The New Yorker Stories - Ann Beattie [201]
“Get one that’s tall enough,” Kate says. “And don’t get one of those trees that look like a cactus. Get one with long needles that swoops.”
“Swoops?” Howard says, turning in the hallway.
“Something with some fluidity,” she says, bending her knees and making a sweeping motion with her arm. “You know—something beautiful.”
Before the guests arrive, a neighbor woman has brought Todd back from his play group and he is ready for bed, and the tree has been decorated with a few dozen Christmas balls and some stars cut out of typing paper, with paper-clip hangers stuck through one point. The smaller animals in the stuffed-toy menagerie—certainly not the bear—are under the tree, approximating the animals at the manger. The manger is a roasting pan, with a green dinosaur inside.
“How many of these people who’re coming do I know?” I say.
“You know . . . you know . . .” Howard is gnawing his lip. He takes another sip of wine, looks puzzled. “Well, you know Koenig,” he says. “Koenig got married. You’ll like his wife. They’re coming separately, because he’s coming straight from work. You know the Miners. You know—you’ll really like Lightfoot, the new guy in the Philosophy Department. Don’t rush to tell him that you’re tied up with somebody. He’s a nice guy, and he deserves a chance.”
“I don’t think I’m tied up with anybody,” I say.
“Have a drink—you’ll feel better,” Howard says. “Honest to God. I was getting depressed this afternoon. When the light starts to sink so early, I never can figure out what I’m responding to. I gray over, like the afternoon, you know?”
“O.K., I’ll have a drink,” I say.
“The very fat man who’s coming is in A.A.,” Howard says, taking a glass off the bookshelf and pouring some wine into it. “These were just washed yesterday,” he says. He hands me the glass of wine. “The fat guy’s name is Dwight Kule. The Jansons, who are also coming, introduced us to him. He’s a bachelor. Used to live in the Apple. Mystery man. Nobody knows. He’s got a computer terminal in his house that’s hooked up to some mysterious office in New York. Tells funny jokes. They come at him all day over the computer.”
“Who are the Jansons?”
“You met her. The woman whose lover broke into the house and did caricatures of her and her husband all over the walls after she broke off with him. One amazing artist, from what I heard. You know about that, right?”
“No,” I say, smiling. “What does she look like?”
“You met her at the races with us. Tall. Red hair.”
“Oh, that woman. Why didn’t you say so?”
“I told you about the lover, right?”
“I didn’t know she had a lover.”
“Well, fortunately she had told her husband, and they’d decided to patch it up, so when they came home and saw the walls—I mean, I get the idea that it was rather graphic. Not like stumbling upon hieroglyphics in a cave or something. Husband told it as a story on himself: going down to the paint store and buying the darkest can of blue paint they had to do the painting-over, because he wanted it done with—none of this three-coats stuff.” Howard has another sip of wine. “You haven’t met her husband,” he says. “He’s an anesthesiologist.”
“What did her lover do?”
“He ran the music store. He left town.”
“Where did he go?”
“Montpelier.”
“How do you find all this stuff out?”
“Ask. Get told,” Howard says. “Then he was cleaning his gun in Montpelier the other day, and it went off and he shot himself in the foot. Didn’t do any real damage, though.”
“It’s hard to think of anything like that as poetic justice,” I say. “So are the Jansons happy again?”
“I don’t know. We don’t see much of them,” Howard says. “We’re not really involved in any social whirl, you know. You only visit during the holidays, and that’s when we give the annual party.”
“Oh, hel-lo,” Becky says,