Anne Tyler - Saint Maybe

October marked the longest Daphne had ever held a job — one entire year — and the florist gave her a raise. Her friends said now that she was making more money she ought to rent a place of her own. “You’re right,” she told them. “I’m going to start looking. I know I should. Any day I will.” No one could believe she still lived at home with her family.

That Thanksgiving was their first without Bee. It wasn’t a holiday Agatha usually returned for — she was an oncologist out in L.A., with a very busy practice-but this time she did, accompanied of course by Stuart. When Daphne came home from work Wednesday evening, she found Agatha washing carrots at the kitchen sink. They kissed, and Agatha said, “We’ve just got back from the grocery. There wasn’t a thing to eat in the fridge.”

“Well, no,” Daphne said, leaning against a counter. “We thought we’d have Thanksgiving dinner at a restaurant.”

“That’s what Grandpa said.”

As usual, Agatha wore a tailored white blouse and a navy skirt. She must have a closetful; she dressed like a missionary. Her black hair curled at her jawline in the docile, unremarkable style of those generic women in grade-school textbooks, and her face was uniformly white, as if her skin were thicker than other people’s. Heavy, black-rimmed glasses framed her eyes. You could tell she thought prettiness was a waste of time. She could have been pretty — another woman with those looks would have been pretty — but she preferred not to be. Probably she disapproved of Daphne’s tinkling earrings and Indian gauze tunic; probably even her jeans, which Daphne did have to lie down to get into.

“You know what Grandma always told us,” Agatha said. “Only riffraff eat their holiday meals in restaurants.”

“Yes, but everything’s been so—”

Just then, Stuart came through the back door with a case of mineral water. “Hello, Daphne,” he said, setting the case on the counter. He shook her hand formally. Daphne said, “Well, hey there, Stuart,” and wondered all over again how her sister had happened to marry such an extremely handsome man. He was tall and muscular and tanned, with close-cut golden curls and eyes like chips of sky, and away from the hospital he wore the sort of casual, elegant clothes you see in ads for ski resorts. Maybe he was Agatha’s one self-indulgence, her single nod to the importance of appearance. Or maybe (more likely) she just hadn’t noticed. It was possible she was the only woman in all his life who hadn’t backed off in confusion at the sight of him, which would also explain why he had married her . Look at her now, for instance, grumpily stashing his bottles in the refrigerator. “Really, Stu,” she said, “you’d think we were staying till Christmas.”

“Well, someone will drink it,” he told her affably, and he went to hold open the door for Doug, who was hauling in a giant sack of cat food.

Ian arrived from work earlier than usual, and he hugged Agatha hard and pumped Stuart’s hand up and down. He was always so pleased to have everyone home. And after supper — mostly sprouts and cruciferous vegetables, Agatha’s doing — he announced he’d be skipping Prayer Meeting to meet Thomas’s train with them. Ian almost never skipped Prayer Meeting.

He was the one who drove, with his father up front next to him and Daphne in back between Agatha and Stuart, her right arm held stiffly apart from Stuart’s suede sleeve. ( She could not take his looks for granted.) The dark streets slid past, dotted with events: two black men laughingly wrestling at an intersection, an old woman wheeling a shopping cart full of battered dolls. Daphne leaned forward to see everything more clearly, but the others were discussing Agatha’s new Saab. So far it was running fine, Agatha said, although the smell of the leather interior kept reminding her of adhesive tape. Agatha probably thought of Baltimore as just another city by now.

At Penn Station all the parking slots were filled, so Ian circled the block while the others went inside. “What’s happened to Ian?” Agatha murmured to Daphne as they walked across the lobby.

“Happened?” Daphne asked.

But then their grandfather caught up with them and said, “My, oh, my, I just never can get over what they’ve done to this place.” He always said that. He made them tip their heads back to study the skylight, so airily delicate and aqua blue above them, and that was what they were doing when Thomas discovered them. “Gawking at the skylight again,” he said in Daphne’s ear. She wheeled and said, “Thomas!” and kissed his cheek and passed him on to Agatha. Lately he had become so New Yorkish. He wore a short black overcoat that picked up the black of his hair and the olive in his skin, and he carried a natty little black leather overnight bag. But when he bypassed Stuart’s outstretched hand to give him a one-armed bear hug, Daphne could see he was still their old Thomas. He had this way of assuming that people would just naturally love him, and so of course they always did.

Now they had to crowd together in the car, and since Daphne was smallest she sat in front between Doug and Ian. As they drove up Charles Street, Thomas told them all about his new project. (He worked for a software company, inventing educational computer games.) None of them could get more than the gist of it, but Ian kept saying, “Mm. Mm hmm ,” looking very tickled and impressed, and Stuart and Agatha asked intelligent-sounding questions. Doug, however, was silent, and when Daphne glanced up at him she found him staring straight ahead with an extra, glassy surface in front of his eyes. He was thinking about Bee, she knew right off. All of the children home again but Bee not there to enjoy them. She reached over and patted his hand. He averted his face and gazed out the side window, but his hand turned upward on his knee and grasped hers. His fingers felt satiny and crumpled, and extremely fragile.

It wasn’t till late that night, after Doug and Ian had gone to bed and the others were watching TV, that Agatha had a chance to ask her question again. “What’s happened to Ian?”

“Nothing’s happened,” Daphne said.

“And Grandpa! And this whole house!”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Thomas, you know, don’t you?”

Thomas gave a light shrug — his favorite response to any serious question. He was seated on Agatha’s other side, flipping channels with the remote control. Stuart lounged on the floor with his back against Agatha’s knees. It was after midnight and Daphne was getting sleepy, but she hated to miss out on anything. She said, “How about we all go to bed.”

“Bed? In California it’s barely nine o’clock,” Agatha said.

“Well, I’m ready to call it a day,” Stuart announced from the floor. “Don’t forget, we flew the red-eye.”

“I come home and find this place a shambles,” Agatha told Daphne. “The grass is stone dead, even the bushes look dead. The front-porch swing is hanging by one chain. The house is such a mess there’s no place to set down our bags, and the dishes haven’t been done for days and there’s nothing to eat in the fridge, nothing in the pantry, not even any cat food for the cat, and when I go up to our room both mattresses are stripped naked and all the sheets are in the hamper and when I take the sheets to the basement the washing machine doesn’t work. Grandpa told me it’s been broken all fall. I asked him, ‘Well, what have you done about it?’ and he said, ‘Oh, any time one of us goes out we try to remember to gather a little something for the laundromat,’ and then he said we’re eating our Thanksgiving dinner in a restaurant. A restaurant! On St. Paul Street!”