Anne Tyler - Saint Maybe

They passed the house with all the statues in the yard — elves and baby deer and a row of ducks. Agatha wished their own yard had statues, but her mother said statues were common. “Right now,” she said, “the last thing I can afford is looking common.” She talked a lot these days about what she couldn’t afford. Danny hadn’t left them well provided for.

They passed the house that said MRS. GOODE, PALMIST — FORTUNES CHEERFULLY TOLD, but their mother didn’t stop. Agatha was glad. Mrs. Goode was gray all over and her parlor smelled of mothballs. They came to where the shops began, shoe repairs and laundromats. At Luckman’s Pharmacy Thomas and Agatha slowed hopefully, but their mother said, “We’ll go to Joyner’s this time.” She rotated her drugstores because she didn’t want people thinking she bought too many pills. It was a pity, though. Luckman’s had one of those gumball machines with plastic charms intermingled. Thomas and Agatha let their feet drag and sent a longing gaze backward.

Traffic in this area was busier, and the bus exhausts made the heat seem worse. Thomas wore a smudgy mustache of sweat. Each click of their mother’s heels shot something like a little sharp paring knife straight through Agatha’s head.

On Govans Road the long, low front of Rumford & Son’s Office Equipment took up nearly half a block. They stood facing it across the street, waiting for the light to change. Thomas said, “Wouldn’t it be nice if typewriter stores had gumball machines?”

“Well, they don’t, and I don’t want you asking,” their mother said.

“I wasn’t going to ask!”

“Just be very, very quiet, so I won’t be sorry I brought you.”

In the olden days, she didn’t have to bring them places. She’d say, “Oh! I’m going stir-crazy, I tell you.” Or, “I’m getting cabin fever.” She would ask Ian or Mrs. Myrdal to baby-sit, because back then she could afford it. She would go out all afternoon and come home happy and show the children what she had picked up for them — candy bars and lollipops, sometimes even toys if they were small enough to fit in her bag. But now she had to take the three of them everywhere. She took them to her doctor, even, and when she was called inside Agatha had to watch the other two. “Can’t we go back to having sitters?” Agatha would ask, already knowing the answer. The answer was, “No, we can’t. Face the facts, sweetheart: we’re in the Department of Reality now.” Their mother’s favorite thing to say. Agatha hated hearing that and she would cover her ears like Thomas, but when she took her hands away her mother would still be talking. “You think I like having you with me every single second? Think I wouldn’t rather just leave on my own any time I get the notion?”

Their mother loved them, but they kept trying to make her not love them. That was what she told them. “You want me to walk out on you,” she told them, “but I refuse to do it.”

Whenever she said that, Thomas would take hold of some little part of her clothing, down near the hemline where she didn’t notice.

The light turned green and they crossed the street. Their mother’s heels sounded daintier now. When they stepped inside the store, cold air washed over them — lovely, cold, blowing air — and Daphne said, “Ah,” which made their mother laugh. Wasn’t it wonderful how quickly she could change! To laugh like that, her best little husky-throated laugh, the instant she walked through the door! And the typewriter man wasn’t even listening yet, although he came over soon enough. He said, “Why, look who’s here!” You could see how pleased he was. He was a blond, pale man with skin that flushed when he smiled. “What brings you out on such a hot afternoon?” he asked their mother.

“Oh, we were just taking a stroll,” she said. All of a sudden she seemed bashful. “We were passing by and I said, ‘Shouldn’t we visit my typewriter, kids?’ ”

“Absolutely. You don’t want it feeling neglected,” he said.

He beamed down at Agatha. She gave him her biggest smile back, all teeth.

The showroom was filled with desks, and a typewriter sat on each one. Some were big complicated electrics and some were little low-slung manuals. If it were up to Agatha, they’d have a manual. Those looked easier. But her mother’s was electric, with keys that chattered loudly almost before you touched them.

They had first come to this store in the spring, shortly after Danny died. Their mother had decided to be a secretary. “I have endured my very last of the Fill ’Er Up Café,” she told them. “This time I want an office job.” So one afternoon they had walked to Rumford’s, where their mother asked a lady with squiggly hair if she could use a machine to learn to type. “Do what?” the lady said. Their mother had explained that she wanted to sit at a desk for just exactly twelve days and teach herself out of a book called Touch Typing in Twelve Easy Lessons , and she promised that all three children would be as quiet as mice. “Hon,” the lady said, “this is not a secretarial college.”

“Well, don’t you think I know that?” their mother cried. “But how do you suppose I could manage a real secretarial college? How do you expect me to pay? Who would watch my children?”

“Hon—”

“This is all I’ve got to go on, don’t you understand? I need to find a job of some kind, I need to find employment!”

Then the typewriter man came over. “What seems to be the trouble here?” he asked, and the lady looked relieved and said, “This is Mr. Rumford, the owner. He can tell you,” and she walked away. Mr. Rumford had been much more sympathetic. Not that he let their mother carry out her plan (he was really just the owner’s son , he said, and his father would have a conniption), but he admired her spunk and he suggested that she rent, instead. She could rent from this very store and practice in the privacy of her home. Their mother said, “Oh! I never thought of that,” and she took a Kleenex from her pocket and blew her nose.

“Know what I recommend?” the man had said. “An electric. Look at those pretty fingernails! You don’t want to ruin your nails, now, do you?”

Their mother tried to smile.

“A manual, you have to pound down hard,” he told her. “That’s why you see those professional stenographers with their squared-off, ugly, short fingernails.”

Agatha hid her own hands behind her back. Her mother looked up into the typewriter man’s eyes. She said, “But wouldn’t an electric be more expensive?”

“Pennies a day! Just pennies.”

“And heavy, too. I mean an electric must weigh a lot more. And I’m not … I’m all on my own. I don’t have anyone to carry things.”

“Tell you what,” he said. “I’ll bring it by myself, after work.”

“You would do that?”

“It’ll be my pleasure,” he told her. “Let me show you the machine I have in mind.” And off he went, leading them through the rows of desks.

The machine he had in mind was a blue metal hulk with a cord so thick that when he brought it that evening, the only outlet they could plug it into was the one behind the refrigerator. He had to move the refrigerator and pull the kitchen table over so the cord would reach, and then he was red in the face and their mother made him sit down and have a beer. While he was drinking his beer, he showed her the special features — the electric return and the keys that would repeat. “This is just so nice of you,” their mother told him. “I know Mrs . Rumford must be having to keep your supper warm.”

“I’d be mighty surprised if she was,” he said. “We’re in the process of a divorce.” Then he placed her fingers in the right position on the keys — what he called “home base”—and taught her to type a sad mad lad , which made her laugh. When he left he gave her his card so she could call him with any questions.