Anne Tyler - Back When We Were Grownups

“It’s kind of like those nature programs on TV, where the female does away with the male after he donates his sperm.”

“Pardon?”

Poppy said, “Here we are!”

He wasn’t even in sight yet, but they could hear his cane pegging rapidly down the passageway. “Every light in both parlors was turned high as it could go,” he told Rebecca as he entered. “You seem to think you have to siphon off excess electricity in case it might explode or something.”

The album was clamped under his free arm — an ancient cardboard scrapbook bound with a tasseled string. He set it on the table and lowered himself, stiff-legged, into the nearest chair. “Sit down, sit down,” he told Will, patting the chair beside him. “We should start with my late wife, Joyce. She passed away in 1969. I miss her to this day. Now, where are we. Let’s see. Trouble is, there’s no order here. Everything’s jumbled up.”

Rebecca poured Poppy’s milk into a mug and placed it next to the album, using the excuse to set a hand on Will’s shoulder as she leaned past him. He looked up at her and smiled.

“What I’m hoping to find is the picture of Joyce when we met,” Poppy said, turning a page. “She wore the most fetching hat. It resembled two bird wings.”

“I bet this is the one you call Patch,” Will said. He was looking at a snapshot of a child with a bunch of balloons. “I recognize her freckles.”

“Oh, then we’re way too recent,” Poppy told him. “I met Joycie long before Patch came along.”

“And this is the one you call NoNo, I think.”

Rebecca wished Will wouldn’t refer to the girls as “ones,” as if they were specimens of something. She settled in the chair across from him. “Yes,” she said, peering at the upside-down picture, “that’s NoNo at a birthday party. And here is Biddy. Doesn’t she look cross? She used to hate to dress up, is why. She said dress-up dresses itched.”

“So many parties, ” Will said.

“Isn’t that the truth,” Poppy agreed. He reached for his mug and took a loud sip.

“Everywhere I look,” Will said, “—the refrigerator, the album — everybody’s celebrating. We just get through drinking a toast and then you sit me down and show me pictures of other toasts, years of toasts. Even the children are drinking toasts! Do you really think that’s wise?”

“We give them only a sip,” Rebecca told him.

Poppy said, “Why am I not finding Joycie? That picture of her when we met. I hope it isn’t lost.”

“And after all,” Rebecca told Will, “these are photographs. You don’t usually photograph people reading books or playing chess, although we do those things too.”

Poppy looked up from the album. “Chess?” he asked. “We don’t play chess.”

“Well, Dixon does, sometimes.”

“I see your point,” Will said. “It’s just… maybe you have an unusual number of parties, don’t you think? Why, any time you and I try to get together, we have to work around all your social events.”

“Social? Those are professional!”

“Yes, but… it seems you’re the social type, you know? Hobnobbing with your mechanic, for instance; sharing a stranger’s marital secrets.”

“Aldo’s not a stranger!”

“Ah. Well. Truthfully, I must say I’m not sure I find the man as laudable as you do. To me, his attitude toward his wife shows a lack of responsibility.”

“Responsibility for what?” Rebecca asked.

“He had a duty, in my opinion, to set some standards. Both for his children’s sake and his own. And he neglected that duty.”

“Oh, piffle,” Rebecca said.

She may have been more forceful than she intended, because Will drew back slightly. Rebecca drew back too, and pressed her fingers to her lips.

“Here we go!” Poppy said. “Joycie when we met.” He slid the album closer to Will.

“Ah, yes. Very attractive,” Will said, hunching over it.

“She was a cutie, all right.”

Will’s right hand rested on the top of the page, his thumb rubbing the corner with a repetitive, whiskery sound. Rebecca remembered him, all at once, seated at the library table: his papers laid out just so, his books in stacks, his colored pencils in rows.

With a little stretch of the imagination, she could have glanced toward the dark kitchen window and seen Joe Davitch’s laughing face.

Poppy tugged at the album till Will released it, and then he studied Joyce’s picture. “She had the brownest eyes,” he said. “You think the Davitches’ eyes are brown; you should have seen Joyce’s. Hers were more like black.”

He picked up his mug and drank off the last of his milk. “Well,” he said. “I’m beat. I’d better haul myself off to bed.”

Rebecca slid her chair back and stood up. She said, “I should say good night too, I guess.”

“Oh,” Will said. “All right.”

He stumbled to his feet. He stood waiting while she went around to Poppy’s chair and helped him up, handed him his cane, placed an arm round his waist; and then he followed them down the kitchen passageway.

“Feet ache, ankles ache, knees ache…” Poppy intoned. In the foyer, he turned to Will. “Good seeing you,” he said. “Don’t forget my birthday party.”

“I wouldn’t miss it,” Will told him.

Poppy started up the stairs. Rebecca crossed to the front door and opened it. “When is his party?” Will asked her.

“Well,” she said, “it’s December.”

“What date in December?”

She faced forward, gazing out. In the light from the streetlamps, everything had a soft, gray, blurry look, like a memory. She felt she had been through all this before; she knew she had been through it: that dampening of her spirit; that tamped-down, boxed-in feeling; that sense she had in Will’s presence that she was a little too loud and too brightly colored. And now she recollected that he was the one who had brought things to a halt that long-ago night on the sofa. She had been rushing ahead, ready to fling herself recklessly over the edge, and then he had pulled away and suggested they show more restraint.

She said, “I don’t think we’ll be seeing each other in December.”

Even the distant traffic sounds seemed to come to a stop.

“Or before then, either,” she said.

He took a ragged breath.

“Why?” he asked her.

And when she didn’t answer, he said, “Was it something I did?”

“No, Will, you didn’t do anything.”

“Was it your family? Did they not like me?”

She felt a stab of pity. She said, “Oh, I’m sure they liked you!”

“Or Zeb, then?”

“Zeb?”

“He’s obviously my competition.”

The pity faded. “The fact of the matter is,” she said, “this just won’t work, Will. I’m sorry.”

Then she stepped forward and pressed her cheek against his. He stood woodenly, not responding. “Goodbye,” she told him.

He said, “Well. Yes. All right. Goodbye, Rebecca.”

She watched his ungainly, angular figure set off down the front walk, and she waited until he’d climbed into his car before she shut the door.

The house had a muffled sound that seemed lonelier than silence. Coffee cups sat abandoned in the parlors, and the dining room looked half stripped and disheveled, and Aunt Joyce smiled wistfully from the album on the kitchen table.

It turned out that Rebecca was the one who was still in mourning.

A woman named Mrs. Mink called to organize a baby shower. “My friend Paulina Garrett recommended you,” she said. “I told her I wanted someplace elegant. Someplace like a mansion.”

Rebecca said, “Well, the Open Arms is just a row house.”