The New Yorker Stories - Ann Beattie [14]
With Lincoln, Cynthia lived in an apartment in Columbus, Ohio. “It’s a good thing you live halfway across the country,” her father wrote her, “because your mother surely does not want to see that black man, who claims his father was a Cherappy Indian.” She never met Lincoln’s parents, so she wasn’t sure herself about the Indian thing. One of Lincoln’s friends, who was always trying to be her lover, told her that Lincoln Divine wasn’t even his real name—he had made it up and got his old name legally changed when he was twenty-one. “It’s like believing in Santa Claus,” the friend told her. “There is no Lincoln Divine.”
Charlie was different from Pete and Lincoln. Neither of them paid much attention to her, but Charlie was attentive. During the years, she had regained the twenty pounds she lost when she was first married and added twenty-five more on top of that. She was going to have to get in shape before she married Charlie, even though he wanted to marry her now. “I’ll take it as is,” Charlie said. “Ready-made can be altered.” Charlie was a tailor. He wasn’t really a tailor, but his brother had a shop, and to make extra money Charlie did alterations on the weekends. Once, when they were both a little drunk, Cynthia and Charlie vowed to tell each other a dark secret. Cynthia told Charlie she had had an abortion just before she and Pete got divorced. Charlie was really shocked by that. “That’s why you got so fat, I guess,” he said. “Happens when they fix animals, too.” She didn’t know what he was talking about, and she didn’t want to ask. She’d almost forgotten it herself. Charlie’s secret was that he knew how to run a sewing machine. He thought it was “woman’s work.” She thought that was crazy; she had told him something important, and he had just said he knew how to run a sewing machine.
“We’re not going to live in any apartment,” Charlie said. “We’re going to live in a house.” And “You’re not going to have to go up and down stairs. We’re going to find a split-level.” And “It’s not going to be any neighborhood that’s getting worse. Our neighborhood is going to be getting better.” And “You don’t have to lose weight. Why don’t you marry me now, and we can get a house and start a life together?”
But she wouldn’t do it. She was going to lose twenty pounds and save enough money to buy a pretty wedding dress. She had already started using more makeup and letting her hair grow, as the beauty-parlor operator had suggested, so that she could have curls that fell to her shoulders on her wedding day. She’d been reading brides’ magazines, and long curls were what she thought was pretty. Charlie hated the magazines. He thought the magazines had told her to lose twenty pounds—that the magazines were responsible for keeping him waiting.
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