Anne Tyler - A Patchwork Planet

“Opal has Jim Bassett’s eyes, have you noticed?” Mom was asking. “His eyes were his best feature — that pale shade of gray. I was thinking after the recital; I looked at Opal and I said to myself, ‘Isn’t that a coincidence! Her eyes are the color of opals.’”

I pictured Mr. Bassett’s eyes when I’d reminded him his daughter had walked out. “But, Barnaby,” he had said, “what actual choice did she have?” With his upper lids crinkling, honestly perplexed. Then I pictured Opal’s eyes, so measuring and veiled.

I have a problem, sometimes, after I come away from a place. I’ll start out feeling fine, but just a few minutes later I’ll get to reconsidering. I’ll regret that I’ve said something rude, that I’ve disappointed people or hurt their feelings. I’ll see that I have messed up yet again, and I’ll call myself all manner of names. Freak of the week! Nerd of the herd! And I’ll wish I could rearrange my life so I’d never have to deal anymore with another human being.

It was nearly two p.m. before I got home. Mom offered to stop for lunch somewhere, but I said no, even though I was starving; so first thing after I walked in the door, I made myself a sandwich. Then I checked my answering machine. Four messages.

Mrs. Dibble said, “Barnaby, I know it’s a Philadelphia day, but Mrs. Figg has the idea that you’d promised to move her husband’s computer down to their den. I told her she must be mistaken, but you know how she is. Anyway, call me if you get back anytime soon.”

Then: “Hello, Barnaby. This is Sophia, at eight-fifteen Saturday morning. Just wondered if you’d be taking the train to Philly today, by any chance! I thought I could give you a ride to Penn Station. Oh, well! I’ll try you later, I guess.”

After that, a cranky-voiced woman: “Now, how do I … oh, I hate these machines!” Mrs. Figg herself, although clients were not supposed to telephone us directly. “Where have you got to, Barnaby? You said you’d come move my husband’s computer!”

And finally Sophia again: “Just trying you one more time before I head for the station! I guess you’ve decided to go by car. Well, maybe next time.” Her tone was airy and casual, with a flicker of a laugh behind her goodbye.

I sighed and punched the Delete button.

I used to have friends to hang out with on weekends. Ray Oakley at work, before he got married. Martine before she met Everett. Or some of the guys from my old neighborhood, but they’d mostly moved away now, or turned all important and busy like Len. And I hadn’t dated a girl in months. I wanted a girlfriend, but lately it seemed girls were getting younger and younger. They’d begun to seem just plain silly, with their giggly enthusiasm and their surfer-type vocabulary and their twitchy little miniskirts.

And I never counted my clients as friends — not even the ones I liked. Clients could up and die on you.

A few years ago, when they were making a public to-do over laying the last stone at the National Cathedral, I read an interview in the paper with a guy who’d seen the first stone laid, in nineteen-oh-something-or-other. He said he’d been just a little boy then, and his father took him to the ceremony. That story caught my fancy, for some reason. I pictured a kid in high button shoes and a ribbon-trimmed hat, hanging on to his father’s hand in a great cobbled square among crowds of cheering people. Then one by one the people started dimming. They grew pale and then transparent, and finally they disappeared. The father disappeared and the men in bowler hats and the women in long cloaks, until the only one left was that little boy standing all, all alone.

Sunday, I woke up late, because I’d had a bad night. I’d tossed and turned and dreamed sketchy dreams I couldn’t quite remember. It was well past noon before I really got going.

The weather was gray and cold, with needles of sleet that pricked my face as soon as I stepped outside. Ice glazed my windshield. I scraped it off and let the engine warm up, and then I drove very slowly, braking as easily as possible at each intersection. Almost no other cars were on the road. The radio announcer said the sleet would continue till evening. A good thing it was a Sunday, he said, when most of us could stay home.

In Penn Station, no more than six or eight people sat far apart on the benches, buried in coats and scarves and looking grumpy.

First I checked the board. Southbound trains were due in at 1:19, 2:35, and 3:11. It was 1:07 by this time, but the 1:19 was fifteen minutes late, wouldn’t you know; so I went off to the newsstand and bought myself a paper. Then I settled on a bench and started reading. When the first arrivals filed in, I watched both doors but I didn’t stand up, because I doubted this was my train. And I was right. I didn’t see anybody familiar. I went back to reading the sports section.

By 2:35 I’d finished every shred of the paper, but I held off on a return trip to the newsstand till I’d checked out the next batch of passengers. They came in at 2:43, although the board didn’t warn us about the delay. (These Penn Station folks could be sneaky sometimes.) First an entire family slogged through — parents, grandparents, several kids, dressed to brave a blizzard. I set my paper aside and stood up. Next came a teenage couple in hooded jackets, toting knapsacks. And next came Sophia.

She was bareheaded — the only one who was, so far. Even in this gray light, her hair had a warm yellow glow. She didn’t see me yet. She shifted her bag to her other hand, and she fastened the top button of her coat. Then she happened to glance in my direction. She came to a stop. We stood about ten feet apart. She said, “Barnaby?”

“Hi,” I told her.

“How come you’re traveling today?”

“I’m not.”

“Well … is something wrong? Is it Aunt Grace?”

“Nothing’s wrong,” I told her. “I just came to drive you home.”

Her mouth took on a tentative look, as if she were about to smile, but she stayed serious. She said, “My car, though.”

“What about your car?”

“It’s parked here in the lot.”

“Never mind,” I told her. “We’ll pick it up tomorrow, when the sleet’s stopped.”

She let herself smile then. And I was smiling too. I cupped her elbow to guide her through the station. Her coat sleeve was as soft against my palm as a kitten’s belly. It made me feel protective, and capable, and determined. It made me feel grown up.

“WHEN I WAS a young slip of a thing,” Sophia’s aunt said, “I used to have so much trouble adjusting to a new year. We’d change from, oh, 1929 to 1930, but I’d go on writing ‘1929’ at the tops of my letters for months, for literally months. Now, though, it’s no problem whatsoever. I suppose that’s because time has speeded up so, I’ve grown accustomed to making the switch: 1980, 1990 … You could tell me to date this check ‘2000’ and I wouldn’t bat an eye!”

She was sweeping the check through the air to dry it, although she’d filled it out with a ballpoint pen. I stood waiting beside her desk till she felt ready to hand it over. Apparently she was one of those clients who preferred not to pay their monthly bills by mail. (No sense wasting a stamp, they’d say, when a Rent-a-Back employee would be coming by the house.)

“You’ll find out for yourself one day,” she said. “Personal time works the opposite way from historical time. Historical time starts with a swoop — dinosaurs, cavemen, lickety-split! — and then slows and takes on more detail as it gets more recent: all those niggling little four-year presidential terms. But with personal time, you begin at a crawl — every leaf and bud, every cross-eyed look your mother ever gave you — and you gather speed as you go. To me, it’s a blurry streak by now.”