Saint Maybe - Anne Tyler [70]
“Bee, dear heart,” Grandpa said.
Now Thomas noticed how still the room had grown. Maybe Grandma noticed too, because she stopped talking and two pink spots started blooming in her cheeks.
“Bee,” Grandpa said, “we’ve got a crew of hungry kids here wondering if you plan on coming their way.”
The others made murmury laughing sounds, although Thomas didn’t see anything so funny. Then Grandma quirked the corners of her mouth and raised her chin. “Why! I certainly doo-oo!” she said musically, and off she sailed with her cake.
The frosting was caramel. Thomas had checked earlier. His grandma made the best caramel frosting in Baltimore—rich and deep and golden, as smooth as butter when it slid across your tongue.
Daphne went off at nine, kicking up a fuss in Ian’s arms because the cousins were still there, but Thomas and Agatha got to stay awake till the last of the guests had said good night—almost ten-thirty, which was way past their normal bedtime.
“Don’t forget your baths!” Ian called after them as they climbed the stairs, but Thomas was too sleepy for a bath and he fell into bed in his underwear, leaving his clothes in a heap on the floor. He shut his eyes and saw turquoise blue, the color of Sister Myra’s swimming pool. He heard the clatter of china downstairs, and the rattle of silver, and the slow, dancy radio songs his grandma liked to listen to while she did the dishes. (She would be washing and Ian would be clearing away and drying; she always said the hot water felt so good on her finger joints.) “Where do you want these place mats?” Ian called. Loud announcers’ voices interrupted each other in the living room; Grandpa was hunting baseball scores on TV. “… never saw Jessie Jordan so gossipy,” Grandma said, and someone shouted, “BEEN IN A BATTING SLUMP SINCE MID-JUNE—”
“Could you turn that down?” Grandma called.
Then Thomas must have slept, because the next thing he knew the house was silent and he had a feeling the silence had been going on a long time. There wasn’t even a cricket chirping. There wasn’t even a faraway truck or a train whistle. The only sounds were those scraps of past voices that float across your mind sometimes when there’s nothing else to listen to. “Thank you, Sister Audrey,” Reverend Emmett said, and Grandma said, “Why, Ian? Why?”
Thomas should have told her why. He knew the answer, after all. Or, at least, he thought he did. The answer is, you get to meet in heaven. They’ll be waiting for you there if you’ve been careful to do things right. His mother would be waiting in her frilly pink dress. She would drive her station wagon to the gate and she’d sit there with the motor idling, her elbow resting on the window ledge, and when she caught sight of him her face would light up all happy and she would wave. “Thomas! Over here!” she would call, and if he didn’t spot her right away she would honk, and then he would catch sight of her and start running in her direction.
5
People Who Don’t Know the Answers
After Doug Bedloe retired, he had a little trouble thinking up things to do with himself. This took him by surprise, because he was accustomed to the schoolteacher’s lengthy summer vacations and he’d never found it hard to fill them. But retirement, it seemed, was another matter. There wasn’t any end to it. Also it was given more significance. Loaf around in summer, Bee would say he deserved his rest. Loaf in winter, she read it as pure laziness. “Don’t you have someplace to go?” she asked him. “Lots of men join clubs or something. Couldn’t you do Meals on Wheels? Volunteer at the hospital?”
Well, he tried. He approached a group at his church that worked with disadvantaged youths. Told them he had forty years’ experience coaching baseball. They were delighted. First he was supposed to get some training, though—spend three