The New Yorker Stories - Ann Beattie [12]
“Are you going to get a haircut, too?” she asks.
“Daddy doesn’t have to get a haircut, because he isn’t trying to get a job.”
Mary Anne looks out the window.
“Your great-grandma sends Daddy enough money for him to stay alive. Daddy doesn’t want to work.”
“Mommy has a job,” Mary Anne says. His wife is an apprentice bookbinder.
“And you don’t have to get your hair cut, either,” he says.
“I want it cut.”
He reaches over to pat her knee again. “Don’t you want long hair, like Daddy?”
“Yes,” she says.
“You just said you wanted it cut.”
Mary Anne looks out the window.
“Can you see all the plants through that window?” Michael says, pulling up in front of the house.
He is surprised when he opens the door to see Richard there.
“Richard! What are you doing here?”
“I’m so sick from the plane that I can’t talk, man. Sit down. Who’s this?”
“Did you and Prudence have a good time?”
“Prudence is still in Manila. She wouldn’t come back. I just had enough of Manila, you know? But I don’t know if the flight back was worth it. The flight back was really awful. Who’s this?”
“This is my daughter, Mary Anne. I’m back with my wife now. I’ve been coming to water the plants.”
“Jesus, am I sick,” Richard says. “Do you know why I’d feel sick after I’ve been off the plane for half a day?”
“I want to water the plants,” Mary Anne says.
“Go ahead, sweetheart,” Richard says. “Jesus—all those damn plants. Manila is a jungle, did you know that? That’s what she wants. She wants to be in the jungle. I don’t know. I’m too sick to think.”
“What can I do for you?”
“Is there any coffee?”
“I drank it all. I drank all your liquor, too.”
“That’s all right,” Richard says. “Prudence thought you’d do worse than that. She thought you’d sell the furniture or burn the place down. She’s crazy, over there in that rain jungle.”
“His girlfriend is in Manila,” Michael says to his daughter. “That’s far away.”
Mary Anne walks off to sniff a philodendron leaf.
Michael is watching a soap opera. A woman is weeping to another woman that when her gallbladder was taken out Tom was her doctor, and the nurse, who loved Tom, spread rumors, and . . .
Mary Anne and a friend are pouring water out of a teapot into little plastic cups. They sip delicately.
“Daddy,” Mary Anne says, “can’t you make us real tea?”
“Your mother would get mad at me.”
“She’s not here.”
“You’d tell her.”
“No, we wouldn’t.”
“O.K. I’ll make it if you promise not to drink it.”
Michael goes into the kitchen. The girls are squealing delightedly and the woman on television is weeping hysterically. “Tom was in line for chief of surgery once Dr. Stan retired, but Rita said that he . . .”
The phone rings. “Hello?” Michael says.
“Hi,” Carlos says. “Still mad?”
“Hi, Carlos,” Michael says.
“Still mad?” Carlos asks.
“No.”
“What have you been doing?”
“Nothing.”
“That’s what I figured. Interested in a job?”
“No.”
“You mean you’re just sitting around there all day?”
“At the moment, I’m giving a tea party.”
“Sure,” Carlos says. “Would you like to go out for a beer? I could come over after work.”
“I don’t care,” Michael says.
“You sound pretty depressed.”
“Why don’t you cast a spell and make things better?” Michael says. “There goes the water. Maybe I’ll see you later.”
“You’re not really drinking tea, are you?”
“Yes,” Michael says. “Goodbye.”
He takes the water into the living room and pours it into Mary Anne’s teapot.
“Don’t scald yourself,” he says, “or we’re both screwed.”
“Where’s the tea bag, Daddy?”
“Oh, yeah.” He gets a tea bag from the kitchen and drops it into the pot. “You’re young, you’re supposed to use your imagination,” he says. “But here it is.”
“We need something to go with our tea, Daddy.”
“You won’t eat your dinner.”
“Yes, I will.”
He goes to the kitchen and gets a bag of M&Ms. “Don’t eat too many of these,” he says.
“I’ve got to get out of this town,” the woman on television is saying. “You know I’ve got to go now, because of Tom’s dependency on Rita.”
Mary Anne carefully