The New Yorker Stories - Ann Beattie [263]
I also played a little game of my own: replace Richard Klingham with Jim Brown.
He was probably twenty-five, maybe thirty years younger than me. Which would be as reprehensible, almost, as Richard’s picking up the teenager.
Back over the bridge, taking the first Venice exit, driving past the always closed House of Orchids, dismayed at the ever-lengthening strip mall.
My mother, again in the lawn chair, reading the newspaper, but now not bothering to look up as cars passed. I could remember her face vividly from years before, when my father and I had turned in to our driveway in Washington in an aqua Mustang convertible. She had been so shocked. Just shocked. She must have been thinking of the expense. Maybe also of the danger.
My mother seemed less timid now. Obviously, she, too, could be quite impulsive. I was just about to tap the horn when my mother stood and took a minute to steady herself before heading toward the house. Why was she bent over, walking so slowly? Had she been pretending to be spry earlier, or had I just not noticed? Then the door opened, and a man—it was Drake, that was who it was—stood on the threshold, extending a hand and waiting, not going down the steps, just waiting. He stood ramrod straight, but, even driving slowly, I got only a glimpse of him: this man who was not my father, with his big hand extended, and my mother lifting her hand like a lady ascending an elegant, carpeted staircase, instead of three concrete steps.
There was nothing I could say. It had all been decided. There was not a word I could say that would stop either one of them.
I turned left just before the street dead-ended, not wanting to risk passing by a second time. I realized that there was someone waiting to hear from me: possibly two people—the kid and the cop—if not three (my mother, who was probably hoping for an apology for my dire warnings about Drake). I could have made a phone call, had the evening go another way entirely, but everyone will understand why I decided otherwise.
You can’t help understanding. First, because it is the truth, and second, because everyone knows the way things change. They always do, even in a very short time. Back in Fort Myers, the transaction was all business: another shift was at work at the rental agency, and there was only the perfunctory question as I opened the door and got out about whether everything was all right with the car.
The Rabbit Hole
as Likely Explanation
My mother does not remember being invited to my first wedding. This comes up in conversation when I pick her up from the lab, where blood has been drawn to see how she’s doing on her medication. She’s sitting in an orange plastic chair, giving the man next to her advice I’m not sure he asked for about how to fill out forms on a clipboard. Apparently, before I arrived, she told him that she had not been invited to either of my weddings.
“I don’t know why you sent me to have my blood drawn,” she says.
“The doctor asked me to make an appointment. I did not send you.”
“Well, you were late. I sat there waiting and waiting.”
“You showed up an hour before your appointment, Ma. That’s why you were there so long. I arrived fifteen minutes after the nurse called me.” It’s my authoritative but cajoling voice. One tone negates the other and nothing much gets communicated.
“You sound like Perry Mason,” she says.
“Ma, there’s a person trying to get around you.”
“Well, I’m very sorry if I’m holding anyone up. They can just honk and get into the other lane.”
A woman hurries around my mother in the hospital corridor, narrowly missing an oncoming wheelchair brigade: four chairs, taking up most of the hallway.
“She drives a sports car, that one,” my mother says. “You can always tell. But look at the size of her. How does she fit in the car?”
I decide to ignore her. She has on dangling hoop earrings, and there’s a scratch on her forehead and a Band-Aid on her cheekbone. Her face looks a little like an obstacle course. “Who is going to get our car for us?” she asks.
“Who do you think?