Anne Tyler - The Tin Can Tree

'Does what hurt?'

'When they pierce your ears.'

'Oh, no. At least, I don't think so. Not for long.'

'If I went there, would I wear a earring?'

'Sure you would.'

'How long is it by bus?'

Joan felt herself drifting off. The house seemed to be spinning around her, making streaky yellow shimmers of sunshine through her eyelids, but when she found that she wasn't even hearing the others' voices now she pulled herself sharply awake. She opened her eyes and found that she was looking at one of Ansel's shoes, tapping lazily on the floor. 'Have I been asleep?' she asked. Simon and Ansel looked over at her. 'What time is it?'

'Not yet three,' said Ansel. 'How's your head?'

'It's fine.'

'You sure?'

‘Yes. Sorry to disappoint you.' She sat up and tucked her blouse in. 'Simon, we got to get going,' she said.

‘Aw, I was just hearing something interesting.'

'It can wait.'

She let him go through the door first, and then she turned to Ansel and smiled at him. 'Thank you for the use of the couch,' she said.

'Nothing to it.' He poked his head out the door, past Joan, and looked at Simon. 'You be making your plans, now,' he said.

'All right.'

'Plans for what?' Joan asked.

'Nothing,' said Simon.

Joan yawned, and followed him down the porch toward home.

'There's not much difference between one person and the next,' Ansel said. 'I've found that to be true. Would you agree with me?' He raised himself up from a prone position on the couch to look at James, who was sitting nearby with the paper. 'Would you?' he asked.

'Well, more or less,' said James, and turned to the sports section.

'Course you do. You have to. Is that the Larksville paper?'

'Larksville paper's not out till tomorrow.'

'Oh. I thought today was Wednesday.'

'It is,' said James. 'The paper comes on Thursday.'

'Oh.'

Ansel lay down again and stared thoughtfully upwards, lacing his fingers across his chest. He had been flat on his back all morning, complaining of dizzy spells, and James had been sitting here keeping him company. It was easier that way. Otherwise Ansel would continually think up reasons to call him into the room and things to ask him for. 'James,' he would call, 'what was the name of that old woman who gave sermons on the street corner?' Or, 'Whatever happened to that seersucker suit I used to have?' And in the long run James would have to spend just as much time in this room as if he'd been sitting there all along. He yawned now and turned another page of his newspaper, and Ansel switched his eyes back over to him.

'It's a fact, James,' he said. 'People don't vary a heck of a lot, one from the other.'

'You told me that,' said James.

'Well, yes, I did. Because it's true. If you will hark your mind back to that Edwards boy, that bucktoothed one that joined the Army – what was his name?'

'I don't know.'

'Oh, sure you know. Sure you know. What was his name?'

'Ansel,' said James, 'I just don't make a point of remembering all these things.'

'Well, I wouldn't brag about it. Clarence, that was it. Or Clayton; I don't know which. Now, Clarence, he went almost around the world with that Army outfit of his. Almost everywhere. And you know what he said when he got back? He said that every single country he'd been in, one thing always held true: when mothers and children climb into a car to go visiting, the first act a mother undertakes is spitting on a hanky and scrubbing her children's faces with it. Always. Canada, France, Germany – always. If that doesn't prove my point, what does?'

James ran his eyes down the baseball scores. He frowned over them, absentmindedly making a little tch sound under his breath when he came upon a score he didn't like. After a while he became aware of the silence, and he looked up to see Ansel watching him with his eyes wide and hurt. 'You weren't even listening,' Ansel said, and James sighed and folded his paper up.

'I was listening and reading both,' he said.

'No. What's it take to make a man listen?'

'Well, I'm sorry. You can tell it to me again, if you want.'

'No.'

Ansel turned slightly, so that his cheek was resting on the sofa cushion, and closed his eyes. 'I've noticed more and more,' he said, 'that no one listens when I talk. I don't know why. Usually I think about a thing before I say it, making sure it's worthwhile. I plan it in my mind, like. When I am dead, what will they remember but the things I talked about? Not the way I looked, or moved; I didn't look like much and I hardly moved at all. But only the things I talked about, and what is that to remember when you never even listened?'

'I listen,' said James.

'No. Sometimes in one of those quiet periods after I've said something, when no one's saying anything back because they didn't hear me, I look at myself and think, well, my goodness. Am I here? Do I even exist?'

'Oh, for heaven's sake,' said James. He opened the paper again.

'When I am dead, I wonder what people will miss me. You? Simon? Mrs Pike will wish she'd brought more hot soup. Joan won't notice I'm gone. Will you miss me?'

James read on. He learned all about a boy named Ralph Combs, who was planning to be Raleigh's contribution to the major leagues. He read Blondie and Dick Tracy and Part 22 of the serialized adventure story, and then he noticed the silence again and he lowered his paper to look at Ansel. Ansel was asleep, with one arm flung over his head and his fingers curling in around the sofa arm. His eyelids were translucent and faintly shining, and over his forehead his hair hung rumpled, making him look the way he had when he was twelve. Seeing him that way made James feel sad. He rose and came over to the couch, standing at Ansel's head and looking down at his long pale face tipped back against the cushions. If he hadn't known better, he would have tapped him on the shoulder and said, 'Now I'll listen.' But then Ansel would wake up and be twenty-six years old again, nervously testing himself for new symptoms, beginning some long monologue that he had begun before, changed forever from that scared small brother who could sit a whole evening without saying a word or raising his eyes from the floor. That twelve-year-old would vanish without a trace, leaving not even an echo of himself in the way Ansel smiled or said a certain word. James moved away from the couch and went over to the window.

Because of the way he felt, the view from the window took on a sad, deserted look. Everything was bowed low under the breeze, straightening up for a second only to bow again. Simon's bicycle lay on its side with a drooping buttercup tangled in its spokes. At the edge of the yard the Potters' insurance man was just climbing out of his Volkswagen (He came every week, because the Potters had to be constantly reassured that their policy really was all right.) He looked tired and sad. While he was crossing the yard he mopped his face and straightened the plastic carnation in his buttonhole, and then on the first porch step he snapped his head erect and put a bright look on his face. After that James lost sight of him. But he could hear the knocking, and the sound of the Potters' door cautiously opening and the bolts being slid back after the insurance man was taken inside. They slid easily in their little oiled tracks. The quickness of them made James smile, and he could picture Miss Lucy's eager fingers fumbling rapidly at the locks, shutting little Mr Harding in and the loneliness out for as long as she and Miss Faye could manage. He stopped smiling and moved away from the window.

Back in the kitchen it was even worse. There was one daisy on the counter, a stray one from the field in back, and it was dead and collapsed against Ansel's untouched lunch tray. ('I'm not eating today,' Ansel had said. 'Do you care?' 'Suit yourself,' said James.) Out the back window was the half-mowed field, looking bald and straggly. Simon Pike was leaning against an incinerator staring at it all, and while James watched, Simon straightened slowly and began wandering in small thoughtful circles around the incinerator. With the toes of his leather boots he kicked at things occasionally, and he had his shoulders hunched up again so that he looked small and worried. James stuck his head out the window.