Distortions by Ann Beattie Read Free Book Online Page A

he’s alert, serious, as though he’d been waiting for a question. She remembers last year, the week before Christmas, when she and David had gone out separately to shop. She got back to the house first, her keys lost—or locked in the car. Before she could look for them, headlights lit up the snowy path. David jumped out of his car, excited about his purchases, reaching around her to put the key in the door. Now she expects him to wake up when she does, that they will arrive home simultaneously. But David still surprises her—at the end of summer he told her he wouldn’t be working in the fall. He was going back to college to finish the work for his Ph.D.
    He sits in a gray chair by the fireplace and reads; she brings coffee to the table by his chair, and he turns off the light and goes upstairs to bed when she is tired. By unspoken agreement, he has learned to like Roquefort dressing. He pokes the logs in the fireplace because the hot red coals frighten her.
    “After I take orals in the spring we’ll go to Greece to celebrate.”
    She wants to go to Spain. Couldn’t the beach have been in Spain? No more questions—she should let him sleep. She shakes the thought out of her head.
    “No?” he says. “We will. We’ll go to Greece when I finish the orals.”
    The leaves of the plant look like worn velvet. The tops are purple, a shiny, fuzzy purple, and the underside is dark green. Suddenly the plant has begun to grow, sending up a narrow shoot not strong enough to support itself, so that it falls forward precariously, has to be staked. They agree it’s strange that a plant should have such a spurt of growth in midwinter. David admires theplant, puts it in a window that gets the morning light and moves it into a side room late in the afternoon. Now when he waters the plant a little plant food is mixed in with the water. David is enthusiastic; he’s started to feed the others to see if they’ll grow. She comes home and finds him stretched by the fireplace, looking through a book about plants. Their plant isn’t pictured, he tells her, but it may be mentioned in the text. She goes into the other room to look at the plant. The shoot appears to be taller. They bought the plant in a food store last winter—not very pretty then. It was in a small cracked pot, wrapped in plastic. They replanted it. In fact, David must have replanted it again.
    She puts away the groceries and goes back to the living room. David is still on the rug reading the book. He’s engrossed. The coffee would probably get cold if she brought it. She has to work that night. She goes upstairs to take a nap and sets the alarm. She rests, but can’t fall asleep, listening to the quiet music downstairs. She pushes in the alarm button and goes back to the living room. David is in his chair, reading the book, drinking coffee.
    “I spent the most terrible winter in my life in Berlin. I don’t know why, but birds don’t leave Berlin in the winter. They’re big, strong birds. They nest in the public buildings. I think the winter just comes too suddenly in Berlin, no plans can be made. The birds turn gray, like snowbirds. I think snowbirds are gray.”
    The old man is looking out the window. He is her patient His daughter and son-in-law are away for a week, and his sister stays with him in the day. She has been hired to stay with him at night. He is not very ill, but old and unsteady.
    She drinks tea with him, tired because she didn’t nap.
    “I don’t sleep well,” he tells her. “I want to talk all the time. My daughter doesn’t sleep either. In the day we fight, or I worry her, but at night I think she’s glad to have someone to talk to.”
    The snowplow is passing the house, slowly, the lights blinking against the newly plowed snowpiles. The lights illuminate a snowman on the next lawn—crudely made, or perhaps it’s just not lit up from the right angle. She remembers her first snowman; her mother broke off the broom handle to give her and