Anne Tyler - A Patchwork Planet

I said, “Sofe—”

“Because I’m not accepting it, Barnaby. You’d have to ram it down my throat before I’d accept it.”

This was a temptation, but I decided on a different tactic. I said, “No, no, no. Good grief, no! It’s … something for Opal.”

“Opal?”

“Her, um, Christmas present. I need for you to take it to her.”

“Opal’s Christmas present is in this envelope?”

“Take it, will you? Take it,” I said, and I held it out to her. Right then it mattered more than anything that I get rid of it; I didn’t care how. When she unclasped her hands, finally, and allowed me to lay the envelope on her palm, I felt a kind of lightness expanding inside my chest. I imagined I had been freed of an actual weight.

“You’re asking me to carry this to Opal’s apartment?” Sophia said, and she raised her eyes to look into mine.

“Well,” I said, “or else … no.” (I could see how that might get complicated.) “No, I want you to give it to Natalie at the train station.”

“Natalie?”

“She knows you’re coming. She’ll meet you there.”

Sophia blinked.

“She’ll be … yes! At the Information island,” I said. And then something about how this situation rhymed, so to speak, made me laugh. I said, “I can assure you it’s not contraband.”

A confused, slightly startled expression crossed her face, as if some string had been tugged in her memory, but she went on looking into my eyes.

“Goodbye,” I said, rising.

“Wait! Barnaby? You’re leaving?”

“Yes, I promised I’d help pack up Mrs. Alford’s house today. Oh. Incidentally,” I said. (My mind was racing now.) “If you and Natalie happen to miss connections, I did put her telephone number in the envelope. Just get it out and call her. But you shouldn’t have any trouble.”

She nodded, with her lips slightly parted. I turned and walked away.

Spink and Kunkle, Plumbing Specialists , the man’s card read. “Our Name Says It AH.”

“Your name says it all?” I asked.

“Sure does,” he said. A freckled man with reddish, fizzing hair.

“ ‘Spink and Kunkle’ says it all?”

“ ‘Plumbing Specialists’ says it all,” he told me irritably.

“Oh.”

“I’m supposed to fix a leak in the master bath.”

“Right.” I handed back his card, and then I turned from the door and called, “Hello?” (I had no idea how to address Mrs. Alford’s daughter, never having heard her last name.) “Plumber’s here!” I called.

“Oh, good.” She came galumphing down the stairs. Dressed for manual labor, Valerie was gawkier than ever. She wore huge white canvas gloves that made her look like Minnie Mouse. “Thanks for stopping by on such short notice,” she told the man. “We’re trying to get the house ready to sell, and you know how a minor thing like a drip will scare some people away.”

“Ma’am,” the man said heavily, “no drip on God’s green earth is minor. Believe me.” He was following her up the stairs, carrying what seemed to be a doctor’s bag. “If you was to put a measuring cup under that drip,” he said, “you would be scandalized. Scandalized! To see how much water you’re wasting.”

“Well, this house belonged to my mother, you see, and somehow she never …”

I went back to the kitchen, where I was packing the pots and pans. Martine was doing utensils. Supposedly, we’d be finished by the end of the day, but that was just not going to happen. Valerie had already asked if we could return tomorrow. I said, “Tomorrow? Tomorrow’s Sunday.”

“Yes, but the next day’s Christmas,” she said.

So I said, “Oh, I guess I could.”

I felt obliged to, really, because she had told me earlier that her mother had willed me the Twinform. “That mannequin thing in the attic,” she’d explained. “I can’t imagine why she thought … But if you don’t want it, just say so. Please.”

“I want it! I want it,” I said.

After that, how could I refuse to come Sunday? Martine said she would come too, but only for the morning. Her brother’s new baby had finally been sprung from the hospital, she said. This meant that her family would be throwing their annual carol sing, after all, and she had to help them get ready. Then she told me I was invited. “You should dress up some,” she told me, “now that you have a Twinform to try out your fashion statements on.”

“Right,” I said. “I can’t wait to see her in a coat and tie.”

Underneath, though, I took my Twinform very seriously. I kept going into the foyer to check on her; I’d moved her down from the attic as soon as I learned she was mine. I pretended I was just figuring out the logistics. “If we could borrow a blanket or something,” I told Martine, “and wrap her up so she doesn’t rattle around the truck bed …”

“ ‘Her’?” Martine teased me. “ ‘She’?”

“Oh, come on, Pasko: you have to admit that face has a lot of character.”

She snorted, and we went back to our packing.

Place mats, tablecloths, napkins, doilies. Tupperware and empty mayonnaise jars and plastic juice containers. Waxed paper, aluminum foil, Saran wrap, freezer wrap. A lifetime supply of white candles. More than a lifetime supply, if you want to be literal about it.

Every now and then, in this job, I suddenly understood that you really, truly can’t take it with you. I don’t think I ordinarily grasped the full implications of that. Just look at all the possessions a dead person leaves behind: every last one, even the most treasured. No luggage is permitted, no carry-on items, not a purse, not a pair of glasses. You spend seven or eight decades acquiring your objects, arranging them, dusting them, insuring them; then you walk out with nothing at all, as bare as the day you arrived.

I told Martine, “I should find some other line of work.”

“Not that again,” she said, and she folded down the flaps on a box of cookbooks.

“It isn’t natural for someone my age to go to more funerals than dinner parties.”

Martine just smiled to herself.

Mrs. Alford’s brother came in with an empty coffee mug. He rinsed it at the sink and placed it in the dishwasher. (Old folks almost always prerinse.) Then he left, slogging off with his head down, not appearing to notice us.

Overhead, the plumber was clanking pipes, and it occurred to me that the name really did say it all. Spink! the pipes went. Kunkle! In the living room, a boom box was playing alternative rock — probably the first time these walls had ever heard such a sound. “Listen to this one,” a kid was saying — talking to his mother, I think. She had started packing the books. “This song comes from before their lead singer went crazy. Okay? Now, this next one … wait a sec. This next one is after he went crazy. Hear that? Can you tell the difference? Well, then, let me play it again. See, this is before he went crazy. This next …”

The bearded husband wandered into the kitchen, opened the fridge, and gazed into it. Then he closed it and wandered off. I still hadn’t heard him speak. Upstairs, the baby was crying, and somebody told her, “Aw, now. Aw, now.” (It sounded to me like the plumber.) I found a length of white flannel in a drawer — the kind you’d spread beneath a tablecloth for protection — and took it out to the foyer and draped it over the Twinform’s shoulders. She gaped at me round-eyed, as if I’d been presumptuous.

Suppose my great-grandfather was walking down the street one day and who did he see but his angel, the woman with the golden braid. “Miss!” he’d cry. “Miss! Wait up! I never thanked you.”