Anne Tyler - The Beginner's Goodbye

“He’s fine , Nandina. Take my word for it.”

“I was just curious, is all.”

“He never should have let you know that he was in AA.”

“I don’t have anything against AA.”

“It’s better than not being in AA if he ought to be,” I pointed out.

“Well, of course it is. You think AA is why I asked about his background? I’m completely sympathetic to his being in AA! Why, every time he comes over I offer him fruit juice or lemonade.”

“True,” I said.

But I knew that was only because she’d caught him once with a can of Coke. Nandina had a real thing about soft drinks. She didn’t just dislike them; she viewed them with moral outrage. If there were a twelve-step program for cola drinkers, I bet she would have sent them a hefty contribution.

Well, but listen to me. I had no business complaining about her. She had taken me in without hesitation when I didn’t have anywhere else to go, and she hadn’t shown the least annoyance at my upsetting her private routine. She was my closest living relative. We shared childhood memories that no one else had been part of.

Often, when we were by ourselves, one of us would start a sentence the way our father used to. “Needles to say …” we would begin — Dad’s habitual little joke, if you could call it that. And the other one would smile.

Or when I was sorting through the porcelain bowl after Gil brought it over — the bowl from my front hall, with its layers of junk mail and take-out menus and random chits of paper. I spread it all on the kitchen table one night while Nandina was fixing supper, and there was Bryan Brothers’ business card. I said, “Gilead!”

“What?”

“That’s Gil’s name: Gilead Bryan. I’d been assuming it was Gilbert.”

Nandina stopped stirring the soup and said, “Gilead. Like the song?”

“Like the song,” I said, and it was another “Needles to say” moment, because how many other people would come up with “There Is a Balm in Gilead”? It was our mother’s favorite hymn, the one she sang when she washed the dishes, only I always thought it was a bomb in Gilead, and when one of our cousins made fun of me for singing it that way, Nandina cracked him over the head with a Monopoly board.

Living in this house again was not half bad, really. In a way it was kind of cozy.

At Christmastime, the company always made a big production out of one of our past titles, The Beginner’s Book of Gifts . We arranged to have it displayed next to cash registers all over town, with a red satin bow tied around each copy. I myself felt the bow was illogical. After all, the book was about gifts; it was not a gift in itself. But Irene was very fond of the bow, which she had dreamed up several years back, and Charles claimed it went over well. Generally we deferred to Charles in matters of public taste. He was the only one of us who led what I thought of as a normal life — married to the same woman since forever, with triplet teenage daughters. He liked to tell little domestic-comedy, Brady Bunch -style anecdotes about the daughters, and the rest of us would hang around listening like a bunch of anthropologists studying foreign customs.

Nandina and I let Christmas pass almost unobserved. We had stopped exchanging gifts years ago, and apart from the balsam wreath that Nandina brought home from the supermarket we made no attempt to decorate. On Christmas Day we went to Aunt Selma’s for dinner, as we had done since our childhood. Even my marriage hadn’t changed that, although Dorothy and I had sworn every year that we would do something different the next time Christmas came around. The food was dismal, and the guest list had shrunk as various relatives died or moved away. This year there were just five at the table: Aunt Selma herself, Nandina and I, and Aunt Selma’s son Roger with his much younger third wife, Ann-Marie. We had not seen Roger and Ann-Marie since the previous Christmas, so there was the issue of Dorothy’s death to be waded through. Roger was one of those people in favor of pretending it hadn’t happened. He was clearly embarrassed that I had had the bad taste to show up, even. But Ann-Marie plunged right in. “I was so, so sorry,” she said, “to hear about Dorothy’s passing.”

“Thank you,” I said.

“And last Christmas, she was looking so well!”

“Yes … she was well.”

“How are you doing, though?” she asked me.

“I’m okay.”

“I mean, really how.”

“I’m doing all right, all things considered.”

“I ask because my girlfriend? — Louise? — she just lost her husband.”

“Oh, I’m sorry to hear that.”

“He passed away yesterday morning. Leukemia.”

“Yesterday!” Aunt Selma said. “Christmas Eve day?”

“Yes, and you just know she’ll never celebrate a Christmas again that she won’t be reminded of Barry.”

“Also, it must make scheduling the funeral so awkward,” Aunt Selma said.

“But, Aaron?” Ann-Marie asked. “Do you have any words of wisdom I might pass on to her?”

“Words of wisdom,” I said.

“Like, how to handle the grieving process?”

“I wish I did,” I said. “Afraid I can’t be much help.”

“Oh, well. I’ll just tell her you seem to have survived it,” she said.

Roger said, “Honestly, Ann-Marie!” as if surviving a loved one’s death were somehow reprehensible. But the odd thing was, right at that moment I realized that I had survived it. I pictured Ann-Marie’s friend waking up this morning, the first full day of her life without her husband, and I thanked heaven that I was past that stage myself. Even though I still felt a constant ache, I seemed unknowingly to have traveled a little distance away from that first unbearable pain.

I sat up straighter and drew a deep breath, and it was then that I began to believe that I really might make my way through this.

And yet, just two nights later, I had one of those dreamlike thoughts that drift past as you’re falling asleep. Why! I thought. Dorothy hasn’t phoned me lately!

She used to phone from her office during the early days of our marriage, just to say hello and see how my work was going. So the honeymoon was over, it seemed. I felt a little tug of regret, even though I knew it was only to be expected.

But then I came fully awake and I thought, Oh. She’s dead .

And it wasn’t any easier than it had been at the very beginning. I can’t do this , I thought. I don’t know how. They don’t offer any courses in this; I haven’t had any practice .

Really, I had made no progress whatsoever.

True winter arrived in mid-January. There was a snowfall of several inches, and then some weeks of bitter cold. But by that time the exterior work on my house was mostly finished and Gil’s men had moved indoors. He told me they were replastering the ceilings now. “Oh, good,” I said. I didn’t go see for myself. Nandina did, though. She reported it to me afterward; said she had felt that somebody ought to make up for my rudeness. I said, “Rudeness? Who was I rude to?”

“The plasterers, of course,” she said. “Workmen need to know that their work is appreciated. They did an excellent job on those ceilings. Not a flaw to be seen.”

“Well, good.”

“Next you need to choose your hall flooring.”

“Yes, Nandina. Gil showed me the samples. I voted for Maple Syrup.”

“You voted for Warm Honey. But how will you know what Warm Honey looks like in your actual hall, when you’re sitting on the couch in my living room?”

“Okay, you go,” I told her, “since you seem to feel so strongly about it.”