Anne Tyler - Saint Maybe

“Oh, yes,” Ian said.

“Do you have a specific bathroom in mind that’s in need of those tiles within the next ten days?” Rita asked him.

“Well, not exactly, but—”

“Then I suggest you walk them straight back out to the trash can,” she said, “or else I’ll have to tack them onto my estimate here.”

“But these are from Spain,” Ian told her. He bent to lift one from the box — a geometric design of turquoise and royal blue. “How could I put something like this in the trash?”

Rita considered him. She didn’t give the tile so much as a glance, but Ian continued holding it hopefully in front of his chest like someone displaying his number for a mug shot.

“You see what I have to deal with,” Daphne told Rita.

“Yes, I see,” Rita said.

Oddly enough, though, Daphne just then noticed how beautiful that tile really was. The design looked kaleidoscopic — almost capable of movement. She couldn’t remember now why stripping the house had seemed like such a good idea.

Rita did do an excellent job, as it turned out, but Daphne hardly had time to notice before something new came along for her to think about: Friday afternoon, she was fired.

It wasn’t entirely unexpected. Ever since she’d got her raise, she seemed to have lost interest in her work. She had shown up late, left early, and mislaid several orders. The messages people sent with their flowers had begun to depress her. “Well, I think I’ll say … well, let me see,” they would tell her, frowning into space. “Why don’t we put … Okay! I’ve got it! ‘Congratulations and best wishes.’ ” Then Daphne would slash CBW across the order form. “To the girl of my dreams” was G/dms . “Thanks for last night,” Tx/nite . She felt injured on their behalf — that their most heartfelt sentiments could be considered so routine. And when they were not routine, it was worse: I am more sorry than I can tell you and you’re right not to want to see me again but I’ll never forget you as long as I live and I hope you have a wonderful marriage . “With delivery that comes to twenty-seven eighty,” she would say in her blandest tone.

The way Mr. Potoski put it was, she could either leave now or stay on for her two weeks’ notice, but she could see he was eager to get rid of her. He already had a new girl lined up. “I’ll leave now,” Daphne told him, and so at closing time she gathered her few possessions and stuffed them into a paper sack. Then she slipped her jacket on and ducked quietly out the door, avoiding an awkward farewell scene. On the way to the bus stop she found herself composing messages to Mr. Potoski. Tx/fun: Thanks, it’s been fun. TK: Take care . Not that she had anything against Mr. Potoski personally. She knew this was all her own fault.

Her bus was undergoing some heater problems, and by the time she reached home she was chilled through. Still in her jacket, she went directly to the kitchen and lit the gas beneath the kettle. Ian must be working late this evening. She could hear her grandfather down in the basement, rattling tools and thinking aloud, but she didn’t call out to him. Maybe there was some advantage to living alone after all — not dealing with other people, not feeling responsible for other people’s happiness. Although that was out of the question, now that she had no salary.

She took a mug from the cupboard, where everything sat in straight rows — eight mugs, eight short glasses, eight tall glasses. The mugs that didn’t match and the odd-sized glasses had been sent to Good Works. The cereals that people had tried once and never again had disappeared from the shelves. In just three days Rita had turned this house into a sort of sample kit: one perfect set of everything. But Daphne hadn’t quite adjusted yet and she felt a little rustle of panic. She wanted some extras. She wanted that crowd of cracked, crazed, chipped, handleless mugs waiting behind the other mugs on the off chance they might be needed.

She ladled coffee into the drip pot and then poured in the boiling water. Coffee was her weakness. Reverend Emmett said coffee clouded the senses, coffee stepped between God and the self; but Daphne had discovered long ago that coffee sharpened the senses, and she loved to sit through church all elated and jangly-nerved and keyed to the sound of that inner voice saying enigmatic things she might someday figure out when she was wiser: if not for you, if not for you, if not for you and down in the meadow where the green grass grows … She waited daily for caffeine to be declared illegal, but it seemed the government had not caught on yet.

She poured the coffee and sat down at the table with it, warming her hands around the mug. Now her grandfather’s footsteps climbed the basement stairs and crossed the pantry. Daphne looked up, but the figure in the doorway was not her grandfather after all. It was Rita. Daphne said, “Rita! Aren’t you done with us?”

Well, she was done. She had finished yesterday afternoon and even presented her staggeringly high bill, which Daphne was going to mail on to Agatha as soon as she figured out where the stamps had been moved to. But here Rita stood, flushed from her climb, looking a bit better put together than usual in a flowing white shirt that bloused above her jeans and a tan suede jacket as soft as washed silk. “Daphne,” she said flatly. “I thought you were Ian.”

Ah.

Daphne had been through this any number of times. Back in high school, girlfriends of hers showed up unannounced, wearing brand new outfits and carrying their bosoms ostentatiously far in front of them like fruit on a tray. “Oh,” they’d say in just such a tone, dull and disappointed. “I thought you were Ian.”

But Rita already had somebody, didn’t she? She was living with Nick Bascomb. Wasn’t she?

“It just occurred to me,” Rita said, “that I ought to try once more to sort out your grandpa’s workbench. Not that I’d charge any extra, of course. But I didn’t feel right allowing it to stay so …”

Her voice dwindled away. Daphne, sitting back in her chair and cupping her mug in both hands, watched her with some enjoyment. Rita diCarlo, of all people! Such a tough cookie. Although Daphne could have warned her that she was about as far from Ian’s type as a woman could get.

“But it seems your grandpa’s sticking to his guns,” Rita said finally.

“Yes,” Daphne said. She took a sip from her mug.

“So I’ll be going, I guess.”

“Okay.”

In another mood, she might at least have offered coffee. But she had troubles of her own right now, and so she let Rita see herself out.

Daphne started reading the want ads over breakfast every morning. A waste of time. “What is this?” she asked her grandfather. “A city where nobody needs anything?”

“Maybe you should try an agency,” he said.

When it came to unemployment, he was her best listener. Ian always said, “Oh, something will show up,” but her grandfather had been through the Depression and he sympathized from the bottom of his heart every time she was fired. “You might want to think about the Postal Service,” he told her now. “Your dad found the Postal Service very satisfactory. Security, stability, fringe benefits …”

“I do like outdoor exercise,” Daphne mused.

“No, no, not a mailman,” her grandfather said. “I meant something behind a desk.”

She hated desk work. She sighed so hard she rattled her newspaper.

In the afternoons she would take a bus downtown to look in person—“pounding the pavement,” she called it, thinking again of her grandfather’s Depression days. She gazed in the windows of photographic studios, stationery printers, record shops. A record shop might be fun. She knew everything there was to know about the current groups. However, if customers asked her assistance with something classical like Led Zeppelin or the Doors, she’d be in trouble.