The New Yorker Stories - Ann Beattie [196]
“Don’t do that,” he said, throwing the crayon stub. “Don’t put yourself down, even as a joke.”
“Oh, don’t analyze everything so seriously,” she said, hopping off the window seat and picking up the conté crayon. She threw it back to him. He caught it one-handed. He was the second person she had ever slept with. The other one, much to her embarrassment now, had been a deliberate experiment.
“Tell your shrink that your actions don’t mean anything,” he said.
“You hate it that I go to a shrink,” she said, watching him bend over the sketchbook again. “Half the world sees a shrink. What are you worried about—that somebody might know something about me you don’t know?”
He raised his eyebrows, as he often did when he was concentrating on something in a drawing. “I know a few things he doesn’t know,” he said.
“It’s not a competition,” she said.
“Everything is a competition. At some very serious, very deep level, every single thing—”
“You already made that joke,” she said, sighing.
He stopped drawing and looked over at her in a different way. “I know,” he said. “I shouldn’t have taken it back. I really do believe that’s what exists. One person jockeying for position, another person dodging.”
“I can’t tell when you’re kidding. Now you’re kidding, right?”
“No. I’m serious. I just took it back this morning because I could tell I was scaring you.”
“Oh. Now are you going to tell me that you’re in competition with me?”
“Why do you think I’m kidding?” he said. “It would kill me if you got a better grade in any course than I got. And you’re so good. When you draw, you make strokes that look as if they were put on the paper with a feather. I’d take your technique away from you if I could. It’s just that I know I can’t, so I bite my tongue. Really. I envy you so much my heart races. I could never share a studio with you. I wouldn’t be able to be in the same room with somebody who can be so patient and so exact at the same time. Compared to you, I might as well be wearing a catcher’s mitt when I draw.”
Nancy pulled her knees up to her chest and rested her cheek against one of them. She started to laugh.
“Really,” he said.
“O.K.—really,” she said, going poker-faced. “I know, darling Garrett. You really do mean it.”
“I do,” he said.
She stood up. “Then we don’t have to share a studio,” she said. “But you can’t take it back that you said you wanted to marry me.” She rubbed her hands through her hair and let one hand linger to massage her neck. Her body was cold from sitting on the window seat. Clasping her legs, she had realized that the thigh muscles ached.
“Maybe all that envy and anxiety has to be burnt away with constant passion,” she said. “I mean—I really, really mean that.” She smiled. “Really,” she said. “Maybe you just want to give in to it—like scratching a mosquito bite until it’s so sore you cry.”
They were within seconds of touching each other, but just at the moment when she was about to step toward him they heard the old oak stairs creaking beneath Kyle’s feet.
“This will come as no surprise to you,” Kyle said, standing in the doorway, “but I’m checking to make sure that you know you’re invited to dinner. I provide the chicken, sliced tomatoes, and bread—right? You bring dessert and something to drink.”
Even in her disappointment, Nancy could smile at him. Of course he knew that he had stumbled into something. Probably he wanted to turn and run back down the stairs. It wasn’t easy to be the younger extra person in a threesome. When she raised her head, Garrett caught her eye, and in that moment they both knew how embarrassed Kyle must be. His need for them was never masked as well as he thought. The two of them, clearly lovers, were forgoing candlelight and deliberately bumped knees and the intimacy of holding glasses to each other’s lips in order to have dinner with him. Kyle had once told Nancy, on one of their late-fall walks, that one of his worst fears had always been that someone might be able to read his mind. It was clear to her that he had fantasies about them. At the