Ann Beattie - Chilly Scenes of Winter

“No! I want you! I want you to be sensible. I love you.”

“I know that There’s nothing I can do about it. I didn’t call you, you got my number and called me.”

“You mean you never would have called?”

“I don’t know.”

“What do you think?”

“I just don’t know. I do think about you.” Think about!

“You love me! This is the craziest thing imaginable. You love me and don’t even know it. Don’t you remember in the other apartment, how we ate dinner together and went to the movies and …”

“I remember it perfectly. It was very nice. It was peaceful.”

“Then move in with me. Or we’ll both find some place to move into. What’s happened between then and now?

Laura shrugs.

“Somebody else?”

“Nobody I’m serious about.”

“Who, Laura?”

“I went out with somebody a couple of times. I don’t even know why I mentioned it, since it’s not what happened between then and now.”

“Who?”

“A taxi driver,” she says. “I went out with him for a couple of drinks.”

“Two times?”

“Yes. Two.”

“That’s all?”

“Yes. That’s all.”

“Where did you meet a taxi driver, Laura?”

“In his taxi.”

“You’re kidding! He picked you up?”

“I don’t want to get into an argument. I’m feeling very low. I did not call you because I knew I could not cope with you. I am very fond of you. I remember the mobile, and I will cook you that soufflé tomorrow night. I want you to go home.”

“No! I can’t leave you like that. Shit, Laura. I never bothered you when you went back. I called once . I didn’t even call again after you said you’d call and you didn’t. I just drove around your goddamn house at night, looking at the lights. I can’t concentrate at work. I can’t stand the thought of dating other women. I hate other women. The only woman I can even stand the sight of is my sister. Cut this out! Come back with me. What is there for you here?”

“Peace. Look at the way you’re acting.”

“You mean if I’d been calm and subtle you would have come?”

“No.”

“Then I’m going to act this way. I’m going to talk truthfully.”

“Stop thinking about yourself and think about me. I need peace. I don’t need to be told what to do. I’ve lost Rebecca and my marriage has fallen apart and I can’t find a job, and you’re telling me it can be like it was before.”

“It can!”

“It can’t. I’m miserable. Before I was just unhappy.”

“A taxi driver! How the hell am I supposed to feel about that? You got in a goddamn taxi, and you let the driver pick you up.”

“So what?”

“That’s awful. It’s incredible. Taxi drivers don’t just pick up great women like you. Look at yourself. God, Laura.”

“I never saw as much as you did,” she says.

He gets up, legs shaky, and walks to the sofa. She is so unreasonable. He looks up at the picture on the wall: two parallel black lines are pushing a rainbow off the canvas. He looks at the rug: a circle of brown inside an oval of green, bordered with black. He wants to see something familiar — something from the old apartment.

“Isn’t there anything of yours here?” he says.

“It’s all back at the house,” she says. “I thought about going back to get some things, but I can’t face Rebecca.”

“She knows it’s not your fault, doesn’t she?”

“I don’t think seven-year-olds make intellectual distinctions.”

“Is there any chance of getting her?”

“Seemingly not. I’ve spoken to a lawyer. She is his daughter.”

“Maybe he’d let you take care of her because it would be better for her.”

“I don’t even know that it would. He’s nice to her. He’s her father.”

“But did you ask?”

“Yes.”

“He said no?”

She doesn’t answer. He stares at the little rainbow, at his feet on the rug. There is a magazine on the floor and a small minor. There are old wood floorboards, wide boards that have been painted brown. One of the panes in the window is cracked. The paint on the ceiling is chipped. The ceiling is painted light gray; it is white where the paint has peeled away. There are silver radiators. It could be a nice apartment, but it would need work. Strip the floors, paint the ceiling … he is already trying to imagine the place theirs, even though he has to leave it, even though she will probably leave it, too. She’d better leave it.

“If I come back tomorrow you might not be here.”

“I’ll be here after six. I have to go out looking for a job. And I’d better go to the store. After seven would be better.”

“You say that, but I might show up and you might be gone.”

“You mean deliberately? No, Charles.”

“Some goddamn taxi driver might pick you up.”

“I do not get picked up by just any taxi driver. Anyway, I don’t have the money for taxis.”

“So he was special to you. That’s what you’re saying?”

“I’m losing patience. I’ve been as nice to you as I can. Tomorrow I’ll even try to be in a better mood to put up with your telling me what to do with my life. Please go home and come back tomorrow.”

He simply cannot do it (“Closer, closer …”) He looks at his feet. They won’t move. He’s sure of it. He smiles at Laura. Isn’t she going to cut this out? Isn’t she going to come over and sit beside him? She stretches out on the mattress.

“I’m tired,” she says. “I was out all day.”

“Did you eat? I could take you out to eat.”

“No thanks. I think I’ll just get ready to go to bed.”

“But you do like me?” he says.

“Yes,” she says.

“And you’ll be here for sure.”

“Yes.”

He looks at the broken windowpane. He should offer to fix it. He doesn’t know how to glaze windows. He should find out and fix it tomorrow night He should demonstrate to Laura that he is very useful; there’s something to what she says — that he makes demands on her. He will make no demands at all, and will fix the window and offer to strip the floors. If he were only bigger, he could volunteer to go to her house with her and carry out furniture and paintings, but of course Ox would kill him or, even more degrading, just pick him up by the back of the neck like some trespassing cat, and drop him in the yard.

“Remember taking me to the zoo, and how upset I got when I asked what giraffes did for fun and you said, ‘How could they do anything?’ ”

“I should have thought of a nicer answer,” he says. “Like the cab driver Holden Caulfield asks about the ducks in winter.”

“That’s an awful scene,” she says.

He gave her Catcher in the Rye , and when she liked that he gave her Nine Stories , but after she read “A Perfect Day for Bananafish,” she couldn’t read any more. She even made him take the book back, and she knew that he already had a copy. She just wanted it out of her sight.

“I guess I’ll see you tomorrow, then,” he says.

He has to go. He shouldn’t press his luck. He rubs his shoes back and forth on the rug. He looks at the broken windowpane.

“Where’s the bathroom?” he says.

She points. He gets up, legs still shaky as hell, and walks around the corner to the bathroom. It is painted an awful shade of blue. There is a white shower curtain patterned with whiter flowers. Breck shampoo (not Laura’s — unless she’s changed) on the back of the toilet. He closes the door. He sits on the side of the bathtub, the curtain wadded beneath him. He just can’t go. If he stays in here for hours she might come to the door and ask if he is all right. He wants her to show concern. He wants her to act interested in him. When he was a kid, his mother used to ask if he was all right when he stayed in the bathroom too long. That annoyed the hell out of him. Mary Tyler Moore’s water-spattered face smiles up from the cover of People magazine, at his feet. Her roommate is messy. He looks behind him to see if Laura’s shampoo is in the tub. No. Where is Laura’s shampoo? He wants to smell it. He gets up and runs the cold water, puts his hand under it and raises the wet hand to his eyes. His eyes burn when he holds his hand against them. He sits on the small stool against the wall, looking at the toilet and sink. The music goes off in the living room. He hears Laura walk across the floor — the floor creaks — and then the music begins again. It is classical music, but he doesn’t know who. Mournful music. Albinoni, perhaps. It would be nice to bring her some records. She wouldn’t like flowers (he tried that in the past, and it turned out that she felt sorry for them because they had been cut off the plant and would soon die. She has a way of feeling sorry for things, even inanimate things), but she would probably like some records. He could bring wine and records. He could bring a diamond ring if he had the nerve. He could leave the bathroom if he had the nerve, if he could go out there and say good-bye. He cannot. He gets up and stands at the sink, running the cold water again. He holds his hand under it, turns the water off and rubs his hand down his face. After all this time he is seeing Laura again, and he is locked in her bathroom. He shakes his head — not to deny it, but because it’s so ridiculous. As ridiculous as driving to her house and looking at the lights, imagining what room she might be in when she’d already moved. Ox is in the house now, and his daughter, Rebecca. He still has Rebecca’s bird in his glove compartment. He would give it to Laura, but it might make her sad. She’d feel sorry for the bird. To say nothing of the fact that it would remind her of Rebecca. Laura buys plants that are dying in supermarkets — ones that have four or five leaves, marked down to nineteen cents, because she feels sorry for them. Couldn’t she feel sorry for him? Sorry enough to go back to his house tonight? He will never find out standing in the bathroom. But it smells good in the bathroom, and as long as he’s in the bathroom he doesn’t have to leave. He will never tell Sam about this. He probably will tell Sam, hoping for sympathy, since Laura probably isn’t going to give any. The metal fixtures are very bright, the floor is dirty. There is a small red rug, with hairs all over it. He opens the door, goes back and turns off the light, and walks slowly to the living room.