The New Yorker Stories - Ann Beattie [46]
May and Sugar laugh. May is holding a ball of yarn that Sugar is winding into smaller balls. One of the cats, which is going to have kittens, is licking its paws, with its head against the pillow Sugar is sitting on. Sugar has a box of rags in the kitchen closet. Every day she shows the box to the cat. She has to hold the cat’s head straight to make it look at the box. The cat has always had kittens on the rug in the bathroom.
“And tuh-night Johnny’s guests are . . .” Ray is imitating Ed McMahon again. All day he has been announcing Johnny Carson, or talking about Johnny’s guests. “Ed McMahon,” he says, shaking his head. “Out there in Burbank, California, Ed has probably got a refrigerator full of Coors beer, and I’ve got to make do with Schlitz.” Ray runs his fingers across the strings. “The hell with you, Ed. The hell with you.” Ray closes the window above his head. “Wasn’t there a talking horse named Ed?” He stretches out on the floor and crosses his feet, his arms behind his head. “What do you want to do?” he says.
“I’m fine,” Sugar says. “You bored?”
“Yeah. I want Gus to show up and create a little action.”
“He just might,” Sugar says.
“Old Gus never can get it together. He’s visiting his old mama way down in Macon, Georgia. He’ll just be a rockin’ and a talkin’ with his poor old mother, and he won’t be home for days and days.”
“You’re not making any sense, Ray.”
“I’m Ed McMahon,” Ray says, sitting up. “I’m standing out there with a mike in my hand, looking out on all those faces, and suddenly it looks like they’re sliding down on me. Help!” Ray jumps up and waves his arms. “And I say to myself, ‘Ed, what are you doing here, Ed?’ ”
“Let’s go for a walk,” Sugar says. “Do you want to take a walk?”
“I want to watch the damned Johnny Carson show. How come you don’t have a television?”
Sugar pats the last ball of wool, drops it into the knitting basket. She looks at May. “We didn’t have much for dinner. How about some cashew butter on toast, or some guacamole?”
“O.K.,” May says. Sugar is very nice to her. It would be nice to have Sugar for a mother.
“Fix me some of that stuff, too,” Ray says. He flips through a pile of records and picks one up, carefully removes it, his thumb in the center, another finger on the edge. He puts it on the record player and slowly lowers the needle to Rod Stewart, hoarsely singing “Mandolin Wind.” “The way he sings ‘No, no,’ ” Ray says, shaking his head.
In the kitchen, May takes a piece of toast out of the toaster, then takes out the other piece and puts it on her father’s plate. Sugar pours each of them a glass of cranberry juice.
“You just love me, don’t you, Sugar?” Ray says, and bites into his toast. “Because living with Gus is like living with a mummy—right?”
Sugar shrugs. She is smoking a cigarillo and drinking cranberry juice.
“I’m your Marvin Gardens,” Ray says. “I’m your God-damned Park Place.”
Sugar exhales, looks at some fixed point on the wall across from her.
“Oh, metaphor,” Ray says, and cups his hand, as though he can catch something. “Everything is like everything else. Ray is like Gus. Sugar’s getting tired of Ray.”
“What the hell are you talking about, Ray?” Sugar says.
“Your one cat is like your other cat,” Ray says. “All is one. Om, om.”
Sugar drains her glass. Sugar and Ray are both smiling. May smiles, to join them, but she doesn’t understand them.
Ray begins his James Taylor imitation. “Ev-ery-body, have you hoid, she’s gonna buy me a mockin’ boid . . .” he sings.
Ray used to sing to May’s mother. He called it serenading. He’d sit at the table, waiting for breakfast, singing and keeping the beat with his knife against the table. As May got older, she was a little embarrassed when she had friends over and Ray began serenading. Her father is very energetic; at home, he used to sprawl out on the floor to arm-wrestle with his friends. He told May that he had been a Marine. Later, her mother told her that that wasn’t true—he wasn’t even in the Army, because he had too many allergies.
“Let’s take a walk,” Ray says now, hitting the table so hard that