Anne Tyler - Saint Maybe

He flinched at the wickedness of this thought, which had glided so smoothly into his mind that it might have been there all along.

In Biology 101 on Tuesday, his lab partner said she’d noticed him on the church bus. She wondered if he’d like to attend the Wednesday Night Youth Group at her place of worship. “Oh, I’m sorry, I can’t,” he said instantly. “I’ve got a paper due.”

“Well, maybe another time, then,” she said. “We always have such fun! Usually they show a movie, something nice and clean with no language.”

“It does sound like fun,” he said.

He meant that sincerely. He ached, all at once, for a blameless life. He decided that if Cicely turned out not to be pregnant, they would start living like that. Their outings would become as wholesome as those pictures in the cigarette ads: healthy young people laughing toothily in large, impersonal groups, popping popcorn, taking sleigh rides.

But on Thursday, when Cicely phoned to tell him she’d got her period, what did he do? He said, “Listen. You have to go on the pill now. You know that.” And she said, “Yes, I’ve already made an appointment.” And that weekend they picked up where they had left off, although Cicely still had her period and really it was sort of complicated. He had to rinse all the bedclothes the following morning, and as he stood barefoot in the dormitory bathroom watching the basin fill with pink water, he felt weary and jaded and disgusted with himself, a hopeless sinner.

* * *

Christmas fell on a Sunday that year. Ian didn’t get home till Friday evening; so Saturday was a hectic rush of shopping for gifts. Only on Christmas Eve did he have a chance to look around and realize the state of the household. He saw that although a good-sized tree had been erected in the living room, no one had trimmed it; the box of decorations sat unopened on the piano. The swags of evergreen were missing from the banister, the front door bore no wreath, and the house had a general air of neglect. It wasn’t just relaxed, or folksy, or happy-go-lucky; it was dirty. The kitchen smelled of garbage and cat box. The last two remaining goldfish floated dead in their scummy bowl. None of the gifts had been wrapped yet, and when the children asked to hang their stockings it emerged that all the socks were in the laundry.

“Well, I’m sorry,” Bee said, “but one person or another has been sick the last two weeks running and I just haven’t had a minute. So I’m sorry. Hang something else, instead. Hang grocery bags. Hang pillowcases.”

“Pillowcases!” Thomas said dolefully.

“Don’t worry,” Ian told him. “I’ll do a wash tonight. You go on to bed and I’ll hang your stockings later.”

So that evening was spent in the basement, more or less. Ian found the hampers so overstuffed and moldy that he guessed the laundry had not been seen to in some time, and he decided to take care of the whole lot. Also he put himself in charge of gift wrapping. While his mother sat at the dining room table sipping the sherry he’d poured her, he swaddled everything ineptly in plain tissue. (She had not thought to buy Christmas paper.) He wrapped even the gifts meant for him — a couple of shirts, a ski jacket — pretending to pay them no heed. Periodically he left his work to run downstairs to the basement and start another load of laundry. The scent of detergent and fresh linens gradually filled the house. It wasn’t such a bad Christmas Eve after all.

“Remember Christmas in the old days?” his mother asked. “When we got everything ready so far ahead? Presents sat under the tree for weeks! Homemade, most of them. Lord, you children made enough clay ashtrays to cover every surface, and none of us even smokes. But this year I just couldn’t get up the spirit. Seems like ever since this happened with your brother I’ve been so … unenthusiastic.”

Ian didn’t know what to say to that. He made a big business of tying a bow on a package.

“And remember all the hors d’oeuvres at Christmas dinner?” she asked. “This year I’ll be doing well to throw a piece of meat in the oven.”

“Maybe we should go to a restaurant,” Ian said.

“A restaurant!”

“Why not?”

“Let’s hope we haven’t come to that, ” his mother said.

In the living room they heard a sharp grunt — his father, asleep in his recliner chair.

But as it turned out, Christmas Day was not so different that year from any other. Mrs. Jordan came, along with the foreigners. The children contributed their share of excitement (Claudia’s six and Lucy’s three, combined), and Doug’s Polaroid Land camera flashed, and the cat made choking sounds behind the couch. It was disconcerting, in a way. Last Christmas Daphne hadn’t been born yet; nor had Franny. Now here sat Daphne chewing a wad of blue tissue while Franny stirred her fists through Agatha’s jigsaw puzzle. They both seemed so accustomed to being here. And Danny and Lucy had completely vanished. Something was wrong with a world where people came and went so easily.

The day after Christmas, Sid at the movers’ phoned to see if Ian could help out over vacation. Their man Brewster had left them in the lurch, he said. Ian told him he’d be glad to help. School would not reopen till mid-January and he could use the extra cash. So Tuesday morning, he reported to the garage on Greenmount.

LeDon was delighted to see him. That Brewster fellow, he said, had just up and walked away in the middle of a job. “He say, ‘See you round, LeDon.’ I say, ‘Hey, man, you ain’t ditching me.’ He say, ‘All day long I’m ditching you,’ and off he go. Well, he weren’t never what you call real friendly.”

They were moving an old lady from a house to an apartment — lots of old-lady belongings, bowlegged furniture and mothballed dresses and more than enough china to stock a good-sized restaurant. Her son, who was overseeing the move, had some kind of fixation about the china. “Careful, now! That’s Spode,” he would say as they lifted a crate. And, “Watch out for the Haviland!” LeDon rolled his eyes at Ian.

Then at the new place, they found out the kitchen was being remodeled and they had to set the china crates in the living room. “What the hell?” the son said. “This was supposed to be finished three days ago.” He was talking to the cabinetmaker — the deaf man Ian had come across last summer, as it happened. “How much longer?” the son asked him. Any fool could see it would be way longer; the kitchen was nothing but a shell. The cabinetmaker, not looking around, measured the depth of a counter with a steel measuring tape. The son laid a hand on the man’s forearm. The man turned slowly, gazed a moment at the son’s hand, and then lifted his eyes to his face. “HOW … LONG!” the son shouted, exaggerating his lip movements.

The cabinetmaker considered, and then he said, “Two weeks.”

“Two weeks!” the son said. He dropped his hand. “What are you building here, Noah’s ark? All we need is a few lousy cupboards!”

The cabinetmaker went on about his business, measuring the counter’s length now and the height of the empty space above it. Surely he must have known the son was speaking to him, but he seemed totally absorbed in what he was doing. Once again, Ian envied the man his insular, impervious life.

On New Year’s Eve Pig Benson threw a big, rowdy party, but Ian didn’t go. Cicely was baby-sitting her brother and it was her last night home. (Her college worked on a different schedule from Ian’s.) So they set all the clocks an hour ahead and tricked Stevie into going to bed early, and then they snuck upstairs to her room, where Ian unintentionally dozed off. He was awakened by church bells ringing in the New Year, which meant her parents could be expected at any moment. As soon as he’d dressed, he slipped downstairs and into the frosty, bitter night. He walked home half asleep while bells pealed and firecrackers popped and rockets lit the sky. What optimism! he found himself thinking. Why did people have such high hopes for every New Year?