Ann Beattie - Chilly Scenes of Winter

“What do you two do?”

“He studies a lot. I fix dinner. Sometimes we go to other people’s places. We don’t do much.”

“Has he got long hair?”

“Yes,” she says. “How did you know?”

“Figures,” he says.

“What’s wrong with that?”

“Nothing. I wish I had become a surgeon. It’s boring working for the government. At least I make enough money to pay the mortgage. Sam hardly makes enough to pay his rent.”

“Why doesn’t he live at your place?”

“My place? I don’t know. That would look strange.”

“What do you care what it looks like?”

“I don’t know. I wouldn’t want him there all the time. He’d get on my nerves.”

“Sam doesn’t get on your nerves. He’s there all the time anyway.”

“He’d bring all his damn women over.”

“So what. Maybe they’d have friends.”

“I’m twenty-seven years old. I ought to be able to find a woman if I want one.”

“Do you look?”

“Not much.”

“Aren’t you lonesome?”

“Of course I’m lonesome. Why do you keep reminding me?”

“I don’t like to think you’re lonesome.”

“I’m not that lonesome. I’m exhausted when I work, and Sam’s around on weekends.”

“But you’re still lonesome.”

“For Christ’s sake, Susan.”

“Maybe if you face it you’ll find somebody.”

“I’m seeing Laura tomorrow.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“Everybody’s married. And if they’re not, they’re either fat or thin.”

“You’re deliberately not facing the situation.”

“You’re nineteen,” Charles says. “Leave me alone.”

“My age doesn’t have anything to do with it.”

“Susan, Clara’s finally too bonkers to argue with me. Do you have to carry on for her?”

Susan looks out the car window. They are going around a traffic circle. A man is in the middle of the circle with a shopping bag and a cane. Cars swerve to avoid him. The old man lifts his cane and shakes it. Charles pulls around him, into the far lane where a Christmas tree lies. The car smashes through the tree.

“I’m surprised Janis Joplin appeals to you,” Susan says. “She doesn’t seem like your type at all.”

“She was great,” Charles says. “I saw her in a concert. I almost went to Woodstock. I wish I had gone to Woodstock.”

“You would have been walking around in the mud, looking for a place to pee.”

Charles laughs. “I thought you’d think Woodstock was glamorous.”

“I saw the movie,” Susan says.

“Do you go to movies with this hippie surgeon?”

“Sometimes. Not much.”

“When he goes, I’ll bet he likes Bergman,” Charles says.

“Fellini,” she says.

“If I weren’t your brother, I’d save you,” he says. “In a few years he’ll be smoking Disque Bleu’s.”

Charles gets up much earlier than necessary to meet Laura at two o’clock. There is a note in the kitchen from Susan, saying that she’s gone shopping. There is also a note from Sam, that he didn’t see the night before, saying “Just get your hand on her thigh and move it up slowly. That drives them wild.” There is no signature. A plate with the remains of a chili dinner is next to the note. Charles puts it in the sink. He does not feel like washing dishes. He decides, instead, to go to the laundromat. He doesn’t feel like going to the laundromat and stops at the front door with the dirty laundry basket to think whether there’s some excuse to get out of it. There is not. He goes out to the car, notices that it has rained during the night. He inhales before he turns on the ignition. The car starts immediately. It delights him that his car is unpredictable. Turtle Wax, he thinks. Laura, he thinks.

He is the only man at the laundromat. His sheets are the only ones without flowers. A little boy sitting on top of the next washing machine drops his toy into the water and Charles has to fish it out for him. The little boy cries when he hands it back. The child’s mother rushes over, picks him up, and disappears to the back of the laundry. The woman is pregnant. Her sheets have pink roses all over them. He looks at his pocket watch and discovers that the dryer is cheating him out of two minutes time. There is no one to complain to. If Laura were there, he could complain to her. Maybe Susan was right. Maybe he criticized her or complained too much. His vacation is almost over. He puts the clean clothes in the back seat of his car and drives to the school three hours early. Of course she is not there. He goes to a restaurant and orders breakfast. He is told that it’s too late for breakfast. He gets mad and, for the first time in days, craves a cigarette. Instead, he orders a ham sandwich. He has finished lunch in twenty minutes. That leaves two hours to kill. He goes out to his car and sits there, shivering. Laura is still in her A-frame. He turns on the car radio to hear the news, but it’s over. He has the opportunity to order a two-record set called “Black Beauty” if he acts now. He turns the dial. Merle Haggard sings about trading all of his tomorrows. He turns the radio off and starts the car. He drives around for almost an hour, then goes to the school and parks, waiting for her. He closes his eyes, remembers taking the Metroliner with Laura to New York, how he gave her a cup of water to hold for him while he got out an Excedrin. He always got headaches on trains. When the pill was on his tongue he reached for the cup and she smiled. She had drained it. The Excedrin was very bitter melting on his tongue as he got up to get another cup of water. The whole trip to New York was rotten. She hadn’t wanted to go, but he had tickets to a play. He didn’t know she didn’t like Ibsen. That was early … when he first knew her. She was separated from Jim then, and living in a crummy apartment she wouldn’t buy any furniture for. She smoked grass with him for the first time. She smoked all the grass, and Sam still hasn’t gotten around to getting him more. Another time in New York he bought two grapefruit at a fruit stand, and the next time he looked at her the grapefruit were under her sweater. It looked very nice. She was very nice. He opens his eyes, convinced that he will fall asleep and scream, that she will walk up to his car and he will be screaming inside. The city is full of diplomats. He has been hit twice by them. Both diplomats were crazy. He gets depressed, sometimes, thinking that everybody is crazy. Except Sam. And then he gets worried that he feels that way about Sam.

He checks his watch. It is a gold watch that belonged to his grandfather. On the day his grandfather killed himself, he also shot two grouse. He went out in the morning for the birds, and in the afternoon for himself. They heard the story over and over when they were growing up about how their grandmother cleaned and cooked the grouse anyway. He studies the face of the watch, wondering whether his grandfather looked at it before he killed himself. She will be here in twenty-four minutes, he says out loud. He doesn’t see her car, but she must already be inside the school. She is a devoted stepmother. She is devoted to everybody but him. He envies Rebecca. He has one of Rebecca’s pictures that Laura left in his car by mistake. It is a crayoned picture of a flying red bird that looks like a flying pig. He takes it out and looks at it. He closes the glove compartment. Glove compartment. When people wore gloves. Years ago. His grandfather. There is a picture of his grandfather on a table in his mother’s house. He was a plain-looking man, with white hair and puckered cheeks and a cravat. He built his own house. Charles got his house from his grandmother, when she died. It was not the same house his grandfather built. With the insurance money she had bought a newer one. His grandmother thought he was the only worthwhile member of the family. In elementary school, Charles had sung in the choir. His grandmother loved music. She left him her house.