Earthly Possessions - Anne Tyler [61]
But no, here he came, shaking his head, extra bouncy on his heels from having had to hold still so long. “It’s Mrs. Jamison, sure enough,” he told us. “Potato on toothpicks, standing at the counter, hoping for someone to look down on.”
“Maybe she won’t know who you are,” Mindy said.
“Are you kidding? Every night she prays I fall out of a window,” said Jake. “We’ll just sit here a while.”
He was talking about a slatted bench that stood at the edge of the yard, facing the street. We sat down on it, Mindy in the middle. It was one of those lukewarm, breezy evenings that make you feel you’re expecting something. We sat like people in a movie house, but all we had to watch was a dingy men’s store across the way and a few passing cars. Periodically Jake would crane around toward the office door—a narrow rectangle full of light.
“What if she’s there for the evening?” Mindy asked him.
“We stay somewheres else and come back the next day. Rent us a room with Charlotte’s traveler’s check.”
“Oh, Jake, I’m beat. Can’t we just go on in and pay no mind what she says to you?”
“I wouldn’t face that woman for nothing,” Jake said. “I’m scared to death of her.”
I thought that was funny. I started laughing, but stopped when he glared at me. “Why don’t you just shove a pistol in her ribs?” I said.
Oh, I was even tireder than I’d thought. Jake drew his head in sharply. Mindy said, “Pistol?”
“Lady’s crazy,” he told her. He had his arm along the back of the seat, and now he started stroking her shoulder like someone calming a cat. “Fact is, Oliver’s mom has always disliked me,” he said. “I believe she ties me up in her mind with things I never had no part in. Various misfortunes of Oliver’s. It wasn’t me put those bombs in no mailboxes, I didn’t even know him then. Didn’t know him till training school. But try and tell her that. She sees me, she thinks ‘Trouble’.”
“She’s not the only one,” Mindy said.
Their voices had taken on that clear, anonymous sound that comes at twilight. They might have been campers telling ghost stories, strollers talking under someone’s window, parents heard from far across a lawn.
“When the two of us got out of training school,” Jake said, “why, I would drop over to see him sometimes. He didn’t live all that much of a distance. He lived with his mom, who was a real estate lady. I would find him home reading, all he done was reading. We’d ride around, go out for a hamburger, you know how it is. I really had a good time with that Oliver. But only if his mom wasn’t there. His mom was so brisky and dry of voice. Never smiled unless she was saying something mean. Like she’d say, ‘Back so soon, Jack?’ She always called me Jack, which is definitely not my name. That can grate on a person. ‘Funny,’ she’d say, ‘I thought you were here just yesterday. No doubt I was mistaken.’ With this small sweet smile curling up her mouth while she was talking. I hate a woman to do that.”
“That’s how my mother did you,” said Mindy. “You just have this knack, I believe.” She told me, “My mother used to be so rude to him! Now she pretends he’s not alive and never will mention his name. I ask in my letters if she’s seen him and all she’ll answer back is how many inches of rain they’ve had. He could fall down dead and she wouldn’t tell me. To her he’s dead already.”
“Well, that explains it,” Jake said.
“What’s it explain?”
“Anyway,” said Jake, “you may laugh that I’d let Mrs. Jamison get to me but I couldn’t help it. I mean I just couldn’t help it. See, at the time my own mom was right disappointed in me too though nowhere near as mean, of course. She would just act pale and slumpy and bow her head real low over her sewing. Know how they do? I went to Oliver’s to get away from her, but met up then with Oliver’s mom. Seems I had been characterized as someone no-account. Seems I couldn’t shake other people’s picture of me.”
I gave a sudden sigh. Mindy crossed her ankles, and her dress stirred and whispered.
“Well, I run off,” said Jake. “I heard of this guy that would pay you for driving a car to California. I just wanted