Ann Beattie - Chilly Scenes of Winter

“Naturally you’re concerned.”

“That’s not what I asked! I asked if I sounded drunk.”

“No. You certainly don’t. You only sound concerned.”

“I am concerned. It’s a popular misconception that alcoholics aren’t concerned. If I weren’t concerned, I wouldn’t be an alcoholic, Charles.”

He has no idea what to say to terminate the conversation.

“Some people are unwilling to carry on a conversation once they find out that someone is an alcoholic, but you’ve been most gracious. Naturally, when we tend an egg, we look beyond the crack in the shell. We look to see the infant bird, to care for it, to care that it is all right. And since I haven’t heard from Elise for so long, naturally I am wondering.”

“Certainly you are. And I’m sure she’ll get in touch.”

You bet she will, that bitch, and Susan will see to it. Somehow.

“You can’t know how reassuring it is to discuss this with an adult, ” Mrs. Reynolds says.

“Well, I’m sorry I can’t be of more help to you, Mrs. Reynolds, but I’m certain that she’s back at school now. She’s okay, I’m sure of that.”

She will be dead somewhere. Twisted and dead. And the police will find his fingerprints on her coat — he lifted her coat from the sofa when she was here — and they will come to work and arrest him.

There will be a scuffle — he will try to keep his balance when he stands to greet the policemen. He will have a bemused, curious look on his face. And one of them — the big one — will misunderstand and think he is preparing to fight his way out. Why else would he lean to one side, why else that rigid spine, prepared for a fight? The big one will pick him up and throw him through the glass, and he will fall twenty-one stories. Braced briefly and miraculously between two snow-cushioned tree limbs, he will scramble for safety, but lose his grip and fall from the tree to the ground, while the policemen look through the hole in the glass and slap each other on the back. A sex pervert; he deserved that fall, O’Hara.

He calls Sam to see if he knows anything about where Elise might be. Sam reports that his temperature is ninety-nine and that he doesn’t know where Elise is. He did give her fifteen dollars though. “All she was worth — at the most.”

“You paid her for it, you paid for it?” Charles says.

Things are really taking a new turn if Sam paid for it.

“It wasn’t that overt. She told me she needed money. I think she said she needed twenty dollars. I gave her fifteen, which is definitely all she was worth.”

Sam sort of paid for it. Things are sort of taking a new turn.

“But she didn’t say anything about where she was thinking of going?”

“The only thing even remotely related to travel that she talked about was how she envied the Kennedys, except for the amputee who has a bit of trouble with it, for being able to go siding.”

“You don’t think she took off for some ski lodge?”

“Not on fifteen bucks.”

“She might have had more.”

“Not in her wallet. Well, she had about ten or fifteen more in there, I guess.”

“You went through her wallet.”

“She was showing me some pictures. I saw a little bit of money in the back.”

“It could have been hundred dollar bills.”

“I don’t think so. She was really grateful when I gave her the fifteen. She should have been. Even with inflation, that was a five-dollar lay.”

“Okay,” Charles says. “You don’t know anything.”

“Maybe you know whether my snowmobile socks are at your place,” Sam says.

“Yeah, they are.”

“I looked all over the place for them before I left. Ended up going to work in a pair of yours.”

“Bring them back.”

“I will. Why would I want a pair of your socks?”

“They’d better not be the ones Laura gave me.”

“How should I know? They’re a pair of navy blue socks.”

“No. She gave me gray ones.”

“Christ, you’re nuts. My dinner’s getting ready to burn.”

“What are you having?”

“Stouffer’s lasagna.”

“It’s good you’re eating. Keep your strength up.”

“You sound like somebody’s grandmother.”

“You’re as testy as I am. Guess you’ve got a right if you’ve still got a fever.”

“I’ve got a right if I have to stand here gassing to you while my lasagna bums up.”

“Okay. Good-bye.”

“Bye,” Sam says.

Charles puts the phone back on the hook, taking his hand away slowly, debating whether it might not be wiser to let it dangle. Might as well let her call again, get it out of her system so she doesn’t start that “You murdered her” stuff again. Murder. Jesus. Elise couldn’t drive anybody to murder. Who would bother? Except all those murderers out there … the ones who’ll wear rubber gloves and not have their fingerprints on her coat. In comes Detective O’Hara, out the window goes Charlie. Then she’ll be sorry. Then, too late, she’ll realize that she didn’t want her husband and Rebecca. She’ll go back to work in the same library, just to be in the building where he once cornered her against the bookshelf. Twice. Three times at least.

He puts a box of taco hors d’oeuvres in the oven and finds a beer in the bottom of the refrigerator that he decides to save to go with the tacos. Laura and her husband and daughter are probably having a nourishing dinner. They are having baked ham, sweet potatoes, asparagus, freshly baked bread, milk, and that dessert. Laura used to come home with him sometimes and cook dinner. She’d take off her stockings and go get a pair of the soft gray socks she had given him and stand in the kitchen in the socks, cooking dinner. In her dress and socks she looked like some bobbysoxer. If he had known her in the fifties they would have jitterbugged. She would have worn a ribbon in her hair, and a long pleated skirt, blazer, and white socks and saddle shoes. The socks would have a funny weave that looked like rivulets when they got twisted around a little. Gonna rock, gonna rock around the clock tonight.

The kitchen clock says five-thirty. That gives him enough time for a shower. But does he want a shower? No. He wants that beer. But doesn’t he want it with the tacos? Yes. People’s problems should end when they get home from work. They don’t. No wonder men go home and knock their kids around. There’s only one beer, which will be great with the tacos, but they want it immediately to cool their throat, so when the kid says that a wheel came off his bicycle the father looks at the wheel, picks it up, and pushes it over the kid’s head, the kid goes around yowling, the wheel like a clown’s ruffle, his wife says he’s a beast, separates from him, divorces him. If only Laura would push a wheel over Rebecca’s head. Not very likely. She goes to parent’s day, is “room mother” for the kindergarten, bakes special gingerbread cookies for the kids, who all love her. “She was such a nice woman, you’d never think she’d push a wheel over her child’s head.” And, in fact, she won’t. She’ll just cook a nice nourishing dinner and then tuck Rebecca in, and what she does after that is too painful to think about. Maybe she will call him, though. She won’t.

The phone rings as he is finishing dinner.

“This is a voice from the past,” the caller says.

He swallows the last quarter inch of beer. It tastes foul.

“I have pretty eyes and long hair, and I call you every time I’m in trouble. Who am I?”

“Pamela Smith,” he says, his voice gloomy.

“That’s right!” Pamela Smith says.

“What kind of trouble are you in, Pamela?”

“Spiritual trouble.”

He repeats this.