Anne Tyler - A Patchwork Planet

Her eyes had a stretched look, and she wore a peaky, excited expression that made me feel sad for her. I’d never really thought of Martine as a woman. Well, she wasn’t a woman; she was just this scrappy, sharp-edged little person. So I said, “Oh — um—”

And yet at the same time I was reaching for her once more, as if my body had decided to go ahead without me. I had her between my palms (every rib countable inside the baggy denim), but she was leaning across me to douse the headlights. Then she tore free and climbed out of the car, all in one rough motion. I got out, too, and followed her toward the house. The porch floorboards made a mournful sound under our feet. The first flight of stairs was carpeted, but the second flight was bare, and so steep that I had to tag a couple steps below her so as not to be nicked by her boot heels as we climbed.

The instant we had reached the third floor — one large attic room fall of a tweedy, dusty darkness — we were hugging again and kissing and stumbling toward her bed. Her bed had a headboard like a metal gate, white or some pale color, so tall it had to sit out a ways from the slant of the ceiling. It jangled when we landed on it. Martine breathed small, hot, bacon-smelling puffs of air into my neck while I fumbled with her overall clasps. They were the kind where you slide a brass button up through a brass figure eight. I don’t think I’d worked one of those since nursery school, but it all came back to me.

“Martine,” I said (whispering, though no one could have heard), “I’m sorry to say I don’t have, ah, anything with me,” but she said, “Never mind; I do,” and she rolled away from me to rummage through her overall pockets. Then she pushed something smooth and warm and warped into my palm: her billfold. That made me even sadder, somehow. But still my body went hurtling forward on its own, and it didn’t give my mind a chance to say a thing.

Not till later, at least, when everything was over.

And then it said, What was that all about?

Which Martine was probably wondering too, because already she was twisting away from me, rustling among the sheets and then rising to cross the room. A light flickered on — just the dim fluorescent light on the back of her ancient cook-stove. It showed her facing me, head tilted, clutching a bedspread around her with thin bare arms. She still had her socks on. Crumpled black ankle socks. Little white pipe-cleaner shins.

“Oh, Lord,” I said.

Her head came out of its tilt, and she said, “Well. I guess you want to get going.”

“Yeah, I guess,” I said, and I reached for my clothes. Martine turned and went off toward what must have been the bathroom, with the bedspread making a hoarse sound as it followed her across the floor planks.

I did call out a goodbye when I left, but she didn’t answer.

Back when Natalie and I were still married — at the very tail end of our marriage, when things had started falling apart — I happened to be knocked down by a car after an evening class. Ended up spending several hours in the emergency room while they checked me out, but all I had was a few scrapes and bruises.

When I finally got home, about midnight, there was Natalie in her bathrobe, walking the baby. The apartment was dark except for one shaded lamp, and Natalie reminded me of some pious old painting — her robe a long, flowing bell, her head bent low, her face in shadows. She didn’t speak until I was standing squarely in front of her, and then she raised her eyes to mine and said, “It’s nothing to me anymore if you choose to stay out carousing. But how about your daughter, wondering all this time where you are? Didn’t you at least give any thought to your daughter?”

Except my daughter was sound asleep and obviously hadn’t noticed my absence.

I looked, into Natalie’s eyes — reproachful black ovals, absorbing the glow from the lamp without sending back one gleam. I said, “No, I didn’t, since you ask. I was having too good a time.” Then I went off to bed. I fell into bed, still wearing my clothes, like someone exhausted by drink and fast women.

Every now and then, I think I might have an inkling why Ditty Nolan stopped leaving her house. It may have had something to do with those years spent tending her mother. “If you make me stay home for so long, just watch: I’ll stay at home forever,” she said.

“If you think I’m such a villain, just watch: I’ll act worse than you ever dreamed of,” I said. I said it during my teens. I said it toward the end of my marriage. And I said it that whole nasty Monday, which seemed, now that I looked back, to have lasted about a month.

Back at my place, I found two more messages from Sophia and another from Mrs. Dibble. Sophia’s voice was patient, without the least hint of annoyance, which made me feel terrible. Mrs. Dibble was all business. “I want you to call, Barnaby, as soon as you get in. I don’t care how late it is. Use my home number.”

So I called. What the hell. If she wanted to fire me, let’s get it over with.

It wasn’t even ten o’clock, but she must have been in bed, because she answered so immediately, in that super-alert tone people use when they don’t want to let on you’ve wakened them. “Yes!” she said.

“It’s me,” I said.

“Barnaby.”

A pause, a kind of shuffling noise. She must be sitting up and rearranging her pillows. “Here are your assignments for tomorrow,” she said. “Mrs. Cartwright wants you to help her buy a birthday present for her niece. Mrs. Rodney needs her mower taken in for maintenance. Miss Simmons would like a window shade hung. Mr. Shank has asked for—”

“Wait,” I told her. “Is this all in one day?”

“Yes,” she said, and there was something unsteady in her voice — a bubble of laughter. “Package mailed for Mr. Shank, fireplace cleaned at the Brents’—”

“Fireplace?” I said. It was August. We were going through a heat wave.

The laughter grew more noticeable. “Plants moved for Mrs. Binney from the dining room to the living room—”

Mrs. Binney raised African violets, none of them over six inches tall. There was no reason on earth she should need my help to move them.

“Mrs. Portland wants you daily all next week,” Mrs. Dibble said. “She’s thinking of rearranging every stick of furniture she owns. The Winstons have requested—”

“What’s going on here?” I asked.

“I believe they must be trying to make a point, dear heart.”

I was quiet a moment. Then I said, “How did they find out?”

“How do they find out anything? Not from me, I promise.”

I didn’t know what to say.

“They love you, Barnaby,” Mrs. Dibble told me, and now the laughter had faded. She was using a solemn, treasuring tone that embarrassed me. “It hasn’t escaped their notice how you’ve cared for them all these years.”

“So,” I said. “You’re not firing me?”

“Firing you!”

“Well, I know I didn’t return a few of your phone calls—”

“Barnaby. I would never fire you. Did you really think I would? You’re my very best worker! I tell everybody that! ‘Barnaby’s going to end up owning this company,’ I say. ‘You just watch: when I’m old and decrepit, it’s Barnaby who’ll buy me out.’”

“Who’ll what?” I said.

“Oh, well, just on the installment plan or something. If only I could afford it, I’d give it to you for free! It means a lot to me to see a good man take it over.”

I swallowed.

“But why are we discussing this now?” Mrs. Dibble asked. “For now, we have to think how you’re going to manage all these assignments.”

I said, “I’ll find a way, Mrs. Dibble. You just leave it to me.”