Anne Tyler - The Tin Can Tree

'What?' Joan said.

But her aunt didn't answer. She continued down the stairs laboriously, and when she reached the bottom she would have gone straight into the kitchen except that Joan took hold of her by one arm.

'Don't you want to sit in the parlour a while?' she asked. 'I'll bring coffee.'

'No.'

'Ansel's out there in the kitchen.'

'No.'

Mrs Pike went on walking, not pulling away from Joan but just walking off, so that Joan had to drop her arm or follow her. She dropped it. Her aunt said, 'No,' again, as if some new question had been raised, but Joan was trailing behind her now in silence, frowning at Mrs Pike's back. Her back was soft and shapeless, and folded in upon itself at the waist where her sash was tightened. When she walked the hem of her robe fluttered out and Joan could see the dinginess where it had dragged across the floor.

Ansel was standing, ready to greet her. He said, 'Mrs Pike, I been waiting to see you,' and Mrs Pike said, 'Ansel,' and crossed to one of the kitchen chairs. Over by the window Simon stood with his back to her, his hands jammed awkwardly in his pockets and his chopped-at, straggly head wearing a stiff and listening look.

'I only came to tell you how I feel,' Ansel said gently. Then I'll leave.'

'Where is Roy?' asked Mrs Pike.

'Out back. You want I should get him?'

'No.'

Mrs Pike was sitting craned forward a little, with her hands on her stomach as if it hurt her. After a minute Ansel sat down opposite her, but Joan remained standing and Simon stayed by the window. Mrs Pike didn't look at any of them. 'I thought I would come downstairs a little,' she said.

'That's the way,' said Ansel. 'You shouldn't sit alone.'

'I wasn't sitting.'

'What I actually came to say,' Ansel said, 'was how bad I feel about all this. That's all I wanted to tell you. I told James, I said, "It's like the tragedy has struck at our own lives. I know just how she feels," I said. I said -'

'No, 'said Mrs Pike.

'Ma'am?'

But Mrs Pike only looked away then, toward the screen door. Behind her, Simon picked up the cord of the paper window shade and began tying knots in it, small tight knots running up and down the length of the cord.

'What was you saying no for?' Ansel asked.

Mrs Pike didn't answer.

'Was you saying I don't know how you feel? Mrs Pike, I know how you feel better than you do yourself. I been through this before.'

'Ansel,' Joan said. 'You've offered your sympathy now. I think you'd better leave.'

'But I've got so much I want to say to her -'

'I came down to eat,' said Mrs Pike, 'but I don't think I will.'

Joan turned away from Ansel and looked down at Mrs Pike. She said, 'Why, Aunt Lou, there's all kinds of things to eat in the icebox. Everyone's been bringing things.'

'No,' her aunt said.

'I know that when my mother died,' said Ansel, 'everyone kept trying to snap me out of it. They said that mourning has never brought the dead back. But it's only right to mourn; it's only natural. People have their faults but when they're dead you mourn them, and you expect to be mourned yourself someday.'

'Janie Rose didn't have no faults,' said Mrs Pike.

'No, ma'am, of course she didn't. When my-'

'We don't know how it might have turned out. She was a little chubby but not, you know, really fat. She might have slimmed down some later on. I never said to her she was fat. I don't know what she thought I said but really I didn't. Never a word.'

'When my mother died,' said Ansel, 'I thought of all the bad things I ever said about her. I got in a real swivet about it. She was a fine woman, but scared of everything. Wouldn't stand up against my father for us. When some sort of crisis was going on she had a way of sort of humming underneath her breath, slow and steady with no tune, and sewing away at someone's overalls without looking up. My father was -'

Joan came over and stood between Ansel and Mrs Pike, bending down low so as to make her aunt look into her face. 'I want you to eat something, now,' she said. 'There's a stew. Would you like that?'

'No.'

'There's a whole icebox of things.'

'No.'

'My father was not what you'd call a man of heart,' said Ansel, placing his fingertips together. 'Very strict. We always kept two goats around the place, to eat off the underbrush -'

'Isn't it funny,' Mrs Pike said, 'that no one sent roses. Roses are a very normal flower, yet nobody sent them. Everything but, in fact.'

'It's a little hot for good roses,' Joan said.

'In the spring, when the goats had kids,' said Ansel, 'we would fatten them up for eating. Only by the time they were fat they'd be good pets, and we would beg for my father not to kill them. We would cry and make promises. But my mother sat humming (though she loved those goats the best of all and had names for every one of them) and my father always killed them. Only there was one thing that made up for that -'

'Ansel,' Joan said, 'Will you go home?'

'Wait a minute. When my mother brought a roasted kid in, or any part of it, holding it high on a wooden platter with potatoes around it, she always dropped it just in the doorway between the kitchen and the dining room. It never failed. The meat on the floor, and the potatoes rolling about like marbles and leaving little buttery paths behind them. "Pick it up," my father always said, but she would begin talking about germs and never let us eat it. I haven't yet tasted a piece of roasted goat. I think about that often now; it makes up for that humming, almost. I'm sorry I ever -'

Someone knocked on the front door. Joan said, 'Ansel, will you go see who that is?'

'Why, Joan it's your house.'

'I don't care; just go.'

'I'm not well enough to go bobbing up and down for people,' said Ansel. But he rose anyway, moving slowly like an old man and holding his chest. 'Who is it?' he called.

'Is that you, Ansel?'

It was James, with his voice sounding loud and steady even though he was still outside the house. Hearing him made Joan straighten up and feel suddenly more cheerful, and Simon turned around and let the window-shade cord slip out of his hand. 'Ansel, what are you doing here?' James called.

'What're you doing here?'

'I'm looking for you. I been looking all over.'

James had let himself in now, seeing that Ansel wasn't advancing to the door very quickly. He crossed the parlour in long strides, and appeared in the kitchen entrance with his hands on his hips.'

'I'm taking you home for supper,' he told Ansel. 'I'm sorry about this, Mrs Pike.'

Mrs Pike only gazed at him unblinkingly, without appearing to hear him. Joan said, 'I wish you would, James.'

'Come on, Ansel.'

'Supper in the after noon ?' asked Ansel.

'It's getting on towards sunset.'

'Well, I don't feel so good, James. I'm not hungry.'

'What's the matter with you?' James asked.

'My head is swimming.'

'You been resting enough?'

'Well, yes. But after lunch this blackness started floating in, and then a little later this, um -'

Joan leaned back against the table, watching. She had never seen James actually listen to all this before; it seemed strange, and she couldn't figure out why he was doing it. The more James listened, the more Ansel's symptoms expanded and grew in detail; even his face looked paler. But James kept on nodding, saying 'Hmmm,' every now and then. Finally he said, 'I'll put you in bed. You can have your supper on a tray, if you want.'

'Oh, I think I'll just stay here and -'

'It's time to go, Ansel.'

Ansel sighed and let himself be led toward the doorway by one elbow. To Mrs Pike he called, 'I hope you're feeling better, ma'am. I'll be back tomorrow, maybe, or the next day-'