Anne Tyler - The Amateur Marriage

“Oh. All right.”

“The world won’t end if we fail to get together every single evening!”

“That’s true,” she said, after a moment.

“Okay, then. Bye,” he said, and he replaced the receiver.

Then he went into his bedroom and settled at his desk and paid his bills. Sealed the envelopes. Pounded stamps onto the corners. Jerked out all his drawers and cleaned them, throwing away old circulars and paper clips and rubber bands and business cards.

After that he went to the kitchen and cooked himself an actual, time-consuming meal. He boiled rice and he blended several canned soups and stews to form a sort of goulash that he ladled on top. He cut up vegetables for a salad — unfortunately a larger salad than he needed, once he’d combined what he’d chopped, but he ate every bit of it anyhow. He ate standing at the counter, forking the salad straight from the salad bowl and the goulash straight from the saucepan. Then he cleaned the kitchen. Then he went back to the living room and turned on the TV.

Shortly after eleven, while he was watching the late news, his doorbell rang. He rose to peer through the peephole. Anna’s face was small and distinct and, he thought, expressionless, but when he opened the door he saw that tears had made shiny trails down her cheeks. He said, “Anna?”

“I don’t know why you’re behaving this way,” she told him. “I don’t know what’s made you angry.” She stepped inside, wearing a quilted red jacket that he hadn’t seen before, keeping her arms crossed over her chest. “I thought we were having a perfectly nice Sunday together, and now you don’t want to be with me!”

He said, “That’s not true, Anna. Of course I want to be with you.” Then all at once he was horrified. “My God,” he said, “what have I done? I didn’t mean to hurt you! Anna, don’t cry. Please,” he said. He’d never seen her cry before. He wrapped his arms around her and led her into the room. “Please, Anna… here, have a seat. Oh, God, where’s the Kleenex? Please don’t cry!”

He placed her on the couch and settled next to her, trying to take her hands except that she was digging the heels of her palms into her eyes. “Please. Please,” he kept saying. He hugged her. “You have to listen to me. I don’t know what was wrong with me. I’ve been just sort of crazy all day; I jumped to all kinds of crazy conclusions. I think maybe I’m just… unsure of you. We’re in such an unsure relationship. Always juggling our time, spending our nights apart when Pagan’s here… I think we ought to get married.”

Anna gave a little snorting laugh as if she didn’t take him seriously, but he said, “No, I mean it.” And he did. “Just so this won’t happen anymore!” he said. “These strains, these misunderstandings, each of us not certain of the other… Please, Anna. Marry me.”

She lowered her hands and drew away and looked at him. Her face was wet and her lashes were damp and the whites of her eyes were pink. She drew a shaky breath and said, “Well. Maybe you’re right.”

“Is that a yes?”

“I guess,” she said.

“You’ll marry me?”

“I guess.”

“Oh, Anna, you won’t regret it! I’m going to take such good care of you!”

And he gathered her close again.

He should have been the happiest man in the world at that moment. But even as she relaxed in his arms he felt a kind of leftover, lingering ache. It seemed that somehow this day had done some damage, not to her but to himself, or maybe to the two of them.

It was ironic that Pauline overslept, because all night long she had wished for morning. At one point, surfacing from an edgy half-dream about a bill she’d neglected to pay, she had been relieved to see that her alarm clock read 6:10—an acceptable time to get up. But the room had seemed strangely dark, and when she checked the clock again she’d realized that it was actually 2:30. She had groaned and thrown off her blanket, turned onto her back, yawned aloud, retrieved the blanket (it was April, a betwixt-and-between time of year), switched to her side… and all at once it was nearly nine and the world had started without her. She could hear the Bennett children next door jumping on their trampoline, and the garbage men clanging trash cans in the distance, and, oh, Lord, she’d forgotten to put the garbage in the alley for the Saturday pickup. She hauled herself out of bed and went over to the window, pried two slats of the blind apart and saw the tail of the garbage truck just disappearing around the bend. Carrie Bennett was planting pansies in the plot between their backyards, and the sun was a bright, warm yellow and much too high in the sky.

Then she couldn’t get any hot water. What on earth? She stood naked on the bath mat, one hand reaching behind the shower curtain to test the temperature, for one whole minute and then for two. Stone cold. There were days when she felt this house was out to get her. She turned off the water and considered awhile. All she knew about hot water was that it came from a tank in the basement. And it was heated by gas — a scary, invisible substance. What if gas were flooding the basement at this very moment?

Pagan was away at college, and she didn’t like to phone Michael because his wife might answer. It would have to be George. She checked the clock once more as she tied her bathrobe sash, and then she sat down on her bed and dialed George’s number.

“Hello?” Samantha said.

Oh, goody. Pauline felt a little rush of happiness just at the sound of Sam’s voice. She said, “Hi, sweetheart! It’s Grandma.”

“Hello, Grandma,” Samantha said. She was one of those comically middle-aged children — eleven going on forty, with a self-assured, declarative manner. “Guess what, we’re getting a puppy,” she said.

“A puppy! I thought Jojo was allergic.”

“He is, but Mom read in the newspaper that even allergic kids can have poodles, because poodles don’t get dandruff.”

“I didn’t know any dogs got dandruff,” Pauline said. “Can that be right? And poodles: aren’t they sort of high-strung?”

“Not the big kind. Mom’s done research. Also poodles are one of the most intelligent breeds and they’re especially known for—”

“Pauline?” Sally broke in.

“Oh, hi, Sally. I was just—”

“I hate to interrupt your conversation, but we have an appointment with this dog lady out in Phoenix.”

“Yes, Samantha was just telling me, you’re getting a poodle! Isn’t that exciting!”

“Can we call you back this afternoon?”

“Well, actually I wanted to speak to George about a household emergency.”

“George has gone to the hardware store. Tell you what, I’ll leave him a note to phone you when he gets in. Okay? Bye, now.”

There was a click. Pauline was left holding a dead receiver. She couldn’t help but feel hurt, a little, although she knew that Sally was merely in a rush.

She phoned Karen. “Karen?”

“Oh, hello, Mom.”

“The most upsetting development: I don’t have any hot water.”

“You don’t?”

“I went to take a shower and the water just ran cold, never even got to lukewarm.”

“Well, gosh. Maybe you should call the electric company.”

“It’s not electric, though. It’s gas. At least, I’m pretty sure it is.”

“So? The gas and electric company; they’re the same thing. Look, Mom, I’ve got to run. I’m late for a meeting at work and I haven’t had my breakfast.”

“It’s Saturday! You don’t work on Saturday!”

“Not usually, no, but if we don’t get on this case a whole family’s going to be evicted by Monday morning, so…”