Anne Tyler - Saint Maybe

“It might be a good idea.”

“Why don’t I just go ahead and help, then? We’ll set aside a time each evening.”

“No, first I think you should ask Miss Pennington,” Daphne told him.

He gazed down at her. He and she were doing the supper dishes (she had offered to dry) while the other two sat at the kitchen table, ostensibly studying. Now Agatha said, “It wouldn’t hurt to show the teacher you take an interest, Ian.”

“Well, of course I take an interest,” Ian told her. “Good grief, I’m one of the grade mothers. I baked six dozen cookies for Parents’ Night and delivered them in person.”

“You never went in for a private conference, though,” Daphne said.

“I thought that was an improvement. Your first full year in school I haven’t been issued a summons.”

“Well, all right,” Daphne said sorrowfully. “If you don’t want to keep the lines of communication open …”

“Keep the what? Lines of what? Well, shoot,” Ian said, setting a stack of bowls in the sink. “Fine, I’ll go. Are you satisfied?”

Daphne nodded. So did the other two, but Ian had his back to them and he didn’t see.

* * *

Daphne reported that the parent-teacher conference went very well. “He was wearing that grown-up shirt we bought him for Christmas,” she told Thomas and Agatha, “the one he has to iron. He came to school straight from work and he had his wood-chip smell about him. I’m pretty sure she noticed.”

“Maybe he should’ve worn a suit,” Thomas said. “Miss Pennington’s always so dressy. We don’t want her to think he’s just a laborer.”

“He is just a laborer,” Daphne said. “What’s wrong with that?”

“Yes, but first she should see he’s intelligent and all,” Thomas said. “Then afterwards she could find out what he does for a living.”

“Well, too late now. Anyhow: so I used their first names in the introductions, just like Agatha told me. I said, ‘Ian Bedloe, Ariana Pennington. I believe you-all have met before.’ ”

“It should have been the other way around,” Agatha told her. “ ‘Ariana Pennington, Ian Bedloe.’ ”

“Oh, big deal, Agatha. So then they shook hands and Miss Pennington asked Ian what she could do for him. They sat down at two desks in the back of the room and I stood next to Ian.”

“You were supposed to leave them on their own.”

“I couldn’t. They sort of, like, included me. Ian said, ‘Daphne, here, wanted me to discuss with you …’ and all like that.”

“Well, I don’t guess it matters much at this stage,” Thomas told Agatha. “They wouldn’t right away start making out or anything.”

“Miss Pennington wore her blue scoop-necked dress,” Daphne said. “We all just wait for that dress. It’s got a lacy kind of petticoat showing underneath, either attached or not attached; we never can make up our minds. And usually she pins this heart-shaped locket pin to her front but not this time, and I was glad. We think there may be a boyfriend’s photograph inside.”

“You mean she might already have somebody?” Thomas asked, frowning.

“Who cares? Now that she’s met Ian.”

“She liked him, then,” Agatha said.

“She had to like him. He was sitting where the sun hit his hair and turned it almost yellow on top, you know how it does. He kept his cap off and he didn’t say anything religious, not once. Miss Pennington kept smiling at him and tipping her head while he talked.”

“Gosh, this is going better than we’d hoped,” Thomas said.

“And when he called her ‘Miss Pennington,’ she put her hand on his arm and said, ‘Please. Ariana.’ ”

“Gosh.”

“She told him I was one of her very best students and she didn’t know why I was concerned about my homework, but she appreciated his coming and she just thought it was so refreshing to see a man involve himself in his children’s education.”

“She did understand we’re not really his, didn’t she?” Agatha asked. “She knows he’s not married, doesn’t she?”

“She must, because she had my file opened out in front of her. And besides, Ian told her, ‘It’s not only me who’s involved. Both their grandparents used to be teachers, and they help quite a bit, too.’ ”

“Well, I wish he hadn’t of said that. It’s mostly him, after all.”

Thomas said, “No, this way is better. Now she doesn’t think she’ll be totally saddled with kids when she marries him.”

“Everyone in my school is going to die of jealousy,” Daphne said. “Boy! I can’t wait to see DeeDee Hutchins’s face, and that stuck-up Lolly Kaplan.”

“So get to the end,” Agatha told her. “Did you do like we planned about dinner?”

“I did exactly like we planned. When Ian got up to go he said, ‘Well, I really do thank you, Miss Pennington—’ ”

“Not ‘Ariana’?”

“ ‘Miss Pennington,’ he said, and I said, ‘Me too, thanks; and Ian, can’t we ask her to dinner sometime?’ ”

“That did it,” Thomas said. “No way to back out of that.”

“Well, he tried. He said, ‘Oh, Daph, Miss Pennington has a very busy schedule,’ but she said, ‘Please, it’s Ariana. And I’d love to come.’ ”

“Goody,” Agatha said.

“Except … Ian is so backward.”

“Backward?”

“He said, ‘To tell the truth, our family’s not much for entertaining.’ ”

The other two groaned.

“But Miss Pennington told him, ‘Oh, I wouldn’t expect a banquet!’ and then she laughed and put her hand on his arm again.”

“She’s nuts about him,” Thomas said.

“Except Ian moved his arm away. In fact every time she did it he moved his arm away.”

“He’s playing hard to get.”

That made Daphne and Agatha look more cheerful. Thomas was the social one, after all. He was almost frantically social; he could skate so deftly through any situation. He was the one who knew how the world worked.

On the night Miss Pennington came to dinner, their grandma fixed roast beef. (The Bedloes confined themselves now to foods that didn’t require much preparation: roasts and baked chicken and burgers.) She had trouble holding utensils, and so she let Agatha make the gravy. “Pour in a dab of water,” she instructed, “and now a dab more …”

Thomas was setting the table, arranging the good silver on the place mats their grandma had already spread around. He came to the kitchen with a fistful of forks and said, “How come you’ve got nine place mats out?”

“Why, how many should we have?” their grandma asked.

“It’s only us and Miss Pennington: seven.”

“And also Mr. Kitt and the woman from your church,” their grandma said. “That comes to nine.”

Mr. Kitt needed no explanation; he was the authentic, certified vagrant who’d been more or less adopted by Second Chance last winter. But the woman? “What woman?” Thomas asked.

“Why, I don’t know,” their grandma said. “Some new member or visitor or something, I guess. You’ll have to ask Ian.”

The three of them looked at each other, “Rats,” Daphne said.

“I’m sure we’ll like her,” their grandma told them. “Ian said as long as we were going to all this trouble, we might as well invite her. And we’ve never had Mr. Kitt once; Ian says you’re the only people in church who haven’t.”

“Yes, but … rats,” Daphne said. “This was supposed to be just Miss Pennington!”

“Oh, don’t worry, we won’t neglect your precious teacher,” their grandma said merrily.

Last week they’d heard a new neighbor ask their grandma how many children she had. They’d listened for her answer: would she say two, or three? What did you say when a son had died? But she fooled them; she said, “Only one that’s still at home.” As if the people who stuck by you were all that counted, as if anybody not present didn’t exist.