Ann Beattie - Chilly Scenes of Winter

“Hello,” the man says. “Cold as a witch’s tit, isn’t it?” The man is wearing a black coat and scarf. He looks menacing.

“Yeah,” Charles says. “Farmer’s Almanac says we’re in for a big storm the eighteenth.”

“You were going to come for a drink,” the man says. “Come for a drink.”

“Okay,” Charles says. “I’ll get over.”

“Any time,” the man says.

“Good. Thanks,” Charles says.

He feels good about that until he realizes that the man’s car was parked far away from either the red brick or the white house with blue shutters and that he still doesn’t know where he lives.

He runs with the grocery bag from the driveway to the front door. Susan opens it.

“It’s awful out,” she says. “How did it go?”

“I got through the day,” he says, then realizes that that was melodramatic. He expects her to inform him that his attitude is wrong, but she doesn’t.

“How are you?” he says. “Doctor desert you?”

“No. He’ll be in later tonight. His car broke down.”

Charles feels sorry for him because his car broke down. He does not want to feel sorry for the man.

“What kind of jackass wouldn’t get rid of a Cadillac anyway?” he says.

He takes the groceries into the kitchen, then goes to the bedroom to see Sam. Sam is asleep, his feet again out of the covers. This time his fly is hanging open and his pajama top is all bunched up around him. Charles is sure that he is getting pneumonia. He backs out of the room, goes to the kitchen and gets a glass of grapefruit juice.

“What makes you so sure he doesn’t have pneumonia?” Charles asks.

“He doesn’t have pneumonia. He was awake for several hours today.”

Charles is glad she’s still there. He wishes the Cadillac would break apart in the middle.

“Would you like me to cook these?” Susan asks, taking the pork chops out of the bag.

He will never have that dessert again. “Sure,” he says.

“After dinner we’ve got to go see her,” Susan says.

He had forgotten. “I know,” he says. “Pete call back?”

“No.”

“I guess I’ll get it in person then.”

Charles checks the thermometer: thirty-two degrees.

“It’s freezing,” he says. He goes into the living room and lies down on the sofa. It reminds him of lying in the hospital bed, no energy to move, his mother sitting at his side, on top of her coat on a chair. The man who shared his room was named somebody-or-other Brownwell. Brownwell, it turned out, had an inoperable melanoma. Charles had no idea what that was, and Brownwell didn’t either, and as hard as he tried not to, hands over his ears, Charles still heard the doctor say “cancer” through the thin screen that was pulled around Brownwell’s bed. It was so depressing there. He’d wake up in the morning and see Brownwell’s head against the pillow; the rest of his body already seemed to have shrunken up, given up, disappeared. Sometimes Charles would raise himself in bed the little he could to make sure that Brownwell was still there below the shoulders. Brownwell sat and stared. Charles’s mother always asked Brownwell if he wanted a glass of water when she came and when she left. Once he did. Charles turns on the couch, trying to get the hospital out of his mind. The sheets were so stiff. Once he woke up a little to see Brownwell, who paced for four days until they discharged him, pacing by his bed. Brownwell stopped to pull Charles’s blanket up. Charles pretended to be asleep and lay very still, but it was all he could do to restrain himself because he wanted to reach out and kiss Brownwell’s hand. He almost did kiss his hand. Not because he straightened the sheets, but just because he felt so damn sorry for Brownwell. Every day when the doctor came to see him, Charles waited to hear the word “melanoma.” He hung on the doctor’s every word. “You’re very alert today, that’s a good sign,” the doctor said. Another time, the doctor asked him if his mother was “emotionally disturbed.” He never found out what his mother had done that made the doctor ask. Pete came every night — damn, he should like that man — and brought Playboy and, for some reason, an inflatable plastic pillow he could blow up and put under the one on the bed. Actually, it came in handy. He was too weak to sit up well without calling the nurses to haul him up by his armpits, but with the pillow he was a little higher and could see a little more. Brownwell’s son blew it up for him. The son was a cub scout. Brownwell looked like he could die every night during visiting hours. He looked better when his wife and son left. Charles gets up. He’s going to remember as long as he lies there. He goes out to the kitchen and watches Susan pour Sam’s leftover white wine over the cooking pork chops.

“I hope she’s not so sedated she doesn’t know us,” Susan says.

“She fakes that. She almost always knows us.”

He sits in a chair. The pork chops smell good. He is glad she is there, because he is too tired to cook. He shouldn’t be so tired. He should have a checkup. He doesn’t want to. They will find out he has an inoperable melanoma.

They eat dinner at the table, even though Charles and Susan told Sam that they should bring a tray to him in bed and bring chairs in for them to sit on to keep him company. Charles was secretly glad to see Sam get up, because that would keep pneumonia away. Nothing would keep inoperable melanoma away, but walking would keep pneumonia away. He shakes his head, trying to clear his mind so he can enjoy dinner.

“Did you get the candy bars?” Sam asks. Sam is very hoarse.

“Oh, yeah. They’re in my coat pocket.”

“Probably won’t be able to eat that much, though,” Sam says.

“Sure you will.”

“I’ve got to get back to work tomorrow,” Sam says.

“You’re nuts. You can hardly stand up.”

“Then let them send me to the doctor and send me home. That way I won’t lose my job.”

“Call them and tell them you’re sick.”

“Won’t work.”

“Bastards,” Charles says.

“I’m lucky to have the damned job,” Sam says.

“A Phi Beta Kappa is lucky to be selling men’s jackets. Yeah.”

“The money, I mean.”

“Speaking of which, you’ve still got a twenty of mine for grass.”

Susan looks up, surprised.

“Coming in end of the week,” Sam says. He gets it from a woman whose son gives it to her. She puts it in her lunch pail. The woman works in the “Bath Accessories” shop. She’s a nice woman — a dumb, nice woman. Charles met her once when he came to pick up Sam, and Sam was walking out with her. “I like being dangerous,” she said, swinging the pail. “Only I don’t got the nerve to use it. You boys have a good time. I’m dependable. My boy can get you more.”

“One time Sam got a memo from the boss saying that he should wear a tape measure around his neck to make himself look more official,” Charles says to Susan.

“He didn’t.”

“I did,” Sam says. “God, did I drink a lot that weekend.”

“You don’t wear the thing, do you?” she asks.

Sam rolls his eyes. “Oh, Sam, that’s awful.”

“I sort of think it’s funny now. Another time, when I first started working there, he sent his brother around. His brother was a big fellow. He took forty-two extra long. And the guy told me he wanted a thirty-eight regular. He could hardly squeeze into it. What did I care. I rang it up. Next day the boss came around to congratulate me. ‘That’s right,’ he said. ‘The customer is always right.’ ”

Susan shakes her head and laughs.

“Laugh while you can. Wait until you get out,” Sam says.

“She’s going to marry the doctor,” Charles says. “She’s got no worries.”