Ann Beattie - Burning House

They go off in high spirits. Louise comes up to his waist, almost, and I notice again that they have the same walk. Both of them stride forward with great purpose. Last week, Bradley told me that Milo had bought a weathervane in the shape of a horse, made around 1800, at America Hurrah, and stood it in the bedroom, and then was enraged when Bradley draped his socks over it to dry. Bradley is still learning what a perfectionist Milo is, and how little sense of humor he has. When we were first married, I used one of our pottery casserole dishes to put my jewelry in, and he nagged me until I took it out and put the dish back in the kitchen cabinet. I remember his saying that the dish looked silly on my dresser because it was obvious what it was and people would think we left our dishes lying around. It was one of the things that Milo wouldn’t tolerate, because it was improper.

When Milo brings Louise back on Saturday night they are not in a good mood. The dinner was all right, Milo says, and Griffin and Amy and Mark were amazed at what a good hostess Louise had been, but Bradley hadn’t been able to eat.

“Is he still coming down with a cold?” I ask. I was still a little shy about asking questions about Bradley.

Milo shrugs. “Louise made him take megadoses of vitamin C all weekend.”

Louise says, “Bradley said that taking too much vitamin C was bad for your kidneys, though.”

“It’s a rotten climate,” Milo says, sitting on the living-room sofa, scarf and coat still on. “The combination of cold and air pollution …”

Louise and I look at each other, and then back at Milo. For weeks now, he has been talking about moving to San Francisco, if he can find work there. (Milo is an architect.) This talk bores me, and it makes Louise nervous. I’ve asked him not to talk to her about it unless he’s actually going to move, but he doesn’t seem to be able to stop himself.

“O.K.,” Milo says, looking at us both. “I’m not going to say anything about San Francisco.”

“ California is polluted,” I say. I am unable to stop myself, either.

Milo heaves himself up from the sofa, ready for the drive back to New York. It is the same way he used to get off the sofa that last year he lived here. He would get up, dress for work, and not even go into the kitchen for breakfast — just sit, sometimes in his coat as he was sitting just now, and at the last minute he would push himself up and go out to the driveway, usually without a goodbye, and get in the car and drive off either very fast or very slowly. I liked it better when he made the tires spin in the gravel when he took off.

He stops at the doorway now, and turns to face me. “Did I take all your butter?” he says.

“No,” I say. “There’s another stick.” I point into the kitchen.

“I could have guessed that’s where it would be,” he says, and smiles at me.

When Milo comes the next weekend, Bradley is still not with him. The night before, as I was putting Louise to bed, she said that she had a feeling he wouldn’t be coming.

“I had that feeling a couple of days ago,” I said. “Usually Bradley calls once during the week.”

“He must still be sick,” Louise said. She looked at me anxiously. “Do you think he is?”

“A cold isn’t going to kill him,” I said. “If he has a cold, he’ll be O.K.”

Her expression changed; she thought I was talking down to her. She lay back in bed. The last year Milo was with us, I used to tuck her in and tell her that everything was all right. What that meant was that there had not been a fight. Milo had sat listening to music on the phonograph, with a book or the newspaper in front of his face. He didn’t pay very much attention to Louise, and he ignored me entirely. Instead of saying a prayer with her, the way I usually did, I would say to her that everything was all right. Then I would go downstairs and hope that Milo would say the same thing to me. What he finally did say one night was “You might as well find out from me as some other way.”

“Hey, are you an old bag lady again this weekend?” Milo says now, stooping to kiss Louise’s forehead.

“Because you take some things with you doesn’t mean you’re a bag lady,” she says primly.

“Well,” Milo says, “you start doing something innocently, and before you know it it can take you over.”

He looks angry, and acts as though it’s difficult for him to make conversation, even when the conversation is full of sarcasm and double-entendres.

“What do you say we get going?” he says to Louise.

In the shopping bag she is taking is her doll, which she has not played with for more than a year. I found it by accident when I went to tuck in a loaf of banana bread that I had baked. When I saw Baby Betsy, deep in the bag, I decided against putting the bread in.

“O.K.,” Louise says to Milo. “Where’s Bradley?”

“Sick,” he says.

“Is he too sick to have me visit?”

“Good heavens, no. He’ll be happier to see you than to see me.

“I’m rooting some of my coleus to give him,” she says. “Maybe I’ll give it to him like it is, in water, and he can plant it when it roots.”

When she leaves the room, I go over to Milo. “Be nice to her,” I say quietly.

“I’m nice to her,” he says. “Why does everybody have to act like I’m going to grow fangs every time I turn around?”

“You were quite cutting when you came in.”

“I was being self-deprecating.” He sighs. “I don’t really know why I come here and act this way,” he says.

“What’s the matter, Milo?”

But now he lets me know he’s bored with the conversation. He walks over to the table and picks up a Newsweek and flips through it. Louise comes back with the coleus in a water glass.

“You know what you could do,” I say. “Wet a napkin and put it around that cutting and then wrap it in foil, and put it in water when you get there. That way, you wouldn’t have to hold a glass of water all the way to New York.”

She shrugs. “This is O.K.,” she says.

“Why don’t you take your mother’s suggestion,” Milo says. “The water will slosh out of the glass.”

“Not if you don’t drive fast.”

“It doesn’t have anything to do with my driving fast. If we go over a bump in the road, you’re going to get all wet.”

“Then I can put on one of my dresses at your apartment.”

“Am I being unreasonable?” Milo says to me.

“I started it,” I say. “Let her take it in the glass.”

“Would you, as a favor, do what your mother says?” he says to Louise.

Louise looks at the coleus, and at me.

“Hold the glass over the seat instead of over your lap, and you won’t get wet,” I say.

“Your first idea was the best,” Milo says.

Louise gives him an exasperated look and puts the glass down on the floor, pulls on her poncho, picks up the glass again and says a sullen goodbye to me, and goes out the front door.

“Why is this my fault?” Milo says. “Have I done anything terrible? I—”

“Do something to cheer yourself up,” I say, patting him on the back.

He looks as exasperated with me as Louise was with him. He nods his head yes, and goes out the door.

“Was everything all right this weekend?” I ask Louise.

“Milo was in a bad mood, and Bradley wasn’t even there on Saturday,” Louise says. “He came back today and took us to the Village for breakfast.”

“What did you have?”

“I had sausage wrapped in little pancakes and fruit salad and a rum bun.”

“Where was Bradley on Saturday?”

She shrugs. “I didn’t ask him.”

She almost always surprises me by being more grownup than I give her credit for. Does she suspect, as I do, that Bradley has found another lover?