Anne Tyler - Earthly Possessions

When she was gone, I reached over to the stool beside me and picked up a newspaper. Used, badly refolded, but all of it was there. "Want the fannies?" I asked Jake. He looked disgusted. I shrugged. I scanned the first page, then the second. Primaries, cost of living, labor contracts.".. not a word about Jake or me. We'd dropped out of people's minds, might pot even have existed. They'd moved on to more important concerns. I was stunned. Jake wasn't, though. When I lowered the paper, he didn't even glance up. He was too busy filling his pockets with Domino sugar packs.

"We're not in here," I told him.

"Huh?" he said. He looked around the diner.

"In the paper. Not in the paper."

"So?" The waitress brought our order. I sat staring into my coffee, not touching it. Jake hitched up his jacket sleeves and reached across me for the salt. "How much cash you got?" he asked me.

"Cash?"

"I need to find out."

"It's none of your business," I said.

"I know you got some, I saw it in your billfold."

"That's my own private money," I said.

Ordinarily I don't give a hoot about money, never have; but this was different. I was on my own and forgotten, deserted by everyone who should have been hunting me, and here was this stranger trying to take my last means of support. Also, my feelings were hurt. I'd enjoyed having somebody buy me things, to tell the truth. I said, "You might show a little consideration."

"Look.

Lady," said Jake. "Charlotte. This trip ain't cheap, for the gas alone. I'm running short. Now as a rule I would no more take from a individual person than fty, but in this case I have got to ask you for your billfold." I pretended not to hear him.

"Let's just say it's a loan," he said.

"I don't want to loan it." I'm begging you. I got to have it. What you think, those puny dollar bills will last forever?" The waitress glanced over her shoulder at us. Light flashed off her spectacles.

"You're killing me," Jake said. "Just sitting here killing me." His voice was low but cracking around the edges, and I could tell he was about to throw a scene. I hate scenes. I took the billfold out of my purse and slapped it down on the counter.

"Ah," said Jake.

"Seven measly dollars," I said. "I certainly hope you're satisfied."

"Word of honor pay it back, Charlotte. Cross my heart."

"I bet," I said.

I rested my chin on my fist. Brooded over my coffee, blinking in the steam.

Looked around for sugar, but the metal rack was empty. I could have cried.

"There's no sugar!" I said.

"Well, there," said Jake, and fished up a pack from his pocket. He opened it and poured it in for me. I sat back and watched. Then he added cream, and stirred it with a plastic spoon. "Drink it," he told me.

I felt comforted. All I had to do was lift the cup, which was warm and heavy and solid. Everything else had been seen to. I was so well taken care of.

After Saul and I were engaged, my mother made some adjusI'ments in her thinking. I suppose she imagined ways of keeping us with her forever, somehow.

She acted friendlier toward him. She grew more animated and had to be taken to look at wedding gowns. Her heart's desire was a real church wedding, she said.

Saul said that would be fine. Not a one of us belonged to a church, but why point that out? I just drifted along. There was a satisfying heaviness in my hands and feet that made me move unusually slowly. Though sometimes I'd sit up with my heart pounding; I'd wonder: Am I really going to do this? Go on through with this? What can I be thinking of? But then I'd make my mind go blank. My muscles would loosen, and the heaviness would swim back over me.

Taking pictures now, I froze so long behind the camera that you might ask who was getting preserved here: my customers or me. Sitting with Saul in the evenings, I sheltered under his arm and listened to him plot our lives. He wanted six children. I assumed I couldn't have any (having inherited, in some illogi- cal way, my mother's non-pregnancy and untrue baby) but I nodded, even so. I imagined six dark, unreadable little boys with Saul's straight nose, hanging onto my skirts. I imagined myself suddenly as colorful, rich, and warm as Alberta, my narrow, parched life opening like a flower. All I had to do was give myself up. Easy. I let him lead me. I agreed to everything. It was such a pleasure that I felt soothed and sleepy, like a cat in sunshine.

Mama said there was nothing fit to wear in the bridal shops, and she started making my dress at home. White satin, high-necked, with buttoned sleeves.

Evidently she wasn't planning on a summer wedding. It was almost June by then.

Saul's money was running low. He still hadn't found what he wanted to do. All I wanted to do was sleep with Saul, but that went against his convictions. He had tomcatted long enough, he said, and was looking now for a home, a family, a steady way of life. And he wouldn't marry me till he found a job; everything had to be perfect. I myself would rather have been married immediately, but I didn't argue. In this new mood of mine, I only smiled. My hands and feet grew heavier every day; my eyes took on the pearly glow of someone in a trance.

Then Saul caught a bus to Colorado. He went to see an old Army buddy; they were going to talk about a partnership in something. Maybe some kind of a shop where they could work with their hands. I should keep my fingers crossed, he told me. He was aiming for a June wedding, That was terrible, that time he was gone. I felt Td just waked from some long, pillowy dream and taken a look at where I was: still friendless, sallow, peculiar, living alone with my mother, surrounded by monstrous potted plants taller and older than I was. Rubber trees and Chinese palms that hadn't put out a new leaf since I was born. Mildewed sets of the classics locked in glass-fronted bookshelves, dusty candy in pedestaled dishes. And Mama newly anxious over this trip to Colorado, fretting and mumbling and letting my wedding gown fall apart on the dress form in the dining room.

Would I really consider going so far? she asked. Was I taking her along?

I would consider going anywhere, anywhere at all. And I wasn't taking Mama.

I moved to Saul's room. (Mama was shocked.) Saul had a lot of clutter too but at least there was life in his clutter. All his Army things smelled salty and wild. What little he had saved from Alberta's house- a green metal toolchest and two hunting rifles-had a self-contained look. I stared for hours at a group photo of Edwin, the four boys, and a birthday cake, with a clipped-out square at the center of the picture. I slept in his hard sleigh bed, I wrapped up in his terrycloth bathrobe, and occasionally I slipped my feet into a pair of his shoes. But still I couldn't seem to step inside his life. Clomping along, trailing an extra six inches of terrycloth sleeve, I would wade to the window and lean out to memorize his view: Alberta's house, with the panes gone now and the roof ripped off. I opened his closet just to breathe in his clothing, and once even heaved a rifle onto my shoulder and laid my cheek against the oiled wood of the handle. Squinting along the bluish barrel, resting my finger on a trigger no more complicated than a camera button, I could easily imagine shooting someone. It's the completed action: once you've taken aim, how can you resist the pull to follow through?

Saul was gone ten days, but came back with nothing settled. He hadn't liked his friend as much as he'd remembered. He didn't know; they just hadn't hit it off, somehow. He would rather keep on looking. Rather wait for whatever felt right That evening I put on a floating nightgown, and listened for Mama's door to close. Then I went skimming through the dark to his salty-smelling room, to his hard sleigh bed, to his window full of moonlight and Alberta's tottering house.