Earthly Possessions - Anne Tyler [76]
“You know I got low blood sugar.”
“Really? You want some sugar?”
“No I don’t want sugar.”
“No trouble at all, Mindy, I got it right here.” He searched his jacket, accidentally poking me with one elbow. “Look at here. Domino sugar.”
The packets were worn and grimy by now. He held them out, a double handful. “Never say I don’t come prepared.”
“Jake Simms,” said Mindy, “don’t you know anything? It’s not sugar I need, that would be stupid.”
He lowered his hands. He looked over at me. “Can you figure that?” he asked.
“Well …”
“She’s got low blood sugar, but she don’t want to eat sugar.”
“She must know, I guess.”
He shook his head, looking down at the packets. “I just don’t see this, Mindy,” he said. “You don’t even make sense. How come you run after me so hard if it turns out there’s no way I can please you?”
“Me run after you?” said Mindy. “Oh, go ahead, gripe and groan. Blame it all on me. Then ask yourself what you told me last Fourth of July. Go on, ask yourself.”
He gave me a quick glance, sideways, from under his blunt lashes.
“What’d you tell her?” I asked.
He set his mouth, crammed the sugar back into his pockets.
“Told me he never had come to rest with anyone but me,” said Mindy. “Said he didn’t know why, it was just the way he felt. We were eating a picnic lunch, he had done right poorly in a demolition derby. I told him that derby didn’t matter a bit. ‘To my mind,’ I told him, ‘you will always be like the first time I saw you driving: real swift and fine, in your white western jacket that got tore up later in that derby over by Washington.’ And that’s when he said what he said. Asked if I would marry him.”
“I never did,” said Jake.
“Well, you said you could see that it might someday come to pass.”
“You just got it all twisted around to suit your purposes.”
“No, Jake,” she said. “Believe me, I do not. It’s you that twists. Can’t you see what spits you in the face? For every time you run from me, there’s another time you run after me, deliver yourself up to me. You say, ‘Mindy, I’m yours. You’re all I got.’ You call out under my window, you drive by my house in the night and I see your headlights slide across my ceiling. You get me on the telephone: ‘Everybody’s mad at me and the world don’t look so hot. Can’t you come on out and keep me company?’ ”
“You just like to exaggerate,” said Jake.
“What you said was, ‘I can see that we might someday find ourselves married.’ ”
“If I did, I don’t recall it.”
“ ‘Like, if you was to end up pregnant or something,’ you said.”
There was a silence.
“You said, ‘What do I want to keep buffeting back and forth for, anyhow? Why don’t I just give up?’ ”
In the sudden glow of a movie marquee Jake’s face appeared sallow, unhealthy. The skin beneath his eyes was a bruised color.
“Isn’t that the truth?” Mindy asked him.
“Hold it, I found us a bank. Pull over.”
She slammed on the brakes, throwing both of us forward, and veered into a parking space. Jake held himself upright with a hand on the dashboard. “There was something I was meaning to ask,” he said slowly. “All this crazy talk has put it right out of my head.”
We waited.
Then his face cleared. “How much money you got?” he said to Mindy.
“Is that all you can think about?”
“I mention it in case you want a hot dog or something, while me and Charlotte are in the bank.”
“Oh,” she said. “Well, I got enough.”
“See that little diner joint? Meet you there in five minutes. Maybe ten.”
“You want me to order you two something?”
“Naw,” said Jake.
“Aren’t you hungry?”
“Oh, why, well sure,” he said, “but that hot dog is just to hold you, Mindy. After we get our money we’re going somewheres good. Isn’t that right, Charlotte. Charlotte?”
“A steak place would be nice,” said Mindy.
“Steak place, any place, I don’t care,” he told her. “Scoot.”
Mindy opened the door and slid out. We followed. Jake touched a finger to Mindy’s wrist. “Bye,” he said.
“Bye,” she said, and left, swinging her heart-shaped purse. It was a warm, buggy night that smelled of caramel. The streets were