Anne Tyler - The Tin Can Tree

Lily handed her the next bunch and then stretched, raising her thin black arms an enormous length above her head. To show her disapproval Missouri jerked her string with a twanging sound, and one of Lily's leaves fell out of its bunch on the stick and landed on the dust. 'Oh, Lord,' Missouri said. She handed her string to Joan and bent to pick up the leaf, holding the small of her back with one hand. A pink slip strap slid down over her shoulder. 'Four hours ago it was four o'clock,' she said when she had retrieved the leaf. 'Now it's four thirty. When'll it ever be five?'

'Won't help you if it is,' called Mrs Hall, 'so long as you've still got leaves on your table.'

'Well, I can't help it if they loaded the most leaves on me.' She pulled her strap up again and took the end of the twine away from Joan. 'I was saying something,' she said. 'I have that fidgety feeling, like I wasn't finished.'

'Sitting,' Joan reminded her.

'Sitting? Oh, sitting. My Lord, how long I been on that? Well, anyway.' She snapped her fingers at Lily, who was gazing open-mouthed at a pecan tree, and Lily jumped and handed her another bunch of leaves. 'Originally,' Missouri said, 'I was getting around to a remedy for Mrs Pike. Well, now I've gotten to it. Mrs Pike is going to have to start working again.'

'Working?' Lily said, ' I didn't know Mrs Pike worked.'

'Will you hush?' Missouri switched the twine to her left hand and reached across to slap Lily's arm. 'I don't know where you spend all your time, Lily,' she said. She took up the twine in her right hand again and snatched Joan's leaves from her. 'Well, it so happens she does work. She's a seamstress. Teen-incy stitches and a Singer for her machine work. Miss Joan can tell you. Most of it's altering things, but she makes things from scratch also. Reason you might not know,' she told Lily, 'is she does it at home. Works in. A lot of right important people go there. Mrs Lawrence, the judge's wife, does – saw her drive up to the door once. Do you see what I'm getting at, Miss Joan?'

'Well, yes,' said Joan. 'You're saying this would snap her out of it. But being a seamstress is like working in a beauty shop – you have to carry on a conversation. And Aunt Lou just isn't capable right now.'

'Of course not,' said Mrs Hall. 'Why, she just don't have the heart to do that. Will you look at you people?'

'I got the answer,' Mrs Hall's first hander called. 'I don't see why you are all worrying.' She kept on handing as she spoke, thrusting precisely neat bunches at Mrs Hall with lightning speed. 'It's like when you've been sick,' she said. 'They have to walk you around by the elbow a while. Well, Mrs Pike needs to be walked around too, only in the talking sense. Joan here only works every other day; she can spare the time. She can greet the customers and tell them the news and all, so's they won't even notice how quiet Mrs Pike is. Then by and by Mrs Pike'll start to get interested in what Joan is talking about. She'll begin uncurling and saying a few words herself. That's why she was such a favourite before, Mrs Pike was; she could talk up a storm.'

Missouri was watching her with her mouth open. 'Char-leen,' she said, when Charleen had finished speaking, 'you are just as silly as you look, Charleen. You must think Miss Joan is some kind of a walking newspaper. Do you? She don't say two words in a day, Joan don't. Customers would drop off like apples in the fall, and Mrs Pike would have one more reason not to get a grip on things.'

'Silly yourself,' Charleen muttered, and bent closer over her pile of leaves.

'Mrs Pike's no worse than my sister Mary was,' said Mrs Hall. 'When Mary's oldest died she sat on the porch seven days and seven nights and it rained on her. I thought she'd mold, before we got her in again. Mrs Pike is at least talking some.'

'Not much,' Josephine said. She was scraping tobacco gum off her hands with a nail file while Mrs Hall tied a knot at the end of her stick. 'I went up to her at the burying and, "Mrs Pike," I said. "I surely am sorry." And you know what she said? She said, "This is where Simon's bedroom was going to be." I tell you, it scared me.'

'Well, they were going to build a house there,' Mrs Hall said. She slammed another stick in the stand. 'I say they should have put Janie Rose by the church, but that's an individual matter.'

Missouri took off her straw hat and began fanning her face with it. 'You can rest,' she told Joan and Lily. 'We're even now. Boy?'

'Yes'm.'

'Well, come on and get it.'

Joan and Lily leaned back against the table, half sitting on it, and Missouri tilted her head back so that she could fan her neck. 'Sun's about gone,' she said, 'but still working. What was it I was thinking, now? Lily?'

'Well, I'm sure I don't know,' Lily said.

'Hush. Wait, now – oh.' She stopped fanning herself, clamped her hat on her head again, and bent for another rod. 'Stop that standing around,' she commanded. 'Charleen, I take it back.'

'What?'

'What I said. I take it back. You only half silly.'

'Oh, why, thank you.'

'Only half as silly as you look. Stand up straight, Lily, you're a mess. What's that all over your hands?'

'It's tobacco gum, what you think?'

'Oh.' She snapped off her length of twine, with Mrs Hall watching closely, and reached for Joan's leaves. 'I'm a little vague, but I'm thinking,' she said. Then she frowned into space for a while. Finally she said, 'Growing old surely do damage a person.'

'Well, is that what you've been getting ready to say?' Mrs Hall asked irritably.

'Oh no,' Missouri said. 'It was something entirely different. I was working up to something.'

'You were talking about Aunt Lou,' Joan reminded her.

'Well, I know I was. If you all would just let me -'

'Personally,' said Mrs Hall, 'I think this is a lot of fuss for nothing. You think it's something wrong if Mrs Pike sticks to herself a few days. Well, something is wrong. Somebody died. And that's all I'm going to say.'

'It's just as well,' said Missouri. 'You keep distracting my mind.'

'Why, Missouri-'

'You said,' Missouri reminded her, 'you said that was all you was going to -'

Mrs Hall sighed and turned her back, muttering something but not attempting to argue any more, and Missouri nodded to herself several times. There now,' she said. 'Now, what was I -?' But when Lucy clicked her tongue in exasperation, exactly like her mother, Missouri waved her free hand at her to tell her not to speak. 'Now I remember,' she said. 'Growing old surely do – Well. Anyway. Now, of course we're not saying anything's wrong with Mrs Pike. Sure she's sad. Going to go right on being that way, always a little sad to the end of her days. But that don't stop us from trying to make her feel better; that's just natural. We all got reasons. Maybe we want to stop remembering the dead ourselves. Or a host of other reasons.'

She bent down and slapped a fly on her leg. 'Oh, you,' she said to the fly, and then reached out for Joan's leaves. Joan was holding the leaves too high and far away, and Missouri had to snap her fingers at her. 'Come on,' she said. Joan came to life and handed the leaves over.

'Anyhow,' said Missouri. 'Now I've lost my place again. Where was I?'

'Mrs Pike,' Joan said.

'Mrs Pike? Oh, her. Well, no, I was passing on to someone else. What's-his-name. What's his name?'

'Mr Pike?' Lily suggested.

'Just hush. Though he's in this too, of course. No, just hush -Simon. That boy of theirs. You know him, Joan?'

'He's my cousin,' said Joan.

'Oh, yes. Yes. Simon. Going to go to pieces if things go on this way. Do you see now what I'm getting at?'