Ann Beattie - Chilly Scenes of Winter

“Weigh this, please,” he says to the teen-age boy standing at the produce scales. The boy’s face falls. He spills it all out, separates the different kinds and puts them on the table the scale sits on. One falls. He picks it up, face red. He writes 89 on the bag and drops the apples in. He weighs the bunch of bananas; 72 appears under the 89. He weighs the single grapefruit. “Wait, these are ten for ninety-nine,” he says. He writes 10 on the bag. The oranges cost 49 and the single pear 16. He adds it up, circles it in red. Charles almost runs to the checkout counter, where he has a long wait. A woman in front of him, her cart full of boxes of disposable diapers, stands reading Family Circle . She has a pug nose and bangs. Her clothes are all different colors. Charles rechecks and finds that he has only thirty-five dollars. Still — the fruit costs so little. Thirty-five. He recounts and sees that he’s right. Finally he gets to the cashier. She has on a pink smock. She is pregnant. She rings up the amount on the cash register. He gives her a ten dollar bill and starts to leave without his change.

“Sir,” she calls.

He doesn’t want the change; he wants to get on with it. But wouldn’t they go after him if he ran? Sweating, he turns back. She counts it out loudly. A woman in line stares at him.

He goes back to the office and walks through the lobby. The blind man is asleep (looks it, at least) in a chair in the comer. Charles takes out one piece of fruit — the pear — and puts it on the blind man’s counter. He walks quietly away. The blind man does not move. Someone will pick up the pear on their way home and the blind man will say, “What have you got?” and they will answer, “A pear,” and the blind man will be completely mystified. He sells no fruit. He will have no idea where it came from. Charles chuckles. He goes to his office and sits in the chair. Reports. He has reports to do. The bag tips over on his desk, the bananas stick out. An apple hits the floor. He retrieves it, sits down and dials Betty’s number. No answer. But at least he knows her last name now. It is Betty Dowell. He will know what buzzer to ring.

But Laura, Laura … he really went out to find a suitable place to call Laura. He has taken care of Betty now — he will drive to her apartment after work and give her the fruit and apologize — and he should just pick up the phone and dial Laura, not make a big thing of it. He does. The phone rings exactly fifteen times.

Charles does as much work as he can between then and five-thirty, then leaves the building and goes to his car in the parking lot. He gets in and puts the key in the ignition. He leans back and closes his eyes. Laura. He sits forward and turns on the ignition. He begins to drive, through the heavy rush-hour traffic, to Betty Dowell’s apartment. It’s oldies time on the radio. “The Name Game” plays. “Laura, Laura, bo bora banana fana fo fora, fee fi mo mora, Laura,” he sings. He takes a banana out — he has a bit of trouble tearing it off the stalk with one hand — and peels it. He bites into it. He went to the store and he forgot to buy food for dinner. Damn! Why don’t housewives all go mad, go completely crazy, run naked down the streets, stampeding, screaming? How could he be right in the grocery store and forget? Wait. How could he be going to call Laura, how could he be going to go over to Laura’s and still eat at home? Oh, shit. He is terribly confused. He finishes the banana and throws the skin out the window. He double parks in front of Betty’s apartment. A driver rolls down his window and curses him. “Think you own this lane, you bastard?” A couple is walking into the apartment building. The woman holds the door open for him. Just like that! He won’t have to stand on the street shouting that he is there. He will surprise her; she will have to let him in, have to accept the fruit. Maybe he should have sent a fruit basket with a big bow. Maybe this looks tacky. But wouldn’t the other have seemed too presumptuous? Muzak plays in the elevator. A note above the controls: “I found a brown glove. Also have cat to give away. Apt. 416.” He has forgotten to look and see what floor Betty lives on. When the elevator stops at three for the couple, he pushes “lobby.” He goes out the door, holding it open with his foot, and peers at the list of tenants in the corner. Dowell, Dowell … 512. He goes back to the elevator and rides to five. He stands in front of apartment 512. He knocks. There is no noise inside. He knocks again. He reaches in his coat pocket for a pen, writes “For Betty from Charles” on the bag of fruit and leaves it leaning against her door. He goes back to the elevator and rides to the lobby, walks across the blue patterned carpet to the door, walks out the door to his car. He drives home. Everything is fine now. She will get the fruit, she will forgive him; he will call Laura, she will forgive him. But what has he done to Laura? What did he ever do that she wouldn’t call him? He has got to find out He drives faster.

Sam holds the door open for him.

“I thought you weren’t coming home.”

“I wasn’t. I couldn’t reach her. Thought I’d call from here.”

“Well, you’re not going to believe this, but I was baking a tuna casserole. You can have some.”

“Yeah? That’s good.”

“I’m the perfect little housewife.”

“You ought to go to law school.”

“We went through this before, Charles.”

“I kept after you about the dog and you got a dog.”

There is silence. The wrong example. And speak of the little devil, there he is sauntering into the kitchen, a little late to appear enthusiastic about his homecoming.

“You had a fine time making monkeys of us last night, didn’t you?” he says to the dog.

“Sorry,” Sam says.

“It wasn’t your fault.”

“I know,” Sam says. He opens the oven door and looks in.

“You got a postcard from Pamela Smith. In case you were still worried that she was abducted, or whatever you were thinking. A Special Delivery. Just came this afternoon. I read it. I don’t get it.”

Sam goes into the living room, hands him the postcard. On the front is a statue of The Winged Victory. On the back is written:

L

ARICA

B

E

R

A

T

I

OF MIND AND SPIRIT

N

It is signed, “Pamela Smith.”

“Wow,” Charles says.

“What does it mean?” Sam says.

“Arica’s some sort of therapy, something like that.”

“Oh. You want to eat pretty soon?”

“Yeah. Call me.”

Charles goes into the bathroom and shaves and showers. He pinches the roll of fat around his waist So what? — Ox is repulsive. He saw a picture of Ox in a bathing suit once that made him almost physically sick. So what if he has an inch of fat? He brushes his teeth. He urinates. He used to urinate in the tub, but he didn’t want Sam doing it, and he thought that if he stopped, somehow Sam would sense that he was not to urinate in the tub. At the time, it made sense. He flushes the toilet. He examines his teeth in the mirror. They are fine teeth. He looks at his hair. He should have washed it.

“Dinner,” Sam says.

Charles goes into the bedroom and squirts on deodorant, drops the towel over the lamp. He puts on fresh underwear and goes out to the table.

“That looks very good,” he says to Sam.

“I took the bus to the store. We didn’t have shit.”

“Good idea,” Charles says. He burns his tongue. Damn! It won’t be any fun kissing her with a burned tongue. He glowers at the casserole.

After dinner he ceremoniously pulls a chair up to the phone on the kitchen wall and calls her. He has memorized the number. Or at least he thought he had until a strange woman’s voice answered.