Saint Maybe - Anne Tyler [139]
And all his years here he had failed to understand Mr. Brant’s prejudice against nails, his insistence on mortise-and-tenon and dovetails. “You put a drawer together with dovetail, it stays tight a century no matter what the weather,” Mr. Brant was fond of saying, and Ian always thought, A century! Who cares? It was not that he opposed doing a thing well. Everything that came from his hands was fine and smooth and sturdy. But you could manage that with nails too, for heaven’s sake; and if it didn’t last forever, why, he would not be there to notice. Now, though, he took special pride in the cradle’s nearly seamless joints, which would expand and contract in harmony and continue to stay tight through a hundred steamy summers and parched winters.
Early in December Rita and Ian went with Daphne and her new boyfriend, Curt, to a bar downtown that featured pinball machines. Daphne had developed a passion for pinball. Rita was beginning her seventh month and she had lately cut her work hours in half, which left her with too much time on her hands. Any outing at all struck her as preferable to staying home. This was why Ian agreed to go to the bar, even though he didn’t drink. And Rita, of course, couldn’t drink, and Curt turned out to belong to A. A. So there the three of them sat with their seltzers while Daphne, merrily sloshing her beer, toured the various games. Her favorite, she said, was the one called Black Knight 2000, which she wanted the four of them to try if only the others would give them half a chance. She hoisted herself onto a stool and glowered at the crowd. There were so many people here that Ian couldn’t even see what kind of room it was.
Curt was telling Rita about his sister’s breech baby. (Did people actively collect these tales?) He didn’t look like much, in Ian’s honest opinion—a bespectacled and bearded type in clothes too determinedly rustic. Also, something unfortunate had happened to his hair. It stuck out all over his head in rigid little cylinders. Ian said, “What …?” He leaned closer to Daphne and said, “What would you call that kind of hairdo, exactly?”
“Do you like it? I did it myself,” she said. “You braid dozens and dozens of eentsy braids and dunk them in Elmer’s glue to make them last. The only problem is when he jogs.”
“Jogs?”
“He claims they bobble against his head and bang his scalp.”
Ian snorted, but all at once he felt old. In fact he was very likely the oldest person present. He looked down at the hand encircling his glass—the grainy skin on his knuckles, the gnarled veins in his forearm. How could he have assumed that old people were born that way? That age was an individual trait, like freckles or blond hair, that would never happen to him?
He was older now, he thought with a thud, than Danny had ever managed to become.
Rita was laughing at something Curt had said, unconsciously cradling the bulge of her baby as she leaned back against the bar. Daphne was humming along with the jukebox. “Madonna,” she broke off to tell Ian.
“Pardon?”
“ ‘Like a Prayer.’ ”
“I beg your pardon?”
“The song, Ian.”
“Oh.”
He took a gulp from his glass. (This seltzer smelled like wet dog.) “So anyhow,” he said to Daphne, “where did you and Curt meet?”