Anne Tyler - Earthly Possessions

"You were just unlucky," I told him.

"Never mind."

"When you think," said Jake, "that I set all this in motion f ust to show t ain't a bad man, don't it make you want to laugh?" Late in the afternoon we arrived in Linex, which seemed to be one very wide, empty street We stopped in front of a grocery store to use the phone booth. "Now the name of this place is the Dorothea WhiI'man Home," said Jake. He was leafing through the directory, which was no thicker than a pamphlet. His stubby finger slid down the columns. He had kept the door open and I looked past his shoulder to see, of all things, butterflies, spangling the yellow air. We truly had traveled; we'd left that cold false Maryland spring behind and found a real one. "Lookl" I said, and Jake spun toward the door. "Butterflies," I told him.

"Will you let me get on with this?" I wasn't wearing my raincoat any more and he had unzipped his jacket. We were showing whole new layers: identical white shirts. Glassed in the way we were, under the last of the sunlight, we both had a thin shine of sweat like plants in a greenhouse. "In Clarion, it may be snowing," I said.

"Not likely," said Jake. His finger had found its mark and stopped.

"Dorothea WhiI'man Home," he said. I'll dial, you talk."

"How come I have to talk?"

"You don't think they'd let a man through."

"I can't imagine why not."

"Well, I ain't taking no chances. Ask for Mindy Callender, say ifs her aunt or something." He dropped in a dime and dialed. I pressed the receiver to my ear. A woman answered: "Whitman Home."

"Mindy Callender, please," I said. "One moment."

Something in the lines turned off and on. There was a pause and then a thin voice said, "Hello?"

"Hello. Mindy?"

"Who's this?" I handed the receiver to Jake. "Hey there," he said. He grinned. "Yeah, yeah, it's me. I'm here. No, that was just-well, I'm fine. How're you?" He listened a long time. His face grew serious again. "Sony to hear that," he said. "Really? WeD, I'm sorry to… look here, Mindy, I need to know something. Has anybody been asking for me? Asking if you knew my whereabouts? You sure, now. No I'm not in no trouble, quit that.

Just tell me where to come for you." I pressed my back against the glass of the booth, trying to get more room. I watched Jake's fingers tap the directory and then grow still. "Why not?" he said. "It ain't even dark yet. Look, now, Mindy, we're in sort of a hurry here, we… how's that? Naw. What would I be doing with a ladder?" He listened a while longer. "Yeah, well," he said. "First left after the… sure. Sure I got it, I ain't that stupid. Okay. Bye." He hung up and dug his fingers into his hair. "Shoot," he said.

"What's the inatter?"

"First she says she can't get free today, wants me to come at midnight instead and fetch her down a ladder. A ladderl I tell you, sometimes that Mindy is so… and when I say no, she says then maybe she'll meet me at six tomorrow morning. M^ybe, maybe not What is she playing at now?"

"I would think a ladder would be sort of… risky," I said.

"You don't know Mindy, that's just the kind of thing she admires," he said.

"I'm surprised she don't want me charging up on a horse." We left the booth and went into the grocery store. Jake chose a Gillette, a can of lather, a giant bottle of Coke, and a bag of Doritos. I saw a freezer full of orange juice and developed a craving for some, but he said it would be too much trouble to mix.

He was very short-tempered, I thought. He cruised the aisles, — muttering to himself, hurrying me along whenever I slowed down. "Come on, come on, we ain't got all night."

"The way I see it, all night's just what we do have," I said.

"This is not tihe time to start acting smart," he told me.

After we'd finished in the grocery store we drove on through Linex, which had turned a silvery color now that the sun was down. We traveled so far I wondered if we were going for good, giving up on Mindy. I thought that would be fine. (Even leaving someone else's loved one could fill me with a kind of wicked joy.) But then Jake slowed the car and peered at the woods to his right. He said, "This here will have to do, I guess." A brown wooden sign spelled out TUNSAQUTT KAMPGROUNDS in chiseled letters. We turned onto a dirt road and bounced along, passing an empty bulletin board, a Johnny-on-the-Spot, and several trashcans. Finally the road ended. Jake stopped the car and slumped back. "Well," I said.

"Yeah, well," he said.

He rolled down the window. This deep in the woods it was already twilight, and a mushroom-smelling chill hit us like a faceful of damp leaves. He rolled the window up again. "I thought at least they'd have picnic tables," he said.

"Maybe we could try further on." *Nah." I pulled my raincoat around me but Jake just sat there, drumming his fingers on the steering wheel. Finally I reached into the grocery bag and opened the Doritos. "Have some," I said. He shook his head. I took a handful myself and ate them one by one. They're good,"

I told him. "Try and see."

"I ain't hungry."

"If we just had that orange juice they'd be perfect."

"Now, how'd we mix orange juice way off here in the woods?

Besides, I had to watch the money. We're almost out."

"If you're watching the money, why'd you buy the razori^' I said. "I'd rather have orange juice."

"Well, I would rather have a shave," said Jake. He straightened up and checked his face in the mirror. "Death Row Jethro," he said, and sank back. "She'd take one look and run. I can't abide not shaving."

"I can't abide not eating fruit," I told him. "I just have this craving; I believe I'm getting scurvy."

"Will you quit that? Will you just stop dwelling on a thing?" I quit. I ate some more Doritos and looked at the woods. Once I got used to the bareness-slick brown needled floor, color washed out in the dusk-I thought it was sort of pleasant here. But Jake was so restless. He started crackling through the grocery bag. He took some Doritos after all and then brought out the Coke bottle, unscrewed the top, and sent a fine warm spray over both of us. "Oops. Sorry," he said.

"That's all right."

"Have a drink."

"No, thanks."

"If you like," he said, "you can sleep in the back tonight. I ain't sleeping anyhow. I plan to just sit here and go crazy."

"Okay."

"I don't see how you stand this," he said. "You forget," I told him, "I've been married." We sat there munching Doritos, watching the trees grow taller and blacker as night came on.

Ten

I first left my husband in 19xx, after an argument over the furniture. This was Alberta's furniture that he'd stored instead of selling, for some reason, back when he sold her house. We hadn't been married a month when he hired a U-Haul and brought everything home with him: her rickety bedroom suites, linoleum-topped table and worn-out chairs, her multicolored curtains and shawls and dresses… add to this her father-in-law's belongings as well, all the props and costumes the old man had stashed in the dining room. Well, I thought Saul meant to hold a garage sale or something. Certainly I saw that we couldn't go on paying the storage bills. But it seemed he had no such intention. He kept it, every bit of it. The house was overstaffed as it was, so he had to double things up: an end table in front of another end table, a second sofa backed against the first. It was crazy. Every piece of furniture had its shadow, a Siamese twin. My mother didn't seem to find it odd at all (she doted on him now, she thought he could do no wrong) but I did. He wouldn't even open Alberta's letters; what did he want with her furniture?

I myself thought of Alberta daily, and had coveted all she owned for years, but these were just her cast-offs. If she had managed to fling them away, so could I. "Saul," I said, "we have to get rid of this clutter. I can't move. I can't breathe! It's got to go."