Anne Tyler - Digging to America

Her world had become very peaceful since the breakup. Well, it had been peaceful before, too, but somehow her brief venture into a livelier, more engaged way of life made her appreciate the blessed orderliness of her daily routine. She awoke before dawn, when the sky was still a pearly white and the birds were barely stirring. One of the cardinals on her block had a habit of omitting the second note of his call and repeating just the first in a flinty, bright staccato. Vite! Vite! Vite! he seemed to be saying, like an overeager Frenchman. A jet plane crossed the highest windowpanes perfectly level, perfectly silent, and sometimes a wan, translucent moon still hung behind the neighbors' maple tree.

She lay gathering her thoughts, absently stroking the cat, who always slept in the crook of her arm, until the young doctor down the street started his noisy car and set off for morning rounds. That was the signal for her to get up. How creaky she was becoming! Every joint had to learn to bend all over again each morning, it seemed.

By the time she came back from her shower, the sun had risen and more of the neighborhood was awake. The new puppy exploded from the house next door, yapping excitedly. A baby started crying. Several cars swished past. You could tell what time it was on this street just by counting the cars and hearing how fast they were going.

She dressed with care, eyeliner and all; she was not a bathrobe kind of woman. She made her bed and collected her water tumbler and the book she had fallen asleep with, and only then did she head downstairs, trailed by the cat, who liked to twine between her feet.

Tea. Toasted pita bread. A slice of feta cheese. While the tea was steeping she arranged her silver on a woven-straw place mat. She refilled Moosh's water bowl and checked his supply of kibble. She went out front for the newspaper, barely glancing at the headlines before laying it aside and sitting down to breakfast. (She preferred to concentrate on one thing at a time.) The tea was fresh and hot and bracing. The feta was Bulgarian, creamy and not too salty. Her chair was placed to catch the sunshine, which gilded the skin on her arms and felt like warm varnish on her head.

What a small, small life she lived! She had one grown son, one daughter-in-law, one grandchild, and three close friends. Her work was pleasantly predictable. Her house hadn't changed in decades. Next January she would be sixty-five years old not ancient, but even so, she couldn't hope for her world to grow anything but narrower from now on. She found this thought comforting rather than distressing.

Last week she'd noticed an obituary for a seventy-eight-year-old woman in Lutherville. Mrs. Cotton enjoyed gardening and sewing, she had read. Family members say she hardly ever wore the same outfit twice.

No doubt as a girl Mrs. Cotton had envisioned something more dramatic, but still, it didn't sound like such a bad existence to Maryam.

If it was a Wednesday the one day she worked, in the summer she would set off for Julia Jessup shortly after nine, when the rush-hour traffic had finished. She would greet the janitor, open the mail, see to the small bit of paperwork. The smell of waxed floors made her feel virtuous, as if she were the one who had waxed them, and she drew a sense of accomplishment from discarding the past week's calendar pages. The school without its children their Hi, Mrs. Yaz! Morning, Mrs. Yaz! gave her a gentle twinge of nostalgia. On the bulletin board, an unclaimed mitten from last winter seemed to be shouting with life.

If it was not a Wednesday, she would take the newspaper into the sun porch after clearing away her breakfast things. She read desultorily bad news, more bad news, more to shake her head at and turn the page. Then she placed the paper in the recycling bag underneath the sink and went to weed her flowerbeds, or paid some bills at the desk in Sami's old room, or busied herself with some household task. Very rarely did she go out in public during the morning. Going out was work. It required conversation. It raised the possibility of mistakes.

She had noticed that as she grew older, speaking English took more effort. She might ask for es-stamps instead of stamps, or mix up her he's and she's, realizing it only when she saw a look of confusion cross someone's face. And then she would feel exhausted. Oh, what difference did it make? she would wonder. So unnecessary, for a language to specify the sexes! Why should she have to bother with this?

She was lonelier in public than she was at home, to be honest.

Before lunch she generally took a long walk, traveling the same route every day and smiling at the same neighbors and dogs and babies, noticing a new sapling here, a change of house color there. Summer was the time to call in the painters and the nursery crews. Workmen swarmed over the neighborhood as industriously as ants. She encountered her favorite plumber clanking through the tools in his panel truck.

It was hot now, but she liked being hot. She felt she moved more smoothly in heat. The glaze of sweat on her face took her back to airless nights in Tehran, when she and her family slept on mattresses dragged up to the rooftop and you could look across the city and see all the other families arranging their mattresses on their rooftops, as if every house had split open to show the lives going on inside. And then at dawn the call to prayer would float them all up from their sleep.

It wasn't that she wished to be back there, exactly (so much about that unprivate way of life had gone against her grain, even then), but she wouldn't have minded hearing once more that distant cry from the minaret.

She went home and rinsed her face in cool water and fixed herself a light lunch. Made a few phone calls. Looked at her mail. Sometimes Ziba stopped by with Susan. Or sometimes she just left Susan off while she ran errands; Maryam liked those days best. You could amuse a child more easily if no grownups were around. She would let Susan play with her jewelry box, sifting gold chains and clusters of turquoises through her fingers. She would show her the photo albums. This is my maternal great-uncle, Amir Ahmad. The baby on his knee is his seventh son. It was unusual in those days for a man to be seen holding a baby. He must have been an interesting person. She studied his face stern and square-bearded, topped by a heavy black turban, giving nothing away. She had only the faintest memory of him. And this is my father, Sadredin. He died when I was four. He would be your great-grandpa. But would he? The words sounded untruthful the instant they slipped from her mouth. Close though she felt to Susan as close as any grandmother could possibly feel she had trouble imagining the slightest link between the relatives back home and this little Asian fairy child with her straight black hair, her exotic black eyes, her skin as pale and opaque and textureless as bone.

On several occasions Jin-Ho came along, and twice Xiu-Mei too. Ziba looked after them quite a bit during the month of July, because Bitsy's chemotherapy made her want to nap all the time. But she was doing very well, Ziba reported. She said, Are you sure you don't mind, Mari june? I promise I won't be gone long. Maryam said, Of course I don't mind, and meant it. For one thing, this was a way of helping Bitsy. And then two or three children could entertain each other. All Maryam did was serve them refreshments at some point during the visit homemade cookies or brownies and apple juice tea in tiny enamelware cups.

Jin-Ho was now a head and a half taller than Susan, and she had asked to be called Jo, although none of them could remember to do it. Xiu-Mei was still small and frail but feisty, with a mind of her own. She wore hand-me-downs from both Jin-Ho and Susan; it was strange to see Susan's faded playsuits resurrected, coupled with JinHo's old sandals and a pacifier strung on a length of elastic around her neck.