Anne Tyler - A Slipping-Down Life

“Thank you, Daddy,” Evie said. The afternoon was too perilous to bother arguing about her attendance record. Her father sat with his fingers together, the tip of his nose whitening as it always did under strain. Mrs. Casey was pleating the V of skin again.

“Lord knows we don’t have extra cars to hand out,” she said, “or anything like that; we’re only simple folk. But your daddy here was thinking you might want your old job back, Bertram. Plenty would give their right arms for that job.”

“Well, I could use it, I reckon,” Drum said. “Sure.”

The three parents sat side by side, keeping their backs very straight, as if the couch were something breakable.

At three o’clock they left. Mrs. Casey said, “Well, I surely did — Obed, where is my purse? Now, don’t be a stranger, Bertram. You come by whenever you like — even if you just get lonesome, or hungry for a snack. Thank you for the sweet lunch, Evie.”

“Joyed it,” said Mr. Casey.

Evie’s father carefully buttoned all the buttons of his coat. He kissed Evie on the cheek and shook Drum’s hand. “My car will be coming next Wednesday,” he said. “Thursday I’ll give you the keys to the VW. Won’t you come by and see me sometime?”

“Oh, of course,” said Evie. “It’s just that these last few weeks have been so busy. Getting settled and all.”

“You could come for supper some night. Will you do that?”

“Of course,” Evie said.

She stood beside Drum in the doorway, shivering slightly, watching the two cars grow smaller. “Now,” Drum said. “It’s over and done with.”

She nodded.

“And hot dog, we got us a car. Ain’t that something? I always did like stick-shifts.”

“I believe that’s all you can think about,” Evie said.

“Huh?”

“Well, you could at least have said thank you. Or talked to him more. Oh, I know that car, it smells woolly like his school suit and I will think about that every time I get in it. Couldn’t you just tell him you appreciated it?”

“Nothing wrong with a woolly smell,” said Drum.

“No,” Evie said, giving up. So when he suddenly tightened his arms around her, pulling her close, it came as a surprise.

“Don’t fret, I’m here,” he said.

Beneath his shirt she felt his rib cage, thin and warm, and she heard the steady beating of his heart.

Then one Saturday at the Unicorn, Drum got into an argument. Not a fist fight, this time; just a shouting quarrel. It was almost midnight. Evie was splitting a burnt-out match into tiny slivers of paper while she waited for the evening to end, and the crowd had thinned enough so that she heard clearly when Drum’s voice rose in the back room. “The hell you say. What you trying to pull, Zack?” She looked up, first toward the back room and then at the people sharing her table — three couples, talking softly over empty beer mugs, separated from other couples by a jungle of vacant chairs. None of them paid any attention. “Ah, don’t give me that,” Drum said. Evie rose and pushed through the chairs and behind the band platform. When she reached the back room she squinted in through layers of smoke. There was Drum, facing the proprietor and holding his guitar by the neck. David stood beside him. “… to be sensible about this, Drum,” he was saying. Nearest Evie were Joseph Ballew and Joseph’s bass player. “I don’t see Joseph getting treated so light,” Drum said.

“Joseph’s our lead player,” the proprietor told him. “You know that.”

“Have you got some method to tell who draws in what people? No. All you got is—”

“Look, Drum, you’ll still play on Saturdays. But Fridays, face it, there ain’t all that big a crowd nowadays. You want me to lose money?”

“What’s going on?” Evie asked.

They looked at her and then turned away again, not answering. Finally David said, “Zack was just saying how—”

“I been cut back to one night a week,” said Drum. “There was a full house tonight and it’s almost Christmas and now Zack here decides he’s losing money.”

“Now, Drum, if I could see my way clear you know I’d—” Zack said. He looked fatter than ever and very sad, with sweat running down the sides of his face like tears. “Spring, of course, we could see about having you for both nights again. It all goes by seasons , don’t you see.”

“He’s right,” said Joseph.

“You can talk,” Drum told him. “How would you feel to get cut back without no warning?”

“Sure, I know how—”

“Ah, forget it,” Drum said. “Where’s my coat?”

“It’s right behind you,” Evie said.

But Drum went on stamping through the room, shoving chairs aside and looking under instrument cases. When finally he found the coat he said, “Another thing. You can forget Saturdays too, from now on. I ain’t coming back here. You’ll have to get along without me.”

“Now, Drum, wait,” said David.

“Do you want a ride or don’t you?”

He pushed his way out of the room, right past Evie, and David looked at the others for a minute and then shrugged and followed him. Evie had to run to catch up with them.

Outside, the air was crackling with a sharp dry cold that made her ears tighten. She stumbled after Drum and David, struggling into her coat on the way. Their car was haloed with frost. While Drum unlocked the door Evie shifted from one foot to the other to keep warm, but Drum didn’t look cold at all. He pulled the key out of the handle and then just stood there a minute, staring out over the icy roofs of other cars. “Hop in,” David told Evie. “Let me sit up front. I’ll talk to him.”

Evie perched on the edge of the narrow back seat. One knee rested against Drum’s guitar, which had kept some of the warmth from the Unicorn. While Drum was backing out no one spoke, but then on the highway Drum said, “Damn fat fool.”

“He’s just having to look out for his business,” David said.

“What, over Christmas? School’s letting out, the place’ll be jammed. And how about Joseph, now? How does he get to stay?”

“Zack told you. Joseph is the—”

“All right, all right. The lead player. Who don’t even have a sense of rhythm. I tell you, we’re well out of that place. Got to find us something lively now.”

“Well, where, Drum? Do you think you can pick up a new job just by snapping your fingers? I can’t even find us private parties nowadays, and here it is Christmas time and I have sent ads all over town.”

“Something will turn up.”

“Nothing will turn up. Tomorrow I’m calling Zack. I’ll tell him we’ll be there next Saturday same as usual. You were just a mite put out, I’ll tell him. He’ll understand.”

“No, he won’t, because I ain’t showing. Me and Evie are going to the movies.”

“Suit yourself, then,” David said. And he was quiet for the rest of the ride, although he whistled under his breath.

When they dropped David off at his house, Drum jerked his chin toward the front seat. “Come up here and sit,” he said.

“What for?”

“Come talk to me.”

She looked at his face in the rear-view mirror. It was pale and shadowed. And after she had settled herself beside him he said, “I made a fool out of myself, didn’t I?”

“Oh, no.”

“Seems like I am just going through one of those low periods. Last Christmas we played at three different parties; this Christmas they forgot all about us.”

“Maybe you need more publicity,” Evie said.

“I don’t see how I can get any more. Oh, pretty soon he will fire me for Saturdays too, I can feel it coming. I will have to play at those free things he has on Sunday afternoons, everybody drinking coffee. That’s how low I’ll come to.”