The New Yorker Stories - Ann Beattie [189]
“Running into a nut like that, I guess it makes getting back to the city look good,” the cop said.
He’s thinking summer people, Tom decided.
“You have a nice year, now,” the cop said. “Tell your wife I sure do envy her her retirement.”
“Her retirement?” Tom said.
The cop looked at the blacktop. “I admit, the way you described that guy I thought he might be sent by somebody who had a grudge against you or your wife,” he said. “Then at the fire-department picnic I got to talking to your neighbor—that Mrs. Hewett—and I asked her if she’d seen anybody strange poking around before you got there. Hadn’t. We got to talking. She said you were in the advertising business, and there was no way of knowing what gripes some lunatic might have with that, if he happened to know. Maybe you walked on somebody’s territory, so to speak, and he wanted to get even. And your wife being a schoolteacher, you can’t realize how upset some parents get when Johnny doesn’t bring home the A’s. You never can tell. Mrs. Hewett said she’d been a schoolteacher for a few months herself, before she got married, and she never regretted the day she quit. Said your wife was real happy about her own decision, too.” The cop nodded in agreement with this.
Tom tried to hide his surprise. Somehow, the fact that he didn’t know that Jo had ever exchanged a word with a neighbor, Karen Hewett, privately made the rest of the story believable. They hardly knew the woman. But why would Jo quit? His credibility with the cop must have been good after all. He could tell from the way the cop studied his face that he realized he had been telling Tom something he didn’t know.
When the cop left, Tom sat on the hot front hood of his car, took the hamburgers out of the bag, and ate them. He pulled the straw out of the big container of Coke and took off the plastic top. He drank from the cup, and when the Coke was gone he continued to sit there, sucking ice. Back during the winter, Jo had several times brought up the idea of having a baby, but she hadn’t mentioned it for weeks now. He wondered if she had decided to get pregnant in spite of his objections. But even if she had, why would she quit her job before she was sure there was a reason for it?
A teenage girl with short hair and triangle-shaped earrings walked by, averting her eyes as if she knew he’d stare after her. He didn’t; only the earrings that caught the light like mirrors interested him. In a convertible facing him, across the lot, a boy and girl were eating their sandwiches in the front seat while a golden retriever in the back moved his head between theirs, looking from left to right and right to left with the regularity of a dummy talking to a ventriloquist. A man holding his toddler’s hand walked by and smiled. Another car pulled in, with Hall and Oates going on the radio. The driver turned off the ignition, cutting off the music, and got out. A woman got out the other side. As they walked past, the woman said to the man, “I don’t see why we’ve got to eat exactly at nine, twelve, and six.” “Hey, it’s twelve-fifteen,” the man said. Tom dropped his cup into the paper bag, along with his hamburger wrappers and the napkins he hadn’t used. He carried the soggy bag over to the trash can. A few bees lifted slightly higher as he stuffed his trash in. Walking back to the car, he realized that he had absolutely no idea what to do. At some point he would have to ask Jo what was going on.
When he pulled up, Byron was sitting on the front step, cleaning fish over a newspaper. Four trout, one of them very large. Byron had had a good day.
Tom walked through the house but couldn’t find Jo. He held his breath when he opened the closet door; it was unlikely that she would be in there, naked, two days