Anne Tyler - Saint Maybe

Another pause.

Another laugh, this time a real one.

“You surely know how to brighten up a person’s mood,” she said.

Then she sat down on a kitchen chair and told him about her awful morning, this woman in charge of hiring who’d acted SO uppity and hoity-toity … So anyhow, she said. Would he please come and get his machine? She should have realized she wasn’t the type for an office.

He came after work and he stayed for supper. She made him an omelet. She set two of the least bent candles in the center of the table. “This is delicious,” he said after his first mouthful.

She said, “Oh, no, really, you caught me without any groceries. You should see what I usually fix.”

What she usually fixed was Kellogg’s Corn Flakes, but Agatha knew she didn’t mean it as a lie. It was more like a politeness. Trying to help her out, Thomas and Agatha kept their eyes on their plates and ate extra neatly.

He took the typewriter away with him when he left, but he told their mother not to feel discouraged. “Want to know what I think?” he asked. “I think someone’s going to jump at the chance to hire a gal like you. All you got to do is bide your time — that and keep your skills up. Sure you don’t want to hang onto this machine?”

“I can’t afford it,” she said.

“Tell you what: I’ll hold it for you. You liked this model, didn’t you? I’ll hold it in the showroom a while in case you change your mind.”

“Well, that’s very thoughtful,” she said.

So now she had her own machine at Rumford & Son’s, which they went regularly to visit. And at first she really did type on it. She sat down at the desk and showed the man she still remembered her pat rat sat hat . But then she started just talking about her typewriter. She asked how it was getting along without her and he said it looked mighty lonesome and she laughed and changed the subject. Today, for instance, she discussed the weather. She said how some people had all the luck, working in an air-conditioned building; how at home she slept with nothing to cool her off but a fan; how she had to slide out of her negligee halfway through every night on account of the heat. She scooted the stroller a few inches forward, a few inches backward, forward, backward, over and over, speaking in her slow, scrapy voice and every so often laughing when the typewriter man said something funny.

Thomas crawled under a desk and told Agatha it was his house. The typewriter on top was so little and cute that Agatha started punching the keys. She had to punch really hard because it wasn’t electric, and Thomas complained about the noise. He said, “This is my house. You go somewhere else.” Agatha pretended not to hear. She typed agatha dean 7 years old baltimore md usa . Thomas shouted, “Stop that racket on my roof!” and reared up and bumped his head. When their mother heard him crying she broke off her conversation and turned. “Oh, Thomas,” she said, “now what?” But the typewriter man didn’t seem cross. He said, “Why, what’s this? Two customers in need of my assistance,” and he helped Thomas out from under the desk. “Something I can show you, sir? Some question I can answer?”

Thomas stopped crying and rubbed the top of his head. “Well,” he said. He thought a moment. He said, “You know how people have those blood veins one in each arm?”

“Blood veins, ah …”

“So how come any place you prick will bleed? Wouldn’t you think there’d be places that don’t?”

“Ah, well …”

“I apologize for this,” their mother said. “They promised they’d behave. Come on, children, I’m taking you home.”

“No, Mama! I behaved!” Agatha said. She didn’t want to leave the air-conditioning.

But her mother said, “Nice talking with you, Murray.”

“Hurry back, okay?” the man said, and he walked them to the door. Agatha could tell he was sorry to see them go.

Out on the sidewalk their mother started humming. She hummed “Ramblin’ Rose” while they waited for the traffic light, and she took them to Joyner’s Drugstore for Lifesavers. Just trailed her fingers across the candy counter, brush-brush, nothing to it, and dropped the two rolls in her bag. Then she twinkled her eyes at Thomas and Agatha. They giggled and she instantly looked elsewhere as if she’d never met them.

While she collected her prescription, Agatha rocked the stroller because Daphne was starting to fuss. Thomas dawdled up and down the aisles, hunting dropped coins. At Luckman’s he’d once found a nickel and put it in the gumball machine, but all he got back was gum. He’d been hoping for a set of silver plastic handcuffs the size of finger rings.

The pharmacist saw them to the door, saying, “Still hot out there?” Thomas and Agatha smiled up at him, remembering to look attractive — Thomas not sucking his thumb, Agatha not letting her mouth flop open — but their mother said, “Mmhmm,” and wheeled the stroller on through without a glance. You never could be sure, with her, who you had to be nice to and who you didn’t.

Standing at the front window and holding back the curtain, Agatha watched for the first star. In the summertime she had to be alert, because the sky stayed light for so long that the stars would more or less melt into view. Agatha knew all about it. She waited at this window every night. Sometimes Thomas waited too, but he wasn’t nearly so faithful. Also he said his wishes aloud, no matter how often she warned him not to. And he wished for definite objects — toys and candy and such — as if the sky were one big Sears, Roebuck Christmas catalog. “Star light, star bright, first star I see tonight … I wish for a front-end loader with real rubber treads on it.”

Agatha, on the other hand, wished silently, and not even in words. She wished in a strong wash of feeling, instead. Let everything turn out all right , was the closest she could put it. Or, no, Let us be safe . But that was not exactly it either.

She looked from the sky to the street and saw Ian and Grandma Bedloe coming up the sidewalk. Ian carried a picnic basket covered with a red-checked cloth, and Grandma Bedloe carried a cake tin. Agatha loved Grandma Bedloe’s cakes. She made one last sweeping search for her star and then gave up and ran to answer the doorbell.

“Hello, dearies,” Grandma Bedloe said, and she kissed Agatha first and then Thomas. It was just since Danny died that she’d started kissing them. It was just since Danny died that she’d dried out so and shortened, and begun to move so stiffly. But the stiffness was rheumatism, she said: her knees acting up. A matter of humidity.

“See what we brought you!” she told them. “Devil’s food cake and fried chicken. Where’s your mother?”

“She’s having a nap.”

“A nap?”

She glanced over at Ian. He wore his most faded jeans and a plain white T-shirt; he must have just got off work. Agatha thought he resembled those handsome teenaged hoodlums on TV. She wished the girls at school could see her once in his company, but it never seemed to happen.

“I hope you haven’t had supper yet,” Grandma Bedloe said. “Has your mother started anything cooking? How long has she been in her nap? Does she usually nap at this hour?”

Each question brought her further into the house. She pressed forward, passing Thomas and Agatha, heading for the kitchen, where she set the cake tin on the table and turned to look around her. “Oh, my, I’d say she hasn’t started cooking,” she said. “Goodness. Well. Try and make space for that basket on the counter, Ian. Agatha, dear, shall I put a few of these dishes to soak while you wake your mother?”