Follies by Ann Beattie

Author:Ann Beattie
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Scribner
Published: 2005-08-31T04:00:00+00:00

Tending Something

CURLED on the sofa in her apartment, Mandy wrote down names, though it seemed silly, because she meant to include the whole gang. Oh, sure, some of the people at the surprise party she was planning for Kathy’s birthday would not be all that happy to see certain other people, though she wasn’t inviting anyone—that was it; that was why she was making the list—she would not invite anyone who couldn’t at least act civil. It made her feel slightly embarrassed and self-conscious to be thinking about people acting properly, but she supposed that was her Southern heritage, and besides: the world could do with a little more civility.

In their early twenties, her crowd’s who’s-sleeping-with-whom? game had been preoccupying: one-night stands, affairs, betrayals confessed over vodkas on ice. All those years of pushing ice cubes out of trays. No apartment ever seemed to have a refrigerator with an ice maker. She remembered Trey, hitting a mass of 7-Eleven ice, having to go to the emergency room after breaking his thumb. Mandy had gone to the hospital with him and his twin sister, Tina, who—as they waited in the corridor—wondered aloud if they should call Alicia, because he’d been sleeping with her. At that time, Alicia had been low on the totem pole of women the other women liked, but now that she worked at Vogue, it was clear that when Alicia wasn’t liked, it was jealousy. Mandy jotted Genine’s name onto her list. She’d decided against getting take-out from the Mexican place on Thirty-sixth, and decided instead to order a sheet cake from the supermarket. Cake and champagne would be enough, since all people really wanted to do was talk. Carter and Jake should be invited. Colin Jaye, from Oak Park, who—after he’d ranted about cults and followers of gurus—Alicia had nicknamed “Sri So Sensible.”

A year ago at this time, Mandy had wondered if she might be in love with Trey’s good friend Jake Nemeyer, though the joke had been on her: he’d thrown an out-of-the-closet party, and afterward, Mandy had gone alone to the last showing of the night to see You Can Count On Me, which moved her to tears. Though she could see that she acted like the sister in the movie—dependable; loyal; someone who could be relied on to fix things—she identified with the wayward brother. When she got out of the theater she found it had been snowing. Late at night, snow: everything blurry; the air freezing. The cabdriver had said, “Unless somebody died, you shouldn’t be crying. What are you? Thirty? Did somebody die?” He had even guessed her age as older than she was. She had him take her uptown to the building where she worked. She told the night watchman she’d forgotten something in her office. He looked at her and let her in and didn’t call out when she walked past the after-hours book without signing in. She’d guessed correctly that he wouldn’t come looking for her if she didn’t emerge.

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