by Anne Tyler
“Eleven,” Marilyn announced at last, and the rest of them picked up their cards.
Nor did Pauline mention Alex Barrow at any point. First off, they wouldn’t have known who he was. But also, she regretted dropping his name at the pool. So she kept quiet, much quieter than usual, and listened more than she talked. She listened to what Wanda’s husband had said about the new carpet; then to what Marilyn’s husband had said about her golabki—both remarks insulting, so that the other women gave scandalized little gasps of laughter. (Never mind that Marilyn’s husband was Wanda’s brother. In this room, he was The Opposite Side.) Did all wives believe they had chosen the wrong course?
When they had finished their game, drunk their coffee, eaten the last of the little sugared pastries from Kostka Brothers and wiped their fingers on Katie’s jazzy Miro-print napkins, it was Pauline who made the first move to leave. “Oh, not yet!” the others cried, but she said, “I’ve got a drive ahead, remember. And no doubt the Anxiety Committee will be wringing his hands at the window.” So they let her go, with hugs and pats and promises to phone.
She descended the wooden stairs feeling the faint sense of bereavement that always overtook her when she parted from her girlfriends.
As usual, the trip home seemed to take less time than traveling in the other direction. And certainly she had less trouble finding her way. Before she knew it she was back on Loch Raven, speeding northward, rolling her window almost shut to stop her hair from blowing. She had a tune repeating in her brain, something her children liked to sing that she hummed in disjointed snatches. I’m sorry, playmates, I cannot play with you . . .
The entrance to Elmview Acres was a double wrought-iron gate that always stood open, rising in two graceful curves from two square brick pillars. On the right-hand pillar, a black-and-brass sign read ELMVIEW ACRES, EST. 1947.
My dolly has the flu, boo-hoo, boo-hoo, boo-hoo . . .
She turned right on Santa Rosa, passing the pool, which was unpopulated now except for the lifeguard silhouetted against the sunset on his high white chair; passing the clubhouse with its glass-encased bulletin board out front (bridge classes, child study classes, Garden Club workshops). She turned right on Beverly Drive and then, for the second time that day, she took an unpremeditated left onto Candlestick Lane.
If he happened to be in his yard, she would stop and roll down her window and call out some friendly question about the progress of his meat loaf. If he was not in his yard, she would drive on.
He was not in his yard. But she didn’t drive on.
She slowed and came to a halt and studied the front of his house. It was a very unrevealing house. The front door was solid, without even the smallest glass panes. The giant picture window was shielded by white fabric so textureless and opaque that it might have been some sort of liner, like the waterproof inner curtain on a shower stall.
She turned off the ignition and got out of the car. She marched up the front walk in a businesslike manner, her purse clamped under her arm—a woman just doing her duty.
Before she could press the buzzer, though, he opened the door. “Pauline?” he said. She had neglected to remember how thick and kinky his hair was, and how closely it bracketed his dramatically dense black eyebrows. He was wearing a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up so high that she could see the bulge of his biceps.
“I was just driving back from the city,” she said. (“The city” sounded more sophisticated than “my girlfriend’s place.”) “I thought I should stop and ask how your meat loaf is doing.”
“Well, aren’t you thoughtful! Come in,” he said, stepping back and gesturing toward the foyer. He was barely taller than she was; that was sort of a shock. Although he gave the impression of mass and muscle, so that when she moved past him to enter the house she felt petite by comparison.
“The meat loaf has been compiled, so to speak,” he told her, “but it hasn’t gone into the oven yet. You can see if it passes inspection.”
He led the way toward the kitchen, through a layout eerily similar to that of her own house but airier and more open. The place was very tidy. He hadn’t let things slide the way a lot of men would. And the kitchen was immaculate. If not for the loaf pan on the counter beside the stove, you would never have known he’d been cooking.
The meat loaf was an unappetizing brown rather than a nice fresh red. Pauline bent close and sniffed it. It did smell all right, she thought. “Well, good for you!” she told him. “This looks delicious!” She straightened and surveyed her surroundings. The window curtains were printed with fruits in a repeating white-lattice framework, a pattern her mother would have liked. Pauline herself would never have chosen anything so old-fashioned. A wall calendar hung next to the phone with nothing written in.
“Forget delicious,” Alex was saying. “I’ll settle for just edible. You’re looking at a man in crisis. Last night I made military beans and they were a disaster.”
“Military beans?”
“Or . . . no, army beans.”
Pauline wrinkled her forehead. Then it came to her. “Navy beans!” She laughed.
“Yes, that’s it, navy beans.”
“Well, navy beans are tricky. You have to cook them forever. Why on earth would you choose navy beans?”
“I assumed they’d be a cinch,” he told her. “My mom used to make them; she cooked them with a can of tomatoes. I thought, What could be simpler than that? But at ten o’clock at night they were still these little hard pebbles. I ended up throwing them out.”
Pauline studied him a moment. Then she said, “It’s difficult, isn’t it. Being on your own.”
Once again she was amazed at her daring, but Alex seemed to take it in stride. “Yes,” he said, “in some ways it is. In practical ways, like figuring out how to work the washing machine and such. Gosh, houses have so many parts to them! But in other ways, it’s kind of a relief.”
Pauline cocked her head and waited. She hadn’t seen him so serious before. He was leaning back against the counter with his arms tightly folded across his chest, his biceps all the more noticeable.
“I couldn’t do anything right, towards the end,” he said. “Nothing I did would satisfy her. She had this way of going silent and then glancing off to one side and raising her eyebrows. I got the feeling someone was standing there agreeing I was hopeless.”
“Oh, I know!” Pauline said. It just burst out of her, somehow.
He was about to continue speaking, but he paused and looked at her.
“I know exactly what you mean,” she said in a lower voice.
“You do?”
“And there’s that compressed thing they do with their mouths, like they could think of lots to say except they’re too self-controlled to say it.”
“Exactly,” Alex said. “But I can’t believe anyone would do that with you.”
“Try telling that to my husband,” she said.
“I always thought your husband looked like a pretty nice guy.”
“Nice!” she said. “Well, yes. But, oh, you know how it is when someone’s constantly disappointed in you. Disapproving of you. Judging you and finding you lacking.”
“Frowning in this unamused way,” Alex said, “when you say something you’d fancied was funny.”
“He doesn’t even like music,” Pauline said. “He prefers dead quiet. If I have the radio on when he comes home—just something lively, you know, to brighten up the atmosphere—he right away clicks it off. Sometimes that’s my first inkling that Michael’s in the house: this sudden silence.”
“Well, how about if you’re making the music?” Alex asked her. “Me, now, I play the trumpet.”
“You do?”
“I was in the marching band in high school.”
“Oh, I love the trumpet! It’s so energetic.”
“But when I tried to play it after we married, Adelaide worried it would bother the neighbors. She wanted me to use a mute. It’s not the same instrument with a mute.”
“Well, of course not,” Pauline said.
“There are so many shoulds in their lives,” Alex said.
“They haven’t got any talent for enjoyment,” Pauline said.
They were quiet a moment. Pauline felt suddenly bashful. She looked downward and hugged her purse. Then Alex reached for the purse and gently lifted it from her grasp, and she looked up and found him gazing into her eyes. Not so much as glancing away from her, he set the purse on the counter next to the meat loaf and leaned closer to kiss her on the lips. His mouth was very warm. He smelled like thyme or marjoram—something green and on the verge of bitter.
When they separated, she felt no less bashful than before. To cover her embarrassment beneath his grave, steady scrutiny, she stepped forward and tipped her face to him again and they went back to kissing. His hands slid up under the tail of her blouse, heating her skin through her slip. Oh, Lord, what bra was she wearing? Was it the one with the safety pin? Now he was working around toward her breasts, and she pulled away and smoothed her blouse down and gave him a shaky smile.
“Goodness!” she said.
He was out of breath, she saw. And not smiling.
“Well, I’d better be—goodness! Look at the time!”
In fact there wasn’t a clock in sight, as far as she could tell, although certainly the kitchen had grown dimmer.
“Pauline,” he said.
She retrieved her purse from the counter and faced him, wearing what she hoped was a bright and interested expression.
“I’m sorry,” he told her. “I shouldn’t have done that.”
“Oh, that’s okay!” she said.
She hoped he didn’t mean he regretted it.
He said, “Can’t we . . . ? Do you really have to go just now? I’d like for you to stay.”
“I’m already very late,” she told him. “They’ll be wondering where their supper is.”
“Couldn’t I see you afterward? This evening? How about if I sort of, say, walked past your house after dark? Couldn’t you come outside and just talk with me? Only talk?”
“I’m not sure,” she said.
“You could say you want a breath of fresh air; you’re going to take a stroll.”
She had never in her life said she wanted a breath of fresh air. She and Michael were not the types to take a stroll with no purpose. But she found herself saying, “Michael goes to bed before I do, often. Usually about nine or so.”
“Nine, then,” Alex said.
“This would be just to talk, though.”
“Yes, of course,” Alex told her. “Honest. I promise.”
To emphasize the promise he reached out and took hold of her wrist, encircling it completely with his strong, thick fingers. She needed all of her resolve to draw away from him and leave.
It seemed that she’d been in his house no more than two minutes, but outside the sky was white and flat, edging on toward twilight. She started the car too abruptly and took off too fast, speeding down Candlestick Lane to Pasadena and then swerving right onto Winding Way, approaching her house from the wrong direction so that what mattered to her most was getting into the driveway before anybody noticed. She parked haphazardly the instant she’d turned in, well before reaching the carport, and flung herself out of the car and hurried up the front walk. But then at the door, she paused. She touched her fingers to her lips and reached up to pat her hair and checked to make sure her blouse was tucked firmly back into her skirt. Really what she needed was a kind of margin, here—a no-man’s-land between the two houses where she could regain her composure. But already the door was opening and “Mom!” Lindy cried. “Tell George he’s not allowed to play with my Silly Putty! He’s messed it all up with different colors from his stupid comic books!” Karen, who had something black smudged around her mouth, was holding out her arms and saying, “Up, Mama, up,” and Mother Anton was hovering behind in that shadowy, dithery way she had, so irritating, so helpless. “Did I misunderstand?” she asked Pauline. “I had thought you’d be home long before this. Was there something I should have done about supper?”
“No, no . . . Karen, what is that on your face? Don’t hang on me, Lindy; let me catch my breath. Where’s your father?”
“He’s in the kitchen trying to make soup,” Lindy said.
“Soup! What’s he want soup for? I’ve got supper all ready to go into the oven!”
She forged a path through the dining room, hindered by children clinging to her skirt or her ankles or wherever they could reach—it felt like a dozen children, not three—and followed by Mother Anton with her put-upon expression. Michael was struggling to open a can with the little pocket-size can opener that Pauline used only on picnics. He turned when she came in and said, “Thank goodness you’re here! The children were crying with hunger!”
“Oh, for mercy’s sake,” she told him. “It’s not as if they’re in danger of starvation.” She set her purse on the counter and took the can opener from him. “I’ll throw dinner in the oven and it’ll be ready in an hour.”
“An hour!” Michael said.
She pretended not to hear him. (In fact, it would be more than an hour, since the oven needed preheating. But maybe she could jack up the temperature a bit and hurry things along.) She set the thermostat to 4000 and took a Pyrex casserole out of the fridge along with a head of iceberg lettuce. The clipping sound of her heels made her seem brisk and efficient, she hoped; but no, Michael was still watching her with those reproachful eyes of his. “Where were you all this time?” he asked.
“It’s not so late!” she told him. “My stars! If you people didn’t insist on eating before the sun goes down—”
“I phoned Katie and she said you’d left ages ago.”
“Yes, well, I just . . . stopped by my folks’ house,” Pauline told him. She was fitting the casserole into the oven now, so she didn’t have to look him in the face. He said, “Your folks?” but then Karen began clamoring for him to pick her up—a providential distraction.
“How’s poor Megan?” Mother Anton asked. “Has she had that baby yet?”
“You mean Donna,” Pauline told her. The woman could not seem to get Pauline’s sisters’ names right, which usually was an annoyance, but tonight Pauline welcomed the change of subject. “It’s Donna who’s having the baby,” she said. “No, it still hasn’t come, after they went to all that trouble last night getting her to the hospital, calling Mom over to babysit . . . and then it was false labor.”
“Gracious, you’d think she’d recognize false labor by now,” Mother Anton said. “Isn’t this her third?”
“Her fourth.”
“Oh, I thought she had two.”
“It’s Megan who has two.”
“Isn’t Megan who we’re talking about?”
Pauline stopped unwrapping the head of lettuce and sent Michael a despairing glance, but he stared back at her without expression. Karen was scrambling all over him, working her way from his arms to his shoulders while he stood there like an inanimate object. “What’s that around Karen’s mouth?” Pauline asked him. (Might as well take the offensive.) “I leave her in your charge and come home to find her turned into a tar baby!”
“It’s chewing gum,” George piped up. He was sitting on the floor with a comic book. “She got chewing gum in her hair, even, and Daddy had to cut it off with scissors.”
Pauline gave Karen a closer look. Sure enough, a spot above her left ear had been sheared right down to the scalp. She said, “Oh, for—you know she’s too young to have chewing gum!”
Michael didn’t answer. He continued to watch her, no doubt winning points in heaven for his forbearance, and it was George who said, “Daddy didn’t give it to her. She got hold of it off your dresser top.”
“Well, Lord knows how we’ll ever clean her up,” Pauline said. “She may just have to grow old that way.”
And she began cutting the lettuce into wedges, stubbornly not meeting Michael’s gaze.
In the end, clea
ning Karen up required nail-polish remover. Soap and water weren’t enough. Pauline had to wrestle her to the ground and practically sit on her to keep her from twisting free, and the whole time Karen behaved as if she were being murdered, her shrieks reverberating off the bathroom tiles. “Stop that,” Pauline told her. “You’re hurting my ears.” Lindy watched from the doorway, looking pleasantly entertained, while George—soaking in bubble bath—peered wide-eyed over the rim of the tub. Then, of course, Karen had to be returned to the tub herself, hiccuping and sniffing, because now she smelled like a manicure parlor.
At least it occupied the time till dinner was ready. The children seemed to have forgotten they were hungry. Even when they were settled around the dining-room table, finally, damp and pale and subdued in their fresh pajamas, they made no move toward the plates Pauline had filled for them. “Eat,” she told them, and she picked up her fork with a broader gesture than necessary, setting an example. She was slightly damp herself by now, her blouse and skirt splashed with bathwater, her face filmed with sweat. And she had no more appetite than they did, but she cut into her chicken breast with ostentatious enthusiasm. “I got this recipe from Mimi Drew,” she told Michael. “I think you’re going to like it.”
It would be a miracle if he liked it (there were water chestnuts in it), but for once he didn’t make one of his disparaging remarks. Instead, he rose and went to the kitchen for . . . what? For butter. She took it as a reproof; he could have asked her to fetch it. She would have been glad to fetch it. But no, he had to limp all the way across the dining room, all the way into the kitchen and back, swinging his bad leg extra widely from the hip as he tended to do when he was tired. He placed the butter dish in front of his mother and inched back down onto his chair with a grunt. That the butter was for his mother added insult to injury; it implied that Pauline was not properly alert to his mother’s needs. His mother sliced into the butter at once and spread it directly on her bread, as if she’d been too desperate to allow it that ceremonial rest stop on her dinner plate. Michael took a mouthful of chicken and chewed steadily and doggedly. A little vein or muscle flickered in his left temple every time his jaws closed. He made eating seem like hard work.
