Anne Tyler - Back When We Were Grownups

In the entrance hall of his school — a stone building covered with ivy that looked arranged, rather than free-growing — they were met by a young woman passing out self-stick labels and felt-tip pens. Hi! the labels read. My grandson is __________. Rebecca wrote Peter Sanborn and returned the pen to the woman. The instant she had affixed the label to the front of her blouse, a small, bald man in a suit stepped up to her. “Peter Sanborn!” he cried.

“Yes?”

She was expecting him to offer some compliment on Peter’s project, but instead he seized her hand and said, “I want you to know that we have taken his stepmother’s complaint very, very seriously and we do understand her concerns.”

“Her concerns?”

“Naturally it’s an issue, at this time when families are so often fragmented. With all the working mothers, though, grandparents seemed the logical solution. It never occurred to us that… But now that Mrs. Sanborn’s alerted us, we have fully prepared ourselves for every possible contingency. In a case where a child lacks grandparents, we offer one on loan.”

Rebecca gave a startled guffaw. The man peered solemnly into her face. “Students have been encouraged to apply at the office,” he told her. “Strictest confidence is guaranteed.”

“That should reassure my daughter no end,” Rebecca told him.

“My own mother is one of the names on file,” he said.

“And then there’s always Dick Abrams,” she couldn’t resist adding.

“Abrams?”

“He has eight grandparents. Surely he should be asked to share the wealth.”

“Oh, ah, I don’t feel we could—”

“Just something to consider,” she told him, and she withdrew her hand.

“What’s gotten into NoNo?” she asked Peter as they moved through the crowd. “Patch, I might expect it of, but NoNo, acting so contentious all of a sudden!”

“That was our principal,” Peter said. “NoNo telephoned him last week.”

“Well, isn’t that always the way! No sooner do you get your children nicely pigeonholed than they turn around and surprise you.”

They were walking down a wide corridor, traveling in a swarm of gray-haired women, a sprinkling of gray-haired men, and an underlayer of boys in navy blazers. Two boys near Rebecca were trying to step on each other’s shoes. They elbowed and wrestled and stumbled into passersby while the middle-aged woman accompanying them sailed on serenely. One of them fell into Peter, but Peter just moved aside and the boy didn’t apologize. Rebecca had the impression that Peter didn’t know all that many of his schoolmates. She felt a familiar clenching of her shoulders, a sort of mother-bear response; she wanted to hug him close and snarl at the other children. But Peter showed no sign of discomfort. He seemed intent on maneuvering them toward the double doors ahead, which opened into a gigantic, echoing gymnasium filled with felt-draped tables and fabric screens.

Rebecca had not thought to ask what type of exhibit this would be. She had expected science projects, since she’d spent a number of long, dull hours at science fairs in the past. But this appeared more art-related. Paintings were tacked to the screens; sculptures and clumsy ceramic vases and abstract wire constructions stood on the tables. Each had a name next to it, lettered in grade-school print on a rectangle of white poster board, and already some of the grandparents were saying, “Did you do this?” and, “Oh, my, isn’t this something!”

“Which is yours?” Rebecca asked Peter.

Instead of answering, he turned sideways to slip through a cluster of women. He rounded the first aisle and stopped short at the head of the second.

There, in a glass box the size of a large aquarium, a sort of oil derrick made of brightly colored rods and sockets and toothed wheels pivoted up and down, allowing a series of blue marbles to roll the length of its spine and land in a metal saucer. Each marble was a slightly different size and rang out a different note on the scale: do, re, mi… From the saucer the marbles traveled through a convoluted tube and returned to their starting point, where they rolled down to land once again— do, re, mi, fa, sol, la, ti, DO! over and over, delicate musical plinks! that could be heard, she belatedly realized, throughout the gym. What caused the marbles’ return, she couldn’t imagine. She was mystified, and awestruck, and captivated. She could have stood there forever, rapt, and other people must have felt the same because quite a crowd had gathered, none of them in any hurry to move on.

“Peter!” she said. “This is wonderful!”

Peter tilted his head and studied the contraption critically, his hands deep in his pockets, his back angled forward beneath the weight of his knapsack.

“This is… I don’t know how you did it! It’s amazing! What do your teachers say?” she asked him.

“I think they kind of liked it.”

“Is there a motor, or what?”

“That’s a secret.”

“Oh, don’t tell me, then. I’ll just view it as a miracle.”

“But I will give you a hint,” he said. “Think about those toy birds that bob into a drinking glass.”

“Ah,” she said, none the wiser.

He said, “Would you like to see the other projects?”

“No,” she said, “I believe I’ll just stay here and admire this one.”

He grimaced and looked at the ceiling, implying, Grandmothers! What can you do? But she could tell he was pleased.

* * *

She phoned Will as soon as she got home; she felt stretched like a band of elastic until she heard his voice at the other end of the line. “I’m back,” she told him. “Did you go to D.C. without me?”

“Oh, no, I would never do that.”

“You should have,” she said. Although she was happy he hadn’t.

“How was your grandson’s exhibit?”

“It was marvelous! I wish you could have seen it.”

“I wish I could have too,” he said.

She let herself picture that, for a moment: Will at her side on Grandparents’ Day. Finally, finally, she would not have to show up everywhere alone. But he was asking her something. Asking her to dinner.

She said, “Dinner? At your place?”

“I thought maybe you might like to meet my daughter.”

“I would love to meet your daughter,” she said.

Already her mind was racing through possible outfits, possible topics of conversation — choosing who to be, really, for this very important encounter.

He said, “How about tomorrow night?”

“Tomorrow? Saturday? Oh.”

She didn’t have to explain. He sighed and said, “I know. A party.”

“But I could do it Sunday,” she told him.

“All right: Sunday. I’m assuming she’ll be free then. Let’s make it early. Six o’clock, since it’s a school night.”

“Can I bring a dish?”

“No, just yourself,” Will said in a memorized way.

She refrained from asking him which self.

Later, talking on the phone to NoNo, she happened to let slip that she would be meeting Will’s daughter. “You’d think it would be no big deal,” she said, “after meeting you three girls. But I can’t help feeling nervous, a little.”

“Oh, well, I’m sure you’ll do fine,” NoNo said absently. “ Whose daughter is this, again?”

“Will Allenby. He was with me a couple of weeks ago when you and Peter stopped by after dinner.”

“Oh, yes,” NoNo said.

“But I was forgetting! Peter! Peter’s the reason I called! NoNo, that boy is a genius.”

“Yes, everyone tells me he’s bright,” NoNo said. “I only wish he could drive.”

“Did you see his project?”