Back When We Were Grownups

by Anne Tyler

  So she wore her flight-attendant outfit—tailored white blouse and navy skirt. Actual stockings. Actual leather pumps. And she battened down the wings of her hair with two plain silver barrettes that one or another granddaughter had left in the third-floor bathroom.

  This time the drive to Macadam was more familiar, and therefore it seemed shorter. The swimming pools’ vivid turquoise color reminded her of a type of hard candy she used to favor. Trust Jesus, she read. I Still Like Larry. The stop sign on the corner of Will’s street had a sticker that said EATING ANIMALS plastered underneath.

  The house he lived in—the late Professor Flick’s house—was a white clapboard Colonial gone yellow around the edges. Hurricane Floyd had swept the state the week before, and evidently no one had bothered cleaning the front yard since. Rebecca had to thread her way through small branches and broken twigs and clumps of wet leaves on the walk. One branch was such a booby trap, lying in wait at ankle height, that she felt compelled to pick it up and heave it into the grass. So she arrived with damp, dirty hands, which she tried to scrub with a screw of tissue from her purse before she pressed the doorbell.

  Once she had been buzzed in, she crossed a foyer crammed with antiques and climbed a carpeted staircase, rising into a steadily intensifying smell of lamb stew. It must have drifted up from Mrs. Flick’s kitchen, though, because when Will opened his door, just off the second-floor landing, nothing but the cold gray scent of newspapers floated out to her. Gazing past him, she saw newspapers everywhere—stacks of them on the chairs, the tables, the windowsills, the floor. “Come in! Come in! Have a seat,” Will said, but there was nowhere to sit. He said, “Oh,” as if he’d just realized. “Here, I’ll . . .” He tore around the room, scooping up armloads of papers and piling them in a corner. “I keep thinking I should hire a cleaning service,” he said. Rebecca didn’t tell him that a cleaning service wouldn’t have helped. She sat down and looked around her.

  The walls were bare, marked with crumbling nail holes and the ghosts of old picture frames. The windows were curtainless, tall and narrow, letting in a bleached white light. She was sitting in one of those canvas butterfly slings from the sixties, and she would bet that the other pieces came from that era too. Will must have raided his garage or attic before he moved here, unearthing remnants of his student days—a cheap blond coffee table, a matted orange shag rug, a wheeled, adjustable chair meant for an office desk.

  “Maybe you could give me some decorating tips,” he said, and he smiled at her hopefully, showing all his teeth.

  Rebecca smiled back. “Is Beatrice not here yet?” she asked.

  “No, but I expect her any—oh, I’m sorry! What can I bring you to drink?”

  “What do you have?” she asked.

  “Water, milk . . .”

  “Water, please.”

  He left the room. He was wearing slippers, she saw, folded down in back beneath his heels, although otherwise he was neatly dressed in khakis and a white shirt. She could glimpse no more than a sliver of the room adjoining this one—wallpapered with dark, ugly flowers—but she gathered it was a dining room. She heard a faucet running, and then he returned, holding a pink aluminum tumbler. “Here,” he said, giving it to her. When their hands accidentally touched, she was reminded that he hadn’t kissed her hello. He must be anxious. He started raking his fingers through his hair in that agitated way he had, and instead of sitting down himself, he remained standing in front of her. She took a swallow of water. It was room temperature, tasting of chlorine and something sharp, like mildew. She set the tumbler on the floor beside her chair and rose and wrapped her arms around his neck. “What—?” he said, stepping back, looking toward the door even though it was closed.

  She didn’t let him go. She tightened her hold and said, “Don’t worry; everything will be fine. You’ll see.”

  “Oh, you don’t know Beatrice,” he said, still eyeing the door.

  “We’re going to have such fun!”

  “I’m serving this nutritious grain dish because she’s vegetarian, and I think I might not have cooked it enough.”

  The buzzer rang, making him start. Rebecca dropped her arms, and he went to press a button next to the light switch. “Oh, God,” he said. He raked his fingers through his hair some more. He turned back to her and said, “Also, I used chicken broth. Don’t tell Beatrice.”

  “My lips are sealed,” Rebecca said.

  “It was what the recipe called for, and I wasn’t sure I could omit it.”

  “Next time, I’ll give you the name of a powder you can substitute,” she told him.

  She felt peculiarly unconcerned, as if she were playing a part in a play—the part of somebody knowledgeable and efficient. While Will tucked his shirt more securely into his khakis, she just stood waiting, not so much as glancing down at her own clothes. (At least she knew she couldn’t be taken for a hippie.)

  Slow footsteps climbed toward them. Will flung open the door. “Hi, there, Beatrice!” he said, in a sprightly voice that Rebecca had never heard him use before.

  The person who walked in was small and tidily constructed, of no determinate gender, dressed entirely in black leather although it was a warm evening. Her skin was a stark, chalky white and her barbs of black hair had a dead look, as if they’d been dyed. She endured a brief clasp from Will—less a hug than a momentary spasm of his arm around her shoulders—and then she turned and surveyed Rebecca coolly. She had a gold stud in her nose and a thin gold ring in one eyebrow—the kind of thing that always made Rebecca feel she should diplomatically avert her gaze. Not one feature in this girl’s face brought Will to mind.

  Rebecca said, “Hello, Beatrice. I’m Rebecca.”

  Beatrice turned back to Will. “You told me to be here at six,” she said, “so here I am.”

  “Well, thank you, Bee. I’m awfully glad you came.”

  “Are we eating supper, or not? Because I have things to do.”

  Will looked over at Rebecca. She smiled at him encouragingly. He looked at Beatrice. “Wouldn’t you like to sit around a while first?” he asked. “Have a little talk?”

  “Talk? Talk about what? Is there something you want to tell me?”

  “No, just—”

  “Who is this lady, anyhow? I don’t get it.”

  Will tugged violently at a handful of his hair. Rebecca was the one who answered. “I’m an old, old friend of your father’s,” she said. “He and I grew up together.”

  This earned her another cool stare, from head to foot. All at once, Rebecca was less confident of her outfit.

  “So,” Beatrice said, “I guess you’re going to tell me next you’ve fallen madly in love or something.”

  Will said, “Beatrice!” in an explosion of pent-up breath.

  “Well, it’s true we’ve . . . fallen in fond, I guess,” Rebecca said. “But really I just came here tonight to meet you.”

  “Okay: we’ve met,” Beatrice said. “Can I go now?” she asked her father.

  “Go?” he said. “But you haven’t eaten!”

  “All right. If you insist, let’s eat,” she said.

  Will sent Rebecca another look. She said, “Yes! Why don’t we.”

  Anyhow, there weren’t enough cleared chairs for the three of them to sit in the living room.

  They went out to the dining room, Will leading the way. The table was incongruously elegant—a dark, varnished oval on a pedestal of lion paws—but the chairs were the folding metal kind you’d see in church fellowship halls, and a dozen cardboard boxes partially blocked the window. Will said, “You two sit down and I’ll bring the food.” Then he disappeared behind a swinging door.

  “Well!” Rebecca said. “Where’s your usual seat?” Because she wasn’t about to make the mistake of displacing Beatrice.

  But Beatrice said, “I don’t have one,” and pulled out the chair at the head of the table.

  Rebecca chose the chair to Beatrice’s right. She took some time settling herself, unfolding
her napkin (paper) and spreading it in her lap. Three green glass plates had been laid directly on the table, each with a rust-specked knife and fork to its left. Reflexively, Rebecca started to switch her knife to the other side. Then she thought better of it and left it where it was.

  “When your dad was your age,” she told Beatrice, “his entire aim in life was to get his driver’s license.” This was one of her preplanned topics—something to break the ice. “He was the only boy in our class who wasn’t driving yet. He kept failing the road test. Has he told you that?”

  “No, but it doesn’t surprise me,” Beatrice said. She seemed more affable now. She had picked up her plate and was holding it in front of her face, either checking her reflection or peering through it. “He’s such a klutz,” she said, setting the plate back down. “Every time he goes anywhere, just about, he comes back with a dented fender or something.”

  “Well, he’s thinking,” Rebecca defended him. “He’s got his mind on more intellectual matters.”

  Beatrice merely raised her eyebrows. Rebecca wondered if that was painful, considering the gold ring.

  Something clanged on the kitchen floor, and Will said, “Drat!” Rebecca smiled conspiratorially at Beatrice. Beatrice remained stony-faced.

  “Do you know how I imagined you?” Rebecca asked. “I thought you’d be the scholarly type. I don’t know why, but I used to picture that Will would have a son who was very studious and scientific. Tristram, I decided his name was. And then when he said he had a daughter instead, I sort of turned you into a female Tristram. I imagined you’d wear a long muslin dress and this meek, old-fashioned hair style.”

  She attempted a light laugh that came out sounding tinny. Beatrice didn’t laugh herself, but she seemed to be listening. Her eyes, for the first time, rested on Rebecca’s eyes, and she stopped fiddling with her fork.

  “I had this vision of you reading aloud to him in front of the fire,” Rebecca told her. “I thought you’d have these serious philosophical discussions.”

  “Well, we don’t,” Beatrice said flatly.

  “No, I can see that.”

  “End of the day? We’re not speaking.”

  Rebecca misunderstood her, at first. Accustomed though she was to young people’s turns of phrase, she thought that Beatrice meant they didn’t say good night to each other. Then she said, “Oh. You don’t speak ever?”

  “This supper’s an exception. But I’m not here because I want to be.”

  “Well . . . still, it was nice of you to come.”

  “I’m here because he promised me my own e-mail account if I came.”

  Rebecca said, “Oh.”

  Will barged through the swinging door, carrying a Pyrex casserole in both hands. “Ta-da!” he said. He set it on the table. Rebecca sprang to pick it up—she expected it to be hot, although he’d carried it in bare-handed—but she discovered it was lukewarm, nowhere near a temperature that would damage the varnish. She sank back down, feeling silly.

  “This is a complete-in-one-dish, whole-grain meal,” Will told Beatrice. “Entirely vegetarian.”

  “Actually, I eat meat now,” she said.

  “You do?”

  His shoulders drooped. He looked over at Rebecca.

  “We could all stand to eat more grains from time to time,” she assured him.

  “Okay, well . . . I’m not serving anything else because this is complete in one dish. Oh. I already said that.”

  “Have a seat,” she told him.

  He sat down across from her and stared glumly at the casserole. It was Rebecca, finally, who lifted the lid. Chunks of broccoli and cauliflower dotted what looked like oatmeal. A serving spoon was submerged almost the length of its handle. Rebecca plucked the spoon out with the tips of her fingers. “Beatrice?” she said. “Care to pass me your plate?”

  Beatrice rolled her eyes, but she obeyed.

  “Will? Some for you?”

  He held out his plate. A fleck of something green clung to his lower lip. Rebecca resisted the urge to brush it off.

  She served herself last, and then wiped her fingers and picked up her fork. “Mm!” she said once she’d taken a bite. The other two were already eating, chewing crunchily and steadily, and she couldn’t think how because the dish was downright disgusting. The vegetables tasted raw and rooty, and the grain was so undercooked that she imagined it swelling up in her stomach and exploding. She looked around for water. There was none. Amazingly, Beatrice lifted another forkful to her mouth.

  “I’m afraid I’m not much of a chef,” Will said.

  “I just think you’re wonderful to make the effort,” Rebecca told him. “There are lots of men who would serve TV dinners, in your situation.”

  He ducked his head shyly and said, “It’s not as if it’s all that complicated a recipe.”

  Beatrice said, “So, do many men have you to supper, Rebecca?”

  “Um . . .”

  “Do you do a good bit of dating?”

  Will glanced over at Beatrice, looking alarmed. Rebecca said, “Well, no, I—”

  “Because you actually seem pretty normal, on the surface. And I’m just wondering if you realize what kind of a guy you’re eating with, here.”

  “A very nice guy,” Rebecca said firmly. “I’ve known him since he was a toddler.”

  “This is the guy who kidnapped our dog when Mom asked him for a divorce,” Beatrice told her.

  “Your dog?”

  “Our little dog Flopsy Doodle.”

  Rebecca looked at Will. He swallowed. “I didn’t kidnap her,” he said. “I only . . . borrowed her. I happened to be upset.”

  “He stole her when we were out and didn’t even leave us a note,” Beatrice said. She spoke pleasantly, almost perkily; she was the cheeriest Rebecca had yet seen her. “We came home and called, ‘Flopsy?’ No Flopsy. So my mom phoned my dad; we knew it had to be him. She told him she was calling the police, and do you know what he did? He lied and said he hadn’t the least idea what she was talking about. Then he opened his door and let Flopsy run off on her own, when everybody knows she’s got a terrible sense of direction. It’s lucky she wasn’t killed.”

  “I was sad, all right?” Will said. “I was having a difficult time.”

  “Like it wasn’t difficult for Mom and me.”

  “Look: it was a momentary lapse. I already said I was sorry. How many times can I apologize? I went looking for her myself, in the middle of a rainstorm; I was out half the night hunting her; I brought her back in my new car even though she was covered with mud—”

  “Well, just so you realize,” Beatrice told Rebecca. Then she rose and slid her chair neatly against the table. She gave her father a scornful stare down the length of her studded nose. “You can call me tomorrow about the e-mail account,” she said.

  She walked out, clicking briskly in her hard-soled black leather boots.

  After they heard the front door shut, Will and Rebecca looked across the table at each other. “I guess that wasn’t very successful,” Will said.

  “Nonsense; it went fine.”

  “Oh, I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know,” Will said, shaking his head.

  “Girls that age are impossible,” she told him. “My daughter? When she was your daughter’s age? Her most cherished dream was to grow up to be a bartender.”

  Will didn’t seem impressed. Rebecca went further; she said, “And she always fell for the scariest boys. Boys you wouldn’t trust in your house, even! I worried what would become of her. But then she married the nicest man possible. Several nice men, in fact.”

  “I don’t know, I don’t know,” Will went on saying.

  “Will. Believe me. She’s going to be fine.”

  He glanced up, then, from under his white eyebrows. “About the dog,” he said. “I’m sorry to say she was right: I behaved very badly there, for a while.”

  “Well, no wonder! You were distraught.”

  “What Laura said first was, she
just needed a little space. To do some thinking, she said. I accommodated her in every way; moved out immediately. I was so agreeable! Then she called me on the phone and announced she was making it permanent. It kind of . . . floored me. I went over to talk about it, and when I found they weren’t at home, why, I must have gone a little nuts. But it was only that one occasion.”

  “And you did bring the dog back,” she said.

  “Yes, you should have seen the state of my car seats!” He grabbed another handful of his hair. “Well, enough of this. Can I offer you more to eat?”

  “No, thanks. I’m stuffed,” she said.

  “Let’s go into the living room, then.”

  “Can’t I help with the dishes?”

  “Absolutely not,” he said.

  She didn’t argue. The undercooked grain was making her feel sort of logy; she envisioned dragging her stomach like a watermelon from table to sink.

  He rose and came over behind her and slid her chair back. When she was standing, he took her gently by the shoulders and turned her to face him. Then he kissed her. This was not the light kiss they normally exchanged. It was more pressing and intense, more insistent, and she didn’t know why she felt no response. Mainly, she felt embarrassed. She drew away. She reached up to touch one of her barrettes. “Well!” she said. “Gracious!”

  “Rebecca,” he said, still holding on to her shoulders.

  But she said, “I should be going, I guess. It’s getting late.”

  “Oh. Right,” he said, and he released her.

  In fact it was not yet seven o’clock, but he didn’t point that out.

  They walked through the living room, skirting newspapers. At the front door, Rebecca turned and gave him a brilliant smile. “Thanks so much for dinner,” she said.

  “It wasn’t very good, I’m afraid.”

  “It was delicious. Really.”

  “If I’d only known Beatrice had gone back to eating meat,” he said, “I could have served my chili. I have several extra containers now from the times when I’ve eaten at your house. I could have used them tonight and had the week’s supply come out even again.”

  She laughed as she stepped onto the landing. But later, driving home, she was grim-faced and preoccupied, and when she parked and got out of her car, her body felt so heavy—so unspeakably burdensome—that she knew she couldn’t blame it solely on the casserole.