Anne Tyler - Back When We Were Grownups

As soon as the hostess had left, Will turned back to Rebecca, plainly expecting her to begin the conversation. Instead, she spent some time placing her purse just so on her left, then unfolding her napkin in slow motion and smoothing it across her lap.

Why was she acting so gracious, she wondered — so matronly, so controlled?

It was the way she behaved with strangers. Really, he was a stranger.

But she said, “It’s wonderful to see you, Will!”

He blinked. (She may have been a bit loud.) He said, “Yes, me too. For me to see you, I mean.”

There was a pause.

“And all except for the braid, you look exactly the same,” he added.

“Yes, fat as ever!” she said, laughing brightly.

He cleared his throat. She rearranged her napkin.

“I took the Poe Highway over here,” she said. “Goodness, things have changed! So many new housing developments, or new to me, at least, and Macadam looks very different. I doubt I’d even—”

A young man dressed in black set their drinks in front of them. “So,” he said, whipping out a pad and pen. “Decided what you’re having?”

Rebecca said, “Not quite yet, thanks,” but Will said, “Oh, sorry, wait a minute, let’s see, what am I—”

He took a pair of rimless glasses from his breast pocket and hooked them over his ears. (Now he seemed downright ancient. She could draw back from him and imagine that she had never seen him before.) “You go first,” he told Rebecca.

She said, “Well, I… The salmon, I guess.” It was the first thing her eyes landed on.

Will was peering at his menu. “Salmon, veal, rib roast…” he said, his index finger traveling down the page. “Ah, maybe the rib roast.”

“And how would you like that cooked, sir?” the waiter asked.

“Medium, please. No, better make it well done.”

“Well done it is,” the waiter said, writing on his pad.

“On second thought,” Will told him, “I believe I’ll have the Award-Winning Swordfish.”

“Swordfish,” the waiter said. He scratched out what he’d written.

“But without the Caramelized Onion Sauce,” Will said. “Unless…” he said. He beetled his snarly white eyebrows. “Would it still be the actual Award-Winning Swordfish if it didn’t have the sauce?”

“It wouldn’t be the actual Award-Winning Swordfish in any case, sir,” the waiter said, “because that one was eaten by the judges.”

Rebecca laughed, but Will just said, “All right, then, no sauce. And no dressing on the salad.” He looked across at her. “I’m trying to watch my cholesterol.”

This surprised her at least as much as his having Caller ID. Mentally, she supposed, she had sealed him in amber — imagined him still a college boy wolfing down milk shakes and burgers.

“I’m not used to eating out much,” Will told her once the waiter was gone. “Generally I cook at home. I make my famous chili. You remember my chili.”

“Oh! Your chili,” she said. She did remember, she realized. Or at least she remembered Will chopping onions into tiny, uniform squares, and Mrs. Allenby tut-tutting at the red spatters across her clean stovetop.

“My particular recipe constitutes a completely balanced meal,” Will was saying. “I mix up a double batch every Sunday afternoon, and I divide it into seven containers and that’s what I eat all week.”

“All week?”

“Now I’ll have an extra container on hand because of this evening. I’m not sure yet how I’ll deal with that.”

“But don’t you get awfully bored, eating the same meal every night?”

“Not a bit,” he said. “Or if I do, what of it? I’ve never understood this country’s phobia about boredom. Why should we be constantly diverted and entertained? I prefer to sink into my life, even into the tedious parts. Sometimes I like to sit and just stare into space. I don’t require newness just for newness’ sake.”

“Well… you’re right, I guess,” Rebecca said. “Goodness! I don’t know why we mind boredom so much.”

“I have my lunches in the college cafeteria. Spinach salad and yogurt.”

“That sounds extremely healthful,” she told him.

The waiter set a basket of breads between them, and Rebecca selected a roll and put it on her bread plate. Then she reached for the butter. The silence was that obvious kind where every gesture becomes important. The slightest turn of her wrist seemed almost to make a noise.

“So,” she said finally, “I gather you’ve adjusted to living on your own, then.”

“Yes, I can’t complain. I rent a very nice apartment over on Linden Street.”

“An apartment,” she repeated. (Cancel that image of the tenured-professor’s house.)

“In the home of Mrs. Flick. You remember Dr. Flick of the English department, don’t you? She started renting out her top floor after he died. I have a good-sized living room, dining room, kitchenette, bedroom, and study. The study can double as a guest room if my daughter ever wants to stay over.”

“Oh, Will, you have a daughter?”

“Seventeen years old — a senior in high school. Beatrice, her name is.”

Beatrice! Rebecca was struck dumb with admiration. Beatrice would be a female version of Tristram. Rebecca pictured her in a modest muslin dress from the nineteenth century, although she knew that was unlikely. She pictured Beatrice and her father joined in some scholarly endeavor — Beatrice reading aloud while Will nodded soberly in his rocking chair by the fire.

“But that’s nothing compared to you,” Will was saying.

“Me?”

“You have four daughters, you mentioned.”

“Oh, yes, I’m way ahead of you!” She took a gulp of iced tea — too big a gulp; she nearly choked. “I’ve got grandchildren, even! Six. I mean seven. Because my husband’s three girls were older, you know; his girls from his previous marriage.”

“And how did he happen to pass away? If you don’t mind my asking.”

His delicate wording, along with the clumsy look of his mouth as he spoke — a sort of crumpled look, as if he had too many teeth — made her feel the need to set him at ease. “He died in a car wreck,” she said forthrightly. “It was very sudden. Well, a car wreck is always sudden, of course. But I was so unprepared! And so young! I was twenty-six years old. And his girls had just barely gotten to where they admitted I existed.”

“Couldn’t you have sent them to their relatives? They must have had some, someplace.”

“Well, only their mother.”

“Their mother!” Will said.

“But she’d remarried; she lived in England. Sending the children to her would… In fact, the subject never came up.”

Will shook his head. “Personally,” he said, “I would find that situation intolerable.”

This hurt her feelings, for some reason. She knew he meant to sympathize, but she couldn’t help imagining a note of judgment in his voice. She said, “Everything ended up fine, though! Just fine! I’ve managed very well. I run a little business out of my home, hosting parties. Joe started that — my husband. And the girls are all grown up now. You should meet them! It’s this huge, big, jumbled family; nothing like what you and I were used to when we were children. Oh, isn’t it amazing, how life turns out? Could you have imagined we’d be sitting here, waiting for swordfish and salmon, back when we were eating pancakes at Myrtle’s Family Restaurant?”

On cue, the waiter set their plates in front of them — Will’s swordfish starkly naked, Rebecca’s salmon buried beneath a conglomeration of capers, mushrooms, sun-dried tomatoes, black and green olives, and pine nuts. Two salads arrived, Rebecca’s smothered in blue cheese dressing. “Fresh-ground pepper?” the waiter asked, brandishing what looked like a mammoth chess piece. Will shook his head. To make up for him, Rebecca said, “Yes, please!” even though she was longing for the two of them to be left alone. One twist of the grinder and she said, “Okay! Thanks!” Finally, the waiter walked off.