Anne Tyler: A Slipping-Down Life

On her way home from school one day, she saw a poster in a laundromat window. “Rock the Nite Away! “it said. “Pulqua’s first all-local rock show!” Below that was a column of names that she had never heard of: the Huddlers, Spoony and James, Daphne Liggett. And at the bottom, Drumstrings Casey. “Bertram ‘Drumstrings’ Casey.” The name had a worn, vulnerable look, like something she was too familiar with. She pulled a scrap of paper from a frayed zipper notebook and wrote down the time and place of the show. Then she folded the paper and placed it inside her history book.

“Are you serious?” Violet said on the phone. “I don’t believe you even know what a rock show is.”

“Well, I do listen to the radio.”

“What’s that got to do with it? You’re sitting in your bedroom, listening to the radio. But do you know what kind of trash goes to a live rock show?”

“I don’t care,” Evie said. She was shut up in her closet to avoid being heard by Clotelia, the cleaning girl. Her voice was muffled by clothes and boots and suitcases, and what was meant to sound lighthearted came out secretive and urgent. “It’s at the movie house. What could happen there? I think we should go, Violet.”

“Well, listen,” said Violet. “My uncle went to one of those shows in Raleigh, back before he was married. He said they danced the dirty bop all up and down the aisles. He said he was so embarrassed he just sat transfixed to his seat, never saw anything like it.”

“What’s the dirty bop?” Evie asked.

“ I don’t know.”

“Well, it’s bound to be out of style by now. They wouldn’t still be doing it.”

“No, but they’ll have thought of something else,” Violet said.

“That’s all right. I want to hear just one special singer. Then we can go.”

“Really? What’s his name?”

“Oh, it’s nobody famous.”

“What’s his name?”

“Bertram Drumstrings Casey.”

“Drumstrings?”

“Do you know him?” Evie asked.

“No. How do you know him?”

“I don’t. I just heard him on the radio.”

“What kind of stuff does he do?”

“I only heard him talking.”

“Well, for heaven’s sake,” said Violet. But she seemed to be thinking it over, because after a minute she said, “Did you ask your father about it?”

“No,” Evie said. Her father was a high school math teacher, a vague, gentle man who assumed that Evie would manage just fine wherever she was. In her talks with Violet, though, he kept turning out to be the kind of father who put his foot down. “I don’t think I’ll bother him with it,” she said.

“Oh-oh.”

“Will you come?”

“Oh, well, sure,” said Violet. “Now that I know the reason why.”

When she had hung up, Evie waited a second and then gave her closet door a sudden shove. But Clotelia was nowhere around. Downstairs a soap-opera star said, “This is going to be very hard for me to tell you, Bertha—”

“Oh, Bertha, watch out!” Clotelia shouted.

Evie got to her feet and smoothed her wrinkled skirt down.

Violet met her in the lobby, wearing a purple spring coat. She was an enormously fat girl with teased black hair and a beautiful face, and she always wore brilliant colors as if she hadn’t read any advice to the overweight. Beside her, Evie seemed almost thin, but lifeless — gray-skinned and dull-haired. She had on her school coat and oxfords. “Are you going to dance in those?” Violet said.

“Who would I dance with?”

They were shoved by slick-haired boys in leather jackets, girls in tight sweaters and false eyelashes the size of small whiskbrooms. Almost nobody from school was there. “We are cut off from civilization here. I hope you realize that,” said Violet. “I swear, will you look at that girl’s earrings?” Her voice was rich and and lazy. Every time she spoke, boys turned to see who she was and then slid their eyes away again.

Inside the theater they had to work their way through more boys who roamed the aisles in packs. Above the “No Smoking” signs, blue smoke was already beginning to haze the ceiling. Couples with their arms around each other leaned against walls and exit doors and the pipe railing down front — anywhere but in the chairs. “Are we supposed to stand during this?” Evie asked, and Violet said, “No, not me.” She flung herself into one of the wooden seats, bought second-hand from a larger town nearby. A boy who was sidling down their row said, “Move sweetie.”

“Move yourself,” Violet said.

Oh, nothing bothered Violet. She smiled a beautiful bland smile at the empty stage, and the boy struggled past her large pale knees and then past Evie’s, muttering all the time. “You’d think they would serve popcorn,” Violet said calmly. She smoothed her skirt down and went on gazing at the stage.

But the popcorn stand was closed tonight. The theater had turned into something else, like a gym transformed for a senior prom or an American Legion hall into a banquet room. There was a cavernous chill from the tongue-and-groove walls, in spite of the heavy velvet window curtains. The ceiling seemed higher and dingier, and when Evie looked up she saw light-fixtures poised dizzyingly far above her, their bowls darkened by pools of insects that she had never noticed before. Down front the movie screen had been rolled up. The wooden stage with its electric amplifiers looked like a roomful of refrigerators. A man in shirt sleeves was unraveling microphone cords. “Testing,” he said. “Anybody out there?” The volume was high, but it melted away among the voices in the audience.

When the first group began, only a few people had found seats. Four boys in pink satin shirts came out carrying instruments and stood in a semicircle, and one of them spent some time getting his French cuffs adjusted. Then they began playing. Their music was too loud to be heard. It blended with the voices out front, the volume reaching a saturation point so that it was impossible to separate the notes or distinguish the words. “This is hurting,” said Violet, but she had to shout directly into Evie’s ear. Nobody else seemed to mind. They shuffled about in groups, not quite dancing, or draped themselves on the arms and backs of the seats and snapped their fingers and wagged their heads as they continued their conversations. When the music stopped, they cheered. After three more numbers they clapped raggedly and the musicians gathered their instruments and left. Nobody watched them go.

“Who was that?” Violet asked. But they had no program to tell them. A few minutes later three boys and a girl came on, and the girl sang a song and did a tiny intricate dance step. The words of the song were slippery and whining: “Oh, ya, ya, my honey knows how .…” Evie felt a sort of seeping discomfort, but the rest of the audience listened carefully and clapped and whistled afterward.

Following the fourth group, there was an intermission. A phonograph somewhere played a Mantovani record. A few of the boys went out to the Coke machines in the lobby, and others took flat curved bottles from their hip pockets. Only Evie and Violet stayed in their seats. They had kept their coats on, as if they were only dropping in on their way to somewhere else. “Where is Drumstrings Casey?” Violet asked. “Was he one of them?”

“No. I don’t think so.”

“How will we know him?”

“He will only have a drummer. Look, maybe we should go. Do you want to?”

“What for?”

“I feel like I’ve made a mistake. Shall we go?”

“Oh, why? I’m enjoying myself,” Violet said. “At least let’s stay till Drumstrings comes.”