Perfect Recall by Ann Beattie

Author:Ann Beattie
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Scribner
Published: 2001-08-31T04:00:00+00:00

See the Pyramids

THE STONE rabbit’s ears stand completely upright, a reminder to Cheri that for perfect posture, you should imagine someone pulling your head straight toward the sky, as if a piece of string is attached to the center of your head. And if you don’t care about perfect posture? Grab the string and loop it around your neck, then let him pull. The big marionette manipulator in the sky: God, who wants you to stand up straight. His celestial voice filtering through Anders’s barking baritone: I’ve told you and told you to stand up straight; you’re going to get curvature of the spine, be a stooped old woman before your time.

Cheri considers what a disappointment she sometimes is to Anders. She is pretty, but not regal; talented, but not with an unusual talent; nice, though given to sulking. The stone rabbit, which Anders has corrected her about—it is a cement rabbit, not stone—stands in the center of the back-porch picnic table, a deity waiting for its nightly offerings: small windup toys from the local drugstore positioned at its bunny feet; a bough of lilacs from the garden; a contemporary update provided by the addition of a woven friendship bracelet tied over the bunny brow as an improvised sweatband. They love to joke, Anders and LaValle; it’s something men of that generation seem to do, Cheri has noticed: have big plans and enjoy small jokes. The vintage Farrah Fawcett poster from someone’s garage sale has been laminated to become a dartboard for suction-cupped arrows; Anders has obtained drinking glasses at a flea market that are illustrated with Jughead and his friends Archie, Betty, and Veronica; there is a moose doormat that says WELCOME TO THE CAMP Though Cheri disdains retro for the sake of retro, some of the old jokes—including fashion—seem to make more sense than all these proliferating adolescent jokes.

They have rented this house on the Maine coast for July. The situation is that the owners, with ever increasing property taxes to pay on their waterfront property, now rent out their house for the last two months of summer and move back to their apartment on Beacon Hill. Cheri is occupying the house with Anders, LaValle, and Erin. She and Erin bankroll the place with money from modeling. Anders does the inventive, sporadically presented cooking. LaValle is a complete deadbeat who doesn’t even wash his own clothes, though he does have some interest in “motoring,” as he calls it: having them all pile into the car with a picnic Anders has packed and driving somewhere nice to eat it. Erin, Cheri’s best friend, loves LaValle, which is why he’s part of the picture: Erin’s “agent”; her “driver”; a willing “assistant to photographers” (which means that he has the smarts to point out where it’s sunny). Erin herself is a very capable person, but lazy. She’ll occasionally toss LaValle’s clothes (silk underwear; shorts; tacky tourist-shop tee-shirts; sweatpants) into the washer as a little kiss of domesticity; in exchange, he takes care of what he calls “the details.

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