Ann Beattie - Chilly Scenes of Winter

“It’s nuts to get married,” Sam says. “What would you get married for?”

“I never said I was getting married. He did.”

“I should know,” Charles says. “According to you, I’m so smart”

Susan looks at her watch. “I don’t know when visiting hours are, do you?”

“We’re family. I don’t think it matters. It would be good to avoid the regular hours because we’d probably miss Pete that way.”

“We ought to at least say hello to him. He’s awfully upset, you said.”

“We cheer him up a lot. We’re such good-natured kids.”

“We could try to act nice tonight. It could be a sort of rehearsal for you, Charles. For when Mark gets here.”

“I already like him immensely,” Charles says.

“I do too,” Sam says.

“Will you let him in?” Susan says to Sam.

“When he makes his house call, you mean?”

Susan sighs.

“Iffen I don’t shoot at the varmint from behind the moonshine machine,” Sam says. Sam puts down his napkin. “Good dinner,” he says. He walks slowly back to the bedroom.

“Let’s get ready,” Susan says.

“Let’s do the dishes.”

“Come on,” she says. “We don’t want to find her asleep when we get there.”

Charles goes to the closet for his jacket. He takes out the candy bars and takes them in to Sam. Sam is propped up in bed, watching the news.

“Thank you,” Sam says.

“Welcome,” Charles says. “I got you cigarettes, too. Do you want them?”

“Not right now. Thanks, though.”

Charles meets Susan at the front door, and they go outside to the car. He notices that the birds have eaten all the seed, and that he will have to put out more. Predictable: put out birdseed, it disappears, you put out more, it disappears, and so on. Susan is nervous. She wants to drive, and he lets her. He puts on the radio. John Lennon is singing “Mind Games.” John Lennon thinks that “love is the answer.” But John — what if she won’t get out of her A-frame to be loved? The snow that was not predicted until the eighteenth has started to fall lightly.

“Road’s getting slick. Watch it on the turns,” Charles says.

“I drive Mark’s car all the time,” she says. She is in a bad mood. It always upsets her to see Clara in the bin.

“Stop at that drugstore,” he says. “I’m going to get a pack of cigarettes. They all want cigarettes.”

She stops in front of the drugstore, and he gets out and buys a pack of Camels. A woman in front of him is buying a magazine with Cher on the cover. “Bonos Bust” the headlines read. Cher, in a low-cut silver gown, is pictured holding their daughter, Chastity, and Sonny has his arm against his brow, as if shielding himself from the sun. The three people have all been cut out of separate photos and jumbled into this one. Charles stares at Sonny, who is wearing boots and fringed pants and a pink shirt. If you don’t shield yourself from the sun you can get an inoperable melanoma, Charles thinks. He would not really care if Sonny Bono died at all, if he didn’t have to be in the bed next to him. The outfits the Bonos are wearing look like something mental patients would put together. Except that then Cher would have on bedroom slippers with her silver dress. The bin. He pays for the cigarettes and walks back to the car. The announcer is talking about the attempt to deport John Lennon. “Does anybody out there want John out of the country? Call in and let us have your views. You know, some people say the government has harassed John. Some of our best citizens have written letters or appeared in John’s behalf. Should they continue? Should John Lennon stay in the U.S.A.? Call us at.…” The announcer’s message is followed by “The Ballad of John and Yoko”: “Christ, you know it ain’t easy, you know how hard it can be, the way things are goin’….” John sings about eating chocolate cake from a bag. Now there’s something nice to remember, one of those crazy in-love things, like special songs and Chinese restaurants. He didn’t do enough of that. Even then he was tired. Right now he is very tired. He rests his head against the foggy side window. He closes his eyes and imagines scenes that never took place: he and Laura went to the beach, and she got sunburned and he rubbed Solarcaine on her back; Laura cooked a ten-course Chinese dinner for him, gave him a surprise birthday party; she asked him for advice, and he gave her good advice that made her happy; they ate Fudgsicles in a park in Paris. Do they have Fudgsicles in Paris? They must. They have a McDonald’s. Revision of that fantasy: he and Laura had a Big Mac in the Paris McDonald’s, later went to the top of the Eiffel Tower. Her eyes were wide at the Lido, the horses racing to the edge of the stage. They climbed a mountain in Switzerland, drank hot mulled cider. They held hands and walked down a street in the spring. She tripped, he fixed the heel of her shoe. She dropped a scented handkerchief, he picked it up, smelled Vol de Nuit. They were together at Christmas, and the house smelled of turkey. She gave him a pineapple. He parted her hair, smoothing his hand down in between brush strokes. In a supermarket, she kissed his ear. They went ice-skating, she in a long skirt, he in a long scarf just like the Currier and Ives print that used to be in his sixth-grade history book. In the rain in Mexico she bought a big white bowl with a rooster in it that he carried. They had a villa and a maid, and where they were the water was so blue it seemed to burn. In actuality, they once had cheeseburgers at McDonald’s on Saturday and were happy eating them there, in spite of the noise the children made and how downtrodden the people looked. Once he got in the tub with her, and she didn’t kick him out. She taught him to play chess, and they drank a delicious, expensive French wine. She gave him a sweater, and he had it for a long time before he lost it. He gave her Vol de Nuit, and she smiled. Once he got in the shower with her and she laughed at him, but didn’t kick him out. She did an imitation of the way he slouched when he walked; he imitated her distracted gaze. Nobody got mad. The roller coaster, and the Ferris wheel. They made cookies together. She took her picture in a photo booth to give to him. They ate at a famous seafood restaurant and had brandy. They got stoned and listened to Schubert. She sent him a valentine signed “Anonymous” and always swore that she didn’t do it, even though it was her handwriting. He gave her a chair for her apartment, brought it to her in the rain. She sat in it. It was all wet.

He looks out the window at the snow. They are already at the hospital. There are three lights in a row, and a few cars. Susan pulls into a place at the end of the row, and they get out and walk toward the side door. A security officer points them to their mother’s wing. Room 14-B. Walking to room 14-B he gives away four cigarettes and lights four cigarettes. He gives out a fifth on the threshold of his mother’s room, turns to light it. “Don’t shake,” the woman says, holding his hands. She frowns at them, no doubt realizing she’ll have little success. She exhales in his face.

“We’re here, Mom,” Susan says to their mother.

She is sitting in bed with a bright yellow ribbon tied around her hair.

“I’m going home tomorrow,” she says. “They knew, they knew it was a mistake to put me here.”

Susan looks at Charles.

“That’s great,” he says. “How are you?”

“Charles, they won’t believe me, but a young doctor here does believe me that I nearly died in that hospital, and I had to get the card of laxatives from my purse and into the bathroom I went, only to get rid of the pain.”

“What does the doctor say about the pain? What caused it?”

She stares at him. “The laxatives. So many laxatives. No one believes me that I almost died with the pain. I had to go into the bathroom and take them, those that I had with me from home, in my purse.”