Ann Beattie - Chilly Scenes of Winter

“Do you want coffee?” Charles asks.

“I’d prefer tea, please.”

He goes to the cabinet for cups. The cups are very cold from the cabinet. He rinses them in tepid, then warm water before putting the boiling water in.

“Actually, the daughter had a daughter too, but it was with its father. Its father was some hot shit San Francisco stockbroker.”

“You mean that this girl was an adult?”

“She was twenty-one. She claimed she screwed Peter Fonda on the kitchen floor in an all-night health food restaurant, but I don’t believe it.”

“It probably happened,” Charles says.

“Well, she says the same thing happened with Ahmet Ertegun, so I don’t believe it.” Charles nods.

“But it’s not all that crazy out there. Burbank is awfully ugly. I don’t know … I think about going back, but I wouldn’t want to go back to Mendocino.”

“What did you come back East for?”

“Oh, I … started to feel I was expanding too quickly — that I’d end up like stretched taffy or something. I came back to compress.”

Charles nods.

“But it’s not all that crazy out there. And now it seems so unreal to me here. I think I may be going back there. Work some shit job for a little while and go back.”

Charles nods.

“How’s your job?” she asks.

He shrugs. “Money,” he says.

“Do you wear a suit to work?” she says.

“No.”

“That’s Charles — a rebel at heart.”

“Nobody wears them,” he says. “What kind of people work there?”

“Most of them are older than me. Family people. They’re all sort of numb. They’re what everybody says they are.”

“I guess it could be worse. You should see the conditions in the canning factory in Mendocino.”

“Yeah,” he says. “I wouldn’t want to work in a canning factory.”

“I’m lucky to have my fingers,” she says. “After a while it’s hard to tell your own fingers from the cauliflower flowerets.”

She takes a sip of tea.

“One day when Marian’s daughter was looking out the window Yoko Ono walked by.”

Charles nods.

“I really don’t have much interesting news. Tell me what’s new with you.”

“Nothing.”

“Do you ever get away to go skiing?”

“I don’t ski,” Charles says.

“Oh. I must be thinking of George Nimkis.” Charles nods.

“Did you know Nimkis? Wanda’s husband?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Totally forgettable. Cared about nothing but skiing. He taught Wanda to ski on their honeymoon, had skis hung on their living room wall. There was even an old pair of them in back of the toilet. She finally left him for a skiing instructor. God knows, she was expert enough at skiing, but the ski instructor didn’t talk about skiing all the time. I don’t know what happened to George. How could I have gotten you confused with George? He had ski masks in all colors, and he’d pull them over the lamp shades. It looked like an evil jack o’lantern. I’m glad she got away from George. I wonder where she is now.…”

“You knew a lot of people around here, didn’t you?”

“I went to school here for four years and worked here for a year after that. I was a silly little secretary. Well, you knew me then. You know.”

“I should think that would beat the canning factory.”

“It did, it did. I had to gouge out the centers of cauliflowers with a knife. It was a wicked thing, and it never got dull. I can’t imagine what that knife was made of. I was terrified of it. I never worked fast enough.”

“So you’re going to go back to Mendocino, huh?”

“I don’t know what to do with myself. I really think I could get interested in that woman if it weren’t for her daughter. Besides being crazy, she’s so piggish. She lies on the rug all day, and she eats anything that’s put in front of her, and believe me, she expects regular meals down there. Sonny Bono wrote her a couple of letters. I don’t know how she knew him.”

“I heard that Dylan showed up at some party with Cher. I wonder what’s gotten into Dylan?”

“I saw his kids at Malibu. They play with Ryan O’Neal’s kid.”

“What’s he doing hanging out with Cher? ‘Haff-breed.’ Christ.”

She puts her plate and cup in the sink. “I can’t remember what you and I used to talk about,” she says.

“Lesbians,” he says.

“That’s right,” she says. “I was freelancing for that feminist newspaper. Well, I still feel very strongly that lesbianism is a good alternative. Like everything else, it has problems. Having a child, for one. And I have decided to have a child. If you have them after thirty they might be monsters. Not really monsters, but what do you call them when they have those oriental eyes?”

“Mongoloid.”

“Of course. Mongoloid. I couldn’t deal with that. For a while Marian’s daughter almost freaked me off the idea, but I think it’s what my body wants. Ultimately.”

He once lent Pamela Smith fifty dollars for an abortion. They got another ten from Sam, and ten from a friend of Sam’s who came over with Sam and saw her crying. Her brother gave her some, and a neighbor in her apartment. And a friend of hers from college who lived twenty-five miles away gave her another fifty. The friend didn’t have a car and Charles’s wouldn’t work, so they borrowed Pete’s. When Pete found out about it a week later he gave Charles twenty dollars to give her. Charles explained that it was not his child. Pete took back a ten. “Give her the rest,” Pete said. He and Pamela Smith ate at a cheap steak restaurant with the remaining ten. Pamela Smith dyed her hair after the abortion and lost a lot of weight, as if to make sure it was really gone. It was, although Pamela Smith was very upset all that summer, thinking that she saw infants’ faces in the clouds.

“Would you do something very kind for me?” Pamela Smith says. “Would you let me stay on your sofa tonight?”

“Sure. Just let me know when you’re tired.”

“Aren’t you even going to question me?” she says.

“No. I don’t mind if you sleep here tonight.”

“I think I’d rather, because it’s a very strange scene at the place I’m staying.”

“You can stay here,” he says.

“You’ve always been so nice to me.”

“No I haven’t. I used to beg you to shut up about lesbianism. I burned your Sappho book.”

“We had a good talk once, didn’t we, about Kate Millett?”

“You wrote me a letter about Kate Millett that I didn’t answer.”

“I met her. She’s a brilliant woman.”

“Maybe she is. I don’t know.”

“Aren’t you interested to read Sexual Politics? ”

“No.”

“Of course there are better books. Would you be interested in reading any feminist writing?”

“Yeah. Send me something.”

“How come you’re interested in feminists, but not Kate Millett?”

“Hell, I was just being polite. I’ll never read anything you send me.”

“I really shouldn’t sleep on your sofa. But it’s an awfully weird scene.”

“If you’re mad at me you can go to bed and then we won’t have to continue this conversation. I’m pretty tired, and I’m going to bed myself.”

“What I like about you is that you’re straightforward. Many men are not straightforward. I think that in business they have to compete, to at least appear very receptive and open, and when they’re relaxing with women — that’s what they think women are for —they assert their true self, which is generally not straightforward.”

“Good night, Pamela,” he says. “I’ll bring you a sheet and a blanket.”

“May I make more tea before I go to bed?”