by Anne Tyler
Rebecca’s mother and Aunt Ida had accepted, much to Rebecca’s surprise, with the understanding that they would leave the party early on account of the long drive home. Also they would arrive early, they announced, in order to help out. Privately, Rebecca began thinking up tasks that would keep them harmlessly occupied. Sorting through the napkins, inspecting the stemware for water spots . . .
Because it was December, the decorating scheme would be Christmassy. Already a slender tree stood in the front-parlor window, diminutive white lights twinkling tastefully from each branch. Now Rebecca set up another tree in the dining room, chunkier and messier, smothered in decades’ worth of construction-paper chains and Polaroid photos of the children pasted on paper-doily snowflakes. Some of the photos were faded past recognition. Many were interchangeable, since Davitch babies tended to look fairly much alike below a certain age. (All those little clock faces, wisps of dark hair, squinty mistrustful eyes.) On top she put a gold foil star with seven different-sized, unevenly spaced points, brought home from kindergarten long ago by one or another of the girls; no one knew which anymore. She draped a huge banner across the rear-parlor mantel reading HAPPY 100th BIRTHDAY POOPY—a mistake she hadn’t noticed until she got it home—and she lugged the TV and the VCR down from the family room and plugged them into an outlet in the front parlor, because Hakim (in love with Western technology, like every immigrant Rebecca had ever known) was bringing as his present a professionally produced videotape assembled from the family’s home movies. This was supposed to be a secret, although Poppy had to have suspected something. On the morning of the party, when he went in to watch cartoons, all he found was a rectangle of dust on the TV stand. He didn’t say a word about it, though; just grunted and laid out a game of solitaire instead.
The day was bright and unusually cold, which meant Rebecca could wear her Bedouin costume. Although of course she didn’t put it on first thing. No, first she put on baggy pants and one of Joe’s old flannel shirts, and she raced around the house picking up and vacuuming and cooking Poppy a special breakfast. Nothing but sweets—waffles and cocoa. (The man would contract diabetes before the end of the day.) A little blue birthday candle flickered on the topmost waffle. “Happy birthday to you . . .” she sang, all by herself, standing over the table with her hands clasped together in front of her.
Poppy said, “Why, thank you, Beck,” and calmly blew out the candle. It amused and touched and exasperated her, all at the same time, how he accepted this fuss and bother as only his due.
“Just think,” she told him. “One hundred years ago today, you were just the tiniest bundle nestled in a cradle. Or maybe in your mother’s bed. Were you born at home? Did your mother have a doctor?”
“She had a midwife,” he said, cutting into his waffles. “Mrs. Bentham: she came to the house. We lived on North Avenue then. She was just starting out in her practice, and we were her first set of twins.”
“Oh, yes, twins,” Rebecca said. “I’d forgotten that.” Briefly, she laid a hand on his arm. “It must make you sad, celebrating your birthday without your brother here to share it.”
“No, not really,” he said matter-of-factly. “I’ve had a lot of years to get used to it.”
He took a much too large mouthful of waffles, dotting his mustache with beads of syrup. He was wearing his red plaid bathrobe over striped pajamas. Bristly whiskers silvered his face, and his white hair stood on end, unbrushed, raying out like sunbeams.
“Eighteen ninety-nine,” Rebecca said. “I don’t even know who was President then!”
“Beats me.”
“Your family wouldn’t have had a car, I suppose, or a telephone . . .”
But he was pursuing another train of thought. He said, “I’ve wondered, from time to time, if I’ve had added onto my life all those years my brother didn’t get to use.”
He spoke as if his brother had had no choice—as if it hadn’t been his own decision not to use those years. Rebecca said, “Well, I imagine he would have been glad to see you enjoying them.”
“Not necessarily,” Poppy told her. “He always did believe I got the best of the deal.”
“How was that?”
“Oh, you know . . . he wasn’t a naturally happy person. Some people, they just have a harder time being happy.”
“Would you say Joe was naturally happy?”
Poppy took another bite of waffles, either considering her question or stalling.
“When I met him, he was laughing,” she prompted him. Then she recalled that in fact, she was the one who’d been laughing. But she continued. “He said, ‘I see you’re having a wonderful time.’ His very first words to me. Because Zeb was clowning around; you know how he does, and so I started . . . And when I decided to marry him, then he was laughing, for sure! I saw him laughing in the library window and I decided at that moment.”
Poppy said, “Hmm,” and blotted his mustache on his napkin.
“And don’t forget,” Rebecca said, “by profession, he was a party-giver.”
“But he never felt party-giving was really his true life,” Poppy reminded her.
“Well, no.”
“And that’s where he and I differed,” Poppy said. “Because I was always telling him, ‘Look,’ I said. ‘Face it,’ I said. ‘There is no true life. Your true life is the one you end up with, whatever it may be. You just do the best you can with what you’ve got,’ I said.”
“But he had a fine life!” Rebecca said.
“He certainly did.”
Poppy folded his napkin and laid it beside his plate. “So what I tell myself,” he said, “is I’m observing our birthday for both of us. That’s how I like to view it.”
Evidently, he had swerved back onto the subject of his twin brother. Rebecca took a second to realize it, though. That was what happened when you lived with someone confused: you became confused yourself, and one thing developed the oddest way of blurring into other things.
* * *
Her mother and her aunt arrived shortly before noon. Her mother wore her dressiest pants set and a fluffy mohair jacket that made her look smaller than ever. Her hair had been crimped into ridges as evenly spaced as the rows of tufts on a bedspread. Aunt Ida was all ruffles and froth—a pink rosebud print, despite the season—and she must have gone to the same hairdresser, although her curls were already beginning to wander out of formation. Between them they carried a large, flat package, beautifully wrapped and ribboned. “It’s a portrait of William McKinley,” Aunt Ida confided in a whisper.
“McKinley,” Rebecca said.
“He was who was President in 1899.”
“Oh, we were just discussing that at breakfast,” Rebecca said. “McKinley! Is that who it was!”
“We thought it would remind Mr. Davitch of his youth.”
“I’m sure he’ll love it,” Rebecca said. “Have you two had lunch yet?”
“Oh, we don’t want to be any trouble.”
“It’s no trouble. I’ve got some cold cuts set out.”
She placed their gift on the chest of drawers in the front parlor, and then she led them back to the kitchen. “Poppy’s upstairs napping,” she said. “He had a sandwich ahead of time and now he’s trying to rest before the party.”
“Law, he must be so excited,” Aunt Ida said, but Rebecca’s mother said, “I never did understand the notion of adults having birthday parties.”
“Well, it’s kind of our tradition,” Rebecca told her. “And besides, this is his hundredth! He could have had his name read out on TV, if we had asked.”
“My last birthday party was in 1927,” Rebecca’s mother said. “I was five years old.”
Aunt Ida said, “Oh, that can’t be right! What about when you turned eighteen and Mother gave you her pearls?”
“That wasn’t a party, though, Ida.”
“Well, you had a cake! With candles on it! If you don’t call that a party, I’d like to know what it was!”
“Have a seat,
” Rebecca told them. “Who would like iced tea?”
“Oh, I would, darlin’, if it’s made,” Aunt Ida said.
It was. (Rebecca knew that they always drank iced tea with lunch, even in the dead of winter, although at suppertime they would turn it down for fear of not sleeping well.) She brought the pitcher from the refrigerator and set it on the table. Aunt Ida was forking a mountain of cold cuts onto her plate, selecting each slice daintily with her little finger quirked as if that would make her portion seem smaller. Rebecca’s mother was delivering a blow-by-blow account of their trip. “We took the old County Highway,” she said, “because you couldn’t pay me to drive on that I-95, all those truckers whizzing past blaring their horns at a person. I don’t think I told you about Abbie Field’s daughter having that awful accident on I-95 down near Richmond. She had gone to I think Heathsville, or Heathsburg, one of those places; was it Heathsville? Heathsburg? Went to visit her parents-in-law and was coming back on a Sunday after mass; her mother-in-law is Catholic, you know, one of those very devout Catholic widows, and she had invited Abbie to her ladies’ bridge club luncheon on Saturday and then—”
“Wait; that’s not possible,” Aunt Ida said.
“Beg pardon? Of course it’s possible. You can be a Catholic and still play bridge.”
“You said Abbie went to visit her parents-in-law. Plural. But that her mother-in-law was a widow.”
“All right; I misspoke. It’s not a capital crime.”
Rebecca said, “How’s the move coming, Mother?”
“What move?”
“Your move to the retirement home.”
“Oh, that. Well, I’m working on it, but first I have to sort my belongings.”
Aunt Ida sent Rebecca a look. “Have a deviled egg,” Rebecca told her.
“Why, thank you, hon. I really shouldn’t, on account of my cholesterol, but you know I can’t resist.”
“Folks tell me I should hire help,” Rebecca’s mother said. “I’m too old to do all that sorting on my own, they tell me. But you know how that works. When Ida here tried to clean out my desk, would you believe what she did? Threw away a perfectly good sheet of three-cent postage stamps.”
“Have a deviled egg, Mother,” Rebecca said.
Then the phone rang, and she cried, “Whoops!” and raced off to answer it, even though the kitchen extension was no more than a foot away from her.
* * *
Rebecca’s Bedouin costume was a long black woolen robe with broad vertical bands of purple, red, and turquoise running from shoulder to hem. It made her feel like Elizabeth Taylor in Cleopatra, she had told the clerk at Discount Dashikis when she was trying it on. In order to keep the bright colors from blanching her features, she applied a good deal more makeup than usual. Then she wound a splashy purple-and-black silk sash around her head. When she descended the stairs, the sash wafted out behind her like a bridal train. “Goodness,” her mother said, meeting up with her in the foyer. Rebecca gave her a sphinxlike smile. (Nothing she would wear could make her mother happy.) But Aunt Ida, already seated in the front parlor, cried out, “Oh, my, don’t you look cheery!”
“Thank you,” Rebecca told her. In a majestically level, swift, flowing motion, she crossed to the hearth and bent for the butane torch hidden in the basket of pinecones at one side. She started lighting the candles she had set around the room—the Christmas candles and the Hanukkah candles and the all-occasion candles and even the pale egg-shaped candles ordinarily reserved for Easter.
“It’s a regular conflagration!” Aunt Ida said gaily.
Rebecca’s mother sat down in the rocker, first smoothing the back of her slacks beneath her as if she were wearing a skirt. “I laid out your cocktail napkins in a fan shape,” she told Rebecca. “I don’t know if that’s the way you wanted them. I straightened up some in the kitchen, and I took the liberty of watering that poor dead plant out back beside the steps.”
“Thank you, Mother.”
“You’ll find the leftover cold cuts on the top shelf in the fridge. I put them in one of those newspaper bags I found in the waxed-paper drawer, although I’m not entirely easy in my mind about letting foodstuffs come into contact with colored plastic.”
“I’m sure they’ll be finished off before the poison has time to take effect,” Rebecca told her.
The doorbell rang. Her mother said, “Mercy,” and checked her watch. “It’s three minutes before two! Who do you suppose that is?”
“Not a Davitch, you can bet,” Rebecca said. She went out into the foyer. “Company, Poppy!” she called up the stairs, and then she opened the door. J. J. Barrow, her electrician, was standing on the stoop with his twelve-year-old son. Both of them were dressed up—J.J. in a suit and tie, his son in a navy blazer and tan corduroys—and J.J. was holding a bottle of bourbon with a ribbon around its neck. “Come in!” Rebecca told them. “You two are so punctual!”
“Well, we didn’t want to keep folks waiting,” J.J. said. He was a large, bearded bear of a man, a type Rebecca had a weakness for, and she had invited him on impulse when he and his son came to fix the thermostat earlier in the week. Now she ushered them into the parlor, keeping an arm around the son’s shoulders. “Mother,” she said, “Aunt Ida, this is our electrician, J. J. Barrow, and this is his son, J.J.J.” J.J.J. was what they called J.J. Junior, and she always had to stifle a giggle when she was saying it; it made her feel she was stuttering. “My mother, Mildred Holmes, and my aunt, Ida Gates.”
“How do you do,” Aunt Ida said, and Rebecca’s mother smiled and tilted her head. “Are you . . . here as guests?” she asked.
“Yes, ma’am,” J.J. said. “My wife would have come too, except her pastor dropped by unannounced.”
“J.J. can handle anything electrical,” Rebecca said, “and also some plumbing repairs as long as they don’t require inspection. And his son knows nearly as much as he does; don’t you, J.J.J.?” Oops, another giggle.
J.J.J. looked worried and said, “Well, I would still need Pop’s help with some of the big things, though.”
“Rebecca and me have been through a lot,” J.J. said, falling into a chair. “She was my main support when my first wife up and left me. And I was around when her grandson Danny passed through that little shoplifting stage.”
“Well, now!” Rebecca said, clapping her hands. (She hadn’t mentioned Danny’s shoplifting stage to her mother.) “Where’s our guest of honor, I wonder!”
Her mother wore a blank expression. Aunt Ida just smiled and patted the sofa cushion beside her. “Why don’t you come sit down, J.J.J.?” she asked. “Aren’t you sweet, to attend an old man’s birthday party!”
“I never met anybody who was a hundred before,” he told her, and he crossed the room and settled next to her, admirably composed, hands folded loosely between his corduroy knees.
Now they heard Poppy on the stairs—cane, shoe, shoe; cane, shoe, shoe—and Rebecca went out to the foyer to meet him. He often woke from his nap extra stiff; she thought he might want help. But no, he was barely leaning on the banister, and his face looked rested and relaxed, not stretched by pain. He wore his gray suit and a narrow black bow tie knotted around a collar so high and starched that he seemed to have stepped directly from the year when he had been born. His hair was slicked down flat and his cheeks looked polished. “I thought I heard the doorbell,” he said.
“Yes, J.J. and his son are here. You remember J.J.,” she said hopefully.
He might or he might not. At any rate, he grunted and continued his descent.
“And Mother and Aunt Ida came while you were napping,” she said. “You should see what they brought you!”
“I intend to open my gifts as they arrive,” he told her. He reached the bottom of the stairs and started pegging into the parlor, passing her in a breeze of lavender cologne. “They won’t get the proper notice if I just pile them in a heap and open them all at once.”
“Fine, Poppy,” Rebecca said.
No
t that her permission was needed. Already he was reaching out a hand for J.J.’s bottle, holding it at arm’s length to study the label. “Thanks,” he said finally. “It’ll make a nice nightcap.” He turned toward the two older women. “Ladies.”
“Happy birthday, Mr. Davitch,” they said practically in unison, and Aunt Ida added, “You don’t look a day over eighty!”
“Eighty?” Poppy asked. The corners of his mouth turned down.
“Yes, sir, it’s not often I’m asked to celebrate somebody’s hundredth birthday,” J.J. told him.
“How often?” Poppy asked him.
“Well, now, I guess I would have to say never, in fact.”
“Here, Poppy,” Rebecca said. She took the wrapped package from the chest of drawers. “This is Mother and Aunt Ida’s gift.”
“Wait, just let me get comfy.”
He chose a wing chair and lowered himself by degrees, first setting the bourbon on the table beside him. Then Rebecca handed him the package. “Nice paper,” he said. He slid a trembling thumb beneath one taped flap. “Don’t want to tear it; might as well save it for later use.”
“Absolutely,” Rebecca’s mother told him, and she bit her lip and sat forward, concentrating, until he had lifted the flap without causing any damage.
William McKinley turned out to be a forthright-looking man in a high white collar and black bow tie nearly identical to Poppy’s. Rebecca had worried Poppy wouldn’t know who he was, but luckily a brass nameplate was tacked to the bottom of the frame. “William McKinley. Well, now,” Poppy said, slanting the picture on his knees to study it.
“He was President the year you were born,” Rebecca told him.
“Well, how about that.”
“Got himself assassinated,” J.J. offered out of the blue.
“How about that.”
