The New Yorker Stories - Ann Beattie [179]
He pulled on sweatpants, tied the drawstring, and lit a cigarette with the fancy lighter she had bought him for Christmas. She had given it to him early. It was a metal tube with a piece of rawhide attached to the bottom. When the string was pulled, an outer sleeve of metal rose over the top, to protect the flame. Peter loved it, but she was a little sorry after she gave it to him; there had been something dramatic about huddling in doorways with him, using her body to help him block the wind while he struck matches to light a cigarette. She took two steps toward him now and gave him a hug, putting her hands under his armpits. They were damp. She believed it was a truth that no man ever dried himself thoroughly after showering. He kissed across her forehead, then stopped and pushed his chin between her eyebrows. She couldn’t respond; she had told him the night before that she didn’t understand how anyone could make love in their parents’ house. He shook his head, almost amused, and tucked a thermal shirt into the sweatpants, then pulled on a sweater. “I don’t care if it is snowing,” he said. He was going running.
They walked downstairs. Her father, a retired cardiologist, was on his slant board in the living room, arms raised to heaven, holding the Wall Street Journal. “How do you reconcile smoking a pack a day, and then going running?” her father said.
“To tell you the truth,” Peter said, “I don’t run for my health. It clears my mind. I run because it gives me a high.”
“Well, do you think mental health is separate from the health of the body?”
“Oh, Stan,” Cammy’s mother said, coming into the living room, “no one is trying to argue with you about medicine.”
“I wasn’t talking about medicine,” he said.
“People just talk loosely,” her mother said.
“I’d never argue that point,” her father said.
Cammy found these visits more and more impossible. As a child she had been told what to do and think, and then when she got married her parents had backed off entirely, so that in the first year of her marriage she found herself in the odd position of advising her mother and father. Then, at some point, they had managed to turn the tables again, and now all of them were back to “Go.” They argued with each other and made pronouncements instead of having conversations.
She decided to go running with Peter and pulled her parka off a hanger in the closet. She was still having trouble zipping it outside, and Peter helped by pulling the material down tightly in front. It only made her feel more helpless. He saw her expression and nuzzled her hair. “What do you expect from them?” he said, as the zipper went up. She thought, He asks questions he knows I won’t bother to answer.
Snow was falling. They were walking through a Christmas-card scene that she hadn’t believed in in years; she half expected carolers around the corner. When Peter turned left, she guessed that they were heading for the park on Mass. Avenue. They passed a huge white clapboard house with real candles glowing in all the windows. “Some place,” Peter said. “Look at that wreath.” The wreath that hung on the front door was so thick that it was convex; it looked as if someone had uprooted a big boxwood and cut a hole in the center. Peter made a snowball and threw it, almost getting a bull’s-eye.
“Are you crazy?” she said, grabbing at his hand. “What are you going to do if they open the door?”
“Listen,” he said, “if they lived in New York the wreath would be stolen. This way, everybody can enjoy throwing snowballs at it.”
On the corner, a man stood staring down at a small brown dog wearing a plaid coat. The blond man standing next to him said, “I told you so. She may be blind, but she still loves it out in the snow.” The other man patted the shivering dog, and they continued on their walk.
Christmas in Cambridge. Soon it would be Christmas Eve, time to open the gifts. As usual, she and Peter would