Secrets & Surprises by Ann Beattie Page B

been right the time she told her who Griffin Berridge was when she said that he decided to be fucked up about his father’s fame.
    A week later when her mother called, she felt guilty for not having called or written. She told her mother about Griffin’s car accident, by way of explanation, and her mother said only, “I’m sorry.” Her mother was calling to tell her that her father was suffering, that he would not take the pain pills the doctor had given him because they made his mind fuzzy, but that he couldn’t work or, some days, even go out, because the disc in his back bothered him so. She said that she had thought that Diana’s coming home might cheer him—or perhaps Diana could talk him into taking the pills.
    Alarmed, she called the airline, forgetting she could not reserve a seat on the shuttle, even before she spoke to Griffin. Then she went into the bedroom and told him she had to go home, and why. She hoped that it would not result in a tirade—that for once he would be reasonable and see it as the simple situation it was.
    He said, “That’s where your parents live. This is home,” and went back to his reading.
    Her father was not very pleasant to her, which surprised her and disappointed her mother, she knew. He was glad to see her, but brooded that his wife had summoned her, when she had a life of her own. Did he protest too much—could he be doing it to make his wife feel badly? Diana was ashamed for wondering. Here was her father, depressed and hurting, and she was wondering if mind games were being played.
    She stayed for three days, and once each day—as much as she thought he would tolerate—she tried to talk him into taking the pills. When, at the end of the third day, he still would not, she resented his iron will, his thundering “I will not!,” which made her back off, so far that she backed over the threshold to the living room, where she found her mother weeping. “He’s so damn stubborn,” her mother said, brushing away the tears. And it was not like her mother ever to disagree with her father; when her mother disagreed, you knew it by her blank face.
    That night, when she left, a neighbor drove her to the airport. His name was Peter Jenkins—everyone called him Jenkins—and he could afford to live in the Village because of the money he got when his parents were killed in a plane crash. She could not remember how she got that information, but from the time she was small she had known it, and because people in the neighborhood talked about it often, she was able now to understand that they liked Jenkins, but they also looked down on him. Even calling him by his last name indicated that he was a little apart from them.
    All Peter Jenkins wanted to talk about was her father (a great man, he always said—talented and also kind) and his difficulties, and what difficulties she might be having adjusting to life in Boston. She felt hypocritical presenting her life as interesting and peaceful. She knew that he would want to hear the truth, and she did not mean to be condescending to him—it was just that she did not want to think about the truth herself. She was doing badly in school and the man she lived with might have deliberately smashed up his car, and she had found her father remote, obstinate, wanting sympathy rather than help. She had felt sorry for her mother.
    “Ever go rowing on the Charles?” he asked, weaving through traffic.
    She told him she hadn’t.
    “You jog?” he said. “Last time I was there it looked like a marathon was going on, there were so many people running.”
    She said that she didn’t run.
    “If you ran, you might make it to the airport faster than I’m getting you there.”
    “Don’t worry about that,” she said. “If I miss one flight I can get another.”
    When they got to the airport he smiled at her and got out to lift her bag to the sidewalk.
    “You take care,” he said. “Everything’s going to work out all right.”
    “Thank you