Anne Tyler - A Patchwork Planet

“Thanks,” I said.

“Stand on your own two feet. Right? Now you see why I don’t want a live-in companion.”

“Oh, yes.”

“Sophia’s even offered to come stay with me herself, bless her heart,” Mrs. Glynn said. She reached over to ruffle the Yorkie’s bangs. He smiled, showing his tongue — a little pink dollop of a tongue like on a child’s teddy bear. “I told her, ‘What, and spoil a perfectly good relationship?’ Sophia is my one and only niece. It’s not as if I had relatives to squander.”

“I thought I could live in her guest room,” Sophia told me, “but Aunt Grace wouldn’t hear of it.”

“She’d be watching me every minute,” Mrs. Glynn said. “Oh, I know: meaning the best! But trying to change what I ate or when I went to bed. Wouldn’t you?” she asked Sophia fondly. “As it is, you’re worse than a mother.”

“It’s true,” Sophia said. “I’m a worrywart.”

“She’s a worrywart!” Mrs. Glynn announced. She came up with it so triumphantly, I was pretty sure she hadn’t heard Sophia. “Pushing the multivitamins. Nagging me to exercise. Trying to make me stash my money in a bank.”

“Aunt Grace distrusts banks,” Sophia told me.

“Of course I distrust banks!” Mrs. Glynn said. This she seemed to have caught with no trouble, although Sophia had barely murmured it. “I lived through the Great Depression! I’d be out of my mind to trust a bank! I keep my liquid assets in the flour bin.”

“There,” Sophia said. “See what I mean?” she asked me. “She hasn’t known a person five minutes and she tells him where she keeps her cash.”

“Not just a person. A nice person, with kind brown eyes and a mouth that tips up at both ends!”

“But you’d tell anybody you met, I believe,” Sophia persisted. “You think we’re still in the thirties, when people left their front doors unlocked and their car keys in the ignition.”

“Now, don’t exaggerate,” Mrs. Glynn said. “I’m very careful to lock my front door.”

“When you happen to think of it!”

I could see they’d had this conversation any number of times. They were obviously enjoying themselves, each delivering her lines with an eye cocked in my direction. I said, “Well, anyhow. At Rent-a-Back, we’re used to dealing with independent people. We adjust to fit our customers’ needs: as much butting in as they want, or as little.”

“Tell about Mr. Shank,” Sophia prodded me.

“Mr. Shank?”

“How he calls in the middle of the night just because he’s lonely.”

“Oh,” I said. I was surprised that she’d remembered. “Well, he’s got the opposite problem, really—”

“Tell about Mrs. Gordoni. There’s this client named Mrs. Gordoni,” Sophia said to her aunt, “who can’t afford to pay.”

“In pain from what?” Mrs. Glynn asked.

“To pay To pay the fees,” Sophia said. “And Barnaby helps her out even so, and underreports his hours.”

“I have no problem whatsoever in paying off my bills,” Mrs. Glynn told me firmly.

Sophia said, “No, I didn’t mean—”

“Whatever the charge, I can more than pay. And however many hours. I believe I’ll start with an hour a day. After that, we’ll see.”

“An hour a day,” I said, hunting through my pockets for my calendar. “And would that be mornings, or afternoons?”

“Afternoons, if you have them.”

“Yes, ma’am. Or somebody will. Me or one of the others.”

“One of the others? Wait. Wouldn’t it be you who came?”

“I’ll come if possible,” I said.

“I’d prefer it to be you.”

“Well, I’ll try,” I said.

“For one thing, you’re left-handed,” she told me.

I was, in fact, although I had no idea how she had figured that out. Sophia said, “What does left-handed have to do with it?”

“I just feel left-handers are more reliable, that’s all.”

Sophia made a sound somewhere between a laugh and a sigh. I said, “Yes, ma’am, I’m very reliable,” as I flipped through calendar pages. “How is three o’clock?” I asked. “I have that open every weekday. Or four o’clock except for Fridays, so on Fridays we could—”

“No, I think later,” Mrs. Glynn said decisively. “I think five-thirty. Could you do that?”

“Sure thing,” I told her, penciling it in. Five-thirty was our slow time — dinner hour for many of the older folks. “Will you be here then? Or you want to give us a key.”

“You can take a key for unexpected occurrences,” she said, “but generally FU be here. Why don’t you start next Monday? By then I’ll have a list written out.”

She rose from her chair, and we did too. Her little dog perked up his ears and made a chortling sound. “I knew you were left-handed because you put Sophia on your right when you sat down,” Mrs. Glynn told me. “My husband was left-handed. He liked to have me on his right at all times — sitting, walking, even sleeping. He said it freed his sword arm to defend me.”

When she smiled up at me, the bags beneath her eyes grew bigger than ever. She had to sort of peek out over them. It made her seem mischievous and gleeful, like an elf.

Mrs. Glynn’s five hours would help out quite a bit with the eighty-seven hundred, but they wouldn’t be enough on their own, of course. I told Mrs. Dibble I needed more jobs. “You know Mrs. Figg? The Client from Hell? You can send me over there after all; I’ve changed my mind. And forget what I told you about wanting off Saturday nights.”

“Hmm,” Mrs. Dibble said. “Someone must be saving up for something.”

I just said, “Oh, a few extra dollars would always come in handy.”

For the sake of a few extra dollars, I agreed to a double trash-can route when Jay Cohen came down with mono. I spent an entire day shifting furniture for Mrs. Binney, who stood about with one finger set prettily to her chin and said, “On second thought …” I loaded the Winstons’ station wagon at four o’clock in the morning for their annual drive to Florida. (They wouldn’t let me do it the night before — scared of thieves. And of course they were the type who believed in setting off before dawn.)

I even went so far as to telephone Len Parrish, because he had mentioned needing part-time help on his newest housing development. Someone to show off the model home — just a warm body, he’d said. But not my warm body, evidently, because first he behaved like Mr. Important (“Barn! You caught me just as I was heading out the door! Sorry I can’t chat.”), and then he claimed he’d already hired someone. I didn’t know whether to believe him or not. “Hey, guy,” he said. “How you doing? How’s the car? We should get together for a drink at some point. I’m going to give you a call.”

I wondered if he planned to declare the drink on his taxes. (Not that I really expected him to call.) One time, Len had told me that just about anything he did he considered tax deductible. “Taking a trip to the beach, going to the movies …,” he said. “Because it gives me more experience, and I’m therefore better equipped to make informed business decisions. Heck, the way I figure it, life is tax deductible!”

Probably it was just as well he didn’t have any work for me.

On Monday, I went to Mrs. Glynn’s, bringing my canvas gloves because I didn’t know what chores she had in mind. But as it turned out, her list contained only the most undemanding tasks. Fetch all tureens and platters from tops of kitchen cabinets, replace on shelves within my reach. Move armchair from sunporch to living room.

I was tightening the screws on a saucepan rack when Sophia showed up. I heard Tatters yapping at her. She had come straight from work, apparently. Breezed into the kitchen in her dressy black coat and asked me, “How’s it going?”