Anne Tyler - Searching for Caleb

At nine o'clock in the morning, Red Emma Borden was wiping the counter in the Caro Mill Diner when these four unfamiliar people walked in-a man and wife, a teenaged daughter and a very ancient gentleman. Red Emma was about to have a cigarette (she'd been on her feet since four) and she wasn't eager to wait on anyone else. Still, it was nice to see some new faces. She had been born and raised and married and widowed in this town and she was sick of everybody in it. So she puffed up her orange curls, tugged her uniform down, and reached for the order pad. Meanwhile the strangers were trying to find acceptable seats, which was not all that easy to do. Two of the counter stools were broken, just topless aluminum pedestals, and another would tip you off as soon as you tried to perch upon it. They had to cluster at one end down near the exhaust fan. Even then, the old gentleman had a long tail of cotton batting dangling out from under him. But none of them made any complaint; they just folded their arms and waited for her behind four pairs of blue, blue eyes. "Well, now," said Red Emma, slapping down cracked plastic menu cards. "What you going to have?"

She addressed the woman first-a skin-and-bones lady wearing a hat. But it was the husband who answered. "Speedy here will have everything in the kitchen," he said.

"Speedy! I barely inched along," the woman said.

"I thought you had entered the Indy five hundred. And your seat belt flopping out the door, after I took all that time installing it for you-"

"I will take coffee and three fried eggs," the woman told Red Emma.

"Sunny side up. And hotcakes, link sausages, and orange juice. And something salty, a sack of potato chips. Grandfather? Meg?"

Red Emma feared she would be cooking all morning, but it turned out the others just wanted coffee. They had the dazed, rumpled look of people who had been traveling. Only the woman seemed to care to talk. "My name is Justine," she said, "and this is my husband, Duncan. Our Grandfather Peck and our daughter Meg. Do you have the keys?"

"How's that?"

"We were told to stop here and pick up the keys for Mr. Parkinson's house."

"Oh yes," said Red Emma. She would never have supposed that these were the people for Ned Parkinson's house-a tacky little place next to the electric shop. Particularly not the old gentleman. "Well, he did say somebody might be by," she said. "Have you took a good look at it yet?"

"Duncan has. He chose it," said Justine. "You haven't told us your name."

"Why, I'm Red Emma Borden."

"Do you work here all the time?"

"Mornings I do."

"Because I like to eat in diners. I expect we'll run into you often."

"Maybe so," said Red Emma, breaking eggs onto the grill. "But if you come after noon it'll be my late husband's cousin, Black Emma Borden. They call her that because she's the one with black hair, only she's been dyeing it for years now." She poured coffee into thick white cups. "You say your husband chose the house?" she asked Justine.

"He always does."

Red Emma flung him a glance. A fine-looking, straw-colored man. His conscience did not appear to be bothering him. "Look, honey," she told Justine. She set the coffeepot down and leaned over the counter. "How come you would let your husband choose where you live? Does he understand kitchens? Does he check for closet space and woodwork that doesn't crumble to bits the first time you try to scrub it down?"

Justine laughed. "I doubt it," she said.

Red Emma had once sent her husband to a used car lot to buy a family automobile and he had come home with a little teeny red creature meant for racing, set low to the ground, slit eyes for windows. It ate up every cent they had saved. She had never forgiven him. So now she felt personally involved, and she glared at this Duncan. He sat there as calm as you please building a pyramid out of sugar cubes. The grandfather was reading someone's discarded newspaper, holding it three feet away from him as old people tend to do and scowling and working his mouth around.

Only the daughter seemed to understand. A nice girl, so trim and quiet.

She wore a coat that was shabby but good quality, and she kept her eyes fixed on a catsup bottle as if something had shamed her. She knew what Red Emma was getting at.

"There's other places," Red Emma said. "The Butters are letting, oh, a big place go, over by the schoolhouse."

"Now on the average," Duncan said, and Red Emma turned, thinking he was speaking to her, "on the average a single one of the blocks in Cheops's pyramid weighed two and a half tons." No, it was the grandfather he meant that for, but the grandfather only looked up, irritated, maybe not even hearing, and turned a page of his paper. Duncan spun toward Meg, on his left. "It is accepted that wheels as such were not used in the construction," he told her. "Nor any but the most primitive surveying tools, so far as we know. Nevertheless, the greatest error to be found is only a little over five degrees on the east wall, and the others are almost perfect. And have you thought about the angle of the slant?"

Meg looked back at him, expressionless.

"It's my belief they built it from the top down," he said. He laughed.

Red Emma thought he must be crazy.

She flipped the hotcakes, loaded Justine's plate, and set it in front of her. "The Butters' house is a two-story affair," she said. "They also have a sleeping porch."

"Oh, I believe Mr. Parkinson's place is going to be just fine," said Justine. "Besides, it's near where Duncan's going to work. This way he can come home for lunch."

"Now where's he going to work?" Red Emma asked.

"At the Blue Bottle Antique Shop."

Oh, Lord. She should have known. That gilt-lettered place, run by a fat man nobody knew. Who needed antiques in Caro Mill? Only tourists, passing through on their way to the Eastern Shore, and most of them were in too much of a hurry to stop. But Red Emma still clung to a shred of hope (she liked to see people manage, somehow) and she said, "Well now, I suppose he could improve on what that Mr.-I don't recall his name. I suppose if he knows about antiques, and so on-"

"Oh, Duncan knows about everything," said Justine.

It didn't sound good, not at all.

"He hasn't worked with antiques before but he did build some furniture once, a few jobs back-"

Yes.

"The man who owns the Blue Bottle is Duncan's mother's sister's brother-in-law. He wants to ease off a little, get somebody else to manage the store for him now that he's getting older."

"We've used up all my mother's blood relations," Duncan said cheerfully.

He was correcting the pitch of one pyramid wall. The truth that was coming out did not appear to embarrass him. "The last job was with my uncle, he owns a health food store. But no one in the family has a fix-it shop, and fixing is what I really do. I can fix anything. Do you need some repair work here?"

"No indeed," Red Emma told him firmly.

And she turned back to Justine, ready to offer her sympathy, but Justine was munching potato chips with a merry look in her eye. Her hat was a little crooked. Could she possibly be a drinker? Red Emma sighed and went to clean the grill. "Of course," she said, "I don't mean to say anything against Ned Parkinson's house. Why, in lots of ways it's just fine. I'm sure you'll all be happy there."

"I'm sure we will be," Justine said.

"And certainly your husband can handle any plumbing and electrical problems that might arise," Red Emma said, wickedly sweet, because she did not for a moment think he could.

But Duncan said, "Certainly," and started plunking his sugar cubes one by one back into the bowl.

Red Emma wiped the grill with a sour dish rag. She felt tired and wished they would go. But then Justine said, "You want to hear something? This coming year will be the best our family's ever had. It's going to be exceptional."