Anne Tyler - A Slipping-Down Life

“Of course,” Evie said.

“Or you could keep coming just on Saturdays, if you wanted.”

“Why? Do you think I’m not working out any more?”

“No, Lord, you’re working out fine. But if your father starts worrying, you being gone two evenings and all—”

“No, I’ll come,” Evie said. Although it did seem that her father might begin to wonder. She frowned down at her skirt, gathering it in folds between her knees, while David made more lists on more scraps of paper.

The next Friday they drove to Farinia to pick up Drum. Evie had been through Farinia often, but without really noticing. She stared out her window now at the town’s one paved street, with its double row of un-painted stores covered in rusty soft-drink signs. On a corner next to a shoe repair shop, a service station sat under a tent of flapping pennants, its lights already shining. David drove in and honked his horn.

“You haven’t run over the bell thing yet,” Evie told him.

“Bell thing? Oh. No, I don’t want gas, this is where Drum lives.”

“Here?”

Then she saw that the service station was an unpainted Victorian house, its bottom story tiled with shiny white squares. Above, lace curtains wavered in narrow windows. “What the hell,” David said. “I’ll run up and get him.”

“Can I come too?”

“If you want.”

She followed him across the service area and up a flight of rickety outside steps. The door had a card thumbtacked to it saying “ObeD E. CAseY” in pencil. David knocked. “Who is it?” a woman called.

“It’s me, David. I’ve come for Bertram, tell him.”

The door opened. After the rickety steps and the penciled card, Drum’s mother was a relief — a plump, cheerful woman in a bibbed apron, smile lines working outward from Drum’s brown eyes. “Evening, David,” she said. Then she saw Evie, and she raised her fingers to her lips. “Oh, my Lord,” she said. “Why, you must be — my Lord. Come in, honey. I hate to say it but I’ve forgotten what they called you.”

“This is Evie Decker, Mrs. Casey,” David said.

The name on Evie’s face, of course, was Mrs. Casey’s own — something Evie hadn’t thought of before. But Mrs. Casey didn’t seem to mind. She only looked worried; she shepherded Evie to a chair and hovered over her while Evie sat down. “Here, honey, put a cushion at your back. It’s much more comfortable. My!” she said, staring openly at Evie’s forehead. “I never thought it would be so, so large!”

David, still beside the door, shifted his weight uneasily. “Where is Bertram?” he asked. “We’re running late.”

“Oh, he’s just now changing. I’ll hurry him along.”

She disappeared, looking backward one last time, and David sank down in a flowered armchair. The room was dim but clean, with a line of vinyl plants on the window sill and stiff plastic antimacassars on every piece of furniture. Over the mantel was a picture of a cross with a radiant gilt sunset just behind it. The glass-faced bookcase contained three books and dozens of photographs in white paper folders, which Evie rose to look at more closely. Towheaded boys scowled out at her, three or four to a picture. One was Drum, his hair turning darker and longer as he grew. In the most recent picture he was posed all alone with his guitar held vertically on one knee. “Would you believe that he was ever blond?” Mrs. Casey said behind her. “Then one day it seemed it all turned black, surprised the life out of me. The others, now, they’re turning too. Bertram’s daddy says his did the same.”

“It’s a good picture of him,” Evie said.

“Would you like it?”

“Oh, no, I—”

“Go on, take it, we have more. It’s the least I can do. Honey, I feel I owe you something. ‘Bertram,’ I said (I never call him Drum), ‘that little girl has put your name in the paper and started you on your way. Now don’t you forget that,’ I said, and sure enough, here they are having him work Fridays too and I just know you had a part in it. Oh, how can you sit up at your little table that way? I heard all about it. ‘She is doing you just a magnificent service, Bertram,’ I said—”

“I’m sure they’d have started him on Fridays anyway,” Evie told her. “He’s the best singer I know of.”

“Now aren’t you sweet? Well, I can’t say it myself, of course, being his mother, but deep down I know he has a wonderful career in front of him. He is what I am pinning my hopes on. ‘You remember,’ I tell him, ‘that wherever you go, you are carrying my hopes around with you.’ And it’s on account of me that he’s not just a filling-station attendant like his daddy. ‘Boy’s lazy,’ his daddy says. ‘Nineteen years old,’ he says, ‘and spinning out his days plucking music, only pumping gas when it suits him.’ I tell him I won’t stand for that kind of talk. ‘You just remember,’ I tell him, ‘that Bertram is going to be famous one day. He’s carrying all my hopes,’ I say. There’s a spark in Bertram, you know? He gets it from my side. My father played the banjo. Not just being musical but a sort of, I don’t know—”

Evie nodded, over and over. Agreement welled up inside her like tears, but even saying yes meant breaking into Mrs. Casey’s web of words. “There was always something special about him,” said Mrs. Casey. “Right from when he was born. I felt it. Would you like to see the album?”

“We got to go, Mom,” Drum said. He was standing in the living room doorway, buckling his belt. “Don’t wait up for me.”

“Oh, why do you rush off like this? Bertram, honey, I want you to bring Evie back again, you hear? We just get along like a house afire. I hope you will never be so famous you forget the people who did you a good turn.”

“A good turn, what’s she been telling you? I’m paying her, ain’t I?”

“Not to do all that cutting you didn’t. Can’t any money pay for that. Evie, honey, what do the doctors say?”

“I don’t know,” said Evie.

“Well, you might just inquire. When Bertram leaves this area I expect they could fix you up just like new.”

“Mom, for Lord’s sake,” Drum said.

“Well, she don’t want it all her life, now does she?”

“We better be going,” David said. He stood up and ran his fingers through his hair. “Nice seeing you, Mrs. Casey.”

“Well, hurry back.” And at the door, as she handed Evie the picture in its paper folder, she said, “Don’t be a stranger, Evie, we’ll welcome you just as often as you want to come. Next visit I’ll let you see Bertram in the photo album, you hear?”

“Thank you,” said Evie. She was surprised to feel David’s hand suddenly clasp her elbow as she started down the steps.

She went back often. Drum usually had to be called for on Fridays, and it was Evie who ran up to knock on the door while David waited in the Jeep. “I don’t see how you stand that woman,” he said.

“Why? I think she’s sweet.”

“How can you listen to all that talk? And going on about your forehead and all, how can you put up with that?”

“Oh, I don’t mind,” said Evie.

She thought that David might even like her now, in an absent-minded way. They had had so many long rides together, with the filling of the silence resting on the two of them — Drum being absent or as good as absent, twanging that one guitar string. Once when they were alone David said, “I’ve been thinking about your forehead. I mean, they’re only white now, the letters. Have you ever thought of wearing bangs?”

“Then no one in the Unicorn would see them,” Evie said.

“Well, no.”

“Don’t you want me to come to the Unicorn any more?”