Chilly Scenes of Winter

THREE

He calls Laura from the hospital. He calls her from a phone in a sun room (it is labeled “Sun Room” on a plaque to one side of the door) on his mother’s floor at the hospital. He holds a Ladies’ Home Journal curled into a tight tube, but doesn’t realize until halfway through the conversation that he is holding anything.

“Laura?” he says, “Can you talk?”

There is a short pause. She will say something ridiculous like, “Oh, we subscribe to too many now,” and hang up.

“Hi,” she says. “Jim isn’t here. He’s at a meeting.”

“Maybe he’s cheating on you. Maybe you should just assume that and cheat on him. With me.”

“What?” she says.

“I thought I might as well get to the point.”

“You did,” she laughs. “How have you been? You didn’t write back.”

“I thought he might get the mail.”

“He doesn’t open my mail.”

Her husband was nicknamed “Ox.” How can she defend him in any way?

“He might ask questions, though,” Charles says.

“I don’t suppose you called to talk about him,” Laura says. “Is everything okay with you?”

“I miss you. I’m miserable.”

There is another long silence.

“My mother’s in the hospital,” he says. “That’s where I am.”

“She didn’t try to kill herself?”

“She hit the scotch and plugged in a lot of heating pads — I don’t know where she gets all of them — and thought she was struck with appendicitis, and now she’s here.”

“You’re at the hospital now?”

“Yeah,” he says.

“I’d come over, but Jim’s supposed to be home at ten.”

“Come tomorrow.”

“I have to go to Rebecca’s school tomorrow. It’s a parents’ day.”

Rebecca is Jim’s child from his first marriage. When he was Laura’s lover he used to go to Rebecca’s school every day, sit outside in his car until Laura picked up the child at noon. They usually got there at eleven. He always said he was going to lunch early. They kidded him about it at work. “Almost lunch time,” they’d say as soon as he got there in the morning. But he only took an hour for lunch, so nobody said he couldn’t go. He would sit in Laura’s car, holding her hand. The car would fill with cigarette smoke.

“What time are you getting out? I could meet you there.”

“I haven’t planned it.…”

“I just want to see you for five minutes.”

“Why don’t you come at … two. You’ll see my car there. I’ll leave it open.”

“All right,” he says.

“I hope your mother’s all right. Is she going to have to go back to that place?”

“No,” Charles says. “I don’t think so.”

“It would be kinder to tie her to the bed,” Laura says.

Jim’s first wife is in a mental hospital. Laura has told him about visiting her — how they save all her letters, which are mostly about food, and how they stop on the way and get McDonald’s Filet o’ Fish, Kentucky Fried Chicken, macaroni salad, Heath Bars and Cott ginger ale, and how she does nothing but eat when they are there, everything together, a sip of ginger ale, some of the candy bar, the macaroni. It makes Laura sick. She gets dizzy, can’t eat for a week.

“My sister’s home from college,” Charles says. “I’ve got the week off.”

“That’s nice. You two can do some things.”

“We can’t think of anything to do. Yesterday we went to a skin flick.”

“That’s horrible,” Laura says.

“I thought of you.”

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” Laura says. “I’ve got to go.”

“Where are you going?”

“What’s the use in telling you? You never believe me. I have bread in the oven.”

“How domestic,” he says.

“If you feel so bitter, maybe it would be better not to come tomorrow.”

“I love you,” Charles says. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

He hangs up. A woman in a corner chair looks back at her knitting. A young man on an orange plastic sofa is asleep with his head on his overcoat, which is rolled up on the arm of the sofa. The young man has on a blue suit and shiny black shoes. The toes are too pointed. His tie, dangling from the sofa arm, is too thin. He makes gurgling noises in his sleep. Charles is always afraid of falling asleep in public places. He thinks that he will scream. He doesn’t even close his eyes on buses any more. In fact he has started driving to work instead of taking the bus so he won’t be tempted to fall asleep. Charles looks at himself in the mirror. It is an oblong mirror with a picture of the hospital painted at the top. Charles sees that he has circles under his eyes. His skin is pasty. In five days he will be twenty-seven. His eyes meet the woman’s in the mirror. She looks down at her knitting again. He walks away from the minor, puts the magazine on a table, tries to rub the creases out, gives up, thinks about going to his mother’s room to join Susan and Pete, cannot, sits down.

“Is your wife having a baby?” the woman says.

“No,” Charles says.

“My daughter is,” the woman says.

“That’s nice,” Charles says. He and Laura were always worried that she would get pregnant. He frowns. The woman smiles.

“What are you hoping for?” Charles says.

“Health,” the woman says. “Good health. That’s what’s important.”

Predictable. Everything is predictable.

“She has three boys, so she’s hoping for a girl,” the woman says.

“That’s nice,” Charles says. He gets up and leaves the sun room. He walks slowly down the corridor to his mother’s room. He sees the back of Pete’s coat and turns around. He goes back to the telephone and dials his number. He is going to tell Sam to go to his place with Elise — it’s depressing him. The phone rings twice. Sam answers it.

“Sam. It’s been a rotten day and I’m tired, so I want you and Elise out of my bed when I get back there. I hope you don’t take offense, but I don’t want to sleep on the sofa again tonight.”

“She’s gone,” Sam says. “She had me drive her to the train.”

“Gone? Where did she go?”

“Home. She said that by now her mother wouldn’t be drunk. Her mother always sobers up about this time so she won’t have to make it a New Year’s resolution.”

“Oh,” Charles says. “What are you doing there?”

“I just got back from the train. I was eating the leftover chili.”

“I forgot to ask you for New Year’s Day dinner,” Charles says.

“Oh, yeah. I figured I was invited.”

“Maybe I’ll see you later, if I’m lucky enough to get out of here soon.”

“Pete there?”

“Yeah. I’ll have to think of some reason not to go out for a drink with him.”

“How’s your mother?”

“I haven’t seen her yet. Tomorrow I’m seeing Laura.”

“That’s great. Did you call her?”

“No. Mental telepathy.”

“Oh. You’ve just got a feeling, huh?”

“I was kidding. I called her. She was baking bread in her A-frame.”

“I wish I had something to go with this chili,” Sam says. “Don’t you ever buy groceries? Maybe I could call Laura and she’d run some over.”

“Hell,” Charles says. “With your luck she probably would. With my luck she’d fall in love with you and be rolling around in my bed when I got back.”

“I’ll see you,” Sam says.

“Yeah. Good night, Sam.”

Charles walks down to his mother’s room. His mother is sitting up in bed. The curtain is pulled around the other woman’s bed. His sister is sitting in a chair beside the bed. Pete is dancing across the floor. He stops, embarrassed.

“I was demonstrating how to turn,” Pete says.

“Go ahead,” Charles says.

“I did. I already did it,” Pete says, slapping Charles’s back.

“He wants me to go dancing,” Clara says.

Charles nods.

“Show some enthusiasm, my boy,” Pete says, slapping his back harder. “Wouldn’t a few twirls fix anybody up?”

Charles moves over to Susan’s chair. He wants to sit down. He wants to sit down on her lap. He would like to be smaller, and her child instead of her brother, and then he could curl up and shut his eyes, and everyone would think he was being good, instead of being bad. It is wrong not to encourage Pete, who is trying hard to be helpful. He is just a jackass.

“Do you dance?” Charles’s mother says. It is the first time she has acknowledged his presence.

“Yes,” Charles lies, smiling at Pete that he is going along.

“What do you dance?” Clara asks.

Charles cannot think of the names of any dances. “The hula,” he says.

Susan laughs. Pete frowns.

“Aw, he’s just kidding. All young kids dance.”

“The tango,” Charles says. He has just remembered the name of that movie: Last Tango in Paris. Marlon Brando running around, cornering that Parisian, his dead wife, that young girl, the streets of Paris, all those people doing the tango, that girl running off, the streets of Paris, Laura.…

“The tango!” Pete laughs. Pete is getting mad. Susan looks down, trying not to show her smile.

“You don’t tango,” Pete says.

“I don’t know the name of the dance I do,” Charles says. “I just sort of move around.”

“Well, you’d know what you were doing if you’d take a few lessons,” Pete says. “That’s what I’ve been trying to tell Mommy. Then at the convention she could take a twirl or two like the other wives. She doesn’t want to go, because she just sits in the hotel room. We don’t have to have that, do we, Charles?”

“No,” Charles says. “She should go.”

Pete smiles approval.

“Did you hear your boy say you should take a few twirls?” Pete says. Pete does not know how to get off a subject. Susan looks down, disguising a yawn. Clara reaches for the water glass and deliberately drops it.

“I’m so clumsy,” she says, as Susan picks up the glass. Susan’s stockings are wet. “How could I be a dancer?”

“We’re going to take a museum tour when you’re on your feet,” Pete says. “We live in a city with a fine museum, and we’re going to tour it.”

“I don’t know anything about art,” she says.

“What do you have to know? You can look at a picture and enjoy it, right? What did you know about children until you had them?”

“I read Doctor Spock.”

“There! Mommy’s going to read a book about art and then hit those pictures!” Pete says, smiling broadly.

“If I ever get well,” she says.

“You are well, honey. You’re going to be looking over those pictures before you know it.”

She closes her eyes. “I never saw a Picasso I liked,” she says.

“He was a great painter,” Pete says. Charles doubts that Pete knows who Picasso is.

“I guess I could look at some of them again,” she says. Her eyes are still closed.

“That’s the idea,” Pete says. “Isn’t it?”

No one answers. Pete moves over to Charles. “That’s the idea, right?” he says.

“Right,” Charles says.

“Maybe we should let her get some rest,” Susan says.

“Rest those feet,” Pete says, patting them under the covers. “Those feet are going to twirl you around the floor at the convention.”

“I’ve never been to a convention,” she says.

“Three weeks!” Pete says. “There are probably art galleries in Chicago. We can hit the pictures there, too.”

“I don’t know. I try to read books, but I never get through them.”

“Just read the section on that artist you like,” Pete says.

“What artist do I like?”

“You were talking about some artist.…”

“I said I never saw a painting of his that I liked, Pete.”

“Well, you will in Chicago,” Pete says. He grabs her foot and shakes it.

“See you tomorrow, honey,” he says.

“I guess so,” she says. “Where’s my Susan’s hand?”

Susan goes back to the bed and holds her mother’s hand.

“Good-bye,” Clara says.

“Rest,” Susan says, patting her hand.

“I might not go to the convention,” Clara says. “I might stay home and rest.”

Pete’s mouth opens, but he doesn’t say anything. He smiles a big smile.

“See you tomorrow,” he says.

“Where’s my Charles?” she says.

“Oh, shit,” Charles says, loud enough for Pete to hear. He walks to his mother’s bed and gives her his hand.

“You were my first baby,” she says. “I guess that doesn’t matter to you, but it matters to me.”

“What do you mean?” Charles says, but her eyes are closed and she doesn’t answer. Deliberately. She wants them to leave thinking that she is still ill.

Charles tells Pete as they wait for the elevator that he and Susan are very tired — otherwise they’d enjoy that drink with him.

“You don’t like me,” Pete says. “I didn’t kill your father. He just died.”

The woman knitting in the sun room waves. Charles waves back. He looks at the phone. Two o’clock tomorrow.

“We’re just not very much alike,” Charles says.

Pete looks surprised; he expected some other answer. He pushes the “down” button again, straightens his coat collar.

“You’re not coming to dinner either, are you?” Pete says.

“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?”

“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.”