Burning House by Ann Beattie Read Free Book Online Page A

couple of days ago,” I said. “Usually Bradley calls once during the week.”
    “He must still be sick,” Louise said. She looked at me anxiously. “Do you think he is?”
    “A cold isn’t going to kill him,” I said. “If he has a cold, he’ll be O.K.”
    Her expression changed; she thought I was talking down to her. She lay back in bed. The last year Milo was with us, I used to tuck her in and tell her that everything was all right. What that meant was that there had not been a fight. Milo had sat listening to music on the phonograph, with abook or the newspaper in front of his face. He didn’t pay very much attention to Louise, and he ignored me entirely. Instead of saying a prayer with her, the way I usually did, I would say to her that everything was all right. Then I would go downstairs and hope that Milo would say the same thing to me. What he finally did say one night was “You might as well find out from me as some other way.”
    “Hey, are you an old bag lady again this weekend?” Milo says now, stooping to kiss Louise’s forehead.
    “Because you take some things with you doesn’t mean you’re a bag lady,” she says primly.
    “Well,” Milo says, “you start doing something innocently, and before you know it it can take you over.”
    He looks angry, and acts as though it’s difficult for him to make conversation, even when the conversation is full of sarcasm and double-entendres.
    “What do you say we get going?” he says to Louise.
    In the shopping bag she is taking is her doll, which she has not played with for more than a year. I found it by accident when I went to tuck in a loaf of banana bread that I had baked. When I saw Baby Betsy, deep in the bag, I decided against putting the bread in.
    “O.K.,” Louise says to Milo. “Where’s Bradley?”
    “Sick,” he says.
    “Is he too sick to have me visit?”
    “Good heavens, no. He’ll be happier to see you than to see me.
    “I’m rooting some of my coleus to give him,” she says. “Maybe I’ll give it to him like it is, in water, and he can plant it when it roots.”
    When she leaves the room, I go over to Milo. “Be nice to her,” I say quietly.
    “I’m nice to her,” he says. “Why does everybody have to act like I’m going to grow fangs every time I turn around?”
    “You were quite cutting when you came in.”
    “I was being self-deprecating.” He sighs. “I don’t really know why I come here and act this way,” he says.
    “What’s the matter, Milo?”
    But now he lets me know he’s bored with the conversation. He walks over to the table and picks up a
Newsweek
and flips through it. Louise comes back with the coleus in a water glass.
    “You know what you could do,” I say. “Wet a napkin and put it around that cutting and then wrap it in foil, and put it in water when you get there. That way, you wouldn’t have to hold a glass of water all the way to New York.”
    She shrugs. “This is O.K.,” she says.
    “Why don’t you take your mother’s suggestion,” Milo says. “The water will slosh out of the glass.”
    “Not if you don’t drive fast.”
    “It doesn’t have anything to do with my driving fast. If we go over a bump in the road, you’re going to get all wet.”
    “Then I can put on one of my dresses at your apartment.”
    “Am I being unreasonable?” Milo says to me.
    “I started it,” I say. “Let her take it in the glass.”
    “Would you, as a favor, do what your mother says?” he says to Louise.
    Louise looks at the coleus, and at me.
    “Hold the glass over the seat instead of over your lap, and you won’t get wet,” I say.
    “Your first idea was the best,” Milo says.
    Louise gives him an exasperated look and puts the glass down on the floor, pulls on her poncho, picks up the glass again and says a sullen goodbye to me, and goes out the front door.
    “Why is this my fault?” Milo says. “Have I done anything terrible? I—”
    “Do something to cheer yourself up,” I