by Anne Tyler
“But you can’t say for sure,” Ben Joe said.
“What?”
“You can’t say for sure your letter wouldn’t have made him come back earlier, you can’t say—”
“Benjy honey, don’t you worry. Can’t say nothing for sure, if it comes to that. Don’t you worry.”
Both of them were silent for a minute, Lili Belle rocking steadily in her chair and filling the silence with slow creaks. Then she sat up straight again and said, “Well, how long you going to be here?”
“I don’t know yet. Not too much longer, I guess.”
“I heard your older sister’s in town.”
“That’s right.”
“Well, it’ll work out. Her husband’ll come and get her, you just watch. She’s a right pretty girl—I seen her downtown before—and he’ll come claim her. You just wait.”
“Well, maybe so.”
“Uh, you know my brother? Freeman? Well, Freeman he—”
“I thought his name was Donald.”
“No, he changed it. That’s what I was about to tell you. He said he was sick of this town and sick of blue denim and wanted to be free, so he changed his name to Freeman and went to work in a diner in New York. He likes it right much, I hear. Sent us this picture postcard saying, ‘This here New York is a right swinging town.’ That’s what he said, ‘a right swinging town.’ You being in New York reminded me of it.”
Her head was against the back of her chair again, lolling wearily. There was no telling how many nights she had sat up with little Phillip.
“You’re tired,” Ben Joe said. “I’ll be going, Lili Belle. Here’s the letter.”
He pulled out the pink envelope and put it in one of her hands. She took it listlessly, stopping her rocking to frown down at it.
“Oh, land,” she said. “Land.”
She didn’t go on speaking, though Ben Joe waited. She dropped the letter in her lap and went on rocking.
“I’ll find my own way out,” he said finally. “And I’m going to take care of that hospital bill, Lili Belle. Soon as I get it from the bank.”
“No, Benjy, I don’t—”
She was up on her feet now, wanting to protest, but he pulled on his jacket and left hurriedly. “You tell little Phil hey!” he called back.
“Well—”
He ran down the porch steps and into the yard. The sky above the river had grown churned and dark, and a cold wind was rising. As he walked he stuck his hands deep into his trouser pockets and hunched up his shoulders against the cold.
8
When he had finished what he had to do at the bank, Ben Joe headed toward Stacy’s. It was a small, grim-looking café, but he and his friends had almost lived there once, back when they were in high school. They could meet up with almost anyone they wanted to see there if they waited long enough. Now, looking at the dirty gray front of the building while he waited for the traffic light to change, Ben Joe wondered why they had ever liked it. The picture window was dark and smudged, cluttered with neon beer signs and hand-lettered pizza posters. In front of it two weird-looking high school boys slouched, watching the people who passed by. When Ben Joe crossed the street and came closer to them, he stopped looking in their direction and stared steadfastly at Stacy’s doorknob in order to avoid those amused eyes of theirs. But once inside it was no better; clustered in the dimness, lit briefly by the twirling rainbow from the jukebox, were more slouching boys and more leather jackets. Occasionally he caught a glimpse of a girl or two, with her hair piled in a fantastic frizzed mountain on her head and her skirt well above her knees. It was only after he had blinked a couple of times and strained his eyes into the farthest corners that he found Joanne.
She was sitting at a booth with her red coat thrown back behind her and a cup of coffee sitting on the table in front of her. But the coffee was going unnoticed; Joanne stared out at the empty dance floor with her mouth partly open and her eyes thoughtful.
“Hi,” Ben Joe said.
She started a little and looked up at him. “Oh, hi,” she said. She turned toward the cash register and called, “Stacy!”
Stacy was a fat blond woman who hated everyone under forty. No one knew why it was to her place that all the high school kids came. She bumbled toward them down the aisle, muttering something under her breath and slapping her round feet hard upon the floor at every step.
“What, “ she said.
“Ben Joe’s here now.”
“Hmm!” She stared at him blankly, with her eyes narrowed. “What you want?”
“Coffee. With double cream.”
“With what?”
“Double cream.”
“Double cream, hey. Double cream. My soul, double cream.” She stamped off again, still muttering.
“Seven years gone by and she hasn’t changed a mite,” Joanne said. “How long’s it been since you’ve come here, Ben Joe?”
“Oh. I don’t know. Couple of years. Why?”
“I just wondered. Seems to me it used to be more lively.”
“Mmm.”
“Doesn’t it to you? Seem that way?”
“I guess.”
“On one of these tables there’s a monument carved,” she said. “It says, ‘Memorial to Joanne, for her spirit.’ Buddy Holler did that the day I walked out of chemistry class because it was boring.”
Ben Joe smiled across the table at her. He wasn’t listening to what she said; he was just glad to be having that cheerful voice of hers babble on. Before he had been walking too thin a line, losing sight of the division between Lili Belle’s world and his mother’s. Now there was Joanne to help. She was talking in an everyday voice about matter-of-fact things, and she was from home and reminding him that that was where he was from, too.
“Joanne,” he said, “how well would you say you know Jenny?”
“Jenny our sister, you mean?”
“Yes.”
She frowned. “Oh, I don’t know. How old was she when I left—only eleven. Just barely getting a good start in life.”
“You don’t figure you know her very well?”
“No, not very well.”
“Well, how about—What does she say in her letters to you?”
“Oh, you know.” She grinned suddenly. “Just facts and figures—gotten much worse since you turned the money over to her.”
“Does she say how she spends the money?”
“Sure.”
“No, I mean does she tell you what bills she mails and what bills she takes in person? I mean …”
His coffee was set before him. He looked above the steam of it to Joanne’s puzzled face.
“I’m not following,” she said. “What do—”
“Well, does she say how the money is partitioned up, for instance? A certain amount to groceries, a certain amount for savings, and so on. Has she ever told you that?”
“Not even Jenny gets that specific,” said Joanne. “What’s the matter, Ben Joe?”
“Nothing. No, I just …”
He picked up his coffee and began drinking it, not meeting Joanne’s eyes. She was giving him that amused little knowing smile again; he’d never found out how much she knew. Either she didn’t know a thing or she was determined not to tell what she did know, and he’d never be able to find out which it was.
“I don’t understand a soul in this world,” he said.
“What makes you think you should? Especially girls. Think what a—Oh, hey, speaking of girls. Is that Shelley Domer?”
Ben Joe turned. Shelley was just coming in the door, dressed all in blue and carrying a coat over her arm. Behind her came a man Ben Joe didn’t know.
“Who’s he?” Joanne asked.
“I don’t know.”
“Sure looks familiar.”
“Well, it might be Jack Horner. Shelley said the other night—”
�
��John Horner,” Joanne said. “I remember all about him. Used to live just outside Sandhill, went to Murphy High School.”
She put her chin in her hand and examined John Horner. So did Ben Joe, although he tried to look as if he were watching something else. He was surprised to see that Horner was a nice enough looking man, with a broad face and a mop of brown hair. For some reason, Ben Joe had pictured him as thin and sinister; he couldn’t say why. Shelley was smiling up at him with that small, formal smile she always put on when she felt awkward, and when she saw Ben Joe she looked pleased and her smile broadened. Immediately she came over to their table, letting Horner follow if he wanted to.
“Hey, Ben Joe,” she said. “Hey, Joanne. It’s good to see you again.”
“It’s good to see you. Why don’t you sit down?”
“Well, all right.”
Shelley looked back and forth, first at the seat beside Joanne and then at the seat beside Ben Joe, and finally she chose the one beside Ben Joe and slid shyly into it. Opposite her, John Horner sat down by Joanne and began talking to her immediately, not waiting for an introduction to Ben Joe.
“You look kind of glum,” Shelley said to Ben Joe.
“I do?”
“What you been doing that makes you look so glum?”
“Well, I don’t know. What’ve you been doing?”
“Looking for a job. I didn’t find one, though.”
“Whered you look?”
“Sesame Printery.” She smiled, unexplainably, at her fingernails. “I worked there one summer proofreading, remember? And they’re so low on work that Mr. Crown—that’s the boss—he’s just thinking up things to keep the typesetters busy. This morning they turned out five hundred labels reading ‘Strawberry Jam,’ one hundred labels reading ‘Pickled Pigs’ Feet,’ though Mrs. Crown hates them and won’t pickle any no matter what inducement Mr. Crown offers, and seven school-book covers saying ‘All cats look gray in the dark,’ because that’s little Sonny Crown’s favorite quotation. This afternoon they’ll print the Crowns’ stationery. So I don’t reckon they need any help.”
Across the table, Horner was laughing at something Joanne had said. Shelley looked over at them and said, “I’d introduce you to John if he wasn’t talking just now. But anyway, that’s the John Horner I was telling you about. You like him?”
“Well, what I see of him I do,” Ben Joe said.
“He and I are going roller-skating this afternoon. I just know I’ll break my neck.”
“Has he asked you yet?”
“Asked me what?”
“About marrying him.”
“No, not yet.”
“What you going to say?”
“Oh …”
“Come on, now,” he said. He was teasing her, but she turned suddenly serious and began pleating the paper napkin beside his saucer. “Haven’t decided yet?” he asked her more gently.
She shook her head.
“You couldn’t drag me in this place again,” Joanne was saying to John. “It’s all taken over by hoods, looks like. Used to be a real happy place, everybody dancing together—”
“Remember Barney Pocket?” John asked. “Remember how he used to make up dances all by himself? Lord, he was a funny guy. Put himself through college, later, calculating how soon people would die and then borrowing money from them. It worked, too.”
“He walked to Newfoundland one summer,” Joanne said. “On a dare.”
Ben Joe cleared his throat. “Joanne,” he said, “I think Gram expects us home for lunch.”
“Okay, Ben Joe.”
Shelley and John stood up to let them out. While Ben Joe was struggling into his jacket, Shelley edged closer and said, “You coming tomorrow?”
“Sure,” Ben Joe said. “I’ll be by at—”
“Hush!” She frowned toward where John was standing talking with Joanne and then turned back to Ben Joe. “Will you hush?”
The urge to tease came over him again. He grinned down at her and said, “Don’t tell me he doesn’t know I’m coming! Why, Shelley Domer, that amounts to outright two-timing. I swear if you’re not—”
“I mean it, now!” Her face was white and miserable; Ben Joe immediately felt sorry. “He is a steady boyfriend, after all,” she said. “I don’t want to—”
“Okay, okay.”
He reached around to help her with her coat, and then raised one hand in Horner’s direction.
“See you,” he said.
“So long.”
When they were outside, Joanne stopped to button up her coat. “It’s getting kind of chilly,” she said. “Shelley hasn’t changed much, has she?”
“I don’t know.”
“I mean, she’s still sort of quiet and drifty. You always did alternate between two extremes, come to think of it—first a dreamy girl and then a shrieky, dancing one.”
“Well.”
“That all you got to say?”
He watched the traffic light patiently, not hearing her. “What you got on your mind, Ben Joe?”
“I don’t know. Joanne?”
“What?”
“Would you say about ten dollars a day is enough to pay for a stay in a hospital?”
“That depends on the circumstances.”
“Well, I don’t know the circumstances, really. It’s just this friend of mine. I’m worried about how much money he’d need.”
“Light’s changed.”
She pulled him impatiently into the street, but once they had crossed she walked more slowly, studying the question.
“It sounds like a fair guess,” she said. “Yes, I’d say so.”
“Well, I don’t know,” said Ben Joe. “I keep thinking it should be more, somehow.”
“That’s your problem,” said Joanne.
9
Overnight the weather turned much colder. The wind howled and rattled at the bones of the house, and dry leaves scraped along the sidewalk. In the evening, when Ben Joe began dressing for his date with Shelley, his whole family pounced on him out of sheer boredom and wanted to know where he was going.
“Just out,” he said.
He was in the living room, buttoning up the shirt Jenny had just ironed.
“I thought you might take me to see Jamie Dower tonight,” Gram said.
“In this weather?”
“Well … it’s Sunday. Good visiting time.”
“I’ll take you tomorrow,” he said. “I don’t know why we can’t get synchronized on this Jamie Dower thing. If I’m ready to go you’ve got an iron-bound excuse not to, and now that I’m busy you’re almost out in the car honking for me. Where’s Susannah? I bet you anything she took my cuff links.”
“She’s in the attic,” said Tessie. “Hunting squirrels.”
“Oh.”
“She took the only gun of mine that really shoots and she’s been up there since suppertime. Got a whole soup can full of B-B’s beside her.”
“Funny way for a grown woman to spend her time. You notice if she’s wearing my cuff links?”
“The squirrels have been nesting there,” his mother said. “Someone has to get rid of them. Besides, your shirt has button cuffs.”
“Oh. Well, then, it’s the wrong shirt. I asked for the one with the French cuffs on it.”
Jenny, sitting on the rug with a book, looked up and made a face at him. “Serve you right if I’d made you iron it yourself,” she said.
“That one looks just as nice, Ben Joe.”
“Okay, okay. How can she hunt squirrels in the dark?”
“She’s got the extension lamp,” Tessie said. “She’s really made at them.”
“She’ll never shoot one.”
“Ben Joe, your shirt tail is out.”
“I know it.”
He jammed it into his trousers and went to the hall mirror to put his tie on. In th
e wavy glass he saw his face, sullen and heavy with the boredom of a long day at home. Behind him a part of his family was reflected, looking just as bored as he did. His mother sat in the rocking chair, absently glancing through a newspaper; her neck was made funny and crooked by a flaw in the mirror. Beside her sat Tessie, doing nothing at all but looking admiringly at her new shoes and occasionally wetting one finger and bending down to wipe at an imaginary scuff. The shoes were not reflected, but he had been asked to give an opinion of them so many times in the last day and a half that he thought he would be seeing them in his sleep forever—clumsy, too-white oxfords that were still new enough to look enormous on her feet. Also in the mirror were Jenny’s legs, but not the rest of her. He thought even her legs looked bored.
He finished knotting his tie, made a ferocious face in the mirror to see if his teeth needed brushing, and went back into the living room for his jacket.
“I’m going,” he said.
“Are you going to be anywhere near the drugstore?”
“Or the newsstand?”
“Nope,” he said. “Not going anywhere near anything.”
“Well, it’s hard to believe when you’re dressed up so handsome,” Gram said. “Come kiss me good night.”
He bent down and kissed her cheekbone, and then kissed the tops of Tessie’s and his mother’s head for good measure.
“I won’t be late,” he said.
“All right, Ben Joe.”
At the doorway he turned to look at them again. He was in one of those faraway moods when everything he saw seemed to be inside a shining goldfish bowl, and he suddenly saw how closed-off his family looked. They went peacefully on with what they were doing; Ben Joe, having vanished, might as well not exist. When he stepped outside he gave the door an enormous slam, just to make himself exist a minute longer.
