Ann Beattie - Another You

I know what is going to happen now. The baby’s death is going to be the starting point for every diagnosis, every possible solution, every recommendation about how Alice and I should live our lives. The thing I have tried so hard to put out of mind is going to be paraded out like an enormous float at Mardi Gras, all the doctors and nurses reaching up their cups for coins. M’s death and Alice’s sad state are going to be paraded by me time and again, and I will no doubt be expected to explain what truths lie beneath the masks. It seems quite excessive punishment for something I did that was not so sinful, really. At least, since we do not speak of it, I assume you don’t think my actions were a sin, or that if they were, you have implicitly forgiven me. That’s why I was so glad you came, and even happier that you stayed .

Ever ,

M .

SONJA OPENED THE DOOR as Marshall was still fumbling with his key, and he sensed immediately that something was different. Perhaps she smiled slightly more than she would have ordinarily; perhaps she was just a touch too formal in the way she stood before him, as if whoever was behind her might have the ability to stare through the back of her head and see her expression from the front.

Sonja was in her gold sweater, but it was not worn over the black thermal underwear she was so fond of lounging around in. The camouflage boots were gone, and she was wearing white wool socks with her ballet flats. He stared at her in the brief information-gathering moment available to him before he would have to go into the house, looking for a clue. There was none, but none was needed: immediately upon entering he saw McCallum, sitting in a chair by the fire and — incredibly! — McCallum did not rise, but raised his arm and gave him the by-now-familiar two-fingered wave acknowledging that Marshall had just walked into his own house.

“Apparently you’ve both had quite an evening,” Sonja said wryly, as she hugged him, her body not slackening at all as it touched his: formal Sonja, entertaining company.

“My apologies,” McCallum said. “My apologies for having ruined so many people’s lives, though I hope I haven’t dragged you into this thing too far, Marshall.”

“We’ve been discussing his depression,” Sonja said. “The new medicine he’s been taking.”

“After your call, which was certainly within your rights, and I appreciate your attempt to help in this difficult situation, Marshall — after your call, though, Susan broke several items and ordered me out of the house, and since you seemed to think it was crucial to talk to me, and since I found myself with no place to spend the night, I thought I’d drop by.”

“What has he told you?” Marshall asked Sonja, hanging his coat on the coatrack, walking into the living room intent upon giving McCallum no more pleasant a greeting than McCallum had given him. McCallum had taken the chair closest to the fire. His feet, in black socks with gold toes, were splayed on the footstool. On the table next to him was a coffee mug. Sonja went to the sofa and sat down, picking up a pillow and clutching it to her stomach.

“I think it would be a little difficult to begin at the beginning,” she said.

He was sure it would. “How’s Evie?” he said. Let the intruder see that they had other things to think about in their lives besides him. If McCallum had told her about Livan Baker, had she told him anything about their own problems? He knew Sonja. He was sure she had not.

“I don’t feel you’re on my side,” McCallum said to Marshall.

“Then what made you decide to come to my house?”

“Because I thought if our unspoken suspicion of one another could be brought out in the open we might have a real exchange.”

Marshall sank down on the sofa next to Sonja. He said to her: “You know about Livan Baker? The trip to Boston?”

“He says she’s psychotic,” Sonja said.

“It never happened?” His eyes went to McCallum.

“It didn’t happen the way she says it happened. Nor did she ever state the — how should I say? — unexpurgated version to me, only to her roommate, Timothy, who tore into my office ready to murder me and left an hour later apologizing.”

“When did Timothy do that?” Marshall said. Almost the minute he spoke, he realized how ludicrous this was, his asking after somebody who had been at the library as if he knew him.

“Days ago,” McCallum said, picking up the mug and sipping. He replaced it on the coaster. He ran his hand over his forehead. “She’s had an eating disorder since puberty,” he said. “I have, in my wallet, several hysterical notes she’s written me, accusing me of progressively more horrendous crimes. When I show you, you’ll see they’re more than a little self-incriminating. On the now disastrously mythologized Boston trip, she didn’t have proper winter clothes, and I felt sorry for her and bought her a coat and a hat. It seems this is a ‘mistake’ her godfather once made, buying her a coat and then, according to her, spreading it underneath her and screwing her on top of it the same afternoon. In Chicago, when she was nine or ten. Why she doesn’t cut up her clothes instead of eating and vomiting, I’ll leave to the experts to decide. Why men feel they should buy shivering waifs proper clothes I understand completely. Also, whether the godfather, if that’s what he was, did anything more than I did, I must also leave for them to decide, though I hope whoever they are, they will factor in my own account of the day that has now grown so monstrous in her recollection.”

“She’s apparently quite crazy,” Sonja said.

“As is my own wife, at the moment,” McCallum said. “She feels that in not telling her I had a research assistant, I have somehow made a mockery of our marriage vows. She also feels that our son, who has attention deficit disorder, is a misunderstood genius whom I, and his teachers, in collusion with the doctors, are trying to destroy, in wanting to provide him with medication that will mitigate his behavioral problems so he might sit still, keep quiet, and follow a line of thought.” He looked at Marshall. “By the way,” he said, “I agree with you. I am incapable of talking like a normal human being. When I try not to be derisive, I am inevitably derisive. Though I’ve heard the students say the same of you, Marshall. I wonder whether it might not be a pitfall of the profession.”

“Leave me out of it.”

“You’re going to spend the night, is that right?” Sonja said to McCallum. Marshall could see that Sonja realized how unstable the man was; that she was prompting him, cueing a disturbed person about what he wanted to do.

“I could go to a motel,” McCallum said, staring into the distance between the two of them.

“McCallum, it’s fine if you want to stay,” Marshall said, “but right now I’ve had enough of being dragged into your problems, and I would like to go to bed myself. Without dinner, and having just driven all the way to Livan Baker’s apartment, only to find that she’s no longer hysterical. She has reunited with her boyfriend. He’s come to visit, and she’s having a pizza with him. In the morning, when we’ve all had some rest, we can discuss this further.”

“Just like that, you believe I didn’t do it?”

“I’m not sure what you did, but Livan Baker didn’t impress me, and if you have crazy letters from her, I’m willing to consider that we’ve both been had.”

“Can it be that I’m going to have an ally?”

“You’re going to have the guest bedroom,” Marshall said. “I’ll see you in the morning.”

“You two won’t whisper behind my back?”

“McCallum, while we whisper, you can talk to yourself and have a running commentary mocking whatever you’ve just said.”