The Amateur Marriage

by Anne Tyler

  He flicked his turn signal on and took another left at Wickridge Street, then a right into Anna’s driveway, where he came to a stop.

  “Thank you, Michael,” she said. “Are we still meeting for dinner tomorrow?” She had a hand poised on the door handle.

  “I think you like me,” Michael told her.

  There was a brief, shocked pause. Even he was shocked.

  Then she said, “I think I love you.”

  They started spending their weeknights together, usually at her place because her place was cozier. Lying on his back in the dark, his left arm needles and pins from the weight of her head on his shoulder, Michael marveled at how natural this felt. They might have been an old married couple. In her sleep she had a way of grasping his free hand and flattening it against her stomach as if she owned it, which tickled him; awake, she was not so bold. She wore cotton pajamas to bed, always white. She woke up cheerful but quiet; she didn’t like to talk in the early morning. She was modest to a fault and turned away from him as she dressed.

  They told each other their darkest secrets. Anna had fallen out of love with her husband some time before he died; Michael worried he was to blame for what had happened with Lindy. “I think I wasn’t a close enough father,” he said. “I remember how relieved I was when I found out she was a girl, because then less would be demanded of me.”

  Anna always listened through a whole story before she commented. He appreciated that. Then she asked questions, sometimes unexpected ones. For instance: “What if Lindy wasn’t really Pagan’s mother?”

  “What?”

  “How can you be sure she wasn’t just watching him for a friend? You remember how it was in those days, all that communal living, those young people acting like one big extended family.”

  “Well, in fact we can be sure,” Michael said. “We tracked down his birth certificate before he started school. Lindy was his mother, but his father wasn’t named.”

  “Someone Spanish,” Anna said meditatively. “Considering his hair and those brown, brown eyes.”

  Another time she asked why he and Pauline hadn’t gone to a marriage counselor. Michael said, “What for? What would we have said was wrong?”

  “Just that you were unhappy, I guess.”

  “I think you have to give them a better reason,” Michael said. “Like ‘She did this’ and ‘He did that.’ It doesn’t work if you’re simply not the right type for each other.”

  “But you were the right types when you first met.”

  “You know, I can’t even remember what I was thinking back then,” Michael said. “Maybe I just wanted a girlfriend. I was young and I wanted a girl and Pauline was the one who was there.”

  Anna studied him. He could say anything to her. She never overreacted the way Pauline used to do. She didn’t take things personally; she didn’t say, for instance, “But I was also there!” although she certainly could have. And she never stored up his confessions to use against him later.

  On weekends they spent their nights separately, because of Pagan. Michael agreed that this was the right thing to do, but he couldn’t help chafing against it as Saturday and Sunday dragged on. Pagan had reached the stage of life where friends were more important than family—a small crew of boys dating from his elementary-school days, and lately a few girls as well. Often he’d be out till ten or eleven at night, and there Michael sat, alone, and Anna sat alone at her place for no practical purpose. “This is ridiculous,” Michael told her on the phone. “I’m just a doorman! My only function is to let the kid in the door when his curfew rolls around.”

  “That’s very noble of you,” she said teasingly, and then he had to laugh.

  Pagan got along well with Anna face to face. At least, he was perfectly amiable when she showed up on weekends. In her absence, though, he campaigned against her. Or maybe not so much against her as in favor of Pauline. “I don’t understand why you and Grandma don’t get back together,” he would say. “It’s so silly! You’re married!”

  “Well, actually we’re not,” Michael said.

  “My friends don’t know where I am when they want to get in touch with me.”

  “Oh, is that what the problem is,” Michael said.

  Young people were amazingly self-centered. Even his grown children, not so young at all anymore, had sulked like two-year-olds when he filed for divorce. “This is not the normal order of things,” George had told him. “There are supposed to be two of you.”

  “There are two,” Michael had pointed out.

  “Two together. Two parents.”

  “Oh, for God’s sake, George, you’re a parent yourself by now; what do you care? Besides, it’s not as if there was anything I could do about it. Your mother told me to leave, remember?”

  “She’d been telling you to leave for years. That didn’t mean you had to go.”

  Unreasonable, the lot of them. Next to them Anna was like cool, clear water.

  Christmas that year was bare and brown, not a snowflake to be seen, but in January a good foot of snow fell during the course of one night. Michael woke unusually late on a Sunday morning to find his bedroom filled with an eerie white glow, and when he rose and looked out the window he saw that the trees had turned into white pipe-cleaners and the cars down in the parking lot were igloos.

  He went to Pagan’s bedroom door and knocked and stuck his head in. Here the curtains were closed, so that the light was gloomy and the air smelled used and musty. Pagan was just a mound beneath the blankets, breathing snuffily. Michael said, “Hey. Guess what, it snowed.”

  Pagan stirred and groaned.

  “I’m going to have to go shovel Grandma’s walk,” Michael told him.

  No response.

  “So you’ll need to get your own self up and dressed in time for Anna’s. Do you remember we’re invited to Anna’s for waffles? I’ll expect you to be ready by the time I’m back, say at a quarter to ten.”

  Pagan said, “Mmf.”

  “Did you hear me?”

  “Mmf.”

  Michael hoped for the best and closed the door.

  By the time he’d showered, shaved, dressed, and located his gloves and the boots he hadn’t worn since last winter, it was almost nine o’clock. The sidewalk at the rear of the building had been cleared but the parking lot was still buried, and he had to wade to his car laboriously and then kick away the drifts that were piled up against the door before he could get it open. First he started the engine and turned on the heater and defroster. Then he began scooping armloads of snow off the roof and windshield. His scraper would have been too puny; this was deep, billowing snow, but so fluffy that when he started driving it compacted easily beneath his wheels. He had no trouble reaching the street and traveling the short distance to Elmview Acres.

  Pauline’s front walk was an untouched stretch of white. It was a pity he couldn’t start shoveling inward from the curb, because his boots left corrugated prints that would be harder to remove. Taking as few steps as possible, he made his way to the door and pressed the bell. Pauline appeared at once wearing a red ski jacket and a white knit hat with a pompom. “I just phoned you!” she said. “No one answered.”

  “Shoot, that means Pagan must have gone back to sleep.”

  “I thought I was going to have to shovel the walk myself!”

  Other women did that all the time, but Michael didn’t say so. In a way, he sort of enjoyed performing these duties—the husbandly tasks that she still expected of him, married or not. It made him feel responsible and accomplished. He was aware of an added swagger in his stride when he set off toward the carport where she kept the shovel.

  The snow was almost weightless, and shoveling it was like shoveling clouds. He dug swiftly from the house to the curb, and then he worked toward the driveway where he cleared a path for Pauline’s car. Pauline followed with a broom, sweeping the last thin haze of white that he left on the concrete. “Wasn’t this a shock!” she called. “I woke up and looked out the w
indow and I couldn’t believe my eyes!” Her voice rang bell-like in the clear air, and her face was bright-pink and cheery. Evidently the snow had made her forget her resentment. Michael forgot it too; he stood smiling at her when he’d finished, watching as she whisk-whisked her way toward him. She was wearing red mittens, and her knit cap concealed her sculpted, middle-aged hairdo. Only a few ruffles of blond poked out around the edges, reminding him of how she had looked as a girl.

  “What about your pipes?” he asked her. “Are you remembering to leave the basement faucet trickling?”

  “Well, not up till now, but I guess I ought to start.”

  “At least for tonight you should,” he said. “Keep an eye on the thermometer. I’d say anytime it falls into the teens, you ought to leave that tap on.”

  “Would you like some coffee, Michael? I’ve just made up a fresh pot. I’ve decided I’m skipping church today.”

  “Oh!” He fumbled his jacket cuff away from his watch. “No, thanks. I’d better be going,” he told her. He walked back to the carport and set the shovel in the corner. Other tools were clumped there in a tangle—a hoe, a rake, an edger—and he realigned them against the side of the house before he returned to the driveway. “I have to collect Pagan,” he said.

  “I’ll bet he’s thrilled with the snow,” Pauline said.

  “He would be, if he’d wake up.”

  “He’s like George at that age. Remember? George would sleep till it got dark again, if we’d let him.”

  “Must be something adolescent,” Michael said.

  He was walking toward the curb now, with Pauline close behind. When he reached his car he turned, and she stopped and looked up at him, hugging herself against the cold. “Thank you, Michael, for coming,” she said. “I don’t know how I would cope if I had to handle all this myself—the snow, the pipes . . .”

  “That’s okay.”

  As he drove off he saw her in his rearview mirror, waving one fat red mitten like a child.

  It was ten till ten when he got back to the apartment, but Pagan wasn’t even awake, let alone ready to leave for Anna’s. Michael said, “Hey! What happened here?” and he yanked the curtains open. Now the stuffy smell depressed him, and the swamp of cast-off clothes littering the floor. “Pagan? Hear me? Up and at ‘em! Anna’s waiting for us!”

  Pagan stirred and groaned and sat up. One cheek was creased from his pillowcase, and his eyes were slits. “Did you know it snowed?” Michael asked.

  “Mmf.”

  “Look out the window!”

  Pagan looked but then flopped backward onto his bed.

  “Anna’s fixing waffles, Pagan. We should have left five minutes ago.”

  “Do I have to come?”

  “Yes, you do,” Michael told him firmly. Then he went out to the living room to phone Anna and say they’d be late. Her line was busy, though. He supposed she was talking to her daughter. Sunday was their usual telephone time.

  Once Pagan was up and dressed, he showed more interest in the snow. “This is great!” he told Michael as they walked toward the car. “You think they’ll close the schools tomorrow?”

  “Who knows?” Michael said. “They might.”

  “Darn, I don’t have my sled! Let’s drop by Grandma’s and get it.”

  “We’re late as it is, Pagan. We’ll pick it up after Anna’s.”

  “Do I really have to go to Anna’s? I’m missing all the fun! I bet Keith and them are already out in this!”

  “I’ll bet they’re sound asleep,” Michael said, “if they’re anything like you.” He unlocked the passenger door and then went around to the driver’s side.

  Most of the main streets had been plowed by now, and the sun was high enough so that the surfaces were black. “See there?” Pagan moaned. “It’s melting!”

  “It’s no such thing. Every bit of it will still be there long after you’ve eaten your waffles and thanked your hostess politely for inviting you.”

  Michael had given Anna a waffle iron for Christmas; that was why she was doing this. He had also given her an electric percolator, a toaster, and a mixer. “So you’ll have too many belongings to move around anymore,” he’d told her. She had laughed, but he was speaking in earnest.

  By the time they parked in her driveway, it was ten twenty-five. She came out onto the porch, wiping her hands on her apron, and Michael called, “Sorry we’re late!” as he was stepping from the car.

  “Don’t apologize. I just worried you’d got stuck in the snow.”

  “It was Pagan who was stuck. Stuck in bed.”

  “Sure, blame me,” Pagan grumbled. He slammed his door shut and called to Anna, “Like I could wake myself up, on a Sunday! Grandpa was out shoveling Grandma’s sidewalk and I didn’t have a clue; for all I knew it was the middle of the night.”

  Michael hadn’t planned to admit that he’d gone to Pauline’s. Not that it was a secret, exactly, but he certainly wouldn’t have volunteered the information. He glanced toward Anna, trying to read her reaction, but her face showed nothing.

  Anna’s own sidewalk was cleared and bone-dry. She must have shoveled it very early. Even her driveway was cleared, and the last traces of snow had been removed from her car. As Michael climbed the porch steps, he said, “If I’d only gotten here sooner I could have shoveled for you, too.”

  “Oh, well,” she said, accepting his kiss on her cheek. “I think I can still manage to shovel my own snow, thank you!”

  She sounded matter-of-fact, but he wondered why she’d turned her cheek to him instead of her lips.

  Inside the house, a fire was burning in the fireplace and the air smelled of hot maple syrup. “You two sit at the table and I’ll start the waffles,” she said. “Coffee? Orange juice? Pagan, I’ve made cocoa.” She moved between the kitchen and the dining room, looking uncharacteristically domestic in the white pinafore apron that covered her sweater and slacks. Pagan, meanwhile, was still on the topic of sledding. “Everybody’ll be out on Breakneck Hill by now,” he said. “By the time I get there they’ll have used up all the snow.”

  “You can’t use up snow, Pagan,” Michael said.

  “Sure you can! You just watch! Keith and Rick and them will be making all these sled tracks, and pretty soon there’ll be nothing but bare ground.”

  Michael studied him a moment. It was true that these days, Pagan was at a disadvantage—shuttled between two homes, not entirely a part of either neighborhood. In fact, you couldn’t call Michael’s area a neighborhood at all. His apartment building was inhabited by elderly widows and young married couples just starting out, and everything around it was commercial.

  “I’ll tell you what,” he said. “As soon as we’ve finished eating, I’ll run you by Grandma’s to pick up your sled and then I’ll drop you at Breakneck Hill.”

  “Really? Great! I’ve already finished eating.”

  “Well, I haven’t,” Michael said, and he reached deliberately for the syrup pitcher. “So I suggest you fortify yourself with another waffle.”

  To his surprise, Pagan took his advice. The prospect of joining his friends had put him in a better mood, apparently, because he ate two more waffles and drank a second mug of cocoa, and when Anna asked him what kind of sled he had, he embarked on a lengthy monologue about various types of snow equipment. “Rick, now, he’s got this really cool number from Sweden that’s a whole different shape—thinner, like—and you should see the speed he makes! But it cost a bundle, I bet.” Anna listened, smiling, taking occasional sips of coffee. She was good at talking with young people. She seemed to view them as interesting foreigners; she asked questions about their habits, their music, their leisure activities as if she were writing a guidebook, and even Pagan—now a socially clumsy fourteen-year-old—warmed up and grew expansive once the conversation got going. He gestured widely with both hands as he outlined the shapes of different sleds, often narrowly missing the syrup pitcher or his cocoa mug.

  But Michael thought Anna was looking
only at Pagan and not at him, and he worried this meant she was mad at him.

  Then after breakfast, when he suggested she come with them to Breakneck Hill, she said she couldn’t. “It’s the day of Ed’s concert, remember?” she said.

  Michael didn’t remember. He suspected her of making it up. He said, “A concert at this hour?”

  “At one p.m. He’s giving a cello recital. So I guess we should just get together afterward, don’t you agree? You’ll drop off Pagan at, what, it will be noon by then, I imagine; and since you’ll have to pick him up again in just another hour or two, it makes sense that we go our separate ways and then meet later.”

  “Fine,” Michael said. “Right. Might as well do the sensible thing, here.”

  She drew in a breath to speak, but he turned away briskly and went to fetch his jacket.

  At Pauline’s house the front walk was dry now—a satisfaction. Pagan bounded up to the door and disappeared inside while Michael waited at the wheel. A few minutes later Pagan reemerged, wearing black nylon gloves and big rubber boots with the clasps unfastened. He set off, jingling, toward the carport, and Pauline opened the storm door and called after him, “Don’t forget your scarf!”

  “I can’t wear a scarf when I’m sledding!”

  He vanished into the carport just long enough for Pauline to shrug helplessly at Michael, and then he came out with his sled, a sturdy old Flexible Flyer that used to belong to George. “You’ll catch pneumonia!” Pauline called. She was in her stocking feet but stepped onto the front stoop anyhow and stood shading her eyes as she gazed at Pagan.

  “A scarf would get caught in the runners and I’d die a gruesome death by strangulation,” Pagan said, not breaking his stride.

  Pauline turned to look at Michael again. Michael just grinned.

  When the sled was safely stowed in the trunk and they were driving toward Breakneck Hill, Michael said, “How long do you expect to be sledding?”

  “Long as I can, I guess.”