Anne Tyler - Searching for Caleb

"His great-uncle taught Caleb how to work a stringed instrument when they were both fourteen."

"That's the place," Justine said.

He slumped, as if the conversation had taken everything out of him.

On Main Street Justine saw someone she knew-old Miss Wheeler, who used to ask the cards whether she should put her father in a nursing home-and she wanted to stop and speak to her, but Duncan wouldn't hear of it. "I'd like to get this over with, Justine," he said. Going back to places always did make him cross. When they passed the Wayfarer's Diner and then the Whole Self Health Food Store, whose tattered awning and baggy screens leapt out like familiar faces, Justine could feel the edginess in the skin of his arm. "Never mind, we're only visiting," she told him. But she had trespassed again and he drew himself in, moving slightly away from her so that their arms no longer touched and there was a sudden coolness along her left thigh.

Arthur Milsom's church was a large brick building on the other side of town. Justine had never attended it, but of course Meg had pointed it out to her-she remembered how the steeple had seemed sharper than necessary, barbed with some glittery metal at the tip. The rectory was brick also, but the house of the assistant pastor, next door to the rectory, was a small white cottage without trees or shrubs, set on a square of artificial-looking grass. There was a bald picture window with a double-globed, rosebud-painted lamp centered in it, and beside the front walk a hitching post in the shape of a small boy with a newly whitened face and black hands. Duncan stopped to study it, but Justine took her grandfather by the elbow and hurried him up the steps. "Where is this?" he asked her.

"This is Meg's, Grandfather. We're visiting Meg."

"Yes, yes, but-" And he revolved slowly, staring all about him. Justine pressed the doorbell, which was centered in a brass cross with scalloped edges. From somewhere far away she heard a whole melody ringing out in slow, measured, golden tones. Then the door opened and there was Meg, thinner and more poised, with longer hair. "Hello, Mama," she said. She kissed Justine's cheek, and then her greatgrandfather's. When Duncan had turned from the hitching post and climbed the steps she kissed his cheek as well. "Hello, Daddy," she said.

"Well, Meggums."

"I thought you might change your mind and not come."

"Would I do a thing like that?"

She didn't smile.

She led them across sculptured blue carpeting into the living room, where Christ gazed out of gilt frames on every wall. Most of the furniture seemed to come in twos-two identical tables flanking the sofa, two beaded lamps, two ice-blue satin easy chairs with skirted ottomans. On the spinet piano in the corner there were two framed photographs, one of Arthur in a clerical robe and the other of Meg with some sort of shiny drapery across her bare shoulders-but so retouched, so flawlessly complexioned, her hair so lacquered, that it took Justine a moment to recognize her. Besides, what right did some unknown woman have to set Meg's photo in her living room? Justine picked it up and studied it. Meg said, "Oh, that's my-that's just the picture we put in the paper when we-" She snatched the photo away and set it down. "I'll get Mother Milsom," she said.

Justine sought out Duncan, who was slouched on the sofa leafing through a Lady's Circle. His feet, in enormous grease-spattered desert boots, were resting on the coffee table. "Duncan!" she said, slapping his knee. He looked up and then moved his feet carefully, picking his way between china rabbits and birds, candles shaped like angels, a nativity scene in a seashell and a green glass shoe full of sourballs. Justine let out a long breath and settled down beside him. Across the room, her grandfather paced the carpet with his hands clasped behind his back. He did not like to sit when he would have to struggle up again so soon for the entrance of a lady. He paused before first one Christ and then another, peering closely at a series of melancholy brown eyes and lily-white necks.

"Religious art in the living room?" he said.

"Ssh," Justine told him.

"But I was always taught that that was in poor taste," he said. "Unless it was an original."

"Grandfather."

She looked at the door where Meg had disappeared. There was no telling how much could be heard. "Grandfather," she said, "wouldn't you like to-"

"They've got him in the dining room too," said Duncan, peering through the other doorway. "Praying in the garden."

"Oh, Duncan, what do you care? When did you ever give a thought to interior decorating?"

He frowned at her. "So you're going to take their side," he said.

"I didn't know there were sides."

"How's that?" asked her grandfather.

"Duncan thinks I'm defecting."

"Hmm?"

"Defecting."

"Nonsense," said her grandfather. "You're as smart as anybody."

Duncan laughed. Justine turned on him. "Duncan," she said, "I certainly hope you're not going to go into one of your silly fits here. Duncan, I mean this. For Meg's sake, now, can't we just try to-"

But then whispery footsteps crossed the carpet, and a lady in white entered the room with Meg just behind her. "Mother Milsom, I'd like you to meet my mother," Meg said. "And my father, and my greatgrandfather Peck." Meg's face was stem and her forehead was tweaked together in the center; she was warning her family not to disgrace her. So Duncan rose to his full height, keeping one thumb in his magazine, while the grandfather touched his temple and Justine stood up and held out her hand, Mrs.

Milsom's fingers felt like damp spaghetti. She was a long, wilted lady with light-brown hair parted in the center and crimped tight to her head, a pale tragic face, eyes as black and precisely lidded as a playing-card queen's. Her dress, which was made of something crepey, hung limp over her flat chest, billowed hollowly at the waist and wrists, and dripped in layers to her skinny sharp legs. She wore pointed silver pumps from the Sixties. When she smiled her eyes remained wide and lusterless, as if she were keeping in mind some secret sorrow. "So finally we meet," she said.

"We would have come before but Duncan was buying Prince Albert tins,"

Justine told her. Nervousness always did make her talk too much.

"I understand. Won't you be seated? Margaret, darling, would you care to serve the iced tea?"

Meg looked at her mother. Then she left the room. Mrs. Milsom floated slowly downward into one of the satin chairs, parts of her appearing to settle whole minutes after other parts. She laid her hands delicately together. "Arthur I hope will be joining us shortly," she said. "At the moment he's napping."

"Arthur naps?" said Duncan.

"It's a fourth Sunday. His day to preach. Preaching takes so much out of him. Naturally we had been hoping that you would be here in time to hear his sermon, but apparently things did not fall out that way." She gave Justine a deep, mournful look.

"Oh well-" said Justine. They would have come for the sermon, even Duncan-anything for Meg-but Meg had specifically told them not to arrive till after lunch.

"Generally on fourth Sundays he awakes with a headache," said Mrs.

Milsom, "and sustains it during the entire service and even afterward, until he admits that I am right and takes to his bed. He suffers real pain. This is not some ordinary headache."

"Maybe he should switch to fifth Sundays," Duncan said. "Sixth, even."

Justine shot him a look.

"Where's the minister?" asked Grandfather Peck, settling creakily into an armchair.

"Grandfather, turn on your-"

"Arthur is napping, Mr. Peck," said Mrs. Milsom. Her voice was thinned to just the right pitch. "I know all about the deaf," she told Justine. "My father was afflicted. In his later years he would go so far as to sing the 'Doxology' while his congregation was on 'Bringing in the Sheaves.' "