Anne Tyler - If Morning Ever Comes

Once in the downstairs hall, he moved quickly across the half-lit area between the stairs and the front door. There was a square of warm yellow light on the rug, cast through the wide archway of the living room, and the murmuring voices of his sisters were as clear as if they were out in the hall also, but nobody noticed when he crossed the yellow square. At the front door he stopped, setting his suitcase by his feet, and stood there a minute and then turned back and entered the yellow square again.

“Mom?” he said at the living-room doorway.

“Mmm.” She didn’t look up. She was sitting on the couch, sipping her after-supper Tom Collins and leafing through a Ladies’ Home Journal . Beside her Gram was reading Carol a chapter out of Winnie-the-Pooh , although Carol wasn’t listening, and on the other side of the room Jenny and Tessie and the twins were arguing over a game of gin rummy. The other two were out somewhere — Susannah with the school phys-ed instructor and Joanne with Gary, showing him her home town before they went back to Kansas in the morning. But those who were still at home looked so calm and cheerful, sitting in their lamp-lit room, that Ben Joe almost wished he could stay with them and forget the suitcase at the front door.

“Hey, Mom,” he said.

“What is it?” She looked up, holding one finger in the magazine to mark her place. “Oh, Ben Joe. Why don’t you come on in?”

“ ‘Many happy returns of Eeyore’s birthday,’ ” Gram was saying in her bright, reading-aloud voice. Carol sniffed and bent down to touch the bunny ears on one of her slippers, and Gram glared at her. “I said, ‘Many happy returns of—’ ”

“I’m going back to school,” Ben Joe said.

“ ‘Eeyore’s birthday,’ ” Gram went on, no longer looking at the book but just finishing the sentence automatically. “Where you say you’re going, Ben Joe?”

“To school,” he said.

“You mean, tonight you’re going?”

“Yes’m.”

His mother folded the page over and then closed the magazine. “Well, I don’t see—” she began.

“I just suddenly remembered this test I’ve got, Mom. I really have to go. I’m going to catch that early train …”

His sisters turned around from their card game and looked at him.

“Where’s your suitcase?” Jane asked.

“Out in the hall. I just stopped in to say good-by.”

“Well, I should hope so,” said his mother. “Why didn’t you tell us earlier? Now I don’t know what to do about those shirts of yours that are still in the laundry—”

“Don’t worry about it. You can send them to me later.” He felt awkward, just as he knew he would, standing empty-handed in the doorway with everyone staring at him. His grandmother was the first one to stand up. She came toward him briskly, her arms outstretched to hug him good-by, and he smiled at her and went to meet her halfway.

“If you’d only told us, I could’ve made some cookies,” she said.

“No, I don’t need—”

“Or at least some sandwiches. You want me to whip you up some sandwiches, Ben Joe?”

“I haven’t got time,” he said.

The rest of the family was clustered around him now; Carol had her arms about one of his knees as if he were a tree she was about to climb. Behind his sisters stood his mother, with her face no longer surprised but back to its practical, thoughtful expression.

“I suppose it’s about time,” she said. “Looked as if you’d forgotten school.”

“We’ll drive you to the station,” said Lisa.

“No, thank you, I’ve got plenty of time.”

“But you just said you didn’t have—”

“No, really. I feel like walking. Come kiss me good-by, everyone.”

There was a succession of soft, cool cheeks laid against his. His grandmother held Carol up and she kissed him loudly on the chin, leaving a little wet place that he wiped off absent-mindedly with the cuff of his sleeve.

“Look, Mom,” he said, when his mother stepped forward to hug him, “you tell Joanne good-by for me, okay? And Susannah. Tell Joanne I’m sorry to leave without—”

“Of course I will,” she said automatically. “Try to get some sleep on the train, Ben Joe.”

Gram kissed him again, with her usual angry vigor, and said, “Don’t buy a thing on the train if you can help it, Benjy. You never know how much they’re going to upcharge. Me, now, I have some idea, because I used to be a good friend of Simon McCarroll that sold cigarettes and Baby Ruths on the train from here to Raleigh some twenty years back. He used to say to me, ‘Bethy Jay,’ he says, ‘you’ll never know how they upcharge on these here trains,’ and I’d answer back, I’d say—” She stopped, staring off into space. It was her habit, when saying good-by’s, to lead the conversation in another direction and ignore the fact that anyone was leaving. Taking advantage of her pause, Ben Joe’s mother patted him on the shoulder and became brisk and cheerful, just as she always did at such times.

“I know you’ll have a good trip, Ben Joe,” she said.

“You got enough money?” Jenny asked.

“I think so. Jenny, you tell Susannah to take good care of my guitar, will you?”

“I will. Bye, Ben Joe.”

“Good-by.”

His sisters smiled and began turning back to their gin-rummy game. His mother led the way to the front door.

“You’ll tell her too, won’t you?” he said to her. “Tell her it’s a good guitar, and a good hourglass and all. Don’t let her go forgetting—”

“Oh, Ben Joe.” She laughed and pulled the door open for him. “Everything’ll take care of itself.”

“Maybe.”

“Everything works out on its own, with no effects from what anyone does …”

He bent to pick up his suitcase and smiled at her. “Good-by, Mom,” he said.

“Good-by, Ben Joe. I want you to do well on that test.”

He started out across the porch, and the door closed behind him.

When he was across the street from his house he turned and looked back at it. It sat silently in the twilight, with the bay windows lit yellow by the lamps inside and the irregular little stained-glass and rose windows glowing here and there against the vague white clapboards. When he was far away from home, and picturing what it looked like, this wasn’t the way he saw it at all. He saw it as it had been when he was small — a giant of a place, with children playing on the sunlit lawn and yellow flowers growing in two straight lines along the walk. Now, as he looked at the house, he tried to make the real picture stay in his memory. If he remembered it only as it looked right now, would he miss it as much? He couldn’t tell. He stood there for maybe five minutes, but he couldn’t make the house register on his mind at all. It might be any other house on the block; it might be anyone’s.

He turned again and set off for the station. The night was growing rapidly darker, and his eyes seemed wide and cool in his head from straining to see. Occasionally he met people going alone or in two’s on after-supper errands, and because it was not really pitch-dark yet, almost all of them spoke cheerfully or at least nodded to Ben Joe whether they knew him or not. Ben Joe smiled back at them. To the older women, walking their dogs or talking to friends on front walks, he gave a deep nod that was almost a bow, just as his father had done before him. Two children playing hopscotch on white-chalked lines that they could barely see stepped aside to let him pass. He walked between the lines gingerly so as not to mess them up, and didn’t speak until the smaller one, the boy, said hello.

“Hello,” said Ben Joe.

“Hello,” the little boy said again.