Chilly Scenes of Winter by Ann Beattie Read Free Book Online Page B

was discharged. Mommy’s weak as a kitten from all those laxatives.”
    “Don’t they watch her? Don’t they know she’s bats?”
    There is a long silence. “We’re looking forward to seeing you soon, too,” Pete says. “I most certainly will tell her.” Pete hangs up.
    “Oh Christ, ” Charles says, slamming the receiver down.
    “What’s the matter?”
    “She took herself a bunch of laxatives and she’s talking about death again. He’s there, no doubt telling her to try to foxtrot.” Charles stops. He is surprised to realize that he remembers the name of another dance.
    Sam shakes his head, swirls the wine in his glass.
    “Nothing goes right,” Sam says.
    Charles picks up his coat from the back of the chair. “Come on,” he says to Sam. “We’re going to the store to get some good stuff. Bring those cookbooks with you.”
    “All of them?”
    “There’s only four or five.”
    Sam puts on his coat, picks them up.
    “Under desserts,” Charles says, closing the door behind him. “Look up soufflés. See if there’s one that sounds like it’s made out of oranges and cognac.”
    Sam cannot find it. Charles looks too, in the parking lot of the Safeway, but nothing even vaguely similar is listed. He ends up buying a Dutch Apple pie.
    “I hate that kind,” Sam says.
    “I do too. Maybe I’ll save it as a hostess present for Clara’s dinner.”
    But on New Year’s Day their mother is in the mental hospital. She is too sedated to have visitors. Pete is there, and Pete’s brother, who flew in from Hawaii. Early in the morning Pete called to say that things were pretty good. The doctor did not think there would be much of a problem, and she’d be back home soon. She was taken to the hospital after she sat propped up in bed crying for an entire night. At noon, when Charles was fixing a bowl of soup to take to Sam on a tray, Pete called again. “You son of a bitch,” Pete said loudly. “I know you don’t like me and you never liked me, and from now on it’s between you and your mother. I’m not calling you again. I’m not feeling guilty any more. You make me feel guilty she’s here, when nobody could have taken better care of her. Talk to the doctors here about that, you son of a bitch.” Charles called the hospital back, but there was no way Pete could be paged, and his mother had no telephone. The soup boiled over on the stove, and Charles tried to dab it up with a sponge, careful not to burn himself on the still-hot burner. The noodles looked disgusting clinging to the sponge. He put a napkin on a tray, the way his mother used to do for him when he was sick in bed, and then the bowl of soup. He could hear Sam coughing in the bedroom. The TV was in there, on a table Charles had moved to the foot of the bed. Even above the noise of the football game, Sam’s coughing could be heard.
    “You ought to have me call a doctor,” Charles says, standing in the doorway with the tray. He feels his own nostrils unclogging as the steam from the soup rises.
    “Everybody’s got the flu. I don’t need one.”
    “That cough sounds awful.”
    “Are you bringing me my lunch or not?”
    Charles walks into the room. The announcer screams. The Dolphins have the ball. Sam sneezes.
    “Don’t get so close to me,” Sam says.
    “You’ve got a fever,” Charles says. “I could feel the heat when I leaned over.”
    “Too bad the nursie isn’t still here,” Sam says.
    “I’ll bet she’d tell you to go to a doctor.”
    “I’ll bet she’d jump into bed. Nurses are all amazing. I think nursing students are more remarkable than real nurses.”
    “Eat your soup.”
    “The last time I went to the doctor I had had a cough for two weeks—I’d shoot up in bed in the middle of the night, choking with it. He could hear me coughing. I coughed the whole time I was there. I told him that nothing worked but streptomycin. Naturally he wouldn’t give me any. He said, ‘Oh! You like that stuff, huh?’ When the