by Anne Tyler
Nine
She saw now what she was up against: he was still mourning his marriage. He was grieving every bit as deeply as if he’d been widowed. That explained the missteps in their first few conversations, and his tendency to talk on and on about Laura, and his sad, unconfident manner. A man who kidnapped his wife’s dog was a man who still felt connected.
Not that he was aware of it himself, Rebecca supposed. For he called her two days later to ask, “Seeing as how you’ve met my family now, what little of it there is, don’t you think I should meet yours?”
“Mine? Well . . .”
“So far I’ve bumped into, what? Two or three of them,” he said, “but I’d love to meet the others.”
“Well, I guess I could have everyone to dinner.”
“That would be great!” he said.
His eagerness was so uncharacteristic that she suspected he might be forcing it. She imagined his steeling himself before he picked up the phone to call her—squaring his shoulders, gathering resolve. “You know,” she told him, “the Davitches can be kind of daunting, taken in a bunch. You could meet them just a few at a time, if you’d rather.”
“No! I think this will be fun!” he said.
She recognized that glittery tone of voice. She had used it herself, many a time.
* * *
They settled on the coming Saturday. It could have been Thursday instead, but Rebecca didn’t want one of those haphazard Thursday potlucks—some chaotic free-for-all where Will could be overwhelmed. No, this would be organized and sedate. People would arrive at a prearranged time and talk about civilized topics. She considered hiring Alice Farmer to serve, but Alice Farmer was fully capable of sitting down to interview Will—interrogate him, really, making sure he passed muster—while Rebecca herself did the serving. She decided against it.
Min Foo was the first one she called. “I’m inviting you to dinner this Saturday, October second,” she said. “Just you and Hakim. No children.”
“No children!”
“At eight o’clock sharp. And dress up.”
“Why can’t we bring the children?”
“It’s a grownup affair. I want you to meet the man in my life.”
This was the phrase she had selected ahead of time—so much more dignified than other terms she might use. It rolled off her tongue fairly easily, she felt, but was met by a silence as sharp as a crack at the other end of the line.
Min Foo said, “You have a man in your life.”
“Right,” Rebecca said.
“You never told me that!”
“Well, you must have heard a man was coming around, now and then.”
“I thought that was just a friend! Why are you springing this on me now?”
“Min Foo! I’m not springing anything on you! It’s not about you!”
This wasn’t going at all the way she had planned.
With NoNo, the focus was different. She wanted to know why a Saturday. “Is business really that bad?” she asked. “You’re never free on a Saturday! Is the Open Arms going under?”
“No more than usual,” Rebecca said.
“And haven’t I already met this person?”
“Yes, but this will be his, sort of, formal introduction to the family as a whole.”
“Oh. Okay,” NoNo said.
She didn’t seem impressed by that part about the man in my life.
Before Rebecca could place the next call, the telephone rang: Patch, in high dudgeon. “How come you invited Min Foo to dinner and not me?”
“Well, I was just—”
“Is this because she’s your real daughter?”
“Patch! For heaven’s sake! I’m inviting all of you!”
“And I have to hear it through the grapevine,” Patch said. “I’ve a good mind not to come.”
“Well, if you’d stay off the phone long enough for me to call you in the first place!” Rebecca snapped. And she slammed down the receiver.
Only Biddy reacted as she was supposed to. “A man in your life! Really?” she said. “Oh, Beck, I didn’t realize. Is this the one who was there when I stopped by the other evening?”
“That’s him,” Rebecca said.
“Oh, this is so exciting. Tell me what food to bring.”
Sometimes Rebecca thought that the whole point of having lots of daughters was, the law of averages said at least one of them might behave right at any given time.
Saturday turned out warm and humid, more like July than October. This was a pity, because Rebecca had bought a fall outfit expressly for the occasion. It was a tailored gray straight-skirted suit, very subdued—unnoticeable, even. (And certainly nothing a hippie would wear.) She put it on anyhow, along with her flight-attendant pumps. She was plain on the surface but fancy underneath, because she had also bought new lingerie—sheer black lace that would have to be washed by hand. She didn’t care. Also, it was killingly expensive. She didn’t care at all. She had plans.
When she went downstairs to the kitchen, where Biddy and Troy were unwrapping food, Troy did a double take. “Why! It’s Joan Crawford!” he said. Rebecca struck a model’s pose, nose raised snootily in the air, and Biddy stopped work to say, “Are those shoulder pads? Goodness.” Then she told Poppy, “Quit that!” because he was picking at a pie crust. She herself wore a ruffled blue sundress, which looked a little too froufrou on her spare frame, and Troy and Poppy wore coats and ties. Rebecca felt a rush of affection. It was nice of them to go to the trouble.
Will rang the doorbell precisely at eight. He was in a charcoal wool suit and his upper lip shone with sweat, either from the heat or from nervousness. “Don’t you look stylish!” Rebecca said. When she kissed him, she smelled aftershave—something spicy—and all at once she felt lit up and optimistic, as if this were her very first party rather than her millionth.
“Am I early?” he asked. “Am I late?”
“You’re right on time,” she told him. “Come out back while we see to the food,” and she took hold of his arm.
“Now, Biddy you’ve already met,” she said as they entered the kitchen, “and you know Poppy, and this is Biddy’s, um, Troy. Troy, this is Will Allenby.”
“How do you do,” Troy said, shaking Will’s hand. Troy had extremely vivid blue eyes, and when he was introduced to people he often gave the impression of peering into their souls, drilling them with his hundred-watt gaze. Will responded by leaning forward determinedly and meeting Troy’s stare straight on, so that for a moment they seemed to be butting heads.
Poppy said, “Why, hey, there! Good to see you again!” This could have been a bluff, but when Will said, “Good to see you, Mr. Davitch,” Poppy said, “Please. Call me Poppy.”
Which wasn’t something he allowed just everyone. (Barry, for example, had recently been told that they weren’t on close enough terms yet.) Rebecca sent Poppy a grateful smile.
She said, “Once you get to know the Davitches, Will, you’ll realize we don’t have a prayer of expecting them when they’re due; so I suggest we make ourselves comfortable while we’re waiting. Can I offer you a drink?”
“No, thanks,” Will told her, but Poppy said he’d like a Scotch, and everyone else wanted white wine.
In the parlor, Rebecca lit the candles while Troy saw to the drinks. Biddy was asking Will where he came from, what he did for a living, how long he’d known Rebecca—the usual small-talk questions, which Will answered dutifully. “Church Valley, Virginia,” he said, “but now I live in Macadam. I’m head of the physics department at Macadam College. I can’t say for certain when I met Rebecca. Fifty years ago? More?”
“Fifty years!” Biddy exclaimed.
“I’ll never adjust to the sound of that,” Rebecca said. She accepted a glass of wine from Troy and sat down on the couch, close to Will but not touching. “Telling people I did such-and-such half a century back, or haven’t seen so-and-so in forty-five years . . . I think, What am I saying? Can I really have been alive that long?”
“Yes, my odometer’s taken something of a leap,” Will said. He turned to Rebecca and confided, “Little cough in my engine lately.”
“Cough?”
“Kind of coughing noise when I accelerate.”
Troy gave an abrupt laugh. “I would expect a physics professor to use a more technical term,” he explained when everyone looked at him.
“No, Troy, I’m not in the least conversant with automobile engines,” Will told him. “I have to put myself in the hands of strangers—mechanics who charge me a fortune and then, half the time, don’t fix the problem.”
“Oh, you should go to Aldo,” Rebecca said.
“Aldo?”
“The man who coaxes my Chevy along. He’s very gifted. And such a nice person! Biddy, you know Aldo.”
“Oh, Aldo’s great,” Biddy said. “He solved my squeak when nobody else could.”
“Aldo is forever bragging about his wife,” Rebecca told Will. “How pretty she is and how talented and how she makes everything from scratch. Even the slipcovers. Even the rugs. Tanya, her name is. Tanya this, Tanya that, all the livelong day. Tanya and he are learning ballroom dancing. Tanya and he are planning a trip to Hawaii. Tanya and he got professionally made up and had their photograph taken as Bonnie and Clyde. The Man Who Loves His Wife, I call him. ‘Doesn’t that sound like the world’s most incredible marriage?’ I’m always asking people.”
Will said, “This is your . . . mechanic?”
“Yes, and then last month he told me Tanya was at the doctor’s. I said, ‘I hope it’s nothing serious.’ He said no, she just needed to increase her medication. It turns out she’s subject to these demented delusions and always has been. She thinks he’s plotting to leave her; she swears that he’s unfaithful; she once showed up on a woman’s porch waving a souvenir Japanese sword. Two of their sons won’t come home anymore. The oldest son asked him once, ‘How can you put up with her?’ and Aldo told him, ‘Because it’s somebody else. It’s not the real, true Tanya.’”
“This is the man who repairs your car,” Will said.
“Right,” she said. “I just think he’s so . . . admirable. He still believes his wife is amazing after all that’s happened. He still boasts about her hooked rugs and gets made up like Bonnie and Clyde.”
Will started to say something, but just then the front door slammed open. “Oh! Finally!” Rebecca said, and she went out to the foyer.
Min Foo stood there with Hakim, who was lugging one of those infant car seats that made parents appear to be returning from a successful trip to the farmers’ market. Abdul slept soundly inside, curled over like a little cashew with a knit cap partially covering his eyes. “I know! I know! You said adults only,” Min Foo told Rebecca. “But what do you expect? I’m nursing! What do you expect me to do? Watch it, Hakim. Don’t bang him into the wall.”
She was wearing an elegant black silk pants set and every holy medal she owned, but a distinct circle of dampness darkened the tip of each breast. Inwardly, Rebecca sighed. All she said, though, was, “Hello, dear.”
“Don’t set him there!” Min Foo squawked, spinning toward Hakim. “The next person walking in is bound to step on him! Really, the man is hopeless,” she told Rebecca. “This morning at seven—seven o’clock on a Saturday!—he asks me to brew him coffee.”
“I only asked if coffee had been made, Min Foo,” Hakim said mildly. He was stooping over the infant seat, trying to raise Abdul’s cap off his eyes.
“You could have checked for yourself and seen that it wasn’t made! ‘It’s not that I’m demanding,’ he said, but what could he demand, pray tell, considering I’ve always brought him every little thing?”
“Now, now,” Rebecca said, “I’m sure he didn’t mean—”
“Naturally you would stick up for him,” Min Foo told her. “You believe men are . . . What is that you’re wearing?”
Rebecca looked down at her outfit. (Maybe it was not so unnoticeable after all.) Before Min Foo could deliver an opinion, though, the door swung open again. “It’s us!” Patch cried.
It was not only Patch and Jeep but NoNo and Barry as well—Barry holding one of NoNo’s famous fall-foliage arrangements—with Zeb bringing up the rear. “Did you all ride together?” Rebecca asked, and Jeep said, “Nope, just got here together by happenstance.”
Rebecca had been hoping to spread the introductions out more, so that Will wouldn’t feel too confused. “Well, anyhow,” she said, “come on in and meet—”
“What is that you’re wearing?” Patch asked.
“It’s my brand-new suit that I bought on Thursday, and I like it; so don’t say a word.”
Patch blinked.
Rebecca reminded herself that it was crucial to stay calm.
When she led them into the parlor, Will and Troy both stood up. Will’s arms were dangling docilely at his sides, which for some reason gave her a pang. “Everybody!” she said. “I’d like you to meet Will Allenby, the . . .”
It seemed redundant to refer to him once more as the man in her life. (And maybe Will would find it presumptuous, besides.) “. . . the person I invited you here to meet,” she finished lamely. “Will, you remember NoNo, and this is her husband, Barry; and Patch and her husband, Jeep . . .”
“How do you do, how do you do,” Will said, shaking hands. It was one of those situations where so many people might have spoken that everyone expected someone else to, and Will’s voice was the only sound in the room. So when Poppy cried, “A toast!” Rebecca gladly took it up. “Yes, a toast!” she said. “I think we’ll need a new bottle opened, Troy.”
She helped him pass out the wine—a glass for Will, even, which he held awkwardly by the rim, his hand poised crablike above it. Min Foo insisted on club soda, another of those modern notions. (Rebecca, in her own breast-feeding days, had been ordered outright to drink lots of beer.)
“A toast to my birthday!” Poppy said when everyone was served.
Biddy said, “No, Poppy, wait.”
“Oh, don’t we all have drinks yet? I’m sorry.”
“It’s not your birthday, Poppy.”
“Oh. Not my birthday.”
He looked at Rebecca. “I guess I made a mistake,” he said.
“That’s all right, Poppy,” she told him. Then she stepped closer to him and whispered in his tufted ear, “A toast to welcome Will.”
“Will! Yes!” He raised his glass. “A toast to Will! To welcome Will!”
“To Will,” everyone murmured—everyone except Barry, who sang out a ringing “Hear, hear!” in what Rebecca could have sworn was a British accent.
“Thank you,” Will said, lifting his glass a few inches. He gave a slight cough. “And a toast to Rebecca, too; is that okay? To Rebecca, for being so lovely and gracious and cheering up my life.”
Rebecca felt her face growing pink. She was conscious of everyone’s eyes on her, and she felt a brief silence spreading around her before the others chimed in.
It was more than she had even thought to fantasize: her entire family, gathered in one room, hearing for the first time that somebody thought she was lovely.
* * *
At dinner, Will said, “I see you’re taking good care of my plant.”
“You gave her that plant?” NoNo asked.
Rebecca broke in quickly to say, “It’s doing well, don’t you think?”
It had grown at least a foot and put out two enormous new leaves, even though it was hidden away in the dimness of the dining room. (She had moved it there in the hope that it would attract less attention.)
Mercifully, NoNo just raised her eyebrows.
Rebecca’s original plan was to seat Will on her right. But Poppy seemed to have a case of clinginess this evening, and he plunked h
imself there first, scooting his chair close enough so his knees could keep a reassuring contact with hers underneath the table. And Barry was already settled on her left. She had to point Will toward a spot several spaces away, down between Patch and Biddy.
“Oh, what a treat!” she told Barry. “I get to have you next to me.” (Why did she always have to say the opposite of what she was thinking?) “Tell me,” she said, picking up her fork, “do you find you’re feeling at home with us yet?”
“Yes, absolutely,” he said, but he was shaking his head instead of nodding, she noticed.
Biddy was saying to Will, “I trust you have nothing against hearts of palm.”
“Is that what these are?”
“I thought they’d make a nice symbolic touch; don’t you agree? But I see you’ve moved yours to the side of your plate.”
“Well, I wasn’t sure, you see, exactly what they were.”
“They’re the innermost core of the cabbage-palm stem. Very high in vitamin C.”
“Palm trees have been cut up for this?”
“Well, yes.”
“Is that a fact!”
“Broccoli plants are cut up, after all; asparagus shoots are cut up . . . Don’t tell me you’re one of those food avoiders.”
“No, no, I just, I’m not all that much for experiment.”
“Hearts of palm aren’t an experiment!”
“To me they are.”
“Sea urchins are an experiment. Hearts of palm are just salad.”
“Yes, but, at home, you see, I generally have chili.”
“Chili.”
“I make this really excellent chili on Sunday afternoons—that would be tomorrow—and I divide it into seven containers for the seven nights of the week.”
Biddy sat back in her seat and looked at him without expression.
Poppy was beginning a story. “In the fall of 1939,” he told Hakim, “I experienced a dental emergency.”
Jeep was discussing football with Troy, who was nodding attentively although his eyes had a sort of glazed look.
