Anne Tyler - Saint Maybe

She lit her cigarette and tilted her head and blew out a long stream of smoke, all the while staring defiantly at Ian. He said, “I did?”

“Lucy went and got herself pregnant.”

“Oh.”

“I said, ‘Tommy, you can’t be certain that baby’s even yours,’ and he said, ‘Mom, I know it. I just don’t know what on earth I’m going to do,’ he told me.”

Ian said, “What?” He felt he’d missed something. “You mean it could have been someone else’s baby?” he asked.

“Well, who can say?” Mrs. Millet said. “I mean life is all so iffy, right? I said, ‘Tommy, don’t fall for this! You could be anything! You could be a male model, even! Why saddle yourself with a wife and kid?’ But Lucy talked him into it. She had him wrapped around her little finger, I tell you. It was the kind of thing that just breaks a mother’s heart.”

“So … but this aunt of hers,” Ian said. He seemed to be losing track of the purpose of his visit. “Alice, you say.”

“Alice Dean. Well, she had nothing against it. She was delighted to marry Lucy off. Meant she could get back to wherever she came from and her old-maid ways. So Tommy and Lucy set up house in this crummy little trailer over at Blalock’s Trailer Park and Tommy started work at Luther’s Sports Equipment, but when Lucy told him she was expecting again— two babies in three years! — he left her. I don’t blame him, either. I do not blame him. He was just a boy! ‘When you going to do this, when you going to do that?’ she was always asking, but he hadn’t had him any kind of life yet! Naturally he wanted to roam a bit. She claimed he was irresponsible and she fretted about the least little thing, so of course he stayed away even more and when he did come home they’d fight. Twice the police had to be called. Then thank the Lord, he finally had the sense to leave. Got shed of her and asked for a divorce. And wouldn’t you know she hired herself a big-shot city lawyer and sued for child support. Proves what I’d been telling him: all as she was after was his money. Someone to support those kids; by then she’d had the second one and she was always yammering about, ‘I can’t feed these kids on yard weeds,’ and such. I told Tommy, I said, ‘She should just go to work, if she needs money so bad.’ ”

“But then who would watch the children?” Ian asked.

“Lord, you sound just like her. ‘Then who would watch the children?’ ” Mrs. Millet mimicked in a high voice. She flicked her cigarette into a tin ashtray. “She should’ve got a sitter, of course. That’s what I told Tommy. ‘And don’t expect me to sit,’ I told him. I never did like other people’s children much. So anyhow, Tommy hung around here awhiles but there wasn’t all that much for him in Portia, and so finally he hitchhiked to Wyoming. He had in mind to find work there, something glamorous having to do with horses. Well, that didn’t quite come through like he had hoped and so of course he couldn’t send money first thing, but he was planning to! And then we hear Lucy’s run off.”

“Runoff?”

“Run away with some man. That lawyer that handled her divorce. It was Mr. Blalock called and told me, down at the trailer park. She owed him rent. He said her trailer was empty as last year’s bird nest, door flapping open in the wind and everything hauled away that wasn’t nailed down. Said her neighbors saw a moving van come to take her belongings. Not a U-Haul; a professional van. The man was loaded, was what they guessed. She must’ve went with him for the money.”

“Went with him where?” Ian asked.

“Why, to Baltimore, but at first we didn’t know that. At first we had no idea, and I told Tommy he was better off that way. The slate has been wiped clean,’ I told him on the phone. ‘I do believe we’ve seen the last of her.’ But then guess what. She calls him up a few months later. Calls him in Cheyenne. Tells him she’s in Baltimore and wants the money he owes her. Oh, I just wish I’d have been on the other end of the line. I’d have hung up on her so fast! But Tommy, I will say, he was a whole lot smarter by then. He says, ‘I thought you had yourself some rich guy now,’ and she says, ‘Oh,’ says, ‘that didn’t work out.’ Well, I just bet it didn’t work out. I bet the fellow was married, was what. That’s the kind of thing you see happen every day. Tommy tells her, ‘I can’t help that , I met somebody here and we’re planning on a June wedding. All I got is going for the wedding,’ he says. Then he says, ‘And anyhow, where’s my things? You took every blasted thing I left in that trailer,’ he says. ‘Stuff I was coming back to fetch someday you packed up and hauled away like it belonged to you.’ ‘Tommy, I need money,’ she says. ‘I’m in a awful fix right now.’ He says, ‘First you send me my things,’ and signs off. You see how he’d got wise to her. Oh, she aged him, I tell you. She hardened him. She callused him.”

Mrs. Millet stubbed out her cigarette and sat staring into space. Over the stove, a plastic clock in the shape of a cat ticked its long striped tail back and forth.

“It was the winter of ’sixty-seven he had the accident,” she said. “Motorcycling on icy roads. His wife called me up and told me. I will never hear the phone ring again as long as I live without going all over cold and sick.”

Ian said, “Well, I’m sorry.”

But it was only the most detached and courteous kind of sorry. He would never have left the children with such a man, even if the man had been willing.

“Of course, that second wife was pretty no-account herself,” Mrs. Millet said.

Ian stood up. (No use staying on for more of this.) He said, “Mrs. Millet, I appreciate your talking to me. I guess what you’re saying is, there was only that one aunt.”

“That’s all as I ever heard of,” she said.

“And no brothers or sisters, or cousins, or anything like that.”

“Not as I know of. Chances are the aunt has passed on too, by this time. Lord, lately it seems the whole world has passed on.”

It did seem that way, at times. At times, it really did.

At Prayer Meeting the ghostly smell of dry-cleaning fluid mingled with Mrs. Jordan’s cologne. “Pray for me to accept this cross without complaint,” Sister Myra said. Accept what cross? Ian hadn’t been listening. He bowed his head and felt the silence wrap around him like a clean, cool sheet that you reach for in your sleep halfway through a hot night.

“For our Sister Myra,” Reverend Emmett said at last.

“Amen.”

“Any other prayers, any other prayers …”

In a row toward the rear, Sister Bertha stood up. “I am troubled in my heart for another person tonight,” she said. She spoke pointedly to the empty chair in front of her. “I know of someone here who seems to be experiencing a serious difficulty. I was waiting to see if he’d ask for our prayers but so far he hasn’t.”

He? There were only three men present: Reverend Emmett, Brother Kenneth, and Ian.

“I know,” Sister Bertha said, “that this person must be feeling very overworked, very beset with problems, and he’s casting about for a solution. But it doesn’t seem to occur to him that he could bring it up at Prayer Meeting.”

She sat down.

Ian’s cheeks felt hot.

Surely private detectives were sworn to secrecy, weren’t they? Just like lawyers, or doctors. Weren’t they?

Reverend Emmett looked uncertain. He said, “Well …” and glanced around at the other worshipers. His eyes did not linger noticeably on Ian, although of course he must suspect. “Does this person wish to ask for our prayers?” he said.

No response. Just a few rustles and whispers.