Ann Beattie - Distortions

May thinks that is very sad. She remembers the last time she saw her father. It was when her mother took the caps off her father’s film containers and spit into them. He grabbed her mother’s arm and pushed her out of the room. “The great artist!” her mother hollered, and her father’s face went wild. He has a long, straight nose (May’s is snubbed, like her mother’s) and long, brown hair that he ties back with a rubber band when he rides his motorcycle. Her father is two years younger than her mother. They met in the park when he took a picture of her. He is a professional photographer.

May picks up the National Enquirer and begins to read an article about how Sophia Loren tried to save Richard Burton’s marriage. In a picture, Sophia holds Carlo Ponti’s hand and beams. Wanda subscribes to the National Enquirer . She cries over the stories about crippled children, and prays for them. She answers the ads offering little plants for a dollar. “I always get suckered in,” she says. “I know they just die.” She talks back to the articles and chastises Richard for ever leaving Liz, and Liz for ever having married Eddie, and Liz for running around with a used-car salesman, and all the doctors who think they have a cure for cancer.

After lunch, Wanda takes a nap and then a shower. Afterward, there is always bath powder all over the bathroom — even on the minor. Then she drinks two shots of tequila in lemonade, and then she fixes dinner. Mrs. Wong comes back from the library punctually at four o’clock. May looks at Wanda’s National Enquirer . She turns the page, and Paul Newman is swimming in water full of big chunks of ice.

Mrs. Wong’s first name is Maria. Her name is written neatly on her notebooks. “Imagine having a student living under my roof!” Wanda says. Wanda went to a junior college with May’s mother but dropped out after the first semester. Wanda and May’s mother have often talked about Mrs. Wong. From them May learned that Mrs. Wong married a Chinese man and then left him, and she has a fifteen-year-old son. On top of that, she is studying to be a social worker. “That ought to give her an opportunity to marry a Negro,” May’s mother said to Wanda. “The Chinese man wasn’t far out enough, I guess.”

Mrs. Wong is back early today. As she comes up the sidewalk, she gives May the peace sign. May gives the peace sign, too.

“Your mama didn’t write, I take it,” Mrs. Wong says.

May shrugs.

“I write my son, and my husband rips up the letters,” Mrs. Wong says. “At least when she does write you’ll get it.” Mrs. Wong sits down on the top step and takes off her sandals. She rubs her feet. “Get to the movies?” she asks.

“She always forgets.”

“Remind her,” Mrs. Wong says. “Honey, if you don’t practice by asserting yourself with women, you’ll never be able to assert yourself with men.”

May wishes that Mrs. Wong were her mother. It would be nice if she could keep her father and have Mrs. Wong for a mother. But all the women he likes are thin and blond and young. That’s one of the things her mother complains about. “Do you wish I strung beads?” her mother shouted at him once. May sometimes wishes that she could have been there when her parents first met. It was in the park, when her mother was riding a bicycle, and her father waved his arms for her to stop so he could take her picture. Her father has said that her mother was very beautiful that day — that he decided right then to marry her.

“How did you meet your husband?” May asks Mrs. Wong.”

“I met him in an elevator.”

“Did you go out with him for a long time before you got married?”

“For a year.”

“That’s a long time. My parents only went out together for two weeks.”

“Time doesn’t seem to be a factor,” Mrs. Wong says with a sigh. She examines a blister on her big toe.

“Wanda says I shouldn’t get married until I’m twenty-one.”

“You shouldn’t.”

“I bet I’ll never get married. Nobody has ever asked me out.”

“They will,” Mrs. Wong says. “Or you can ask them.

“Honey,” Mrs. Wong says, “I wouldn’t ever have a date now if I didn’t ask them.” She puts her sandals back on.

Wanda opens the screen door. “Would you like to have dinner with us?” she says to Mrs. Wong. “I could put in some extra chicken.”

“Yes, I would. That’s very nice of you, Mrs. Marshall.”

“Chicken fricassee,” Wanda says, and closes the door.

The tablecloth in the kitchen is covered with crumbs and cigarette ashes. The cloth is plastic, patterned with golden roosters. In the center is a large plastic hen (salt) and a plastic egg (pepper). The tequila bottle is lined up with the salt and pepper shakers.

At dinner, May watches Wanda serving the chicken. Will she put the spoon in the dish? She is waving the spoon; she looks as if she is conducting. She drops the spoon on the table.

“Ladies first,” Wanda says.

Mrs. Wong takes over. She dishes up some chicken and hands the plate to May.

“Well,” Wanda says, “here you are happy to be gone from your husband, and here I am miserable because my husband is gone, and May’s mother is out chasing down her husband, who wants to run around the country taking pictures of hippies.”

Wanda accepts a plate of chicken. She picks up her fork and puts it in her chicken. “Did I tell you, Mrs. Wong, that my husband drowned?”

“Yes, you did,” Mrs. Wong says. “I’m very sorry.”

“What would a social worker say if some woman was unhappy because her husband drowned?”

“I really don’t know,” Mrs. Wong says.

“You might just say, ‘Buck up,’ or something.” Wanda takes a bite of the chicken. “Excuse me, Mrs. Wong,” she says with her mouth full. “I want you to enjoy your dinner.”

“It’s very good,” Mrs. Wong says. “Thank you for including me.”

“Hell,” Wanda says, “we’re all on the same sinking ship.”

“What are you thinking?” Wanda says to May when she is in bed. “You don’t talk much.”

“What do I think about what?”

“About your mother off after your father, and all. You don’t cry in here at night, do you?”

“No,” May says.

Wanda swirls the liquor in her glass. She gets up and goes to the window.

“Hello, coleus,” Wanda says. “Should I pinch you back?” She stares at the plant, picks up the glass from the windowsill, and returns to the bed.

“If you were sixteen, you could get a license,” Wanda says. “Then when your ma went after your father you could chase after the two of them. A regular caravan.”

Wanda lights another cigarette. “What do you know about your friend Mrs. Wong? She’s no more talkative than you, which isn’t saying much.”

“We just talk about things,” May says. “She’s rooting an avocado she’s going to give me. It’ll be a tree.”

“You talk about avocados? I thought that, being a social worker, she might do you some good.”

Wanda drops her match on the floor. “I wish if you had anything you wanted to talk about that you would,” she says.

“How come my mother hasn’t written? She’s been gone a week.”

Wanda shrugs. “Ask me something I can answer,” she says.

In the middle of the following week a letter comes. “Dear May,” it says, “I am hot as hell as I write this in a drugstore taking time out to have a Coke. Ray is nowhere to be found, so thank God you’ve still got me. I guess after another day of this I am going to cash it in and get back to you. Don’t feel bad about this. After all, I did all the driving. Ha! Love, Mama.”

Sitting on the porch after dinner, May rereads the letter. Her mother’s letters are always brief. Her mother has signed “Mama” in big, block-printed letters to fill up the bottom of the page.