Anne Tyler - A Patchwork Planet

Mr. Cartwright said he knew no such thing, but I knew it. And I knew green peppers repeated on him too, and I knew what their shoe sizes were and their grandchildren’s video game preferences, and I had advised on the very coat that Mrs. Cartwright was wearing today. (It was this navy one or a gray, almost white, which I had pointed out would show the dirt.)

In the window bays near the registers I noticed big sacks of sidewalk salt, and I thought of picking one up for Ditty Nolan. But the Cartwrights might feel slighted, seeing me attend to another customer on their time. So what I did was drive them home (Mr. Cartwright next to me, Mrs. Cartwright perched in the rear but leaning forward between us to advise on traffic conditions) and carry in their groceries, and then I got in my own car and drove back to the store for salt. Then I went to Ditty Nolan’s.

I don’t know why Ditty Nolan was scared to go out. She hadn’t always been that way, if you could believe Ray Oakley. Ray Oakley said Ditty’s mother had fallen ill with some steadily downhill disease while Ditty was off in college, and Ditty came home to nurse her and never left. Even after the mother died, Ditty stayed on in the Roland Park house where she had grown up — must have had a little inheritance, or how else would she have managed? For sure, she didn’t go out to work. And when I rang her doorbell, she had to check through the front window first and then undo a whole fortress of locks and sliding bolts and chains before she could let me in. “Barnaby!” she said.

She was thin and pretty and unnaturally pale, with wispy tow hair that hung to her shoulders. Her dress was more a spring type of dress — flower-sprinkled and floaty — which wasn’t so unreasonable for someone who avoided all weather.

“I brought your salt,” I told her.

“Oh, good,” she said, stepping back. “Come on inside.”

I followed her in and dropped the sack to the floor. I said, “Has there been some kind of forecast I haven’t heard about?”

“Forecast?” she asked. She was wandering away to some other part of the house. Her voice came threading back to me.

“Is it supposed to snow or something?”

“Not that I know of,” she said.

She returned, holding an envelope. My name was on the front. “Happy birthday,” she said.

“Oh! Well, thanks.”

I should have guessed: the salt was just an excuse. She knew every birthday at Rent-a-Back and never let one pass without notice. I opened the envelope and looked at the card inside. “This was really nice of you,” I told her.

She waved my words away. Long, fragile hands, untouched by the sun. “What a pity you have to work today,” she said. “I hope you’re having a party later on.”

“Just supper at my folks’ house.”

“Is your little girl going to join you?”

“Well, no,” I said. “But look at what she sent.”

From my rear jeans pocket I pulled out Opal’s gift — a leather money clip, the kind you make from a kit. I hadn’t put any money in (if you thought about it, it was kind of an ironic gift), but I liked carrying it around. “The mailman brought this Saturday,” I said, “along with a handmade card with a drawing of me on the front that really did resemble me. You could even see the stitches on my blue jeans.”

“Oh, isn’t that sweet!” Ditty said.

“I was so tickled that I called her up long distance,” I said. “Knocked her mother for a loop, as you might imagine. But I think Opal liked it that I bothered.”

“I’m sure she loved it,” Ditty said.

I put the money clip back in my pocket. “You want me to add the salt to your account?” I asked.

“Yes, please,” she said. “And then maybe when the weather gets bad, you could come sprinkle my walks. I can’t have the UPS man falling down and suing me.”

Ray Oakley always claimed, every year when she gave him his birthday card, that she had a little crush on him. But I knew better than that. She didn’t have a crush on any of us. It’s just that service people were the only human beings she saw anymore.

My parents lived in Guilford, in a half-timbered, Tudor-style house with leaded-glass windows. Out front beside the gas lantern was this really jarring piece of modern sculpture: a giant Lucite triangle balanced upside down on a pole. My mother went after Culture with a vengeance.

I showed up for dinner late, hoping my brother had gotten there first; but no such luck. Mine was the only car in the driveway. So I spent some time locking my doors and double-checking the locks, studying my keys to see which pocket they should go in. Eventually I was detected, though. My father called, “Barnaby?” and I turned to find him standing on the front steps. Against the light from the hall chandelier he looked like a stretched-out question mark, with his stooped, hunched, narrow shoulders. “What’s keeping you?” he asked.

“Oh, I’m just …”

“Come on in!”

I climbed the steps, and he stood back to let me by. He was taller than me and more graceful by far — had a Fred Astaire kind of elegance that my brother and I had totally missed out on. Nor did we get his soft fair hair or his long-chinned parchment face. My mother’s genes had won every round.

“Happy birthday, son,” he told me, giving my arm a squeeze just above the elbow.

“Well, thanks.”

That about wrapped it up. We had nothing further to talk about. As we crossed the hall, Dad sent a desperate glance toward the second-floor landing. “Margot?” he called. “Barnaby’s here! Aren’t you coming down?”

“In a minute.”

The living room had an expectant look, like a stage. A fire crackled in the fireplace, and somebody’s symphony poured from the armoire where the stereo was hidden. Over the mantel hung more of my mother’s Culture: a barn door, it could have been, taken off its hinges and framed in aluminum strips.

“Well, now,” my father said.

He seized the poker and started rearranging embers.

“Which birthday is this, anyway?” he asked, finally.

“Thirtieth,” I told him.

“Good grief.”

“Right.”

Then we heard my mother’s footsteps on the stairs. “Happy birthday!” she cried, hurrying in with her arms outstretched.

“Thanks,” I said, and I gave her a peck on the cheek.

She had dressed up, but in that offhand way that Guilford women do it — A-line skirt, tailored silk shirt, navy leather flats with acorns tied to the toes. Her one mistake was her hair. She dyed her hair dead black and wore it sleeked into a tight French roll. It made her look white-faced and witchy, but would I be the one to tell her? I enjoyed it. You see a woman who’s reinvented herself, who’s shown a kind of genius at picking up the social clues, it’s a real pleasure to catch her in a blunder. I watched as she bustled about — snatching my jacket, darting off to the closet, rushing back to settle me on the couch. “We haven’t seen you in ages,” she said when she’d sat down next to me. Then she jumped up: cushion tilted off-center in the armchair opposite. “You’re skin and bones!” she said over her shoulder. “Have you lost weight?”

“No, Mom.”

“I’ll bet anything you’re not eating right.”

“I’m eating fine,” I said.

If I’d lost weight every time Mom claimed, I’d have been registering in the negative on the bathroom scale.

Now she was off to pull open a desk drawer. The woman could not sit still. Always something discontented about her, something glittery and overwrought that set my teeth on edge. “Where is it?” she asked, rummaging about. She came up with an envelope. “Here,” she said, and she sat back down and laid it in my hand. “Your birthday present,” she said.