The New Yorker Stories - Ann Beattie [171]
One Day
Henry was twenty, and for almost fifteen years of his life he had understood that he didn’t like his older brother, Gerald. His father, Carl, didn’t care that Henry didn’t get along with Gerald, but his mother, who thought the boys would grow into affection for each other, now asked more often what was wrong. Whenever Henry admitted that he disliked Gerald, his mother said, “Life is too short not to love your brother.” On this particular visit, Henry had told her that he didn’t actually dislike Gerald—he was indifferent. “This is no time to be indifferent,” she had said. Gerald was in the process of getting divorced. He had been married to a woman named Cora. Probably the nicest thing Henry could remember about her was that she had once praised him excessively and convincingly for changing a tire. The most embarrassing thing happened the time he shared a canoe with her on a water ride at an amusement park; thrown against her as the canoe turned and tilted, he had twice reached out reflexively to steady himself and made the mistake of grabbing her breast instead of her arm.
Henry and Gerald had just arrived, separately, at their parents’ house in Wilton. Gerald was already stretched out on a chaise, with his shirt off, drinking a gin-and-tonic, getting a tan. After Henry had done a little work around the yard, he reverted, as always, to being childish: he was drinking Coke and putting together a jigsaw puzzle.
It was Carl’s birthday. Henry had given his father a pair of swimming trunks patterned with a mishmash of hibiscus, hummingbirds, and something that looked like brown bananas. His mother had bought his father more weights for his barbell. Earlier in the day, two boxes had been delivered from the store. After the delivery boy lowered them to the kitchen floor, he had shaken his hands and then examined his palms. “God help me,” he said.
“Henry, darling,” his mother, Verna, said now. She had come out of the house and stood in front of the picnic table, where he was assembling a puzzle that would be a pizza all the way when he finished. She put a mug of iced tea next to him on the table. There were no glasses in the house—only mugs. He had never asked why. When she said “Henry, darling,” it meant that she was announcing her presence in case he wanted to talk. He didn’t. He pushed two pieces together. An anchovy overlapped a piece of green pepper.
“Thank you for trimming the hedge,” she said.
“You’re welcome,” he said.
“I think that Gerald is more upset about the divorce than he lets on. A friend of Daddy’s called Gerald this morning to play golf, and he wouldn’t.”
Henry nodded. More to get away from Verna than to commiserate with his brother, he got up and walked across the lawn to where Gerald lay stretched out on the chaise, eyes closed. Gerald was only twenty-seven, but he looked older. There was a little roll of fat around the belt line of his khaki jeans. Henry knew that Gerald knew that he was standing there. Gerald didn’t open his eyes. An ant was running around the rim of Gerald’s gin-and-tonic. Henry brushed it in.
“Feel like going down to the driving range and hitting a couple of buckets?” Henry said.
“You know what I feel like?” Gerald said. “I feel like going to bed with somebody who’s beautiful and eighteen years old and who doesn’t ask a million questions.”
“You care if it’s a girl?” Henry said.
“Ha, ha,” Gerald said.
“What questions?” Henry said.
“About everything I ever did or thought before I got into