Distortions by Ann Beattie Read Free Book Online

make it if you promise not to drink it.”
    Michael goes into the kitchen. The girls are squealing delightedly and the woman on television is weeping hysterically. “Tom was in line for chief of surgery once Dr. Stan retired, but
Rita
said that he …”
    The phone rings. “Hello?” Michael says.
    “Hi,” Carlos says. “Still mad?”
    “Hi, Carlos,” Michael says.
    “Still mad?” Carlos asks.
    “No.”
    “What have you been doing?”
    “Nothing.”
    “That’s what I figured. Interested in a job?”
    “No.”
    “You mean you’re just sitting around there all day?”
    “At the moment, I’m giving a tea party.”
    “Sure,” Carlos says. “Would you like to go out for a beer? I could come over after work.”
    “I don’t care,” Michael says.
    “You sound pretty depressed.”
    “Why don’t you cast a spell and make things better?” Michael says. “There goes the water. Maybe I’ll see you later.”
    “You’re not really drinking tea, are you?”
    “Yes,” Michael says. “Good-bye.”
    He takes the water into the living room and pours it into Mary Anne’s teapot.
    “Don’t scald yourself,” he says, “or we’re both screwed.”
    “Where’s the tea bag, Daddy?”
    “Oh, yeah.” He gets a tea bag from the kitchen and drops it into the pot. “You’re young, you’re supposed to use your imagination,” he says. “But here it is.”
    “We need something to go with our tea, Daddy.”
    “You won’t eat your dinner.”
    “Yes, I will.”
    He goes to the kitchen and gets a bag of M&Ms. “Don’t eat too many of these,” he says.
    “I’ve got to get out of this town,” the woman on television is saying. “You know I’ve got to go now, because of Tom’s dependency on Rita.”
    Mary Anne carefully pours two tiny cups full of tea.
    “We can drink this, can’t we, Daddy?”
    “I guess so. If it doesn’t make you sick.”
    Michael looks at his daughter and her friend enjoying their teaparty. He goes into the bathroom and takes his pipe off the window ledge, closes the door and opens the window, and lights it. He sits on the bathroom floor with his legs crossed, listening to the woman weeping on television. He notices Mary Anne’s bunny. Its eyebrows are raised with amazement at him. It is ridiculous to be sitting in the bathroom getting stoned while a tea party is going on and a woman shrieks in the background. “What else can I do?” he whispers to the bunny. He envies the bunny—the way it clutches the bar of soap to its chest When he hears Elsa come in, he leaves the bathroom and goes into the hall and puts his arms around her, thinking about the bunny and the soap. Mick Jagger sings to him: “All the dreams we held so close seemed to all go up in smoke …”
    “Elsa,” he says, “what are your dreams?”
    “That your dealer will die,” she says.
    “He won’t. He’s only twenty years old.”
    “Maybe Carlos will put a curse on him. Carlos killed his godfather, you know.”
    “Be serious. Tell me one real dream,” Michael says.
    “I told you.”
    Michael lets her go and walks into the living room. He looks out the window and sees Carlos’s car pull up in front of the walk. He goes out and gets into Carlos’s car. He stares down the street.
    “Don’t feel like saying hello, I take it,” Carlos says.
    Michael shakes his head.
    “Hell,” Carlos says, “I don’t know what I keep coming around for you for.”
    Michael’s mood is contagious. Carlos starts the car angrily and roars away, throwing a curse on a boxwood at the edge of the lawn.

Imagined Scenes

    “ I ’ve unlaced my boots and I’m standing barefoot on a beach with very brown sand, ocean in front of me and mountains in the distance, and trees making a pretty green haze around them.”
    “Pretty,” David says.
    “Where would that be?”
    “Greece?”
    When she wakes from a dream, David is already awake. Or perhaps he only wakes when she stirs, whispers to him. He doesn’t sound sleepy;