Anne Tyler - A Patchwork Planet

“Um …”

As luck would have it, my mother approached him just then with the tray. “Coffee, Daddy? It’s decaf.”

“Now, what the hell do I want decaf for? What’s the point of coffee if it don’t have any kick to it?”

“Think how much better you’ll sleep, though, Daddy.”

“Ha,” he said, but he helped himself to a cup and stirred in several spoonsful of sugar, while she waited.

“Jeffrey?” my mother said next, heading toward Dad.

“Yes, thanks. I will have some.”

She bent to rest her tray on the lamp table beside him. “Barnaby won’t let me give him back his money,” she told him.

“Eh?” my father said.

“His eighty-seven hundred. He won’t take it.”

I felt Sophia glance over at me, but the others paid no attention. “Fifteen-two, fifteen-four, and a double run for twelve,” Opal announced, while Jeff set aside his poker and took another swig of wine.

“I tried to give it back to him,” my mother said, “but he tore up the check.”

“We’ll discuss this some other time, shall we?” my father said pleasantly.

“I want to get this settled, though.”

“Another time, I told you.”

“What other time? We hardly ever lay eyes on him!”

“Margot,” my father said. “Do you suppose we could make it through one holiday without your tiresome fishwife act?”

Wicky stopped humming. There was a pause, and then my mother lifted her tray and proceeded back to the kitchen at a dignified pace. A second later, we heard the tray slamming onto a counter. A faucet started running. Dishes started clattering. Wicky looked over at Jeff, but he minutely shook his head, and so she stayed seated.

Gram cleared her throat. “Sophia, dear!” she said. “Tell us! What dots your family do for Thanksgiving?”

Well, at least they didn’t publicly demolish each other, Sophia could have said; but she told Gram, “Oh, nothing very exciting, I’m afraid. Usually, Mother’s two cousins come for dinner, along with one cousin’s husband. And then this year she’s invited my Aunt Grace from Baltimore too.”

“She’s invited your Aunt Grace?” I asked.

But I don’t think Sophia heard, because Gram was saying, “Isn’t that lovely! And will they be serving a turkey?”

“Oh, yes. In fact, it’s kind of like you-all’s arrangement — a potluck — although Mother does assign specific dishes. For instance, Aunt Grace is bringing her chestnut dressing. She fixed it ahead of time, except for the baking, and I helped her onto the train with it, but Lord knows how she’ll manage at the other end of the trip.”

“You helped her onto the train?” I asked.

All this was news to me, I can tell you.

Sophia sent me an absentminded smile. “The cousins are in charge of the vegetables,” she said, “and Cousin Dotty’s husband makes the pies. He’s an excellent cook, although in all other respects he’s considered something of a—”

There was a crash in the kitchen, followed by the tinkling of glass. Sophia stopped short. The rest of us exchanged glances.

Gram said, “Yes, dear? Something of a …?”

“Oh! Something of a … ne’er-do-well, I suppose. But—”

A metal object clanged so loudly that it gave off an echo, like a gong.

“Maybe I should go out there,” Wicky said.

“Stay where you are, why don’t you,” my father told her blandly.

She sat back, drawing J.P.’s deadweight body closer against her.

Sophia looked from one of us to the other.

“Ne’er-do-well!” I said.

Sophia said, “What?”

“I haven’t heard that term in ages!”

“You haven’t heard … ‘ne’er-do-well’?”

“It’s almost Old English, don’t you think?” I asked the room at large. I had to raise my voice to be heard above the racket from the kitchen. “It’s almost something Robin Hood might have said! In fact, a lot of those bad-guy words are like that: so quaint and antiquey. ‘Ruffian.’ ‘Knave.’ ‘Wastrel.’ ‘Scoundrel.’ Ever noticed?”

No one had, apparently.

“ ‘Layabout.’ ‘Rapscallion,’ ” I said. “ ‘Scofflaw.’ ‘Scum of the earth.’ ”

“ ‘Beast of burden,’ ” Opal offered unexpectedly.

“Well, that’s a little off the subject … or maybe not, come to think of it. And ‘ill-gotten gains.’ ‘Misspent youth.’ Or, let’s see …”

“ ‘Besetting sins,’ ” my father said from his armchair.

“Right! Besetting sins. But it’s not the same for good-guy words, at least not as far as I’ve—”

The telephone rang. We were all so relieved that every last one of us stirred as if to go answer it, but Mom picked it up in the kitchen. We could hear her intonation, if not her exact words. “Mm? Mm? Hmm-hmm-hmm.”

Then she appeared in the doorway. “Barnaby,” she said — her voice noncommittal, her face composed, not a hair out of place—“that was that Martine person, and she says to tell you she has the truck but she’ll bring it by in the morning.”

“Thanks,” I said.

Pop-Pop asked, “What truck is that?”

I said, “Oh, just the, you know, work truck.”

“Fool kid sold off the Sting Ray,” my father told my grandpa.

“He did what?”

“Sold off the Corvette Sting Ray and bought a used Ford pickup.”

Pop-Pop leaned forward on the couch to peer at me. I could feel his stare, even though I had my back to him. I turned and told him, “I was planning to mention that.”

“You sold the Sting Ray?”

He was so amazed, the whites of his eyes showed all around the irises.

“Well, yes, I did,” I said.

“Why?”

I said, “I needed the money.”

“The money, son: you could have borrowed money from me! I’d have been glad to lend you money!”

“Well, see … the whole point was, not to be in debt anymore. Not to owe anybody.”

Pop-Pop’s jaw went slack.

“But, Barnaby,” he said finally. “That was the only year the Corvette had a split rear window.”

“Oh, damn that split rear window!” I said. Then I said, “Sorry.” I looked around at the others. They all wore the same accusing expression — even Opal. (Or maybe I was imagining things.) “I mean,” I said, “I do know what a big deal it was, Pop-Pop—”

“Shoot,” Jeff said suddenly. “It broke my heart when Pop-Pop gave the Corvette to you.”

“It did?” I asked.

“I would have killed for that car!”

“You would?”

I sat there a minute absorbing this, chewing the inside of my cheek. Dad, meanwhile, took over the conversation. “Of course, when I was Barnaby’s age,” he said, “I went out and worked if I needed money, but nowadays, it seems—”

“With all due respect, Dad,” I told him, “you were never my age.”

“Excuse me?”

“Times are different, Dad, okay? What I’ve experienced, you haven’t. And vice versa, no doubt. So you can’t compare us, is what I’m saying.” I turned back to my grandpa. “I’m sorry, Pop-Pop,” I told him. “Giving me that car was the best thing anyone’s ever done for me, and don’t think I don’t know that. But I’m trying really hard to grow up now, don’t you see? And I had to sell the car to get there. I hope you understand.”

I could hear the rustle of Mom’s apron as she wrapped her hands in it. Then Pop-Pop said, “Why, sure, son. It was yours to do what you liked with.”

After that we had a fairly normal evening, but that was just because all of us were exhausted.

Sophia and I had driven over in the Saab, and we’d both assumed that I would go back to her house for the night, since the roommate was out of town. But on Jeff’s front walk I said, “Why don’t you drive, and that way you can drop me off at my place.” Then I felt the need to invent too many excuses. “I have to get to work so early tomorrow, and Martine won’t know where to pick me up, and besides, Opal mentioned something about breakfast____”