Anne Tyler - Back When We Were Grownups

He opened his loose-leaf binder and smoothed a page that was already smooth.

On April 19, 1861, Rebecca forced herself to read, troops were ordered transferred from…

Something made her glance toward the library door — a flash of movement. She looked through the center windowpane and found Joe Davitch’s laughing eyes. She scraped her chair back. Will set an index finger on his page and raised his head. “Goodbye, Will,” she told him.

“Huh?” he asked. “You’re leaving? So soon? I still have work to do!”

“That’s all right; stay where you are.”

“Oh. Well. Okay. So, um… au revoir, I guess.”

“No,” she said. “Goodbye.”

And then she walked out the door and into Joe Davitch’s arms.

* * *

Or that was how she described it to her grandchildren, years later.

Gliding over the complications: the second, third, and fourth goodbye scenes that Will thickheadedly seemed to require; the loose ends left behind at school with exams not taken, spring semester incomplete; the general dismay when she moved, bag and baggage, to the Open Arms’ third floor two weeks before the wedding. “Oh, I know this person must be very attractive,” her mother said on the phone. “Very handsome and good-looking; I can just imagine. Probably has no end of charm. But I have to ask you this, Rebecca: do you realize what you’re getting into? We’re talking about the man who’ll be holding your hand when you die. Or you’ll be holding his hand when he dies. Is that something you have considered?”

“Die?” Rebecca said.

“No, I thought not,” her mother said grimly.

Then at another point — at several other points: “And what about poor Will? What about his mother? How on earth will I ever face Maud Allenby again?”

She probably hadn’t faced Maud Allenby again, Rebecca thought now. She probably crossed the street to avoid her, even after all these years. She turned from an aspirin commercial to ask, “Do you ever see Mrs. Allenby?”

“She passed away,” her mother said, not taking her eyes from the screen. “I thought I told you.”

Rebecca said, “Oh!” She did seem to recollect that she had heard that.

“But we’d stopped keeping company long before,” her mother said. “It just never was the same after you jilted Will.”

“Well, I’m sure he managed to survive it,” Rebecca told her.

“Maybe. Maybe not. I wouldn’t have any idea. I don’t know where he settled, what he’s doing, whether he ever remarried…”

Rebecca waited for her mother to correct herself, but she didn’t; so finally she said, “He couldn’t re marry; he wasn’t married in the first place.”

“The fact of the matter is,” her mother said, “Will Allenby was your true soul’s companion. I still believe that. The two of you had so much in common; you were so much in love; you understood each other so well. Maud and I talked about it often. ‘Aren’t they compatible?’ I used to say. ‘It’s just as if they knew each other from some previous incarnation. They’re both such old, wise souls,’ I said. ‘They belong together, those two.’”

Rebecca turned to look at her.

“You became a whole different person after you jilted Will,” her mother said.

* * *

Rebecca’s girlhood room still had the same furniture — a twin bed with a white-and-gilt “French provincial” headboard, a low bureau with an attached oval mirror, and a nightstand topped with a doily. But all personal traces of her had vanished long ago, and when she walked in with her overnight bag she could just as well have been entering a hotel room. It didn’t even smell like her anymore. Not that she was certain what her own smell was; but this smell was her mother’s, clean but musty, unused.

What kept her mother going, these days? Her life seemed so stagnant: the tea-and-toast breakfast, the few dishes washed and dried afterward, the bedclothes pulled up, the carpet sweeper rolled across an already immaculate carpet…

Well, what kept anyone going? Who was Rebecca to talk?

The telephone rang — the turquoise Princess phone with a rotary dial that still sat on the nightstand — and a moment later she heard a tapping on her door. “Rebecca?” her mother called. “It’s Joe’s brother.”

“Oh, thanks,” she said, and she picked up the receiver.

She assumed it was something routine until she heard the thin blade of distress in his voice. “I’m sorry as hell to bother you—” he started right in.

“What’s the matter?”

“The basement: it’s filling with water. But there hasn’t been a drop of rain; I don’t know what—”

“Which part of the basement?”

“The part over by the window.”

“Darn,” she said. “It’s the main drain again.”

“What does that mean? What should I do?”

“Are you upstairs?” she asked him.

“Yes, I’m in the family room. I don’t know what happened! I went down to put my laundry in the dryer; I’d done a little wash earlier. And all at once I was walking in water. There was this horrible sloshing sound! It was like something in a nightmare!”

Rebecca tried not to let her amusement show in her voice. “Now, Zeb,” she said, “this is not all that much of a problem. It’s the tree next door’s roots clogging up the drain line, that’s all. Mr. Burdick will have it fixed in no time.”

“This late at night?”

“No, we’ll have to wait till morning. But you should call him now to let him know we need him. Go over to my desk, get my little leather address book—”

“What if the water keeps rising?”

“It won’t. Just don’t turn on any more faucets than you can help, and try not to flush any toilets. I’ll start out extra early tomorrow so I can be there when Mr. Burdick arrives.”

“I’m awfully sorry, Rebecca. I wanted you to have a worry-free visit.”

“I am worry-free,” she said. “And you should be, too. This is not a serious problem. Just call Mr. Burdick — John Burdick & Sons.”

“Well,” Zeb said. “All right.”

She could tell he was reassured. His voice had returned to its usual level rumble.

“How’s Poppy doing?” she asked him.

“He’s okay. He’s gone to bed. He asked me twice what time you were coming home.”

“Tell him, oh, say, nine a.m. And tell Mr. Burdick, too. I don’t want him getting there before me.”

“Okay, Rebecca. Thanks.”

“Good night, Zeb.”

She hung up and reached for the alarm clock, an old Baby Ben that had been allowed to run down. First she wound it, and then she set the alarm for 6:00.

Any time now, she was convinced, that house was going to end up a heap of rubble. Only she knew all its hidden ailments. She remembered the day she’d moved in — the shock of the upstairs with its fake-wood-grain metal bedsteads and rickety pressboard bookshelves. The casual guest would never suspect how the windows stuck, and the faucets dripped, and the walls appeared to be suffering from some sort of skin disease. From a distance, the place looked so imposing.

If her very first meeting with Joe had foretold her role in his life forever after, she thought as she undressed, hadn’t it also foretold her role in the Open Arms? For it seemed the place was always beset by disasters, both physical and social, and Rebecca was always, by default, coming to the rescue. Not that she’d had any aptitude for it. She wasn’t much of a cook; she couldn’t hammer a nail straight; she’d been a wallflower from birth. But gradually, she had learned. She’d become more take-charge, almost bossy. “Have you grown taller?” her mother asked on one of her rare visits. “There’s something different.” Rebecca hadn’t grown an inch, but she agreed there was something different. She felt she took up more space. Her voice sounded louder now, even to her, and her laugh had acquired a ha-ha sound while before, it had been mere breath.