Anne Tyler - A Slipping-Down Life

Her father went to bed with a book. Lights blinked off up and down the street, and chairs were scraped off porches through bright yellow doors that finally closed and darkened. Then someone came up the sidewalk, all alone. She watched him swing over the hedge and cut across the lawn to the front porch steps. “Oh, you know better than anyone, don’t you?” he said.

“Know what?”

“How come you’re sitting out here? You’re waiting for me to slink back, nowhere else to go.”

He climbed the steps and sank down on the swing, at the opposite end from her. “Everybody asked about you,” he said.

“Who do you mean?”

“At the Unicorn.”

“I thought you weren’t going there this week,” Evie said.

“No call not to, is there? Sure we did. Last night and tonight, same as ever. People said, ‘Where is that girl who cut herself up, has she found her someone else by now?’ I was thinking of saying you had killed yourself. ‘Finished what she started,’ I would say. That would have gone big.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Evie said. “Do you think I would kill myself over the likes of you?”

“Then I went back home with David and slept in the tool shed. His mother came out in the morning with a broom. Old witch, should have been riding it. ‘What are you doing here?’ she asks. I swear if she wasn’t about to sweep me right out.”

“Well, I don’t blame her,” Evie said. “You just hang on and hang on, Drum Casey. When are you going to leave me alone? As soon as I get used to you being gone, you turn up again. Will you ever just get out and stay out?”

“Oh, now, don’t make me go,” said Drum. “It’s late. I’m tired.”

“Well, so am I.”

She drew in her breath, waiting for him to say something else that she could fire back at him, but he seemed to have given up. He sat slumped against the arm of the swing. All she saw was a black shadow with his T shirt making a triangle of white above his jacket. Finally he said, “You know Joseph Ballew? He says, ‘Where is that plump girl with “Casey” on her forehead? Lost her interest? You’re slipping, man,’ he says.”

Evie didn’t answer.

“Have you ever thought of losing some weight?”

It took a moment for his words to sink in. Then she said, “Well, my God in heaven.”

“Have you?”

“Why do you feel free to act so rude? I eat less than you do.”

“I was just asking. You know, in Tar City they got this slenderizing place. Steam baths and exercise machines. You ever been to one?”

“No, I have not.”

“Well. This girl was telling about it. Seems they can really slim people down. And make-up, and hair styles — You know, I saw in this magazine once where they decide the shape of your face and then fix your hair to fit it. They had before-and-after pictures; it looked real good.”

“I wish you would go,” Evie said.

“What, now?”

“Nobody makes you sit here. If you can’t stand my looks, find someone else’s porch to sleep on.”

“Well, wait now,” Drum said. “You got it all wrong. I’m trying to help out.”

“I didn’t ask for any help.”

“I just want you to look your best. There’s no reason you should get mad about it.”

“What business is it of yours if I look my best?”

“Well, I was thinking we might could get married,” Drum said.

Evie held still for a minute, not breathing. Then she began to laugh.

“Did I say something funny?” Drum asked.

“Yes,” she said. But the laugh, which should have flowed on, suddenly rusted and broke. “I believe you’re out of your head,” she said.

“Why? Don’t you want to?”

“No, I don’t,” said Evie.

“I don’t know what you got to lose. You must like me some or you wouldn’t have, you know, cut the letters. You wouldn’t hang around me all the time. And here I am with no home. And my career’s at a standstill, we could get our pictures in the papers. Human interest. Plus I do like you. I wouldn’t be asking if I didn’t.”

“What do you like about me?” Evie said.

“Jesus.”

“Well, go on. Name something.”

“ I don’t know. I like the way you listen to people. Is that enough?”

“No,” said Evie.

“Look. I like you. I want to get married. I feel like things are just petering out all around me and I want to get married to someone I like and have me a house and change . Make a change. Isn’t that enough? Don’t you want to change your life around some?”

Evie held the cushion closer to her and breathed in its musty smell. Then she lifted a hand and ran one finger across her forehead, tracing the narrow ridges of the scars, which always felt pleasantly crinkled. In the opposite house, the last of the lights went out. People slept fitfully in hot, rumpled beds hollowed to fit their shapes, in houses they had grown up and grown old in. Beside her, Drum shifted in the swing. He was waiting for her answer, which would be yes, but only after she had taken her time over it. Things moved too fast. She had wanted a courtship, with double dates and dances and matching shirts, but all she got was three minutes of staring at sleeping houses before she said, “Oh, well. Why not?” and Drum slid over to kiss her with cool blank lips.

She awoke from a dream in which she slipped through slimy clay, trying to escape a reckless woman driver in an army car. It was nearly ten o’clock in the morning. The second hand of her alarm clock spun off circle after circle while she lay watching, unable to move her eyes or gather her thoughts together. A steeple bell rang. The Sunday paper slapped against the screen. Her father passed her door on his way to church, and she wondered if he would find Drum asleep in the swing. But even that was not enough to unfasten her eyes from the clock.

Long after her father’s car had driven off, she heard the front door slam. Drum’s boots crossed the downstairs hall. “You there?” he called.

Evie didn’t answer.

“Evie?”

“All right, I’m coming,” Evie said.

Lying still so long without breakfast had made her dizzy. Black and blue buttons swarmed toward her when she climbed out of bed. As soon as her eyes had cleared she stepped into last night’s clothes and then went to the mirror to unravel her pincurls. How would she curl her hair if she were married? Clotelia’s magazines said no man liked to see his wife in curlers. The word “wife” hit her strangely, stilling her fingers for a moment. It was more definite than “married,” which had merely floated shapelessly in her mind since the night before. She saw herself in a housecoat, mixing orange juice; saying no to a vacuum-cleaner salesman; wondering if it were time to start supper. None of the situations seemed likely. What Drum had come for, she thought, was to tell her he had changed his mind. She would never be a wife, after all. She felt so certain of it that she descended the stairs blank-faced, shut against everything, and when she saw him lounging in the living room doorway she failed to smile.

But all Drum said was, “Could you fix some breakfast?”

“All right,” she said.

She fried eggs and bacon while he leaned on the stove and watched. The shut feeling was still with her, causing a brisk competence which she had never had before. Eggs plopped neatly in the frying pan, and she laid down strips of bacon in exactly parallel lines. Then Drum said, “No biscuits?”

“You’ll have to do without,” she told him. “I don’t know how to make them.”

“Can’t you get Clotelia to show you? Breakfast is not breakfast without no biscuits.”