Anne Tyler - Saint Maybe

“Or we could eat without her,” Agatha said. “We could let her rest.”

“No, no, I’m sure she’d want — where’s Daphne?”

“In her crib,” Agatha said.

“She’s napping too?”

“No, she’s just … Mama just set her there a while.”

“Well, let’s go get her!” Grandma Bedloe said. “We can’t leave our Daphne all alone, now!” And off she went, with Thomas and Agatha following.

In the children’s room, Daphne poked her nose between the crib bars and cooed. “Hello, sweetness,” Grandma Bedloe told her. She picked her up and said, “Somebody’s sopping.” Then she looked at the supplies lined against the footboard — a filled nursing bottle, a plate of darkening banana slices, and one of the breadsticks Daphne liked to teethe on. “What is all this?” Grandma Bedloe asked. “Her lunch? Her supper? How long has she been in here?”

“Just a teensy while,” Agatha said. “Honest. She just did get put down.”

“Well, I’m going to change her diaper and dress her in some nicer little clothes,” Grandma Bedloe said. (It was true that Daphne’s undershirt didn’t seem very fresh.) “You and Thomas go start your suppers.”

So they went back to the kitchen, where Ian was unpacking the basket. He didn’t ask what parts of the chicken they preferred. Agatha had been going to say the keel, a word she’d heard last week at a fast-food place. “I’ll have the keel, please.” Whatever that was. She figured it might make Ian stop and notice her. But he served each of them a drumstick without a word and went to the refrigerator for milk. He filled two glasses and thought a minute and then bent forward and sniffed. Then he took both glasses to the sink and poured them out. Agatha pinched a piece of crust off her drumstick and placed it in her mouth, meanwhile waiting to see what other drink he would offer. But he didn’t offer anything. He just pulled out a chair and sank down onto it.

“Aren’t you going to eat too?” Thomas asked him.

But he must not have been listening.

“Ian? You can have our mama’s share. I bet she won’t be hungry.”

“Thanks,” Ian said after a pause. But he didn’t reach into the basket.

Grandma Bedloe was talking to Daphne. “Now, doesn’t that feel better?” she was saying. “Let’s go show Mommy.” She knocked on their mother’s bedroom door. They heard her turn the knob and walk in. “Oh, Mom-mee! Look who’s come to see you, Mommy.”

Their mother gave one of her sleep-moans.

“Lucy?” Grandma Bedloe said. “Are you all right, dear?”

Poor Grandma Bedloe. She didn’t know their mother had to wake on her own. Finally she came back to the kitchen, carrying Daphne in a white knit romper that showed off her curly black hair. “Does your mother tend to sleep like that till morning?” she asked.

Agatha said, “Oh, no.” She was glad to be able to tell the truth. “She’ll get up again! Don’t worry! She wakes up after dark and then she’s awake all night, just about.”

Grandma Bedloe settled Daphne on her hip. She said, “I certainly hope …” Then she said, “I wouldn’t blame her a bit, understand …” Finally she said, “Tell me, Agatha, do you think she might be taking a little too much to drink?”

“Drink?”

“I mean, alcohol? A beer or two, or wine?”

“No,” Agatha said.

“I hope you don’t mind my asking. And you know I wouldn’t blame her. We all like a little cocktail now and then!”

“Mama doesn’t,” Agatha said.

“Well, that’s something,” Grandma Bedloe said with a sigh.

Then she started pestering Thomas to eat his chicken. She claimed he was skinny as a sparrow. Come to think of it, he was kind of skinny. But she was wrong about the cocktails. Their mother never drank at all. She said drinking made her say things.

She also said that dead people don’t really leave us; they just stop weighing anything. But Agatha didn’t know who was right there, her mother or Grandma Bedloe, because when she’d asked Grandma Bedloe why they had needed six people to carry Danny’s coffin, Grandma Bedloe said, “What do you mean?” Agatha said, “Couldn’t just one person do it? With just the tips of his fingers?” Grandma Bedloe said, “Why, Agatha, he was a full-grown man. He weighed a hundred and seventy pounds.” Then she had turned all teary and Grandpa Bedloe told her, “There, hon. There, hon.”

“He used to say he was getting a paunch, and he’d have to start watching what he ate,” Grandma Bedloe wept. “He never dreamed how little time he had! He could have eaten anything he wanted!”

“There, honeybee.”

Now it occurred to Agatha that what had weighed so much was the coffin itself. Maybe that was why they’d needed six people.

After supper Grandma Bedloe tidied the kitchen while Ian played Parcheesi with Thomas and Agatha. He held Daphne on his knee and gazed down at the board with a sort of puzzled expression. When Thomas miscounted on purpose, he didn’t even notice. “Cheater!” Agatha told Thomas. “He’s cheating, Ian.”

“Really?” Ian said.

“He should be up in front of you where you could take him off next move.”

“Really,” Ian said.

He had been a lot more fun in the olden days.

When Grandma Bedloe had finished the dishes she came to stand in the doorway, wearing a flowered apron of their mother’s that Agatha had forgotten about. “Ian,” she said, “I cannot in all good conscience walk out and leave these children on their own like this.”

Ian shook the dice in one cupped hand and spilled them across the board: a four and a six. “You hear me, Ian?” his mother asked.

Agatha watched their faces, hoping. They could stay, she wanted to tell them. Or they could take the three of them home with them. But then what about their mother?

“Maybe you could bring her too,” she suggested to Grandma Bedloe.

“Bring who, dear?”

“Maybe you could bring us all to your house. Mama too.”

Ian moved one man four spaces. Then he reached toward another man.

“If you wrap her in a blanket, she can walk pretty good,” Agatha said. “Stir coffee into her Coca-Cola and make her drink it and then hold her hand; she can walk anywhere you want her to.”

Ian’s fingers stopped in midair. He and Grandma Bedloe looked at each other.

Just at that moment, footsteps creaked in the hall and here came their mother, tying the sash of her kimono. It was the shiny gray kimono she hardly ever wore, not her usual bathrobe, so she must have known there were visitors. Also her hair was brushed. It puffed around her shoulders and down her back, dark and cloud-shaped, so her face stood out brightly. She gave them all her best smile. “Oh! Mother Bedloe. And Ian,” she said. “This is so embarrassing! Caught napping in the shank of the evening! But I took the children on a long, long walk this afternoon and I guess I must have worn myself out.”

Grandma Bedloe and Ian studied her. Thomas and Agatha held very still.

Then Grandma Bedloe said, “Why, my heavens! Pushing a stroller, on a day like today! Of course you’re worn out. You just sit yourself down and let me bring you some supper.”

Agatha let go of her breath. Thomas was smiling too, now. He had a smile like their mother’s, sort of dipping at the center, and he looked relieved. And Grandma Bedloe was moving toward the kitchen, and Ian reached again for his Parcheesi piece. Everyone was relieved.

So why did Agatha suddenly feel so anxious?

It was past their bedtime but their mother hadn’t noticed yet. She was perched on a stool in the kitchen, reading a cookbook and munching one of the drumsticks Grandma Bedloe had left on the counter. “Beef Goulash,” she read out. “Beef with Pearl Onions. Beef Crescents. Agatha, what was that beef dish Grandma Bedloe told us about?”