by Anne Tyler
So on a Friday afternoon just before the last bell, when Thomas was supposedly in a Leaders of Tomorrow meeting and Agatha had study hall, they met at the old cracked porcelain water fountain behind Poe High and walked the two blocks to the grade school. Almost no other students were out at this hour, but Thomas greeted by name the few who were—those excused early for dental appointments and such. “Thomas!” they said, and, “Yo, man, what you up to?” Agatha merely stalked on, blank-faced. She wore a bulbous down jacket over a skirt that stopped in the middle of her chunky bare knees—not an outfit any of her classmates would have been caught dead in, but then Agatha never concerned herself with appearances. She was supremely indifferent, impervious, striding on without Thomas until he ran to catch up with her.
At Reese Elementary Thomas took the lead, choosing a side door instead of the main entrance and climbing the stairs two steps at a time. Outside Room 223 he paused, turned toward Agatha, and beckoned.
Through the small window they saw rows of fifth-graders bent over their books. Miss Pennington walked among them, tall and willowy, pausing first at this desk and then at that one to answer questions. You would never take her for a woman of the seventies. In an era when teachers had started wearing pants to work, Miss Pennington wore a silky white blouse and a flaring black skirt cinched tightly at the waist, sheer nylon stockings, and high-heeled patent leather pumps—the sexy, constricting clothes of the fifties. Her hair was shoulder-length and her fingernails were sharp red spears, and her makeup—when she turned as if by instinct and glanced toward the door—was seen to be vivid and expertly applied: deep red lipstick emphasizing her full lips, and plummy rouge and luminous blue eyeshadow. Thomas and Agatha stepped back hastily, out of her line of vision. They looked at each other.
“Well?” Thomas asked.
“She’s kind of … brightly colored, isn’t she?”
“Oh, Agatha, you don’t know anything. She’s gorgeous! Women are supposed to look that way. That’s the type guys dream about.”
“Oh,” Agatha said.
“She’s perfect,” Thomas told her.
“All right,” Agatha said crisply. “Let’s get this thing rolling, then.”
* * *
Daphne told Ian he needed to make an appointment for a parent-teacher conference. “Conference?” Ian said. “Now what’d you do?”
“I didn’t do anything! How come you always think the worst of me? I just want you to talk to my teacher about my homework.”
“What about it?”
“Well, like, are you supposed to help me with it, or let me do it on my own?”
“But I already let you do it on your own. What are you saying, you need help?”
“It might be a good idea.”
“Why don’t I just go ahead and help, then? We’ll set aside a time each evening.”
“No, first I think you should ask Miss Pennington,” Daphne told him.
He gazed down at her. He and she were doing the supper dishes (she had offered to dry) while the other two sat at the kitchen table, ostensibly studying. Now Agatha said, “It wouldn’t hurt to show the teacher you take an interest, Ian.”
“Well, of course I take an interest,” Ian told her. “Good grief, I’m one of the grade mothers. I baked six dozen cookies for Parents’ Night and delivered them in person.”
“You never went in for a private conference, though,” Daphne said.
“I thought that was an improvement. Your first full year in school I haven’t been issued a summons.”
“Well, all right,” Daphne said sorrowfully. “If you don’t want to keep the lines of communication open …”
“Keep the what? Lines of what? Well, shoot,” Ian said, setting a stack of bowls in the sink. “Fine, I’ll go. Are you satisfied?”
Daphne nodded. So did the other two, but Ian had his back to them and he didn’t see.
* * *
Daphne reported that the parent-teacher conference went very well. “He was wearing that grown-up shirt we bought him for Christmas,” she told Thomas and Agatha, “the one he has to iron. He came to school straight from work and he had his wood-chip smell about him. I’m pretty sure she noticed.”
“Maybe he should’ve worn a suit,” Thomas said. “Miss Pennington’s always so dressy. We don’t want her to think he’s just a laborer.”
“He is just a laborer,” Daphne said. “What’s wrong with that?”
“Yes, but first she should see he’s intelligent and all,” Thomas said. “Then afterwards she could find out what he does for a living.”
“Well, too late now. Anyhow: so I used their first names in the introductions, just like Agatha told me. I said, ‘Ian Bedloe, Ariana Pennington. I believe you-all have met before.’ ”
“It should have been the other way around,” Agatha told her. “ ‘Ariana Pennington, Ian Bedloe.’ ”
“Oh, big deal, Agatha. So then they shook hands and Miss Pennington asked Ian what she could do for him. They sat down at two desks in the back of the room and I stood next to Ian.”
“You were supposed to leave them on their own.”
“I couldn’t. They sort of, like, included me. Ian said, ‘Daphne, here, wanted me to discuss with you …’ and all like that.”
“Well, I don’t guess it matters much at this stage,” Thomas told Agatha. “They wouldn’t right away start making out or anything.”
“Miss Pennington wore her blue scoop-necked dress,” Daphne said. “We all just wait for that dress. It’s got a lacy kind of petticoat showing underneath, either attached or not attached; we never can make up our minds. And usually she pins this heart-shaped locket pin to her front but not this time, and I was glad. We think there may be a boyfriend’s photograph inside.”
“You mean she might already have somebody?” Thomas asked, frowning.
“Who cares? Now that she’s met Ian.”
“She liked him, then,” Agatha said.
“She had to like him. He was sitting where the sun hit his hair and turned it almost yellow on top, you know how it does. He kept his cap off and he didn’t say anything religious, not once. Miss Pennington kept smiling at him and tipping her head while he talked.”
“Gosh, this is going better than we’d hoped,” Thomas said.
“And when he called her ‘Miss Pennington,’ she put her hand on his arm and said, ‘Please. Ariana.’ ”
“Gosh.”
“She told him I was one of her very best students and she didn’t know why I was concerned about my homework, but she appreciated his coming and she just thought it was so refreshing to see a man involve himself in his children’s education.”
“She did understand we’re not really his, didn’t she?” Agatha asked. “She knows he’s not married, doesn’t she?”
“She must, because she had my file opened out in front of her. And besides, Ian told her, ‘It’s not only me who’s involved. Both their grandparents used to be teachers, and they help quite a bit, too.’ ”
“Well, I wish he hadn’t of said that. It’s mostly him, after all.”
Thomas said, “No, this way is better. Now she doesn’t think she’ll be totally saddled with kids when she marries him.”
“Everyone in my school is going to die of jealousy,” Daphne said. “Boy! I can’t wait to see DeeDee Hutchins’s face, and that stuck-up Lolly Kaplan.”
“So get to the end,” Agatha told her. “Did you do like we planned about dinner?”
“I did exactly like we planned. When Ian got up to go he said, ‘Well, I really do thank you, Miss Pennington—’ ”
“Not ‘Ariana’?”
“ ‘Miss Pennington,’ he said, and I said, ‘Me too, thanks; and Ian, can’t we ask her to dinner sometime?’ ”
“That did it,” Thomas said. “No way to back out of that.”
“Well, he tried. He said, ‘Oh, Daph, Miss Pennington has a very busy schedule,’ but she said, ‘Please, it’s Ariana. And I’d love to come.’ ”
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“Goody,” Agatha said.
“Except … Ian is so backward.”
“Backward?”
“He said, ‘To tell the truth, our family’s not much for entertaining.’ ”
The other two groaned.
“But Miss Pennington told him, ‘Oh, I wouldn’t expect a banquet!’ and then she laughed and put her hand on his arm again.”
“She’s nuts about him,” Thomas said.
“Except Ian moved his arm away. In fact every time she did it he moved his arm away.”
“He’s playing hard to get.”
That made Daphne and Agatha look more cheerful. Thomas was the social one, after all. He was almost frantically social; he could skate so deftly through any situation. He was the one who knew how the world worked.
On the night Miss Pennington came to dinner, their grandma fixed roast beef. (The Bedloes confined themselves now to foods that didn’t require much preparation: roasts and baked chicken and burgers.) She had trouble holding utensils, and so she let Agatha make the gravy. “Pour in a dab of water,” she instructed, “and now a dab more …”
Thomas was setting the table, arranging the good silver on the place mats their grandma had already spread around. He came to the kitchen with a fistful of forks and said, “How come you’ve got nine place mats out?”
“Why, how many should we have?” their grandma asked.
“It’s only us and Miss Pennington: seven.”
“And also Mr. Kitt and the woman from your church,” their grandma said. “That comes to nine.”
Mr. Kitt needed no explanation; he was the authentic, certified vagrant who’d been more or less adopted by Second Chance last winter. But the woman? “What woman?” Thomas asked.
“Why, I don’t know,” their grandma said. “Some new member or visitor or something, I guess. You’ll have to ask Ian.”
The three of them looked at each other, “Rats,” Daphne said.
“I’m sure we’ll like her,” their grandma told them. “Ian said as long as we were going to all this trouble, we might as well invite her. And we’ve never had Mr. Kitt once; Ian says you’re the only people in church who haven’t.”
“Yes, but … rats,” Daphne said. “This was supposed to be just Miss Pennington!”
“Oh, don’t worry, we won’t neglect your precious teacher,” their grandma said merrily.
Last week they’d heard a new neighbor ask their grandma how many children she had. They’d listened for her answer: would she say two, or three? What did you say when a son had died? But she fooled them; she said, “Only one that’s still at home.” As if the people who stuck by you were all that counted, as if anybody not present didn’t exist.
She probably thought it was fine for Ian to grow old all alone with his parents.
The first to arrive was Mr. Kitt. Mr. Kitt wasn’t really a vagrant anymore. He had a job sweeping floors at Brother Simon’s place of business and he lived rent-free above Sister Nell’s garage. But people at church still traded him proudly back and forth for meals, and he continued to look the part as if he felt it was expected of him. Gray whiskers a quarter-inch long shadowed his pale face, and his clothes always sagged, oddly empty, even when they were the expensive tailored suits handed down from Sister Nell’s father-in-law. On his feet he wore red sneakers, the stubby kind that toddlers wear. These made him walk very quietly, so when he followed Daphne into the living room he seemed awed and hesitant. “Oh, my,” he said, peering around, “what a family, family type of house.”
“Ian’s not home from work yet,” Daphne told him. The three children had been asked to make conversation while their grandma changed. Thomas said, “Won’t you sit down?”
Mr. Kitt settled soundlessly on the front four inches of an armchair. “Last night I ate at Mrs. Stamey’s,” he told them. (Sister Myra’s, he must mean. He refused to go along with the “Sister” and “Brother” custom.) “She served me a porterhouse steak her husband had cooked on the barbecue.”
“We’re just having roast beef,” Agatha said.
“That’s okay.”
Their grandpa came down the stairs. In the doorway he stopped and said, “Why, hello there! Doug Bedloe.”
“George Kitt,” Mr. Kitt told him. He rose by degrees and they shook hands. Of the two men, Mr. Kitt was the more dressed up. Their grandpa wore his corduroys and the wrinkled leather slippers that had no heels. “Can I fix you a drink?” he asked Mr. Kitt.
“No, thank you. Drink has been my ruin.”
“Ah,” their grandpa said. He studied Mr. Kitt a moment. “You must be the fellow from Ian’s church.”
“I am.”
“Well, my wife will be down any minute now. She’s just putting on her face.”
He took a seat on the couch next to Agatha. Agatha hadn’t dressed up either—Agatha never dressed up—but Thomas and Daphne had taken special care. Thomas’s heathery pullover matched the blue pinstripe in his shirt, and Daphne wore her favorite outfit: a purple gauze skirt that hung to her ankles and a man’s fringed buckskin jacket. She was twisting the silver hoop in one earlobe, a nervous habit she had. One of her crumpled black boots kept jiggling up and down. “Did you remind Ian to come straight from work?” she asked Agatha.
“I reminded him at breakfast.”
“I sure hope Miss Pennington doesn’t get here before he does.”
“Who’s Miss Pennington?” their grandpa asked.
“My teacher, Grandpa. We told you all this.”
“Oh. Right.”
“My fifth-grade teacher.”
“Right.”
“Fifth grade?” Mr. Kitt asked, looking anxious. “I detested fifth grade.”
“Well, you won’t detest Miss Pennington,” Daphne told him.
“Fifth grade was long division,” Mr. Kitt said. “I used to erase holes in my paper.”
“Miss Pennington’s super nice and she lets us bring in comic books on Fridays.”
The front door opened. “Here he is!” Daphne cried. But the first to enter the living room was a heavyset young woman in a business suit. Ian followed, carrying his lunch pail. He said, “Sorry if we’re late.”
We? The children looked at each other.
“This is Sister Harriet,” Ian said. “She’s new at our church. Harriet, this is my father, Doug Bedloe. You know Mr. Kitt, and I guess you’ve seen Thomas and Daphne at services. Over there is Agatha.”
If Sister Harriet had seen them, they had not seen her; or else they’d forgotten. She was extremely forgettable. Her lank beige hair hung down her back, gathered ineptly by a plastic barrette at the nape of her neck. Her face was broad and plain and colorless, and her suit—a straight jacket and a midcalf-length skirt-was made of some cheap fabric without texture. Also she didn’t seem to be wearing stockings. Her calves were blue-white, chalky, and her bulging black suede flats were rubbed smooth at the widest part of her feet.
“Oh, Mr. Bedloe,” she said, “I’m so pleased to meet you at last. And Mr. Kitt, it’s good to see you again.” Then she went over to the children. “Thomas, I sat right behind you in church last Sunday. I’m Sister Harriet.”
She held out her hand to each of them in turn—a square, mannish hand, with the fingernails trimmed straight across. There was a moment when the only sounds were shuffles and sheepish murmurs. “Um, how do you … nice to …” Then their grandma arrived. She was always slow on the stairs, gripping the banister heavily as she descended, but she must have guessed this evening that she was needed; for before she’d even entered the living room she was calling out, “Hello, there! Sorry I took so long!” This time the introductions went the way they were supposed to, with everyone talking at once and little compliments exchanged. “Isn’t that a lovely pin!” Grandma told Sister Harriet, picking out the one attractive thing about her, and Sister Harriet said it used to be her great-aunt’s. Then the doorbell rang and Ian went to admit Miss Pennington.
Miss Pennington looked just ri
ght. She was one of those people who seem to know exactly what to wear for every occasion, and tonight she had not overdressed, as other women might, nor did she make the mistake of shocking them with something excessively informal and off-dutyish. She had on the flowered shirtwaist she had worn all day at school, with a soft flannel blazer added and a double strand of pearls at her throat. The way she moved through the group, greeting everyone so pleasantly, even Mr. Kitt and Sister Harriet, made the children grin at each other. When she came to Daphne, she gave her a little hug. She might as well be family.
The talk before dinner, unfortunately, centered on Sister Harriet. It appeared that Sister Harriet came from a small town near Richmond, and at first she’d found Baltimore a very hard place to make friends in. “The company where I work is as big as my whole town,” she said. “At home it was a tiny branch office! Here they have so many employees you just can’t hope to get to know them all.”
“What company is that?” Miss Pennington asked her.
“Northeastern Life. They handle every type of insurance: not only life but auto, disability—”
“Insurance? But aren’t you a nun?”
“Why, no,” Sister Harriet said.
Mr. Kitt started laughing. He said, “Ha! That’s a good one. Nun! That’s a good one.”
“It’s just what we call each other in church,” Sister Harriet told Miss Pennington. “Ian’s and my church. We call each other ‘Sister’ and ‘Brother.’ But you can say ‘Harriet,’ if you like.”
“Oh, I see,” Miss Pennington said.
The three children looked down at their laps. How irksome, that “Ian’s and my.” As if Ian and Sister Harriet were somehow linked! But Miss Pennington kept her encouraging expression and said, “I imagine church would be an ideal place to make friends.”
“It surely is,” Sister Harriet told her. And then she had to go on and on about it, how nice and down-home it was, how welcoming, how in some ways it reminded her of the little church she’d grown up in except that there they’d held Prayer Meeting on Tuesdays, not Wednesdays, and they didn’t approve of cosmetics and they believed that “gosh” and “darn” were cuss words; but other than that …
