Chilly Scenes of Winter Page 4

  “Yes we are,” Susan says.

  Pete smiles. “Ah!” he says. “That’s good. We’ll have a turkey.” He turns to Charles. Charles can’t bear to refuse.

  “Sure,” Charles says.

  “What could I get that you would like?” Pete says.

  Charles feels sorry for him. He remembers him dancing in the room, remembers Pete refusing to sign his report card when he got a “B” in conduct, how he had to stay after school every day for a week, until the teacher gave up, because of the unsigned report card.

  “Olives,” Charles says.

  “Olives!” Pete says. “Any special kind?”

  “Just regular olives,” Charles says.

  “They come in jars with big ones or the small kind,” Pete says.

  Charles does not like olives. Olives were one of the things Jim’s first wife always asked to have brought to her. She would eat olives with Tootsie Rolls, and then drink grape soda. The foods Laura named made a great impression on Charles; he has trouble forgetting them.

  “The big ones,” Charles says.

  “Big ones. I hope they can be found,” Pete says, pushing the “down” button again. Pete talks about things tirelessly. The woman waves to Charles again. He pretends not to see.

  “We should have olives and celery and all the trimmings,” Pete says. “You know, Mommy wasn’t up to cooking at Christmas, but she’s up to it now. She’ll be dancing around that kitchen.”

  “I’ll come cook it,” Susan says.

  “That’s very nice of you,” Pete says.

  Laura is baking bread. She is probably not still baking. It is probably out of the oven. The Ox is probably eating it. Charles is hungry; he would like some of that bread. More than that, he would like that dessert. More than that, he would like Laura.

  “Kids dance nowadays, don’t they?” Pete says, riding down in the elevator.

  “Not much,” Susan says. “Nobody does much of anything any more. I don’t even think there are many drugs on campus.”

  “I should hope not,” Pete says.

  “Well,” Charles says. “We’ll see you in a couple of days.”

  “Right,” Pete says. “Where are you parked?”

  “To the left,” Charles says.

  “Me too,” Pete says.

  As they walk down the street, Pete says, “How’s the car holding out?”

  “It runs okay. Uses a lot of gas.”

  “If you ever want a good car wax, let me recommend Turtle Wax,” Pete says. “That’s really the stuff.”

  “I’ll remember that,” Charles says.

  “No you won’t,” Pete says.

  “Turtle Wax,” Charles repeats, not wanting to have to hear again that he doesn’t like Pete.

  “You don’t like me a damn,” Pete says. “But it’ll be good to have you to dinner all the same.”

  There is an awkward moment when they reach Charles’s car.

  “Headed home?” Pete says.

  “Yeah. We’ll see you.”

  “I guess I’m headed there,” Pete says, shrugging his shoulder toward a bar.

  “Well, we’ll see you,” Susan says.

  Pete nods his head. “See you,” he says.

  “Poor Pete,” Susan says in the car.

  “Nobody told him to marry her.”

  “She did. She told me that once. She told him that if he was going to come over all the time, he should marry her.”

  “Well, that should have told him,” Charles says.

  “I feel sorry for him,” she says.

  “Your friend left,” he says. “I forgot to tell you.”

  “She didn’t have a good time, I guess.”

  “What do you care? She’s just some girl on your floor.”

  “Yeah,” Susan says. “She might have had a good time with Sam.”

  “I don’t care if she had a good time or not,” Charles says.

  “Sam’s really something,” Susan says. “Is he still selling clothes?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Maybe we could ask him to dinner at Pete’s place,” Susan says.

  “He wouldn’t come.”

  “How do you know?”

  “He doesn’t like Pete.”

  “Does he know him?”

  “We ran into him once in a hardware store. We were there to get a hammer for Sam. Pete got onto a thing about ‘security systems’—how Sam owed it to himself to install ‘a high-power security system.’ He ran around pointing out locks and bolts. You know—Sam hasn’t got anything anybody would bother to steal. He thought Pete was a jackass.”

  “You’re the one who always says that. Sam probably didn’t say anything like that.”

  “He said, ‘What a goon.’ ”

  “Maybe he’d go to dinner anyway. You’d like him there.”

  “Sure I would. I’d like to put him through that.”

  “He came before.”

  “That was when she was a lot better. The last time he came, her dress kept slipping off her at the table, and he was humiliated. You remember. You were there, weren’t you?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Sure. It was just before you started college. Pete was in Chicago. She kept saying, ‘One of my men might be gone, but I have two others.’ Sam was humiliated.”

  Susan combs her hair. She leaves her black mittens on, and Charles thinks that she looks like some weird animal with big paws. She’s a nice sister. He wishes he could think of something to do with her.

  “If you stop at a store, I’ll buy something to fix for dinner,” she says.

  “You feel like fixing dinner?”

  She shrugs. Laura likes to cook. Laura and the Ox are probably eating a late dinner together in their cold A-frame. Tomorrow he will see Laura. Laura’s hair is longer than Susan’s. Laura wears perfume. She wears Vol de Nuit. She gives Vol de Nuit to Jim’s first wife for a present. They sit in the visiting room of the loony bin, smelling the same. Charles feels that he knows the woman, that he has been to the bin, but only Laura and Jim have been there. He hates Jim for getting to spend so much time with Laura, envies him the moments with her in the bin, visiting his first wife, thinks that he would be able to stand watching the woman eat, if only he could go there with Laura. Anywhere with Laura.

  “I’m seeing Laura tomorrow,” he says. “I called her from the hospital.”

  “That’s good,” Susan says. “I hope she’s nice to you.”

  “She’s always nice. She just won’t leave her husband.”

  “Aren’t there other attractive women where you work?”

  “No. They all look and act the same, but the fat ones are a little louder, and the thin ones either bite their nails or twist their hair.”

  “They can’t all be bad.”

  “I can’t make myself look. When I do look, they all look bad.”

  He pulls up in front of a Safeway. “How about some money?” he says.

  “I’ve got plenty of money.” She gets out of the car and he sits there double parked, waiting for her. He hopes she will buy oranges and cream and chocolate and make the dessert for him. When she comes back, she has bought a roasting chicken and stuffing and green peas.

  “What’s the guy you go with like?” Charles says.

  “He’s in pre-med. What do you want to know about him?”

  “Are you going to marry him?”

  “I don’t know. He wants to go to Mexico.”

  “What for?”

  “Just for a vacation. To buy a statue. He’s very smart, but he’s sort of nuts. I haven’t wanted to call him since I got here. He’s on a Mexico thing. He wears brown huaraches and a poncho. He saw the statue he wants to buy in the travel section of The Times.”

  “What do you two do?”

  “He studies a lot. I fix dinner. Sometimes we go to other people’s places. We don’t do much.”

  “Has he got long hair?”

  “Yes,” she says. “How did you know?”

&
nbsp; “Figures,” he says.

  “What’s wrong with that?”

  “Nothing. I wish I had become a surgeon. It’s boring working for the government. At least I make enough money to pay the mortgage. Sam hardly makes enough to pay his rent.”

  “Why doesn’t he live at your place?”

  “My place? I don’t know. That would look strange.”

  “What do you care what it looks like?”

  “I don’t know. I wouldn’t want him there all the time. He’d get on my nerves.”

  “Sam doesn’t get on your nerves. He’s there all the time anyway.”

  “He’d bring all his damn women over.”

  “So what. Maybe they’d have friends.”

  “I’m twenty-seven years old. I ought to be able to find a woman if I want one.”

  “Do you look?”

  “Not much.”

  “Aren’t you lonesome?”

  “Of course I’m lonesome. Why do you keep reminding me?”

  “I don’t like to think you’re lonesome.”

  “I’m not that lonesome. I’m exhausted when I work, and Sam’s around on weekends.”

  “But you’re still lonesome.”

  “For Christ’s sake, Susan.”

  “Maybe if you face it you’ll find somebody.”

  “I’m seeing Laura tomorrow.”

  “That’s not what I meant.”

  “Everybody’s married. And if they’re not, they’re either fat or thin.”

  “You’re deliberately not facing the situation.”

  “You’re nineteen,” Charles says. “Leave me alone.”

  “My age doesn’t have anything to do with it.”

  “Susan, Clara’s finally too bonkers to argue with me. Do you have to carry on for her?”

  Susan looks out the car window. They are going around a traffic circle. A man is in the middle of the circle with a shopping bag and a cane. Cars swerve to avoid him. The old man lifts his cane and shakes it. Charles pulls around him, into the far lane where a Christmas tree lies. The car smashes through the tree.

  “I’m surprised Janis Joplin appeals to you,” Susan says. “She doesn’t seem like your type at all.”

  “She was great,” Charles says. “I saw her in a concert. I almost went to Woodstock. I wish I had gone to Woodstock.”

  “You would have been walking around in the mud, looking for a place to pee.”

  Charles laughs. “I thought you’d think Woodstock was glamorous.”

  “I saw the movie,” Susan says.

  “Do you go to movies with this hippie surgeon?”

  “Sometimes. Not much.”

  “When he goes, I’ll bet he likes Bergman,” Charles says.

  “Fellini,” she says.

  “If I weren’t your brother, I’d save you,” he says. “In a few years he’ll be smoking Disque Bleu’s.”

  FOUR

  Charles gets up much earlier than necessary to meet Laura at two o’clock. There is a note in the kitchen from Susan, saying that she’s gone shopping. There is also a note from Sam, that he didn’t see the night before, saying “Just get your hand on her thigh and move it up slowly. That drives them wild.” There is no signature. A plate with the remains of a chili dinner is next to the note. Charles puts it in the sink. He does not feel like washing dishes. He decides, instead, to go to the laundromat. He doesn’t feel like going to the laundromat and stops at the front door with the dirty laundry basket to think whether there’s some excuse to get out of it. There is not. He goes out to the car, notices that it has rained during the night. He inhales before he turns on the ignition. The car starts immediately. It delights him that his car is unpredictable. Turtle Wax, he thinks. Laura, he thinks.

  He is the only man at the laundromat. His sheets are the only ones without flowers. A little boy sitting on top of the next washing machine drops his toy into the water and Charles has to fish it out for him. The little boy cries when he hands it back. The child’s mother rushes over, picks him up, and disappears to the back of the laundry. The woman is pregnant. Her sheets have pink roses all over them. He looks at his pocket watch and discovers that the dryer is cheating him out of two minutes time. There is no one to complain to. If Laura were there, he could complain to her. Maybe Susan was right. Maybe he criticized her or complained too much. His vacation is almost over. He puts the clean clothes in the back seat of his car and drives to the school three hours early. Of course she is not there. He goes to a restaurant and orders breakfast. He is told that it’s too late for breakfast. He gets mad and, for the first time in days, craves a cigarette. Instead, he orders a ham sandwich. He has finished lunch in twenty minutes. That leaves two hours to kill. He goes out to his car and sits there, shivering. Laura is still in her A-frame. He turns on the car radio to hear the news, but it’s over. He has the opportunity to order a two-record set called “Black Beauty” if he acts now. He turns the dial. Merle Haggard sings about trading all of his tomorrows. He turns the radio off and starts the car. He drives around for almost an hour, then goes to the school and parks, waiting for her. He closes his eyes, remembers taking the Metroliner with Laura to New York, how he gave her a cup of water to hold for him while he got out an Excedrin. He always got headaches on trains. When the pill was on his tongue he reached for the cup and she smiled. She had drained it. The Excedrin was very bitter melting on his tongue as he got up to get another cup of water. The whole trip to New York was rotten. She hadn’t wanted to go, but he had tickets to a play. He didn’t know she didn’t like Ibsen. That was early … when he first knew her. She was separated from Jim then, and living in a crummy apartment she wouldn’t buy any furniture for. She smoked grass with him for the first time. She smoked all the grass, and Sam still hasn’t gotten around to getting him more. Another time in New York he bought two grapefruit at a fruit stand, and the next time he looked at her the grapefruit were under her sweater. It looked very nice. She was very nice. He opens his eyes, convinced that he will fall asleep and scream, that she will walk up to his car and he will be screaming inside. The city is full of diplomats. He has been hit twice by them. Both diplomats were crazy. He gets depressed, sometimes, thinking that everybody is crazy. Except Sam. And then he gets worried that he feels that way about Sam.

  He checks his watch. It is a gold watch that belonged to his grandfather. On the day his grandfather killed himself, he also shot two grouse. He went out in the morning for the birds, and in the afternoon for himself. They heard the story over and over when they were growing up about how their grandmother cleaned and cooked the grouse anyway. He studies the face of the watch, wondering whether his grandfather looked at it before he killed himself. She will be here in twenty-four minutes, he says out loud. He doesn’t see her car, but she must already be inside the school. She is a devoted stepmother. She is devoted to everybody but him. He envies Rebecca. He has one of Rebecca’s pictures that Laura left in his car by mistake. It is a crayoned picture of a flying red bird that looks like a flying pig. He takes it out and looks at it. He closes the glove compartment. Glove compartment. When people wore gloves. Years ago. His grandfather. There is a picture of his grandfather on a table in his mother’s house. He was a plain-looking man, with white hair and puckered cheeks and a cravat. He built his own house. Charles got his house from his grandmother, when she died. It was not the same house his grandfather built. With the insurance money she had bought a newer one. His grandmother thought he was the only worthwhile member of the family. In elementary school, Charles had sung in the choir. His grandmother loved music. She left him her house.

  Laura should be here. What is he going to say to her? He wants, somehow, to convey to her that her husband is a dull man. Since he is also dull, he wants to point out that she wouldn’t be getting into anything unexpected; she would just be swapping a dull person who doesn’t care much about her for one who does. That sounds awful. He will have to think harder. He puts his watch away. It is heavy in his pocket. He push
es it far into the pocket, not wanting to lose it. What would his old puckered-cheeked grandfather think of his rendezvousing with a woman at an elementary school?

  She doesn’t come. She’s five minutes late, then ten. He turns on the radio, hoping to find out that his watch is inaccurate. There is a special report about a child’s oven that blows up. Judy Collins. A financial report. He looks up and sees Laura’s car, a black Volvo. Laura pulls up alongside his car, on the other side of the street. “I’m sick,” she hollers. “I just came to tell you. I called, but you had left.”

  “What’s the matter with you?” he says. Wind blows in his face.

  “The flu,” she says. “I’m really sick. I’ve got to go back to bed.”

  He looks at her stupidly. She looks very sick. Her hair is dirty. No question that it is more brown than blond. He stares into her eyes. They are bright. She has a fever. A car honks in back of her and she drives on. He thinks she is gone and can’t bring himself to start the ignition. Her car pulls up alongside his.

  “Hi,” he says.

  “I’m sorry I’m sick,” she says, leaning across the seat. “I’ll see you another time.”

  “Isn’t there anything I can do for you?”

  “No. I just want to go back to bed.” She shakes her head. She looks awful.

  “You shouldn’t have come out.”

  “I thought of you sitting here. I knew you wouldn’t believe I was sick.”

  “I would have believed you,” he says, as indignant as she was when she said her husband didn’t open her mail. But he probably wouldn’t have. Even the bread-baking is in question.

  “Will you call me?” he says. She nods, rolling the window up. Her car is moving slowly forward.

  “I’m going to follow you,” he says. “You’re too sick to drive.”

  “I only have a fever,” she says through the crack in the window, but he puts the key in the ignition, and she waits. The car won’t start. It grinds, but nothing happens. When he is about to scream, pound the windshield, holler and curse, it starts. He follows her car. He follows it all the way to her house, which he can barely see from the road. It is a twenty-minute ride from the school, along streets he has never driven. He starts to pull into the drive, but sees another car and backs up, drives on. At the end of the dead-end street he makes a U-turn and coasts slowly past her driveway. What if she is dying? He sees her get out of her car and walk toward the house. He watches her until she disappears, then coasts to the end of the street. There is a lot of traffic, once he leaves her block. He keeps thinking about turning around, going to the house and saying something to her, no matter who’s there. He lacks nerve. He’s not sure what else he lacks, because her husband’s no prize either. He is wondering about that when his car conks out at a stop sign. He tries to re-start it, but nothing happens. Finally, he sits there with the car flooded, cars pulling around him, head on the steering wheel. What the hell—it wouldn’t hurt to grow his hair some.