Ann Beattie - Chilly Scenes of Winter

“You sound funny still, Charles. You feeling okay?”

“Sore throat.”

“I came by earlier. Did you see my note?”

“Yeah. You left the key here, too.”

“Oh, yeah. I was wondering what happened to that.”

“What did you come by for?”

“To see if you’d already eaten.”

“Oh. Have you eaten?”

“Yeah,” Sam says. “Three hot dogs and a can of beans.”

“Ugh.”

“I don’t have any money.”

“Then how were you going to go out to eat?”

“You were going to take me.”

“Oh. Well, sorry I missed you.”

“Where were you?”

“I took the day off from work and wandered around. Went to the park.”

“Feed the birds and feel sorry for yourself?”

“No. Forgot to take anything for the birds and felt guilty.”

The young in one another’s arms, birds in the trees …

“They’ve been laying people off at work.”

“They have? Are you worried?”

“Sure I’m worried. Where am I going to find another job.”

Sam doesn’t ask it as a question.

“You could find another one.”

“You said that with the same enthusiasm you give your mother pep talks with: ‘You can find better things to do than sit in the tub.…”

Charles laughs.

“I wish I could sit around in a tub. There’s something comforting about that. Just sitting in all that warm water, nothing to do,” Sam says.

“It’s very Freudian.”

“It’s very comforting. The hell with Freud. I’m going to go sit in the tub.”

“I’ll be talking to you.”

“Good-bye,” Sam says.

Charles decides to take a hot shower. Have one more cup of tea — he drinks so much tea he can never sleep — and stand under the hot water. His legs are tired from so much walking. He’s sweated a lot; he should wash his hair too. It would be so nice to lie on a raft, to float off the coast of Bermuda, sun shining, wind blowing, drifting. Rum drinks. White shells. Pink flowers. Bicycles. His parents used to take them to the beach in the summer. It was a crowded beach, Popsicle sticks everywhere, stores that sold dirty sweatshirts, fat women in straw hats, the men in matching straw hats, with miniature beer cans attached to the hatband. Auctioneers who kept shouting for everyone to move in, oriental rug shops, gift shops with naked plastic statues that could be filled with water so they’d pee, drugstores that smelled of fish (they always had tanks of goldfish in the back, and dyed birds), the amusement park with puddles of beer and candy apples half eaten. His father always had him by the hand in the amusement park, guiding him around puddles. He went in a house of mirrors with his father. It was a little too hot in there. His father’s laughter was forced. They bumped their heads against the glass. They kept seeing the same people inside over and over. Everybody groped forward with their hands out, got knocked in the head anyway. The kids ran around laughing, as though they knew where they were going. And on the way out, when they finally found their way out, there was a moving belt they had to walk down, which made them teeter out the door. The railing ended just before you came through the plastic fringe curtain to the outside. His mother bought him a bucket and shovel and several different molds at the grocery store to take to the beach. Two kids in the neighborhood had them and Charles had asked for one. The other kids had a starfish mold, a fish mold, a circle, a square, a triangle mold, and a mermaid mold. Charles’s bucket and shovel came with a bucketful of triangle molds in different colors. “Maybe it’s a different manufacturer?” his mother said. “How should I know?” He took the label down to his friend’s house. Same manufacturer. He reported back to his mother. “How the hell should I know?” she said. “Can’t you use that triangle thing? What’s wrong with it?” He thought she was very stupid for getting the worst one in the store. She didn’t even check. He told his father that, behind his mother’s back. “I’m sure she didn’t check,” his father said. “But she’s awfully busy on grocery day, you know.” Charles hated grocery day. She was always very busy, his sister in the grocery cart, his mother holding his hand and pushing the cart with her other hand. Why did he have to hold her hand? He wasn’t like the other kids: he didn’t pull things off shelves or wander away. And finally she said they were just too much for her and left them with a neighbor when she went shopping. What had they ever done? It never failed — every time she’d get to the checkout counter she’d say to him, “Wait with your sister, I’ll be right back,” and run off for another item, and he’d stand there just knowing that his sister would start crying or that it would get time to unload the cart and pay for the food and he wouldn’t have any money. When he had to start unloading and his mother wasn’t back he was frantic. He dropped cans, couldn’t get a grip on the things to lift them out. She always took so long. He used to think she’d run off and left them, that not only would he have no money to pay for the food, but he’d have to get Susan home, and he didn’t even know for sure in which direction to walk. He used to watch the route his mother drove to the store very carefully. He memorized a couple of street names. Why couldn’t she shop at a closer store? He had asked her that, and she had thrown a fit. “He even criticizes where I shop! Who does he think he is?” His father was always in the middle.

He picks up the phone. “Hello?”

“Hi. What’s up?” Susan says.

“What’s up? I’ll tell you what’s up. I’ll tell you what I’d like to have up — my hand against Elise’s bubble head. I’d like to slug her. What the hell would you bring a crazy girl like that home for? Why did I have to end up with her? Have you heard from her?”

“Don’t get excited.”

“Have you ever dealt with her mother? The woman is nuts . She called and nearly had me crazy because Elise never showed up after she left here. Tonight she called with the news that she was in Vail, Colorado, with my friend Sam the lawyer.”

“Oh no,” Susan says.

“Where she really is, I wouldn’t know. But I want you to make it your business to find out and to tell her that she’s not to implicate me in this, or the lawyer and I will beat her to a pulp.”

“I’ll call Denise. She tells Denise everything.”

“She should have told you a little more about where she was going.”

“Yeah. I’m sorry.”

“That mother of hers is nuts, Susan. I’ve got a nut mother of my own to deal with. And I don’t want to get dragged into this thing.”

“She probably is in Colorado. She probably picked up somebody and went to Colorado with him.”

“Find out. I want to know where she really is. And I want word to get to her that she should cool it about how nice my wife was to her and how swell Sam the lawyer is. Tell her to make up lies about somebody else.”

“I will.”

“And call me back and let me know where she is.”

“Okay.”

“Good-bye.”

“Wait. Before you hang up, how’s Mom?”

“I don’t know. I’m going over there for dinner this weekend.”

“She’s cooking again?”

“Of course not. Pete is.”

“That’s nice of him.”

“Yeah. We’ll all have a great time. Especially if we don’t have to haul her out of the tub at dinner time.”

“I know. Well, I’m sorry about all the trouble Elise caused you, and I’ll call back when I find out something.”

“By the way, Susan. Is the funny way Mark talks an affectation?”

“I’ll write you,” she says. “You can’t tell me?”