The Beginner's Goodbye (21 page)

“Oh, now. She was just trying to help,” Peggy told me. “She just wants you to find somebody.”

There was a time when I would have said, “Find somebody! Who says I
want
somebody?” But on that particular day, still under the influence of my post-Christmas-dinner blues, I didn’t bother arguing. All I said was, “Even so. It’s not as if losing a spouse were some kind of hobby we could share.”

Neither Peggy nor Irene showed the proper empathy, though. Peggy just tsk-tsked, and Irene left us abruptly because by then we’d arrived at our building. “Bye, now,” she said, and went off to do her shopping.

“This was a woman so skinny I could have cut a hand on her collarbone,” I told Peggy as I opened the door. “She chewed with just her front teeth. She brought cookies made of shirt cardboard.”

“You are
mean
,” Peggy told me severely. She set her purse on her desk and slipped her coat off.

I hesitated.

“Peggy,” I said.

“Hmm?”

“You know your oatmeal-chocolate-chip cookies?”

“Yes.”

“Those big, lumpy ones you brought in a while back?”

“What about them?”

“You know how there were bits of things in them? Little crispy bits? Not chocolate chips, not nuts, but something kind of sharp? Like stones?”

“Soy grits,” she said. She hung her coat on the coat tree.

“Soy grits,” I repeated.

“For the supplemental protein,” she said.

Then she said, “Count on you to suspect stones in a gift cookie.”

“I didn’t say I
suspected
stones. I said they were
like
stones.”

“You are so, so wasteful, Aaron,” she told me. She settled at her desk.

“I’m what?”

“Anyone else would be
glad
when a person tries to be close. You’re too busy checking out her motives.”

I said, “Whose motives are you talking about?”

“You can’t even see it. You don’t even notice. You just let her go to waste.”

“Let
who
go to waste?” I asked. “Are you talking about Louise?”

Peggy threw both hands in the air.

“Oh,” I said. “Wait.”

But she spun toward her computer and started furiously typing. I stood looking at her a moment, and then I walked into my
office. I hung my jacket up and settled behind my desk. I didn’t return to work, though. I had left my door open and I could still see her—the gilt edging of her ruffled hair beneath the overhead lights, the two waterfalls of white lace flowing from her correctly positioned, dutifully level elbows.

I had known Peggy since we were in first grade; I remembered the extra cubby she’d needed for her stuffed animals. I remembered the pantalettes that had frilled below her skirts in junior high. (Some of our ruder classmates used to call her Bo Peep.) And then of course I knew her from all her talk, talk, talk at the office; bear in mind that she was very fond of talking.

On weekends, she had once told us, she liked to go to Stebbins hardware and ask the gray-haired men who clerked there how to fix a sagging door, or what to do about a curling wallpaper seam. She really did need their advice, she said; but also, she found it a comfort. It took her back to the time when her father was alive.

The present that she gave herself after a trying day was to skip the evening news and watch Fred Astaire movies instead.

And she didn’t think her clothes were so odd, she said. (This was in response to a less-than-tactful question from Irene.) They were her way of making an effort—doing something special for the sake of the people around her.

And she took great pleasure in cooking, I knew. She said cooking felt like dancing: it had the same timely moves and the same sense of system and sequence. I could understand that. I pictured her preparing a perfect little meal without a single misstep, humming beneath her breath as she moved around the kitchen. She would arrange a pottery bowl of fresh flowers for the table. She would set out linen napkins that she’d folded into tepees.

I pictured being served such a meal, with the fork at my left and the knife and spoon at my right, instead of all in one hasty clump the way I did it myself. The plate deposited deftly in front of me, positioned exactly so, the fork perhaps moved a bit farther left to make room. The soft warmth of the food rising gently toward my face.

Peggy untying her apron before sitting down across from me.

I got up and went to stand beside her chair. I cleared my throat. I said, “Peggy?”

“What.”

“Would you ever be willing to—would you ever like to go out someplace with me?”

Her fingers paused on the keys. She turned and looked up at me.

“Someplace, like, on a date,” I said. (In case I hadn’t made myself clear.)

She studied me a moment. Then, “Why don’t you ask Irene?” she said.

“Irene!”

“I thought Irene was the one you admired so much.”

“Oh, well, she was,” I said. “She is. But you’re the one I’d like to go someplace with.”

She went on studying me. I stood a little straighter and tried to look my best. I said, “Couldn’t you give me a chance?”

After another long moment, she said, “Well. I could. I would like to give you a chance.”

And she did.

·  ·  ·

I take Maeve inside for apple juice, and while she’s drinking it I settle at the kitchen table with the morning paper. But then Maeve spots my cane leaning beside the back door. She drops her sippy-cup with a clunk and toddles over to grab the cane and bring it to me, like a puppy bringing its leash. “Walk?” she says.

“Walk?”

“Finish your apple juice first.”

She lets the cane clatter to the floor, abandons it without a glance and picks up her juice and downs it, glug-glug, with her eyes fixed on me the whole time—brown eyes, like mine, but disproportionately large and rayed by sunbeam lashes, like Peggy’s. (It always amazes me how two very disparate people’s genes can melt together so seamlessly in their offspring.) She slams the cup on the table and claps her hands, all business. “Walk, Daddy,” she says.

“Okay, Maevums.”

Next door, Mary-Clyde Rust is kneeling in her petunia bed. As we pass she calls, “Morning, Miss Maeve!” and sits back on her heels, clearly prepared for some chitchat, but Maeve waves a hand and keeps going, face set due south, making a beeline for the park. I shrug at Mary-Clyde, and she laughs and returns to her weeding.

The Ushers have a little tin-can trailer in their driveway. Ruth Usher’s sister and brother-in-law are visiting from Ohio. Yesterday Maeve was given a tour of the trailer and she was extremely impressed, so I worry she’ll insist on stopping today, but she is too intent on getting to the park. The central attraction there is a
creek that’s good for grubbing around in. I don’t think we’ve ever gone to that park without returning soaked, both of us.

A couple we don’t know is approaching—a dark-haired young woman and a young man in a Phillies cap. Maeve is about to zip on by when the man says, “Why, hello there,” and she pauses and raises her face to him and flutters her eyelashes, beaming. I’ve never figured out how she decides which people she’ll cotton to. Not two minutes later we meet a jogger who also says hello, and Maeve doesn’t give him a glance.

As we’re nearing Cold Spring Lane, a car slows instead of passing. I look over to see Nandina’s Honda drawing up next to us. “Robbirenna!” Maeve shouts. That’s how she refers to the twins when she’s excited. (Robby was named for Gil’s father; Brenna for our mother.) The two of them survey Maeve stolidly from the backseat, and Nandina leans across to call through the passenger window, “See you at the park?”

“See you,” I say.

If it were Gil, he would offer us a ride, but Nandina is a stickler for the child-seat law. She takes off again, and Maeve sits ker-plunk on the sidewalk and starts wailing.

“We’ll see them in a minute, Maeve.”

“See them
now
!”

I reach down for her hand to lift her to her feet. Her hand is a fist, a tight satin knot, and she tries to pull it away, but I keep a firm hold.

Every so often, I reflect on that story Gil told me: how his father came back from the dead to check on Gil’s construction work. I
know Gil felt it was his father’s unfinished business that brought him, but what’s occurred to me lately is, couldn’t it have been
Gil’s
unfinished business? Couldn’t Gil have been thinking,
I wish to God I could have settled things with my pop
?

I haven’t mentioned this to Gil, though, because I suspect he might be embarrassed he ever told me that story.

Robby and Brenna are older than Maeve by several months, and it shows. They’re more reserved, more self-contained, and they have that social presence that day-care centers seem to confer. When we get to the park we find them deeply absorbed in watching a father and son’s batting practice—the boy connecting with a solid thwack, his mother and his little sister cheering from the sidelines. “Hi, Robby! Hi, Brenna!” Maeve calls out. They each raise an index finger infinitesimally without taking their eyes from the ballplayers. I feel a tug of pity for Maeve, but she’s philosophical about it. She sets off on her own through the weeds along the creek bank. “Butterfly, Daddy!” she calls. “I see it, honey.”

Nandina starts telling me about a dispute she’s having with Charles. This has to do with
Why I Have Decided to Go On Living
, which took off a couple of years ago and unexpectedly made its author and us, both, some actual money. In preparation for next Christmas, Charles is proposing a sequel—maybe
Why I Have Decided to Travel More
or
Why I Have Decided to Have Children
. But the author seems to have come down with writer’s block, and now Charles is suggesting that we enlist some other author, or even write it in-house. Nandina says, “Am I missing
something here? Am I wrong to think that one of those books is enough? Am I hopelessly out of step?”

I say, “No, Nandina, believe me—” and then, “Whoa!” because Maeve has just veered sharply and plunged straight down the bank and into the water. “Get out of there!” I call, and I’m after her in a flash, with Nandina close behind in case I need a hand.

“Turtle, Daddy!” Maeve says. (“Tor-toe,” she pronounces it.)

“Get out of there this instant!”

As I’m hauling her up the bank, I see the twins watching us, setting their identical, coin-shaped faces toward us until we’re safely on dry land again. Then they turn back to the ballplayers without comment.

Do you imagine it hasn’t occurred to me that I might have just made Dorothy’s visits up? That they were mere wishful thinking, brought on by the temporary insanity of grief?

But tell me, in that case, how she could have said those things that she knew and I didn’t.

That she had refused a better job for my sake.

That she had hidden her feelings for my sake.

In short, that she had loved me.

Did I make
that
up?

On the walk home, Maeve lags and complains. She says her legs are too busy. “You’re tired,” I interpret for her, but she takes offense at this. “I’m
not
tired!” she says. I get the impression she associates the word “tired” with naps, which she views as torture
no matter how much she needs one. I say, “Well, then, maybe you’re hungry.” This strikes her as more acceptable. It is, in fact, past noon, and I worry that Peggy is waiting lunch for us. But no, as we turn onto our street we catch sight of her up ahead, unloading a final bag of groceries from her trunk. “Mama!” Maeve shouts, and she takes off at a run.

“How was your morning?” Peggy asks her when she’s close enough. Maeve just gives her a hug around the knees and races on toward the house. Peggy shuts her trunk lid and waits for me to reach her. “Honestly, Aaron, you’re
squelching
!” she says, because my shoes are sopping wet, and so are the cuffs of my trousers. I give her a peck on the cheek and we follow Maeve, who looks as if she’s wearing hip boots. Her overalls are dark with creek water from the thighs on down.

My friend Luke told me once that he’d been considering my question about whether the dead ever visit. It was true that I had asked him, back around the time I asked Nate, but this was weeks and weeks later. Apparently he had been deliberating the issue ever since. “I’ve decided,” he said, “that they
don’t
visit. But I think if you knew them well enough, if you’d listened to them closely enough while they were still alive, you might be able to imagine what they would tell you even now. So the smart thing to do is, pay attention while they’re living. But that’s only my opinion.”

Well, I have no idea if his opinion was right. But all the same, I’m careful these days to pay attention. I see how Peggy gives a frothy little spin to her skirt as she turns onto our sidewalk, and how Maeve has suddenly, out of nowhere, taught herself to climb steps the grownup way, foot above foot. I make a firm mental note of these things as I follow them into the house.

“What?” Peggy asks in the hall. “What are you smiling at?”

“Nothing.”

It would be untruthful to say that I never think of Dorothy anymore. I think of both Dorothys—the one I married and the one who came back to visit. I see the Dorothy I married standing by her office bookcase in her starched white coat, demanding to know what was wrong with my arm, or squinting in a baffled way down the business end of a vacuum-cleaner hose, or fiercely cramming celery into the only Thanksgiving turkey she ever tried to cook. And then I think of how people reacted to the Dorothy who came back—some almost scared and some embarrassed, as if she’d committed a social blunder, and some showing no surprise. But I’m not so sure anymore that those who showed no surprise had forgotten she had died. Maybe they remembered perfectly well. Maybe they were just thinking,
Of course. We go around and around in this world, and here we go again
.

A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Anne Tyler was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, in 1941 and grew up in Raleigh, North Carolina. She graduated at nineteen from Duke University, and went on to do graduate work in Russian studies at Columbia University. This is Anne Tyler’s nineteenth novel; her eleventh,
Breathing Lessons
, was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1988. She is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She lives in Baltimore, Maryland.