Энн Тайлер - Searching for Caleb

“Oh yes. What was that again?”

“Well, let’s see, I’m not quite . . . but he says it’s moving just fine.”

“Fine, is it.”

Perhaps Two should not have retired just yet. But he would feel better when his brothers joined him — Dan in two years, Marcus the year after that. (Sixty-eight was the age they had agreed upon.) Then Claude and Richard could run things on their own. There was no point in working yourself straight into the grave. Still, Two seemed bored and listless as he sat sunk in a corner of the threadbare couch. His father nodded opposite him. His father was so aged that he had reached a saturation point; no new wrinkles had been added in years. He looked not much different from the way he had at seventy. Not much different from Two, as a matter of fact. They might have been brothers. This was how they all ended up, then: arriving at some sort of barrier and sitting down to wait for death, joined eventually by others who had started out later. In the end, the quarter-century that divided their generations amounted to nothing and was swept away. Lucy passed a hand over her own wispy, corrugated forehead. She looked at Two, a handsome man whom she had determined to call Justin back when they were courting, but finally she had given in and called him what his family did. They won, as they always had. Everything was leveled, there were no extremes of joy or sorrow any more but only habit, routine, ancient family names and rites and customs, slow careful old people moving cautiously around furniture that had sat in the same positions for fifty years.

But just as she felt herself sinking into a marsh of despair, she heard Duncan’s light quick step across the porch. She saw him fling the screen door open — such a tall boy, or man rather, with his eyes lit from within and that awning of fair hair flopping over his high, pure, untouched forehead. She rose and smoothed her skirt down and held her purse more tightly to her stomach. “Duncan, darling,” she said. His kiss was as hurried as ever, brief and light as a raindrop, but she felt her heart floating softly upward and she was certain that this time everything was going to go wonderfully.

For lunch Justine served baked ham, potatoes, and snap beans. Everyone was pleasantly surprised. “Why, Justine,” said Two, “this is excellent. This ham is very tasty.”

“Oh, Grandfather did that.”

“Hmm?”

They stared at her. She seemed perfectly serious. Her grandfather was absorbed in salting his beans and could not be contacted.

For dessert they had a layer cake with nine large candles on it and three small ones. Lucy watched closely while it was sliced. “Is it a mix, dear?” she asked.

“Oh, no.”

“You made it from scratch?”

“Grandfather made it.”

This time, he looked up. He gave them a shy, crooked smile and then lowered his white eyelashes. “Why, Father Peck!” Lucy said.

“I did the ham too,” he said. “She tell you that?”

“Yes, she did.”

“Also the potatoes. I baked them first, you see, then scooped them out . . . found it in Fannie Farmer. Some people call them potato boats.”

Two looked at his watch.

“The cake is what is known as a war cake,” said the grandfather. “It makes do with considerably less butter and eggs than we would normally use, you see. After all, we’re living in reduced circumstances.”

He seemed to savor the last two words: reduced circumstances. Lucy thought they sounded smugly technical, like devaluated currency or municipal bonds. For a very brief moment she wondered if he didn’t almost enjoy this life — these dismal houses, weird friends, separations from the family, this moving about and fortune telling. If he weren’t almost proud of the queer situations he found himself in. But then Sarah said, “Remember Grandma’s orange peel cake?” and his face became suddenly thin and lost.

“Oh. Oh yes,” he said.

“She used to mix it secretly in the pantry. Remember? She said she would give the recipe to Sulie but Sulie says she never did. Although of course we can’t be too sure of that.”

“I wonder what was in it,” Justine said dreamily, and she paused so long with her knife in mid-air that Two grew impatient.

“ Come on,” he said. He looked at his watch again. “It’s one thirty-two. Do you always have dinner so late?”

“Mostly we don’t have dinner at all,” Justine said.

“I ask because last year we ate around noon. Dessert was served shortly before one.”

“Was it?”

“The year before that, we ate even earlier.”

“Did we?”

“Is this a new hobby of yours?” Duncan asked Two. “Are you planning to graph us?”

“To — no. No, it’s just a little matter of timing, you understand. I thought the presents would be opened by one o’clock. Maybe we could do them before dessert.”

“But I had counted on enjoying my cake,” the grandfather said.

He and Two stared at each other, a pair of old, cross men. “This is a matter of timing, Father,” Two told him.

“Of what?”

“ Timing! ”

“Speak up.”

Two groaned.

“The worst of it is,” Lucy whispered to Justine, “now Two is growing a teensy bit deaf himself.”

“I most certainly am not ,” Two said.

“Sorry, dear.”

Two picked up a small flat package. “From Sarah,” he said. “Happy birthday.”

Two’s father took the package and turned it over. How many times had Lucy watched him painfully untie a bow, peel off the Scotch tape, remove the paper and fold it carefully for future use before he would look to see what he had been given? Year after year he received this cascade of shirts and socks and monogrammed handkerchiefs, all in glossy white boxes and handsome paper, tied with loopy satin bows. To each gift he said, “Why, thank you. Thank you very much,” after which he replaced it in its box. Probably none of these things would ever be used. Except, of course, Justine’s: a crumpled white sack of horehound drops that honestly seemed to delight him, although that had been her gift for as long as anyone could remember. “Can you figure it out?” he said. “Stuff’s practically impossible to find any more but every year she manages. Expensive, too. Justine makes do with Luden’s cough drops but I fail to see the resemblance myself.” He popped a lozenge in his mouth and passed the sack around. Only Justine took one. Nobody else could stand them. “Last chance till next year,” he told Lucy, flooding her with his pharmaceutical breath. Lucy shook her head.

Duncan of course gave nothing at all, and would never allow Justine to pencil his name beside hers on the sack of horehound drops. He didn’t believe in celebrating birthdays. He would give presents any time, to anyone, sudden surprising touching presents, but not when the rules said he was supposed to. And this year there was no gift from Meg either. Lucy was watching. No so much as a tie clasp or a bureau top organizer. She felt a brief surge of wicked joy: now Duncan himself knew the pain of having an ungrateful child. Perhaps he had thought, when Meg eloped, So this is what it feels like! This is what my parents have had to put up with all my life! But then she was ashamed of herself, and she felt truly sorry that her granddaughter had somehow forgotten such an important occasion.

Next to last came Laura May’s gift: needlework, as usual. This year a family tree, embroidered on natural linen with a wooden frame. “Why, thank you,” said her father. “Thank you very much.” But instead of setting it back down, he held it in both hands and looked at it for a long, silent moment. A diamond shape, that was what it was. Lucy had never noticed before. Justin alone began it and Meg alone ended it. In between there was a sudden glorious spread of children, but what had they come to? Nothing. Claude, Esther, the twins, and Richard stood alone, unmarried, without descendants. (Laura May had tactfully left off all record of Sally’s divorce and Richard’s annulment.) Only Duncan on the far left, son of the oldest child, and Justine on her far right, daughter of the youngest child, were connected by a V-shaped line that spilled out their single offspring at the bottom of the diamond. There was no room for anyone below Meg’s name. Lucy shook her head. “But,” said Justine, “maybe Meg will have six children and things will start all over again!”