Anne Tyler - A Patchwork Planet

Yeah, right; it meant more than a visit from her own father. Fine , I thought. I just won’t go at all.

By this time I was starting to feel I had died or something, listening to so many phone calls without picking up. So I grabbed my car keys and left the apartment. Went off to Mrs. Figg’s to face the music.

It was hot as blazes out. I practically needed oven mitts just to work my steering wheel. I drove badly, zipping through yellow lights and honking at any pedestrian dumb enough to assume I would give him the right-of-way.

“If I’d wanted a worker who didn’t show up,” Mrs. Figg said when she opened the door, “someone I needed to nag about every little task, why, I could rely on my own son, for heaven’s sake.” She scowled into my face, pursing her raisin mouth — not an old woman, but a dried-up, drained-out one with a grudge against the universe. She went ahead and gave me her list, though, because who else could she get to do it? Most of our employees refused to deal with her anymore.

I went to the cleaner’s first and picked up her husband’s shirts. Ordinarily I’d have held my breath the whole time I was inside (the cancer is just swarming at you in those places), but today I took big, deep gulps of the chemical-smelling air while I waited. I wondered what Mrs. Figg had done that made her permanently unwelcome there.

At Ed’s Electronics (where she had hit a salesman with her pocketbook, I happened to know), I collected her tape recorder from Repairs. Then I went to the pharmacy and the hardware, and I was done. But when I got back to Mrs. Figg’s, what did she point out? The tape recorder’s earphone pads were still in need of replacement. “If I’d wanted the kind of worker who did things any which way—” she began, but I was already wheeling around and stomping off. Went to Ed’s Electronics again and raised such a stink, Mrs. Figg looked like a model customer by comparison. Then I drove back to her house and all but threw the pads in her face.

At Mrs. Morey’s, I headed straight for the patio and unhooked the propane tank from her grill. “Wouldn’t you like to see what I just persuaded to bloom?” she asked, trailing behind me, but I said only, “Mmf,” and set off for my car as if I hadn’t quite heard her. Got the tank filled at the gas station, reached into my pocket for my billfold, and came up with two earphone pads in a little plastic pouch. I guess they’d been clipped to the receipt and somehow worked themselves loose. Well, too late now. I tossed them in the trash bin.

At home, I found three more messages on my machine. Sophia said, “Hello, sweetie. Call me at the office, will you?” Mrs. Dibble said, “I wish you’d get in touch. Where are you?” And then Sophia again: “Barnaby, why haven’t you phoned? Do you want me to bring supper tonight? Or not. I’ll wait to hear.”

I made myself a peanut butter sandwich and ate it standing at the bar. Then I polished off the last of the milk, drinking straight from the jug, and threw the jug in the wastebasket, even though it was the kind you were supposed to recycle. After that, I switched on the TV and watched a talk show, the outrageous type of show where everybody tries to confess to more unpleasantness than the next person. I had to sit on the bed to watch, since my chair had turned to glue in the humidity. Even my sheets felt sticky. Overhead, the Hardesty kids were carrying on a thin, shrill squabble, and their mother must have been tuned to her soaps, because at every pause in my own program, I could hear hers murmuring away.

This was the first weekday afternoon in months that I wouldn’t be going to Mrs. Glynn’s. The thought gave me a sort of wincing sensation. I fell back against the pillows and covered my eyes with one forearm.

I might have slept a little. When the phone rang again, the evening news was on. “Hey Gaitlin,” my machine said. (Mar-tine’s little raspy crow voice.) “Pick up, will you?”

I rolled over and reached for the receiver. I said, “What.”

“Why aren’t you here? It’s ten till seven! You promised you’d give me a ride!”

“I did?” I said. “Where’re we going?”

“Sheesh! Mrs. Alford’s. We’re clearing out her kitchen for the painters.”

I said, “Can’t you do it alone?”

“Duh, Barnaby. I don’t have any wheels, remember? What’s with you? I hope you’re not hung up on that Mrs. Glynn crap.”

“Oh,” I said. “You heard. Great. It must be all over town.”

“She’s crazy; don’t you think everyone knows that? Now get yourself on down here. We’re running behind.”

I said, “Well, okay.”

It might not be a bad idea, I decided. Sophia wasn’t going to wait by her phone forever. She’d come by in person, sooner or later, and I just didn’t feel like facing her right at that moment.

Martine was standing out front when I pulled up — leaning against a parked car and eating pork rinds from a cellophane packet. She had on her usual overalls and what looked to be a man’s sleeveless undershirt, so worn it was translucent. “At this rate, we won’t finish work till midnight,” she said as she got in.

I said, “You’re welcome,” and she said, “Oh. Thanks.”

Then she slouched down in her seat and braced her boots against the dashboard and went back to eating her pork rinds. She held the packet toward me, at one point, but I shook my head.

Clearing a kitchen for painters wasn’t that big a job. I could easily have done it alone. But we were dealing, I guess, with Mrs. Alford’s private little affirmative action program, because her first words when she opened her door were, “Oh, I just love to see what young women can get up to nowadays!”

This evening she wore a mint-green housedress that bore an unfortunate resemblance to a mental patient’s uniform. She was having one of her good spells, though, and got both our names right. “What I’d like, Martine,” she said, “is, you take the small things, the pots and pans and things, and stack them in the far corner of the dining room. Barnaby, you can take the furniture and the microwave.”

But Martine had to show off and grab the microwave herself. She staggered away with it, her arms straining out of her undershirt like two brown wires. I followed, with a chair in each hand, and Mrs. Alford came last, clasping a single skillet to her bosom. “You leave this to us,” I told her. Already she was sounding out of breath. She said, “Oh, well, I suppose …” She laid the skillet on the buffet and retreated to the living room. We could hear her footsteps padding across the carpet, and a moment later, the creak, pause, creak of her rocking chair.

Before we moved the step stool, Martine climbed onto it and took down all the curtains. It was starting to get dark out, and the naked, blue-black windowpanes made the kitchen look depressing. Shadows loomed in the corners. Bare spots showed where the clock had been, and the spice rack, and the calendar. I stole a glance through the calendar after I took it down. I saw all the medical appointments — doctor this, doctor that, mammogram, podiatrist. Anything to do with her family had an exclamation mark after it. Grandkids coming! Ernie spending night! Edward here for Labor Day! Then I checked the times I had come, but she didn’t refer to me by name. Rent-a-Back 7 p.m. , she wrote. And no exclamation mark.

“What’re you looking at?” Martine asked. She was standing so close behind me that I jumped. I laid the calendar aside without answering.

When everything had been moved, Martine ran a dust mop around the tops of the walls, while I swept the floor. I found a dime, a red button, and a furry white pill. The pill didn’t look all that intriguing, so I set it in a saucer with the dime and the button. Then we went out to the living room. Mrs. Alford was sitting in her rocker, with her hands folded — not reading, not sewing or watching TV — her face exhausted and empty. But when I cleared my throat, she instantly put on this animated expression and said, “Oh! All done? My, wasn’t that speedy!” And she asked if we’d like a soft drink or something, but we told her we had to be going.