Anne Tyler - If Morning Ever Comes

“Well, I’m glad to hear it.”

She nodded, finished with that piece of news, and then frowned into space a minute as if she were fishing in her mind for the next piece.

“Oh, I know,” she said finally. “I know. Ben Joe, I was so sorry to hear about your daddy. I wrote you about it and you never answered. But I hope it was a peaceful passing. He was a sweet man, your daddy.”

“Thank you,” said Ben Joe.

“Susan Harpton told me about it. And about your going to work at the bank after classes and Joanne getting married and all. She said the whole town missed your daddy.”

“I did too,” said Ben Joe. “Took to riding trains.”

“What?”

“Trains. Riding trains. I rode trains all the time. One time I spent a whole month’s salary that way. Mom about had a conniption fit — I was almost the family’s only support back then.”

“Oh,” Shelley said. She frowned; she was on uncertain ground now. “Well, anyway, I just wanted to tell you I missed him. And if he lived a little different from most people, I don’t think anybody held it against him. Not your daddy. Remember how when he got to drinking he always wanted someone to sing to him? ‘Life Is Like a Mountain Railroad,’ that’s what he liked. Many’s the time I’ve sung it to him.”

“And ‘Nobody Knows the Trouble I’ve Seen,’ ” said Ben Joe.

“That’s right.” She smiled into her coffee cup and then looked up again, with the next subject decided upon. “I hear you’re in law school up north,” she said. “Mrs. Murphy told me that. She’s the one that’s been keeping an eye on the house all these years. She’s nice, though I found when I came back that she’d looked through the photograph albums and all Mama’s love letters. When your mama and grandma passed by the porch as I was sweeping I called out ‘hey’ to them, meaning to ask about you, but I had trouble making myself heard, as your grandma was doing some of that singing of hers and your mama was trying real hard to hush her. When your grandma saw me she recognized me right off, though. She shouted out to tell me you weren’t married yet, which I already knew, and a minute later your mama remembered me too. Your mama is a little slow in recognizing folks, but I don’t hold with what Mrs. Murphy says, that she’s on purpose slow. This town has always been of the opinion she is coldhearted, but I think it’s because your daddy was their fair-haired boy, and they didn’t want him hurt. Not that I think she meant to hurt him. I reckon she is just a little prideful and thinks pride’s the same as dignity so she doesn’t try and change herself. Mrs. Murphy said many’s the time she herself went to your mama to tell her all she had to do was let herself get to crying and then, as soon as the tears got started good, go to … urn, where your father lived at and tell him she wanted him back, but your mama always just tossed her hair and said who cared and offered Mrs. Murphy a slice of angel-food cake. It was the doctor’s business and no one else’s, she would say, though if it wasn’t the doctor’s wife’s business too, then what did they get married for?

“Well, anyway, I never did get to ask how you were doing up north, since your mama and grandma were in a hurry. But I know it can be a lonely place. I went up there once to work for the Presbyterian church and stayed for a month, rooming with a girl I’d met who turned out to be a bit touched in the head. Went around in a chiffon gown with a candle in her hand at four a.m. and talked about craning her swanlike neck in the rain. I went home again. I always have been a homebody. I don’t know what I’ll do without my family. Even Phoebe, and her so mischievous. The last night that Phoebe was … was living, the last night I ever saw her, she was in the kitchen with her boy-friend and when—”

“Phoebe had a boy-friend?” Ben Joe asked.

“Well, yes, and when I walked in, they were robbing this loose-change bank of my mama’s, shaped like an Indian with a slot in the top of his head where she puts the money in, for odds and ends-like that she wants to buy — they were robbing this bank so they could go to the movies. The boy-friend had just got out his pocketknife to put through the slot and Phoebe was holding out her hand and saying, ‘scalpel,’ and that’s the last I ever saw of her. I’m awful glad to meet up with you again, Ben Joe. All these years I been missing you.”

“I’m glad to see you,” said Ben Joe. He smiled at her in silence for a minute and then looked at his watch and stood up. “I’ve got to go. I was on the train all last night. Need to catch up on my sleep.”

“Oh, don’t you hurry.”

“I’ve got to.”

He picked up his jacket from the couch and put it on as he followed Shelley to the door. Outside it was raining; the sight surprised them both and they stood there looking at it.

“Don’t come out with me,” Ben Joe said.

“I won’t melt.”

“No, stay inside.”

“I want to see you safely to the street,” Shelley said.

Her face was serious, and she looked worried about him. Without knowing why, Ben Joe said, “Urn, this Jack Horner—”

“John Horner.”

“John Horner. Do you think he’d mind if I came back again?”

“I don’t know. I don’t — You come see me anyway, Ben Joe. You come anyway.”

She was smiling now, looking up at him with the porch light shining clear through those sky-blue eyes of hers. Her face was so close he could bend down and kiss her. He had never kissed her on her doorstep before, despite all Phoebe’s hopes; he had kissed her in his mother’s old Buick, parked somewhere in the darkness, with that pink smell of her perfume circling him and her arms thin and warm around his neck. Her face hovered under his, still close; she looked up at him. But as he was about to bend toward her he thought that maybe this might commit him again; maybe everything would begin all over again, and time would get even more jumbled up in his head than it was already. So he drew back from the pale oblong of her face and said, “Is Sunday evening all right? About nine?”

“Yes.”

“Well.”

He stood looking at her for a minute longer, and then straightened his shoulders.

“I’ll see you then,” he said.

“Good night, Ben Joe.”

“Good night.”

He turned and started down the long steps, being careful not to slip on the soggy layers of leaves beneath his feet. The rain was no more than an unsteady dripping sound now, with an occasional cool drop landing on his face. Once on the street again, he shoved his hands deep into his trouser pockets and walked very slowly, frowning, sorting his thoughts out. But his thoughts wouldn’t sort; he felt as if he was never again going to know the reason for anything he did. The puddles on the sidewalk began soaking into his shoes, and he started running toward home.

The next day was Saturday. Ben Joe awoke with a hollow, bored feeling; he dawdled over his breakfast until it was cold and then went back to his room to read a detective novel upside-down on an unmade bed. Halfway through the morning one of the girls knocked on his door and said, “Ben Joe?”

“Mm-hmm.”

“It’s me. Lisa. Can I come in?”

“I guess so.”

She stuck her head in the door and smiled. She was much calmer than her twin; it was the way Ben Joe had first learned to tell them apart. She was wearing a neat blue suit and high heels. “We’re going downtown,” she said. “Want to come?”

“You have to dress up that much just to go downtown?”

“Never can tell who you’ll meet.” She grinned, and crossed to his bed to hand him a postcard. “Mail,” she said. “Who’s Jeremy?”