The State We're In: Maine Stories by Ann Beattie Read Free Book Online Page A

available to her. She didn’t move any furniture. She painted around the headboard. It was quite a mess. It made me feel faint when I saw it.”
    I knew this conversation would not be taking place if I’d allowed the accountant to come to the house the same day the man from IRS came, but I hate it when people stand there like I’m a young, helpless girl again, and that inevitably happens if two people are present, because one of them is bound to feel sorry for you. I’m seventy-seven years old. I’ve had two poems in quarterlies this year, and I received a personal note of rejection from Paul Muldoon, who said he very much liked an allusion I made in section one of my poem about Galileo. No one has suggested I’m senile.
    “So would you consider leaving your wife and moving into this peaceful home and changing your life?” I asked.
    He looked startled. “Leave her?” he said. “I don’t think she’d remember to eat if I wasn’t there.”
    “All right,” I said. “So I’m not breaking up your marriage today. Think about it, though. I could use some help walking Yancey at night. In March she got skunked. It was terrible, but there’s nothing you can do. I led her into the house and doused her with tomato juice. It’s happened before, so I had some on hand. Still, I made her sleep in the garage, in her old dog bed. I put an extra blanket over her and had to throw it out later, because three cycles in the washing machine didn’t get rid of the smell.”
    We walked downstairs. Yancey waited at the bottom. I knew what she was thinking: field, breeze, sticks, little scurrying animals. We all forget the painful parts. The tomato juice.
    “I’ve never before had someone invite me to move in!” he exclaimed as he picked up his jacket from the banister. “I thank you for that. And I wish you good luck with your writing. It was a pleasure to see the lovely room you write in.”
    “My daughter and her wife drive me crazy, and you would have been good protection,” I said. “You know how it is when there’s a man around the house. People back down when there’s a manly presence.”
    He nodded. He said, “If you were to recommend one book of poetry I should read, what would it be?”
    “Do you prefer reading older poetry, or are you interested in new poetry?”
    “Let’s say newer. Because I’ve never read recent poetry at all. We subscribe to magazines that print poetry, but I skip over it. I’m an equal opportunity idiot, I guess you’d say. I don’t read cartoon captions either.”
    “Tell me a little about yourself,” I said. “Sentimental? At all mystical? Do you like a poem that tells a story, or a poem that’s more of an enigma?”
    “I liked Robert Frost when I was at VMI,” he said. “I think he would have been the most recent poet we read.”
    “And I’ll bet they taught you all wrong. I’ll bet they told you ‘The Road Not Taken’ was about making important choices and exhibiting free will, didn’t they?”
    “I don’t really remember. I just remember that my roommate got two days in detention because he didn’t memorize it.”
    “Are you Facebook friends now?”
    “With Hank? No, he’s not on Facebook. He’s in jail in Delaware. For menacing his ex-wife.”
    “My daughter’s wife was stalked by her ex-boyfriend. She says there’s no connection between her coming out and his doing that, but you have to wonder. He was an awful man. He slit her tires once. There’s still a restraining order against him, though they’ve heard he went back to Chicago.”
    He shook his head slowly, lips pursed.
    “I’ll tell you what,” I said. “He’s not at all like Robert Frost, but I think you might like the poems of James Wright. My favorite poem by him is ‘Lying in a Hammock at William Duffy’s Farm in Pine Island, Minnesota.’ ” I held on to the banister and sat on the step. Yancey settled on her haunches next to me. When was this man ever going to leave, when was the