Anne Tyler - Earthly Possessions

"Huh?"

"You don't recognize me."

"Oliver?" Neither of them seemed happy to meet. Jake had a stunned, uncertain expression; Oliver looked concerned. He said, "You shouldn't be around here, Jake."

"Why not?"

"Don't you know the cops are hunting you?" Mindy clapped a hand to her mouth. From somewhere to the rear, a woman called, "Who is it, Ollie?"

"No one, Ma." He set down his stamp and came around the counter. "Let's go outdoors," he told us. Up close I saw the white squint lines breaking up his tan, I smelled the clean smell of his pale plaid shirt. He was one of those ambling, gentle-faced men who never act startled. He seemed like somebody I might know. Or maybe it was this place we were in-clearly a home, in spite of the counter, with a tangle of baby-blue knitting abandoned in an armchair. I felt suddenly disoriented. I stumbled after him, nudged by Jake, out the door and down the porch steps, deep enough into the yard so that we could be hidden by twilight. Then we stopped. Mindy reached out and touched one finger to Oliver's forearm. "Why would they be after him?" she asked. "Is it on account of me? He hasn't done wrong."

"Is that true?" Oliver said. He turned to Jake. "They came by yesterday. They got my name from your address book. It was the only one in there besides the liquor store, they said, and so they tracked me down, wondered if I'd seen you. I said no. And Ma did too, of course, and Claire had no idea who they meant."

"Who's Claire?" Jake asked.

"My wife."

"Wife?"

"They told me you had pulled this crazy… but you didn't, did you?"

"Well, I don't know. Sort of " said Jake. He jammed his hands in his pockets and gazed off across the street.

"But… I mean, it doesn't sound logical. Had something gone wrong? What would make you hit that fool bank for that piddling amount? And hostage! Taking a… and now who've you got? Who's a hostage here and who isn't?" he asked.

Mindy said, "Hostage?" He focused on me. "Lord, Jake," he said.

I felt that I was shriveling up.

"But Oliver," said Jake, "just let me tell you. This wasn't nothing I planned, you know. Seems like things just worked out this way. I'm a victim of impulse, right? Look, now, you're the one last hope I have. You're the last way open to me. Oliver? O. J.? Can't you just give us a room to stay the night in?

Sit down with me and figure some way out of this, Oliver. I'm just not up to handling things on my own right now. It's all started getting muddled."

"I'm sorry," Oliver said. Td like to help. But Ma would call the police, you know she would. It's not her fault; she's old and she's scared and she still isn't over that mailbox business. And Claire, well, she's having a difficult pregnancy and I don't want her getting upset. You see my position?"

"Yeah, well. Sure," Jake said.

"Jake, maybe you ought to turn yourself in." We were very quiet. A woman's voice sailed out across the lawn. "Ollie?" Jake said, "Your mama's calling."

"Think about it, Jake."

"Why don't you just go," said Jake. "Your mom will be out here in two minutes flat. Just go, why don't you, tend to that little life of yours."

"Jake, Fm twenty-six years old now," said Oliver.

But he didn't get any answer to that. He waited a while, looking toward Jake with some expression that I couldn't make out in the dark. Then he said, "Well.

So long, I guess," and walked away. A minute later I heard the screen door shut-a summer evening sound that hung on and on. The three of us stood in the yard, empty-handed. We kept on looking at the rich gold rectangle of the door, even though there was nobody there.

Then Mindy said, "Well, I just don't understand this thing in any manner whatsoever."

"Hush up," said Jake. "Let me think." He was rubbing his forehead, over and over. His profile was stark and jutting, like something hastily cut from black construction paper. Mindy tipped forward to look at him. "Please, Jake," she said. "Will you please tell me what is going on?"

"Hush up, Mindy."

"I've got a right to know."

"Come on, let's get in the car," he said.

He started toward the street. I stayed where I was. Without saying anything, he came back and clamped — my arm and led me forward. Mindy followed. She kept saying, "Jake?" The car listed under a streetlight. I was used to squinting at it in the sun and saw, now, what I had missed before: in the course of our trip we had wrecked it pretty thoroughly. Its rear end was caved in, one tail-light hollow, front bumper gone, and there were long weedy scratches across its side.

Jake opened the door to a cavernous blackness, a strong cat smell, a welter of candy wrappers and potato chip bags. A Pepsi can clanged to the pavement and rolled a great distance. I jerked free of Jake's hand and stepped back. "Get in," Jake told me.

I shook my head.

"Please get in, Charlotte."

"No," I said.

"Now listen, there's people walking up, don't make me look bad. You want to complicate things just when I'm feeling so down? Climb on in; act natural."

"No!

How can she act natural when she's a what's-it, hostage?" Mindy asked him.

But actually, it seemed perfectly natural. I slid along the seat to my old, familiar place. Folded my hands across my purse. Jake arrived next to me, Mindy came last and fitted her stomach behind the steering wheel and closed the door.

Well. Here we all were. I had never in my life felt so cramped and poverty-stricken.

"Now, let me think," Jake told us.

"Think about this: I could get arrested for aiding and abetting," said Mindy.

"Will you just let me figure this out?"

"I could have my baby in jail, and all-for something I never had the faintest notion of."

"Oh, shoot, Mindy," said Jake, "anybody else would have guessed. Why'd you think I had that chain on the door?"

"For a derby, of course! For a demolition derby! You often chain the doors when you're driving a derby."

"Well, this is clearly not no derby," said Jake. He jerked a thumb at the ignition key. "Start her up, please."

"Where we going?"

"Find a place to cash Charlotte's check. Bank that's open Friday evenings."

"But-"

"Do you want my company or don't you?" Mindy started the car.

We pulled out into traffic. Everyone else was driving so wearily and steadily, it was like joining up with a river. "I sure would like to eat," Mindy said.

"We'll do that after," said Jake. He was slumped in his seat, watching passing signs indifferently. "Can you figure it?" he asked me. "Guy like Oliver, used to be so cool, used to read a book in the training school, read! Wee nothing could ever bother him. Oliver, married. Settled. Expecting. Grown so old I didn't know him. But he knew me, boy. You don't see me all changed about."

"I kind of liked him " I said.

"You would," said Jake. "That poor sucker."

"Well, I didn't think he was so badly off."

"You just say that because you have to," Jake said. He told Mindy, "Charlotte here is married, you know."

"Yes, I know," said Mindy.

"Married to a preacher." Mindy slowed for a stop sign.

"Isn't that right?" Jake asked me.

I nodded. I was watching a neon martini glass that kept rapidly emptying and refilling., "She helps in the Sunday School, teaching 'Jesus Loves Me.'

Counsels the Youth Fellowship in how to stay out of temptation."

"I do not," I said.

"Her and her husband never ever argue, they just take their troubles to the Lord in prayer."

"Don't be ridiculous, we argue all the time," I said.

"You do?"

"Of course we do."

"What about?"

"None of your business," I said.

It was silly; I was beginning to cry. I had tears in my eyes for no earthly reason. But of course I didn't let Jake see them. I kept on looking out the side window. Crying makes me angry and so I started talking, louder than usual. "We disagree on everything," I said. "He's always finding fault, he says I'm… he holds the stupidest things against me. Like, one morning he was going off to Bible College and I said, *Don't take any wooden nickels.' Well, it was just something to say, I didn't mean anything by it But he's never forgotten. Fifteen years ago! He imagines all these undercurrents that I had never intended. He had this revivalist speak last summer, if s an annual thing; they set up a tent in the kite field. But Saul came back so moody and quiet, said he hadn't enjoyed it at all, hadn't been able to take it in; he'd continually heard my comments on every word the preacher said. But I wasn't even there! And I would never do that, I really try to keep from… but Saul said, 'I heard your voice. Cool, flat voice. No part of that sermon could come through to me. How am I going to handle this?" Tve come to stand for everything bad. I think he sees me as evil.