Ann Beattie - Chilly Scenes of Winter

“Charles.…”

But Laura. And the fat man. What does the fat man want with Laura? Why isn’t he floating? Everybody knows fat people float easily, but Charles is floating upward, neck craning for the top, for air.…

“Charles.…”

He snaps his head forward and sees Sam sitting on the side of the bed.

“Charles … the phone. I called you, but you didn’t answer.”

“What? The phone?”

“Yeah. It’s Pete. I said I’d have you call back, but he insisted.”

“What time is it? I was dreaming something horrible.”

“I figured you were. I couldn’t get you to wake up.”

“I was in Bermuda. Pete. Pete’s on the phone now?”

“Yeah. He says he’s got to talk to you.”

“What time is it?”

“Four o’clock,” Sam says, looking at the clock. The alarm is still pulled. The hand is going around and around. The clock. Dinner. Pete. He walks into the kitchen naked, forgetting Pamela Smith. But she’s fast asleep, arms thrown open, feet hanging off the sofa.

“Pete?” Charles says. “What?”

“I’m sorry to be bothering you, Charles. Sam said you two had a rough night. I had to talk to you, though, because I know you were expecting to come to dinner. At least I don’t imagine you forgot about dinner.”

“No. What is it, Pete?”

“Well, I was washing the chicken. I had planned on a chicken dinner. Stuffed. I was rinsing it, and Mommy — Clara — got a little upset, saying that she was going to prepare the meal. I thought that was great. I went out for a bottle of wine and left her there, and when I got back she seemed pretty confused. She was sitting on the kitchen stool holding the chicken. She said she wasn’t feeling well. She wanted to make the dinner, but she wasn’t feeling well. I told her I’d do it, to go lie down. She wouldn’t get off the stool. She was sitting there holding this damned chicken. She refused to let me fix it. I finally got her to put it back in the refrigerator, but if she doesn’t let me fix it, there isn’t going to be any dinner, because she’s not going to fix it.”

“Oh, Christ, what’s she pulling now?”

“She said she was your mother and she wanted to fix the dinner. I was just doing it to do her a favor. But now there’s not going to be any dinner. She says so herself. I thought I’d call and let you know. Damn. And I wanted to show you my Honda Civic.”

“Oh, Christ. I don’t know what to say.”

“She’s in bed now. Everything’s under control.”

“Okay. I guess there’s nothing I can do. I feel sorry for you, for what that’s worth.”

“I always thought you did. You and your sister are real nice kids. Sometimes I think about what you said — that my own wouldn’t do any better by me — and it’s a consolation. Well, I’d bought olives for you and everything. You remember you wanted them for that New Year’s Day supper we had? Things don’t go in one ear and out the other with me. I got olives and a chablis wine. Taylor chablis. If she had let me make it, it would have been a damn fine meal.”

“I’m sure it would have been. If things get worse, call me.”

“I’m getting hungry,” Pete says, “but I don’t dare cook the chicken, even just for the two of us. That chicken is better left forgotten. I’ll go out and get us a pizza.”

“I’ll drive by on my way to work Monday and take a look at your car. I leave earlier than you do.”

“No. Don’t do that. I want to show you myself.”

“Okay. You show it to me. I’ll see you later, Pete.”

“Promise you won’t drive by and look at it.”

“I won’t. I’ll see you, Pete.”

“Good-bye,” Pete says.

Charles goes back to bed. He sees that Sam is already in bed in his room. He pulls the covers up over himself and falls asleep. He wakes up at five o’clock when the alarm goes off. He gets up, pushes in the button, and goes back to bed. He doesn’t wake up again until midnight, when he gets up to take some aspirin for his throat. The door to Sam’s room is still open. Charles looks in and does a double take. Silently, Sam is screwing Pamela Smith. Charles closes the door. He goes to the bathroom and gets two Excedrin. He sits on the sofa, in the dark, swallowing the water slowly. He does not feel so much like medicating himself as like drowning. The water seems too cold going down; he finds it hard to breathe. He lies back on the sofa, listening to the whispers and creaking mattress in the other room, and falls into a deep sleep.

Driving home from work on Monday night, Charles notices that it is staying light longer. When he gets home from work he will have nothing to do: Pamela Smith cooks, and Sam does the dishes. They keep the house clean. Pamela Smith has dyed her hair again. Sam has gained a little weight. Charles is sure that they screw all day, although they show no affection for one another in his presence. And he hasn’t seen her in Sam’s bed again. They have to screw all day. What else would they do?

Today when Betty came in to get the typing he was embarrassed not to have called her and asked again for her number, saying that he’d lost it. Worse than that, he was specific about the lie: it blew out the car window. It sounded awful. To cover for that, he blathered on: he was going to call and invite her to a small party he was giving. Then he inquired about her sister: had she found work? No — she married a man and is packing to move to Detroit. “Does the man work in the car industry?” Charles asked. “No, he’s an accountant,” Betty said. He has no idea how to make conversation with Betty. He went back to talking about the party: maybe she could come over a little early to help him get things organized. How is he ever going to get out of this?

Somebody answered his phone when he was at lunch and took a message that Pete called. Is his mother back in the hospital? Surely Pete will call him at home and he’ll find out.

Maneuvering through traffic, he is very tempted to turn around and head for Laura’s. This could be it: a scene with her husband, a fight which he would lose, but maybe Ox would hurt him so badly that he’d go into a coma and never come out of it. He thinks about cutting his wheel sharply to the left, plowing into the car coming toward him. The car passes. It was a middle-aged woman. Good he didn’t kill her. Maybe the next car? It passes. Another middle-aged woman, wearing a hat. A white car, woman inside with a green (green?) hat. He begins to make a game of counting the cars with middle-aged women inside. He counts eight before he tires of the game. When he first started counting there were four cars in a row containing middle-aged women, and he thought, nervously, that the country might have been taken over by middle-aged women while he was working. But the next car was a teen-ager. The next was an old man, the next was a teen-age girl, and there was a car full of nuns. What a silly game.

2001 is playing at the movies. Pete told him a horrible story about how he took Clara to see it, and she screamed when the fetus came on the screen. Pete says that for a long time before seeing the movie she had been worried that she’d go to hell because Susan’s twin died. The reason she thinks this, according to Pete in a whispered late-night phone call, is that she wore a red dress to the funeral. She just wasn’t thinking. She had a gray raincoat over it, but still. He told her it was perfectly all right, and she got out Amy Vanderbilt’s book of etiquette. Amy Vanderbilt How could anyone fall out a window? Of course she jumped. Why don’t they admit she jumped, that knowing you don’t wear red dresses to funerals didn’t make her everlastingly happy? Because they don’t admit anything. Amazing they ever admitted the Pueblo was a spy ship. Now Bucher is growing avocados. Tortured by the North Koreans, he returns to the U.S.A. to grow avocados.