by Anne Tyler
Daphne sat back on her stool.
This Rita was so big, though. She had that angular, big-boned frame. You’d expect her to be immune.
“Um, Rita,” she said. “Ian’s kind of … hard to pin down, sometimes. Also, I believe he has this sort of girlfriend at his church.”
“So what? I had a boyfriend, till last Wednesday,” Rita said.
“Yes, but then besides he’s very, let’s say Christian. Did you know that?”
“What do you think I am, Buddhist?”
“He’s unusually Christian, though. I mean, look at you! You’re sitting here in a bar! Drinking beer! Wearing a Hell Bent for Leather T-shirt!”
Rita glanced down at her shirt. She said, “That’s not exactly a sin.”
“It is to Ian,” Daphne told her. “Or it almost is.”
“Daphne,” Rita said, “you get to know folks when you rearrange their belongings. Ian’s belongings are so simple. They’re so plain. He owns six books on how to be a better person. The clothes in his closet smell of nutmeg. And have you ever honestly looked at him? He has this really fine face; it’s all straight lines. I thought at first his eyes were brown but then I saw they had a clear yellow light to them like some kind of drink; like cider. And when he talks he’s very serious but when he listens to what I say back he starts smiling. He acts so happy to hear me, even when all I’m talking about is drawer knobs. Okay: so he does that to everyone. I don’t kid myself! Probably it’s part of his religion or something.”
“Well, no,” Daphne said. She felt touched. She was seeing Ian, all at once, from an outsider’s angle. She said, “I didn’t mean to drag you down. I was just thinking of back in school when some of my friends had crushes on him. They used to end up so frustrated. They ended up mad at him, almost.”
“Well, I can understand that,” Rita said. She took a hearty swallow of beer and wiped the foam off her upper lip.
“And he is a good bit older than you,” Daphne pointed out.
“So? We’re both grownups, aren’t we? Anyhow, in some ways it’s me who’s older. Do you realize he’s only slept with two women in all his life?”
“What?” Daphne asked.
“First his high-school sweetheart before he joined the church and then this woman he dated a few years ago, but he felt terrible about that and vowed he wouldn’t do it again.”
Daphne didn’t know which shocked her more: the fact that he’d slept with someone or the fact that he and Rita had discussed it. “Well, how did … how did that come up?” she asked.
“It came up when I invited him to spend the night,” Rita said calmly.
“You didn’t!”
“I did,” Rita said. “Bartender? Same again.” She met Daphne’s eyes. “I invited him when he came about the bureau,” she said, “but he declined. He was extremely polite.”
“I can imagine,” Daphne said.
“Then all last weekend I waited to hear from him. I haven’t done that since junior high! But he didn’t call, and so here I sit, drinking away my sorrows.”
He wasn’t ever going to call, but Daphne didn’t want to be the one to tell her. “Gosh! Look at the time,” she said. She asked the bartender, “What do I owe?” and then she made a great to-do over paying, so that when she turned back to say goodbye, it would seem the subject of Ian had entirely slipped her mind.
Agatha and Stuart didn’t come home for Christmas. Stuart was on call that weekend. Thomas came, though, and they spent a quiet holiday together, rising late on Christmas morning to exchange their gifts. Ian gave Daphne a key chain that turned into a siren when you pressed a secret button. (He was always after her about the neighborhoods she hung out in.) Her grandfather gave her a ten-dollar bill, the same thing he gave the others. Thomas, the world’s most inspired shopper, gave her a special crystal guaranteed to grant steadiness of purpose, and Agatha and Stuart sent a dozen pairs of her favorite brand of black tights. Daphne herself gave everybody houseplants—an arrangement she’d made weeks ago when she still worked at Floral Fantasy.
For Christmas dinner they went to a restaurant. Daphne viewed this as getting away with something. If Agatha had been home, she never would have allowed it. But Agatha might have a point, Daphne thought as they entered the dining room. The owner kept his place open on holidays so that people without families had somewhere to go, and at nearly every table just a single, forlorn person sipped a solitary cocktail. Across the room they saw Mrs. Jordan, which made Daphne feel guilty because if Bee were still alive she would have remembered to invite her. But then Ian and the owner conferred and they added an extra place setting and brought her over to sit with them. Mrs. Jordan was as adventurous and game as ever, although she must be in her eighties by now, and once they’d said grace she livened things up considerably by describing a recent outing she’d taken with the foreigners. It seemed that during that peculiar warm spell back in November, she and three of the foreigners had driven to a marina someplace and rented a sailboat; only none of them had ever sailed before and when they found themselves on open water with a stiff breeze blowing up, the one named Manny had to jump over the side and swim for help. After they were rescued, Mrs. Jordan said, the marina owner had told them they could never take a boat out again. They couldn’t even stand on the dock. They couldn’t even park on the grounds to admire the view. By now she had them laughing, and she raised a speckled hand and ordered a bottle of champagne—“And you must join us, Ezra,” she told the owner—along with a fizzy apple juice for Ian. It turned out to be a very festive meal.
In the evening Claudia and her family telephoned from Pittsburgh, and Agatha from California. Agatha didn’t seem as distressed about the restaurant as she might have been. All she said to Daphne was, “Did Ian bring Clara?”
“Clara? No.”
Agatha sighed. She said, “Maybe we’ll just have to marry Grandpa off, instead.”
“Actually, that might be easier,” Daphne told her.
In January Daphne started working at the wood shop, performing various unskilled tasks like oiling and paste-waxing. She had done this several times before while she was between jobs, and although she would never choose it for a permanent career she found it agreeable enough. She liked the smell of sap and the golden light that the wood gave off, and she enjoyed the easy, stop-and-go conversation among the workmen. It reminded her of kindergarten—everyone absorbed in his own project but throwing forth a remark now and then. Ian didn’t join in, though, and whenever he said anything to Daphne she was conscious of the furtive alertness in the rest of the room. Clearly, he was considered an oddity here. It made her feel sorry for him, although he might not even notice.
The Friday before Martin Luther King Day, Agatha and Stuart flew in for the long weekend and Thomas came down from New York. Agatha toured the house from basement to attic, checking the results of the Clutter Counseling. She approved in general but pointed out to Daphne that a sort of overlayer was beginning to sprout on various counters and dressers. “Yes, Rita warned us that might happen,” Daphne said. “She offers a quarterly touch-up service but I swore I would do it myself.”
Agatha said, “Hmm,” and glanced at the cat’s flea collar, which for some reason sat on the breadboard. “I wonder how much one of these touch-ups would cost.”
“I could probably get a bargain rate,” Daphne told her. Shoot, she could probably get it for free, if Rita still had her crush on Ian. But maybe she had recovered by now. Daphne hadn’t seen her since that evening in the bar.
Saturday Agatha and Stuart attended an all-day conference on bone marrow transplants, and that night they had dinner with some of their colleagues. This may have been why, on Sunday, they agreed to go to church with the rest of the family. They had barely shown their faces, after all, and tomorrow they would be flying out again. Ian was thrilled, you could tell. He talked his father into coming along too, which ordinarily was next to impossible. Churches ought to look like churches, Doug always said. He was sorry
, but that was just the way he felt.
It was coat weather, but sunny, and so they went on foot—Doug and Ian, then Thomas and Stuart, with Agatha and Daphne bringing up the rear. As they passed each house on Waverly Street, Agatha inquired about the occupants. “What do you see of the Crains these days? Does Miss Bitz still teach piano?” It wasn’t till that moment that Daphne realized how much had changed here. The Crains, no longer newlyweds, had moved to a bigger house after the birth of their third daughter. Miss Bitz had died. Others had gone on to condominiums or retirement communities once their children were grown, and the people who took their places—working couples, often, whose children attended day care—seemed harder to get to know. “All that’s left,” Daphne said, “are the foreigners and Mrs. Jordan.”
“Where is Mrs. Jordan? Shouldn’t we stop by and pick her up?”
“She has to drive now, on account of her rheumatism.”
“This is depressing,” Agatha said.
It did seem depressing. Or maybe that was just the season, the thin white light of January; for in spite of the sunshine the neighborhood had a pallid, lifeless look.
The church was barely half full this morning, but there weren’t six empty chairs in a row and so they had to separate. The men sat near the front, and Daphne and Agatha sat at the rear next to Sister Nell. Sister Nell leaned across Daphne to say, “Why, Sister Agatha! Isn’t this a treat!” Daphne felt a bit jealous; she was never called “Sister” herself. Evidently you had to leave town before you were considered grown.
Two years ago Sister Lula had willed the church her electric organ—the very small kind that salesmen sometimes demonstrate in shopping malls—and Sister Myra was playing “Amazing Grace” while latecomers straggled in. Under cover of the music, Agatha murmured, “Show me which one is Clara.”
Daphne looked around. “There,” she said, sliding her eyes to the left. Clara sat between her father and her brother—a slim woman in her mid-thirties with buff-colored hair feathered perfectly, dry skin powdered, tailored suit a careful orchestration of salmon pink and aqua.
“Why isn’t she sitting with Ian?” Agatha asked.
“Because she’s sitting with her father and brother.”
“You know what I mean,” Agatha told her. But just then the music stopped and Reverend Emmett rose from behind the counter to offer the opening prayer.
He was getting old. It took Agatha’s presence to make Daphne see that. He was one of those people who hollow as they age, and when he turned to reach for his Bible his back had a curve like a beetle’s back. But his voice was as strong as ever. “Proverbs twenty-one: four,” he said in his rich, pure tenor. “ ‘An high look, and a proud heart, and the plowing of the wicked, is sin.’ ” Then he announced the hymn: “In the Sweet Bye and Bye.”
Daphne loved singing hymns. She had forgotten, though, what a trial it was to sing with Agatha, who talked the words in a monotone and broke off halfway through to ask, “Where are the young people? Where are the children?”
Daphne wouldn’t answer. She went on singing.
The sermon had to do with arrogance. Nothing was more arrogant, Reverend Emmett said, than the pride of the virtuous man, and then he told them a story. “Last week, I called on a brother whose wife had recently died. Some of you may know whom I mean. He was not a member of our church, and had visited only a very few times. Still, I was surprised to see him bring forth a bottle of wine once I was seated. ‘Reverend Emmett,’ he said, ‘you happen to have arrived on my fiftieth anniversary. My wife and I always promised ourselves that when we reached this day, we would open a bottle of wine that we’d saved from our wedding reception. Well, she is no longer here to share it, and I’m hoping very much that you will have a glass to keep me company.’ ”
Daphne held her breath. Even Agatha looked interested.
“So I did,” Reverend Emmett said.
Daphne started breathing again.
“I reflected that the Alcohol Rule is a rule for the self, designed to remove an obstruction between the self and the Lord, but drinking that glass of wine was a gift to another human being and refusing it would have been arrogant. And when I took my leave—well, I’m not proud of this—I had a momentary desire for some sort of mouthwash, in case I met one of our brethren on the way home. But I thought, ‘No, this is between me and my God,’ and so I walked through the streets joyfully breathing fumes of alcohol.”
Agatha fell into a fit of silent laughter. Daphne could feel her shaking; she had a sidelong glimpse of her white face growing pink and convulsed. In disgust, Daphne drew away from her and folded her arms across her chest. She didn’t hold with the Alcohol Rule herself, but she almost wished now she did just so she could make a gesture like Reverend Emmett’s. In fact, maybe she already had. Couldn’t you say that every social drink was a gift to another human being? She played with that notion throughout the rest of the sermon, deliberately ignoring Agatha, who kept wiping her eyes with a tissue.
At Amending, Daphne confessed in a low voice that she had spoken rudely to her grandfather. “I told him to quit bugging me about a job,” she said, “and I called Ian an old maid, and I said Bert could go to hell when he showed me where I’d skipped on a bookcase.” Sister Nell was murmuring something long and involved about a dispute with a neighbor. Agatha said nothing, wouldn’t you know. This meant she got to hear everyone else’s sins and pass judgment. “Talk about an high look!” Daphne whispered sharply, and then Reverend Emmett said, “Let it vanish now from our souls, Lord. In Jesus’ name, amen.” After that they stood up to sing “Love Divine, All Loves Excelling.”
The Benediction was hardly finished before Agatha was in the aisle, making her way toward Clara as she put her coat on. Daphne followed, but then Brother Simon stopped her to talk and so she arrived at Agatha’s side too late to introduce her. “I’m Agatha Bedloe-Simms,” Agatha was saying. (Only the rawest newcomer mentioned last names within these walls, but no doubt she wanted to establish her connection to Ian.) “I believe you must be Clara.”
“Why, yes,” Clara said in her ladylike, modulated voice. “And this is my father, Brother Edwin, and my brother, Brother James.”
She was probably making a point, with all those “Brothers,” but if so it passed right over Agatha’s head. “It’s a pleasure to meet you,” Agatha told them. “Clara, Ian has talked so much about you.”
“Oh! Has he?” Clara asked, and a blush started spreading upward from her Peter Pan collar.
Daphne felt confused. Had he really? Before she could find out, though, Reverend Emmett reached their group. “Sister Agatha,” he said, “I’m so glad to see you here.”
He gave no sign of recollecting that Agatha had spurned his church for years and insisted on a city hall wedding. And Agatha herself seemed unabashed. “So tell me, Reverend Emmett,” she said, “what does a fifty-year-old bottle of wine taste like, anyhow?”
“Oh, it was vinegar,” he said cheerfully.
“And don’t you think mentioning it to us was another form of mouthwash, so to speak?”
“Ah,” he said, smiling. “Something to confess at our next Amending.”
He turned to Stuart, who had shown up behind her with Ian. “You must be Agatha’s husband,” he said.
“Brother Stuart,” Stuart announced, with the prideful smirk of someone speaking a foreign language.
There was a bustle of introductions and small talk, and then Reverend Emmett moved off to greet someone else and Agatha whispered to Daphne, “Do we have enough lunch for three extra?”
“Three?” Daphne asked.
“Her father and brother too?”
They didn’t, but that wasn’t the issue. Daphne said, “Agatha, I really don’t think—”
Too late. Agatha turned to Clara and said, “Won’t the three of you come home with us for lunch?”
Clara was still blushing. She looked over at Ian. “Oh, we wouldn’t want to inconvenience you,” she said.
“R
ight,” Ian said. “Maybe some other time.” And he took Agatha’s arm and propelled her toward the door. Daphne and Clara were left gaping at each other. Daphne said, “Um …”
“Well, it was lovely seeing you,” Clara said melodiously.
“Yes, well … so long, I guess.”
Daphne hurried to catch up with the others. Ian still had hold of Agatha, who was looking cross. Outside, when they regrouped—Agatha walking next to Daphne once again—Agatha muttered, “What a dud.”
“Who, Clara?”
“Ian.”
“Maybe they’ve had a fight or something,” Daphne said.
“More likely they’ve just withered on the vine,” Agatha told her.
Up ahead, Stuart was asking all about the Church of the Second Chance. He wanted to know how sizable a membership it had, when it had been founded, what its tax status was. You could tell he was only making conversation, but Ian answered each question gladly and at length. He said that Second Chance had saved his life. Doug, walking in front with Thomas, coughed and said, “Oh, well, ah …” but Ian insisted, “It did, Dad. You know it did.”
He told Stuart, “Sometimes I have this insomnia. I fall asleep just fine but then an hour or so later I wake up, and that’s when the troublesome thoughts move in. You know? Things I did wrong, things I said wrong, mistakes I want to take back. And I always wonder, ‘If I didn’t have Someone to turn this all over to, how would I get through this? How do other people get through it?’ Because I’m surely not the only one, am I?”
They had reached an intersection now, and they waited on the curb while a spurt of traffic passed. Agatha clutched her coat collar tight and glanced over at Daphne. There was something meaningful in the way she narrowed her eyes. And you didn’t want me to invite a girlfriend for him, she must be saying.
“You know that clock downstairs that strikes the number of hours,” Ian told Stuart. “And then it strikes once at every half hour. So when you hear it striking once, you can’t be certain how much of the night you’ve used up. Is it twelve-thirty, or is it one, or is it one-thirty? You have to just lie there and wait, and hope with all your heart that next time it will strike two. Or what’s worse, some nights it starts striking one, two, three and you say, ‘Ah!’ And then four, five and you say, ‘Can this be? Have I really slept through till dawn?’ And then six, seven and you say, ‘Oh-oh,’ because you can see it’s not that light out. And sure enough, the clock goes on to twelve, and you brace yourself for another six hours till morning.”
