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

door going to open with a great heave, when would the vole have to race into its hole, the snake take a break, the rabbit hide by habit, eyes bright and ears perked to the crackle of grass?
    I cleared my throat. Reciting poetry while sitting was a little like trying to sing when flat on your back in bed, but I wanted him to hear the poem, and I’d been standing long enough:
    Lying in a Hammock at William Duffy’s Farm in Pine Island, Minnesota
Over my head, I see the bronze butterfly,
Asleep on the black trunk,
Blowing like a leaf in green shadow.
Down the ravine behind the empty house,
The cowbells follow one another
Into the distances of the afternoon.
To my right,
In a field of sunlight between two pines,
The droppings of last year’s horses
Blaze up into golden stones.
I lean back, as the evening darkens and comes on.
A chicken hawk floats over, looking for home.
I have wasted my life.
    “Is that really a poem?” he finally said.
    “What else would it be?”
    “I’ve never heard anything like that. The last line comes out of nowhere.”
    “I don’t think so. He could have said that from the beginning, but he gave us the scene so that we’d be seduced, the way he’d been, and then he changed the game on us—on himself—at the last moment.”
    “That’s the kind of guy who’d stick a pin in a balloon!” he said. “I mean, thank you very much for reciting that. I’ll get a book of his poetry and write to let you know my reaction.”
    “That’s good,” I said. “Any day’s good when you get someone to buy a book of poetry who wouldn’t ordinarily do it.”
    “You thought I’d identify with the guy in the hammock,” he said. “And I guess I do, to be honest.”
    “Most people who are being honest feel that way at least some of the time, in my experience.”
    “I appreciate your asking me to move in,” he said.
    I smiled. When he left, when the car had safely backed out of the driveway, I’d clip the leash on Yancey and walk her back to the field, then unclip it and let her loose to sniff out the day’s still dazzling possibilities. She looked a little kinky in her black booties. And her lovely coat could use a brushing, I saw. No day failed to contain the unexpected. Which I suspect Yancey thought, too, especially because she didn’t quite understand why she couldn’t make a wild dash like a thunderbolt from door to field, why she panted, why she failed to catch anything, why she’d been skunked, in fact.
    Startled starlings flew up out of the high grass, their black whorl a little tornado that did not touch down and therefore did no damage. They disappeared like a momentary perception above Yancey’s head, fanning out and flying west. Or like the clotted words crammed into a cartoon bubble. Like one of Ginger’s finger-paintings from so, so long ago, brought home for inspection and praise.

SILENT PRAYER
    “S ometimes,” he said, “I think people would sympathize with me if the roles were reversed and I was a woman whose job required her to travel. Have you thought about it that way? In this time when women have still not gotten the opportunities and respect they should, whereas men—I stand here as a case in point—are criticized for doing what women aspire to do. You’d like me to stay home and help you plan a birthday party for Joshua, which I can do by phone, by sending you e-mail, by doing anything that might represent my share of the work, but you won’t give me a break. It’s as though I want to go on every business trip. As though the last flight wasn’t a nightmare. I had a headache for two days afterwards. Do you have any idea at all where my black Nikes are? Not the Pumas that are mostly black, but the Nikes?”
    “I’m sure if we still had your assistant, she could find them.”
    “What’s that supposed to mean? She miscarried and she’s suffering a major depression. She’s called off her marriage. She should be here, to locate my shoes? Are you suggesting