Free The State We're In: Maine Stories by Ann Beattie

in the morning.”
    “You think I might be able to talk to him because of a cliché?”
    At such times—when she seemed to echo what he’d said, yet she’d missed his point—he was never sure if she was mocking him, or whether she truly did not understand what he’d tried to say. Was she a little thickheaded, or was she just, of course she was just , an adolescent.
    “I meant that hospitals trust that most situations change by morning,” he said, a bit dully. She must be very upset about her friend. Why hadn’t she told him immediately? He wished he had something better to offer. He also wished to avoid surgery on his leg. He wished Bettina did not keep a diary—especially one that was so critical of him. He supposed he might also wish for no one to ever go to bed hungry anywhere in the world and for peace.
    “So, you and my dad. You drank together, right?”
    Where did that come from? He said, “We’d have the occasional beer. The drinking problem was mine, not his.”
    “But you hung out together.”
    “Yes. We sometimes worked together.”
    “In a job you can’t talk about because you had a security clearance, but my dad didn’t.”
    “Your father didn’t require a security clearance, no.”
    “So were you smarter than he was?”
    “Brighter? Than your father? I had great respect for your father’s intellect and perceptions. I went to military college, and he didn’t. It made our outlooks somewhat different.”
    “But did you have the same outlook on girls?”
    “What do you mean?” She was often very direct, though he suspected that most such questions were at some remove from what she really wanted to ask. She could certainly be just as difficult to talk to as Myrtis.
    “I mean, did you pick up girls?”
    “Before we were married? You’re asking if we dated women? How would I have gotten to know your aunt if we’d never gone out?”
    She shrugged.
    “That was what you were asking?” he said.
    “Well, not if it makes you mad.”
    “I’m not mad, I’m a little taken aback. True, I didn’t expect such a question. But yes, he and I went on a few double dates together, before I introduced him to Myrtis. As things turned out, I was sorry that I introduced him to her, but if I hadn’t, I suppose we wouldn’t have you, and that would obviously be terrible.”
    “You say things to flatter me,” she said. “Can I ask you one more question? How did you go from your big important job to selling cars?”
    He frowned. What could she mean? What was underlying that question? “Cars?” he said, genuinely puzzled.
    “Mom said you were a used car salesman.”
    “Then your mother was putting you on. I once had an office above a car dealership, but that’s hardly—”
    “If you weren’t a salesman, then what were you?”
    “It’s nowhere near as interesting as you’d like to think—or maybe as I’d like to think—but it’s not something I can talk about.”
    “I wish I had a security clearance. There’s plenty of stuff I’d rather not talk about,” Jocelyn said. “Uncle Raleigh, does my mom just not tell the truth, or do you think she was confused because of where your office was?”
    “I assume she was being sarcastic,” he said. “But I don’t know.”
    “Whatever,” Jocelyn said. “So you won’t tell me what kind of women they were, either?”
    “Tall and short. Educated and not. As your mother is fond of saying, the whole world is filled with people. If women came up to us in a bar, you could have a drink or a dance and not have sex, you know. It’s only in the movies that men like your father and I have sex all the time.” He might have said too much. “We might revisit this topic in a few years,” he said.
    “But, so, I don’t get it about you and Aunt Bettina. She doesn’t seem anything like you.”
    “At this age, people are nothing but their differences.”
    She pulled the toe of her tights and let it go. Dust streamed into the air. She said, “Can I