Ann Beattie - Burning House

It had been a real surprise for Nick when Benton began to think differently from him — when, home from college at Christmas, Benton had called to ask him if he wanted to go to the funeral parlor to pay his respects to Dorothy Birdley’s father. He had never thought about facing Dorothy Birdley again, and Benton had made him feel ashamed for being reluctant. He drove and stayed in the car. Benton went in alone. Then they went to a bar in New Haven and talked about college. Benton liked it, and was going to transfer to the Fine Arts department; Nick hated the endless reading, didn’t know what he wanted to study, and would never have had Benton’s nerve to buck his father and change from studying business anyway. In other ways, though, Benton had become almost more prudent: “You go ahead,” Benton said when the waitress came to see if they wanted another round. “I’ll just have coffee.” So Nick had sat there and gotten sloshed, and Benton had stayed sober enough to get them home. Then, when they graduated, Benton had surprised him again. He had gotten engaged to Elizabeth. In his letters to him that year, Benton had expressed amusement at how up-tight Elizabeth was, and Nick had been under the impression that Benton was loosening up, that Elizabeth was just a pretty girl Benton saw from time to time. When Benton married her, things started to turn around. Nick, that year, stumbled into a high-paying job in New York; his relationship with his father was better, after they had a falling-out and his father called to apologize. Benton’s father, on the other hand, left home; the job Benton thought he’d landed with a gallery fell through, and he went to work as a clerk in a framing store. In December, six months after he married Elizabeth, she was pregnant. Then it was Nick who did the driving and Benton who drank. Coming out of a bar together, the night Benton told Nick that Elizabeth was pregnant, Benton had been so argumentative that Nick was afraid he had been trying to start a fight with him.

“I end up on the bottom, and you end up on the top, after your father tried to talk your mother into shipping you out to his brother’s in Montana in high school, you drove him so crazy. Now he’s advising you about what stock to buy.”

“What are you talking about?” Nick had said.

“I told you that. Your mother told my mother.”

“You never told me,” Nick said.

“I did,” Benton said, rolling down the window and pitching his cigarette.

“It must have been Idaho,” Nick said. “My uncle lives in Idaho.”

They rode in silence. “I’m not so lucky,” Nick said, suddenly depressed. “I might have Ilena’s car, but she’s in Honolulu tonight.”

“What’s she doing there?”

“She’s with a tea merchant.”

“What’s she doing with a tea merchant?”

“Wearing orchids and going to pig barbecues. How do I know?”

“Honolulu,” Benton said. “I don’t have the money to get to Atlantic City.”

“What’s there?”

“I don’t have the money to eat caramel corn and see a horse jump off a pier.”

“Have you talked to her about an abortion?” Nick said.

“Sure. Like trying to convince her the moon’s a yo-yo.”

He rolled down his window again. Wind rushed into the car and blew the ashes around. Nick saw the moon, burning white, out the side window of the car.

“I don’t have the money for a kid,” Benton said. “I don’t have the money for popcorn.”

To illustrate his point, he took his wallet out of his back pocket and dropped it out the window. “Son of a bitch, I don’t believe it,” Nick said. They were riding on the inside lane, fast, and there was plenty of traffic behind them. What seemed to be a quarter of a mile beyond where Benton had thrown his wallet, Nick bumped off the highway, emergency lights flashing. The car was nosed down so steeply on the hill rolling beneath the emergency lane (which he had overshot) that the door flew open when he cracked it to get out. Nick climbed out of the car, cursing Benton. He got a flashlight out of the trunk and started to run back, remembering having seen some sort of sign on the opposite side of the road just where Benton had thrown his wallet. It was bitter cold, and he was running with a flashlight, praying a cop wouldn’t come along. Miraculously, he found the wallet in the road and darted for it when traffic stopped. He ran down the median, back to the car, wallet in his pocket, beam from the flashlight bobbing up and down. “God damn it,” he panted, pulling the car door open.

The light came on. For a few seconds no cars passed. Everything on their side of the highway was still. Nick’s heart felt like it was beating in his back. Benton had fallen up against the door and was slumped there, breathing through his mouth. Nick pulled the wallet out of his pocket and put it on the seat. As he dropped it, it flopped open. Nick was looking at a picture of Elizabeth, smiling her madonna smile.

He drove back to the hotel to get Olivia and Benton for dinner. The lobby looked like a church. There were no lights on, except for dim spotlights over the pictures. Nobody was in the lobby. He went over to the piano and played a song. A man came down the steps into the room, applauding quietly when he finished.

“Quite nice,” the man said. “Are you a musician?”

“No,” Nick said.

“You staying here, then?”

“Some friends are.”

“Strange place. What floor’s your friend on?”

“Fourth,” Nick said.

“Not him, then,” the man said. “I’m on the third, and some man cries all night.”

He sat down and opened the newspaper. There was not enough light in the lobby to read by. Nick played “The Sweetheart Tree,” forgot how it went halfway through, got up and went into the phone booth. It was narrow and high, and when he closed the wood door he felt like he was in a confessional.

“Father, I have sinned,” he whispered. “I have supplied already strung-out friends with Seconal, and I have been unfriendly to an Englishman who was probably only lonesome.”

He dialed his house. Ilena picked it up.

“Reconsider,” he said. “Come to dinner. We’re going to Mr. Chow’s. You love Chow’s.”

“I’ve got nothing to say to her,” Ilena said.

“Come on,” he said. “Go with us.”

“She’s always stoned.”

“Go with us,” he said.

llena sighed. “How was work?”

“Work was great. Exciting. Rewarding. All that I always hope work will be. The road manager for Barometric Pressure called to yell about there not being any chicken tacos in the band’s dressing room. Wanted to know whether I did or did not send a telegram to New York.”

“Well,” she said. “Now I’ve asked about work. Only fair that you ask me about the doctor.”

“I forgot,” he said. “How did it go?”

“The bastard cauterized my cervix without telling me he was going to do it.”

“God. That must have hurt.”

“I see why people go around stoned. I just don’t want to eat dinner with them.”

“Okay, Ilena. Did you walk Fathom?”

“Manuela just had him out. I threw the Frisbee for him half the afternoon.”

“That’s nice of you.”

“I can hardly stand up straight.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I’ll see you later,” Ilena said.

He went out of the phone booth and walked up the stairs. Pretty women never liked other pretty women. He rang the buzzer outside Benton and Olivia’s room.

Benton opened the door in such a panic that Nick smiled, thinking he was clowning because Nick had told him earlier that he was too lethargic. It only took a few seconds to figure out it wasn’t a joke. Benton had on a white shirt hanging outside his jeans and a tie hanging over his shoulder. Olivia had on a dress and was sitting, still as a mummy, hands in her lap, in a chair with its back to the desk.