by Anne Tyler
“But … today? Was he coming today?” Mrs. Glynn asked.
She had a long, drapey coat on, and her hair was screwed into those bottle-cap curls that old-lady beauty shops favor. It made her face look naked and uncertain. She said, “I don’t think he was due to come today. Was he?”
“Well, maybe he wasn’t,” I said. I turned to Martine. “Do you think we made a mistake?”
“We must have,” she said promptly. “Okay! Better be running along!”
“Wrong?” Mrs. Glynn asked. She stared from one of us to the other.
“Sorry about the mix-up,” I said as we sidled past her. “See you, Mrs. Glynn! Bye-bye!”
And we escaped.
Before we went on to Mr. Shank’s, I had Martine drive past my apartment so I could stash Sophia’s money. No sense tempting fate. I ran in, leaving Martine in the truck, and hid the plastic bag behind the bar.
What had Sophia been thinking of, choosing a plastic bag? Had she wanted her aunt to know for sure that this money was a substitution?
It would serve her right if I kept it, I thought. Kept it and bought a car with it—say a used VW. One of those cute little Beetles.
No, don’t worry. I wouldn’t do that.
I smoothed a jumble of T-shirts over the money, and I left.
Mr. Shank, then Mrs. Portland, then Mrs. Figg. Wouldn’t you know Mrs. Figg was the toughest. She wanted eight strands of Christmas lights woven around the two boxwoods beside her front door—a job that just about froze our fingers off—and then when we got done she said it looked artificial. “Artificial!” I said. “Of course it looks artificial. These are red and green and blue lightbulbs; what occurrence in nature are they supposed to imitate?”
“I mean, they’re spaced artificially. I wanted them more random.”
So Martine and I did them over. When we’d finished, Mrs. Figg said that she had no intention of paying for the extra time it took. She said anybody with half a brain would have done it right the first time. I said, “Have it your way, Mrs. Figg. Merry Christmas.”
It was worth it just to see the look on her face. She hated it when someone deprived her of a good argument.
That was our last job of the day, luckily. (By now it was completely dark.) I dropped Martine at her brother’s, and just as she was hopping out, I said, “Thanks for the help with, you know. The money.”
“No problem,” she told me, and then she slammed the door, because her sister-in-law was on the front porch, itching to get to the hospital.
This was Sophia’s last night home before she left for the long Christmas weekend, and we had talked about having dinner at some not too expensive restaurant whenever I got off work. I figured that was my chance to return her money. It did occur to me, Oh, Lord, I hope now she won’t go out and buy me a Christmas present. But I didn’t want to wait till Christmas was over, because I worried about keeping that much cash around.
She was leaving a message on my machine when I walked into the apartment. “… and I would just like to know …,” she was saying.
I picked up the receiver. “Hello?”
“Barnaby,” she said. “Would you please tell me what is going on?”
“Huh?”
“What were you doing at Aunt Grace’s house? Why did you and that Martine person go there when you surely must have known she would be out? I couldn’t believe my ears. I said to Aunt Grace, ‘Who?’ I said, ‘Who did you say was there?’ ”
I put the receiver back down.
Then I thought, Oops.
It was my body proceeding without me again. I didn’t hang up on purpose. I almost seemed to forget that I had to keep the receiver off the hook to continue talking.
But instead of phoning her back, I grabbed the money from behind the bar and I left the house.
The night was clear enough so the stars were out—what few of them could be seen within the city limits—but as soon as I crossed the patio, the automatic lights lit up and doused them. On a hunch, I stopped walking and held still a moment. The lights clicked off, and then, sure enough, the sky did its color-change trick. Loom! it went, and that transparent midnight blue swung into focus. Of course, it lasted no longer than a second. After that, the blue started seeming ordinary again, and I continued on toward the truck.
I drove to Sophia’s, parked in front of her house, and looked around for suspicious strangers before I got out. (The money made an obvious bulge in the right-hand side of my jacket.) Then I climbed her front steps and rang her doorbell.
An immediate, perfect silence fell. You know how sometimes your ear does something funny and there’s an instant when the sound goes off? That’s the kind of silence. Noises I hadn’t even been aware of—mechanical hums and creaks, a murmur behind the curtains—suddenly stopped. And nobody came to the door.
I rang again. Cars hissed down the street behind me, and a faraway train whistle blew, but the house went on giving off its numb, dead silence.
If there had been a mail slot, I’d have slipped the money through it. What she had, though, was one of those black metal postboxes, the kind that doesn’t lock, and I wasn’t such a fool as to entrust her money to that. So I stood there awhile longer, and then I turned and left.
Probably she was watching me as I walked back to the street. She was peering out from behind her curtains to make sure I left. I felt self-conscious and stiff. I made a point of adding a carefree bounce to my step. Even after I reached the truck—after I was home again, parking in the Hardestys’ driveway—I had a spied-upon feeling. When the automatic lights came on, I ducked my head. I scurried across the patio with my shoulders hunched, like a suspect on the evening news.
Okay, so she was mad at me. She was planning to make this difficult. But the nice thing about fussy people is, they have their little routines. You always know where you can find them, and when, if you want to track them down.
AT 9:58 the next morning, she was sitting on a bench at the far end of Penn Station, gazing straight ahead. I know she saw me coming. But I couldn’t read her expression until I got closer. (I was traveling through squares of sunlight; she was hardly more than a silhouette.) I arrived in front of her and stood there. She raised her chin. Her eyes were swimming in tears.
She said, “You hung up on me, Barnaby.”
“I apologize for that,” I told her.
A woman sharing the bench glanced over at us curiously. I sat down between her and Sophia, blocking the woman’s view. “I don’t know what got into me,” I said.
“Nobody’s ever hung up on me. Ever!”
I reached into my jacket and drew out the money, which I’d transferred to a plain white envelope for privacy’s sake. (I’d thought of every possible scenario—even put a note inside, in case she refused to speak to me.) “Sophia,” I said, and I cleared my throat, preparing to make my announcement.
But Sophia went right on. “I simply wasn’t raised that way,” she told me. “I’m sorry, but that’s how I am. I was raised to be respected and treated with consideration. I was taught that I was a special, valuable person; not the kind that someone could hang up on.”
I said, “See, it was only that I felt … interrogated, you know? On account of the tone of voice you used.”
“Why wouldn’t I interrogate you? You walked into my aunt’s private home without her permission! Naturally I would wonder what you were doing there.”
“Well, I should think it was obvious what I was doing there. I wanted to get your money back.”
“Did I ask you to get my money back? Did I request your assistance? I tell you this much, Barnaby: I’d have thrown that money in your face if you brought it back!”
Then she glanced at my envelope. She said, “Is that what this is?” in a piercing, carrying tone that made me slide my eyes toward the other passengers. “Is that what you came to try and give me?”
I said, “Sofe—”
“Because I’m not accepting it, Barnaby. You’d have to ram it down my throat before I’d acc
ept it.”
This was a temptation, but I decided on a different tactic. I said, “No, no, no. Good grief, no! It’s … something for Opal.”
“Opal?”
“Her, um, Christmas present. I need for you to take it to her.”
“Opal’s Christmas present is in this envelope?”
“Take it, will you? Take it,” I said, and I held it out to her. Right then it mattered more than anything that I get rid of it; I didn’t care how. When she unclasped her hands, finally, and allowed me to lay the envelope on her palm, I felt a kind of lightness expanding inside my chest. I imagined I had been freed of an actual weight.
“You’re asking me to carry this to Opal’s apartment?” Sophia said, and she raised her eyes to look into mine.
“Well,” I said, “or else … no.” (I could see how that might get complicated.) “No, I want you to give it to Natalie at the train station.”
“Natalie?”
“She knows you’re coming. She’ll meet you there.”
Sophia blinked.
“She’ll be … yes! At the Information island,” I said. And then something about how this situation rhymed, so to speak, made me laugh. I said, “I can assure you it’s not contraband.”
A confused, slightly startled expression crossed her face, as if some string had been tugged in her memory, but she went on looking into my eyes.
“Goodbye,” I said, rising.
“Wait! Barnaby? You’re leaving?”
“Yes, I promised I’d help pack up Mrs. Alford’s house today. Oh. Incidentally,” I said. (My mind was racing now.) “If you and Natalie happen to miss connections, I did put her telephone number in the envelope. Just get it out and call her. But you shouldn’t have any trouble.”
She nodded, with her lips slightly parted. I turned and walked away.
Spink and Kunkle, Plumbing Specialists, the man’s card read. “Our Name Says It AH.”
“Your name says it all?” I asked.
“Sure does,” he said. A freckled man with reddish, fizzing hair.
“ ‘Spink and Kunkle’ says it all?”
“ ‘Plumbing Specialists’ says it all,” he told me irritably.
“Oh.”
“I’m supposed to fix a leak in the master bath.”
“Right.” I handed back his card, and then I turned from the door and called, “Hello?” (I had no idea how to address Mrs. Alford’s daughter, never having heard her last name.) “Plumber’s here!” I called.
“Oh, good.” She came galumphing down the stairs. Dressed for manual labor, Valerie was gawkier than ever. She wore huge white canvas gloves that made her look like Minnie Mouse. “Thanks for stopping by on such short notice,” she told the man. “We’re trying to get the house ready to sell, and you know how a minor thing like a drip will scare some people away.”
“Ma’am,” the man said heavily, “no drip on God’s green earth is minor. Believe me.” He was following her up the stairs, carrying what seemed to be a doctor’s bag. “If you was to put a measuring cup under that drip,” he said, “you would be scandalized. Scandalized! To see how much water you’re wasting.”
“Well, this house belonged to my mother, you see, and somehow she never …”
I went back to the kitchen, where I was packing the pots and pans. Martine was doing utensils. Supposedly, we’d be finished by the end of the day, but that was just not going to happen. Valerie had already asked if we could return tomorrow. I said, “Tomorrow? Tomorrow’s Sunday.”
“Yes, but the next day’s Christmas,” she said.
So I said, “Oh, I guess I could.”
I felt obliged to, really, because she had told me earlier that her mother had willed me the Twinform. “That mannequin thing in the attic,” she’d explained. “I can’t imagine why she thought … But if you don’t want it, just say so. Please.”
“I want it! I want it,” I said.
After that, how could I refuse to come Sunday? Martine said she would come too, but only for the morning. Her brother’s new baby had finally been sprung from the hospital, she said. This meant that her family would be throwing their annual carol sing, after all, and she had to help them get ready. Then she told me I was invited. “You should dress up some,” she told me, “now that you have a Twinform to try out your fashion statements on.”
“Right,” I said. “I can’t wait to see her in a coat and tie.”
Underneath, though, I took my Twinform very seriously. I kept going into the foyer to check on her; I’d moved her down from the attic as soon as I learned she was mine. I pretended I was just figuring out the logistics. “If we could borrow a blanket or something,” I told Martine, “and wrap her up so she doesn’t rattle around the truck bed …”
“ ‘Her’?” Martine teased me. “ ‘She’?”
“Oh, come on, Pasko: you have to admit that face has a lot of character.”
She snorted, and we went back to our packing.
Place mats, tablecloths, napkins, doilies. Tupperware and empty mayonnaise jars and plastic juice containers. Waxed paper, aluminum foil, Saran wrap, freezer wrap. A lifetime supply of white candles. More than a lifetime supply, if you want to be literal about it.
Every now and then, in this job, I suddenly understood that you really, truly can’t take it with you. I don’t think I ordinarily grasped the full implications of that. Just look at all the possessions a dead person leaves behind: every last one, even the most treasured. No luggage is permitted, no carry-on items, not a purse, not a pair of glasses. You spend seven or eight decades acquiring your objects, arranging them, dusting them, insuring them; then you walk out with nothing at all, as bare as the day you arrived.
I told Martine, “I should find some other line of work.”
“Not that again,” she said, and she folded down the flaps on a box of cookbooks.
“It isn’t natural for someone my age to go to more funerals than dinner parties.”
Martine just smiled to herself.
Mrs. Alford’s brother came in with an empty coffee mug. He rinsed it at the sink and placed it in the dishwasher. (Old folks almost always prerinse.) Then he left, slogging off with his head down, not appearing to notice us.
Overhead, the plumber was clanking pipes, and it occurred to me that the name really did say it all. Spink! the pipes went. Kunkle! In the living room, a boom box was playing alternative rock—probably the first time these walls had ever heard such a sound. “Listen to this one,” a kid was saying—talking to his mother, I think. She had started packing the books. “This song comes from before their lead singer went crazy. Okay? Now, this next one … wait a sec. This next one is after he went crazy. Hear that? Can you tell the difference? Well, then, let me play it again. See, this is before he went crazy. This next …”
The bearded husband wandered into the kitchen, opened the fridge, and gazed into it. Then he closed it and wandered off. I still hadn’t heard him speak. Upstairs, the baby was crying, and somebody told her, “Aw, now. Aw, now.” (It sounded to me like the plumber.) I found a length of white flannel in a drawer—the kind you’d spread beneath a tablecloth for protection—and took it out to the foyer and draped it over the Twinform’s shoulders. She gaped at me round-eyed, as if I’d been presumptuous.
Suppose my great-grandfather was walking down the street one day and who did he see but his angel, the woman with the golden braid. “Miss!” he’d cry. “Miss! Wait up! I never thanked you.”
She would turn and say, “Me?” She’d be this average, commonplace woman, maybe even homely, maybe chapped-lipped or shiny-nosed, depending on the season. “What for?” she would ask, and he would see then that he had been mistaken—that there were no angels, after all. Or that his angels were lots of people he had never suspected.
Where, exactly, would I get hold of a gray cloth ledger with maroon leather corners?
Martine passed through the foyer, lugging a carton. “We’re running out of space,” she told me. “I�
��m going to start stacking things here.” Then she said, “Yikes.” She’d just about bumped into the alternative-rock kid. He veered around her, cradling his boom box in both arms. I guess his mother had finally had enough of it.
Another boy sat at the dining-room table—so far I’d counted four boys and two girls—reading a comic book. He didn’t look up until I said, “Uh …,” because right on the carpet in front of my feet I saw a disgusting brown mess. “Is this dog do?” I asked the kid. “Or what? Is there a dog in the house? There’s dog do on the rug.”
“It’s fate,” he told me coolly.
I said, “Oh.” Then I said, “Okay.” I waited a moment, and finally I decided to head on into the kitchen. It wasn’t till I’d cleared another shelf that I figured out he’d said, “It’s fake.” I grinned.
By now Sophia would be arriving in Philadelphia. She’d be clicking across the station toward the Information island, carrying the envelope and looking around for Natalie. Of course, she’d seen Natalie once before, but that was only briefly and some time ago. She would be wondering whether they’d recognize each other. Maybe she would notice a woman in a red coat, and she would think, Her? and then realize the woman was too plump, or too fair. (And just then the real Natalie walked across my mind—her straight, slim figure and tranquil face, her grave, brown, considering eyes.)
I fished a screwdriver out of my pocket and removed a rusted can opener from the wall above the stove. I put it in the box we had set beside the back door for trash. Mrs. Alford’s brother said, “Oh! What’s this?” I hadn’t even heard him arrive. He bent over the box to study the can opener. “All I have at home is that hand-grip kind; nothing that hangs on a wall,” he told me.
“Then why don’t you take this one?” I asked. “It’s only going out to the garbage.”
“Yes, perhaps … It’s a pity to throw it away, don’t you think?”
“Absolutely,” I told him.
He clutched the can opener to his chest and padded off. In the dining room I heard him say, “There’s dog do on the rug, Johnny,” but I didn’t catch Johnny’s answer.