The New Yorker Stories - Ann Beattie [29]
“Did you see his poor miserable pajamas?” David whispers finally. He throws back the covers and gets up and goes back to the living room. I follow, half asleep. David sits in the chair, puts his arms on the armrests, presses his neck against the back of the chair, and moves his feet together. “Zzzz,” he says, and his head falls forward.
Back in bed, I lie awake, remembering a day David and I spent in the park last August. David was sitting on the swing next to me, scraping the toes of his tennis shoes in the loose dirt.
“Don’t you want to swing?” I said. We had been playing tennis. He had beaten me every game. He always beats me at everything—precision parking, three-dimensional ticktacktoe, soufflés. His soufflés rise as beautifully curved as the moon.
“I don’t know how to swing,” he said.
I tried to teach him, but he couldn’t get his legs to move right. He stood the way I told him, with the board against his behind, gave a little jump to get on, but then he couldn’t synchronize his legs. “Pump!” I called, but it didn’t mean anything. I might as well have said, “Juggle dishes.” I still find it hard to believe there’s anything I can do that he can’t do.
He got off the swing. “Why do you act like everything is a goddamn contest?” he said, and walked away.
“Because we’re always having contests and you always win!” I shouted.
I was still waiting by the swings when he showed up half an hour later.
“Do you consider it a contest when we go scuba diving?” he said.
He had me. It was stupid of me last summer to say how he always snatched the best shells, even when they were closer to me. That made him laugh. He had chased me into a corner, then laughed at me.
I lie in bed now, hating him for that. But don’t leave me, I think—don’t do what Noel’s wife did. I reach across the bed and gently take hold of a little wrinkle in his pajama top. I don’t know if I want to yank his pajamas—do something violent—or smooth them. Confused, I take my hand away and turn on the light. David rolls over, throws his arm over his face, groans. I stare at him. In a second he will lower his arm and demand an explanation. Trapped again. I get up and put on my slippers.
“I’m going to get a drink of water,” I whisper apologetically.
Later in the month, it happens. I’m sitting on a cushion on the floor, with newspapers spread in front of me, repotting plants. I’m just moving the purple passion plant to a larger pot when David comes in. It is late in the afternoon—late enough to be dark outside. David has been out with Beth. Before the two of them went out, Beth, confused by the sight of soil indoors, crouched down beside me to ask, “Are there ants, Mommy?” I laughed. David never approved of my laughing at her. Later, that will be something he’ll mention in court, hoping to get custody: I laugh at her. And when that doesn’t work, he’ll tell the judge what I said about his snatching all the best seashells.
David comes in, coat still buttoned, blue silk scarf still tied (a Christmas present from Noel, with many apologies for losing the white one), sits on the floor, and says that he’s decided to leave. He is speaking very reasonably and quietly. That alarms me. It crosses my mind that he’s mad. And Beth isn’t with him. He has killed her!
No, no, of course not. I’m mad. Beth is upstairs in her friend’s apartment. He ran into Beth’s friend and her mother coming into the building. He asked if Beth could stay in their apartment for a few minutes. I’m not convinced: What friend? I’m foolish to feel reassured as soon as he names one—Louisa. I feel nothing but relief. It might be more accurate to say that I feel nothing. I would have felt pain if she were dead, but David says she isn’t, so I feel nothing. I reach out and begin stroking the plant’s leaves. Soft leaves, sharp points. The plant I’m repotting is a cutting from Noel’s big plant that hangs in a silver ice bucket in his window (a wedding gift that he and Susan had never used). I helped him put it in the ice bucket. “What are you going to do with the top?” I asked. He put