The New Yorker Stories - Ann Beattie [36]
“When did you read Gatsby?” I asked.
“Last night, in the bathtub.”
As we turn to walk back, Noel points out the astonishing number of squirrels in the trees around us. By David’s expression, he thinks Noel is pathetic.
I look at Noel. He is taller than David but more stooped; thinner than David, but his slouch disguises it. Noel has big hands and feet and a sharp nose. His scarf is gray, with frayed edges. David’s is bright red, just bought. Poor Noel. When David called to say he and Patty were coming for a visit, Noel never thought of saying no. And he asked me how he could compete with David. He thought David was coming to his house to win me away. After he reads more literature he’ll realize that is too easy. There will have to be complexities. The complexities will protect him forever. Hours after David’s call, he said (to himself, really—not to me) that David was bringing a woman with him. Surely that meant he wouldn’t try anything.
Charles and Margaret come over just as we are finishing dinner, bringing a mattress we are borrowing for David and Patty to sleep on. They are both stoned, and are dragging the mattress on the ground, which is white with a late snow. They are too stoned to hoist it.
“Eventide,” Charles says. A circular black barrette holds his hair out of his face. Margaret lost her hat to Lark some time ago and never got around to borrowing another one. Her hair is dusted with snow. “We have to go,” Charles says, weighing her hair in his hands, “before the snow woman melts.”
Sitting at the kitchen table late that night, I turn to David. “How are you doing?” I whisper.
“A lot of things haven’t been going the way I figured,” he whispers.
I nod. We are drinking white wine and eating cheddar-cheese soup. The soup is scalding. Clouds of steam rise from the bowl, and I keep my face away from it, worrying that the steam will make my eyes water, and that David will misinterpret.
“Not really things. People,” David whispers, bobbing an ice cube up and down in his wineglass with his index finger.
“What people?”
“It’s better not to talk about it. They’re not really people you know.”
That hurts, and he knew it would hurt. But climbing the stairs to go to bed I realize that, in spite of that, it’s a very reasonable approach.
Tonight, as I do most nights, I sleep with long johns under my nightgown. I roll over on top of Noel for more warmth and lie there, as he has said, like a dead man, like a man in the Wild West, gunned down in the dirt. Noel jokes about this. “Pow, pow,” he whispers sleepily as I lower myself on him. “Poor critter’s deader ’n a doornail.” I lie there warming myself. What does he want with me?
“What do you want for your birthday?” I ask.
He recites a little list of things he wants. He whispers: a bookcase, an aquarium, a blender to make milkshakes in.
“That sounds like what a ten-year-old would want,” I say.
He is quiet too long; I have hurt his feelings.
“Not the bookcase,” he says finally.
I am falling asleep. It’s not fair to fall asleep on top of him. He doesn’t have the heart to wake me and has to lie there with me sprawled on top of him until I fall off. Move, I tell myself, but I don’t.
“Do you remember this afternoon, when Patty and I sat on the rock to wait for you and David and Beth?”
I remember. We were on top of the hill, Beth pulling David by his hand, David not very interested in what she was going to show him, Beth ignoring his lack of interest and pulling him along. I ran to catch up, because she was pulling him so hard, and I caught Beth’s free arm and hung on, so