Saint Maybe - Anne Tyler [46]
Then she spotted Ian. Her eyes widened. She grinned. She dropped to the floor and scuttled toward him, expertly weaving between the grownups’ legs and pausing every now and then to wrench herself free from the hem of her dress. She arrived at his feet, took hold of his trousers and hauled herself to a standing position. When she beamed up at him, she had to tip her head so far back she nearly fell over.
Ian bent and lifted her into his arms. She nestled against his shoulder. “Oh, the darling,” Mrs. Jordan said. “Why, she’s crazy about you! Isn’t she, Ian? Isn’t she? Ian?”
He couldn’t explain why the radiance left over from church fell away so suddenly. The air in the room seemed dull and brownish. Mrs. Jordan’s voice sounded hollow. This child was far too heavy.
Back in school, he kept trying to recapture that feeling he’d had at the funeral. He hummed “Abide with Me” under his breath. He closed his eyes in hopes of summoning up the congregation’s single, melting voice, the soft light from the pebbled windows, the sense of mercy and forgiveness. But nothing came. The bland brick atmosphere of Sumner College prevailed. Biology 101 progressed from nematodes to frogs, and King John repudiated the Magna Carta, and Ian’s roommate dragged him to see Devil-Women from Outer Space.
At night, Danny stood at the blackboard in front of Ian’s English class. “This is a dream,” he announced. “The word ‘dream’ comes from the Latin word dorimus, meaning ‘game of chance.’ ” Ian awoke convinced that there had been some message in this, but the harder he worked to decipher it, the farther away it drifted.
He phoned home Saturday afternoon and learned that Mrs. Jordan, of all people, had cleverly uncovered the name of Lucy’s ex-husband. “What she did,” Bee told Ian, “was sit Agatha down beside her and run through a lot of everyday, wife-ish remarks. She said, ‘Don’t forget the garbage,’ and, ‘Suppertime!’ and, ‘You’re late.’ Her theory was, the name would sort of swim into Agatha’s memory. She thought Thomas was too young to try it on. But all at once Thomas pipes up, ‘You’re late with the check again, Tom!’ he said. Just out of nowhere!”
“Well, that would make sense,” Ian said. “So Thomas must be Tom Junior.”
“I said to Jessie Jordan, I said, ‘Jessie,’ I said, ‘you’re amazing.’ Really I don’t know what I’d have done without her, these past few days. Or any of the neighbors. They’ve all been so helpful, running errands for me and taking the children when my legs are bad …”
What she was saying, it seemed to Ian, was, “See what you’ve gone and done? See how you’ve ruined our lives?” Although of course she didn’t mean that at all. She went on to say the Cahns, next door, had lent her their sitter, and the foreigners had brought over a pot of noodle soup with an aftertaste resembling throw-up. “People have been just lovely,” she said, “and Cicely’s mother called to say—”
“But what about Thomas Senior?” Ian broke in.
“What about him?”
“Did you look for him in the Cheyenne phone book?”
“Oh, we’d already called all the Deans in Cheyenne, but now we have a name to give the officials. They ought to be able to track something down—driver’s license, marriage license … I remember Lucy said once he’d remarried.”
That night Ian dreamed that Lucy sat in her living room among bushel baskets of mail—letters and fliers and magazines. Then Danny walked in and said, “Lucy? What is this?”
“Oh,” she said, “I just can’t open them anymore. Since you died it seems I haven’t had the heart.”
“But this is terrible!” he cried. “Your bulks and your flats I could understand, but first-class, Lucy! First-class envelopes lying untouched!”
“Then talk to Ian,” she said in a wiry, tight voice.
“Ian?”
“Ian says I’m not a bit first-class,” she said, and her mouth turned down at the corners, petulant and spiteful looking.