Anne Tyler - Saint Maybe

One of the words on her blouse was VICTORY. Another was DISASTER. Thomas hadn’t even started second grade yet but he was able to read nearly every word you showed him.

“If you all went to Camp Cottontail like the Parker children you wouldn’t have to leave till nine A.M.,” his grandma said, inching around the table with a stack of cereal bowls. “An air-conditioned bus would pick you up at the doorstep. But oh, no. Oh , no. That’s too simple for your uncle Ian. Let’s not do it the easy way, your uncle Ian says.”

What Ian had really said was, “Camp Cottontail costs eighty dollars for a two-week session.” Thomas had heard the whole argument. “Eighty dollars per child! Do you realize what that comes to?”

“Maybe Dad could make a bit extra teaching summer school,” their grandma had told him.

“Dream on, Mom. You really think I’d let him do that? Also, Camp Cottontail doesn’t take three-year-olds. Daphne would be home all day with little old you. ”

That was what had settled it. Their grandma had the arthritis in her knees and hips and sometimes now in her hands, and chasing after Daphne was too much for her. Daphne just did her in, Grandma always said. Dearly though she loved her.

She shook Cheerios into Thomas’s bowl and then turned toward the stairs. “Agatha!” she called. “Agatha, are you up?”

No answer. She sighed and poured milk on top of the Cheerios. “You get started on these and I’ll go give her a nudge,” she told Thomas. She walked stiffly out of the kitchen, calling, “Rise and shine, Agatha!”

Thomas laid his spoon fiat on top of his cereal and watched it fill with milk and then sink.

Now here came his grandpa and Ian, with Daphne just behind. Ian wore his work clothes — faded jeans and a T-shirt, his white cloth carpenter cap turned around backward like a baseball catcher’s. (Grandma just despaired when her men kept their hats on in the house.) He’d dressed Daphne in her new pink shorts set, and she was pulling the toy plastic lawn mower that made colored balls pop up when the wheels turned.

“The way I figure it,” Ian was saying, “we’d be better off moving the whole operation to someplace where the lumber could be stored in the same building. But Mr. Brant likes the shop where it is. So I’m going to need the car all day unless you …”

Thomas stopped listening and took a mouthful of cereal. He watched Daphne walk around and around Ian’s legs, with the lawn mower bobbling behind her. “This is what I’m bringing to Sharing Hour,” she announced, but Thomas was the only one who heard her. “Ian? This is what I’m—”

“You should bring something fancier,” Thomas told her.

“No! I’m bringing this!”

“Remember yesterday, what Mindy brought?”

Mindy had brought an Egyptian beetle from about a million years ago, pale blue-green like old rain spouts. But Daphne said, “I don’t care.”

“ Lots of people have plastic lawn mowers,” Thomas told her.

She pretended not to hear and walked in tighter and tighter circles around Ian’s blue denim legs.

Once Daphne had her mind made up, nothing could change it. Everyone always joked about that. But Thomas worried she would look dumb in front of Bible camp. It was such a small camp that all the children were jumbled together, the three-year-olds in with the seven-year-olds like Thomas and even Agatha’s age, the ten-year-olds; even ten-year-old Dermott Kyle. Dermott Kyle would be sure to laugh at her. Thomas watched her round-nosed white sandals taking tiny steps and he started getting angry at her just thinking about it.

Then Ian bent over and scooped her up, lawn mower and all. He said, “What’s your breakfast order, Miss Daph?” and she giggled and told him, “Cinnamon toast.”

That Daphne was too ignorant to worry.

When Agatha came downstairs she looked puffy-eyed and dazed. She never woke up easily. Their grandma hobbled around her, trying to get her going — pushing the Cheerios box across the table to her and offering other kinds when Agatha shook her head. “Cornflakes? Raisin bran?” she said. Agatha rested her chin on her fist and her eyes started slowly, slowly drooping shut. “Agatha, don’t go back to sleep.”

“She’ll be fine once she hits fresh air,” Ian said. He was standing by the toaster, waiting for Daphne’s toast to pop up. He’d set Daphne on the counter next to him where she swung her feet and banged her heels against the cupboard doors beneath her.

“She’d be even finer if she could sleep till a decent hour,” their grandma told him. “Why, they’re having to get up earlier in summer than in winter! Poor child can barely keep her eyes propped open.”

“She ought to be in Camp Cottontail,” their grandpa said suddenly. Everyone had forgotten about him. He was scrambling himself some eggs at the stove. “Camp Cottontail comes to the house for them about nine o’clock or so; I’ve seen the bus in the neighborhood.”

“Wasn’t I just saying that? While Holy Roller, on the other hand—”

“It’s not Holy Roller, Mom. Please,” Ian told her. “It’s Camp Second Chance. And it’s sponsored by my church and it’s free of charge. Not to mention it offers the kids a little grounding for their lives.”

Their grandma looked up at the ceiling and let out a long, noisy breath.

“When I was seventeen,” their grandpa said from the stove, “I volunteered to be a counselor at my church’s camp out in western Maryland. That’s because I was in love with this girl who taught archery there. Marie, her name was. I can see her still. She wore this leather cuff on her wrist so the bowstring wouldn’t thwack her. Every night I prayed and prayed for her to love me back. I said, ‘God, if you’ll do this one thing for me I’ll believe in you forever and I’ll never ask another favor.’ But she preferred the lifeguard and they started going out together. After that, why, me and God just never have been that chummy.”

“God and I,” Grandma murmured automatically.

“I mean I still go to church on holidays and such, but I don’t feel quite the same way about it.”

Ian said, “Well, what does that prove? Good grief! You act as if it proves something. But all it proves is, you didn’t know what was best for you. You were asking for a girl who wasn’t right for you.”

Their grandpa just shrugged, but their grandma said, “Oh, Lord, it’s too early in the day for this,” and she dropped heavily into a chair.

Agatha’s eyes were closed now and Daphne had stopped swinging her feet. The dog lay next to the sink like a rumpled floor mat. Only Ian seemed to have any pep. He plucked the toast from the toaster, flipping it a couple of times so it wouldn’t burn his fingers. As he turned to bring it to the breakfast table, he gave Thomas a quick little wink and a smile.

While Ian was driving them to camp he said, “You mustn’t take it too seriously when your grandma and grandpa talk that way. They’ve had some disappointments in their lives. It doesn’t mean they don’t believe deep down.”

“I know that,” Thomas said, but Agatha just stared out the side window. She always got grumpy and embarrassed when talk of religion came up. Thomas suspected she was not a true Christian. He knew for a fact that she hated going to Camp Second Chance. Even the name, she said, made it seem they were settling for something; and what sort of camp has just a backyard, above-ground, corrugated plastic pool you have to fill with a garden hose? But she said this privately, only to Thomas. Neither one of them would have hurt Ian’s feelings for the world.

Ian dropped them off at Sister Myra’s house in a rush; he was running late. “Morning, Brother Ian!” Sister Myra called from her front door, and he said, “Morning, Sister Myra. Sorry I can’t stop to talk.” Then he drove away, leaving them on the sidewalk. Sister Myra lived in a development called Lullaby Acres where no trees grew, and it was hotter than at home. Thomas could feel a trickle of sweat starting down between his shoulder blades.