Anne Tyler: A Patchwork Planet

Martine swerved around a liquor truck that was parking at someone’s curb.

“I’ve got to start viewing the whole picture more,” I said. “I can’t go on falling for people’s foreheads.”

“With me, it’s mouths,” Martine said.

“Really.”

I began chewing on a thumbnail, incidentally covering my own mouth with my fist.

“First time I met Everett, all I saw was his mouth. That curvy upper lip of his. Did I ask if he had a steady job, or whether he was the type who’d want to get married?”

I said, “Married?” and tucked both fists between my knees.

“Did I ask why he was still living with his mom, who dotes on him and serves him breakfast in bed and makes his truck payments for him when he can’t come up with the money?”

“Geez, Pasko,” I said. “I never figured on you getting married, exactly.”

“Why not?” she asked.

“Well, I don’t know….”

“You think I’m not old enough? I’m twenty-six and a half!”

“Well, sure, you’re old enough, I guess.”

“Or you think I’m not frilly and girly enough? Not pretty enough? What?”

“Huh? No! Honest! I think you’re very, um …” It didn’t help that just then she sent me this crosspatch, unalluring scowl, but I said, “Very … attractive! Honest!”

“Everett says I remind him of a ten-year-old boy.”

Everett had a point — one of the few times I’d agreed with him. I said, “Hogwash.”

“When I told him I wanted lingerie for Christmas, he asked if they made black lace training bras.”

I started to grin but stopped myself.

“Maybe we should both come up with some New Year’s resolutions,” Martine said. “Promise ourselves we won’t go on acting like such saps.”

“Well, maybe so,” I said.

But I guess she could tell from my voice that I didn’t have the heart for it. You get close to being thirty, and these resolutions start to seem kind of hopeless.

I wished Natalie hadn’t felt called upon to remind me of my birthday.

Mrs. Alford lived in Mount Washington, in a white clapboard Colonial that was fairly good-sized but shabby, like most of our clients’ houses. (Anybody rich would have hired full-time help, not just Rent-a-Back. And anybody poverty-stricken couldn’t afford even us.) She was watching from behind her storm door, with a cardigan clutched around her shoulders. A woman shaped like a pigeon: tidy little head and a deep, low-set pouch of a bosom. When we started up the steps she opened the door and called, “Good evening, Barnaby! Evening, Martine! Isn’t it nice you could come on such short notice!”

“Oh, for you, anytime, Mrs. A.,” I told her. I walked past her into the foyer and stood waiting for instructions. Her house smelled of steam heat and brothy foods and just, well, oldness. A Christmas tree wouldn’t fool her grandchildren for an instant. But she was so cheerful and determined, peering up at us half blind and smiling brightly, her hair smoothly combed, her lipstick neatly applied. “The tree is in the attic, in a white box with a red lid,” she said, “and the ornaments should be nearby, but I’m not sure exactly where. I haven’t used them lately, because last year I went to my daughter’s for Christmas, and the year before … Now, what did I do the year before?”

“Never fear, Mrs. A. We’ll track those suckers down no matter where they are,” I told her.

“Mind you don’t step through the ceiling, though.”

“Would we do a thing like that?”

The way Rent-a-Back operated was, we tried to send each client the same two or three workers again and again. So Martine and I already knew our way around Mrs. Alford’s house. We knew how to get upstairs, and we knew more or less where the pull-down ladder was, above the second-floor hall. But I don’t think either of us had ever been in her attic before. We clambered up — Martine on my heels, nimble as a monkey — into a hollow of cold air and darkness. I groped overhead till I connected with the lightbulb cord, and then all this junk sprang into view: trunks and suitcases and lamps, andirons, kitchen chairs with no seats, electric fans so outdated you could have fit a whole hand inside their metal grilles. None of it any surprise, believe me. I had toured a lot of attics in my time. I said, “Well, there’s flooring in the middle, at least,” and Martine said, “White box, red lid. White box, red lid,” meanwhile maneuvering past a console radio, a standing ashtray, an open carton full of doorknobs. “Here it is,” she said.

But I had caught sight of something else: a dress form, over by the chimney. It wasn’t an ordinary dress form; not a canvas torso plumped with padding. This was a life-size wooden cutout, head and all, flat as a paper doll. The face was oval and astonished — round blue eyes, two dots for nostrils, and a pink O of a mouth — with brown corkscrew curls painted in at the edges. The arms stuck out at a slant and ended above the elbows; the legs stood in a brace arrangement that kept the figure upright. “Why! It’s a Twinform,” I told Martine.

“Hmm?”

“It’s a Gaitlin Faithful Feminine Twinform! Invented by my great-grandfather.”

Martine glanced over. She said, “Well, how would that be useful, though?”

“Listen to this,” I told her. I read from the little brass plaque on the base. “ ‘Gaitlin Woodenworks, Baltimore, Maryland. Patent Applied For.’ ”

“How would you know how big around to sew your dresses?”

“It’s not for sewing dresses. It’s for putting together your outfit before you wear it. Like, if you’re planning to go to a party or something … Well, it does sound kind of dumb. But once upon a time, you could find a Twinform in every bedroom. Now they’ve disappeared. I’ve never seen one in person before.”

“Those old-time inventions slay me,” Martine said. “People used to try so hard, seems like. Used to aim for the most roundabout method of doing things. Could you come give me a hand here, Barn?”

I turned away from the Twinform, finally, and went to help her.

The Christmas tree carton was a manageable size, with holes at each end to hang on by, but it turned out to be fairly heavy. I said, “Oof!” Martine, though, didn’t make a sound. (Both our girl employees behaved that way, I’d noticed — kept their breaths very even and quiet where a guy would have openly grunted.) “Better let me go first,” I said when we reached the ladder, but Martine said, “What: you think I can’t handle it?”

“Fine,” I told her. “After you.” And then had the satisfaction of watching her pretend it was no big deal when sixty pounds of Christmas tree hit her in the chest as she got halfway down.

Mrs. Alford was waiting for us in the living room — her cardigan thrown aside, her speckled hands twisting and pulling and itching to get started. “Oh, good,” she said. “But what about the ornaments, I wonder?”

I said, “Half a minute, Mrs. A.,” and we lowered the carton to the rug.

“You did see where they were, though,” she said. “You found the boxes.”

“We will; don’t worry,” Martine told her.

“I hope they’re not in the basement, instead.”

Martine and I looked at each other.

But no, they were in the attic. When we went back up, we spotted them on top of a disconnected radiator — two cardboard boxes marked Xmas in shaky crayon script. They weighed a lot less than the tree had. We could carry one apiece with no trouble.

As I was heading toward the ladder, I threw another glance at the Twinform. “Of course, it didn’t allow for Fat Days,” I told Martine, “or Short Days, or any of those other days when women take forever deciding what to wear.”