Anne Tyler - Saint Maybe

They clung to the belief that Ian felt a special affection for Dulcimer, and they always made a point of displaying what she was wearing that day — one or another infant outfit handed down from Daphne. “Why, Miss Dulcimer!” Ian would say. “I do believe fuzzy pink flannel is your most becoming fabric.” They thought it was hilarious when he spoke to her directly. Then they might play Parcheesi — Ian’s idea; all the Bedloes loved any kind of game — or he read to them, his throat aching tightly with held-back yawns as he imitated various squeaky animals.

Daphne was usually an invisible, slumbering presence, but if Lucy stayed out too long Ian might hear a tentative cry from the children’s room. He would find her lying in her crib, sucking her fist and watching the door so his first impression was always that considering stare. She was the only person he knew of with navy blue eyes. He would lift her awkwardly, in a bunch, pretending not to notice the dampness seeping around the legs of her terry-cloth pajamas. He would carry her to the kitchen and set a bottle in the electric warmer. Waiting for it to heat, he breathed her smell of warm urine and something vanilla-ish — maybe just her skin. Thomas tugged at one of her terry-cloth feet. “Hey there, Daffy. Daffy-doo.” Daphne squirmed and murmured into the curve of Ian’s neck.

When Lucy returned, she brought a burst of cold air through the door with her. The cold seemed to lie on her surface in a sparkling film. And she was always lit up and laughing, excited by her expedition. She would hold out her arms to the children. “Were you good?” she would ask. “Did you miss me?” and she’d take the baby from Ian and nuzzle her face, nose to nose. “Guess what: I felt a couple of snowflakes. I bet we’re going to have snow tonight.” Balancing Daphne on her hip, she would fish in her big shoulder bag for Ian’s pay — generously rounding off to the nearest dollar, sometimes even adding a tip and telling him to take Cicely someplace nice. Ian knew that she and Danny weren’t rich, and he would protest but she always insisted. “Well, thanks,” he’d say lamely, and she would say, “Thank you! You don’t know how you saved my life.” Her money smelled of her cologne, a tingly scent that clung to the bills for hours afterward and hung in his room when he emptied his pockets at bedtime.

One afternoon when she returned there was something distracted about her. She greeted the children absently and failed to inquire after Daphne, who was still asleep. “Ian,” she said right away, “can I ask you something?”

“Sure.”

“Can I ask what you think of this dress?”

She slipped her coat off, revealing a different dress from the one she had left the house in. Holding her arms out at her sides, she spun like a fashion model. Thomas and Agatha gazed at her raptly. So did Ian.

It was the most beautiful piece of clothing he had ever seen in his life. The material was a luminous ivory knit, very soft and drapey, but over her breasts and her hips it was perfectly smooth. What would you call such material? He could imagine its silkiness against his fingertips.

“Do you think Danny will mind?” Lucy asked. “I don’t want him to feel I’m a spendthrift. Do you think I should take it back?”

“Oh, well, I wouldn’t,” Ian said. “Now that you’ve gone to the bother of lugging it home.”

She looked down at it, doubtfully.

He told her, “That, um, what-do-you-call …”

That V neckline , he wanted to say, plunging so low in the middle. And that skirt that whisks around your legs and makes that shimmery sound .

But what he said was, “That cloth is not bad at all.”

“But would you think it cost a lot?”

“Oh, only about a million,” he said. “Give or take a few thousand.”

“No, don’t say that! That’s what I was afraid of. But it didn’t cost hardly anything, I promise. You want to know what it cost? Nineteen ninety-five. Can you believe it? Can you believe that’s all it cost?”

Well, she did want his answer, after all. So he reached out to touch the fabric at her waist. It was so fine-spun it made his fingers feel as rough as rope. He curved his palm to cup her rib cage and he felt the warmth of her skin underneath. Then Lucy took a sharp step backward and he dropped his hand to his side.

“Oh, ah, nineteen ninety-five sounds … very reasonable,” he said. His voice seemed to be coming from somewhere else. There was a moment of silence. All he heard was Agatha’s snuffling breath.

“But anyhow!” Lucy said, and she laughed too gaily, artificially, and lifted her bag from the table. “Thanks for your opinion!” she said. Was she being sarcastic? She owed him two dollars but she paid him five. A hundred-and-fifty-percent tip. He said, “I’ll bring your change next time I see you,” and she said, “No, keep it. Really.”

He felt mortified by that.

Walking home through the twilight, he kicked at clumps of old snow and muttered to himself. Once or twice he groaned out loud. When he entered the front hall Bee said, “Hi, hon! How was our little Daffodil?” But Ian merely brushed past her and climbed the stairs to his room.

Over the next few days — a Friday and a weekend — he didn’t baby-sit; nor would he have ordinarily. He and Cicely went to a movie; he and his two best friends, Pig and Andrew, went bowling. Striding toward the foul line with the bowling ball suspended from his fingers, he thought of Lucy mailing that package to Wyoming. What kind of woman owns her own bowling ball? Not to mention the geisha girl figurine.

Really there was a great deal about Lucy that was, oh, a little bit tacky, when you came right down to it. (What a relief, to discover she wasn’t flawless!) Now he recalled the grammatical slips, It won’t be real fancy and It didn’t cost hardly anything; the way she sometimes wore her hair down even with high heels; the fact that she had no people. He knew it wasn’t her fault her parents had died, but still you’d expect a few family connections — brothers and sisters, aunts, at least cousins. And how about friends? He didn’t count those two waitresses; they were just workmates. No, Lucy kept to herself, and when she went out in the afternoons she went alone and she returned alone. He envisioned her rushing in from one of her shopping trips, her cheeks flushed pink with excitement.

Funny how she never brought any parcels back.

Why, even last Thursday she’d brought no parcel, the day she came home with that dress.

She hadn’t bought that dress at all. Someone had given it to her.

She wasn’t out shopping. She was meeting someone.

She had asked if the dress looked expensive. Not Do you think I paid too much? but Could I get away with saying I paid next to nothing? “Can you believe it?” she had asked. (Insistently, it seemed to him now.) What she’d meant was, Will DANNY believe it, if I tell him I bought it myself?

He watched the bowling ball crash into the pins with a hollow, splintery sound, and a thrill of malicious satisfaction zinged through him like an electrical current.

When she phoned Monday night to ask if he could babysit the following afternoon, he felt confused by the realness of her. He had somehow forgotten the confiding effect of that gravelly little voice. But he was busy, he told her. He had to study for a test. She said, “Then how about Wednesday?”

He said he couldn’t come Wednesday either. “Besides,” he said, “baseball practice is starting soon, so I guess after this I won’t be free anymore.”

Lucy said, “Oh.”

“Pressing athletic obligations, and all that,” he said.

There was a pause. He forced himself not to speak. Instead he conjured up a picture of Danny, for whose sake he was doing this. His only brother! His dearest relative, who trusted everyone completely and believed whatever you told him.