Ann Beattie - Falling in Place

“Not that you’re not happy they’re there,” Louise said.

The car bumped over pebbles and onto the grass. As they passed by, music was already playing loudly and two boys were throwing cans of beer to two girls who had gotten out of the car. They were trying to go into the woods, but the beer cans kept sailing at them.

“They’re going to explode!” one of the girls hollered. “Stop it.”

The beer cans kept flying. Once Mary had seen a comedy routine on television when the comic had thrown balls offstage, throwing carefully into somebody’s hand, no sound because there were no misses, and then as he was about to toss another ball, all the balls came flying back, knocking him over. She couldn’t remember how it ended.

“Cut it out!” the girl screamed again. The other girl had run into the woods.

Beer cans kept flying at the girl. She was dodging them, after she had caught one can in each hand. She was trying to keep away from them, backing into the woods, backing up because she didn’t want to get hit in the back.

“Lovely little bit of Americana,” John said to Louise when they passed the boys.

John had put Brandt down, and he scurried away, looking left and right, doing his flat-footed Groucho shuffle.

“Your mother’s turning him into a great intellectual,” Louise said.

“He’s five years old.”

“I remember how old he is. Little as I see him, and small as my brain is, I am able to store some facts away.”

“Go ahead and be a bitch,” he said.

“Thank you for encouraging me to grow in new directions,” Louise said.

Mary passed them. John Joel was lagging behind, panting as they began to go up another hill. Brandt had picked up a stick and was pretending it was a cigar, tapping the top of it, rolling his eyes and talking to himself.

“Mary,” Louise called, “why don’t you carry this cooler the rest of the way?”

“Because I don’t even want to be on this picnic,” she said.

“Come here and get it and carry it,” her father said. “Please.”

Mary stopped and let them catch up with her. When they did, she took the cooler. “I guess I’m not the only one who doesn’t want to be on this picnic,” she said.

“Where would everybody like to be?” John said. “Just where would everybody like to be? You want a pizza? You want Chinese? What? I didn’t hear that nobody wanted to be on this picnic until we were on the picnic.”

“This isn’t a picnic,” Louise said. “This is walking around and getting sweaty. Which is okay, if you’re in the mood for that.”

“What would you rather be doing, Louise?”

“It doesn’t matter what I would rather be doing.”

“Just tell me,” he said. “Tell me, and stop right here, and I’ll go get the car and chauffeur you wherever you want to go.”

“Magnanimous,” Louise said. “You’re only here two nights a week, but it’s the quality , not the quantity.”

“Where?” he said. “Where do you want to go?”

“Oh, maybe you could drop me at exercise class. I like that a lot. I can socialize with Tiffy Adamson and Marge Pendergast and I can wonder along with everybody else what it feels like for Marge to do those stretch exercises with no tits. I can pick up some more smart talk. Or you could drop me at the hospital and I could see if Marlene’s father’s leg ulcer is clearing up. It’s not New York, but there’s a world of excitement out here in suburbia. I read in the paper today that a deer got hit crossing the road. We could call the police barracks and find out where the deer was buried and make a pilgrimage to its grave. It was probably escaping from New York when it had its accident.”

“Don’t kid yourself. Whatever cop pronounced it dead is eating it tonight.”

“Well,” she said, “it’s not entirely civilized out here in the woods. Everyone has to make do.”

“I asked you at Christmas if you wanted to get an apartment in the city.”

“You’re going to put them all in private school?” she said.

Mary was far enough ahead of them so that she didn’t have to hear the answer. She wished she had gone to Angela’s for dinner, even if it would have meant listening to Angela’s father trying to convince both of them to do well in summer school so they could get into good colleges and become lawyers. He wanted everybody to be a lawyer. Angela’s mother was taking courses in law at night. During the day she worked selling real estate. Mary wanted to do well in English just so she would never have to read, or have read to her, another book. It was for sure that Peter Frampton didn’t sit around reading first chapters of famous books. You could bet that Peter Frampton’s business manager didn’t bore the lady love by lecturing her about going to law school.

Her parents called to her. Finally, her father had found the place he wanted to have the cookout. Her mother was already sitting at the wooden bench, opening the bottle of wine. If this was like the last cookout, her mother wouldn’t eat anything, and she would make a scene if Brandt refused to eat. Brandt liked hamburgers instead of hot dogs. Tonight there were hot dogs.

John threw a match on the coals. Small blue flames spread through the coals. He watched until a streak of flame went up.

“How many men does it take to light a barbecue?” John said to John Joel.

“How many?” he said.

“One,” John said. “One supremely confident and competent man. Your dad. Don’t forget that Father’s Day is the seventeenth.”

John Joel laughed.

“They’re all as materialistic as you are,” Louise said. “They’re not likely to forget. They’ll have to think hard about what’s presentable but inexpensive. Isn’t that right, my loves?”

She had started drinking the Chablis. She was staring at the coals burning down.

“The eternal flame blew out at Kennedy’s grave,” she said. “It does it all the time, but they keep it hushed up.” She took another sip of wine. She ran her hand across the picnic table, lightly, so she wouldn’t get a splinter. “If there was one thing I could have tonight,” she said, trailing her fingertip along the wood, “do you know what it would be? Mister Blue brought back to life. I’d like to be playing ‘get the stick’ with my dog.”

He was standing with his back to the bed, looking out the window. A week ago, looking out the same window — but early in the morning, not late at night — he had seen a robin teaching her six babies to fly. He had taken one of the shells, an indescribable blue, to New York, to Nina .

He knew that Louise was awake, although she was in bed with her eyes closed, and he knew she did not care that he was standing at the window. Or if she did care, it was because it was an opportunity for sarcasm. So many husbands had stood at windows while their wives lay in bed. So many wives had done the same thing. So many people got married and had children and survived it .

Risky to have mentioned the apartment in New York again. What if she took him up on it?

“What did you want?” he said. “Be straight with me. Was it some special kind of food you wanted, or did you just not want to be on the picnic?”

“I love how you care deeply about things late at night.”

“Maybe the problem is manners,” he said. “Your manners are about as nice as your son and daughter’s.”

“Sons plural. I have two sons.”

“You have two sons. You’d like to have three. You’d like to have me be a child, too, so you could be even more rude to me.”