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Authors: Ann Beattie
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of them, he’ll have car accidents. Charles is still a sucker for tabloids with headlines reading: “Onassis Keeps Skorpios as Haven for Vegetable JFK” and in smaller type: “Jackie Says She Can Never Leave Him.”
He feels his head. He has been having strange visions, remembering strange things. He goes to the bedroom to check on Sam. Sam is asleep. His feet stick out of the covers. He has on thick red and white striped snowmobile socks that he was given at the office Christmas party. Actually, he didn’t go to the office party. When he went back to work there was a note over his punch-in card, fastened with a paper clip. “Stop by for your Xmas Present. I couldn’t buttonhole you at the party. Ed, in Sportswear.” Sam was embarrassed to go ask for his present, but somehow Ed found out who he was and came over and gave him the present in the employees’ cafeteria. “It’s something anybody could use,” Ed said. On Sam’s present was written: “Number 80.” Sam went looking for Ed a week later, to ask him if he’d like to join them for a few beers Friday night, and found out that Ed had been fired.
Charles thinks about turning off the television, but the sudden silence might disturb Sam. Sam’s face is very white. He hopes Sam does not get pneumonia. Once Charles had pneumonia. That’s how he got the sentimental attachment to the jacket. He was in the hospital for three days, and on the second night he got out of bed and got the jacket out of the metal closet and put it over the front of him, over the top of the white sheets. It was nice to have something familiar there. The room was pale green and white. It made him think he wasn’t going to die. The girl kept coming and holding his hand, looking worried. She didn’t want him to die, either. Why exactly had he left her? Why had he left any of them? Surprisingly, he left as many of them as had left him. He even left the first one, fifteen-year-old Pat O’Hara, when she told a mutual friend that he kissed sloppily. Maybe she never even said that—maybe the friend made it up. The friend was a notorious liar. He remembers the friend: Bruce Laframboise, later captain of the football team, first one in high school to get a sports car, a short, muscular boy who, in high school, had blackened his front teeth with ink. His mother took him to the dentist. Mrs. Laframboise used to tell his mother that Bruce was a model child, except for that peculiar thing he had done. Bruce ended up working in a free clinic in Haight-Ashbury—at least according to Bruce, who was a compulsive liar. Either that or his sister was a compulsive liar, because she always swore that Bruce was, and everybody believed her. His next girlfriend was a stringbean named Pamela Byall, who became a veterinarian. He met her on the street the year after he graduated from college, and she said, “I’ve become a veterinarian, no thanks to you.” Then there were the recent ones, the ones of the last four or five years. One of them lasted a year and a half. Pamela again. Pamela Smith, giver of the jacket. She started thinking that she was really a lesbian. He got tired of hearing about it. He’d go to bed with her, and she’d say, “It would be so nice to go to bed with a woman. What does it feel like to go to bed with a woman?” He told her he didn’t think his perspective would help her. She bought a stack of books about lesbianism. Gay women’s newspapers were thrown all over the house. She found all Sam’s girlfriends terribly attractive, and said so to the girls. One night at a pizza house, he said, “I’m not going to have anything more to do with you” and left, leaving Pamela to pay for a green-pepper pizza. Good, he thought That will be something to turn her against men. But she kept calling him, asking if she could come over and talk. “How can you turn your back on me when I’m so undecided?” she said. He always gave in, let her come over, and sat through a boring
He feels his head. He has been having strange visions, remembering strange things. He goes to the bedroom to check on Sam. Sam is asleep. His feet stick out of the covers. He has on thick red and white striped snowmobile socks that he was given at the office Christmas party. Actually, he didn’t go to the office party. When he went back to work there was a note over his punch-in card, fastened with a paper clip. “Stop by for your Xmas Present. I couldn’t buttonhole you at the party. Ed, in Sportswear.” Sam was embarrassed to go ask for his present, but somehow Ed found out who he was and came over and gave him the present in the employees’ cafeteria. “It’s something anybody could use,” Ed said. On Sam’s present was written: “Number 80.” Sam went looking for Ed a week later, to ask him if he’d like to join them for a few beers Friday night, and found out that Ed had been fired.
Charles thinks about turning off the television, but the sudden silence might disturb Sam. Sam’s face is very white. He hopes Sam does not get pneumonia. Once Charles had pneumonia. That’s how he got the sentimental attachment to the jacket. He was in the hospital for three days, and on the second night he got out of bed and got the jacket out of the metal closet and put it over the front of him, over the top of the white sheets. It was nice to have something familiar there. The room was pale green and white. It made him think he wasn’t going to die. The girl kept coming and holding his hand, looking worried. She didn’t want him to die, either. Why exactly had he left her? Why had he left any of them? Surprisingly, he left as many of them as had left him. He even left the first one, fifteen-year-old Pat O’Hara, when she told a mutual friend that he kissed sloppily. Maybe she never even said that—maybe the friend made it up. The friend was a notorious liar. He remembers the friend: Bruce Laframboise, later captain of the football team, first one in high school to get a sports car, a short, muscular boy who, in high school, had blackened his front teeth with ink. His mother took him to the dentist. Mrs. Laframboise used to tell his mother that Bruce was a model child, except for that peculiar thing he had done. Bruce ended up working in a free clinic in Haight-Ashbury—at least according to Bruce, who was a compulsive liar. Either that or his sister was a compulsive liar, because she always swore that Bruce was, and everybody believed her. His next girlfriend was a stringbean named Pamela Byall, who became a veterinarian. He met her on the street the year after he graduated from college, and she said, “I’ve become a veterinarian, no thanks to you.” Then there were the recent ones, the ones of the last four or five years. One of them lasted a year and a half. Pamela again. Pamela Smith, giver of the jacket. She started thinking that she was really a lesbian. He got tired of hearing about it. He’d go to bed with her, and she’d say, “It would be so nice to go to bed with a woman. What does it feel like to go to bed with a woman?” He told her he didn’t think his perspective would help her. She bought a stack of books about lesbianism. Gay women’s newspapers were thrown all over the house. She found all Sam’s girlfriends terribly attractive, and said so to the girls. One night at a pizza house, he said, “I’m not going to have anything more to do with you” and left, leaving Pamela to pay for a green-pepper pizza. Good, he thought That will be something to turn her against men. But she kept calling him, asking if she could come over and talk. “How can you turn your back on me when I’m so undecided?” she said. He always gave in, let her come over, and sat through a boring
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