Ann Beattie - The New Yorker Stories

She had nightmares. A recurring nightmare was one in which she stood at the altar with Charlie, wearing a beautiful long dress, but the dress wasn’t quite long enough, and everyone could see that she was standing on a scale. What did the scale say? She would wake up peering into the dark and get out of bed and go to the kitchen.

This night, as she dipped potato chips into cheddar-cheese dip, she reread a letter from her mother: “You are not a bad girl, and so I do not know why you would get married three times. Your father does not count that black man as a marriage, but I have got to, and so it is three. That’s too many marriages, Cynthia. You are a good girl and know enough now to come home and settle down with your family. We are willing to look out for you, even your dad, and warn you not to make another dreadful mistake.” There was no greeting, no signature. The letter had probably been dashed off by her mother when she, too, had insomnia. Cynthia would have to answer the note, but she didn’t think her mother would be convinced by anything she could say. If she thought her parents would be convinced she was making the right decision by seeing Charlie, she would have asked him to meet her parents. But her parents liked people who had a lot to say, or who could make them laugh (“break the monotony,” her father called it), and Charlie didn’t have a lot to say. Charlie was a very serious person. He was also forty years old, and he had never been married. Her parents would want to know why that was. You couldn’t please them: they hated people who were divorced and they were suspicious of single people. So she had never suggested to Charlie that he meet her parents. Finally, he suggested it himself. Cynthia thought up excuses, but Charlie saw through them. He thought it was all because he had confessed to her that he sewed. She was ashamed of him—that was the real reason she was putting off the wedding, and why she wouldn’t introduce him to her parents. “No,” she said. “No, Charlie. No, no, no.” And because she had said it so many times, she was convinced. “Then set a date for the wedding,” he told her. “You’ve got to say when.” She promised to do that the next time she saw him, but she couldn’t think right, and that was because of the notes that her mother wrote her, and because she couldn’t get any sleep, and because she got depressed by taking off weight and gaining it right back by eating at night.

As long as she couldn’t sleep, and there were only a few potato chips left, which she might as well finish off, she decided to level with herself the same way she and Charlie had the night they told their secrets. She asked herself why she was getting married. Part of the answer was that she didn’t like her job. She was a typer—a typist , the other girls always said, correcting her—and also she was thirty-two, and if she didn’t get married soon she might not find anybody. She and Charlie would live in a house, and she could have a flower garden, and, although they had not discussed it, if she had a baby she wouldn’t have to work. It was getting late if she intended to have a baby. There was no point in asking herself more questions. Her head hurt, and she had eaten too much and felt a little sick, and no matter what she thought she knew she was still going to marry Charlie.

Cynthia would marry Charlie on February the tenth. That was what she told Charlie, because she hadn’t been able to think of a date and she had to say something, and that was what she would tell her boss, Mr. Greer, when she asked if she could be given her week’s vacation then.

“We would like to be married the tenth of February, and, if I could, I’d like to have the next week off.”

“I’m looking for that calendar.”

“What?”

“Sit down and relax, Cynthia. You can have the week off if that isn’t the week when—”

“Mr. Greer, I could change the date of the wedding.”

“I’m not asking you to do that. Please sit down while I—”

“Thank you. I don’t mind standing.”

“Cynthia, let’s just say that week is fine.”

“Thank you.”

“If you like standing, what about having a hot dog with me down at the corner?” he said to Cynthia.

That surprised her. Having lunch with her boss! She could feel the heat of her cheeks. A crazy thought went through her head: Cynthia Greer. It got mixed up right away with Peterson, Divine, and Pinehurst.

At the hot-dog place, they stood side by side, eating hot dogs and french fries.

“It’s none of my business,” Mr. Greer said to her, “but you don’t seem like the most excited bride-to-be. I mean, you do seem excited, but . . .”

Cynthia continued to eat.

“Well?” he asked. “I was just being polite when I said it was none of my business.”

“Oh, that’s all right. Yes, I’m very happy. I’m going to come back to work after I’m married, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

Mr. Greer was staring at her. She had said something wrong.

“I’m not sure that we’ll go on a honeymoon. We’re going to buy a house.”

“Oh? Been looking at some houses?”

“No. We might look for houses.”

“You’re very hard to talk to,” Mr. Greer said.

“I know. I’m not thinking quickly. I make so many mistakes typing.”

A mistake to have told him that. He didn’t pick it up.

“February will be a nice time to have off,” he said pleasantly.

“I picked February because I’m dieting, and by then I’ll have lost weight.”

“Oh? My wife is always dieting. She’s eating fourteen grapefruit a week on this new diet she’s found.”

“That’s the grapefruit diet.”

Mr. Greer laughed.

“What did I do that was funny?”

She sees Mr. Greer is embarrassed. A mistake to have embarrassed him.

“I don’t think right when I haven’t had eight hours’ sleep, and I haven’t even had close to that. And on this diet I’m always hungry.”

“Are you hungry? Would you like another hot dog?”

“That would be nice,” she says.

He orders another hot dog and talks more as she eats.

“Sometimes I think it’s best to forget all this dieting,” he says. “If so many people are fat, there must be something to it.”

“But I’ll get fatter and fatter.”

“And then what?” he says. “What if you did? Does your fiancé like thin women?”

“He doesn’t care if I lose weight or not. He probably wouldn’t care.”

“Then you’ve got the perfect man. Eat away.”

When she finishes that hot dog, he orders another for her.

“A world full of food, and she eats fourteen grapefruit a week.”

“Why don’t you tell her not to diet, Mr. Greer?”

“She won’t listen to me. She reads those magazines, and I can’t do anything.”

“Charlie hates those magazines, too. Why do men hate magazines?”

“I don’t hate all magazines. I don’t hate Newsweek .”

She tells Charlie that her boss took her to lunch. At first he is impressed. Then he seems let down. Probably he is disappointed that his boss didn’t take him to lunch.

“What did you talk about?” Charlie asks.

“Me. He told me I could get fat—that it didn’t matter.”

“What else did he say?”

“He said his wife is on the grapefruit diet.”

“You aren’t very talkative. Is everything all right?”

“He said not to marry you.”

“What did he mean by that?”

“He said to go home and eat and eat and eat but not to get married. One of the girls said that before she got married he told her the same thing.”

“What’s that guy up to? He’s got no right to say that.”

“She got divorced, too.”

“What are you trying to tell me?” Charlie says.