Anne Tyler - Back When We Were Grownups

She was wearing an elegant black silk pants set and every holy medal she owned, but a distinct circle of dampness darkened the tip of each breast. Inwardly, Rebecca sighed. All she said, though, was, “Hello, dear.”

“Don’t set him there!” Min Foo squawked, spinning toward Hakim. “The next person walking in is bound to step on him! Really, the man is hopeless,” she told Rebecca. “This morning at seven — seven o’clock on a Saturday! — he asks me to brew him coffee.”

“I only asked if coffee had been made, Min Foo,” Hakim said mildly. He was stooping over the infant seat, trying to raise Abdul’s cap off his eyes.

“You could have checked for yourself and seen that it wasn’t made! ‘It’s not that I’m demanding,’ he said, but what could he demand, pray tell, considering I’ve always brought him every little thing?”

“Now, now,” Rebecca said, “I’m sure he didn’t mean—”

“Naturally you would stick up for him,” Min Foo told her. “You believe men are… What is that you’re wearing?”

Rebecca looked down at her outfit. (Maybe it was not so unnoticeable after all.) Before Min Foo could deliver an opinion, though, the door swung open again. “It’s us!” Patch cried.

It was not only Patch and Jeep but NoNo and Barry as well — Barry holding one of NoNo’s famous fall-foliage arrangements — with Zeb bringing up the rear. “Did you all ride together?” Rebecca asked, and Jeep said, “Nope, just got here together by happenstance.”

Rebecca had been hoping to spread the introductions out more, so that Will wouldn’t feel too confused. “Well, anyhow,” she said, “come on in and meet—”

“ What is that you’re wearing? ” Patch asked.

“It’s my brand-new suit that I bought on Thursday, and I like it; so don’t say a word.”

Patch blinked.

Rebecca reminded herself that it was crucial to stay calm.

When she led them into the parlor, Will and Troy both stood up. Will’s arms were dangling docilely at his sides, which for some reason gave her a pang. “Everybody!” she said. “I’d like you to meet Will Allenby, the…”

It seemed redundant to refer to him once more as the man in her life. (And maybe Will would find it presumptuous, besides.) “… the person I invited you here to meet,” she finished lamely. “Will, you remember NoNo, and this is her husband, Barry; and Patch and her husband, Jeep…”

“How do you do, how do you do,” Will said, shaking hands. It was one of those situations where so many people might have spoken that everyone expected someone else to, and Will’s voice was the only sound in the room. So when Poppy cried, “A toast!” Rebecca gladly took it up. “Yes, a toast!” she said. “I think we’ll need a new bottle opened, Troy.”

She helped him pass out the wine — a glass for Will, even, which he held awkwardly by the rim, his hand poised crablike above it. Min Foo insisted on club soda, another of those modern notions. (Rebecca, in her own breast-feeding days, had been ordered outright to drink lots of beer.)

“A toast to my birthday!” Poppy said when everyone was served.

Biddy said, “No, Poppy, wait.”

“Oh, don’t we all have drinks yet? I’m sorry.”

“It’s not your birthday, Poppy.”

“Oh. Not my birthday.”

He looked at Rebecca. “I guess I made a mistake,” he said.

“That’s all right, Poppy,” she told him. Then she stepped closer to him and whispered in his tufted ear, “A toast to welcome Will.”

“Will! Yes!” He raised his glass. “A toast to Will! To welcome Will!”

“To Will,” everyone murmured — everyone except Barry, who sang out a ringing “Hear, hear!” in what Rebecca could have sworn was a British accent.

“Thank you,” Will said, lifting his glass a few inches. He gave a slight cough. “And a toast to Rebecca, too; is that okay? To Rebecca, for being so lovely and gracious and cheering up my life.”

Rebecca felt her face growing pink. She was conscious of everyone’s eyes on her, and she felt a brief silence spreading around her before the others chimed in.

It was more than she had even thought to fantasize: her entire family, gathered in one room, hearing for the first time that somebody thought she was lovely.

* * *

At dinner, Will said, “I see you’re taking good care of my plant.”

“ You gave her that plant?” NoNo asked.

Rebecca broke in quickly to say, “It’s doing well, don’t you think?”

It had grown at least a foot and put out two enormous new leaves, even though it was hidden away in the dimness of the dining room. (She had moved it there in the hope that it would attract less attention.)

Mercifully, NoNo just raised her eyebrows.

Rebecca’s original plan was to seat Will on her right. But Poppy seemed to have a case of clinginess this evening, and he plunked himself there first, scooting his chair close enough so his knees could keep a reassuring contact with hers underneath the table. And Barry was already settled on her left. She had to point Will toward a spot several spaces away, down between Patch and Biddy.

“Oh, what a treat!” she told Barry. “I get to have you next to me.” (Why did she always have to say the opposite of what she was thinking?) “Tell me,” she said, picking up her fork, “do you find you’re feeling at home with us yet?”

“Yes, absolutely,” he said, but he was shaking his head instead of nodding, she noticed.

Biddy was saying to Will, “I trust you have nothing against hearts of palm.”

“Is that what these are?”

“I thought they’d make a nice symbolic touch; don’t you agree? But I see you’ve moved yours to the side of your plate.”

“Well, I wasn’t sure, you see, exactly what they were.”

“They’re the innermost core of the cabbage-palm stem. Very high in vitamin C.”

“Palm trees have been cut up for this?”

“Well, yes.”

“Is that a fact!”

“Broccoli plants are cut up, after all; asparagus shoots are cut up… Don’t tell me you’re one of those food avoiders.”

“No, no, I just, I’m not all that much for experiment.”

“Hearts of palm aren’t an experiment!”

“To me they are.”

“ Sea urchins are an experiment. Hearts of palm are just salad.”

“Yes, but, at home, you see, I generally have chili.”

“Chili.”

“I make this really excellent chili on Sunday afternoons — that would be tomorrow — and I divide it into seven containers for the seven nights of the week.”

Biddy sat back in her seat and looked at him without expression.

Poppy was beginning a story. “In the fall of 1939,” he told Hakim, “I experienced a dental emergency.”

Jeep was discussing football with Troy, who was nodding attentively although his eyes had a sort of glazed look.

NoNo was talking to Zeb about… ballpoint pens, it appeared. “Once a week, almost,” she said, “he tells me he needs ballpoint pens for school. Or maybe once every other week. In any case, way too often. I say, ‘What did you do with those pens I just bought you?’ He says he must have lost them.”

Rebecca leaned forward a few inches to check on Will. He seemed to be dissecting a strip of roasted red pepper. Each tiny dot of char was set carefully to one side.

Min Foo was nursing Abdul, which flabbergasted Patch. “Min Foo! Do that in the other room! You can’t breast-feed at the table!”

“Why not? I’m decently covered. I’m not sitting here undressed.”

“We’ve got company! What must he think?”

Min Foo turned a placid gaze on Will. “I’m sure you’ve seen a woman nursing a baby before,” she told him.