Anne Tyler: A Slipping-Down Life

“You know I’m late,” he said. “Will you let me be?

“I’ve listened all night .

“I’ve pondered all day .

“Faces don’t stick with me half as much as names.”

The drummer slammed down on his drums. The music grew louder. Oh, it was that talking out of his that made the difference. He never should have begun it. While he spoke Evie held very still, but afterwards, with her eyes wandering over the room, she said, “What would make him do like that?”

“I kind of like it,” said Violet, starting her second mug of beer.

“Is he saying something? Is there something underneath it? Is he speaking in code?”

Other girls thought nothing of going straight up to him. They crowded around as soon as a set was done. “Now, how did you ever …” “Where did you get …” Casey slouched easily with his guitar at his side and looked straight through them. He seemed to think they were part of the program. Meanwhile Evie sat by Fay-Jean’s empty chair and drew faces in a ring of beer.

“If I were to get his attention,” she told Violet, “it would have to be without thinking of it first. Something that just happened. Can you see me going up with those others? I would be planning it ahead, smoothing down my skirt, tucking in my blouse, saying something memorized that would come out backwards, in a reading tone of voice.”

“Oh, he wouldn’t notice,” Violet said.

“That’s exactly what I meant.”

One Saturday a redhead who was dancing on the platform stood stock still while Casey did his speaking out. It was only one line.

“If I called your name wrong, would you still say yes?”

When the music crashed down again, the redhead said, “You bet I would!” Then she left her partner and pulled Casey around by one shoulder to finish the dance. He danced as he played, laughing. It was the first time Evie had seen him laugh. The sudden breaking up of that smooth olive face made him look unfinished and angular, like someone’s comical little brother.

“There’s how to get his attention,” Violet said. “Just give him a yank.” But when she turned, she saw that Evie was several tables away by now, pushing toward the ladies’ room. The boy at Violet’s right said, “Hey, little marshmallow, you’re all alone.” Violet smiled and poured more beer.

Or was it Josh Ballew they all came for? He swaggered onto the platform with his head down and one fist raised, like a prize fighter. Everybody clapped. Fay-Jean appeared in a man’s leather jacket and said, “Will you look at how his hair curls up? Oh, I wish mine would do that way.”

“Nobody got a right to leave me like you left me,” Joseph sang. All of his songs were angry. His voice was furry and dark, roughening on vowels, and he stood very close to the microphone. When he started his second song Fay-Jean said, “Will you listen? Evie Decker can have six of Drumstrings Casey. Where’d she go, anyhow?”

“Excused herself,” said Violet.

Someone screamed.

Joseph Ballew looked pleased, and twanged two sharp notes on his guitar. Then he lowered it to sing another line. He never did both at once. Behind him a murmuring arose, and the other players began looking around, but Joseph sang on with his eyes closed.

“Who screamed?” Violet asked.

Fay-Jean moved away, her jacket swinging from her shoulders. As soon as she was gone Violet turned back to her beer, but then there was another scream. This time the voice was Fay-Jean’s.

“My Lord in heaven, Evie Decker!” she said.

Violet stood up. Joseph Ballew stopped playing. The commotion was in a rear corner, by the door to the ladies’ room, but even when Violet had angled her way over there the crowd was too tightly packed for her to see anything.

“Will you let me through?” she said. “What is it? Will you let me through?”

Someone bumped into her from behind. “Police,” he said. “Clear the way. Clear the way.” The crowd divided. Violet passed through, widening the path for the policeman. When she reached the door of the ladies’ room she stopped suddenly and rocked backward against the policeman’s chest.

“Evie?” she said.

Evie was smiling. Two people supported her, the redhead and a skinny blond girl. They held her in a professional, movie-like way, each with one hand beneath Evie’s elbow and one at the small of her back. Evie’s face was ridged with vertical strands of blood. There were crimson zigzags across her forehead, dampening her hair. “Evie, what happened?” said Violet.

“It’s his name,” Evie said.

The policeman stepped forward, carrying a small pad of paper and a retractable ball-point pen. He clicked the pen. “Name?” he asked.

“Drumstrings Casey,” Evie said.

She had cut the letters with a pair of nail scissors. They ran all the way across her forehead, large and ragged and Greek-looking because straight lines were easier to cut: . In the emergency room, after they had swabbed the blood away, there was a silence lasting several seconds. “Backwards?” someone said finally. It looked as if she were staring out at the letters from within, from the wrong side of her forehead. Or maybe she had cut them while facing a mirror. Whatever the reason, Evie wasn’t telling. She sat in a white enameled chair beside an instrument case, her shoulders slumped, the lower part of her face round and blank and pale beneath the red slashes. Her pudgy feet in their vinyl sandals were twined around the chair rungs. Beside her stood the policeman who had brought her in, still curious although he had already taken down the necessary information; and opposite her, right alongside the doctor and nurse, was Violet. Oh, it would take more than this to shock Violet. She had ridden with Evie in the back of the squad car, patting her hand absently. “Evie Decker, I declare,” she said, “I wish you would tell me — Goodness, will you listen? Sirens. They’re for you.” Evie only blinked and watched as the headlights scraped the edges of a tobacco field. When they drove up to the hospital door she said, “I left my pocketbook in the ladies’ room.”

“Oh, don’t worry. I’ll call about it.”

“And then what about your car? And I never paid for my last beer.”

“Don’t worry.”

The others treated her as if she were unconscious, resting their hands on her shoulder while they leaned forward to discuss her. “Is she all right?” the nurse said once, and patted Evie’s cheeks sharply, almost slapping her. “Do you think she’s all right?”

The doctor shrugged and filled a hypodermic needle. “Who knows?” he said. “Damn fool teen-agers. Find her a room, will you? I’m keeping her the night till I see her state of mind.” The nurse left, and so did the policeman, still staring backwards over his shoulder as he closed the door. “Should we have tipped him?” Violet said.

“No,” said the doctor. “You might as well call her family. Does she have a family?”

“Only her father.”

“He’ll have to be told about this.”

So Violet left too, rippling the fingers of one hand at Evie. “Just be a minute,” she said. “Take care.”

Evie was the only patient in the emergency room. The doctor worked in silence, snapping threads just above her eyes with gloved, dead-feeling hands while water dripped somewhere behind him. “Casey your boyfriend?” he asked finally.

“No.”

“Who, then?”

“Just a singer.”

“Rock-and-roll, I suppose.”