Saint Maybe - Anne Tyler [3]
They moved to the living room, Ian bringing up the rear. Lucy perched in an easy chair and Danny settled on its arm, with one hand resting protectively behind her loose knot of black hair. To Ian, Lucy resembled some brightly feathered bird held captive by his brown plaid family. Her face was very small, a cameo face. Her dress was scoop-necked and slim-waisted and full-skirted. She wore extremely red lipstick that seemed not gaudy, for some reason, but brave. Ian was entranced.
“Tell us everything,” Bee Bedloe ordered. “Where you met, how you got to know each other—everything.”
She and Ian’s father had seated themselves on the sofa. (Ian’s father, who had a baseball player’s mild, sloping build, was pulling in his stomach.) Ian himself remained slouched against the door frame.
“We met at the post office,” Danny said. He beamed down at Lucy, who smiled back at him trustfully.
Bee said, “Oh? You two work together?”
“No, no,” Lucy said, in a surprisingly croaky little drawl. “I went in to mail a package and Danny was the one who waited on me.”
Danny told them, “She was mailing a package to Cheyenne, Wyoming, by air. I told her it would cost twenty dollars and twenty-seven cents. You could see it was more than she’d planned on—”
“I said, ‘Twenty twenty-seven! Great God Almighty!’ ” Lucy squawked, startling everyone.
“So I told her, ‘It’s cheaper by parcel post, you know. That would be four sixty-three.’ ‘Let me think,’ she says, and moves on out of the way. Gives up her place at the counter. Stands a few feet down from me, frowning at the wall.”
“I had to take a minute to decide,” Lucy explained.
“Frowns at the wall for the longest time. Three customers go ahead of her. Finally I say, ‘Miss? You ready?’ But she just goes on frowning.”
“I was mailing some odds and ends to my ex-husband and I wanted to be shed of them as fast as possible,” Lucy said.
A little jolt passed through the room.
Bee said, “Ex-husband?”
“Half of me wanted him to get that box tomorrow, even yesterday if it could be arranged, but the other half was counting pennies. ‘That’s fifteen-and-some dollars’ difference,’ this other half was saying. ‘Think of all the groceries fifteen dollars could buy. Or shoes and stuff for the children.’ ”
“Children?”
“What got to me,” Danny said, “was how she wouldn’t be hurried. How it didn’t bother her what other people made of her. I mean she just stood there pondering, little bit of a person. Then finally she said, ‘Well,’ and straightened her shoulders and chose to spring for airmail.”
“It mattered just enough, I decided,” Lucy said. “It was worth it just for the satisfaction.”
“If she had said parcel post I might have let her go,” Danny said. “But airmail! I admired that. I asked if she’d like to have dinner.”
“He was the best-looking thing I’d seen in ages,” Lucy told the Bedloes. “I said I’d be thrilled to have dinner.”
Bee and Doug Bedloe sat side by side, smiling extra hard as if someone had just informed them that they were being photographed.
There was this about the Bedloes: They believed that every part of their lives was absolutely wonderful. It wasn’t just an act, either. They really did believe it. Or at least Ian’s mother did, and she was the one who set the tone. Her marriage was a great joy to her, her house made her happy every time she walked into it, and her children were attractive and kind and universally liked. When bad things happened—the usual accidents, illnesses, jogs in the established pattern—Bee treated them with eye-rolling good humor, as if they were the stuff of situation comedy. They would form new chapters in the lighthearted ongoing saga she entertained the neighbors with: How Claudia Totaled the Car. How Ian Got Suspended