Anne Tyler - The Beginner's Goodbye

She went. She came back to announce that Warm Honey was all right, she supposed, but in her opinion Butterscotch would work better.

I said, “Fine. Butterscotch it is.”

I expected that to settle things, but somehow she didn’t look satisfied.

In the middle of the slack period between Christmas and Easter, Charles proposed a new marketing ploy. “Gift season’s coming up,” he said. “Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, graduation, June weddings … What do you say we offer a collection of Beginner’s books, slipcased together according to theme. For instance, wedding couples could get The Beginner’s Kitchen Equipment, The Beginner’s Menu Plan , and The Beginner’s Dinner Party . No new publications involved; just existing ones, repackaged in a single color. I see high-gloss white for the wedding couples. Pink for Mother’s Day, maybe. Are you all with me here?”

Nandina said, “Could you not have brought this up in this morning’s meeting, Charles?” It was late afternoon, and we were all in the outer office. Nandina was leaving early again. She had her coat draped over one arm. But Charles tipped comfortably back in his chair and said, “This morning I hadn’t thought of it yet. I thought of it over lunch. That always happens to me when I have a martini at lunch. I really ought to drink more.”

Nandina rolled her eyes, and Irene laughed without looking up from the catalogue she was studying. But I said, “I see your point.”

“It can’t be just any martini, though,” he told me. “I favor the ones at Montague’s. They seem to have special powers.”

“I mean about the boxed sets,” I said. It had been a slow day, and I’d killed some time rearranging the Beginner’s series by title rather than date. All the subjects were fresh in my mind. I said, “For the college graduates, say, we could have Job Application, House Hunt , and Monthly Budget . Maybe Kitchen Equipment in that set as well.”

“Exactly,” Charles said. “And we could easily update any of the older titles that needed it.”

Peggy said, “But a slipcase is so limiting! Someone graduating from college might not be ready to buy a house yet. Or a bride might have bought Monthly Budget back when she first left home.”

“That’s the beauty of it,” Charles told her. “People like complete sets. It fulfills some kind of collector’s instinct. They’ll buy a book all over again if it’s changed color to match the others in a unit. Or they’ll say, ‘I’m sure eventually I’ll be needing to house-hunt.’ ”

“You’re right,” Irene said. She set her catalogue down, one long scarlet fingernail marking her place. She said, “I just bought a brand-new boxed set of Anne of Green Gables , even though I already own most of it in various editions.”

“ You read Anne of Green Gables ?” I asked her.

Peggy said, “Oh! That’s true! I did the exact same thing with the Winnie-the-Pooh books.”

Somehow, that was easier to visualize than Irene’s curling up with Anne of Green Gables .

Only Nandina seemed unconvinced. “We’ll talk about it tomorrow,” she said as she headed for the door. “I’m late for an appointment.”

“It’s an idea, though, don’t you think?” Charles called after her. And then to the rest of us, since Nandina was already gone, “Don’t you think?”

“I do,” Irene told him. “It’s actually a brilliant idea.”

“Oh, just Beginner’s Marketing ,” he said modestly.

“ Beginner’s Flimflam , is more like it,” I told him.

“Hey! You said yourself that you saw my point.”

“Well, yes,” I said.

I was probably a bit jealous. Irene never said any of my ideas were brilliant.

I had one more commitment that day before I could leave: a meeting in my office with a Mr. Dupont, who wanted to publish his travel memoirs. The title of his book was Contents May Have Shifted During Flight , which I found promising, but the manuscript itself — at least as near as I could tell from leafing through it while he sat there — consisted of the usual eat-your-heart-out descriptions of breathtaking mountain views he had seen and delicious native dishes he had eaten. None of my concern, of course. We discussed costs, publication schedule, et cetera, and then I told him I was looking forward to doing business with him, and we stood up and shook hands and he left.

Peggy was the only one remaining in the outer office. She sat with her back to me, typing, and I was about to stop and make some friendly remark about how she shouldn’t work too late when she said, still clicking away, “Don’t forget your cane.”

That irritated me, so I didn’t stop after all. I said, “Got it,” and walked past her to the coat tree, where I had hung my cane that morning.

“Twice last week you went home without it,” she said.

“Yes? And? You admit I somehow managed to hobble back in the next day, even so.”

Behind me, the computer keys went silent. I turned to find her looking at me with her very wide, very blue eyes.

“Oh,” she said. “Are we supposed to pretend you don’t use a cane?”

“No, I … It’s just that in actual fact I actually don’t really need it,” I said. “I could do without it altogether if I had to.”

“Oh.”

I felt sort of bad about barking at her, but by that time she had gone back to her typing and so I just said, “Good night, then.”

“Night,” she said, without looking up.

It hadn’t escaped my notice that I was very snappish these days. I thought about it as I was driving home. At our office meeting that morning, when Nandina brought us to order by tapping her pen against her coffee mug, I had nearly bitten her head off. “For God’s sake, Nan,” I had said, “do you have to act as if this were the Continental Congress?” But Nandina, after all, could give as good as she got. (“Yes, I do have to,” she’d said, “and you know perfectly well that I hate to be called ‘Nan.’ ”) Peggy, on the other hand … A child might have drawn those eyes of hers, with the lashes rayed around them like sunbeams.

I parked in front of Nandina’s and thought, I’m turning into one of those grouches that kids are scared to visit on Halloween .

Nandina’s car was in the driveway, I was sorry to see. I had hoped she wouldn’t be back from her appointment yet. I sighed and heaved myself out from behind the wheel. Maybe I could head straight upstairs to my room — bypass her entirely.

But when I opened the front door, I heard her talking in the kitchen. Evidently her appointment was here at the house; some workman, perhaps. And then the workman answered her and it was Gil. I recognized his voice even if I couldn’t catch the words. Still in my jacket, I went out to the kitchen. “Hello?” I said.

Gil was sitting at the table, with his parka draped over his chair back and the sleeves of his flannel shirt rolled up. Nandina stood at the counter, slicing an orange. “Aaron!” she said, turning. “I didn’t hear you come in.”

“Hi, Gil,” I said, and he raised one baseball-mitt hand and said, “How you doing, Aaron.”

“Everything okay at the house?” I asked. He didn’t usually come by till later in the evening.

But he said, “Oh, yes,” and then started patting his shirt pockets. “I did bring that lighting estimate,” he said. “ Somewhere here …”

“I’m making Gil a drink,” Nandina told me. “Would you care for one?”

“What’s in it?”

“Orange juice, a kiwi, ginger root, a papaya—”

“Wow.”