Anne Tyler - A Slipping-Down Life

“Bertram!”

“Now, I mean this. I have had it. How do you think it feels to look at that face night after night when I’m playing? Do you think I like it? Following me with those eyes, watching every move. It wasn’t my fault she cut those fool letters. Am I going to have to go on paying for it forever?”

“Bertram. No one’s asking you to pay for it. She just wants to come hear your music, that’s all.”

“Don’t make me laugh,” said Drum.

“Oh, you’re turning hard, son. Are you going to be one of those stars that forgets the little people?”

“Well, wait now,” said David. He stood up. “Seems to me we’re getting worked up over nothing. If Drum don’t want Evie in the audience she won’t come. Right, Evie?”

“Right,” said Evie. The word opened a door, letting through a flashing beam of anger that took her by surprise. “I won’t come now or ever . Ever again. Not if that’s the way he feels.”

“Praise the Lord,” said Drum.

“And another thing, Drum Casey. If I had known what a cold and self-centered person you are those letters wouldn’t be there, I can promise you that. And your music is boring, it tends to get repetitious, and I hope everybody at the Parisian notices that the very first night and sends you home again. I hope you cry every mile of the way.”

“Why, Evie,” Mrs. Casey said.

“Not only that, but you can’t even play the guitar. You just hammer out noise like any fool at a Coke party, and I hope they notice that too.”

“That’s a lie,” said Drum. “You’re talking crazy.”

“Oh, am I?” She stood, but her knees felt shaky and she sat down again. “I may not be musical but I know that much. Joseph Ballew can play better any day.”

“He can not. Joseph don’t know one end of the guitar from the other.”

“That’s more than you know.”

“You’re out of your head. I play a great guitar. Don’t I, David?”

“Why, surely you do,” Mrs. Casey said.

“All you’ve got going,” said Evie, “is the speaking out and me. Well, the speaking out does not make sense and I’m going to cut my hair in bangs. Then see how far you go.”

“I was working at the Unicorn before I ever heard your name. I didn’t notice anyone asking how come no girl had cut ‘Casey’ in her forehead. Did you, David?”

“It was a waste,” Evie said.

“Will you stop that talk?”

“It was all for nothing.”

“I play a great guitar,” Drum said.

On the way home, Evie cried into the hem of her skirt. David kept quiet. When they had reached her house he said, “That ties it, I guess.”

“I’m sorry,” Evie said.

“No harm done.”

From what she could see in the dark, he seemed to be smiling. She smiled back and smoothed her skirt down. “Well, it looks like I won’t be seeing you again,” she said.

“No, I guess not. Been quite an experience knowing you, though.”

“Well. Good-bye.”

Before she shut the car door behind her she made certain she hadn’t forgotten anything. She wanted to leave no traces, not even a scrap of paper fluttering on the floor to make them remember her and laugh. Her father was downstairs reading, wearing his faded plaid bathrobe. “I was just about to call Violet,” he said. “Aren’t you a little late?”

“We ran into some friends.”

“Oh. There’s cocoa in the kitchen.”

“I don’t want any.”

She started toward her room, but halfway up the stairs she thought she heard his voice. “Did you say something?” she called.

“I said, are those the only clothes you’ve got? Remind me in the morning to give you some shopping money.”

“I don’t want any,” Evie said.

She cut herself a set of bangs, long enough to cover her eyebrows. Her eyes without eyebrows looked worried and surprised. And because her hair was puffy at the sides, she sometimes had the feeling she was living under a mushroom button. “There’s my girl,” her father said. “I’m going to find you a plastic surgeon, too. Would you go? I always knew you would come out of this, if I just let you be.” Then he went off to paint the back porch, whistling a tune she couldn’t recognize.

She threw away her black skirt and blouse, her snapshot of Drum at the Unicorn, Fay-Jean’s pencil drawing and the posed photograph his mother had given her. That was all that was left of him. She walked downtown under Clotelia’s huge umbrella and laid in a stack of school supplies for the coming year. On the way home she bought a Tar City newspaper. “Like everything else,” she read, “night-life seems to be suffering from the heat wave. The Manhattan Club has no entertainment at all this week, and the Parisian’s Drumstrings Casey is strictly amateur.” She refolded the newspaper and pushed it through the swinging door of a trashcan.

Afternoons, she visited Violet. All summer she had stayed home and let Violet come to her, and now she felt as if she had returned from some long hard trip that no one else knew about. The off-hand clutter of Violet’s room and her smiling fat family had a clear and distant look. New china horses had joined the parade across Violet’s bureau. On the closet door was a life-size poster of a movie star she had never even heard of. “What have you been doing all summer?” she asked Violet.

“What do you mean? You’ve seen me every day, haven’t you?”

“Well, yes.” She sat forward on the bed, cupping her chin in her hand. “Seems like I had two summers,” she said. “Two different ones. Sometimes I think, was that me , riding large as life between two boys to a road-house? Why, I never was on a date, even, except with that peculiar Buddy Howland whose voice never changed. I can’t believe I did it all.”

“Oh, remembering things is always that way,” Violet said.

“Not for me. Nothing to bother remembering, before. And I would rather not remember this. Why was I such a fool? You should have stopped me.”

“The best thing now is just to drop the subject from your mind,” Violet said.

“You’re right. I will. Let’s talk about something else. Did you know my father is taking over Miss Cone’s class? He said that she—”

“You told me that.”

“I did?”

“Last month.”

“Oh. I forgot.” She rose sharply from the bed, causing Violet to grab for her bottle of nail polish. “You see what I mean. I don’t remember telling you a thing about it. Oh, how am I going to get over all this? I wish I had spent the summer swimming or being a camp counselor. Or just snug in my house reading books, even. I wish someone would give me back all the time I’ve known Drum Casey, and I would change everything I did.”

“You were going to drop the subject,” Violet said.

But she couldn’t. She spent her mornings skating a slick surface, keeping busy, but afternoons she sprawled across Violet’s unmade bed and said the same things again and again, and Violet listened with a sort of cheerful tolerance that made it seem safe to say them.

On Monday morning, over a week since her fight with Drum, Evie settled down to cleaning out her desk. It helped to do things with bustle in them. Just as she started on the second drawer she heard Clotelia call, “Evie? You wanted down here.”

“Coming,” said Evie. She came out and looked down the stair well to the front hall. Clotelia stood waiting there with her arms folded and her feet apart. “You got a guest,” she said.

“Who is it?”

“Come on down, I told you.”

“Oh, all right.”

“Your father be home any minute, now.”

“Well, what about it?”