Энн Тайлер - Searching for Caleb

But in the evening, when they were sitting on the porch, something stopped her rocking. She straightened suddenly and frowned. “Duncan,” she said.

“Hmm?”

“I have this funny feeling.”

Duncan had been reading a book on how to start a chicken farm, sliding a flashlight down the page because it was already dark. He raised the flashlight now and shone it into her face.

“Something terrible is going on at home,” she told him.

“Something terrible’s always going on at home.”

“I mean it. This is serious. I really mean it.”

“What, have you turned psychic?”

“No, but I can tell if there’s going to be a change of some kind.”

He rocked and waited.

“We have to go there,” she said.

The flashlight clicked off.

“I’m sorry, Duncan. I’ll go alone if you’d rather. But I just feel I—”

“All right, all right.”

While she packed an overnight case, he drove up the hill to ask Junior Jordan to tend the goats. They could have done that weeks ago! But then, Justine knew that as well as Duncan. She waited on the porch, clutching her case, shivering a little although the night was warm. When she saw his close-set headlights bobbing toward her she ran down the steps and opened the car door. “It’s all set,” Duncan told her. “Climb in.”

The car seemed to be drawn down the road by two long yellow cones. Justine was reminded of other trips, before they were married, rushing home to beat a curfew. All through that silent drive she had the feeling that she was some younger, smaller self, anxiously chewing the ribbons of her hat while she wondered if she would be scolded for staying out so late.

In Guilford, at eight o’clock that morning, Sam Mayhew’s cleaning lady had found him dead in his kitchen. He was wearing a bathrobe and there was a roll of Tums on the floor beside him. Apparently he had suffered a heart attack. By ten o’clock old Mr. Mayhew had called the Pecks, but at five o’clock that evening Caroline still knew nothing about it. Nobody wanted to tell her. Instead they huddled in small groups downstairs in Great-Grandma’s house, whispering bulletins back and forth. “She’s in bed eating the chocolates Marcus brought her.” “She’s watching a program on flower arranging.” “She’s trying to get Justine on the telephone again.” “Oh, if only we could just never tell her and this would all blow over!”

Then the grandfather arrived from work. He was forcibly retired now but he liked to prowl around his sons’ offices, checking up. “What’s this?” he said, seeing clusters of women everywhere. When they told him he shook his head sharply, as if getting rid of a fly. “What? But how old was he? Not even out of his forties! And had a heart attack? What kind of stock did the man come from, for God’s sake?”

Then he went to break the news to Caroline. The others stood around downstairs, pretending to talk but trailing off in the middle of sentences. One by one the uncles came to find out where everybody was, and they had to be told too. Richard arrived with a girlfriend who was asked politely to leave, as there had been an unfortunate occurrence. Aunt Lucy, who had double-dated with Sam and Caroline when they were young, became a little upset and kept hanging onto her husband’s arm until Laura May suggested that she fetch her afghan squares to get her mind off things. Then down came the grandfather, sober and dignified, checking his flip-top watch. “Well?” they asked. “How’d she take it?”

“Took it fine.”

“What’d she say?”

“Didn’t say anything.”

“Shall we go up now?”

“Do what you like,” he said, and then he went off to his own house, taking Esther with him to fix his supper.

The others tiptoed up the stairs. Caroline was sitting in her bed against stacks of pillows. When they came in she leaned over to lower the volume slightly on the television set. “Caroline, we’re so sorry,” they said, and Caroline said, “Why, thank you. It’s so nice of you to take an interest.”

“If there’s anything we could be doing now—”

“I can’t think of a thing! But I do appreciate your asking.”

“Would you like to go over to the funeral home? Of course it’s not as if you had still been together or anything, I’m not quite sure what is customary in this case but if you feel you—”

“Why, later, perhaps. Not just now.”

“It’s probably not customary anyway.”

“No.”

“Well, if you want us, then—”

“Oh, certainly! I’ll let you know first thing.”

They tiptoed down again. Although they should be going to their homes for supper, they seemed inclined to churn about in Great-Grandma’s living room instead. They weren’t quite sure just how they should behave. The last death in the family had been in 1912, too long ago for most of them to remember. “Yet after all,” Aunt Sarah said finally, “it’s not as if Sam Mayhew were really—”

“No. No.”

“And after all, he did actually—”

“Oh, he acted like a man possessed.”

“Always trying to turn her against us.”

“Making no effort to understand her.”

“And Caroline’s so sensitive. It’s the way she is.”

“Refusing to give his own daughter away.”

“But still,” said Aunt Lucy, who sometimes grew over-emotional, “Caroline loved him! I know she did, she must have, you could tell she was just torn. And now he’s dead. Oh, what will she do now?”

“ Lucy ,” her husband said. “About time to feed me my supper, don’t you think?”

“Well, all right.”

“We’ll try to call Justine from our house, Grandma. If the phone’s not fixed, I’ll drive out there in the morning.”

“Oh, think of Justine. How will she ever forgive herself?”

Upstairs, cowboys sang lonesome songs around a camp-fire and the wind rolled tumbleweed across the desert with a howling sound.

At nine o’clock that evening, Caroline rose up in her pink silk gown and put on her feathered slippers. Before leaving the room she turned off the television set. She descended the stairs, stately and flowing; she crossed the front hall and went out the door. She drifted across the lawn and then onto the road, where she proceeded down the center with her arms out and her steps mincing and careful like a tightrope walker. To the first car that came, she appeared as monstrous and unexpected as a wad of pink bubble gum. The driver gasped and swerved at the last moment. The second driver was harder to surprise. “Do your drinking at home , lady!” he shouted out the window, and then he slid smoothly past.

She had to wait for six cars, all told, before she found one that would run her down.

Duncan brought Justine a cup of beef broth and a silver spoon and a linen napkin. He found her sitting in the living room of Great-Grandma’s house, all alone, staring into space. ‘Oh. Thank you,” she said. She set the cup on the coffee table.

“I made it myself.”

“Thank you.”

“Ma said coffee, but coffee has no food value.”

She smoothed her dress.

“Broth has protein,” Duncan told her. “You can go without protein for months and feel just fine, never notice, but underneath it’s doing you harm that can never be repaired. Protein is made up of amino acids, the building blocks of the—”

“Duncan, I can’t believe you’re saying all this.”

“I can’t either,” he told her.

He waited for her to try the broth. She didn’t. He squatted beside her. “Justine—” he said.

But no, too late, the aunts had tracked them down again. “Justine? You mustn’t sit like this, dear heart—”