Anne Tyler - If Morning Ever Comes

All he could see of Joanne was the white line that edged her profile from the light of the TV screen on her face. She had her eyes lowered to something in her lap — a piece of cloth. And she was sewing on it, pushing the needle through and then stretching her arm as far out as it would reach in order to pull the thread tight. Joanne was the type of person who used just one enormous length of thread instead of several short practical lengths. On the cane chair in front of her sat Tessie, also just a silvery profile but with a snatch of yellow over her forehead where the light hit her blond hair. And farthest in front, so that her back was toward Ben Joe, sat a small child in a child’s rocking chair. Of her Ben Joe could see nothing, except that she was so small (she would have been two only last June) her feet stuck out in front of her on the chair, and she was rocking violently. He could make out her small hands gripping the chair arms tightly; she flung her head first forward and then back, to make the chair rock. From here he could almost swear her hair was red, although that was improbable. He took another step into the room and said, “Has she got red hair?”

Joanne started and looked at him.

“Hi, Joanne,” he said.

“Ben Joe, come here! No, wait. Come out into the living room. It’s dark as night in here.”

She rose and pulled him out into the light and kissed him on both cheeks, hard, and hugged him around the waist. The little dress she was sewing was still in one hand, but the needle had slipped off its thread and was lying on the rug at her feet. It was funny how the tiniest thing Joanne did was exactly like her, even now, even after all these years. Any of the other girls would have stuck her needle into the cloth for safekeeping before she went to kiss her brother. “God, you’re thin,” she said. She was laughing, and her hair was mussed from hugging him. “I can’t believe it’s really you. Have you gone back to being a vegetarian?”

“No. Mom says it’s eating my own cooking that does it.”

“Mm-hm. You’re older, too. But that’s all right. I don’t reckon you’re ever going to get any lines in your face.”

“That’s from having no character,” he said absently. He was trying to decide what was different about her; something was making him feel a little shy, as if she were a stranger. Probably the way she dressed was partly responsible for it. In place of the blazing red dress of the old days was a soft yellow sacklike thing that hung loosely from her shoulders. She was still thin, though, with a face just slightly rounder than her sisters’. Almost immediately he decided what the change in her was; she was pretty much the same, with that same warm chuckly laugh, but she had a different way of showing it. A subtler one, he thought. Yet the bangles were still on her arms, and the twinkling, chin-ducking smile still on her face. He smiled back.

“I see you’re not old yet,” he said.

“Almost I am. Did you have a good trip?”

“I guess so. I came to call you to lunch, by the way. Gram’s dishing up.”

“I’ll get the children.”

She pattered back into the den, barefoot, and came out again with Carol in her arms and Tessie trailing behind her, blinking in the sunlight. The TV had been forgotten; accordion music seesawed out noisily from the empty room.

“You met Carol yet?” Joanne asked.

Ben Joe looked at Carol, checking her hair first because he was curious to see whether it was red or not. It was. It was cut, cup-like, around a small, round face that was still so young it could tell Ben Joe nothing. “Can you talk yet?” he asked her.

She smiled, not telling.

“Only when she’s in the mood,” Joanne said. “She’s got to say a word exactly right or she refuses to say it at all. A perfectionist. I don’t know where she gets it.”

“What about her red hair?”

“What?”

“Where’s she get that!”

Joanne frowned. “Where you get any kind of hair,” she said finally. “Genes.”

“Oh.”

“I sure am glad to see you, Ben Joe,” she said as they crossed the living room. “I am. You don’t know how glad.”

Embarrassed, Ben Joe smiled down at her and said nothing. At the stairway he stopped and yelled up, “Mom!” and then continued on into the kitchen, not looking at Joanne or waiting for his mother’s answer. But just before they reached the doorway he said, “Well, I’m happy to see you.”

“That’s good,” she said cheerfully.

In the kitchen Gram was bustling around, ladling food onto the plates on the table. Joanne pulled the old high chair up and sat Carol in it. “Don’t you go wiggling around,” she told her. She gave her a little pat on the knee. It made Ben Joe feel strange, watching Joanne with Carol. He never had really thought about the fact that she was a mother now with a child of her own.

“Where’s your mama?” Gram asked.

“Coming.”

“Well, her meal’s getting cold. Sit down, Joanne. Sit down, Ben Joe. Tessie, you got to hurry now. What happened to your napkin?”

“It’s on the screen porch.”

“Well, it’s not supposed to be. No, don’t go get it. More important to get your meal down you hot — stave off germs that way. Ben Joe, honey, aren’t you tired to pieces?”

“Not any more I’m not.”

“Well, you have a big helping of these here beans. Carol just threw her bib on the floor, Joanne.”

She put another scoop of beans on Ben Joe’s plate, shaking the spoon vigorously. Seeing her hands, so much older than the rest of her, reminded Ben Joe of the old man from the train. He said, “Gram, did you ever know a man named Dower?”

“Dower.” She sat down at her own place, smoothing the front of her apron across her lap. “Lord yes, I did. There was a whole leap of Dowers here at one time, though most have died out or moved on. There was the good Dowers and there was the bad Dowers. The good ones were very great friends of the family once. I near about lived at their house when I was a teeny-iney girl. They’re all dead now, I reckon. But the bad ones are living here yet. Wouldn’t you know. No relation to the good ones, of course. Living off the county and letting chickens in the kitchen. That kind just hangs on and hangs on. I don’t know why. They’re so spindly-legged and pasty-faced, but they keep on long after stronger men’s in their graves.”

She stopped to take a breath. Ben Joe’s mother came into the kitchen and pulled up a chair for herself. Carol threw her bib on the floor again and said, “Carrot.”

“We’re going to have to tie a double knot in your bib from now on,” Ben Joe’s mother told her. She took a raw carrot from the plate on the table and handed it to her. “Gram, what are those little things in the dish over there?”

“Smoked oysters. And that child shouldn’t have a carrot.”

“Smoked oysters?”

“That’s what I said. Won’t have this grocery rut of Jenny’s one day longer. My mind’s made up. Ellen, take that carrot away from her.”

“Why? She’s got teeth.”

“But it’s a big thick carrot.”

“Well, we can’t mollycoddle her. The rest of the girls had carrots at her age.”

“Not while I was around,” Gram said. “She’ll choke on it.”

Joanne looked up anxiously and Gram nodded to her.

“On the little pieces of it. She’ll choke. I’ve seen it happen.”

“Oh, don’t be silly,” said Ellen Hawkes.

Joanne reached over and took the carrot away, replacing it with a soda cracker immediately so that Carol didn’t have time to start crying. Ben Joe’s mother turned back to her meal, resigned. Neither she nor Gram paid much attention to these quibbling arguments of theirs; they were used to them. Gram said Ellen Hawkes was coldhearted and Ellen Hawkes said Gram was soft-cored. The rest of the family was as used to the feud as they were. They went on eating now, cheerfully, and Carol began gnawing at her cracker.