Ann Beattie - Another You

“I did kiss her,” McCallum said wearily, getting out of the chair.

“Keep it to yourself,” Marshall said.

“But apparently the girl is quite crazy,” Sonja said, to no one in particular. She was almost out of the room, tired enough, herself, not to bother saying goodnight to McCallum as she left.

“So she’s got a boyfriend,” McCallum said, standing with his hands in his pockets as Marshall silently probed the fire, turning over one glowing log, poking the hot ash tip off another.

“Not the friendly type, either,” Marshall said.

“Sweet on Cheryl?” McCallum asked quietly.

“No,” Marshall said.

“But you did go to a bar with her.”

Marshall looked up at McCallum, surprised. “How did you know that?” he said.

“Oh, it’s all over town,” McCallum said.

It was only when McCallum smiled wickedly that Marshall realized that about that, at least, he was kidding.

“I found out during a moment of male bonding with Timothy,” McCallum said.

“You try to make yourself unlikeable, don’t you?”

“Bad self-image.”

“But the thing is, I don’t have much invested in our getting along,” Marshall said. “I guess what I’m saying is, I’m not looking for friends.”

“Not the currently socially approved attitude for males,” McCallum said. “Supposed to be out bonding in the woods, beating the drums.”

“McCallum,” Marshall said, “I know what things you find absurd and ironic. Is it fair to assume there are also at least a few things you think of as serious?”

“Bad self-image,” McCallum said again. “Easier to negate than to accept.”

“You kissed her?” Marshall said. The large log glowed with a core of deep orange. It was not about to burn out, and it always made him nervous to turn in when a fire was untended. “Why the hell did you kiss her?”

“You continue to ask serious questions of a man you know habitually dodges them?” “Try,” Marshall said.

“Oh, because we were walking past Boston Common and there was a bag lady on the sidewalk, poking around in a shopping cart filled with all kinds of junk. As we walked nearer I started thinking, What if that were me? What if I were standing around presiding over a heap of rubble? What if Beckett were prescient and knew his characters in their ash cans were literally what our cities would become? What if he were a simple realist slightly ahead of his time? As we passed the bag lady, she looked up and said, ‘In the summer I’m a swan boat,’ pointing to the pond. Livan started walking faster, but I’d just been struck by the amazing idea of reincarnation, not reincarnation after death, but being one thing in one season, and another thing in another. Isn’t that true? We’re one thing in winter and another in spring. But Livan had gotten ahead of me, and I rushed to catch up with her, catching hold of her so we’d be in step again — don’t you love it? — and when I touched her sleeve she stopped, instead of walking she stopped, and do you know what? I could see the bag lady was watching. She expected to see something romantic; she expected me to kiss the lady. Then something told me that for whatever reason, Livan wanted to be kissed for the bag lady’s benefit. Then do you know what I thought? That I was an old guy, compared to Livan, and if I kissed her, the bag lady might say something terrible, and Livan might be hurt, I might be humiliated. And then the kiss just happened. The bag lady seemed to be watching for a split second, and then she lost interest. I was thinking about Boston Common in the spring, the flowers, all that green grass, the swan boats out on the lake.”

Perhaps it was the heat of the fire and the cooling temperature of the room that made Marshall shiver. Perhaps, he thought, but not likely: more likely he had realized McCallum was someone he was going to have to take seriously. Talk to longer. “Do you have classes tomorrow?” Marshall heard himself asking.

McCallum hiccupped a dry laugh. “Don’t think I’d be my bright-eyed bushy-tailed best up there at the old lectern?” He ran his hand through his hair. “I don’t have classes on Wednesday,” he said.

“I’m glad,” Marshall said.

“Tell the truth,” McCallum said. “You came into the house and I was the last person in the world you wanted to see, right? In all the world, I was probably the most unwelcome. Your life was going along fine until you got involved in this. You went over there, and what? You thought you could race in like a bunch of soldiers at the end of a Shakespearean play, restore order. So where does this leave us? If you’d asked me I could have told you Livan was trouble and that the only thing I had to feel guilty about was the impurity of my thoughts, the irrationality of my desires. But Marshall: I didn’t have anything else. We’re talking about a day, part of a day, taking a walk in a city. We’re talking about enjoying walking down the street when for once I was with someone who’d talk to me, not just complain about what the kid did wrong that day, someone who’d ask my opinion, who liked me. We’re talking about a grown man who suddenly perceives of a bag lady as his guardian angel because he needed a guardian angel so goddamn much: exiled from my house because there was nowhere to goddamn sit, nothing but ladder-back chairs we inherited when my mother died, the sofa carted off, taken to the junkyard because the kid had broken the frame jumping on it, a man without a sofa, and then this random person who was assigned to me through financial aid, suddenly there the two of us were in Boston, and I was listening sympathetically, as is our goddamn job, correct me if I’m wrong there. I’m listening to her tales of woe, noticing she doesn’t have a winter coat, just a windbreaker, a flimsy nylon thing, and I’m thinking that at the very least I can take her to Filene’s Basement and buy her a coat, and then the two of us can get on with things, such as research at the library. At the moment, it seemed like an epiphany: coffee; sympathy; a seventy-buck coat; a hat picked up later in the day from a street vendor. This was not done with a stiff prick, Marshall. It was done with simple good intentions. And as I say this, I don’t want you to think that I haven’t registered what you said. I heard you loud and clear when you said you weren’t looking for friends. But try to see the awkwardness of my position: how can I apologize for driving over here, bending your wife’s ear, for not going home when I should, accepting your hospitality, me sitting here like a stalled snowplow that can’t roll through another foot of muck. I’m stuck, and you two act the way friends act, even though you’re not my friends and you don’t want to be. You nevertheless extend yourselves, and the pathetic truth is, I want your goodwill. I want you to believe me when I say that what Livan says happened in Boston did not happen.”

“Let me ask you,” Marshall said. “Where do you suggest we go from here? I’m not your audience, I’m your colleague.”

“Elavil,” McCallum said, taking a bottle out of his pants pocket and turning it around in his hand like someone holding a facetted stone, turning it to catch the light. “Connotes ‘elevator,’ as if you’re ascending through space.” He plunged the bottle back in his pocket, got up abruptly, and started to walk out of the living room, the afghan he’d pulled over his shoulders slipping to the floor, his unbelted pants so loose they were almost sliding off, his shirt crushed from his having sat slumped deeply in the chair. He was just an overgrown child, Marshall thought: somebody who’d gotten in too deep, who had too many responsibilities, a person who had one too many problems.

“Right here,” McCallum said, suddenly reversing direction, holding out a folded envelope. Inside was the note from Livan Baker: a young person’s handwriting, a little red-ink drawing of heart-shaped balloons floating away above the words: