Anne Tyler - The Beginner's Goodbye

“You pays your money and you takes your chances,” Charles told her.

“Maybe we could just offer the dummy by itself — no printing involved,” she suggested.

“Then how would that be any different from those Grandma Remembers books in the greeting-card stores?”

“It would be more deluxe?”

Charles sighed. “First of all,” he said, “people like to see their words printed out. That’s what half this company is built upon. And besides that, we’re trying to drum up the most expensive product possible.”

“But what if his life was not wonderful?” Irene asked.

“In that case, he’ll be longing to set the record straight. He can hardly wait to get started! He’ll be hunched under the Christmas tree already hard at work, scribbling his grievances and ignoring all his relatives.”

“Well, thank you, Charles,” Nandina said. “That does give us something to think about. The modular-bookshelf idea seems a bit … ambitious, but we should definitely consider the memoir plan. Now, anyone else?”

The rest of us took to studying the décor, like students hoping not to be called upon.

One odd effect of Dorothy’s visits was that, more and more, I’d begun seeing the world through her eyes. I sat through that meeting like a foreigner, marveling that these people could take such subjects so seriously. Just think: A set of instruction manuals whose stated goal was to skim the surface. A hodgepodge of war recollections and crackpot personal philosophies that no standard publishing house would have glanced at. This was the purpose of my existence?

I used to toy with the notion that when we die we find out what our lives have amounted to, finally. I’d never imagined that we could find that out when somebody else dies.

It was lunchtime when the meeting ended, but instead of going to the corner café with the others I retreated to my office. I had some work to catch up on, I told them. Once I was alone, though, I swiveled my desk chair toward the window and stared out blankly at the dingy brick landscape. It was a relief to stop looking animated, to drop my expression of lively engagement.

I thought back to the time when Dorothy had stood on Rumor Road gazing at our house. I thought of when she’d walked alongside me after lunch. It occurred to me that, in all probability, neither one of us had actually spoken aloud during our encounters. Our conversations had played out silently in my head — my words flowing smoothly, for once, without a single halt or stutter. Granted, that was how I tended to recall all my conversations. I might ask somebody, “C-c-could you give — give — address,” but in my mind it was an unhesitating “Could you give me your address, please?” Still, I never fooled myself. I knew how I really sounded. I sounded like a breaking-up cell-phone call.

With Dorothy’s visits, though, it had been different. I had glided through my sentences effortlessly, because I had spoken just in my thoughts. And she had understood my thoughts. It had all been so easy.

Except now I wanted the jolts and jogs of ordinary life. I wanted my consonants interrupting my vowels as I spoke, my feet stubbing hers as we hugged, my nose bumping hers as we kissed. I wanted realness , even if it was flawed and pockmarked.

I closed my eyes, and I willed her with all my heart just to come lay a hand on my shoulder. But she didn’t.

I heard the others returning from lunch — scraps of chatter and laughter. A chair scraped. A telephone rang. Several minutes later, someone tapped on my door.

I swiveled to face forward. “Who is it?” I said. (“Who?” is what I really said.)

The door opened a few inches and Peggy poked her head in. “Are you busy?” she asked.

“Well …”

She stepped inside and shut the door carefully behind her. (Oh-oh: another of her heart-to-hearts.) She was holding one hand out, palm up, displaying a cookie on a napkin. “You left this on Nandina’s desk,” she told me, and she placed it on my blotter. “I thought you might want it, since you didn’t go to lunch.”

“Thanks.”

Under her arm she carried her cookie tin, which was painted with pink and lavender hydrangeas. The edge of a paper lace doily peeked out from under the lid. She placed the tin on my blotter, too, but she made no mention of it, as if she were hoping to sneak it past me.

“It was Reuben day at the Gobble-Up,” she said. “We all ordered grilled Reubens.”

“Great. I’ll be the only one fit to work this afternoon.”

“Yes, I’ve already got a tummy ache.”

I waited for her to leave, but instead she pulled up the chair across from my desk. She perched on only the front few inches of it, though. I considered that a good sign. But then she removed her sweater, which was definitely a bad sign. She turned to drape it just so over the back of the chair, prinking out the short sleeves so that they flared like hollyhocks. Then she faced me again. She clasped her hands in her lap. “I guess they didn’t think too much of my idea,” she said.

“What idea was that?”

“My menopausal-wife idea. Don’t you even remember it?”

“Oh, yes,” I said.

I tried to cast my mind back to the menopausal wife.

“Well,” I said after a pause, “maybe since we were focused on Christmas …”

“No, it’s always like that. Nandina’s always telling me, ‘You’re a full player on the team, Peggy; I don’t know where we’d be without you, Peggy,’ but then, when I speak up, I always get shot down. They didn’t spend one second’s thought on what I said this morning, except to laugh at me for having a conversation with my repairman. They didn’t discuss it, didn’t vote on it; then Nandina ups and tells Charles that he’s the only one with any inspiration. Did you not notice how she said that? But it was a good idea! They should have paid it more attention!”

“Well, I wonder …” I said. I was still trying to recollect what her idea had consisted of, exactly. “I wonder if maybe people thought it was a little too … specialized.”

“Specialized! Half the world’s population goes through menopause. It’s not what you would call a rare and exotic condition.”

“Yes, all right, but … Or maybe it’s just that the focus seems odd. Beginner’s Menopause I can see, but Beginner’s Menopausal Wife ? That seems aimed at the wrong reader.”

“It is not aimed at the wrong reader,” Peggy said. She was sitting extremely straight-backed now, and her clasped hands were white at the fingertips. “It’s aimed at exactly the person who should have this information: the husband. He’s bewildered! He’s saying, ‘What’s going on with this woman? I don’t understand!’ And we would be explaining to him what she is experiencing. We’d tell him what she needs from him, how she’s feeling useless and outdated now, and how he should be taking extra care of her.”

Yes, that would be Peggy’s main thrust. I said, “Look, Peggy. I see your point, but some people hate being fussed over; have you considered that? If his wife is feeling useless, maybe she’d feel even more useless if her husband started babying her. Maybe she’d even resent it.”

“That is so, so like you,” Peggy said.

“What?”

“Only you would think of resenting someone’s doing you a kindness.”

“I just meant—”

“ Normal people say, ‘Why, thank you, dear. This makes me feel much better, dear. It makes me feel loved and valued.’ ”

“Okay …”

“But you: oh, no. You act so sensitive, so prickly; we all just walk on eggshells around you in case we might say the wrong thing.”