Anne Tyler: A Slipping-Down Life

“That’s right.”

“Mmhmm.” He snapped another thread. “This is nothing dangerous, you understand. First-degree cuts. But they’re ragged. They’ll leave scars. You’ll need a good plastic surgeon to get rid of them for you.”

Evie stared at a crease in his white coat.

“You all right?” he asked her.

“Yes, fine.”

“Well, I can’t think why.”

Violet returned, swinging her purse by its long strap so that it jingled against her shins at every step. “Your father’s on his way,” she said. “I said you had to have a little cut stitched up. Was that what you wanted? I couldn’t see just out and out telling him.” She settled on a stool beside the doctor and arranged her skirt around her. “Would you rather I had?”

Evie shook her head.

“Hold still,” said the doctor.

He worked for what might have been hours, snapping threads endlessly and sometimes letting out a long whistling sigh between his teeth. Beside him, Violet twirled on her stool and hummed. A clock over the exit jerked each minute by with a deep, pointed click. When finally the doctor laid a strip of gauze over the stitches, Evie saw that it was nearly midnight. “This sets some kind of record,” he said. “Aren’t there any singers called Al? or Ed?”

“His first name was Drumstrings,” Violet told him.

“Well, then, I suppose she did the best she could.” He peeled his gloves off. “You can go home tomorrow, if you’re in a normal state. Though what that would be — Help her to the nurse’s station, would you, miss? Ask for Miss Connolly. I’ll talk to her father before I send him in.”

“Thank you,” Evie said.

“You’d be better off in the Peace Corps,” said the doctor.

Evie’s room held two white beds, both empty, and a maple dresser with a mirror over it. There was only a nightlight on. When she looked in the mirror she saw a wide dark shadow with a band of startling white across the forehead. She touched the band with one finger. “Oh, look, you get a johnny-coat,” Violet said. “Only two ties down the whole back of it, and one of them broken. Shall I bring you fresh clothes to wear home tomorrow? Your father’ll never think of it.”

“No, he probably won’t,” Evie said.

She pulled off her clothes, which felt creased and heavy from being worn too long. As she dropped each piece to the floor, Violet fumbled for it in the dark and laid it on a chair. Their movements were slow and soundless — Evie’s because she felt awkward, Violet’s for no known reason because Violet never felt awkward. When Evie had put the gown on, she climbed into the bed farthest from the window. She sat up against the metal headboard, her hands folded across her stomach.

“They’ll bring you breakfast in bed, I suppose,” Violet said.

“Does Drumstrings Casey know about this?”

“Well, I’m not sure.”

“There was a lot of commotion over it. Wouldn’t you think he’d have heard?”

“He wasn’t singing then. Joseph Ballew was. I don’t know.”

“Didn’t you look?”

“Honestly, Evie, I don’t know . I was with you. I and the policeman. We were busy taking you out.”

“I believe this might be the best thing I’ve ever done,” said Evie. “Something out of character. Definite. Not covered by insurance. I’m just sure it will all work out well.”

Violet bent to line up the vinyl sandals beneath the bed. “Why don’t you tell me what you want to wear tomorrow,” she said. “I’ll stop by your house and pick it up.”

“Oh, anything. Skirt and blouse. While I was walking through that crowd with the policeman, I kept thinking of my name: Evie Decker, me . Taking something into my own hands for once. I thought, if I had started acting like this a long time ago my whole life might’ve been different.”

“Well, that’s for sure,” said Violet. “Anyway. Skirt and blouse. Do you want me to stay till your father comes?”

“No, I guess not. Your family will be wondering where you are.”

“All right. See you in the morning.”

Violet’s shoes made a soft, plodding sound out of the room and down the hall. When the sound had faded Evie pulled the sheets over her and lay on her back, staring at the ceiling. Headlights swung across it in slow white wedges. Some sort of blower beneath her window made a steady rushing noise that turned other noises unreal and distant. Her forehead was a tight, thin sheet. There was only a surface pain, but the tightness gave her the feeling that her skin might split into shallow cracks at any moment. She bridged her forehead with one hand, clamping it inward with her thumb and middle finger to ease the stretch.

“Evie?” her father said.

She lowered her hand and winced toward the lighted door. Her father was a tall black angular silhouette, bent at the waist. He entered with his head leading, just as he entered his classroom while students whispered and passed notes and ignored him. “I brought you some clothes,” he said.

“Oh. You did?”

“Don’t you need them?”

“Well, Violet was going to bring some.”

He reached over to the bureau and turned on a lamp, so that her eyes contracted into a sudden ache. “Is that, does that bandage have to be so big?” he asked her.

“It has to cover my whole forehead.”

“All of it?”

She shaded her eyes to look at him. “I thought the doctor had told you,” she said.

“He did, yes.”

“Do you want to see?”

“Oh, no, that’s all right.”

“I don’t mind.” She sat up and undid the gauze, which was fastened by adhesive at both ends, and laid it in her lap. “It’s only a flesh wound,” she said.

“Yes, he said that. He—” Her father looked for only one second before he dropped his eyes again. “I don’t understand,” he said.

“It’s a singer.”

“Yes, I know. Casey. I know.”

“You know him?”

“I mean, I know that’s what the name is. I never heard of Casey before.”

“Oh.”

“I never even heard of him.”

“Well,” said Evie.

Her father bent over the bag at his feet, a shopping bag with string handles. “Clothes,” he said. He brought out a blouse, a flowered skirt, and underpants but no bra. Finally he came to a pink frilled bedjacket sent her by an aunt two years ago but never used. He laid it in her lap. Evie picked it up and turned it over, smoothing the frills. “A bedjacket,” she said.

“I thought you might need it.”

In Evie’s stubby hands, the frills seemed fussy and out of place. A bedjacket must have been what he brought her mother when Evie was born — something he had been told was expected of him, along with flowers and a bottle of cologne. Evie’s mother had been the last woman in Pulqua County to die of childbed fever. Her father never mentioned her (and never said, “You are what I traded your mother for, and it was a bad bargain at that,” which was what Evie continually expected to hear). But the bedjacket, with its satin buttons, seemed to be giving him away without his realizing it, speaking up out of all those years of silence. “Well, thank you very much,” Evie said.

He went over to the window, jamming his hands into his pockets. Everything about him was long and bony; nothing but his awkwardness had been passed on to Evie. His hair and lashes were pale, his eyes set in deep shadowed sockets, his skin sprinkled with large freckles so faint that they seemed to be seeping through a white over-layer. “Plastic surgeons take money, of course—” he was saying.

“I don’t want one.”

He barely heard her. His mind had snagged on a new thought. “Evie, had you been drinking?” he asked. “Was that it?”