Saint Maybe - Anne Tyler [118]
Late in August a gentle, pattering rain began one afternoon, and people ran out of their houses and flung open their arms and raised their faces to the sky. Daphne, walking home from the bus stop, thought she knew how plants must feel; her skin received each cool, sweet drop so gratefully. But the rain stopped short ten minutes later as if someone had turned a faucet off, and that was the end of that.
Then summer was over—the hardest summer in history, her grandfather said. (He meant because of Bee’s death, of course. He had probably not even noticed the drought.) But fall was not much wetter, or much more cheerful either.
October marked the longest Daphne had ever held a job—one entire year—and the florist gave her a raise. Her friends said now that she was making more money she ought to rent a place of her own. “You’re right,” she told them. “I’m going to start looking. I know I should. Any day I will.” No one could believe she still lived at home with her family.
That Thanksgiving was their first without Bee. It wasn’t a holiday Agatha usually returned for—she was an oncologist out in L.A., with a very busy practice-but this time she did, accompanied of course by Stuart. When Daphne came home from work Wednesday evening, she found Agatha washing carrots at the kitchen sink. They kissed, and Agatha said, “We’ve just got back from the grocery. There wasn’t a thing to eat in the fridge.”
“Well, no,” Daphne said, leaning against a counter. “We thought we’d have Thanksgiving dinner at a restaurant.”
“That’s what Grandpa said.”
As usual, Agatha wore a tailored white blouse and a navy skirt. She must have a closetful; she dressed like a missionary. Her black hair curled at her jawline in the docile, unremarkable style of those generic women in grade-school textbooks, and her face was uniformly white, as if her skin were thicker than other people’s. Heavy, black-rimmed glasses framed her eyes. You could tell she thought prettiness was a waste of time. She could have been pretty—another woman with those looks would have been pretty—but she preferred not to be. Probably she disapproved of Daphne’s tinkling earrings and Indian gauze tunic; probably even her jeans, which Daphne did have to lie down to get into.
“You know what Grandma always told us,” Agatha said. “Only riffraff eat their holiday meals in restaurants.”
“Yes, but everything’s been so—”
Just then, Stuart came through the back door with a case of mineral water. “Hello, Daphne,” he said, setting the case on the counter. He shook her hand formally. Daphne said, “Well, hey there, Stuart,” and wondered all over again how her sister had happened to marry such an extremely handsome man. He was tall and muscular and tanned, with close-cut golden curls and eyes like chips of sky, and away from the hospital he wore the sort of casual, elegant clothes you see in ads for ski resorts. Maybe he was Agatha’s one self-indulgence, her single nod to the importance of appearance. Or maybe (more likely) she just hadn’t noticed. It was possible she was the only woman in all his life who hadn’t backed off in confusion at the sight of him, which would also explain why he had married her. Look at her now, for instance, grumpily stashing his bottles in the refrigerator. “Really, Stu,” she said, “you’d think we were staying till Christmas.”
“Well, someone will drink it,” he told her affably, and he went to hold open the door for Doug, who was hauling in a giant sack of cat food.
Ian arrived from work earlier than usual, and he hugged Agatha hard and pumped Stuart’s hand up and down. He was always so pleased to have everyone home. And after supper—mostly sprouts and cruciferous vegetables, Agatha’s doing—he announced he’d be skipping Prayer Meeting to meet Thomas’s train with them. Ian almost never skipped Prayer Meeting.
He was the one who drove, with his father up front next to him and Daphne in back between Agatha and Stuart, her right arm held stiffly