Saint Maybe - Anne Tyler [81]
From here the garage was invisible, since it lay even with the front of the house, but he could see Fred standing in the drive with the pushbutton control in both hands, pressing hard and then harder. Doug grinned. Fred leaned forward, his face a mask of straining muscle, and he bore down on the button with all his might. You didn’t have to set eyes on the door to know it wasn’t reacting. Meanwhile Ollie walked out to the street and climbed into the car and started the engine, and John Two removed a brick from under the left rear wheel. Optimistic of them; Doug foresaw a good deal more work before the garage would be ready for an occupant. Through the open window he heard the croupy putt-putt as the car turned in and rolled up the drive and sat idling. “In another catalog,” John One was saying, “we have seen remarkable invention: automatic yard lights! That illuminate when dark falls! We plan to send away for them immediately.”
“I can hardly wait,” Doug said, and then he twisted in his chair because he thought he noticed someone emerging from his own house, but it was only shrubbery stirring in the breeze.
He was a touch nearsighted, and the mesh of the window screen seemed more distinct to him than what lay beyond it. What lay beyond it—home—had the blocky, blurred appearance of something worked in needlepoint, each tiny square in the screen filled with a square of color. Not only was there a needlepoint house but also a needlepoint car out front, a needlepoint swing on the porch, a needlepoint bicycle in the yard. His entire little world: a cozy, old-fashioned sampler stitched in place forever.
The best thing about the foreigners, he decided, was how they thought living in America was a story they were reading, or a movie they were watching. It was happening to someone else; it wasn’t theirs. Good Lord, not even their names were theirs. Here they spoke lines invented by other people, not genuine language—not the language that simply is, with no need for translation. Here they wore blue denim costumes and inhabited a Hollywood set complete with make-believe furniture. But when they went back home, there they’d behave as seriously as anyone. They would fall in love and marry and have children and they’d agonize over their children’s problems, and struggle to get ahead, and practice their professions soberly and efficiently. What Doug was witnessing was only a brief holiday from their real lives.
He was pleased by this notion. He thought he’d examine it further later on—consider, say, what happened to those foreigners who ended up not going home. The holiday couldn’t last forever, could it? Was there a certain moment when the movie set turned solid? But for now, he didn’t bother himself with all that. He was happy just to sit here, letting some of their Time Out rub off on him.
Then Ollie turned toward the house and called, “Come see!” and for courtesy’s sake, Doug rose and followed Ray and John One to the yard. Other neighbors were here too, he realized. It looked like a party. He joined them and stood squinting in the sunshine, smiling at the foreigners’ car which sat half inside the garage and half out like a crumpled beer can, with the door bisecting it neatly across the middle.
6
Sample Rains
Every Saturday morning, the Church of the Second Chance gathered to perform good works. Sometimes they went to an ailing member’s place and helped with the cleaning or the fixing up. Sometimes they went to some stranger. Today—a warm, sunny day in early September—they met at the little house where Reverend Emmett lived with his widowed mother. Reverend Emmett was not a salaried minister. His sole means of support was a part-time counseling job at a private girls’ school. So when his house needed painting (as it sorely did now, with the old paint hanging in ribbons off the clapboards), all his flock pitched in to take care of it.
Ian brought