Ann Beattie - Burning House

“Well, Art Garfunkel used to have a place out there,” I say.

“Maybe she bought his place.” The woman pushes the check to the center of the table, tilts the vase full of phlox, and puts the corner of the check underneath. “Well,” she says. “Thank you. We’ll come with my brother’s truck to get it on the weekend. What about Saturday?”

“That’s fine,” I say.

“You’re going to have some move,” she says, looking around at the other furniture. “I haven’t moved in thirty years, and I wouldn’t want to.”

The dog walks through the room.

“What a well-mannered dog,” she says.

“That’s Hugo. Hugo’s moved quite a few times in thirteen years. Virginia. D.C. Boston. Here.”

“Poor old Hugo,” she says.

Hugo, in the living room now, thumps down and sighs.

“Thank you,” she says, putting out her hand. I reach out to shake it, but our hands don’t meet and she clasps her hand around my wrist. “Saturday afternoon. Maybe Saturday evening. Should I be specific?”

“Any time is all right.”

“Can I turn around on your grass or no?”

“Sure. Did you see the tire marks? I do it all the time.”

“Well,” she says. “People who back into traffic. I don’t know. I honk at them all the time.”

I go to the screen door and wave. She is driving a yellow Mercedes, an old one that’s been repainted, with a license that says “ RAVE-I.” The car stalls. She re-starts it and waves. I wave again.

When she’s gone, I go out the back door and walk down the driveway. A single daisy is growing out of the foot-wide crack in the concrete. Somebody has thrown a beer can into the driveway. I pick it up and marvel at how light it is. I get the mail from the box across the street and look at it as cars pass by. One of the stream of cars honks a warning to me, although I am not moving, except for flipping through the mail. There is a CL&P bill, a couple of pieces of junk mail, a post card from Henry in Los Angeles, and a letter from my husband in — he’s made it to California. Berkeley, California, mailed four days ago. Years ago, when I visited a friend in Berkeley we went to a little park and some people wandered in walking two dogs and a goat. An African pygmy goat. The woman said it was housebroken to urinate outside and as for the other she just picked up the pellets.

I go inside and watch the moving red band on the digital clock in the kitchen. Behind the clock is an old coffee tin decorated with a picture of a woman and a man in a romantic embrace; his arms are nearly rusted away, her hair is chipped, but a perfectly painted wreath of coffee beans rises in an arc above them. Probably I should have advertised the coffee tin, too, but I like to hear the metal top creak when I lift it in the morning to take the jar of coffee out. But if not the coffee tin, I should probably have put the tin breadbox up for sale.

John and I liked looking for antiques. He liked the ones almost beyond repair — the kind that you would have to buy twenty dollars’ worth of books to understand how to restore. When we used to go looking, antiques were much less expensive than they are now. We bought them at a time when we had the patience to sit all day on folding chairs under a canopy at an auction. We were organized; we would come and inspect the things the day before. Then we would get there early the next day and wait. Most of the auctioneers in that part of Virginia were very good. One, named Wicked Richard, used to lace his fingers together and crack his knuckles as he called the lots. His real name was Wisted. When he did classier auctions and there was a pamphlet, his name was listed as Wisted. At most of the regular auctions, though, he introduced himself as Wicked Richard.

I cut a section of cheese and take some crackers out of a container. I put them on a plate and carry them into the dining room, feeling a little sad about parting with the big corner cupboard. Suddenly it seems older and bigger — a very large thing to be giving up.

The phone rings. A woman wants to know the size of the refrigerator that I have advertised. I tell her.

“Is it white?” she says.

The ad said it was white.

“Yes,” I tell her.

“This is your refrigerator?” she says.

“One of them,” I say. “I’m moving.”

“Oh,” she says. “You shouldn’t tell people that. People read these ads to figure out who’s moving and might not be around, so they can rob them. There were a lot of robberies in your neighborhood last summer.”

The refrigerator is too small for her. We hang up.

The phone rings again, and I let it ring. I sit down and look at the corner cupboard. I put a piece of cheese on top of a cracker and eat it. I get up and go into the living room and offer a piece of cheese to Hugo. He sniffs and takes it lightly from my fingers. Earlier today, in the morning, I ran him in Putnam Park. I could hardly keep up with him, as usual. Thirteen isn’t so old, for a dog. He scared the ducks and sent them running into the water. He growled at a beagle a man was walking, and tugged on his leash until he choked. He pulled almost as hard as he could a few summers ago. The air made his fur fluffy. Now he is happy, slowly licking his mouth, getting ready to take his afternoon nap.

John wanted to take Hugo across country, but in the end we decided that, as much as Hugo would enjoy terrorizing so many dogs along the way, it was going to be a hot July and it was better if he stayed home. We discussed this reasonably. No frenzy — nothing like the way we had been swept in at some auctions to bid on things that we didn’t want, just because so many other people were mad for them. A reasonable discussion about Hugo, even if it was at the last minute: Hugo, in the car, already sticking his head out the window to bark goodbye. “It’s too hot for him,” I said. I was standing outside in my nightgown. “It’s almost July. He’ll be a hassle for you if campgrounds won’t take him or if you have to park in the sun.” So Hugo stood beside me, barking his high-pitched goodbye, as John backed out of the driveway. He forgot: his big battery lantern and his can opener. He remembered: his tent, the cooler filled with ice (he couldn’t decide when he left whether he was going to stock up on beer or Coke), a camera, a suitcase, a fiddle, and a banjo. He forgot his driver’s license, too. I never understood why he didn’t keep it in his wallet, but it always seemed to get taken out for some reason and then be lost. Yesterday I found it leaning up against a bottle in the medicine cabinet.

Bobby calls. He fools me with his imitation of a man with an English accent who wants to know if I also have an avocado-colored refrigerator for sale. When I say I don’t, he asks if I know somebody who paints refrigerators.

“Of course not,” I tell him.

“That’s the most decisive thing I’ve heard you say in five years,” Bobby says in his real voice. “How’s it going, Sally?”

“Jesus,” I say. “If you’d answered this phone all morning, you wouldn’t think that was funny. Where are you?”

“New York. Where do you think I am? It’s my lunch hour. Going to Le Relais to get tanked up. A little le pain et le beurre , put down a few Scotches.”

“Le Relais,” I say. “Hmm.”

“Don’t make a bad eye on me,” he says, going into his Muhammad Ali imitation. “Step on my foot and I kick you to the moon. Glad-hand me and I shake you like a loon.” Bobby clears his throat. “I got the company twenty big ones today,” he says. “Twenty Gs.”

“Congratulations. Have a good lunch. Come out for dinner, if you feel like the drive.”

“I don’t have any gas and I can’t face the train.” He coughs again. “I gave up cigarettes,” he says. “Why am I coughing?” He moves away from the phone to cough loudly.