Anne Tyler - Searching for Caleb

The twins looked at each other. Certainly they had never meant to imply that it was the point of life, exactly.

On a Saturday night in October, Justine was watching television with Neely in her great-grandma's study. Neely was stroking her neck up and down in a particularly rasping way, but she had been so short-tempered with him lately that she didn't want to protest. Instead she concentrated on the television: a mahogany box with a snowy blue postage stamp in its center, showing a girl who had become engaged due to cleansing her face with cold cream twice a night. She flashed a diamond ring at her girlfriends. "Your diamond's going to be twice as big," said Neely. "My father's already promised me the money."

"I don't like diamonds," said Justine.

"Why not?"

"I don't like stones that are transparent."

"You don't like anything any more, Justine."

On the television, a man held up a watch that would keep running steadily through everything, even a cycle in a washing machine.

"How about me?" Neely asked.

"What?"

"Do you like me?"

His finger kept annoying her neck. Justine winced and drew away.

A man in downtown Baltimore was interviewing people coming out of a movie theater. He wanted to see if they had heard of his product, an antibacterial toothpaste. "Goodness, no," said a lady.

"Well, think a minute. Say you have a cold and get over it. You wouldn't want to catch it right back again from your toothbrush, would you?"

"Goodness, no."

He stopped a man in a raincoat.

"Sir? Have you ever thought how risky it is, using the toothbrush you used when you were sick?"

"Why, no, now I never considered that. But you got a point there."

He stopped Duncan.

"Say!" said Neely. "Isn't that your cousin?"

Duncan was wearing some dark shade of jacket that Justine had never seen before. His face was clamped against the cold. There was no one in the world with such a pure, unwavering face. He stooped a little to hear the question, concentrating courteously with his eyes focused on something in the distance. When the man was finished Duncan straightened and thought a moment.

"Actually," he said, "once your body's built up enough resistance to overcome those bacteria in the first place it's very doubtful if-"

The man discontinued the conversation and ran after a ^fat lady.

Justine went to the front hall for her coat. "Justine?" Neely called. She ignored him. Probably he thought she was out of hearing, maybe gone to the kitchen for soft drinks. At any rate, he didn't call again.

All she told herself was that she owed Duncan a visit. He was her cousin, wasn't he? And she really should give him their grandfather's money.

(Which was still crammed in her jewelry box at home.) She had herself convinced. But Duncan must have known exactly how her mind worked, because when he opened the door he stood looking at her for a minute, and then he drew her in and kissed her, and then he said, "Look, I can see the layers sliding across your eyes like shutters until you can properly explain this away." Then he laid her on his bed, with its hollow center that rolled her toward him so that she could feel his warm bones through the thin white fabric of his shirt. He took off her clothes and his. Still she didn't make a single objection, she said none of the things that she had said to Neely. She felt happy and certain, as if everything they did was already familiar. She seemed to be glinting with some secret laughter at this newer, more joyous mischief that they were just inventing, or at Duncan's Puckish face turned suddenly gentle, or at her own self in his mirror eyes, a naked girl wearing a Breton hat.

Duncan came home in March of 1953. He walked into his great-grandma's dining room one Sunday at dinnertime. "Duncan!" his mother said, half rising. Then, "What on earth is that you're wearing?"

He was wearing a peajacket he had bought from Navy surplus. His hair needed cutting. He had been gone nearly a year and in that time his face had changed in some indefinable way that made him an outsider. The grownups stared and his cousins gave him self-conscious, sidelong glances. All but Justine, who raised her face like a beacon and smiled across the room at him. He smiled back.

"Well, my boy," his grandfather said. "So you're home."

"No," said Duncan, looking at Justine.

But they didn't believe him. "Pull up a chair," his mother said. "Take mine. Get yourself a plate. Have you had one decent meal since you left us?"

"I'm going to get married," Duncan said.

"Married?"

The ghost of Glorietta flashed scarlet through their minds. All the grownups shifted uneasily.

"I'm marrying Justine."

First they thought it was a joke. A tasteless one, but just like him.

Then they saw how grave and still the two of them were. "My God," said Justine's mother. She clutched suddenly at a handful of ruffles on her chest. "My God, who would have thought of such a thing?"

Though it seemed to all of them, now, that they should have thought of it long ago. Those visits Justine had paid him! Those trips!

Everyone knew she hated traveling as much as any other Peck. Yet day after day this winter she had packed a lunch in Sulie's kitchen and said she wouldn't be home till night. "I'm going on a trip with Duncan. Out to the country somewhere." "Yes, yes, go," they told her. "Keep an eye on him for us." She had cut classes, missed important family gatherings, stopped seeing Neely, grown distant from her cousins-"But it's good she's with Duncan," they told each other. "She's sure to be a good influence on him." How she had deceived them!

Only Sam Mayhew, slow of mind, seemed unable to make the mental leap the Pecks had just accomplished. He looked all around the table, from one person to the other, with his face set to laugh as soon as he saw the joke. "What? What's that?" he said.

The others waved him aside, too busy adjusting to the shock. But Duncan came over and stood squarely in front of him and spoke very quietly, as if to a child.

"Uncle Sam, I'm marrying Justine."

"But-you can't!"

"I'm telling you I am. I'm telling you, not asking you. Nothing is going to make me change my mind."

"You can't."

"Why, it must not even be legal!" said Caroline.

"Yes, it is," Duncan told her.

"Oh yes," his grandfather said.

"But-" said Caroline.

"Who's the lawyer here, you or me? Boy's right. It's true. And yes, I know, there's a lot to be said against it. But look at it this way. What nicer girl could he have picked? She's sure to settle him down some. And this way there's no adjustment for them to make, no in-law problems-"

"You ought to be locked up," Sam Mayhew said.

"Sir!" said Grandfather Peck.

"Haven't you heard of inbreeding?"

"Not at the table, Sam."

"Haven't you heard of genes?"

"Now, we come of good solid stock," the grandfather said. "No worries there." He picked up the carving knife. "Care for a slice of ham, Duncan boy?"

"He's a blood relative," said Sam Mayhew. "And he's only twenty years old, and he hasn't got a responsible bone in his body. Well, I'm not going to allow it. Justine won't marry Duncan or any other Peck."

"Then we'll elope," Duncan said.

"Elope!" cried Justine's mother. "Oh, anything but that!"

"You are a fool, Caroline," Sam Mayhew said. Then he stood and took Justine by the wrist and pulled her up and toward the door. But she was still calm and so was Duncan. Nothing seemed to disturb them. As Justine passed Duncan he gave her a slow, deep stare that caused the rest of the family to avert their eyes. "Come, Justine," her father said. He led her through the living room and up to her bedroom. She went without a protest. He set her in her room and shut her door and locked it, and put the key up on the ledge again before he went back to the others.