Anne Tyler - The Tin Can Tree

'At her sewing. I want you to stay around and help with the conversation, all right? Missouri says I'm no walking newspaper.'

'What?'

'Will you help me out?'

'Oh, why, sure,' Simon said, and would have been asleep again if Joan hadn't pulled him to a sitting position. He stayed there, slumped between her hands, with his head drooping to one side. 'I was in this boat,' he said.

'Come on, Simon.'

'Then we started sinking. They told me I was the one that had to swim for it. Do you believe that'll happen someday?'

'No,' said Joan, and pulled hard on him till he was standing beside the bed.

'They say everything you dream will happen,' Simon told her. 'It's true. Last year I dreamed Mama would find out about me smoking and sure enough, that night at supper there was my half-pack of Winstons lying beside my plate and Mama staring at me. It came true.'

He bent down to examine a stubbed toe and Joan stood up, preparing to go. 'You come down when you're dressed, 'she said.

'I don't have any clean jeans to wear.'

'That's just something you said in your sleep. You have lots of jeans.'

'No, really, I don't,' Simon said. 'No one's been doing the laundry.'

Joan crossed to his bureau and pulled open his bottom drawer. It was bare except for a pair of bermudas. 'Oh, Lord,' she said. 'I forgot all about the laundry.'

'I told you you did.'

'Well, wear bermudas till this afternoon, why don't you. By then I'll have you some jeans.'

'Have my knees show?' Simon asked.

'What's wrong with that?'

'Boys don't have their knees out any more. You ought to know that.'

'Well, la de da,' said Joan, and rumpled the top of his hair. 'Wear a pair of dirty jeans, then.'

‘They'd all call me sissy if my knees showed.'

'All right. Hurry up, now.'

She closed the door behind her and went downstairs. In the parlour she sat down on a faded plush footstool and reached for the telephone, which sat on a table beside her. She hooked the receiver over her shoulder and then opened the telephone book to the very back, where there was space for frequently used numbers. The page was filled to the bottom, and looked messy because of so many different handwritings. Mr Pike had listed the names of bowling pals in a careful, downward-slanting script, and Simon had scrawled the names of all his classmates even though he never talked to them by telephone, and Janie Rose had printed names in huge capitals that took two lines, after asking several times how to spell each one – the four little Marsh girls, each listed separately, and the milkman who had once brought her a yellow plastic ring from a chicken's leg, which she had worn every day until she lost it. Mrs Pike's handwriting was small and pretty, every letter slanting to the same degree, naming off her steady customers one by one with little memos to herself about colours and pattern numbers pencilled in lightly beside them. Joan went down the list alphabetically. Mrs Abbott, who never talked. Mrs Chrisawn, who was in such a black mood most of the time. Davis, Forsyth, Hammond… She stopped there. Connie Hammond was always good to have around during a tragedy. She brought chicken broth whether people wanted it or not, and she knew little things like how to make a bed with someone in it and what to say when no one else could think of anything. As far as Joan was concerned, having a person talk incessantly would be more harm than help; but her aunt felt differently. Her aunt had actually sat up and answered, the last time Connie Hammond came. So Joan smoothed the phone book out on her knees and dialled the Hammonds' number.

Mrs Hammond was talking to somebody else when she answered. She said, 'If that's not the worst thing -'and then, into the phone, 'Hello?'

'Mrs Hammond, this is Joan Pike,' said Joan.

'Why, Joan, honey, how are you?' Mrs Hammond said, and then softened her shrill voice to ask, 'How's your poor aunt?'

'Well, that's what I wanted to talk to you about,' said Joan. She spoke at some distance from the receiver, in case Mrs Hammond should grow shrill again.

'What's that you say?'

'I said, I wanted to talk to you about that. Aunt Lou is just miserable.'

'Oh, my.' There was a rustling sound as Mrs Hammond cupped her hand over the receiver and turned away. 'Lou Pike is just miserable,' she told someone. Her hand un-cupped the receiver again and she returned, breathless, to Joan. 'Joan, honey, I told Mr Hammond, just last night. I said, I haven't ever seen someone take on so. Well, of course she has good reason to but the things she says, Joan. It wasn't her fault; it was that noaccount Ned Marsh who did it. How he manages to drive even a tractor recklessly is more than I can -'

'Um,' Joan said, and Mrs Hammond stopped speaking and snapped her mouth shut audibly, to show she had been interrupted. 'Um, she hasn't even gotten up today. She's still in bed. And Uncle Roy's at the tobacco barns -'

'The where?'

'Tobacco barns. Working tobacco.'

'Why, that man,' said Mrs Hammond.

'Well, he can't just sit staring at the trees all -'

'He could comfort his wife,' Mrs Hammond said.

'She won't listen. So I was thinking, as long as he's away today-'

'Men are like that,' Mrs Hammond said. 'Work is all they think about.'

'As long as he is at work,' Joan said firmly, 'I think maybe Aunt Lou should start working too.'

'Working?'

'Working at sewing. Missouri said -'

'Mrs who?'

'Mrs – never mind. Wait a minute.' Joan switched ears and leaned forward, as if Mrs Hammond could see her now from where she stood. 'Mrs Hammond,' she said, 'I know how good you are at helping other people.'

'Oh, why, I just-'

'I know you could help Aunt Lou right now, if anybody could. You could bring that dress she was working on, that -was it purple?'

'Lilac,' said Mrs Hammond. 'Princess style.'

That's the one.'

'Lou said it would add to my height a little, a princess style would.'

That's right,' Joan said. 'That's the one.'

'Especially since it has up-and-down pinstripes.'

'Yes. Well, I was thinking. If you could just bring it over and get her to work on it for you, just take her mind off all the-'

'You might be right,' said Mrs Hammond. 'Why didn't I think of that? Why, the day before the funeral, when I came -you remember -1 did feel she was doing wrong to sit so quiet. I said so. I have always believed that baking calms the nerves, so I said to her, "Lou," I said, "why don't you make some rolls?" But she looked at me as if I'd lost my senses. After all, I'd just brought two dozen, and a cake besides. Yet I felt she ought to be doing something; that's what I was trying to tell her. You just might be right, Joan.'

'Well, then,' said Joan, 'do you think you could come over sometime today?'

'I'll come over right this minute. I just wouldn't feel at rest until I had. You say your aunt's still in bed?'

'She was a minute ago,' Joan said.

'Well, you try and get her up, and I'll be there as fast as I can find the dress. I'll be there, don't you worry.'

'All right,' Joan said. 'It certainly is nice of you to come, Mrs Hammond.'

'Well. Goodbye, now.'

'Goodbye.'

Joan hung up and sat back to rub her ear, which felt squashed. Now that all that was settled, the next step was to get Simon downstairs. He would have to back her up in this.

Simon was standing in front of his mirror when Joan came in. He was wearing blue jeans but no shirt, and scratching his stomach absently. 'Hey,' Joan said, and he jumped and looked up at her. 'Find yourself a shirt,' she told him. 'Connie Hammond's coming.'

'Aw, gee, Joan. Mrs Hammond?'