Saint Maybe - Anne Tyler [31]
The pharmacist saw them to the door, saying, “Still hot out there?” Thomas and Agatha smiled up at him, remembering to look attractive—Thomas not sucking his thumb, Agatha not letting her mouth flop open—but their mother said, “Mmhmm,” and wheeled the stroller on through without a glance. You never could be sure, with her, who you had to be nice to and who you didn’t.
Standing at the front window and holding back the curtain, Agatha watched for the first star. In the summertime she had to be alert, because the sky stayed light for so long that the stars would more or less melt into view. Agatha knew all about it. She waited at this window every night. Sometimes Thomas waited too, but he wasn’t nearly so faithful. Also he said his wishes aloud, no matter how often she warned him not to. And he wished for definite objects—toys and candy and such—as if the sky were one big Sears, Roebuck Christmas catalog. “Star light, star bright, first star I see tonight … I wish for a front-end loader with real rubber treads on it.”
Agatha, on the other hand, wished silently, and not even in words. She wished in a strong wash of feeling, instead. Let everything turn out all right, was the closest she could put it. Or, no, Let us be safe. But that was not exactly it either.
She looked from the sky to the street and saw Ian and Grandma Bedloe coming up the sidewalk. Ian carried a picnic basket covered with a red-checked cloth, and Grandma Bedloe carried a cake tin. Agatha loved Grandma Bedloe’s cakes. She made one last sweeping search for her star and then gave up and ran to answer the doorbell.
“Hello, dearies,” Grandma Bedloe said, and she kissed Agatha first and then Thomas. It was just since Danny died that she’d started kissing them. It was just since Danny died that she’d dried out so and shortened, and begun to move so stiffly. But the stiffness was rheumatism, she said: her knees acting up. A matter of humidity.
“See what we brought you!” she told them. “Devil’s food cake and fried chicken. Where’s your mother?”
“She’s having a nap.”
“A nap?”
She glanced over at Ian. He wore his most faded jeans and a plain white T-shirt; he must have just got off work. Agatha thought he resembled those handsome teenaged hoodlums on TV. She wished the girls at school could see her once in his company, but it never seemed to happen.
“I hope you haven’t had supper yet,” Grandma Bedloe said. “Has your mother started anything cooking? How long has she been in her nap? Does she usually nap at this hour?”
Each question brought her further into the house. She pressed forward, passing Thomas and Agatha, heading for the kitchen, where she set the cake tin on the table and turned to look around her. “Oh, my, I’d say she hasn’t started cooking,” she said. “Goodness. Well. Try and make space for that basket on the counter, Ian. Agatha, dear, shall I put a few of these dishes to soak while you wake your mother?”
“Or we could eat without her,” Agatha said. “We could let her rest.”
“No, no, I’m sure she’d want—where’s Daphne?”
“In her crib,” Agatha said.
“She’s napping too?”
“No, she’s just … Mama just set her there a while.”
“Well, let’s go get her!” Grandma Bedloe said. “We can’t leave our Daphne all alone, now!” And off she went, with Thomas and Agatha following.
In the children’s room, Daphne poked her nose between the crib bars and cooed. “Hello, sweetness,” Grandma Bedloe told her. She picked her up and said, “Somebody’s sopping.” Then she looked at the supplies lined against the footboard—a filled nursing bottle, a plate of darkening banana slices, and one of the breadsticks Daphne liked to teethe on. “What is all this?” Grandma Bedloe asked. “Her lunch? Her supper? How long has she been in here?”
“Just a teensy while,” Agatha said. “Honest. She just did get put down.”
“Well, I’m going to change her diaper and dress her in some nicer little clothes,” Grandma Bedloe said. (It was true that Daphne