Free Secrets & Surprises by Ann Beattie Page B

from getting.
    At the museum she hesitated by the sculpture but did not point it out to him. He didn’t look at it. He gazed to the side, above it, at a Francis Bacon painting. He could have shifted his eyes just a little and seen the sculpture, and her, standing and staring.
    After three more lessons she could drive the car. The last two times, which were later in the afternoon than her first lesson, they stopped at the drugstore to get the old lady’s paper, to save him from having to make the same trip back on foot. When he came out of the drugstore with the paper, after the final lesson, she asked him if he’d like to have a beer to celebrate.
    “Sure,” he said.
    They walked down the street to a bar that was filled with college students. She wondered if Larry ever came to this bar. He had never said that he did.
    She and Michael talked. She asked why he wasn’t in high school. He told her that he had quit. He was living with his brother, and his brother was teaching him carpentry, which he had been interested in all along. On his napkin he drew a picture of the cabinets and bookshelves he and his brother had spent the last week constructing and installing in the house of two wealthy old sisters. He drummed the side of his thumb against the edge of the table in time with the music. They each drank beer, from heavy glass mugs.
    “Mrs. Larsen said your husband was in school,” the boy said. “What’s he studying?”
    She looked up, surprised. Michael had never mentioned her husband to her before. “Chemistry,” she said.
    “I liked chemistry pretty well,” he said. “Some of it.”
    “My husband doesn’t know you’ve been giving me lessons. I’m just going to tell him that I can drive the stick shift, and surprise him.”
    “Yeah?” the boy said. “What will he think about that?”
    “I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t think he’ll like it.”
    “Why?” the boy said.
    His question made her remember that he was sixteen. What she had said would never have provoked another question from an adult. The adult would have nodded or said, “I know.”
    She shrugged. The boy took a long drink of beer. “I thought it was funny that he didn’t teach you himself, when Mrs. Larsen told me you were married,” he said.
    They had discussed her. She wondered why Mrs. Larsen wouldn’t have told her that, because the night she ate dinner with her she had talked to Mrs. Larsen about what an extraordinarily patient teacher Michael was. Had Mrs. Larsen told him that Natalie talked about him?
    On the way back to the car she remembered the photographs and went back to the drugstore and picked up the prints. As she took money out of her wallet she remembered that today was the day she would have to pay him. She looked around at him, at the front of the store, where he was flipping through magazines. He was tall and he was wearing a very old black jacket. One end of his long thick maroon scarf was hanging down his back.
    “What did you take pictures of?” he said when they were back in the car.
    “Furniture. My husband wanted pictures of our furniture, in case it was stolen.”
    “Why?” he said.
    “They say if you have proof that you had valuable things, the insurance company won’t hassle you about reimbursing you.”
    “You have a lot of valuable stuff?” he said. “My husband thinks so,” she said.
    A block from the driveway she said, “What do I owe you?”
    “Four dollars,” he said.
    “That’s nowhere near enough,” she said and looked over at him. He had opened the envelope with the pictures in it while she was driving. He was staring at the picture of her legs. “What’s this?” he said.
    She turned into the driveway and shut off the engine. She looked at the picture. She could not think what to tell him it was. Her hands and heart felt heavy.
    “Wow,” the boy said. He laughed. “Never mind. Sorry. I’m not looking at any more of them.”
    He put the pack of pictures back in the