by Anne Tyler
“What difference does it make?” he asked.
“It makes a lot of difference. Who won makes a lot of difference.”
“What?”
“Who won. Mama or that other woman.”
“Well, that’s the—”
“I know.” She turned the lamp around so that it wouldn’t shine in Carol’s eyes and sat down on the foot of the bed. “It’s an awful thing to wonder. And none of my business, anyway. But it’s important to know, for all kinds of reasons.”
He began searching through his crumpled cigarette pack for the last cigarette, not looking at her.
“Here, take mine,” she said.
“Not menthol.”
“They won’t kill you.”
She threw the pack at him; it fell on the floor in front of him and he picked it up and leaned back against the bureau.
“Two weeks before he died,” Joanne said, “he was at home. I know he was. Jenny put it just beautifully, in this letter she wrote me. She said, ‘You’ll be happy to know Daddy has got back from his trip’—‘trip’; that’s an interesting choice of words—‘and he’s living at home now.’ Now, where was he when he died? Still at home?”
“At Lili Belle’s,” Ben Joe said.
“At—Oh.” She shook her head. “Lately I’ve stopped thinking about her by her name,” she said. “What with Gram calling her ‘Another’s House’ all the time.”
“Well, he didn’t mean to go and die there,” said Ben Joe. “He’d just been drinking a little, is all. Went out to get ice cubes and then forgot which home he was supposed to be going back to. Mom explained that to Lili Belle.”
“Mom explained it to Lili Belle?”
“Well, yes. It was her that Lili Belle called soon as he died. He got to Lili Belle’s with a pain in his chest and died a little after. So Lili Belle called Mom, and Mom came to explain how it was our house he’d really intended going back to and not hers; just a mistake. And Lili Belle hadn’t really won after all.”
“Looks like to me she had.”
“But it was by mistake he went there.”
“Oh, pshaw,” Joanne said. She turned to see how Carol was and then faced Ben Joe again. “What about their little boy, his and Lili Belle’s? That was named after Daddy? That’s more’n you were named for. I don’t see that your name is Phillip. Do you think he would have walked off and left a baby named Phillip for good?”
“That’s beside the point. You know, Joanne, sometimes I wonder whose side you’re on.”
She smiled and ground out her cigarette and stood up. “Don’t you lose sleep on it,” she said. “Come on, we’re keeping Carol awake. I’m going to do my nails and I reckon you have people you’ll want to visit.”
“I don’t know who.”
But he straightened up anyway and followed Joanne out of the room. In the hall she gave him a little pat on the arm and then turned toward the bathroom, and he started for the stairs. He stopped at the hall landing, which looked down over the long stairway, and put one hand on the railing.
“You know where the emery boards are?” Joanne called from the bathroom.
He didn’t answer; he leaned both elbows on the railing and stared downward, thinking.
“Oh, never mind. I found them.”
He was remembering one night six years ago; this spot always reminded him of it. He had been studying in his room and at about ten o’clock he had decided to go downstairs for a beer. With his mind still foggy with facts and dates, he had wandered out into the hallway, had put one hand on the railing and was about to take the first step down, when the noise began. He could hear that noise still, although he always did his best to forget it.
First he thought it sounded like an angry bull wheezing and bellowing in a circle around the house. But it was too reedy and penetrating to be that; he thought then that it must be an auto horn. Kerry Jamison had an auto horn like that. Only Kerry Jamison was a well-bred boy and didn’t honk for Ben Joe when he came visiting him. And he certainly didn’t drive on the Hawkes’s carefully tended lawn.
All over the house the girls had come swarming out of the various rooms, asking what the racket was. Tessie, who was scarcely more than a baby then and should have been asleep for hours, inched her bedroom door open and peeked out to ask Ben Joe if she could come downstairs with the others, because there was a trumpet blowing outside that wouldn’t hush for her. She spoke in a whisper; their mother was reading in bed in the room next to Tessie’s and would surely say no if she heard what Tessie was asking. But what neither Ben Joe nor Tessie realized at the time was that their mother was answering the telephone in her room, listening to Lili Belle Mosely tell her her husband was dead. Right then she wouldn’t have cared if Tessie never went to bed again, but Tessie couldn’t know that and she went on in her whispery voice: “Can I, Ben Joe? Say yes. Cani?”
“No, “ said Ben Joe. “I’ll go down and shut it up, whatever it is. Get back in bed, Tessie.”
“But it’s so scary, Ben—”
Their mother’s door opened. Tessie popped back into her room just as Ellen Hawkes flew out of hers; they were like the two figures in a weather house. Ellen had on a pair of blue cotton pajamas and her hair was rumpled and she was struggling into a khaki raincoat of her husband’s as she ran.
“Your father’s dead,” she said, and rushed down the stairs.
Ben Joe put both hands on the railing and leaned down. His mother had passed the little landing at the curve of the stairs and now she was directly below him, still running down; he could see the top of her head, and the curls lifting a little as she came down hard on each step. “Your father’s dead,” she repeated to the girls downstairs. Above her voice came the eerie sound from outside, wheezing and bellowing its way around to the front of the house.
Ben Joe let go of the railing and tore down the stairs after his mother. His shirt was open, and the tails of it flew out behind him as he ran. He had no shoes on. On one of the steps his stockinged foot slipped and he almost fell, but he caught himself and kept on going. The girls were waiting for him at the bottom, with stunned white faces. Tessie had come out to stand on the landing where Ben Joe had stood a minute ago and now she looked down at the others and began to cry without knowing why. She had poked her head through the bars because she was not yet tall enough to see over the railing. Her mother, holding on to the newel post at the bottom of the stairs while she struggled into a pair of Susannah’s loafers, looked up at Tessie briefly and said, “She’ll have got her head caught in those bars again. Better get her out, somebody.”
Tessie’s head was a tiny yellow circle on the second floor, outlined against the dark cupola that rose above the stairwell. The house seemed enormous, suddenly. The whole world seemed enormous.
“Where are you going?” Ben Joe asked his mother.
“To your father’s friend’s house,” she said, without expression. “I’ll be back. Gram’s asleep now. Don’t wake her. And try and figure some way of getting Tessie’s head free without sawing the bars down again, will you?”
Ben Joe nodded. None of it made sense. Everything was harried and nightmarish and yet the same small practical things were going on at the same time. His mother patted his shoulder and then, abruptly, she was off, out the front door and into the darkness of the moonless, early-autumn night. As she crossed the front porch the eerie, wailing sound from outside became louder; as she descended the steps down to the front walk a soldier came into view playing a bagpipe. He was small and serious, with his eyes fixed only on his instrument, and he walked in a straight line across their front lawn and then around to the other side of the house. He and Ellen crossed paths with only inches between them; neither one of them paused or looked toward the other one.
Jenny, standing with the rest of them on the front porch, said, “It’s a bagpipe.”
From out in the back of the house came the sound of their m
other’s car starting, rising above the piercing sound of the bagpipes. A minute later the yellow, dust-filled beams of two headlights backed past them out into the street and then swung sharply around and disappeared.
Susannah stopped staring after the car and turned to Jenny, frowning, trying to sort her thoughts and figure what should be done.
“It’s no bagpipe I ever heard,” she said finally. “Bagpipes make tunes. This is only making one note.”
“Maybe he can’t play,” Jenny said. She was only twelve then, a thin, nervous little girl, and she was shivering and seemed to be trying desperately to get a grasp on herself. “I’m sure that’s it,” she said. “He’ll practice this note for a while and then go to the next, and then go—”
“Not in our yard he won’t,” Susannah said. “Run around the back and stop him, Ben Joe.”
But there was no need to; the soldier had come around the front again. Apparently he liked having an audience. He emerged from the side of the house at a scurrying little run, with his short legs pumping as fast as they could go, and then as soon as he came into the light from the front porch he slowed to a leisurely stroll in order to parade before them for as long as possible. His chest heaved up and down from the running he had done, and the horrible wailing sound was jerky and breathless now.
“Um …” Ben Joe said. He stepped down from the porch and the little soldier stopped. “You think you could do that somewhere else?”
The soldier grinned. He had a small, bony face, with the skin stretched tight and shining across it when he smiled. “No sir,” he said. “No sir. Man said no.”
“What?”
“Your daddy. ‘No,’ he says. No.”
“I don’t—”
“Saw me hitchhiking, your dad did. Told me could I play that thing, I allowed yes I could but not this way, with all but one reed gone so there wasn’t but one sound. He said anyway, anyway, he said, to play it round his house for a joke and not give up till he come back. When he comes he’ll give me a bottle. A free bottle.”
He grinned again and put the mouthpiece to his lips, but Ben Joe reached out and took a gentle hold on his arm. “He won’t be back,” he said. He turned toward Susannah. “Get a bottle of bourbon, Susannah. Bourbon all right with you, friend?”
“Oh yes, oh yes—”
Jenny suddenly came to life. She raced down the front steps and yanked Ben Joe’s hand from the soldier’s arm. “Leave him be,” she said. “You leave him. Let him play.” Her face was white and pinched-looking; Ben Joe thought if she shook any harder she would fall down.
“He’s getting tired of playing,” he told her.
“You leave him.”
Susannah came out of the house again, slamming the screen door behind her. “Here,” she said.
“Why, thank you, ma’am. I am much—”
“You play, you,” said Jenny to the soldier.
Susannah reached over Jenny’s head with the bottle; the soldier held out his hand and Jenny made a grab for the bottle but missed.
“Wait,” she said.
“Wouldn’t change a thing, making him keep playing,” Ben Joe told her gently. “If he played till you had grandchildren, it wouldn’t bring back—”
“You wait, you wait!”
She was rigid now, not shaking any more but with her hands folded into tense fists and her face wet with tears. When Ben Joe put one hand on her shoulder she spun toward him, not actually fighting him but letting her arm stay rigid, so that her fist swung hard into his stomach and knocked all the wind from him. The soldier clicked his tongue, his eyes round. Ben Joe started coughing and bent over, but he kept hold of Jenny, pinning her arms down at her sides and holding her tight while he and Susannah guided her toward the stairs.
“I told you and told you!” she was screaming. “Now you’ve sent him away and he’ll never come back—”
The soldier, mistaking her meaning, smiled cheerfully and waved his bottle at her. “Sure I’ll be back,” he called comfortingly. “Don’t you worry ma’am!”
He set off toward the street, whistling. On the porch, Jane and Lisa took Jenny from Ben Joe while he leaned over the railing and coughed himself hoarse, trying to get his wind again. Susannah whacked him steadily on the back.
“You’ll be all right,” she said over and over. “You’ll be all right. You’ll be all right.”
She did her best, but she couldn’t say it the way Joanne did. And right then he wished for Joanne more than anyone in the world. He thought probably they all did. If she came walking up the steps right now she would fold every single person up close to her and cry, and pat them softly; and they could start crying too and telling her all the secret fears swamping their minds at this minute and then they would realize everything that had happened. If they could only realize something, things could start getting better again.
But Joanne didn’t come up the steps, and when his coughing fit was through, Ben Joe straightened up and followed Susannah into the house again. Up on the second floor, Tessie was crying.
“You get the twins to give Jenny one of Dad’s sleeping pills,” Ben Joe told Susannah. “I’ll try and get Tessie out of the railings.”
Now, six years later, he thought he could still name the two posts where Tessie’s head had been caught. All seven children, from Joanne to Tessie, had been stuck in this railing at least once in their lives. But he thought he knew which posts Tessie had been between that night, because it was still so clear in his mind. He had soothed Tessie, who had been through this before and was not very frightened, and while he was trying to pull her out he thought about the same thing he always thought when he did this: he must put some screening here, to stop all these ridiculous goings-on. Even if Gram did say it would ruin the looks of the railing. Under his hands was the feel of Tessie’s head—the thin, soft hair, the tight little bones of her skull. He had turned her face gently, holding her small ears flat against her head, and worked her out from between the bars and scooped her up to carry her back to bed. It was then, standing there with the weight of her against his shoulder, that the first sorrow hit him—just one deep bruise inside that made him catch his breath. He could remember it still. That, and the little flannel nightgown Tessie wore, and the soft sounds of Jenny crying in the room she shared with Tessie …
It was so clear still that he could have told Joanne, and by telling her proved that Lili Belle hadn’t won. For if his father had meant to go to Lili Belle’s, he wouldn’t have played that bagpipe joke on them. He loved every one of his children; he wouldn’t have left them with any unkind tricks. But even though he had thought about telling her, Ben Joe had stopped himself. It was one of those things that wasn’t mentioned in this house. Not even he and his other sisters mentioned it.
What else didn’t they mention? He looked down the stairs and frowned, wondering what went on behind their cool, bright smiles. What did they think about before they went to sleep at night? He leaned further down, listening. The twins were chattering away in the kitchen; in the living room, someone laughed and Tessie gave a small squeal. He began to feel a sort of admiration for them. It was like watching a man who has been to Africa drink tea in the parlor and make small talk, with all those things known and done behind him that he is not even thinking about. Behind him, Joanne padded back to her bedroom with a pack of emery boards in her hand, but Ben Joe didn’t look around. He remained in his own thoughts, with his hand resting absently on the stair railing.
6
When finally he came downstairs he made another tour of the house, just to see if anyone was free to talk to him yet. He started with his mother, who had joined the others in the living room and was taking tiny stitches in a white collar.
“Finish Tessie’s dress?” he asked.
“Obviously not, since that’s what I’m stitching on.”
He stood in the middle of the room, chewing on his thumbnail while he tri
ed to think of another opening.
“Well, how’s the book store going?” he asked finally.
“It’s all right. What’s the matter, Ben Joe, haven’t you any plans for tonight?”
“Not offhand.”
“You certainly are restless.”
He took this as an invitation to sit down and did so at once on the leather hassock beside her. On the couch opposite him Susannah and Gram collected the cards that lay between them and Susannah began shuffling them. The cards made a quick, snapping noise under her fingers.
“Carol sure doesn’t look like a Hawkes, does she?” he said.
His mother held the dress up at arm’s length and frowned at it. “No, I don’t suppose she does,” she said finally. She lowered the dress into her lap again and then, feeling that something more seemed to be expected of her, said, “It’s really too young to tell yet.”
“I wouldn’t say that,” Gram said. “Has the Hawkes nose, I’ll say that. Small and pointy. And Joanne’s little pointy chin.”
There was another silence. Susannah began dealing, slapping down a loud card for Gram and a soft one for herself in a steady rhythm. Ben Joe stood up again and moved aimlessly over to the game.
“I thought we might go see Jamie Dower tonight, Gram,” he said. “Car’s free.”
“Oh, well, I don’t think so, Ben Joe. Not tonight.”
“Why not?”
“Well …” She frowned at the cards in her hand. “I’d rather wait awhile,” she said. “He wouldn’t have settled his self properly yet.”
“What’s to settle?”
“Can’t be much of a host when you’re still feeling like a guest yourself, can you? Give him a couple more days.”
“A couple more days?” said Ben Joe’s mother. “How long are you planning on staying here, Ben Joe?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, it seems to me you should be gone by then. Columbia’s not going to wait on you forever.”
“Oh, well,” Ben Joe said. He was wandering back and forth with his hands in his pockets, occasionally kicking gently at a leg of the coffee table as he passed it. “Susannah?” he said.
