Earthly Possessions - Anne Tyler [41]
I believe that was the clearest, happiest moment of all my life.
But this was 1960, remember, when Clarion was still a sleepy little town and there weren’t all that many buses. “What day are you leaving?” Libby asked. (In 1960, there really was a Libby still.)
I said, “Day?”
“Bus comes through Mondays and Thursdays, Charlotte. Which do you want a ticket for?”
This place just wouldn’t let go of me. You’d think at least they’d get the bus schedule synchronized with the garbage schedule.
“Thursday, please,” I said. “Tomorrow.”
And then I had to empty out my purse. All she gave me back was eight dollars. But the ticket was worth it, I decided: long enough to tie around my waist. I folded it carefully, feeling slowed and chastened.
After that, I needed a place to stay till Thursday. It was ridiculous that Saul got to live at my mother’s. And Aunt Aster would never allow her guest room to be used. In the end, I had to go on over to the Blue Moon Motel—four dollars nightly, a joke for high school boys with fast ideas. Had to spend the afternoon lying on a mangy chenille bedspread in my stocking feet, not so much as a television to watch, not even a file to do my nails with. My life grew perfectly still, but I told myself it was the stillness that animals take on just before they spring into action.
This was when they hadn’t yet opened the lipstick factory, so when Saul got home from class I don’t think it took him twenty minutes to track me down. Everybody knew where I’d gone; everybody’d seen me tearing off down the street on a brisk October day without a coat on. Or so they said. (Actually I’d been walking, very calmly.) Saul came to the motel and knocked on my door, two sharp knocks. “Charlotte, let me in. What’s the matter with you?”
I was suddenly filled with strength. I was jubilant. I wanted to laugh.
“Charlotte!”
It was clear from the self-assured tone of his voice that he didn’t know what he was up against. I refused to answer him. After a while he went away.
Then everything buckled and crumbled. I felt so sad, I thought something inside me was breaking. I wished I could erase all I’d ever done, give up and die. So when the phone rang, I pounced on it. It was Saul. He said, “Charlotte, quit this, please.”
“I’ll never quit,” I said.
“You want me to get a key from Mrs. Baynes and come in after you?”
“You can’t, I’ve got the chain on the door.”
“Look. I know you wouldn’t leave me,” he said.
“I wouldn’t?”
“I know you love me.”
“I don’t love you at all.”
“I think this must have something to do with your condition,” he said.
“Condition? What condition?”
“You’re pregnant. Aren’t you.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” I told him.
“You can’t fool me, I remember from when my brothers were born. Lots of times I … Charlotte?”
I was counting. I looked around for a calendar but there wasn’t one. I had to count on my fingers, whispering dates to myself. Saul said, “Charlotte?”
“Oh, my God in heaven,” I said.
Saul said, “Charlotte, I wish you wouldn’t take the Lord’s name in vain like that.”
Being pregnant affected me in ways I hadn’t foreseen. For one thing, I became very energetic. I would dash around the studio, shoving heavy cartons aside, wheeling that old camera on its creaky stand till the soldier or whoever rose from his chair looking anxious: “Uh, ma’am, do you think this is wise?” I was stronger and needed less sleep. Long into the night sometimes I’d be pacing the floor. But I was also easily hurt, and things could make me cry for no reason. Julian, for instance.
Julian was Saul’s youngest brother, the handsomest and most shiftless of all. He had a sulky, rumpled, Italian look that used to charm all the girls in school, and his weakness was gambling. But gambling men are not as dashing as the folk songs make them out to be; they tend to break down when they’re on a losing streak. Julian