Ann Beattie - Another You

“Why did it end?” he said. He had gotten up. He’d walked halfway across the floor.

“It couldn’t have gone on any longer,” she said. An evasive answer, but he preferred to think that Sonja had simply come to her senses.

“Let’s talk about it tomorrow,” he said.

“Do we have to?” she said.

“Yes,” he said. “Don’t you think this is the sort of thing we might talk about for more than a few minutes?”

“He said you wouldn’t care,” Sonja said.

“Well, I do care, but I’m in a state of shock.”

“It was stupid, wasn’t it? I could have thrown all this away. You might have stormed out of the house for good. You seem to be going to bed.”

“I am going to bed,” he said.

“You would have cared if I’d thrown it all away, right?”

“Yes,” he said. “But you’re telling me that was never your intention.”

“But if I had,” she said.

“Sonja,” he said, “I don’t think it’s fair that you’re asking for reassurance from me after hitting me over the head. Do you know what I mean?”

No answer.

He said, over his shoulder, as he walked out of the room, “Come to bed. We can talk about this tomorrow.”

When he left, she was a little in shock herself. Evie had advised her against saying anything. Evie’s reason for urging her not to confide in Marshall had come as something of a surprise, but she hadn’t been wrong. Evie had worried that Marshall wouldn’t be sufficiently enraged or jealous; basically, Evie had thought that he would insult her by not caring enough, which meant that Evie thought essentially what Tony thought. “Unemotive,” Evie had called him. Once out of childhood, it was the way he had always been. Evie accepted that — what did Evie not accept, once it was an established fact? — but also Marshall had been lucky. He had been raised by a woman who thought everyone made mistakes, and who included herself when she said that. How strange to think of Evie involved in physical passion — and with a person as cold as Marshall’s father had apparently been. In the nursing home he had lived in before he died, she had found out that his nickname was the Emperor. A man given to haughtiness and self-righteous pronouncements … who could imagine being in his arms? Then again, who would look at Tony Hembley, who was short and nervous and not very good looking, and decide to slip off her pants under her dress, pull the dress over her head, stand there, having quickly unfastened her bra, so that when he turned around from peering in a refrigerator where something spoiled seemed to be moldering, permeating the room with a sudden, ghastly odor — who would think anyone would respond so impulsively to Tony Hembley? That look on his face. He had flirted with her, but the quick strip had been her idea. She had almost told Evie exactly what she’d done, but now she was glad she’d held some things back. Evie had died thinking that although it was inadvisable to tell Marshall about Tony, he could nevertheless be expected to forgive her if she did say something, and that was what he seemed to be doing. And Evie had been right, too, about his drawing inward. There had been no professions of love, no pleading that she stay.

She could hear him in the bedroom, opening a dresser drawer, and she could imagine the rest: his standing at the sink in his pajamas, brushing his teeth, a towel draped around his neck. The fire was still burning, but she didn’t have Marshall’s fear of going to bed before a fire had burned down. It was like being afraid of airplanes or enclosed places: if you weren’t afraid, you weren’t afraid. Still, she stood in front of the fire, which warmed her front as her back grew progressively colder. She picked up Evie’s afghan and slung it over her shoulders Marshall style, looking through the flames to the andirons: two lions, paws raised, their blackened manes rivulets of ash.

As she expected, he was in the bathroom. The door was open, and he stood at the sink by the glow of the night-light, leaning forward, hands gripping the edge of the sink, the toothbrush replaced or not yet used. He heard her enter the bedroom but didn’t turn toward her. Neither did he move away from the sink. He was thinking, again, about McCallum; how desolate he must have felt, with his life out of his control: the hyperactive son; the unwanted baby; a wife who loathed him — she must have loathed him to stab him. It was terribly sad. McCallum was terribly sad.

As she undressed, she looked quickly over her shoulder, twice, to see if he had moved, and the second time she looked he had and was standing with the towel pressed against his face.

“I don’t blame you for hating me,” she said, walking to the open door.

He shook his head no. That, or he was rubbing his face back and forth beneath the towel.

He was crying out of sympathy for McCallum. He finally felt a real connection between McCallum and himself.

“ ’S WONNERFUL, ’s mah-vel-lous, that you should care fooooooor meeeeeee,” McCallum sang.

McCallum was in charge of the tape selection. So far, they had been through both sides of Bobby Short, one side of Maria Muldaur, and ten or fifteen minutes of a Jean-Michel Jarre tape Marshall had ejected, because it was impossible to listen without speeding. They were on day two of their journey, instigated and largely bankrolled by McCallum, who sat in the passenger’s seat padded with down-filled pillows: one behind him, one wedged between seat belt and door, another under his knees. In anticipation of their ultimate destination, McCallum was wearing black kneesocks, khaki Bermuda shorts, running shoes, a baseball cap he’d turned backward, and thermal underwear under a denim workshirt. “Wonnerful,” McCallum sang, though that verse had ended several minutes before.

“You’re grouchy because you’re doing all the driving,” McCallum said. “How is the doctor going to know I’m taking a turn at the wheel? You’re also supposed to not cross the street on a red light. How much advice can anybody afford to pay attention to? Who’s going to see me doing a little driving? It’ll make me feel less like an invalid.”

“I’d see you,” Marshall said.

“Well, I wish you’d been my guardian angel when you-know-who was trying to kill me.”

“I wish I had, too.” He was thinking not only of the possibility of McCallum’s having escaped physical harm, but how much better he would feel if his house had remained the pleasant, undisturbed environment it once had been. Sonja was there now, as he and McCallum drove south during Benson College’s spring break. He had wanted her to come, and initially he had taken it as a bad sign that she hadn’t wanted to. Though she’d assured him it was over, he’d begun to feel that her affair with Tony was the new subtext for everything — every new recipe she prepared, every silly, old romantic movie she wanted to watch on TV. If McCallum hadn’t gotten so excited by the idea of getting some sun, he probably would not have left Sonja’s side he was so worried she would pick up again with Tony. He felt ambivalent about seeing Gordon and Beth, and he was worried that McCallum might be — because suddenly this was getting to be the story of McCallum’s life — an unwanted guest. None of which he had said to McCallum, because the last time Marshall had visited him in the hospital he had become as excited as a child at the prospect of getting out of town.

Already, he missed Sonja. He wanted to be angry at her, but he couldn’t sustain his anger. She had at least acted on her desires — and, much to his relief, she had selected a slightly ludicrous lover. Still, how boring the house must seem, after her antics with Tony. She had considered going somewhere warm herself to “think things over,” but then she had decided to stay where she was.