Anne Tyler - Back When We Were Grownups

“Well,” he said, “yes. But not at the table.”

Patch said, “See there?”

Min Foo stood up, with the baby a squirming bulge beneath the hem of her tunic. She spun on her heel and strode out of the room.

Will said, “Oh, dear.”

“Go after her,” Biddy told Patch.

“I will not go after her! She’s finally off in the parlor where she should have been all along!”

“ I shall go,” Hakim announced, and he rose with dignity and laid aside his napkin. A pause followed his departure. Then voices came from the parlor, and the cranking-up sound of the baby fussing. Hakim started singing in a low, cracked, rumbling voice. Some Arab lullaby, no doubt; something wandery and plaintive that Rebecca couldn’t quite catch.

She looked brightly around the table. “Will has a teenaged daughter; did I mention that?” she asked.

Nine faces turned in her direction.

“The most intriguing person! Seventeen years old.”

“She’s very difficult,” Will said.

“Difficult in what way?” Biddy asked him.

“Well, for one thing, she detests me.”

“Yes, that would be a drawback,” Barry said with a snicker.

But NoNo, dead serious, looked across at Will and said, “You know what, Will? I get that she’s going to be fine.”

“Excuse me?”

“I get that within the next eight months, she’s going to develop a liking for you.”

Will looked helplessly at Rebecca.

“NoNo sometimes… sees into the future,” Rebecca told him. “That’s what she means when she says she ‘gets’ something.”

“It’s genetic,” NoNo explained.

“Genetic!” Will and Rebecca echoed together. Rebecca had never heard this before. “Who supplied the genes?” she asked NoNo.

“Dad’s second cousin, Sophie. You knew that.”

“I didn’t even know he had a second cousin!”

“Sophie was the family oracle,” NoNo told Will. She was spearing a slice of ham as she spoke. “Nobody made a move without consulting her. Marriages, job changes, major purchases… They would come to her and ask, ‘Should I? Shouldn’t I?’ She always knew the answer.”

Poppy said, “ That’s who you take after?”

“Why, yes.”

“Cousin Sophie Davitch?”

“Yes.”

He started laughing. NoNo said, “What?”

“Oh, nothing.”

“What’s so funny?” she demanded.

“Okay: first, Cousin Sophie was three times divorced. And this was back in the 1920s, when nobody got divorced.”

“So?” She reached for the mustard.

“So if she was so good at predicting, how come she couldn’t predict that her three husbands would be mistakes?”

“Well, that I couldn’t say,” NoNo said. “All I know is, Grandmother Davitch told me I inherited my abilities from Dad’s second cousin.”

“And furthermore,” Poppy said, “consider the woman’s method. Do you happen to know how Sophie made her predictions?”

“Well, no.”

“You’d come to her and ask, oh, should you take an ocean voyage. Then she’d turn it around and ask you questions. Had you ever traveled before, where had you gone, how had you enjoyed yourself. Let’s say you told her you had so far only been on a train trip, and that was only to Philly, and you hadn’t thought all that much of the place. Cousin Sophie would ponder a while, pull on her lower lip, stare into space; and then she’d say, ‘My advice is, don’t go. The ocean voyage won’t be a success.’”

NoNo waited, fork poised in midair, but Poppy seemed to have finished. “When is dessert?” he asked Biddy.

“In a minute, Poppy.”

“Oh, good.” He dabbed his mustache with his napkin.

“But what was her method?” NoNo asked him.

“Hmm?”

“Cousin Sophie’s method. What was it?”

“Why, everything that you told her had happened in the past, she just turned it around on you. Claimed it would happen again. If you could really call that a method.”

“It would do,” Will said. He was smiling; he seemed genuinely amused.

But NoNo said, “I’m sure there must be more to it than that, ” and she popped a bite of ham into her mouth.

Out in the parlor, Hakim was still singing. Rebecca suddenly recognized the tune. It was “O Danny Boy,” of all things. “ O Abdul boy, ” he rumbled, “ the pipes, the pipes are calling… ”

“At any rate,” NoNo told Will, “I get that your daughter’s about to start liking you. Take my word for it. And I didn’t ask a thing about your past, now, did I.”

“No,” he said, still smiling, “you didn’t. Well, thank you very much. I’m encouraged.”

The others were smiling too, all around the table. Rebecca had one of those moments when her family seemed extraordinarily attractive — the girls with their animated expressions and black silk hair, the men so handsome and intelligent-looking, Poppy lending an air of distinction with his stately mustache. She let her eyes rest on each face in turn, feeling privileged and nourished, while Hakim sang softly in the parlor. “ ’Tis I’ll be here! in sunshine or in shadow, ” he sang. “ O Abdul boy, my Abdul boy, I love you so. ”

* * *

It was a sign of how well the evening had gone that everybody stayed on after dinner. Min Foo got over her snit and agreed to accompany people on the piano; Troy and Biddy did their Nelson Eddy — Jeanette MacDonald routine; and Barry turned out to be a wonderful tenor, although perhaps “The Lord’s Prayer” was not the piece Rebecca would have chosen. It was nearly midnight before they all left.

Then she led Will to the kitchen—“Just to keep me company while I see to what can’t wait till morning,” she said — because she figured that would jog Poppy into going to bed. She was hoping she and Will could have a little privacy.

But no, Poppy came along with them, claiming he needed warm milk in order to sleep, and while he was waiting for it to heat he took it into his head that Will should be shown the family album. This came about because of a chance remark that Will made to Rebecca. “I had a little trouble,” Will said, “sorting out who was who. Why is that one stepdaughter Chinese? And that person Troy: is he Biddy’s husband? He seemed, er, not the husband type.”

“Boy, have you got it wrong!” Poppy crowed, pivoting from the stove on his cane. “Min Foo is not a stepdaughter; she’s Beck’s daughter. And she isn’t Chinese, either. I guess you were fooled by her name. And Troy for sure is not Biddy’s husband; he’s queer as a two-dollar bill.”

“Three,” Rebecca said.

“Huh?”

“Queer as a—”

Oh, Lord, she was turning into her mother. “Poppy,” she said, “aren’t you exhausted?”

“No, not in the least,” he told her. “I believe I’ll go get your friend the family album.”

“Oh, that’s not necessary,” she said. “Basically, he’s seen the album.”

She meant the refrigerator door, with its multiple layers of photos. But Will couldn’t have known that; so when Poppy asked him, “You have?” Will said, “Why, no, I don’t think so.”

“I’ll be right back,” Poppy said, and he left the room.

“Now you’re in for it,” Rebecca told Will. She switched off the gas beneath the milk. “Did you enjoy the evening? Did you like my family?”

“Yes, they were very interesting,” Will said.

“You didn’t see Min Foo at her best, I’m sorry to say. She’s not usually so short-tempered. I’m worried she’s beginning her same old pattern: have a baby, ditch the husband.”

“Of course, they’re all of them quite… outspoken,” Will said.