Anne Tyler - If Morning Ever Comes

By evening Ben Joe was beginning to feel the weight of home settling back on him, making him feel heavy and old and tired. He had eaten too much for supper; his stomach ached and he didn’t want to admit it to anyone, or to show it by lying down, for fear that his mother and his grandmother would be hurt after all that special cooking. So he wandered aimlessly through the house, searching out something to do or think about. In the den Tessie and Jenny watched television, scowling intently at the screen and not looking up when he came to stand in the doorway. The twins, dressed in different colors now that they were older but still looking exactly the same in every other way, were popping popcorn with their dates in the kitchen, and Susannah and Gram were playing honeymoon bridge. None of them took any notice of him. He went upstairs, hoping to find someone up there who would talk to him, but his mother was using the sewing machine, her mouth full of pins and her eyes narrowed at the sleeve of a dress for Tessie. Joanne was giving Carol a bath. He could hear them even with the door half shut — Carol squealing and splashing, Joanne calming her with low, soothing noises and then occasionally laughing along with her.

“Can I come in?” Ben Joe called.

“Carol, you mind if a man comes to watch your bath?”

Carol made a louder splash, probably with the flat of her hand, and giggled.

“Well, she didn’t say no,” said Joanne.

Ben Joe pushed the door open and stepped inside. The room was warm and steamy, and cluttered with towels and cast-off clothes. Beside the bathtub knelt Joanne, wearing a terry-cloth bathrobe, with her hair hanging wet and stringy down her neck and her face shiny from her own bath. She had rolled the sleeves of the robe up to her elbows so that she could bathe Carol, who sat in a heap of rubber toys that blocked out almost all sight of bathwater and laughed at Ben Joe.

“Can’t be a true Hawkes,” said Ben Joe. “No bubble bath.”

“Oh, that’ll start soon enough.”

Ben Joe leaned back against the sink with one foot on a tiny old step stool that read: “For doing some job that’s bigger than me.” He tested his full weight on the edge of the sink, decided not to risk it, and stood up again.

“I meant to tell you,” Joanne said. “Don’t feel bad.”

“What?”

“Don’t you feel bad about what Gram said. About your mind being a mish-mash. It’s been in the back of my mind all day to tell you, she didn’t meant it. She just said it for the sake of argument.”

“I don’t feel bad.”

“Okay.”

She started soaping Carol’s hair, expertly, turning the pinkish-red hair dark auburn with her quick, firm fingers. For the first time he noticed that she wasn’t wearing a wedding ring. What had she done with it? He pictured her throwing it in Gary’s face, but it sounded improbable. Even in her ficklest days, Joanne had never done things that way. No, it would be more like her not even to tell Gary she was going. Or maybe it had been Gary who had left her , who knew?

“Where’s your wedding ring?” he asked.

“In my jewelry box.”

“What on earth for?”

“Well, I don’t know. I thought maybe I should wear it so I wouldn’t look like an unwed mother, but when I got here Mama said there was no point. She never wears hers , she said. It would just keep reminding her.”

She took Carol by the chin and the back of the neck and ducked her back into the water swiftly. Before Carol could utter more than one sharp squeak she was upright again, with her hair rinsed and streaming.

“Mom’s advice is the last I would take,” Ben Joe said.

“Now, don’t go being mean.”

“I’m not. She wants you to say, ‘Oh, who cares about him? ’ and then your whole problem is solved. You saw what that did for her.”

“Mom’s not as coldhearted as Gram keeps telling you, Ben Joe. You know that.”

“Oh, I know.”

“Besides, this isn’t the same kind of thing.”

“What kind of thing is it?” Ben Joe asked.

Joanne picked out a rubber duck and pushed it toward Carol, who ignored it. Carol was raising and lowering one round knee, watching it emerge sleek and gleaming and then lowering it again when the water had drained off to mere drops on her skin. Joanne watched too, thoughtfully, and Ben Joe watched Joanne.

“I always did like first dates,” she said after a minute. “I was good at those. I knew what to wear — not so dressy it made them shy and not so sloppy they thought I didn’t give a hoot — and how to act and what to say, and by the time I was ready to come in I’d have them all the way in love with me or know the reason why. But the dates after that are different. Once they loved me, what was I supposed to do then? Once I’ve accomplished that, where else is there to go? So I ended up confining myself to first dates. I got so good at them that I could first-date anyone — I mean even the people that were on seventh dates with me, or even people that weren’t dates at all. I could first-date my own family , even — just figure out what would make them love me at a certain moment and then do it, easy as that.”

She leaned forward suddenly, resting her elbows on the rim of the bathtub and staring into the water at Carol’s gleeful face.

“Then I got married,” she said.

Ben Joe waited, not pushing her. Joanne stood up and reached for a towel and then just stayed there, holding the towel forgotten in her hands.

“The trouble is,” she said, “you have to stop clinking your bracelets and dancing like a maniac after a while. You have to rest now and then. Which may have been okay with Gary, but not with me. I didn’t know what to do once I had sat down to rest, and so I started being just terrible. Following him around telling him what a awful wife I was. Waking him up in the middle of the night to accuse him of not believing I loved him. He was all sleepy and didn’t know what was coming off. He’d say sure he believed me and go back to sleep leaving me to lie awake counting the dust specks that floated around in the dark, and making all kinds of plans to get my hair done and have him take me dancing.” She frowned at the towel. “Got so I couldn’t bear my own self,” she said. “I left.”

She wrapped the towel around Carol and lifted her out onto the bath mat.

“What’d you come back here for?” Ben Joe asked.

She dried Carol silently for a minute. Then she said, “Well, I want Carol to be with some kind of people that know her if I am going to get a job. That’s why.”

She had finished scrubbing Carol with the towel and now she pulled a white flannel nightgown over the baby’s head, saying, “Where’s Carol? Oh, I can’t find Carol. Where’s Carol?” until Carol’s face poked through the neck of the nightgown, small and round and grinning.

“Besides,” Joanne said, tying the ribbon under Carol’s chin, “it’s not the same place I’m coming back to, really. Not even if I wanted it to be.”

“Oh, for God’s sake,” said Ben Joe.

“What’s wrong?”

“You and Mama. You and the girls. And Mr. Dower, even. Of course it’s the same place. What would it have gone and changed into? Always pulling up the same silly argument to fool yourselves with—”

“Now, now,” said Joanne soothingly. She picked Carol up. “It’s not the same place really, is it?”

He gave up, helplessly, and followed her out of the bathroom. There was no argument he could give that would convince her; she was too blindly cheerful, giving Carol little pecks on the cheek and talking to her happily as she crossed the hallway. At her mother’s door she stopped and looked in. “Gone downstairs,” she said. “Come on, Ben Joe. I want to ask you something.”