Anne Tyler - Earthly Possessions

"Sometimes he just tempts people to catch him. Watch," she said.

But no, here he came, shaking his head, extra bouncy on his heels from having had to hold still so long. "It's Mrs. Jamison, sure enough," he told us.

"Potato on toothpicks, standing at the counter, hoping for someone to look down on."

"Maybe she won't know who you are," Mindy said.

"Are you kidding? Every night she prays I fall out of a window," said Jake.

"Well just sit here a while." He was talking about a slatted bench that stood at the edge of the yard, facing the street. We sat down on it, Mindy in the middle.

It was one of those lukewarm, breezy evenings that make you feel you're expecting something. We sat like people in a movie house, but all we had to watch was a dingy men's store across the way and a few passing cars.

Periodically Jake would crane around toward the office door-a narrow rectangle full of light.

"What if she's there for the evening?" Mindy asked him.

"We stay somewheres else and come back the next day. Bent us a room with Charlotte's traveler's check."

"Oh, Jake, I'm beat Can't we just go on in and pay no mind what she says to you?"

"I wouldn't face that woman for nothing,"

Jake said. "I'm scared to death of her." I thought that was funny. I started laughing, but stopped when he glared at me. "Why don't you just shove a pistol in her ribs?" I said.

Oh, I was even tireder than I'd thought. Jake drew his head in sharply.

Mindy said, "Pistol?"

"Lady's crazy," he told her. He had his arm along the back of the seat, and now he started stroking her shoulder like someone calming a cat. "Fact is, Oliver's mom has always disliked me," he said. "I believe she ties me up in her mind with tilings I never had no part in. Various misfortunes of Oliver's. It wasn't me put those bombs in no mailboxes, I didn't even know him then. Didn't know him tifl training school. But try and tell her that. She sees me, she thinks Trouble'."

"She's not the only one," Mindy said.

Their voices had taken on that clear, anonymous sound that comes at twilight. They might have'been campers telling ghost stories, strollers talking under someone's window, parents heard from far across a lawn.

"When the two of us got out of training school," Jake said, "why, I would drop over to see him sometimes. He didn't liv^ all that much of a distance. He lived with his mom, who was a real estate lady. I would find him home reading, all he done was reading. We'd ride around, go out for a hamburger, you know how it is. I really had a good time with that Oliver. But only if his mom wasn't there. His mom was so brisky and dry of voice. Never smiled unless she was saying something mean. Like she'd say, 'Back so soon, Jack?" She always called me Jack, which is definitely not my name. That can grate on a person.

'Funny,' she'd say, I thought you were here just yesterday. No doubt I was mistaken.' With this small sweet smile curling up her mouth while she was talking. I hate a woman to do that."

"That's how my mother did you," said Mindy.

"You just have this knack, I believe." She told me, "My mother used to be so rude to him. Now she pretends he's not alive and never will mention his name. I ask in my letters if she's seen him and all she'll answer back is how many inches of rain they've had. He could fall down dead and she wouldn't tell me. To her he's dead already."

"Well, that explains it," Jake said.

"What's it explain?"

"Anyway," said Jake, "you may laugh that Fd let Mrs.

Jamison get to me but I couldn't help it. I mean I just couldn't help it. See, at the time my own mom was right disappointed in me too though nowhere near as mean, of course. She would just act pale and slumpy and bow her head real low over her sewing. Know how they do? I went to Oliver's to get away from her, but met up then with Oliver's mom. Seems I had been characterized as someone no-account. Seems I couldn't shake other people's picture of me." I gave a sudden sigh. Mindy crossed her ankles, and her dress stirred and whispered.

"Well, I run off," said Jake. "I heard of this guy that would pay you for driving a car to California. I just wanted to get gone and so I left with no goodbyes. Not that I kept it a secret on purpose, but my mom happened to be visiting a lady down the street when I received word and what I thought was, I've got to get free! Got to go, can't stay here no more." Only they arrested me in California for running a stolen automobile. Well, I didn't draw a sentence or nothing. It was all cleared up. But things were a little complicated on account of past troubles I'd had, and time I got home it was some months later and Oliver'd gone to Florida. I asked his neighbors. *Why, him and his mother packed up some weeks ago and moved to Perth, Florida, where it's less crime she says and a better class of people, and the sun shines so steady there they give you your newspaper free on any day it rains.' And sure enough, that Christmas and every Christmas after I would get a card from O. J., Florida-type, Santa Claus riding a surfboard, angels picking grapefruit. "Merry Christmas, Jake, I hope you're well.' And I would put some effort into answering, though let me tell you I'm not what you'd call a letter writer. Talk about all I was doing and all, spend quite some time on it. But the only thing he ever sent was those Christmas cards. Only Christmas cards. Made me feel like he was in jail, you know? Just that one card a year, maybe censored; surprised if she didn't check my letters for hacksaws and razor blades. Well, I blame myself, really. I never should have left him with his mom like that. Why didn't I drop around his house before I run, ask him to come on along? But I was just so anxious to get going, you see.

Just so desperate to leave." We watched a stream of cars flow past us, colorless in the twilight, packed with wan, exhausted faces straining southward.

"The trouble is," said Jake, "when people are thinking ill of you you just have this urge to get out, you know? You say, now if I could just gather myself together again. If I could just start my life over somehow."

"That's true," I said.

"I really believe," he told me, "that any time you see someone running, it's their old, faulty self they're running from. Or other people's notion of their faulty self. But I don't know, I don't know." Then he stood up, took a few steps onto the grass, and leaned toward the door of the office. "She's gone," he said.

"Who's there now?" Mindy asked.

"Nobody, looks like." He stood waiting, with his back to us. Mindy set her skirt out all around her. "Notice he hasn't even mentioned supper," she told me.

Thoughtless? And I got low blood sugar."

"Hot dog! Here comes some other guy," said Jake. "We can ask him. Let's go, ladies." We rose disjointedly and followed him. Up the walk, up the steps, across the creaky porch. Through the orange glow of the overhead light-bug proof, supposedly, but that didn't stop a whole herd of brown moths from puttering about near my hair.

Though it wasn't fully dark outside yet, we had to blink when we stepped in the door. Yellow lamps lit the room, glaring off the cracked linoleum. Behind a counter cluttered with ashtrays, magazines, and sightseeing brochures, a lanky, sand-colored man with floppy blond hair stood rubber-stamping envelopes. He didn't look up when we came in. He kept his head bent, his bony hand pacing steadily between envelopes and stamp pad as if he took real pleasure in the rhythm. "Be with you in a minute," was all he said, in a deep, cracked voice that seemed younger than he did.

"Well, I'm hunting Oliver Jamison," said Jake. "You know him?" Then die man stopped working and looked up. His eyes were not so much blue as transparent, but they darkened while I watched. "Why, Jake," he said.