by Anne Tyler
They clung to the belief that Ian felt a special affection for Dulcimer, and they always made a point of displaying what she was wearing that day—one or another infant outfit handed down from Daphne. “Why, Miss Dulcimer!” Ian would say. “I do believe fuzzy pink flannel is your most becoming fabric.” They thought it was hilarious when he spoke to her directly. Then they might play Parcheesi—Ian’s idea; all the Bedloes loved any kind of game—or he read to them, his throat aching tightly with held-back yawns as he imitated various squeaky animals.
Daphne was usually an invisible, slumbering presence, but if Lucy stayed out too long Ian might hear a tentative cry from the children’s room. He would find her lying in her crib, sucking her fist and watching the door so his first impression was always that considering stare. She was the only person he knew of with navy blue eyes. He would lift her awkwardly, in a bunch, pretending not to notice the dampness seeping around the legs of her terry-cloth pajamas. He would carry her to the kitchen and set a bottle in the electric warmer. Waiting for it to heat, he breathed her smell of warm urine and something vanilla-ish—maybe just her skin. Thomas tugged at one of her terry-cloth feet. “Hey there, Daffy. Daffy-doo.” Daphne squirmed and murmured into the curve of Ian’s neck.
When Lucy returned, she brought a burst of cold air through the door with her. The cold seemed to lie on her surface in a sparkling film. And she was always lit up and laughing, excited by her expedition. She would hold out her arms to the children. “Were you good?” she would ask. “Did you miss me?” and she’d take the baby from Ian and nuzzle her face, nose to nose. “Guess what: I felt a couple of snowflakes. I bet we’re going to have snow tonight.” Balancing Daphne on her hip, she would fish in her big shoulder bag for Ian’s pay—generously rounding off to the nearest dollar, sometimes even adding a tip and telling him to take Cicely someplace nice. Ian knew that she and Danny weren’t rich, and he would protest but she always insisted. “Well, thanks,” he’d say lamely, and she would say, “Thank you! You don’t know how you saved my life.” Her money smelled of her cologne, a tingly scent that clung to the bills for hours afterward and hung in his room when he emptied his pockets at bedtime.
One afternoon when she returned there was something distracted about her. She greeted the children absently and failed to inquire after Daphne, who was still asleep. “Ian,” she said right away, “can I ask you something?”
“Sure.”
“Can I ask what you think of this dress?”
She slipped her coat off, revealing a different dress from the one she had left the house in. Holding her arms out at her sides, she spun like a fashion model. Thomas and Agatha gazed at her raptly. So did Ian.
It was the most beautiful piece of clothing he had ever seen in his life. The material was a luminous ivory knit, very soft and drapey, but over her breasts and her hips it was perfectly smooth. What would you call such material? He could imagine its silkiness against his fingertips.
“Do you think Danny will mind?” Lucy asked. “I don’t want him to feel I’m a spendthrift. Do you think I should take it back?”
“Oh, well, I wouldn’t,” Ian said. “Now that you’ve gone to the bother of lugging it home.”
She looked down at it, doubtfully.
He told her, “That, um, what-do-you-call …”
That V neckline, he wanted to say, plunging so low in the middle. And that skirt that whisks around your legs and makes that shimmery sound.
But what he said was, “That cloth is not bad at all.”
“But would you think it cost a lot?”
“Oh, only about a million,” he said. “Give or take a few thousand.”
“No, don’t say that! That’s what I was afraid of. But it didn’t cost hardly anything, I promise. You want to know what it cost? Nineteen ninety-five. Can you believe it? Can you believe that’s all it cost?”
Well, she did want his answer, after all. So he reached out to touch the fabric at her waist. It was so fine-spun it made his fingers feel as rough as rope. He curved his palm to cup her rib cage and he felt the warmth of her skin underneath. Then Lucy took a sharp step backward and he dropped his hand to his side.
“Oh, ah, nineteen ninety-five sounds … very reasonable,” he said. His voice seemed to be coming from somewhere else. There was a moment of silence. All he heard was Agatha’s snuffling breath.
“But anyhow!” Lucy said, and she laughed too gaily, artificially, and lifted her bag from the table. “Thanks for your opinion!” she said. Was she being sarcastic? She owed him two dollars but she paid him five. A hundred-and-fifty-percent tip. He said, “I’ll bring your change next time I see you,” and she said, “No, keep it. Really.”
He felt mortified by that.
Walking home through the twilight, he kicked at clumps of old snow and muttered to himself. Once or twice he groaned out loud. When he entered the front hall Bee said, “Hi, hon! How was our little Daffodil?” But Ian merely brushed past her and climbed the stairs to his room.
Over the next few days—a Friday and a weekend—he didn’t baby-sit; nor would he have ordinarily. He and Cicely went to a movie; he and his two best friends, Pig and Andrew, went bowling. Striding toward the foul line with the bowling ball suspended from his fingers, he thought of Lucy mailing that package to Wyoming. What kind of woman owns her own bowling ball? Not to mention the geisha girl figurine.
Really there was a great deal about Lucy that was, oh, a little bit tacky, when you came right down to it. (What a relief, to discover she wasn’t flawless!) Now he recalled the grammatical slips, It won’t be real fancy and It didn’t cost hardly anything; the way she sometimes wore her hair down even with high heels; the fact that she had no people. He knew it wasn’t her fault her parents had died, but still you’d expect a few family connections—brothers and sisters, aunts, at least cousins. And how about friends? He didn’t count those two waitresses; they were just workmates. No, Lucy kept to herself, and when she went out in the afternoons she went alone and she returned alone. He envisioned her rushing in from one of her shopping trips, her cheeks flushed pink with excitement.
Funny how she never brought any parcels back.
Why, even last Thursday she’d brought no parcel, the day she came home with that dress.
She hadn’t bought that dress at all. Someone had given it to her.
She wasn’t out shopping. She was meeting someone.
She had asked if the dress looked expensive. Not Do you think I paid too much? but Could I get away with saying I paid next to nothing? “Can you believe it?” she had asked. (Insistently, it seemed to him now.) What she’d meant was, Will DANNY believe it, if I tell him I bought it myself?
He watched the bowling ball crash into the pins with a hollow, splintery sound, and a thrill of malicious satisfaction zinged through him like an electrical current.
When she phoned Monday night to ask if he could babysit the following afternoon, he felt confused by the realness of her. He had somehow forgotten the confiding effect of that gravelly little voice. But he was busy, he told her. He had to study for a test. She said, “Then how about Wednesday?”
He said he couldn’t come Wednesday either. “Besides,” he said, “baseball practice is starting soon, so I guess after this I won’t be free anymore.”
Lucy said, “Oh.”
“Pressing athletic obligations, and all that,” he said.
There was a pause. He forced himself not to speak. Instead he conjured up a picture of Danny, for whose sake he was doing this. His only brother! His dearest relative, who trusted everyone completely and believed whatever you told him.
“Well, thanks anyway,” Lucy said sadly, and then she said goodbye. Ian was suddenly not so certain. He wondered if he had misjudged her. He stood gripping the receiver and he noticed how his heart ached, as if it were he, not Lucy, who had been wounded.
* * *
For Doug’s birthday, Bee made his favorite hors d’oeuvres—smoked oyster log and
spinach balls and Chesapeake crab spread. Claudia made a coconut cake that looked like a white shag bath mat. She and her family were the first to arrive. She had Ian come out to the kitchen with her to help put on the candles—fifty-nine of them, this year. Ian wasn’t in a very good mood, but Claudia kept joshing him so finally he had to smile. You couldn’t stay glum around Claudia for long; she was so funny and slapdash and comfortable, in her boxy tan plaid shirt the same color as her skin and the maternity slacks she was wearing till she got her figure back. They ran out of birthday candles and started using other kinds—three tall white tapers and several of those stubby votive lights their mother kept for power failures. By now they had the giggles. It was almost like the old days, when Claudia wasn’t married yet and still belonged completely to the family.
So Ian said, “Hey, Claude.”
“Hmm?”
“You know Lucy.”
“What about her?” she asked, still teary with laughter.
“You don’t think she had that baby early. Do you?” Her smile faded.
“Do you?” he persisted.
“Oh, Ian, who am I to say?”
“I’m wondering if somebody ought to tell Danny,” he said.
“Tell him?” she said. “No, wait. You mean, talk about it? You can’t do that!”
“But he looks like a dummy, Claude. He looks so … fooled!”
He was louder than he’d meant to be. Claudia glanced toward the door. Then she set a hand on his arm and spoke hurriedly, in an undertone. “Ian,” she said.
“Lots of times, people have, oh, understandings, you might say, that outsiders can’t even guess at.”
“Understandings! What kind of understandings? And then also—”
But he was too late. The swinging door burst open and the children rushed in, crying, “Mom!” and “Danny and them are here, Mom.” Claudia said, “What do you think of our cake?” She held it up, all spiky and falling apart. She was laughing again. Ian pushed past her and left the kitchen.
In the dining room, Lucy bounced the baby on her shoulder while she talked with Bee. She still had her coat on; she looked fresh and happy, and she smiled at Ian without a trace of guilt. His mother said, “Ian, hon, could you fetch the booster seats?” She was laying a notched silver fish knife next to each plate. The Bedloes owned the most specialized utensils—sugar shells and butter-pat spears and a toothy, comblike instrument for slicing angel food cake. Ian marveled that people could consider such things important. “Also we’ll need those bibs in the linen drawer,” his mother said, but he passed on through without speaking. From the living room he heard the TV set blaring a basketball game. “Notice that young fellow on the right,” his father was saying. “What’s-his-name. Total concentration. What’s that fellow’s name?”
Ian climbed the stairs while his family’s voices filled the house below him like water—just that murmury and chuckly, gliding through the rooms to form one single, level surface.
On Saturday Cicely’s parents were taking a trip to Cumberland, leaving Cicely in charge of her little brother. They were planning to be gone overnight. This meant that after her brother went to bed, Cicely and Ian would be just like married people, all alone downstairs or maybe even upstairs in her bedroom with the door locked. They didn’t discuss the possibilities in so many words, but Ian got the feeling that Cicely was aware of them. She said maybe he’d like to come over about eight thirty or so. (Stevie’s bedtime was eight.) She wanted to cook him a really elegant dinner, she said. They would have candles, just like Lucy. Maybe Ian could dress up a little. Maybe get hold of a bottle of wine.
He preferred the taste of beer himself, but he would certainly bring wine, and also flowers. He wasn’t so keen on dressing up but he would do that too, if she wanted. Anything. Anything. Would she let him stay the whole night? It didn’t seem the right moment to ask. They were sitting in the school cafeteria with accordion-pleated drinking-straw wrappers whizzing around their heads.
Saturday morning he slept till noon, and as soon as he woke he phoned Cicely to see what color wine she wanted. “What color?” she said, sounding hurried. “Any color; I don’t care.”
“But aren’t you supposed to—?”
“I have to go,” she said. “Something’s boiling over.”
After he’d hung up he realized he should have asked about the flowers, too—what color flowers. Or was it only with corsages that the color mattered? This was a meal, not a prom dress. Oh, everything was all so new to him, all on a larger scale than he was used to. He worried he wouldn’t know precisely what to do with her. He wished Danny were around. The only person in the house was his mother, and she was in one of her cleaning frenzies. She didn’t even offer him lunch. He had to make his own—three peanut butter sandwiches and a quart of milk, which he drank directly from the carton when his mother wasn’t looking.
In the afternoon he and Andrew went over to Pig Benson’s house and played Ping-Pong. Tick-tock, tick-tock, the ball went, while Ian considered dropping a hint about tonight. Or would that be bragging? Danny had once told him that girls hate boys who kiss and tell. Also, it was possible that Pig and Andrew might do something juvenile like shine flashlights in Cicely’s windows or lean on the doorbell and then run. It was very possible. Look at them: scuffling around the Ping-Pong table all gawky and unkempt and wild, acting years and years younger than Ian.
Although at the same time, there was something enviable about them.
When he reached home, his mother was standing in front of the hall mirror in her best dress, screwing on her earrings. “Oh! Ian!” she said. “I thought you’d never get here.”
“What’s up?”
“You’re supposed to head over to Lucy’s right away. She needs you to baby-sit.”
“Baby-sit? I can’t baby-sit! I’ve got a date.”
“Well, I’m sure she won’t be long; she’s just meeting a friend for a drink, she says. Danny’s at a stag party. Goodness, look at the time, and your father’s not even—”
“Mom,” Ian said, following her into the living room, “you had no business volunteering me to baby-sit. I’ve got plans of my own, and besides I think I might spend the night at Pig’s. You have way, way overstepped, Mom. And another thing. This Lucy, calling up the minute Danny’s back is turned—”
“Back is turned! What are you talking about? It’s Bucky Hargrove’s stag party; Bucky’s getting married next week.”
She was plumping cushions and collecting sections of the evening paper. Her high heels gave her an unaccustomed, stalking gait, and Ian could tell she was wearing her girdle; she inhabited her dress in such a condensed manner. She stooped stiffly for a dog bone and said, “Not that I approve of such things: bunch of grown men telling dirty jokes together. So that’s why I said to Lucy, ‘Why, of course you should get out! Ian would be glad to sit!’ I said. And don’t you let on you feel otherwise, young man, or you’ll be grounded for life and I mean it.”
The front door opened and she spun around. “Doug?” she called.
“Here, sweetheart.”
“Well, thank the Lord! You’ve got fifteen minutes to dress. Did you forget we were invited to the Finches’?”
When Ian passed through the hall on his way out, he sent his father a commiserating look.
It was near the end of March, that period when spring approaches jerkily and then backs off a bit. The light was hanging on longer than it had a week ago, but a raw, damp wind was moving in from the north. Ian zipped his jacket and turned up the collar. He circled a group of Waverly Street children playing hopscotch—bulkily wrapped little girls planting their feet in a no-nonsense, authoritative way down a ladder of chalked squares. He performed a polite minuet with one of the foreigners, dodging right, then dodging left, till the foreigner said, “Please to excuse me,” and laughed and stepped aside. Ian nodded but he didn’t stop to talk. Talking with the foreigners could tie up half the evening, what with that habit they had of meticulously
inquiring after every possible relative.
By the time he reached Jeffers Street, dusk had fallen. The windows of Danny’s house glowed mistily, veiled by sheer white curtains. Ian rang the doorbell and then knocked, to show he was a man in a hurry. The sooner Lucy got going the sooner she would be back, he figured.
He had expected her to look shamefaced at the sight of him. (Surely she knew she hadn’t played straight, going behind his back to his mother.) But when she opened the door, she just said, “Oh, Ian! Come in. I really do appreciate this.” Then Thomas and Agatha hurtled toward him from the living room, both wearing footed pajamas. “Ian!” they shouted. “Did you bring Cicely? Where’s Cicely? Mama said maybe—”
“Let him catch his breath,” Lucy told them. She was putting on her coat. She wore a red turtleneck and long, loose woolen pants that gave the effect of a skirt. It seemed unjust that she should be so pretty. “My friend Dot phoned at the very last minute,” she said. “I know it’s a Saturday night, but I thought maybe if you invited Cicely over—”
“She has to stay with her brother,” Ian said bluntly. He stood in front of her with his fists in his jacket pockets. “I’m supposed to go to her house. I promised I’d be there at eight-thirty.”
“Oh, well, that’s no problem. Right now it’s—” She slid back a sleeve and checked her watch. “Six-forty. I’ll tell Dot I have to be in early. Remember Dot? From the Fill ’Er Up Café?”
“Yeah, sure,” Ian said heavily.
But she didn’t seem to catch it. She was looking for something. “Now, where …” she said. “Has anyone seen my keys? Well, never mind. You be good, kids, hear? And you can stay up till I get back.” Then she left, shutting the door behind her so neatly that Ian didn’t even hear the latch click.
In the living room, Daphne sat propped in her infant seat in front of the TV. “Hey there, Daph,” Ian said, shucking off his jacket. The sound of his voice sent her little terry-cloth arms and legs into unsynchronized wheeling motions. She craned around till she was looking up into his face and she gave him a lopsided smile. It was sort of flattering, really. Ian squatted to pick her up. He felt as surprised as ever by the fight in her—the wiry combativeness of such a small body. Even through the terry cloth, the heat from her tiny armpits warmed his fingers.