Ann Beattie - Burning House

Some squash are still lying on the ground. I smash one and scatter the seeds. I lose my balance when I’m bent over. That’s a sign of pregnancy, I’ve heard: being off-kilter. I’ll buy flat shoes.

“Do you know who I really love?” I say to the dog.

He turns his head. When spoken to, he always pays attention for a polite amount of time.

“I love you, and you’re my dog,” I say, bending to pat him.

He sniffs the squash seeds on my hand, noses my fingers but doesn’t lick them.

I go in the house and get him a Hershey bar.

“What do you think about everything?” I say to the dog.

He stops eating the clothesline and devours the candy. He beats his tail. Next I’ll let him off the lead, right? Wrong. I scratch behind his ears and go into the house and look for the book I keep phone numbers in. A card falls out. I see that I have missed a dentist’s appointment. Another card: a man who tried to pick me up at the market.

I dial my sister. The housekeeper answers.

“Madame Villery,” I say. “Her sister.”

“Who?” she says, with her heavy Spanish accent.

“Which part?”

“Pardon me?”

“Madame Villery, or her sister?” I say.

“Her sister!” the housekeeper says. “One moment!”

“Madame!” I hear her calling. My sister’s poor excuse for a dog, a little white yapper, starts in.

“Hello,” my sister says.

“That was some surprise.”

“What did he do?” my sister says. “Tell me about it.”

It takes me back to when we were teenagers. My sister is three years younger than I am. For years, she said “Tell me about it.”

“The bear rang my doorbell,” I say, leaving out the part about the phone call from the diner.

“Oh, God,” she says. “What were you doing? Tell me the truth.”

For years she asked me to tell her the truth.

“I wasn’t doing anything.”

“Oh, you were — what? Just cleaning or something?” Years in which I let her imagination work.

“Yes,” I say, softening my voice.

“And then the bear was just standing there? What did you think?”

“I was amazed.”

I never gave her too much. Probably not enough. She married a Frenchman that I found, and find, imperious. I probably could have told her there was no mystery there.

“Listen,” I say, “it was great. How are you. How’s life in LA?”

“They’re not to be equated,” she says. “I’m fine, the pool is sick. It has cracked pool.”

“The cement? On the bottom or—”

“Don’t you love it?” she whispers. “She says, ‘It has cracked pool.’ ”

“Am I ever going to see you?”

“He put me on a budget. I don’t have the money to fly back right now. You’re not on any budget. You could come out here.”

“You know,” I say. “Things.”

“Are you holding out on me?” she says.

“What would I hold out?”

“Are you really depressed about being thirty? People get so upset—”

“It’s O.K.,” I say, making my voice lighter. “Hey,” I say. “Thank you.”

She blows a kiss into the phone. “Wait a minute,” she says. “Remember when we played grown-up? We thought they were twenty! And the pillows under our nightgowns to make us pregnant? How I got pregnant after you put your finger in my stream of urine?”

“Are you?” I say, suddenly curious.

“No,” she says, and doesn’t ask if I am.

We blow each other a kiss. I hang up and go outside. The day is graying over. There’s no difference between the way the air looks and the non-color of my drink. I pour it on the grass. The dog gets up and sniffs it, walks away, resumes his chewing of the clothesline.

I’ve taken out one of the lawn chairs and am sitting in it, facing the driveway, waiting for my husband. When the car turns into the drive, I take the clothesline and toss it around the side of the house, so he won’t see. The dog doesn’t know what to do: be angry, or bark his usual excited greeting.

“And now,” my husband says, one arm extended, car door still open, “heeeere’s hubby.” He thinks Ed McMahon is hilarious. He watches only the first minute of the Tonight show, to see Ed. He reaches behind him and takes out a cone of flowers. Inside are roses, not exactly peach-colored, but orange. Two dozen? And a white bag, smudged with something that looks like dirt; that must be the chocolate frosting of my éclair seeping through. I throw my arms around my husband. Our hipbones touch. Nothing about my body has started to change. For a second, I wonder if it might be a tumor — if that might be why I missed my period.

“Say it,” he whispers, the hand holding the flowers against my left ear, the hand with the bag covering my right.

Isn’t this the stereotype of the maniac in the asylum — hands clamped to both ears to … what? Shut out voices? Hear them more clearly? The drink has made me woozy, and all I hear is a hum. He moves his hands up and down, rubbing the sides of my head.

“Say it,” he’s whispering through the constant roar. “Say ‘I have a nice life.’ ”

“It’s beautiful,” the woman says. “How did you come by this?” She wiggles her finger in the mousehole. It’s a genuine mousehole: sometime in the eighteenth century a mouse gnawed its way into the cupboard, through the two inside shelves, and out the bottom.

“We bought it from an antique dealer in Virginia,” I say.

“Where in Virginia?”

“Ruckersville. Outside of Charlottesville.”

“That’s beautiful country,” she says. “I know where Ruckersville is. I had an uncle who lived in Keswick.”

“Keswick was nice,” I say. “The farms.”

“Oh,” she says. “The tax writeoffs, you mean? Those mansions with the sheep grazing out front?”

She is touching the wood, stroking lightly in case there might be a splinter. Even after so much time, everything might not have been worn down to smoothness. She lowers her eyes. “Would you take eight hundred?” she says.

“I’d like to sell it for a thousand,” I say. “I paid thirteen hundred, ten years ago.”

“It’s beautiful,” she says. “I suppose I should try to tell you it has some faults, but I’ve never seen one like it. Very nice. My husband wouldn’t like my spending more than six hundred to begin with, but I can see that it’s worth eight.” She is resting her index finger on the latch. “Could I bring my husband to see it tonight?”

“All right.”

“You’re moving?” she says.

“Eventually,” I say.

“That would be something to load around.” She shakes her head. “Are you going back South?”

“I doubt it,” I say.

“You probably think I’m kidding about coming back with my husband,” she says suddenly. She lowers her eyes again. “Are other people interested?”

“There’s just been one other call. Somebody who wanted to come out Saturday.” I smile. “I guess I should pretend there’s great interest.”

“I’ll take it,” the woman says. “For a thousand. You probably could sell it for more and I could probably resell it for more. I’ll tell my husband that.”

She picks up her embroidered shoulder bag from the floor by the corner cabinet. She sits at the oak table by the octagonal window and rummages for her checkbook.

“I was thinking, What if I left it home? But I didn’t.” She takes out a checkbook in a red plastic cover. “My uncle in Keswick was one of those gentleman farmers,” she says. “He lived until he was eighty-six, and enjoyed his life. He did everything in moderation, but the key was that he did everything .” She looks appraisingly at her signature. “Some movie actress just bought a farm across from the Cobham store,” she says. “A girl. I never saw her in the movies. Do you know who I’m talking about?”