Ann Beattie - Distortions

*

Andrew and Penelope and Randy. Andrew and Penelope are twins, eight years old. Before they were born, the doctor took an X ray and told them they would have triplets. He kept thinking that the doctor had done something with the other one, that he was selling it. He even told his wife that, and she went wild. The doctor assured them that he had interpreted the X ray wrong, and when that did not silence them he let them look at the X ray. “What’s that shadow? What’s that?” “I thought that might be a third.” “It might be! Isn’t that a leg?” “There were only two,” the doctor said, and walked out of the room. The bill was exorbitant. And when she was pregnant with Randy he refused to treat her, sent her to his partner. He does not really believe there was a third child any more. It seems silly to him that they were so upset. No doubt the sunsets will someday seem silly too.

*

She complains that in the city there is dust; at the beach there is sand. Anyone would expect that. Why does it drive her crazy? The sand creeps in, gets swept out, gets dusted away, comes again. She can feel her heart beating as she opens the door and sweeps the sand out the door, into the rest of the sand. Sand to sand. Ashes to ashes. She is thinking about dying again. Why? Why the hell is she thinking about that? She is thirty years old.

In the bed at night, she feels a grain or two of sand between her fingers. She gets up and takes a shower. There is a circle of sand around the drain. Why doesn’t the water wash it away? Everybody knows that water washes sand away.

*

Penelope gets the measles. Her eyes and her cheeks get puffy and pale. He consults a medical book and finds that nothing is said about the face bloating. He calls the doctor again. The doctor says that it is nothing; he examined Penelope the day before. She is just a little girl with the measles. David thinks that the man is indifferent — the way he speaks of her as just another itchy kid. They should see a specialist. He calls the doctor back — Penelope is in awe of all the confusion she has created — and asks for the name of a specialist. The doctor hangs up on him! He finds his wife in the kitchen, tells her about what the doctor did.

“You just can’t get along with doctors,” she says. The adjective would be wistfully . “She says wistfully.” What is she wistful for? On the table is an open book. There is a photograph: “Seated man in a bra and stockings, N.Y.C. 1967.”

“I want to leave the beach,” she says.

“But I rented this place for the whole summer.”

“I am attracted to the lifeguard.”

“You’re kidding me.”

“I walk up and down the beach. I parade in front of him. I’ve bought two new bathing suits. Something is going to happen.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

No answer. The young man in bra and stockings has an enigmatic expression. Perhaps someone just said something that astounded him, then took his picture. Perhaps he was just walking around in his bra and stockings, and then he got tired and sat down, and then someone said something astounding and snapped his picture.

Where did she get that sick book? Is she serious about the lifeguard? You’d never leave me for a lifeguard, he wants to say to her, because I am a loving husband and father. Witness the fact that I’ve spent nine hundred dollars to rent this place at the beach to delight my wife and children, and that at this very moment I am trying to find a specialist for my ill child.

“You pick the perfect moment to bring this up,” he says.

“What do you care when I bring it up? It had to be said.”

She is sitting in her bathing suit, fingers lightly on the photograph, as if it might be a ouija board, as though her fingers might begin to move, as though the fingers might direct her somewhere … to the lifeguard? He decides to take a walk down to the beach and look more carefully at the lifeguard.

“How do you feel, Andrew?” he asks his son. His son is playing with a dump truck in front of the house.

“Fine,” Andrew says.

“Where’s Randy?” David asks.

“He’s at the beach with the Collinses.”

Andrew pushes the back of the dump truck down. Sand spills on top of five sticks, all neatly in a row.

“What are the sticks?” David asks.

“What do you mean?” Andrew asks.

“What kind of game are you playing?”

“I’m just using my dump truck.”

Andrew seems very defensive. He has seemed that way all summer. Eight is a bad age. Penelope, on the other hand, is quite cheerful when she is well. Now she is sick. He should call a specialist. But first he wants to go look at the lifeguard.

*

The lifeguard is wearing glasses that can’t be seen into, so his eyes show no expression. His mouth is covered with zinc oxide, smeared on so thickly that it’s hard to tell if his bottom lip has curled into a faint smile or if it’s just the guck. The lifeguard wears bright-blue swimming trunks. There is a chain around his neck with a whistle dangling from it. David would like to blow the whistle into the lifeguard’s ear, make him show some emotion. The lifeguard looks remarkably fit. He would slug him, then grind him into the sand with one of those large, perfect feet. Then he would stand on top of him, the way people stand on top of sand dunes, and wait for him to die.

“Hi,” he says to the lifeguard.

The lifeguard raises his hand. His palm is very white.

“Been in the water?” David asks.

“No,” the lifeguard says. “Not yet, sir.”

By the lifeguard’s foot (large, perfect) is a sweatshirt. Dartmouth.

“You don’t have to call me sir,” David says. “I’m not much older than you.”

The lifeguard smiles. The zinc oxide cracks.

“How old are you?” David asks.

“Twenty-two,” the lifeguard says. He takes off his sunglasses and squints at the water. He puts them back on.

“Do you know my wife?” David asks.

“No,” the lifeguard says.

“A tall, blond woman. She usually wears a red swimsuit.”

“No,” the lifeguard says.

“She also has a green swimsuit. Very tall. As tall as me.”

“Does she come to the beach very early?”

“Yes. She likes it when it’s deserted.”

“I think so,” the lifeguard says. “What about her?”

David had not prepared himself for that question. He smiles foolishly.

*

“You know, honey, you forgot my birthday,” David says.

She shrugs.

“Have I done something?”

“No,” she says.

“You just feel like giving me some shit,” he says.

“I don’t even feel like doing that. I’d just like to be alone. I think about the lifeguard all day.”

“That might be like the sunsets I’ve been imagining. I’ve been seeing the sky at night as rosy and bright and pearly … I’ve been seeing flashes of light across the sky, hearing birds, I think …”

“I don’t see the similarity,” she says.

“We’re both obsessed by something that isn’t real.”

“He’s real. He’s standing on the beach right now.”

“But you’re imagining he’s better than he is.”

“I see what you’re saying,” she says. “I think that maybe after living with you for ten years I’m going crazy too.”

“What do you mean ‘too’?”

“You’re crazy. The way you’re always arguing with doctors, the sunsets you were talking about.”

“If I can’t talk to you, who can I talk to?” David asks.

“Bea Collins said she saw you talking to the lifeguard.”

*

The lifeguard awoke several times: once because he was sleeping on his arm, another time when there was a noise, either in the house or in his dream, and again when the bright light shone into the room. The third time he woke up, the lifeguard made a mental note to change the position of the bed so that the light wouldn’t shine in his eyes every morning. Finally, he got up. He remembered awakening only once; the light, the bed …