Anne Tyler - A Patchwork Planet

“Well, thanks,” I said.

She studied me, maybe wondering how I meant that. In fact, I wasn’t sure myself. I groaned. I tipped my head back against the sofa cushions and closed my eyes.

“Barnaby,” she said. She was using a tactful, delicate tone that put me instantly on guard. I opened my eyes and rolled my head in her direction. “Is it some kind of loan shark?” she asked me.

“Huh?”

“The person you owe money to.”

I laughed.

“Because I know about these things, Barnaby. I see it in my business all the time: people in such deep debt they think they can’t ever get out from under. Exorbitant interest rates, fees on top of fees … I want to help you, Barnaby. I don’t have eighty-seven hundred, but I do have, let’s see … In my savings account—”

“It’s my parents,” I said.

“Your parents?”

“They’re the ones I owe it to.”

“Well, for heaven’s sake,” Sophia said. “You owe eighty-seven hundred to your parents? And they’re making you pay it back?”

“Nothing odd about that,” I pointed out. “A debt’s a debt.”

“Yes, but your parents are so … affluent!”

This made me smile. It always tickles me, how people avoid the word “rich.”

“I just think that’s shocking,” Sophia said. She was sitting very straight on the edge of the couch, practically swaybacked. “When their own son has to work weekends, even, and live in somebody’s basement! That snoopy Mimi Hardesty always peeking out the window the minute I drive up, and calling down to ask if she can run a load of laundry as soon as you and I start getting intimate!”

I smiled again, but she didn’t notice.

“And your clothes are practically rags,” she said, “and your car is on its last legs…. What can your parents be thinking of?”

I could have calmed her down, I guess, if I’d told her about the Chinese statue and such. That would have made my parents look more reasonable. But it would have made me look shoddier. And besides, I enjoyed hearing somebody rail against my parents. I have to say, I took pleasure in it.

No, I was not at my best that night. I was spiteful and contrary, mean-spirited, malicious. When Sophia went out to the kitchen to get us a glass of wine, I pocketed a little porcelain bowl in the shape of a slipper that sat on her coffee table. And I didn’t even like that bowl! And certainly had no use for it.

Monday, I overslept. I was supposed to run errands for Mrs. Figg, because she couldn’t show her face again in half the stores in town. But I stood her up and wouldn’t answer the telephone when it rang. “Barnaby, are you there?” Mrs. Dibble asked my machine. “Mrs. Figg is fit to be tied!” I just turned over and went back to sleep.

What woke me, finally, was Mimi Hardesty calling from the top of the stairs. “Barnaby?” Her voice was oddly high and childish. “There’s a gentleman here to see you.”

You don’t often hear the word “gentleman” in everyday conversation. Especially not Mimi Hardesty’s conversation. I sat up. I said, “Who is it?”

“Um, an officer. Can he come down?”

“Why, sure ,” I said.

Meanwhile scrambling out of bed, grabbing my jeans from the floor, and hopping into them one-legged. Heavy footsteps thudded toward me. I raked desperately at my blankets. It mattered a lot, for some reason, that I should get my bed folded back into a sofa. But I had left it opened out for so long that I’d forgotten how the thing worked, and anyway, it was too late. The cop arrived at the bottom of the stairs — an older man, gray-haired, surprisingly lean considering the weight of his tread. He already had his card out to show me. Does anyone really read those cards? Not me, I can tell you. I didn’t even hear his name, although he announced it in a loud, friendly voice. I looked past him to Mimi Hardesty, who was bending forward to peer at me from several steps above him. One small hand was clapped to her mouth, and her eyes were huge and perfectly round.

“Just like to ask you a couple of questions,” the cop said, pocketing his card. Without glancing in Mimi’s direction, he said, “Okay, ma’am.”

Mimi said, “Oh! Okay,” and turned to scamper upstairs. She was wearing shorts, and although the fronts of her legs were hazed with freckles, the backs were a pure, flawless white.

You notice the most ridiculous trivia during moments of stress.

But I was saying, “Have a seat,” as if I weren’t concerned in the least. “I can guess what you want to ask,” I said. (I figured I’d be better off bringing it up before he did.) I scooped an armload of dirty laundry from the chair. “I know that one of our clients believes I stole from her.”

The cop sat down and opened a spiral notebook. “So did you?” he asked mildly.

I said, “No.”

He gazed at me a moment, his expression noncommittal. I wondered if that might possibly be the end of it. “Did you?” and “No,” and he’d leave. But nothing’s ever that easy. He had to follow protocol: take note of my name, my age, my years of employment at Rent-a-Back. Eventually I gave up and sat down on the edge of my bed. My feet were bare, which somehow put me at a disadvantage, but I worried he might think I was going for a gun if I stood up to fetch my sneakers.

I did tell him that I’d known where Mrs. Glynn kept her money. “Everybody knew,” I said.

He asked, “Did you ever see the money?”

“No,” I said. Then I said, “Hey! Do you think she could be delusional?”

But the cop just gave me a look, at that, and closed his notebook in this weary, disgusted way that made me feel about two inches tall.

When the alarm went off at the Amberlys’ place, the night I was arrested, the police sent one of their helicopters putt-putting overhead. I was a little bit high. We were all a little bit high — me and Len and the Muller boys. I told the others, “Let me deal with this,” and I dialed the Northern District police on the Amberlys’ bedroom phone. “I wish to register a complaint,” I said. “There’s an extremely noisy helicopter disturbing the peace here.”

The man asked what address I was at, and then he went off for a while. When he came back, he said, “Yes, sir. The helicopter is ours; we sent it out on a call.”

“Well, in that case,” I told him smartly, “you should know how to call it back in.”

And I hung up, all dignified and haughty. Then the four of us collapsed into giggles. Then a car pulled up out front, and a flashing light revolved across the ceiling.

It was the very last moment that the world in general thought well of me.

In midafternoon, Sophia phoned. I was back in bed but not asleep. Still, I let the machine answer for me. “Barnaby, it’s me,” she said. “I’ll try you again later. Just wanted to say hi.”

“Hi,” she wanted to say. “Pulled off any more grand thefts lately?”

I got up and went to pee. Ran water over my toothbrush but replaced it in the rack without brushing, as if I were still a kid trying to hoodwink my mother.

Mrs. Dibble phoned again. “Well, I don’t know what’s happened to you,” she started out. “You are seriously disappointing me, Barnaby. Call when you get this message. Mrs. Morey wants her grill tank filled. Martine says to remind you she’ll need a ride to the Alford job. Also, Mrs. Hatter would like to arrange for regular hours with you, starting tomorrow.”

I couldn’t even remember what Mrs. Hatter looked like, she used our services so seldom. Maybe she’d had a stroke or something. Well, tough luck. I started kicking through the clothes on the floor, trying to find my sneakers.

While I was drinking my coffee, two more people left messages. Mrs. Figg wanted me to know that I had ruined her entire morning, and Natalie asked if I could shift next weekend’s visit to Sunday. It seemed Opal had been invited to a birthday party on Saturday. “I wouldn’t bring it up,” she said, “except the birthday girl’s from the popular crowd, and it means a lot to Opal that she was included.”