Anne Tyler - The Beginner's Goodbye

I said, “What do I care about the resale value?”

“It’s a tiny house as it is. You need that room.”

“Nandina, do you mind? We’re trying to have a private conversation.”

“You’re just mad at the sunporch; that’s what it is.”

“Mad!”

“You’re just … emotional about it, because of what happened there.”

“For God’s sake, Nandina, what business is that of yours?”

“Here’s a thought,” Gil broke in. He spoke in an extra-quiet, reasonable-sounding voice, as if negotiating a treaty. “What if we were to keep the sunporch but change the orientation.”

I said, “Orientation?”

“Like, right now it looks like you had a desk kind of arrangement along that wall of shelving that joins the house, am I right?”

The wall where the TV had hung, the one that killed her. I nodded.

He said, “How about we plan now for your desk to face the front, in the middle of the room. Better anyway, right? You’d be looking out on the front yard. And then we’d run a row of shelves all around the circumference, underneath the windows. Just low shelves, built in. It would be, like, a whole new different setup.”

I said, “Well. I don’t know.”

Although I did see his point.

Which Nandina must have guessed, because she said, “Thank you, Mr. Bryan.”

Then she turned and left us alone, finally, and Gil sat back down on the couch and we went on with his papers.

Mr. Hogan said he’d had an inspiration about his war book. He thought it should include his letters home to his mother. That was fine with me. We were merely his printers. But what I hadn’t realized was that he meant to submit the letters in their original, handwritten form. He set them on my desk one day in early October: a three-inch stack of envelopes bound with a satin ribbon that had probably once been blue. “Now, here is an example,” he said, slipping one envelope free. He hadn’t even sat down yet, although I’d offered him a chair. He was a tiny, stooped, white-haired man with squarish patches of pink in his cheeks that made him look enthusiastic. He drew the letter from the envelope with his crabbed fingers. Even from where I stood, I could see that it was almost illegible: a penciled scrawl, faded to silver, on bumpy onionskin paper.

I said, “You’d have to get them typed, of course.”

“Here I’m telling her all about what they give us to eat. I’m telling how I miss her fried shad and her shad roe.”

“Mr. Hogan? Are you planning to have these typed?”

“I’m saying how I haven’t had real biscuits since I left home.”

“Who typed your original manuscript?” I asked him. It had arrived looking quite presentable, which wasn’t something we could take for granted in our business. (And we didn’t have even a hope of any sort of electronic submission.)

“That was my daughter-in-law did those,” he told me.

“Could your daughter-in-law type these letters, too?”

“I don’t want to ask her.”

No point inquiring why, I supposed. People’s goodwill wears out. It happens. I walked over to open my office door. “Peggy?” I called. “Could you bring in that list of professional typists?”

“Right away.”

“Is this something I would have to pay for?” Mr. Hogan asked me.

“Well, yes.”

“Because I’m not made of money, you know.”

“I doubt it would be that expensive.”

“I’ve already spent my life savings on this.”

Peggy walked in, holding a sheet of paper. She seemed to be wearing a crinoline underneath her skirt. I didn’t know you could even buy crinolines anymore. She asked, “How’s the arthritis today, Mr. Hogan?”

“He says I’m going to have to get these letters typed,” Mr. Hogan told her.

“Oh, well,” Peggy said, “I’ve got a nice long list here of people who can help you with that.”

“I don’t think I can afford it.”

Peggy glanced down at her list, as if she might find some solution there.

“These are letters I wrote to my mother,” Mr. Hogan said, offering forth the one letter in both hands. “I thought they might add a little something to my story.”

“Oh, letters from the front are always good,” Peggy told him.

“Mine are more like, from Florida.”

“Still,” Peggy said.

“I write about how I miss her cooking. Her shad and her shad roe.”

“I love shad roe,” Peggy said.

I said, “Well, in any event—”

“I’m living on a fixed income,” Mr. Hogan said. He was peering intently into Peggy’s eyes, and the letter he held was trembling.

Peggy said, “I’ll tell you what, Mr. Hogan. Why don’t I just type them.”

As if I hadn’t seen that one coming.

“Would you charge me?” Mr. Hogan asked.

“Oh, no,” she said. “It won’t be any trouble.”

“Well, thank you,” he told her. A little too easily, in my opinion.

I said, “That’s very nice of you, Peggy,” but in a severe tone, as if I were reproving her.

It was wasted on both of them, though. Peggy merely dimpled at me, and Mr. Hogan was busy fitting his letter back in its envelope.

I always worried our older clients might feel insulted by Peggy. Her honeyed voice and her overly respectful manner could have been viewed as, let’s say, patronizing. Condescending. I would have found her condescending. But no one else seemed to. Mr. Hogan placed his stack of letters in her hand quite happily, and then he said to me, with a combative lift of his chin, “I was sure it would all work out!”

Somehow, I had turned into the heavy. It wasn’t the first time.

When Mr. Hogan had gone, I told Peggy, “I certainly hope you know what you’ve gotten yourself into.”

“Oh, yes,” she said blandly.

Then she offered to fetch me a cup of coffee, even though it was mid-afternoon. I never drank coffee in the afternoon, as she very well knew. She was just changing the subject.

If it hadn’t been for Peggy, Dorothy would have found her Triscuits exactly where she had left them. I thought about that, sometimes. I turned it over in my mind: could I say that, if not for Peggy, Dorothy would still be alive? But it didn’t really compute. Often, Dorothy had taken her six Triscuits to the sunporch with her. Most likely it would not have changed a thing if she had found them.

So I couldn’t really hold that against Peggy. Although I seemed to hold something against her, these days. She was just so, what was it, so sweetie-sweet. And Irene was doing her best to avoid me, as if grief might be contagious, and Charles couldn’t even meet my eyes. Oh, I was sick to death of my officemates.

Maybe I should take a vacation. But how would I fill my time, then? I didn’t even have any hobbies.

“I should start volunteering or something,” I told Peggy. “Sign on with some sort of charity. Except that I can’t think of anything specific I could do.”

Peggy seemed about to say something, but then she must have changed her mind.

My insurance agent’s name turned out to be Concepción. How could I have forgotten that ? She had more dealings with Gil than with me. I gave her Gil’s cell-phone number and the two of them grew thick as thieves, conferring by e-mail and in person and faxing documents back and forth. Gil’s file folder metamorphosed into a three-inch-thick, color-tabbed notebook stuffed with estimates, receipts, diagrams, and lists. He brought it over most evenings after supper and sat on the couch to lay papers the length of the coffee table, explaining his progress in a degree of detail that would have more than satisfied The Beginner’s Book of Kitchen Remodeling . Already the damaged rafters had been replaced and the roof was nearly finished. He was aiming to beat the weather, he said. He would tackle the interior later, after it grew too cold to work outside. He had hired two extra carpenters and so far things were on schedule, as I would see for myself if I ever came to check it all out.