Anne Tyler - The Beginner's Goodbye

“You are mean ,” Peggy told me severely. She set her purse on her desk and slipped her coat off.

I hesitated.

“Peggy,” I said.

“Hmm?”

“You know your oatmeal-chocolate-chip cookies?”

“Yes.”

“Those big, lumpy ones you brought in a while back?”

“What about them?”

“You know how there were bits of things in them? Little crispy bits? Not chocolate chips, not nuts, but something kind of sharp? Like stones?”

“Soy grits,” she said. She hung her coat on the coat tree.

“Soy grits,” I repeated.

“For the supplemental protein,” she said.

Then she said, “Count on you to suspect stones in a gift cookie.”

“I didn’t say I suspected stones. I said they were like stones.”

“You are so, so wasteful, Aaron,” she told me. She settled at her desk.

“I’m what?”

“Anyone else would be glad when a person tries to be close. You’re too busy checking out her motives.”

I said, “Whose motives are you talking about?”

“You can’t even see it. You don’t even notice. You just let her go to waste.”

“Let who go to waste?” I asked. “Are you talking about Louise?”

Peggy threw both hands in the air.

“Oh,” I said. “Wait.”

But she spun toward her computer and started furiously typing. I stood looking at her a moment, and then I walked into my office. I hung my jacket up and settled behind my desk. I didn’t return to work, though. I had left my door open and I could still see her — the gilt edging of her ruffled hair beneath the overhead lights, the two waterfalls of white lace flowing from her correctly positioned, dutifully level elbows.

I had known Peggy since we were in first grade; I remembered the extra cubby she’d needed for her stuffed animals. I remembered the pantalettes that had frilled below her skirts in junior high. (Some of our ruder classmates used to call her Bo Peep.) And then of course I knew her from all her talk, talk, talk at the office; bear in mind that she was very fond of talking.

On weekends, she had once told us, she liked to go to Stebbins hardware and ask the gray-haired men who clerked there how to fix a sagging door, or what to do about a curling wallpaper seam. She really did need their advice, she said; but also, she found it a comfort. It took her back to the time when her father was alive.

The present that she gave herself after a trying day was to skip the evening news and watch Fred Astaire movies instead.

And she didn’t think her clothes were so odd, she said. (This was in response to a less-than-tactful question from Irene.) They were her way of making an effort — doing something special for the sake of the people around her.

And she took great pleasure in cooking, I knew. She said cooking felt like dancing: it had the same timely moves and the same sense of system and sequence. I could understand that. I pictured her preparing a perfect little meal without a single misstep, humming beneath her breath as she moved around the kitchen. She would arrange a pottery bowl of fresh flowers for the table. She would set out linen napkins that she’d folded into tepees.

I pictured being served such a meal, with the fork at my left and the knife and spoon at my right, instead of all in one hasty clump the way I did it myself. The plate deposited deftly in front of me, positioned exactly so, the fork perhaps moved a bit farther left to make room. The soft warmth of the food rising gently toward my face.

Peggy untying her apron before sitting down across from me.

I got up and went to stand beside her chair. I cleared my throat. I said, “Peggy?”

“What.”

“Would you ever be willing to — would you ever like to go out someplace with me?”

Her fingers paused on the keys. She turned and looked up at me.

“Someplace, like, on a date,” I said. (In case I hadn’t made myself clear.)

She studied me a moment. Then, “Why don’t you ask Irene?” she said.

“Irene!”

“I thought Irene was the one you admired so much.”

“Oh, well, she was,” I said. “She is. But you’re the one I’d like to go someplace with.”

She went on studying me. I stood a little straighter and tried to look my best. I said, “Couldn’t you give me a chance?”

After another long moment, she said, “Well. I could. I would like to give you a chance.”

And she did.

· · ·

I take Maeve inside for apple juice, and while she’s drinking it I settle at the kitchen table with the morning paper. But then Maeve spots my cane leaning beside the back door. She drops her sippy-cup with a clunk and toddles over to grab the cane and bring it to me, like a puppy bringing its leash. “Walk?” she says.

“Walk?”

“Finish your apple juice first.”

She lets the cane clatter to the floor, abandons it without a glance and picks up her juice and downs it, glug-glug, with her eyes fixed on me the whole time — brown eyes, like mine, but disproportionately large and rayed by sunbeam lashes, like Peggy’s. (It always amazes me how two very disparate people’s genes can melt together so seamlessly in their offspring.) She slams the cup on the table and claps her hands, all business. “Walk, Daddy,” she says.

“Okay, Maevums.”

Next door, Mary-Clyde Rust is kneeling in her petunia bed. As we pass she calls, “Morning, Miss Maeve!” and sits back on her heels, clearly prepared for some chitchat, but Maeve waves a hand and keeps going, face set due south, making a beeline for the park. I shrug at Mary-Clyde, and she laughs and returns to her weeding.

The Ushers have a little tin-can trailer in their driveway. Ruth Usher’s sister and brother-in-law are visiting from Ohio. Yesterday Maeve was given a tour of the trailer and she was extremely impressed, so I worry she’ll insist on stopping today, but she is too intent on getting to the park. The central attraction there is a creek that’s good for grubbing around in. I don’t think we’ve ever gone to that park without returning soaked, both of us.

A couple we don’t know is approaching — a dark-haired young woman and a young man in a Phillies cap. Maeve is about to zip on by when the man says, “Why, hello there,” and she pauses and raises her face to him and flutters her eyelashes, beaming. I’ve never figured out how she decides which people she’ll cotton to. Not two minutes later we meet a jogger who also says hello, and Maeve doesn’t give him a glance.

As we’re nearing Cold Spring Lane, a car slows instead of passing. I look over to see Nandina’s Honda drawing up next to us. “Robbirenna!” Maeve shouts. That’s how she refers to the twins when she’s excited. (Robby was named for Gil’s father; Brenna for our mother.) The two of them survey Maeve stolidly from the backseat, and Nandina leans across to call through the passenger window, “See you at the park?”

“See you,” I say.

If it were Gil, he would offer us a ride, but Nandina is a stickler for the child-seat law. She takes off again, and Maeve sits ker-plunk on the sidewalk and starts wailing.

“We’ll see them in a minute, Maeve.”

“See them now !”

I reach down for her hand to lift her to her feet. Her hand is a fist, a tight satin knot, and she tries to pull it away, but I keep a firm hold.

Every so often, I reflect on that story Gil told me: how his father came back from the dead to check on Gil’s construction work. I know Gil felt it was his father’s unfinished business that brought him, but what’s occurred to me lately is, couldn’t it have been Gil’s unfinished business? Couldn’t Gil have been thinking, I wish to God I could have settled things with my pop ?