Anne Tyler - Searching for Caleb

Meg looked at her great-grandfather, who smiled a weary smile showing every one of his perfect teeth. She crossed to the kitchen door and opened it.

"Meg," said Dorcas, "your mother's a marvel. My cards say Ann-Campbell is with Joe Pete and I'm to enjoy the rest while she's gone."

"Mama, listen."

Justine looked up. She was seated at the kitchen table, holding both hands rigid. Between each finger were long sprays of raw spaghetti.

"Look, Meg!" she said. "I'm learning the I Ching!"

"Is that all you have to do?"

"Well, we should use yarrow stalks but we don't know what they are."

"I just want to tell you this," Meg said. "I blame you as much as him."

"What, Meggie dear?"

"The two of you are as closed as a unit can get, I don't care what he says."

"Closed? What?" said Justine, looking bewildered. She rose, holding out two spaghetti whiskbrooms. "Wait, Maggie darling, I don't-"

But Meg was gone. She ran across the hall and out of the house. There was no sign of Arthur or Duncan in the yard. Only the Ford, melting into the twilight, with a magazine page flapping in the space where the door should have been. WOULDN'T YOU REALLY RATHER HAVE A BUICK?

9

For the Polk Valley church's April bazaar Justine wore her very best dress-an A-line shift that Duncan had bought her five years ago at a nearly-new sale. She pulled her hair into a sprout on top of her head, covered it over with her hat, and dabbed at her mouth with a pink Tangee lipstick from high school. On her feet she wore her black Mary Janes, on her arm a gypsy bracelet borrowed from the Blue Bottle. Generally speaking, she thought she looked very presentable.

Because the car was in the body shop, Justine had to ask for a lift in Dorcas's baby-blue Cadillac. And Ann-Campbell had to come along, jouncing in the back seat, periodically nosing her sharp little freckled face between the two women to eavesdrop. Justine liked Ann-Campbell. She was certain she was going to lead a very interesting life.

On the way to Polk Valley Dorcas talked about her ex-husband, Joe Pete, whom she had married and divorced three times now. Every time she married him she had a large church wedding all over again, with Ann-Campbell as flower girl in a floor-length organdy dress to cover the scabs, scars, scrapes, bruises, and Band-Aids on her bony knees. Lately relatives had stopped attending, and the gifts had thinned out. "But," said Dorcas, "he's still my first husband, isn't he? I've never been married to anybody else, and neither has he. Why can't I have a wedding like I choose?"

Justine didn't want to think about weddings. They reminded her of Meg.

She was worried sick about Meg, who had become very quiet the last few weeks, and whenever she talked it over with Duncan he acted so cross and stubborn that he was no help at all. He said Meg could marry anyone she chose, a Congo chieftain if she cared to, but not a man whose only quality was harmlessness. "Maybe she loves him," Justine said, but doubtfully. She tried to believe it. Whenever she saw Arthur she worked at being interested in him. She observed that he was kind-hearted, steady, polite . . . and then her mind would trail off to some other subject and she forgot he was there. She watched Meg, who appeared as placid as ever. But then Meg didn't show emotions, that was all. Of course she loved him or she wouldn't say she wanted to marry him.

Oh, the things she had prepared herself for, when Meg was born! Merely the fact of having a new person in the world implied a stream of unforseen events endlessly branching and dividing. As Meg grew into her teens Justine was braced for long-haired suitors, LSD, shoplifting, pregnancy, revolutionists, firearms in the closet-anything, for 595 her daughter's sake she could deal with anything! She just hadn't expected Arthur Milsom, exactly.

"Thursday night Joe Pete calls up. 'Will you be at home a while?' Where would I go to? On no alimony at all and six months behind in child support. And Joe Pete's a rich man, Britt Texaco. 'Joe Pete/ I told him, I said, 'all in the world that's left for me to do tonight is read my November seventy-two Modern Movies,' and he says, 'Fine, for I'm bringing back your daughter and you owe me forty-eight ninety-five for my new emerald rug which she dribble-bleached with a gallon of Clorox. I won't charge for the Clorox/ he says. 'Well and good/ I tell him, 'you can take that up with the FBI when they haul you in for kidnap.' I'm no fool."

"When he brought me back he stayed all night," said Ann-Campbell.

"It's his English Leather aftershave," said Dorcas.

Justine laughed.

The church parking lot was packed with cars, flashing the afternoon sunlight off their chrome/and ladies were swarming in the front yard and spilling down the hill as far as the cemetery. "I want to get a hot dog,"

Ann-Campbell said, "and you owe me a balloon from that time at the shopping center, and I need a caramel apple. If they have cotton candy, can I have some? If they're selling lemon sticks-"

"Ann-Campbell, you promised me you would act nice now if I let you stay out of school today."

"In school we do this math," Ann-Campbell told Justine.

"Oh yes," said Justine, who had disliked math, "If five mothers are fighting over ten blond wigs, how many does each of them get? They want me to say two, but how can I be sure? Maybe one wig's ugly and nobody takes it. Maybe one mother's stronger than the rest and she gets five. Or one's got a head that's too big for the-"

"Ann-Campbell Britt, you are sending a shooting sharp pain right down between my shoulder blades," her mother told her.

If Justine had had to choose what child would most likely be Duncan's in all the world, she would have said Ann-Campbell. Never Meg.

The bazaar was in the church basement, down a flight of linoleum steps.

It took Justine's eyes a minute to get used to the dimness. Then she saw rows of booths covered with crepe paper, and more ladies bustling around in pantsuits and varnished hairdos. Justine hated pant-suits. Whenever she saw one she had an urge to tell the owner some scandalous fortune, loudly enough to be heard everywhere: "The father of your next-to-last baby has run off with a cigar-smoking redhead." But she kept her bright smile and waited, clutching her bag, until the woman in charge noticed she was there. Mrs. Edge's pantsuit was pale aqua, Justine's least favorite color. Oh, but she would have to get over this mood she was in. She widened her smile another inch. "I'm Justine Peck," she said. "I promised to come tell fortunes."

"Mrs. Peck? Why, I thought you would be darker. We've heard such amazing things about you, dear. Now somewhere, let me see now . . ."

Mrs. Edge led the way toward a card table. It was covered with a white cloth to which stars and crescent moons had been pinned. Justine followed and behind her came Dorcas, wobbling on her spike heels and humming.

There was no telling where Ann-Campbell had got to.

"Now dear, this is your cashbox. I've laid a few dollar bills in for change. Is there anything else you'll be wanting? I do hope you won't be chilly. Perhaps you should have brought a wrap."

"Oh no, I'll be fine," said Justine, who was always burning up.

"Why! Here's Mrs. Linthicum, our pastor's wife. Mrs. Peck here is just a wizard telling fortunes, Mrs. L."

"Oh, then you can start on me," Mrs. Linthicum said. She was wearing a dress, and a little brown mushroom of a hat. She was a tall wispy woman with freckles seeping through her pink face powder. When she sat down in the folding chair she arranged herself so graciously, smoothing her skirt beneath her and then patting her bosom as if to make certain it was there, that Justine felt an unexplainable rush of sorrow. She reached over without planning to and touched Mrs. Linthicum's freckled hand. "Oh, is it the left palm you read?" asked Mrs. Linthicum.