The New Yorker Stories - Ann Beattie [2]
What Ellen told him was the truth. The man, Sam, was a junior at George Washington University. He had been rooming with her sister and brother-in-law, but friction had developed between the two men. Her sister must have expected it. Her sister’s husband was very athletic, a pro-football fan who wore a Redskins T-shirt to bed instead of a pajama top, and who had a football autographed by Billy Kilmer on their mantel. Sam was not frail, but one sensed at once that he would always be gentle. He had long brown hair and brown eyes—nothing that would set him apart from a lot of other people. It was his calmness that did that. She invited him to move in after her sister explained the situation; he could help a bit with her rent. Also, although she did not want her husband to know it, she had discovered that she was a little afraid of being alone at night.
When Sam moved in in September, she almost sympathized with her brother-in-law. Sam wasn’t obnoxious, but he was strange. She had to pay attention to him, whether she wanted to or not. He was so quiet that she was always conscious of his presence; he never went out, so she felt obliged to offer him coffee or dinner, although he almost always refused. He was also eccentric. Her husband had been eccentric. Often in the evenings he had polished the brass snaps of his briefcase, rubbing them to a high shine, then triumphantly opening and closing them, and then rubbing a little more to remove his thumbprints. Then he would drop the filthy cloth on the sofa, which was upholstered with pale French linen that he himself had selected.
Sam’s strange ways were different. Once, he got up in the night to investigate a noise, and Ellen, lying in her room, suddenly realized that he was walking all over the house in the dark, without turning on any lights. It was just mice, he finally announced outside her door, saying it so matter-of-factly that she wasn’t even upset by the news. He kept cases of beer in his room. He bought more cases than he drank—more than most people would ever consider drinking over quite a long period. When he did have a beer, he would take one bottle from the case and put it in the refrigerator and wait for it to get cold, and then drink it. If he wanted more, he would go and get another bottle, put it in the refrigerator, wait another hour, and then drink that. One night, Sam asked her if she would like a beer. To be polite, she said yes. He went to his room and took out a bottle and put it in the refrigerator. “It will be cold in a while,” he said quietly. Then he sat in a chair across from her and drank his beer and read a magazine. She felt obliged to wait there in the living room until the beer was cold.
One night, her husband came to the house to talk about their divorce—or so he said. Sam was there and offered him a beer. “It will be cold in a while,” he said as he put it in the refrigerator. Sam made no move to leave the living room. Her husband seemed incapacitated by Sam’s silent presence. Sam acted as if they were his guests, as if he owned the house. He wasn’t authoritarian—in fact, he usually didn’t speak unless he was spoken to—but he was more comfortable than they were, and that night his offer of cigarettes and beer seemed calculated to put them at ease. As soon as her husband found out that Sam planned to become a lawyer, he seemed to take an interest in him. She liked Sam because she had convinced herself that his ways were more tolerable than her husband’s. It became a pleasant evening. Sam brought cashews from his room to go with the beer. They discussed politics. She and her husband told Sam that they were going to get divorced. Sam nodded. Her husband had her to dinner once more before the divorce was final, and he invited Sam, too. Sam came along. They had a pleasant evening.
Things began to go smoothly at her house because of Sam. By Christmas, they were good friends. Sometimes she thought back to the early days of her marriage and remembered how disillusioned she had felt. Her husband had thrown his socks on