Earthly Possessions - Anne Tyler [30]
“Huh?” he said. He looked around the diner.
“In the paper. Not in the paper.”
“So?”
The waitress brought our order. I sat staring into my coffee, not touching it. Jake hitched up his jacket sleeves and reached across me for the salt. “How much cash you got?” he asked me.
“Cash?”
“I need to find out.”
“It’s none of your business,” I said.
“I know you got some, I saw it in your billfold.”
“That’s my own private money,” I said.
Ordinarily I don’t give a hoot about money, never have; but this was different. I was on my own and forgotten, deserted by everyone who should have been hunting me, and here was this stranger trying to take my last means of support. Also, my feelings were hurt. I’d enjoyed having somebody buy me things, to tell the truth. I said, “You might show a little consideration.”
“Look. Lady,” said Jake. “Charlotte. This trip ain’t cheap, for the gas alone. I’m running short. Now as a rule I would no more take from a individual person than fly, but in this case I have got to ask you for your billfold.”
I pretended not to hear him.
“Let’s just say it’s a loan,” he said.
“I don’t want to loan it.”
“I’m begging you. I got to have it. What you think, those puny dollar bills will last forever?”
The waitress glanced over her shoulder at us. Light flashed off her spectacles.
“You’re killing me,” Jake said. “Just sitting here killing me.”
His voice was low but cracking around the edges, and I could tell he was about to throw a scene. I hate scenes. I took the billfold out of my purse and slapped it down on the counter.
“Ah,” said Jake.
“Seven measly dollars,” I said. “I certainly hope you’re satisfied.”
“Word of honor I’ll pay it back, Charlotte. Cross my heart.”
“I bet,” I said.
I rested my chin on my fist. Brooded over my coffee, blinking in the steam. Looked around for sugar, but the metal rack was empty. I could have cried. “There’s no sugar!” I said.
“Well, there,” said Jake, and fished up a pack from his pocket. He opened it and poured it in for me. I sat back and watched. Then he added cream, and stirred it with a plastic spoon. “Drink it,” he told me.
I felt comforted. All I had to do was lift the cup, which was warm and heavy and solid. Everything else had been seen to. I was so well taken care of.
8
After Saul and I were engaged, my mother made some adjustments in her thinking. I suppose she imagined ways of keeping us with her forever, somehow. She acted friendlier toward him. She grew more animated and had to be taken to look at wedding gowns. Her heart’s desire was a real church wedding, she said. Saul said that would be fine. Not a one of us belonged to a church, but why point that out? I just drifted along. There was a satisfying heaviness in my hands and feet that made me move unusually slowly. Though sometimes I’d sit up with my heart pounding; I’d wonder: Am I really going to do this? Go on through with this? What can I be thinking of? But then I’d make my mind go blank. My muscles would loosen, and the heaviness would swim back over me.
Taking pictures now, I froze so long behind the camera that you might ask who was getting preserved here: my customers or me. Sitting with Saul in the evenings, I sheltered under his arm and listened to him plot our lives. He wanted six children. I assumed I couldn’t have any (having inherited, in some illogical way, my mother’s non-pregnancy and untrue baby) but I nodded, even so. I imagined six dark, unreadable little boys with Saul’s straight nose, hanging onto my skirts. I imagined myself suddenly as colorful, rich, and warm as Alberta, my narrow, parched life opening like a flower. All I had to do was give myself up. Easy. I let him lead me. I agreed to everything. It was such a pleasure that I felt soothed and sleepy, like a cat in sunshine.
Mama said there was nothing fit to wear in the bridal shops, and she started making my dress at home. White satin, high-necked, with buttoned sleeves. Evidently she wasn’t planning on a summer wedding. It was almost June by then. Saul’s money was running low. He