Ann Beattie - Falling in Place

The woman with the dog was gone. About where she had stood was a woman in a white sailor’s hat, sitting in a lawn chair pulled a little way into the water, her big legs stretched in front of her. “Hawaii is better,” she said as he passed.

He went back to the path and climbed the steps, feeling how smooth the sand had worn the soles of his feet.

Louise had brought a radio outside. It was playing softly, sitting on the metal top of a table that had a hole, but no umbrella they could find.

“They’re putting the former manager of the Beatles in jail for tax evasion,” she said. She did not look up. She was reading a paperback.

“Did you plan to go to the store for food, or shall we just go out for dinner when Nick and his friend come?” she said.

“Laurie,” he said.

“Laurie,” she said. “Which?”

“You’re mad that I asked them,” he said. “They were coming here anyway. I couldn’t very well not invite them to stop by.”

“Nick and Laurie,” she said. She moved her leg, and the chair swirled a little in the pool. She was almost facing him, but still she hadn’t looked up.

“We’ll go out to eat,” he said. “We’ll go to that restaurant you like.”

“So that you can keep Nick posted,” she said, “you can tell him that I’ve asked for a divorce.”

“What?” he said. “Who have you asked for a divorce?”

She looked up. “You,” she said. There was a report on the radio about which traveler’s checks to buy. A reporter had bought traveler’s checks and left them home on purpose. American Express had come through for her. The people at the Holiday Inn where she had gone to fill out a form and get new checks had been very polite.

“If that’s what you want,” he said. He thought to himself: coward.

“Nick and Laurie,” she said, and moved her leg again. The chair twirled.

“You don’t want to see Nick and Laurie,” he said.

“I’ll see Nick and Laurie,” she said. “I’ll stay the rest of the week, too. You can go, if you want to.”

“Do you want to take a walk?” he said.

“To see if the woman in the bikini is still throwing sticks for her dog? That made me so nostalgic. My poor goddamn dog. Goddamn me, too, for not being able to get the dog out of my head.”

He wondered if it was orange juice in her cup. Seagulls were squawking.

“You saw me talking to her?” he said. “You came down to the beach?”

“I started to, but I saw you in the distance, talking to her. Do you realize that you’re only embarrassing yourself? I saw her at the drugstore, at the counter, in a tight white skirt, and the man sitting on the stool next to her wasn’t more than eighteen years old. Not her son, either. That woman must be forty-five.”

“So what makes you think that I was interested in her?”

“You’re interested in dogs?”

“I like dogs,” he said. “I didn’t worship Mr. Blue the way you did, but it was your dog.”

“Mary told me that she talked to you about getting a dog, and that you didn’t seem too keen on the idea.”

“Should I have? Is that what you want?”

“As you said to Mary, if I wanted a dog, I’d just go out and get a dog. I’m not like you, actually. If I decide I want something, I just act on that impulse.”

“Why not be specific with your insults?” he said.

“I’m not insulting you. Maybe by implication I am. Saying that you’re like me. To be fair to myself, what I said was that I was like you.” She kicked the water, turned. She was sunburned, too. Her face was shiny, her hair wet. She had been swimming. Drinking. It was not orange juice in the cup.

“Here’s something you haven’t thought about,” she said. “What if I told you to take care of the children? What if I moved with Tiffy to New York?”

It was something he hadn’t thought about. He was silent, trying to figure out if she was bluffing.

“Scare you?” she said. “Your mother wouldn’t take two more, would she?”

“They’re my children,” he said. “Do you think that I wouldn’t take them?”

“I don’t think they’d go,” she said. She spun again. “That’s just a guess,” she said. “You know when Brandt had the measles? He got them again — German measles. Your mother had never had German measles.” She laughed. “She called today. She’s peppered.”

“What are you drinking?” he said.

“If you stay,” she said, “I want to rent a boat.”

“I want you to take a walk with me on the beach and sober up.”

“I want it to stay summer,” she said. “I hate Connecticut in the winter. You know what I particularly hate? The birds still hopping around in the cold, the little seed bells you have to hang in the trees for them. Those brown and white seeds all over the leaves. Then the snow.”

“Where would you rather be?” he said.

She said, smiling, “Where would you?”

She made it come back to him: the rooms, the apartment on Columbus Avenue, the place he had been trying all day not to think about, staring at the ocean, the beach. Seagulls instead of pigeons. Salt air instead of the subway smell. His feet sinking into the sand. His feet so heavy he could hardly lift them, the slight creaking of the stairs. “Be quiet,” Nina had whispered, putting her finger to her lips. “The landlady!” He had turned to see a heavy woman in a black dress, her hair in pigtails, coming out the front door of Nina’s building, a big white patent-leather purse gleaming under the streetlight. It was the night they had come back to the apartment and Horton had been there, slumped like a Mexican taking a siesta. In front of the landlady, Horton had put his arms around Nina’s hips. The woman looked shocked and hurried past them down the steps. “She hates me,” Nina laughed. “She sticks her head out the door to see if I’ve brought anybody home with me. She has a daughter who’s the same way.”

He had said to John Joel, on the train, “Not your type, huh?” Condescending. He had been condescending to somebody who would pick up a gun and shoot somebody else. That was not something a child would do. His child had done it. If he had underestimated John Joel that much, maybe John Joel had known all along that Nina was his girl, not Nick’s. Maybe John Joel knew that while he was kidding him, saying that she wasn’t his type.

“I’m going to drive to the fish market,” he said. “You don’t want to go out to dinner.”

“I’ll be sober.”

“What makes you think so?”

“Because you’ll watch over me.” She smiled. Turned the page of her book.

He sighed, and sat on the edge of the pool, swinging his legs over the side. He did watch her. He watched her and tried to think of good things about her, because he was so inclined to dislike her. If she hadn’t wanted to come, she should have said so. If she hadn’t wanted to see Nick, or let him see Nick, she should have said that, too. Good things, he reminded himself. That she had gotten drunk, but didn’t seem to intend to get drunker; that she had been about to take a walk with him on the beach before, until she had misunderstood his exchanging a few pleasantries with a woman for flirtation. She had once drawn a hopscotch game on the kitchen floor, amazed that he didn’t know how to do it, and they had used as a stone a kumquat from a fruit basket her aunt had sent them for Christmas. Hopping through the kitchen. Christmas, when she always gave him presents he would like. Jumping into the pile of leaves he had raked in the backyard. Winter memories: Most of them were winter memories.

At five o’clock, when Nick and Laurie showed up, she was sitting on a lounge chair beside the pool, wearing a blue T-shirt and white cotton pants. A towel that had been on her wet hair was around her neck. She was polite.