Anne Tyler - Back When We Were Grownups

He was right, Rebecca realized. They should have thought how it would look: the poor little man all dressed up, all alone on his expanse of deforested icing. Well, too late now, for Poppy had already been reminded of his poem. “ You’re given a special welcome when you get to heaven late… ”

Min Foo blamed Hakim. That blasted videotape, she said in a piercing whisper, with Aunt Joyce in every frame, just about, reminding Poppy all over again that she was dead.

Hakim said, “So? He would otherwise forget?”

Lateesha asked if she could lick the frosting off the candles. Mr. Hardesty’s walker made a sound like inch, inch as he hobbled toward a chair. “ The journey may be lonely, but the end is worth the wait, ” Poppy finished. “ The sight of your beloved, smiling at the gate. ”

And then, without missing a beat, “Why! That wouldn’t be fondant icing, would it?”

“It would indeed,” Biddy told him.

“Fondant icing! My favorite! Oh, my.”

What Peter had said was right, Rebecca thought. You could still enjoy a party even if you didn’t remember it later.

* * *

The champagne was a top brand; Rebecca had made sure of that. Ordinarily they’d have drunk something cheaper — just sparkling wine, to be honest — but not today. Barry gave a whistle when she handed him a bottle to open. “Pretty classy,” he told her, and she said, “Well, we don’t observe a hundredth birthday every day of the week.” Even the little ones got the real thing. She poured a drop for each of them herself, over Biddy’s protests that they would never know the difference.

“A toast!” she said when everyone had a glass. She raised her own glass. She was standing in the center of the front parlor, surrounded by so many people that some were all the way back in the dining room, and at the moment she wasn’t even sure where Poppy was located. But she said, “To Poppy!” She cleared her throat.

“He’s beginning to seem perennial;

We’re observing his centennial.

So shout it from the chandeliers:

We wish him another hundred years!”

“To Poppy,” they all murmured. And then, in the silence when the others were drinking, Patch said clearly, “Oh, Lord, Beck is back to those everlasting rhymes of hers.”

Rebecca’s eyes stung. She swallowed her sip of champagne and blinked to clear her vision.

From over near the fireplace, Poppy said, “Thank you, all.”

He was standing next to Mr. Hardesty and grasping one side of the walker, so that at first glance it seemed the two men were holding hands. When he had everybody’s attention, he said, “Well. This has been just what I dreamed of, I tell you. From the very start of the day, it’s been perfect. Sunshine on my bedspread when I opened my eyes; radiators coming on all dusty-smelling and cozy. Waffles for breakfast, that puffy kind that are light inside but crispy outside, and one-hundred-percent maple syrup heated first in the microwave and then poured over in a pool and left a moment to soak, so the waffles swell and turn spongy and every crumb of them is sopping with that toasty, nutty flavor…”

Well, this would take a while. Rebecca downed the rest of her champagne and looked for a place to set her glass. Then she felt someone’s hand on the small of her back. When she turned, she found Zeb just behind her. He said, “That was just Patch being Patch. She didn’t mean anything by it.”

“Oh,” she said, “what do I care?”

But to her distress, the tears welled up again.

“The fact is,” she told Zeb, “I’m a superficial woman.”

She had meant to say “superfluous” (she was thinking again of the movie credits — how she might as well not have been present), but she didn’t correct herself; so Zeb, misunderstanding, said, “They can’t expect a Shakespearean sonnet, for heaven’s sake.”

“And another thing,” she said, regardless of who overheard her. “How come everyone calls me Beck ? Beck is not my name! I’m Rebecca! How did I get to be Beck, all at once?”

“ I don’t call you Beck,” Zeb pointed out.

This was true, she realized. But she went on. “’Beck’s unrelenting jollity’—that’s what Biddy told Troy this morning. I heard her, out in the kitchen. ‘This party will be a breeze,’ I heard her say. ‘We’ve got Poppy’s truckload of desserts, and enough champagne to float a ship, and Beck’s unrelenting jollity…’”

“Why don’t we find you a seat,” Zeb said, and he increased the pressure on the small of her back and steered her through the crowd. “Excuse us, please. Excuse us.”

People gave way, not noticing, still listening to Poppy’s speech. He had traveled past the waffles now and arrived at his morning shave. “… anything nicer than soft, rich lather and a plenitude of hot water? The bathroom’s warm and soapy-smelling; the mirror’s a steamy blur. You draw the razor down your cheek and leave this smooth swath of skin…”

No chairs were free, but Zeb guided Rebecca toward the piano, where Emmy and Joey were sitting, and asked if they’d mind moving. “Your grandma’s tired,” he told them. They jumped up, and Rebecca dropped heavily onto the bench. She was tired, come to think of it. She buried her nose in her empty glass and remembered, unexpectedly, a long-ago childhood crying fit that had ended when her father brought her a tumbler of ginger ale. (The same spicy, tingly smell, the same saltiness in her nostrils.) Then Zeb’s fingers closed around the stem of her glass, and she let him take it away to where Barry was pouring refills.

“The best thing about solitaire is, it’s so solitary,” Poppy was saying. “You’re allowed to think these aimless thoughts and nobody asks what you’re up to. You lay out the cards, slip slip slip —a peaceful sound — and then you sit a while and think, and the mantel clock is tick-tocking and the smell of fresh hot coffee is coming up from downstairs…”

People seemed to have reached the conclusion that Poppy’s speech was background music. They were discreet; they kept their voices low, but they were going about their own affairs now. Lateesha was drawing a face on a balloon with a squeaky felt-tip marker. NoNo and Min Foo had the giggles. Mr. Ames had waylaid Zeb to tell him something medical — displaying a gnarled wrist and flexing it this way and that while Zeb bent his head politely.

J.J. sat down on the bench beside Rebecca and confided that he wasn’t entirely at ease about his wife. “What seems to be the trouble?” Rebecca whispered, and he said, “I believe her pastor paid that visit because she asked him to. I believe she’s starting to wonder why she married me.”

“Oh, J.J., don’t you think you’re just anxious because of what happened with Denise?” Rebecca asked. “You’ve been a wonderful husband! You took her on that anniversary trip to Ocean City—”

“Yes, but I believe the more niggling things — the, like, wearing my socks to bed, which she hates…”

Lunch, Poppy was saying, had been precisely what he’d requested: a peanut-butter-jelly sandwich on whole wheat. “Oh, I know it’s not foie gras,” he said, “but there’s something so satisfactory about a p.b.j. done right. And this was done exactly right: the grape jelly smeared so thick that it had started soaking through, making these oozy purple stains like bruises on the bread…”

Rebecca’s mother and Aunt Ida tiptoed across the room with their purses tucked under their arms. They picked their way around a game of jacks on the rug and trilled their fingers toward Rebecca. “Don’t get up!” Aunt Ida mouthed, but of course Rebecca did get up. She followed them out to the foyer, where they could speak in normal tones.