Ann Beattie - Distortions

Late in the afternoon he’s still there. He doesn’t want to frighten her by telling her that more people might be dead. He doesn’t want to know himself, so he doesn’t turn on the radio. He stays for dinner, and as they eat she says it again. He thinks about it. Jeannie? No.

*

On the day of the murder, Wesley Dutton walks to the train station. The people coming into town don’t know there’s been a murder, and Wesley doesn’t either because no one has told him. He goes into the photo-matic as usual and sits, waiting for his pictures to develop. He sits there too long. There are girls waiting. He knows it, but he doesn’t move. One of the girls giggles and tells her friend to open the curtain, that maybe it’s just a pair of legs in there and they can toss them out. Wesley thinks that’s funny. When he laughs, the girls get quiet. A little while later a man who works in the train station pulls open the curtain.

“Come on out now, Wesley,” he says.

The girls are standing in back of the man. Wesley smiles and stands, reaches into the metal slot for the pictures, nods, and walks away. But his heart is racing. How did the man know his name? The pictures are too dark. Only the last one is any good. He tears it off to study, but something else attracts his attention. It’s Bob Nails, running toward him. Bob Nails is out of breath. He slows down and raises a hand. Wesley raises his hand too, to give Bob Nails the picture. Bob Nails nods, returns the picture, and goes on running.

If Wesley keeps it, he’ll leave it in a pocket and his mother will ruin it when she does the wash. She’s told him she isn’t going through his pockets any more; she’ll wash what he gives her. Tissues get washed and dried, pennies brighten from wash to wash. Today Mrs. Dutton found a dollar bill she’d washed and said she wouldn’t give Wesley any more money. She screamed. That’s why he went to the train station.

*

Sam Siddell is speaking to Bob Nails. He speaks normally to the other men, but backs off from Bob Nails and speaks in a whisper. At first Bob Nails was convinced that Sam was looking for an excuse to fire him, but Sam gives him the most interesting jobs and never criticizes his work. He stands under the lift, across the shop from Bob Nails, and whispers — Bob Nails thinks it’s something about a woman who’s come in with an old Chevy. But what would that have to do with Sam’s brother going hunting? Bob Nails finally has to stop work and ask Sam what he’s said.

“I said a girl got killed,” Sam shouts.

“Not somebody from town?”

“Might of been,” Sam hollers.

Bob Nails goes into the office to call Jeannie.

“Young woman,” Sam murmurs as he walks in behind him. “Young woman,” he repeats loudly, nodding in agreement with himself.

She doesn’t answer. Bob Nails tells Sam he’s going to check, he’ll be right back.

“It ain’t his faulty hearing that disturbs me,” Sam Siddell says to the other men. “It’s his faulty ideas of who’s good women and who ain’t.”

Sam walks up to a car that’s being repaired and spits on the hood.

“Not that it ain’t a tragedy he’s got failed hearing.”

*

It’s 1966 and Bob Nails is at Jeannie Parater’s house and she’s showing him pictures of paintings in a book. Bob Nails is going to ask her to marry him before she goes away to college. He’s going to join the Army so they’ll leave town, which is what she always talks about. Tom Dutton likes the Army; he says he’s never getting out. Bob Nails’s father has told him that if he gets married and joins the Army he’ll shoot him in the back, no matter what country they send him to. When Bob Nails’s father isn’t going to shoot someone in the back, then he’s going to get an incurable cancer, and when he gets that, then he’s going to wire everybody’s car and all the people in the business world who’ve cheated him will be blown sky high; or he’ll get two heart attacks and hang the loan shark he’s into before he gets the third.

“Why do you always want to be talking violence?” Bob Nails’s mother says to his father. “If you talked nicer it would be nicer for Bobby to be home.”

Before that, Bob Nails couldn’t really give her a reason for being at the Paraters’ all the time. Now he had one, so when his mother asked why he couldn’t spend more time at home, he said his father was always talking about killing people and blowing things up and he didn’t want to hear it. His mother nodded sadly. She only got mad once, when Bob Nails and Jeannie drove to another town and spent the weekend.

“Do you think your father talks violence in his sleep? At ten o’clock he goes to bed. At ten o’clock you can come home,” Bob Nails’s mother says.

He’s not sure why he never asked Jeannie to marry him. There was something crazy about her — the way she kept showing him pictures: lines and dots and landscapes, all drawn by different men. She said the idea to spend the weekend with him just came to her when they were sitting in the diner. On Monday she didn’t want to leave, but he made her get in the car, convinced now that she wouldn’t want to marry him, that she’d shown him all those pictures just to smart off. He didn’t say anything on the way back. He began to feel the way his father did — that he could kill, strangle, blow things up. But he loved her and didn’t know why. He stayed home at night and thought about it. After a while he went back to see her, but it was only for two weeks because she left in September. Later that month Bob Nails’s father had his first heart attack.

*

She’s giggling, driving too fast on purpose to confuse him. He hates her when she’s this way.

“And do you know what she told my mother? She said the day the Apollo spacecraft landed on the moon Wesley wouldn’t leave the television, even to eat.”

“What’s so funny about that?”

She’s steering with her left hand, and she’s right-handed. There’s a yellow warning sign, but she’s going too fast to notice.

“Some people don’t laugh in the face of progress,” he adds, gripping the dashboard.

“Wait! Let me tell it.”

She’s looking at him instead of the road.

“So later that afternoon Mrs. Dutton heard Wesley pacing. She looked in his bedroom and there he was walking around with two big squares of foam rubber tied under his shoes. He’d cut up the pillows!”

Why did he agree to this ride? Every time the car cuts around a curve he’s sure he’s going to die. Now they’re on a road he’s not familiar with. Neither is she. She throws the gearshift into reverse and they’re back on the main road.

“Where was the accident? I’m confused now.”

“What accident?”

“Sam might make fun of you for going deaf, but he should know you’ve gone stupid too. The murdered woman.”

They’re going around another curve. A car approaching clicks its high beam on and off.

“Is it one of the roads over top of that hill?”

They’re at the top before he has time to answer. Bob Nails is sure she’s going to kill them. “Yeah,” he agrees immediately. “That road, I think.”

She turns and slows down. “This can’t be it. There’d be some markings.”

“Why are you looking for it? What do you care?”

“I just want to know,” she says.

“Know what?” Bob Nails says.

“Listen,” Jeannie says, slamming on the brakes. “You always were after me because I wanted to find out about things. You hate books. You’re glad I came back. You don’t want me to find out about anything. You don’t want me to find out about you.”

“Me?” he says. “What are you talking about?”

They’re sitting in the dark and the car has come to a stop, not quite in the middle of the road. She’s stretched her neck toward him so she can scream in his face. There’s a surprised look on her face.