Anne Tyler - A Slipping-Down Life

“You just need a good night’s sleep,” Evie told him. “Things will look different in the morning.”

“Oh, sure, I know.”

When they got home, he pulled off his shirt and jeans and then climbed into bed with a jelly glass half full of bourbon. He watched Evie while she moved around the room straightening up. She folded his clothes and laid them in a chair, she changed into her seersucker nightgown and then stood before a mirror to curl her hair. From one of her drawers she took a plastic barrette and pinned her bangs back. They would have to be trained that way. She planned to leave her forehead bare again, showing Drum and all the rest of the world what his music was worth to her.

“This business about Saturdays,” Drum told her. “I ain’t going to change my mind; I meant it. I don’t want to play there at all any more. Why should I go where I’m not appreciated? I would like to find me something new, switch over. Now, are you going to side with David and start beating me down about this?”

“You know I wouldn’t,” Evie said.

“Well, I was just wondering.”

He set the empty jelly glass on the window sill, and by the time Evie had put the lights out he was asleep.

But Evie stayed awake, long after she had gone to bed. She lay on her back, stiff and still, watching how the cold moonlight frosted the rim of the jelly glass. That had been the last of the bourbon. It was a reckless purchase one weekend when they had extra money, and for two months the bottle had sat in the kitchen cupboard growing sticky and fingerprinted, brought down rarely and measured out carefully. Now how long would it be before they bought more? Their money came in dribbles — five dollars here, fifteen there, sometimes a little from her father who said, “This is for a sweater,” or for books, or a new hairdo, making it too explicit for Evie to object, although she never spent it on what he suggested. What they had they kept in billfolds; it wasn’t enough for a bank. And it was paid out in dribbles, too, so that the dimestore budget book with its headings—”Mortgage,” “Insurance,” “Transportation”—seemed unrelated to their lives. They spent it on cigarettes or records, or on a can of artichoke hearts which Drum said he wanted to try just once before he died. When they were poorest they ate stale saltines and spaghetti in dented tins, reduced for quick sale. They turned out coat pockets and dug between sofa cushions. And in the end, more money always dribbled in again.

But now their only income would be from the A & P and the filling station. It wasn’t much. If she didn’t want Drum pumping gas all day she would have to find a job, and she even knew where: at the public library. Her father had told her about a position there, intending it for Drum. (Money was something her father worried about. Money and balanced diets.) But how would Drum ever endure a library? He would sit behind a circulation desk in spurred boots and a black denim jacket, sinking lower every time he jabbed a rubber stamp against an ink pad. It would have to be Evie who did it, afternoons when school was out. She even thought she might like it. She pictured herself in a blue smock, calm and competent, going through a set of crisp motions with catalogue drawers. When she finally slept she dreamed she walked up to the Unicorn’s band platform with a stack of historical romances, and one by one she laid them in Drum’s lap. “Thank you,” said Drum, strumming his guitar. “It’s what I always wanted.”

But in the morning Drum turned out to be against the idea. He heard it with his eyes on something far above the bed, his face smooth and blank and patient. Then at her first pause he said, “No.”

“But don’t you see?” Evie asked. “It works out so well. You would never be pressed into doing some job you hated; you would know you had me to fall back on.”

“I don’t like it,” said Drum.

“Well, Drum, I never. Are you one of those people that doesn’t like working wives?”

“No. Well, no, of course not. But it wouldn’t look good. People will say I must have got cut back at the Unicorn.”

“You have,” Evie wanted to say, but she didn’t. She had read in Family Circle about how wives needed tact at times like this.

On Monday afternoon, she passed the library twice very slowly and then made up her mind and walked in. All she wanted to do was satisfy her curiosity. She smelled the familiar library smells, paste and buckram and polished wood, and she saw how the cheerful yellow curtains framed narrow rectangles of winter light. Behind the desk sat Miss Simmons, red-haired and spectacled, sliding pencils into an orange-juice can some child had painted for her. “Why, Evie,” Miss Simmons said. “How nice to see you.”

“I only came by for a minute,” Evie said. She shifted the heap of books she held against her chest.

“Was there something I could help you with?”

“Oh, no. Well, I was curious, is all; my father said you had a job open.”

“That’s right, Naomi’s job. She got married. I hated to lose her. Are you interested?”

“Well, I don’t know. There’s my, Drum, he doesn’t — but it sounded like something I’d like.”

“It’s after school hours, you know. No problem there.”

“Yes, I know, but—”

“Dollar and a half an hour.”

“Would it take up any evenings?”

“Evenings, no, we’re not open evenings. Three to six every afternoon; you’d be home in time for supper. Won’t you think about it? I’d love to have someone I knew.”

Miss Simmons had a wide, lopsided smile that changed the shape of her face, making her look young and hopeful. When she smiled Evie said, “Oh well, all right. I think I’d like to,” without even planning it. Drum was in some far unlighted corner of her mind. She wouldn’t think about him until later. She followed Miss Simmons into the workroom behind the desk, still carrying her books, listening carefully while the job was explained to her. “Could you start today?” Miss Simmons asked. “There are all these cards piled up. Oh, I hope you like it. Some people get the fidgets in libraries. It’s the importance of details that bothers them.”

But to Evie, importance of details seemed peaceful and lulling. She settled herself on a high stool in the workroom, with an electric heater warming her cold stockinged feet and a mug of cocoa at her elbow. For three solid hours she alphabetized Library of Congress Cards and stacked them in neat little piles. Abbott, Anson, Arden — the cards snapped crisply under her fingers, and when she had finished with the A’s she evened up the corners, slipped a rubber band around them, and moved smoothly into the B’s. “Are you getting tired?” Miss Simmons called. “Do you want to take a break? I know this must seem tedious.” But Evie didn’t get tired all afternoon. At six o’clock, when Miss Simmons moved around the reading room closing blinds and straightening magazines, Evie was sorry to have to go.

Drum was lying on the couch at home with an old copy of Billboard . “What took you so long?” he asked.

“I stopped by the library.”

“Oh,” Drum said.

“Do you — shall I open up some chili?”

“Sure, I reckon.”

He never asked what she had been doing at the library.

She went to work every day that week. Although Miss Simmons kept up a steady patter of tea-party talk Evie stayed silent, soaking up the words and the warmth from the heater as she filled out overdue-reminders. Sometimes she wandered through the reading room with a trolley of books to shelve, and the memorized classification numbers hummed peacefully through her head while she searched for shelf-space. Or she sat behind the circulation desk, swiveling in a wheeled metal chair and stamping first books and then cards — thump-tap, thump-tap — until she was lulled into a trance. People rarely spoke to her. If Violet came by and said, “Hi, Evie. Evie?” Evie looked up with a blank smile for several seconds before she realized who it was.