The New Yorker Stories - Ann Beattie [119]
“Wear looser pants,” Frank says to Freddy.
“This is so much better than some bar that stinks of cigarette smoke and leather. Why do I do it?” Freddy says. “Seriously—do you think I’ll ever stop?”
“Let’s not be serious,” Tucker says.
“I keep thinking of this table as a big boat, with dishes and glasses rocking on it,” Freddy says.
He takes the bone from his plate and walks out to the kitchen, dripping sauce on the floor. He walks as though he’s on the deck of a wave-tossed ship. “Mr. Sam!” he calls, and the dog springs up from the living-room floor, where he had been sleeping; his toenails on the bare wood floor sound like a wheel spinning in gravel. “You don’t have to beg,” Freddy says. “Jesus, Sammy—I’m just giving it to you.”
“I hope there’s a bone involved,” Tucker says, rolling his eyes to Frank. He cuts another tiny piece of meat. “I hope your brother does understand why I couldn’t keep him on. He was good at what he did, but he also might say just anything to a customer. You have to believe me that if I hadn’t been extremely embarrassed more than once I never would have let him go.”
“He should have finished school,” Frank says, sopping up sauce on his bread. “He’ll knock around a while longer, then get tired of it and settle down to something.”
“You think I died out here?” Freddy calls. “You think I can’t hear you?”
“I’m not saying anything I wouldn’t say to your face,” Frank says.
“I’ll tell you what I wouldn’t say to your face,” Freddy says. “You’ve got a swell wife and kid and dog, and you’re a snob, and you take it all for granted.”
Frank puts down his fork, completely exasperated. He looks at me.
“He came to work once this stoned,” Tucker says. “Comprenez-vous?”
“You like me because you feel sorry for me,” Freddy says.
He is sitting on the concrete bench outdoors, in the area that’s a garden in the springtime. It is early April now—not quite spring. It’s very foggy out. It rained while we were eating, and now it has turned mild. I’m leaning against a tree, across from him, glad it’s so dark and misty that I can’t look down and see the damage the mud is doing to my boots.
“Who’s his girlfriend?” Freddy says.
“If I told you her name, you’d tell him I told you.”
“Slow down. What?”
“I won’t tell you, because you’ll tell him that I know.”
“He knows you know.”
“I don’t think so.”
“How did you find out?”
“He talked about her. I kept hearing her name for months, and then we went to a party at Garner’s, and she was there, and when I said something about her later he said, ‘Natalie who?’ It was much too obvious. It gave the whole thing away.”
He sighs. “I just did something very optimistic,” he says. “I came out here with Mr. Sam and he dug up a rock and I put the avocado seed in the hole and packed dirt on top of it. Don’t say it—I know: can’t grow outside, we’ll still have another snow, even if it grew, the next year’s frost would kill it.”
“He’s embarrassed,” I say. “When he’s home, he avoids me. But it’s rotten to avoid Mark, too. Six years old, and he calls up his friend Neal to hint that he wants to go over there. He doesn’t do that when we’re here alone.”
Freddy picks up a stick and pokes around in the mud with it. “I’ll bet Tucker’s after that painter personally, not because he’s the hottest thing since pancakes. That expression of his—it’s always the same. Maybe Nixon really loved his mother, but with that expression who could believe him? It’s a curse to have a face that won’t express what you mean.”
“Amy!” Tucker calls. “Telephone.”
Freddy waves goodbye to me with the muddy stick. “ ‘I am not a crook,’ ” Freddy says. “Jesus Christ.”
Sam bounds halfway toward the house with me, then turns and goes back to Freddy.
It’s Marilyn, Neal’s mother, on the phone.
“Hi,” Marilyn says. “He’s afraid to spend the night.”
“Oh, no,” I say. “He said he wouldn’t be.”
She lowers her voice. “We can try it out, but I think he’ll start crying.”
“I’ll come get him.”
“I can bring