The New Yorker Stories

“Oh, metaphor,” Ray says, and cups his hand, as though he can catch something. “Everything is like everything else. Ray is like Gus. Sugar’s getting tired of Ray.”

“What the hell are you talking about, Ray?” Sugar says.

“Your one cat is like your other cat,” Ray says. “All is one. Om, om.”

Sugar drains her glass. Sugar and Ray are both smiling. May smiles, to join them, but she doesn’t understand them.

Ray begins his James Taylor imitation. “Ev-ery-body, have you hoid, she’s gonna buy me a mockin’ boid . . .” he sings.

Ray used to sing to May’s mother. He called it serenading. He’d sit at the table, waiting for breakfast, singing and keeping the beat with his knife against the table. As May got older, she was a little embarrassed when she had friends over and Ray began serenading. Her father is very energetic; at home, he used to sprawl out on the floor to arm-wrestle with his friends. He told May that he had been a Marine. Later, her mother told her that that wasn’t true—he wasn’t even in the Army, because he had too many allergies.

“Let’s take a walk,” Ray says now, hitting the table so hard that the plates shake.

“Get your coat, May,” Sugar says. “We’re going for a walk.”

Sugar puts on a tan poncho with unicorns on the front and stars on the back. May’s clothes are at Wanda’s, so she wears Sugar’s raincoat, tied around her waist with a red Moroccan belt. “We look like we’re auditioning for Fellini,” Sugar says.

Ray opens the sliding door. The small patio is covered with sand. They walk down two steps to the beach. There’s a quarter-moon, and the water is dark. There is a wide expanse of sand between the house and the water. Ray skips down the beach, away from them, becoming a blur in the darkness.

“Your father’s in a bad mood because another publisher turned down his book of photographs,” Sugar says.

“Oh,” May says.

“That raincoat falling off you?” Sugar says, tugging on one shoulder. “You look like some Biblical figure.”

It’s windy. The wind blows the sand against May’s legs. She stops to rub some of it away.

“Ray?” Sugar calls. “Hey, Ray!”

“Where is he?” May asks.

“If he didn’t want to walk with us, I don’t know why he asked us to come,” Sugar says.

They are close to the water now. A light spray blows into May’s face.

“Ray!” Sugar calls down the beach.

“Boo!” Ray screams, in back of them. Sugar and May jump. May screams.

“I was crouching. Didn’t you see me?” Ray says.

“Very funny,” Sugar says.

Ray hoists May onto his shoulders. She doesn’t like being up there. He scared her.

“Your legs are as long as flagpoles,” Ray says to May. “How old are you now?”

“Twelve.”

“Twelve years old. I’ve been married to your mother for thirteen years.”

Some rocks appear in front of them. It is where the private beach ends and the public beach begins. In the daytime they often walk here and sit on the rocks. Ray takes pictures, and Sugar and May jump over the incoming waves or just sit looking at the water. They usually have a good time. Right now, riding on Ray’s shoulders, May wants to know how much longer they are going to stay at the beach house. Maybe her mother is already back. If Wanda told her mother about the Cadillac, her mother would know it was Sugar’s, wouldn’t she? Her mother used to say nasty things about Sugar and Gus. “College people,” her mother called them. Sugar teaches crafts at a high school; Gus is a piano teacher. At the beach house, Sugar has taught May how to play scales on Gus’s piano. It is a huge black piano that takes up almost a whole room. There is a picture on top of a Doberman, with a blue ribbon stuck to the side of the frame. Gus used to raise dogs. Three of them bit him in one month, and he quit.

“Race you back,” Ray says now, lowering May. But she is too tired to race. She and Sugar just keep walking when he runs off. They walk in silence most of the way back.

“Sugar,” May says, “do you know how long we’re going to be here?”

Sugar slows down. “I really don’t know. No. Are you worried that your mother might be back?”

“She ought to be back by now.”

Sugar’s hair looks like snow in the moonlight. “Go to bed when we get back and I’ll talk to him,” Sugar says.

When they get to the house, the light is on, so it’s easier to see where they’re walking. As Sugar pushes open the sliding door, May sees her father standing in front of Gus in the living room. Gus does not turn around when Sugar says, “Gus. Hello.”

Everyone looks at him. “I’m tired as hell,” Gus says. “Is there any beer?”

“I’ll get you some,” Sugar says. Almost in slow motion, she goes to the refrigerator.

Gus has been looking at Ray’s pictures of Sugar, and suddenly he snatches one off the wall. “On my wall?” Gus says. “Who did that? Who hung them up?”

“Ray,” Sugar says. She hands him the can of beer.