Anne Tyler - Searching for Caleb

Sometimes he remembered that she had not always been this way, though he couldn't put his finger on just when she had changed. Then he wondered if she only pretended to be happy, for his sake. Or if she were deliberately cutting across her own grain, like an acrophobe who takes up sky diving.

He became suddenly thoughtful, offering her perhaps a visit to Baltimore, although still, after all these years, the mere thought of his family filled him with a contrariness he seemed unable to control. Justine was still very fond of the family. When he pointed out for her the meaning beneath their words, the sharp edge beneath their sweet, trite phrases, Justine pointed out the meaning beneath that meaning, and he would have to admit some truth in what she said. She had the pathetic alertness of a child who has had to depend too much on adults; she picked up every inflection, every gesture and untied ribbon and wandering eye, and turned it over and over to study its significance. (Was that how she could read the future? She had foretold Great-Grandma's death, she said, when she noticed her buying all her lotions in very tiny bottles.) So with Justine's words fresh in his mind he would drive to Baltimore feeling charitable and enlightened, though that never lasted past the moment of entering staid chilly Roland Park with its damp trees and gloomy houses and its reluctant maids floating almost motionlessly up the hill from the bus stop, following their slow flat feet while their heads held back. And once they had arrived he kept watching her, trying to see if deep down she hated him for taking her away. But Justine was no different here from any other place. She gave everybody sudden kisses, knocked Aunt Bea's spectacles askew, swooped through the house causing all the fairy lamps and figurines to tremble on the tables, and once at supper she accidentally ate the little glass spoon from her salt dish. All the aunts jumped up and wrung their hands, but Duncan smiled and his forehead smoothed and he rested back upon the white, tumbling waters of life with Justine.

Now the aunts and uncles were old, the grandfather wore a hearing aid, and the cousins (Sally divorced, the rest unmarried, all childless) were developing lines and sags in their curiously innocent faces like aging midgets. The lawns had grown meager and the fleet of Fords was outdated.

The only servant was old Sulie, who shuffled around angry about something, as she had been for years, stirring the dust back and forth with a wilted gray rag. Great-Grandma's house was inhabited by Esther and the twins, but Justine was the legal owner. Someday, everyone said, Justine and Duncan would want to come home bringing their sweet Meg, and when they did this house would be ready. Justine only smiled. Of course they would never live there. Yet always in the backs of their minds it waited as a last resort, if all else failed, if they ever were forced to admit defeat. It figured in back-up plans; it moved in on them, inch by inch, whenever money was tight and jobs were scarce, and over the years it had come to contain an imaginary life parallel to their own, advancing when theirs did. They knew what nursery school they would have sent Meg to if they had lived here, and then what grammar school; what pharmacy they would have patronized and where they would have gone for their groceries. Yet only one glance at that house, where it loomed beneath the oaks, was enough to make Duncan grow dark and hollow and he would suddenly lay a hand on Justine's thigh as if she were a square of sunlight on a windowseat, and he just in from the cold.

8

An inferior class of people tended to travel by bus. Daniel Peck glared at them: three sailors, a colored boy in a crocheted cap, and a sallow, weasely woman with four children whom she kept slapping and pinching. One of the children stuck out his tongue. "Look at there. Did you see that?"

Daniel asked his granddaughter.

She glanced up from her magazine.

"Child made a face at me."

She smiled.

"Well, there's nothing funny about it, Justine."

Whatever she said, he didn't quite catch. It bothered him to go motoring with his hearing aid on.

They were returning from Parthenon, Delaware, where finally, after a great deal of tedious correspondence, he had located the youngest son of the past headmaster of Salter Academy. A Mr. Dillard. Mr. Dillard had already informed him by letter that he had never kept in touch with any of his father's students (who were older than he and not likely to be among the living anyway, he said tactlessly), but Daniel Peck knew that memory was not such a well-ordered affair. Sometimes little things could jog it, he knew, sometimes so small a thing as the smell of clover or the sight of a boy wobbling on a bicycle. So he had come in person, bringing his photograph of Caleb and prepared to offer any detail he could think of, a whole wealth of detail flattened and dried in his mind. "He was a tardy boy, always tardy. Perhaps your father mentioned having a student with a tardiness problem. And let's see, he was extremely sociable.

Surely if there had ever been a class reunion of any sort he would have attended. Or just come visiting, don't you know. Perhaps come visiting your father years later, he would do that sort of thing. Can you remember such a visitor? Tall boy, blond, this picture doesn't quite show. He had a habit of tilting his head when listening to people. If you were a child he passed on his way to your father's study, for instance, he would most surely have spoken to you. Though he was not a smiling person. Did you see him? Do you know?"

But Mr. Dillard did not know. A stooped, red-faced man who wouldn't speak up. There were cartoon fishes all over his bathroom wallpaper. His wife was nice, though. Lovely lady. She offered them homemade butter mints, the first he had tasted in years, and gave Justine the recipe on an index card.

He set his face toward Justine, waiting till she would feel it and raise her head again. "Yes, Grandfather," she said.

"What'd you do with that recipe?"

She looked blank.

"Recipe card Mrs. Dillard gave you."

"Oh!"

"Don't tell me you lost it."

"Oh no. No, I-"

He didn't know the rest of what she said but he could see her plainly enough, rummaging through her crushed straw bag and then her dress pockets, one of which was torn halfway off. Gone, then. He would never have those fine butter mints again.

He removed a large leather wallet from the inner breast pocket of his suit coat. He took out a cream-colored envelope and a sheet of stationery. The envelope was already stamped and addressed. He was 5/8 ANNE, IIL-^ very well organized. His stepmother had taught him years ago: compose your card of thanks on the carriage ride home. Never allow an hour to elapse before writing a bread-and-butter note. "Then why," Duncan had asked as a child, "don't we write the whole letter ahead of time?" But no, that wouldn't do at all. You had to mention something personal that had occurred during the visit, don't you see. As Daniel did now, after frowning a moment at his pen.

Dear Mrs. Dillard, March 5, 1973

I write to express my appreciation for your hospitality. Your butter mints were extremely tasty, and it was very kind of you to take the time to see us. We shall remember our visit to you with a great deal of pleasure.

Respectfully, Daniel J. Peck, Sr.

When he got back to Caro Mill or wherever he would type a copy of this note for his files. He liked to keep a record of all correspondence, particularly that regarding Caleb. His old Underwood typewriter, with its metal keys and high black forehead, was forever set up on the bureau by his bed; his file cabinet was packed solid with letters of inquiry, thank you letters, follow-up letters, for how many years back? How many years?

Well, his stepmother died in 1958. That was a hard time. She was the last person on this earth who called him Daniel. He had not realized that until she died. She had journeyed through all his life with him, minus the first few months: seventy-seven years. The only person who remembered his kid soldier doll, and his father's way of widening his eyes when displeased, and the rough warm Belgian blocks that used to pave the streets downtown. She left her house to Justine, and he knew why. (She was uneasy in her mind about that girl, the sweetest of his granddaughters and the most defenseless, dragged from pillar to post by harum-scarum Duncan, whom marriage had not toned down in the least.) But for months after her death Daniel would not enter her house or look at it, and although he allowed Esther and the twins to move in he told them to stay out of her bedroom. He would sort her things later, he said; he was just a little busy right now. He walked around feeling wounded, struck as if for the first time by the fact that the world kept progressing and people aged and died and nothing in life was reversible.