Back When We Were Grownups

Seven

You’ll never in a million years guess who I’ve asked to dinner,” Rebecca told her mother on the phone.

“Who’s that, dear?”

“Oh, nobody but Will Allenby.”

“Will Allenby! Are you serious? My stars! How did this come about?”

“We just happened to talk on the phone a little while ago.”

“My Lord in heaven! Tell me everything,” her mother ordered. “Every last detail.”

“There’s nothing to tell, really. I had supper with him a few weeks back, and tomorrow night he’s coming to my house. He’s living in Macadam. He’s head of the physics department.”

“Is he single? Or what.”

“He’s divorced.”

“Divorced! Poor Will; who’d have thought? Though divorced is much better than widowed, of course.”

“How do you figure that?” Rebecca asked.

“Well: if they’re divorced, they’re mad at their ex-wife and so they put her out of their minds. If they’re widowed, they go on mourning. They feel guilty about remarrying.”

“Who said anything about remarrying?” Rebecca asked. “We’re just having a meal together.”

“Yes, but, you never can tell. One thing leads to another, you know! And you and he have all that shared past. It’s not as if you’re strangers. Oh, I’d love it if you married Will!”

“Mother,” Rebecca said. “Let’s not jump to conclusions. I’m sorry now I mentioned it.”

Why had she mentioned it, in fact? Almost the instant she woke up this morning, she’d had it in her mind to call her mother and tell her the news. It was like some kind of offering — a mouse she could lay at her mother’s feet. See there? I’m still the old Rebecca after all!

“What does he look like?” her mother was asking. “Is he as good-looking as he used to be?”

“Yes, but he’s older, of course. His hair is white.”

“That’s okay! What do you care! None of us is getting any younger. Oh. Rebecca. Do you want to hear an amazing coincidence? Would you believe I ran into his mother’s sister-in-law just last weekend at the Kmart? And this is not someone I see every day. Or every year, even! In fact, I’m surprised I recognized her. You must have known her. Katie, or Kathy; something like that. Was it Katie? No, Kathy. No, Katie. She was married to Will’s mother’s brother, Norman, before he died, and they used to live on Merchant Street in this darling little cottage that always made me think of a doll’s house. Do you remember that house?”

Rebecca sighed and said, “No.”

“Well, it was next door to the Saddlers’ place. You remember the Saddlers’ place, the one with all the chimneys.”

“No, I don’t think I do.”

“You must! It had two chimneys in the middle, and one more at each—”

“I remember.”

“You just finished saying you didn’t.”

“Mother. What difference does it make?” Rebecca asked. “This is a house next to another house that I don’t remember either, where somebody I never met used to live before her husband died.”

“I’m sure you did meet her, dear. She must surely have been at the Allenbys’ many a time when you were visiting.”

“All right,” Rebecca said, “I met her. What did she say?”

“What did she say about what?”

“About anything. When you ran into her at the Kmart.”

“Oh, we didn’t actually speak. I was afraid she wouldn’t know me. I just swiveled my eyes in another direction and made like I didn’t see her.”

Rebecca began massaging her left temple.

“So who did he marry?” her mother asked.

“Who did who marry?” Rebecca asked, contrarily.

“Will, of course. My goodness! Who have we been talking about, here?”

“He married an ex-student of his.”

“Was the divorce his idea, or hers?”

“Hers, I believe,” Rebecca said.

“Oh, dear. Well, never mind. We’ll just hope for the best.”

“What is that supposed to mean?” Rebecca asked.

“Never mind! What are you planning to wear, do you know?”

“I hadn’t thought,” Rebecca said.

“I was reading somewhere just the other day that the color brown is the most flattering to any type of figure.”

“I don’t own anything brown,” Rebecca said.

“You still have time to go shopping!”

“I have to hang up,” Rebecca said. “Talk to you later, Mother.”

* * *

It wasn’t true that she’d given no thought as to what she would wear. Throughout the night — even in her sleep, it seemed — she had mentally reviewed her wardrobe, and she had settled, finally, on the eggplant-colored caftan. By midafternoon Wednesday, she had already put it on. She had already set the table, placed candles around the dining room, and added the finishing touches to the food — everything cold, so that she wouldn’t have to be off in the kitchen for any length of time. In the front parlor, the cushions were plumped and more candles stood about in groups. She had opened all the windows, even those on the street side, to whisk away any trace of cooking smells.

Absurd to make such a to-do. Absurd.

Promptly at five-thirty, Zeb arrived to pick up Poppy. He had promised to keep him occupied for the evening. “I thought we’d try that new steakhouse,” he told Rebecca, “and then maybe go to a movie. That would put us back here at, oh, nine-thirty or ten. Is that okay with you?”

In fact, it seemed a bit early. What if she and Will were to linger over coffee? What if they returned to the parlor after supper and started… Well, not that they’d be doing anything very private, of course, but what if they just wanted to talk without other people listening? She couldn’t say this to Zeb, though, because he’d already rearranged his schedule to help her out. “That’ll be fine,” she told him. “It’s good of you to take him, Zeb.”

He said, “Jesus, it’s the least I can do. So. Is this a… what. Is this an actual date you’re having?”

“No, no! Mercy,” she said. “I’m much too old to be dating.”

“Is that right,” he said mildly, and then he called, “Poppy? You ready?”

Poppy emerged from the rear of the house, patting all his pockets with the hand that wasn’t holding his cane. Every pocket rustled. He had taken to insisting, lately, on bringing a supply of candy bars on his outings. Evidently he feared being caught in some emergency situation with no source of sweets. “I’m all set,” he announced. “Going to have a boys’ night out,” he told Rebecca.

“Good, Poppy. Enjoy yourselves, you two.”

As soon as she had closed the door behind them, she raced up the stairs to her bedroom. She had decided that the caftan was too informal. It might even be mistaken for sleepwear. She changed into a silk blouse and a floor-length hostess skirt, and she switched her clunky leather sandals to daintier ones, high-heeled.

Her room looked ransacked. Cast-off clothes littered the bed, and half a dozen pairs of shoes were strewn across the floor. In the mirror, her face had the bright-eyed, hectic expression of someone who’d been nipping at the sherry.

Well before six, the doorbell rang. It was so early that she feared a drop-in family visitor. But no, when she opened the door, there stood Will, practically invisible behind a gigantic plant of some kind. “Oh! You shouldn’t have,” she said.

“I know I’m early,” he told her. “I allowed a little extra time in case I got lost.”

“That’s all right! Let’s see, maybe you could set that here on the floor by the… Isn’t it unusual!”

In fact, the plant was bizarre. Three feet tall, at least, with monstrous, lumpy, dark-green leaves speckled a sulphur yellow, it loomed from a red-rimmed white bowl that reminded her of a chamber pot. Once Will had set it down, it blocked nearly all the light from the foyer window. “What is it called?” she asked.

Will spread his arms helplessly. “I don’t know,” he said. “They told me it was impossible to kill, was all.”

“Oh, good.”

His white curls and lined forehead shocked her all over again. (In her mind, she seemed to keep returning him to his youth.) His palms were dusted with potting soil. He was wearing faded jeans with a short-sleeved, gray plaid shirt, and on his feet were mammoth jogging shoes. He must have seen her glance at the shoes, because he said, “I guess I should have dressed up more.”

“Nonsense! I’m not dressed up.”

She led him into the parlor, walking as quietly as possible so he wouldn’t notice her heels. “Have a seat,” she said. “Can I offer you something to drink?”

“No, thanks.”

He sat down on the sofa, first carefully tweaking the knees of his jeans as if they had a crease, which they didn’t. Then he gazed around him at the crystal chandelier, the damask draperies, the Oriental carpet. “This is really very… This is quite a place,” he said.

“Yes, well, don’t let it fool you,” she told him. She chose to settle not on the sofa beside him but in the wing chair to his left, to her own surprise. Then she tugged her skirt up a bit so it wouldn’t seem floor-length, but when she remembered she was wearing knee-high nylons she lowered it again. “Any minute now,” she said, “I expect the roof to fall in.”

“Is that picture above the mantel an ancestor of your husband’s?”

He was referring to a portrait of a woman in a hoopskirt, with an obstinate, thick-necked look to her. “No,” Rebecca said, “I think they bought it at a garage sale.”

“Well, still, it’s… the whole place is very impressive.”

“Tell me, Will,” she said. “Have you kept in touch with any of our old college friends?”

She had thought up this topic ahead of time. It seemed a neutral one, and certain to fill several minutes, at least. But he just said, “No, not really.”

“Your roommate, for instance? Don Grant? Or Horace what’s-his-name?”

“No.”

“Oh. Well, me neither,” she said. “But I was assuming that in my case, it was because of… you know. Because of dropping out and getting married and all.”

“I’ve never been very sociable,” Will told her. He didn’t seem to have his mind on what he was saying; he was still gazing around the room. He said, “This house must have quite a—”

The doorbell rang. He looked at her. “Quite a history,” he said. And then, when she didn’t move, “I believe your doorbell rang.”

“Oh,” she said. “Right.”

She rose and went to answer it.

Mr. Quint, from Second Eden, scraped his perfectly dry feet on the mat before he stepped into the foyer. “Just wanted to let you know I’ve set my men to working out back,” he told her. “I did say we’d be — What is that?”

He meant Will’s plant. He drew back as if he thought it might bite.

Rebecca said, “I’m not sure, exactly. Wouldn’t that be your department?”

“Mine? Lord, no. I’ve never seen anything like it.” He kept on staring at it in a perplexed and worried way even as he picked up where he had left off. “I did say we’d be here by noon, but we’ve been running a tad bit late today.”

“That’s okay,” she told him. To be honest, she had forgotten he was coming.

“We can finish up before dark, I’m just about certain. You want to take a peek at them azaleas I was talking about?”

“No, I’m sure they’ll be fine.”

“Not that they’ve got any blossoms this time of year anyhow, but there’s these little hang tags, you know? With color photos on them.”

“It doesn’t matter. Really.”

“Or why don’t I just pull off a tag and bring it in to show you? I’ll go round back right now and fetch it.”

“I don’t care about it!” she said.

“Oh.”

“I have company.”

“Suit yourself,” he said. “As long as you don’t come running to me after you see them in bloom.”

He still had his eyes on the plant as he turned to leave.

In the parlor, she found Will standing at the piano. He pressed one chipped, crackled key until a note plinked out.

“I know it’s a little flat,” she said. (In high school, Will had been famous for having perfect pitch.)

He said, “Oh, well.”

“Our guests seem to like that sort of honky-tonk sound — that dance-hall, tinny, plunky sound. At every party, just about, someone will sit down to play.”

Will closed the piano lid. He said, “You used to be so shy at parties.”

Probably this was just a meaningless remark, but she read it as an accusation. How could she have changed so much when he had remained the same? he might be asking. She said, “I’m no different now! I promise. It’s just, you know, when parties are your livelihood—”

The telephone rang.

She said, “Why don’t we let the machine get that.”

There was a second ring. A third.

Too late, she recollected that the machine was not turned on. The telephone kept ringing, and Will kept looking at her.

“So!” she said. “I should go see to our supper. Would you like to come out to the kitchen?”

“Certainly,” Will said. “Can I help?”

“No, no. Just keep me company,” she said.

The phone shut up, finally. Rebecca led the way through the rear parlor and the dining room, where Will began to lag behind. She turned to find him studying another portrait — the one that hung over the sideboard. “Was this your husband?” he asked her.

“Why, no,” she said. Was he joking? The man in the portrait wore a frock coat and fitted trousers, and he carried a shiny top hat in one gloved hand. “I’ll show you what my husband looked like,” she said. “I’ve got an old snapshot on the fridge.” And they continued down the passageway to the kitchen.

What she hadn’t realized was that the snapshot she had in mind — Joe on some long-ago beach trip, holding up a fresh-caught crab and laughing in the sunlight — had gradually become buried beneath a shingling of later snapshots. Photos tended to live in the imagination, she thought; she hadn’t actually looked at this one for years, although she could still visualize every detail. She had to weasel it out from under the others, and once Will had seen it (“Ah, yes,” was all he said), he went on to peer at the rest. “That’s Dixon in the cap and gown,” she explained. “My grandson, at his high-school graduation party. And this…” She pointed toward a picture partly obscured by a magnet shaped like a bagel. “This is NoNo, my youngest stepdaughter, at her wedding. Doesn’t she look beautiful? Biddy is the oldest; that’s her standing next to LaVon, my former son-in-law. They were celebrating Lateesha’s baby-welcoming, I think. And then Patch, she’s our athlete. A gym teacher; can you imagine? I believe this must have been taken when her girls’ lacrosse team won the — well, listen to me, rattling on! And I bet you must be starving to death.”

She spun away to unwrap the platter of cold chicken on the counter. Will followed at her heels, his hands jammed awkwardly in his rear pockets. He said, “It’s true you always wanted ten children.”

“Who, me?”

“You said that being an only child was so, what did you say, so pitiful. You wanted a big, jolly crew of children.”

“I did?”

She stopped to stare at him, with a serving fork poised over the chicken.

“And you would have all these traditions, you said — all these family rituals, those big Christmases and Thanksgivings that other families had.”

She said, “I don’t remember that.”

“Well, it seems you ended up with it, anyhow.”

“I don’t remember a bit of that,” she told him. “Could you bring in the bread basket, please?”

He picked the basket up and followed her back to the dining room. “Pretty,” he said of the table.

She flushed. She thought now she might have overdone things. “Oh,” she said, setting down the platter, “it’s no big deal. You can sit facing the window. I’ll go get the salad.”

But when she returned, he was still standing. He waited till she had lit the candles, and then he pulled out her chair for her. His hand on her chair was so close that she could feel its warmth through the fabric of her blouse. In a sudden fit of daring, she leaned back imperceptibly until her shoulder was pressing against his fingers. But he drew away as if he hadn’t noticed and went around to his side of the table.

Or maybe he had noticed, and was deliberately rebuffing her.

“What’s happening in your backyard?” he asked as he sat down.

“My…?” She twisted around to look through the open window behind her. “Oh, those are the nurserymen. They’re putting in some azaleas.”

He said, “This is like running a plantation or something. Do you employ a large staff?”

“No, just… well, a woman who helps with the cleanup, sometimes, if it’s a big party.” She passed him the chicken.

“And what is your role at these parties? You provide the entertainment? Magicians for children’s birthdays and such?”

“No, it’s really just the physical space. Although we do offer catering, if the customer wants it.”

She hated how chatty and informative she sounded, like someone delivering an advertising spiel. Was this all they could find to talk about? They seemed to do much better on the telephone than in person.

She forked a drumstick onto her plate. “I was wondering,” she said. (Preplanned topic number two.) “Is your daughter like you were at her age?”

“No,” Will said. “She’s bewildering.”

Rebecca laughed, but he gazed back at her glumly. He said, “I never have understood the first thing about her. I didn’t understand her when she was a baby and I understand her even less now that she’s an adolescent.”

“Oh, well, adolescents,” Rebecca said, waving a hand. “Who does understand them?” She helped herself to a roll.

“Laura seems to. Her mother.”

“Really?”

She waited to hear more, but the person who spoke next was one of the workers in the backyard. “Now, this here is my advice,” he said. His words were punctuated by the chuffing sound of a pickax. “Never, ever agree to stay overnight at a woman’s place. No matter how she begs and pleads, you have her stay at your place, or else a motel or a buddy’s place. Because you really got no way of knowing when her boyfriend might get out of jail. This one gal, she says her boyfriend couldn’t never in a million years get out, and like a fool I believe her. I say okay, I’ll sleep over, and what do you think happens? Next morning there’s a knock on the door. ‘Oh,’ she says. ‘Who can that be?’ Steps up naked as a jaybird to look through the little peephole and then comes squawking back to me, ‘Lord Almighty, it’s him!’ I says, ‘Woman?’ I says, ‘Woman, didn’t you swear and declare that he was locked up good?’”

Will said, “Of course, Laura’s considerably younger than I am. I suppose it’s only natural she would have a better understanding of adolescents.”

Rebecca refocused her thoughts. “How much younger?” she asked.

“She’s thirty-eight; I’m fifty-three.”

“So, let’s see… fifteen years. Well, with Joe and me it was almost that much: thirteen and a half.”

Outside the window, the nurseryman was saying, “I walk past him in the hall; say, ‘How you doing,’ and keep on going. ‘How you doing,’ he says back, and I walk on down the stairs just easy-like and careless-like, but all the time the back of my neck is tingling; know how it will do? Waiting for that knife between the shoulder blades.”

“Man, you was lucky,” another voice said. “How come you to put any stock in what a woman tells you?”

“This chicken is delicious,” Will said.

Rebecca said, “Thank you. Won’t you have some salad?”

“Thanks.”

“The thing about women is, they want what they want when they wants it,” the first man said. “They don’t mind what they might have to do to get it. They’ll do anything. They won’t be stopped. They call you on the phone, and they come by your place of work, and they look you up at the house and try to mess with you. You tell them, ‘Gal, hey, cut me some slack,’ but they just, man, they just steamroll on and can’t nothing turn them aside.”

“But you were so mature for your age,” Will was saying.

Rebecca said, “Excuse me?”

“You were so serious. So involved in your studies. Laura, on the other hand…” He shrugged. He was stirring his salad around rather than eating it, she saw. (This was a recipe of Biddy’s, involving charred yellow beets. It might have been too gourmet.) “Well, I should have known,” he said. “The way we met: she enrolled in my introductory physics class but decided it wasn’t relevant to her life. She came to get permission to drop the course and I persuaded her not to. That was our first conversation.”

“Aha! See there?” Rebecca crowed, pointing her fork at him. Then she glanced toward the window and lowered her voice. “You’re bearing out my theory about prophetic moments.”

“Pathetic?” Will asked.

“Prophetic. Moments that predict a couple’s future. See: at the very start of your courtship, she was threatening to leave you.”

“But I thought it was just a normal student interview. I had no idea that that was the start of our courtship.”

“No, of course not. That’s how prophetic moments work,” Rebecca told him. “You don’t suspect that’s what they are at the time they’re taking place.”

“It does seem I should have heard some kind of alarm going off,” Will said. “This was the course I was always so proud of, the one where I showed beginning students that physics could be an adventure.”

Rebecca said, “Oh, what a shame.”

“And she never did really take to the subject,” Will said sadly. “She stayed on after I convinced her but dropped the course second semester; switched to ecology instead to finish up her science requirement. Ecology! A pretend sort of science. But all I thought at the time was, now I could ask her out. I must have been blind as a bat.”

“She must have been blind, to think physics was irrelevant,” Rebecca said.

“Well, that’s where the two of you differ,” Will told her. “Laura’s a more superficial type of person. What matters most to her are material things. Clothing, makeup, hairstyles, jewelry… On every possible occasion, including Easter, she expected me to give her a gift of jewelry.”

“Really!” Rebecca said. This was getting interesting. “What kind of jewelry?”

“Oh… I don’t know.”

“I mean, important jewelry, like diamonds? Or just a new charm for her bracelet or something.”

He stopped stirring his salad and looked at her.

“Well,” she said hastily, “some women are like that, I guess.”

“She owned so many shoes that a closet company had to come build a special rack in her closet.”

“Gracious!”

Rebecca owned a lot of shoes herself. Not that she was a spendthrift. These were very cheap shoes, purchased on sale or at discount stores. But they seemed to have a way of not fitting quite right a short while after she bought them, and so she was always buying more. Mentally, now, she began discarding the extras. Those brown suede clogs, for instance: she could easily get rid of those. She had worn them exactly once and discovered that her heels hung half an inch over the backs, although she could have sworn they’d fit perfectly when she first tried them on.

“Plus another thing is, they’re so jealous,” the nursery man was saying. He grunted, and then she heard the thud of a rock or a root stob as he heaved it aside. “They phone you all the time and they ask you what you was doing if you take a minute to answer. They show up at your door and check out you’re not cheating on them. This one guy I know, he had to move to Arizona finally just to get shed of this woman who was always on his tail.”

“It’s more than a fellow can handle, sometimes,” the second man agreed.

Rebecca slid her chair back and rose to shut the window. She tried to make no noise, but she had a glimpse of two startled faces looking directly into her eyes before she turned away. When she had reseated herself, smoothing her skirt beneath her, she said, “You know, I’ve always regretted not completing my education.”

“You could do that now,” Will told her.

“Well, yes. Yes, I could! In fact, I’ve just started reading a biography of Robert E. Lee.”

“Lee,” Will said consideringly.

“Remember, how I had this new theory about Lee’s real reason for deciding to cast his lot with the South? And the other day I thought, I should go on with my research anyhow, just out of sheer curiosity.”

“Well, there you have it,” Will told her. “Laura’s got no curiosity whatsoever.”

Rebecca clucked. The telephone rang.

He said, “Don’t you want to answer that?”

“No, never mind.”

She waited till the ringing stopped, which seemed to take forever. Then she said, “So she isn’t a scholar.”

“Who isn’t?”

“Laura.”

“No, not in the least.”

She hoped he would elaborate, but just then the phone started ringing again.

“You certainly get a lot of calls,” Will told her.

“Yes,” she said. She sighed. “Won’t you have more chicken?”

“No, thanks, I couldn’t eat another bite.”

Her own plate was nearly untouched. Even so, she removed her napkin from her lap and prepared to slide her chair back. “I’ll go make us some coffee,” she said. “Would you prefer regular, or decaf?”

“Neither, thanks.”

“I can have it ready in a jiff.”

He said, “I never was in the habit of coffee, you may remember.”

She didn’t remember, actually. She remembered only that he hadn’t liked sweets — unusual, in a young man. But when she said, “I purposely did not fix a dessert,” he said, “Oh, that’s all right,” as if he thought she was apologizing.

“I mean, I didn’t suppose you’d want one.”

“No, really, I’m fine.”

She gave up. “Well,” she said, “shall we go into the parlor, then, where it’s comfortable?”

Instead of answering, he leaned toward her. The movement was so sudden that she wondered, for a second, whether he had a stomachache. “Rebecca,” he said, “it’s occurred to me that this was providential.”

“Was… what?”

“That first night you telephoned, I had just about hit bottom. It was so incredibly providential that you called me when you did, Rebecca.”

He reached across the table and gripped one of her hands. Unfortunately, it was the hand that held her scrunched-up napkin. Also, she felt an instantaneous, nearly overwhelming urge to wriggle her fingers frantically, like some kind of undersea creature. She forced them to stay motionless, although the urge was so intense that she was almost vibrating. At the same time she had to remember to make her eyes look wider than they normally were, and to keep her head raised high so that the cushion of flesh beneath her chin would not reveal itself.

Then the front door slammed against the closet, and Zeb called out, “We’re home!”

He had promised they wouldn’t be back till ten! Or nine-thirty, at the earliest! But here came Poppy’s cane tip-tapping through the two parlors, following Zeb’s softer tread. Will withdrew his hand.

“In the old days, ice-cream places offered unlimited samples,” Poppy was saying. “Any kind of flavor you liked — eggnog, pistachio, rum raisin — on little wooden spoons for you to try before you committed yourself.”

They arrived in the dining-room doorway. “Well, hi, there!” Zeb exclaimed, in what struck Rebecca as an artificial tone of voice.

“What are you doing here?” she asked him coolly.

“We stopped for ice cream after supper and Poppy was so displeased with the service, he said he’d just as soon have his dessert here at home.”

He was looking not at her but at Will, who had turned partway around in his seat to see him. Rebecca still had a distant hope of avoiding introductions — if Zeb and Poppy would only retire tactfully to the kitchen, while she and Will moved into the front parlor — but now Will rose and held out his hand. “How do you do,” he said. “I’m Will Allenby.”

“I’m Zeb, Rebecca’s brother-in-law,” Zeb said, shaking his hand. With his poor posture and his dingy, wire-rimmed glasses, his strings of oily gray hair hanging over his forehead, he seemed almost ugly tonight. “This is my uncle, Paul Davitch,” he said. “Sorry to barge in like this.”

“I thought you two were going to a movie,” Rebecca told him.

“We were considering a movie,” Poppy said, “but after the ice-cream fiasco I just didn’t have the heart for it.” He stood poised in the doorway, pivoting his cane with both hands as if he thought he was Fred Astaire.

“What fiasco was that?” Will asked him politely. (Too politely, in Rebecca’s opinion.)

“I told the girl at the counter I’d like a little taste of butterscotch ripple,” Poppy said, “and she gave me one and it was weak, just very frail and weak in flavor. So I said, ‘Well, I believe I’ll sample the coffee nugget next,’ and she said, ‘Sir!’ in this smart-aleck tone — not a respectful ‘sir’ by any manner of means. ‘Sir, if we gave out unlimited samples we wouldn’t have any product left to sell, now, would we.’”

Will clicked his tongue.

“Back in my day, folks were more accommodating,” Poppy said.

“Mine too,” Will told him.

“So we thought we’d come on home and see what you-all’s dessert was.”

“We’re not having any dessert,” Rebecca said. “I didn’t make one.”

“I’ll go look in the freezer, then. Check what flavors of ice cream we’ve got. Want some ice cream… um?” he asked Will.

“That’d be great,” Will said, and he sat down again.

Rebecca slumped in her seat.

Poppy set off for the kitchen, humming something tuneless. He was leaning on his cane hardly at all, for once. He had a jaunty lilt to his walk that struck Rebecca as infuriating.

“So!” Zeb said chummily. He pulled out the chair next to Will. “You knew our Rebecca back when she was in high school, I hear.”

“Our Rebecca?” she demanded.

“Oh, way before high school,” Will said. “I knew her in nursery school. I knew her when she was too young for any kind of school.”

“I bet she was quite something when she was a little kid.”

“She was cute, all right,” Will said.

Rebecca rolled her eyes.

“Well: cute,” Zeb said. “She was cute even when we met her. Showed up that very first evening in a blue dress and matching blue shoes, carrying a purse that was shaped like a workman’s lunch box.”

Rebecca would not have expected him to remember that. She hoped he wouldn’t mention some other things he might remember — like that twentieth-birthday party, which had taken place when she and Will were supposedly still a couple.

Before Zeb could say any more, though, the front door slammed open again. “Beck?” NoNo called. “Are you home?”

“Out here,” Zeb called, and he cocked his head at Rebecca — trying to imply, no doubt, that now he wasn’t the only one who’d interrupted her evening.

Rebecca just glared at him.

NoNo had Peter with her. She was wearing her work clothes — a green smock with a yellow trowel embroidered on the pocket — and she looked tired and out of sorts. “Where were you?” she asked Rebecca. “I’ve been phoning and phoning all evening, and nobody ever answered and the machine wouldn’t pick up.”

“I was entertaining,” Rebecca said pointedly.

This didn’t faze NoNo for an instant. “Anyway,” she went on, “Peter wants to ask you—”

Rebecca said, “Will, I’d like you to meet my stepdaughter, NoNo Sanborn, and her stepson, Peter. This is Will Allenby.”

“Oh. Hi,” NoNo said. Will had stood up again when she entered, but they were too far apart to shake hands. “Peter wants to ask you something,” she told Rebecca.

“Will was my high-school boyfriend,” Rebecca said.

It seemed important to make this clear, although she wasn’t sure just why.

NoNo gave Will a second glance and said, “Really? Well. Nice to meet you.” Then she turned to Peter. “Tell Beck what you wanted to ask her,” she ordered.

Peter said, “Um, at my school they have this, what-do-you-call…”

He had combed his hair flat with water, or maybe one of those newfangled gels. He had a skinned-back, pale, nervous look, and when he laced his fingers together Rebecca could hear his knuckles crack. “It’s kind of like a, well, maybe, exhibit; an exhibit of these projects we’ve been working on, and the thing of it is…”

He gazed imploringly at NoNo. She smiled at him and nodded several times.

“I don’t know why they do this,” he said, “but they call the exhibit Grandparents’ Day, and they have us invite all our grandparents.”

Rebecca was so anxious for him that she was nodding along with NoNo, willing him to get through this. But Will said, “Isn’t that great!”

Everybody looked at him.

“That he’s inviting you to Grandparents’ Day,” Will explained to Rebecca.

Peter said, “Well, I’m not… I know she’s not really my grandma. I mean, she wouldn’t have to come if she didn’t want to. But since my dad’s parents are dead and all, and we don’t get to see my mom’s parents much; we don’t see them ever, in fact—”

“I would love to come,” Rebecca told him.

“You would?”

“I’d be honored. When is it?”

“It’s not till Friday the twenty-fourth, but we have to get our slips signed by tomorrow so the teachers will know for sure—”

“This school of his is driving me crazy,” NoNo told the room at large. “Last night at a quarter till ten, I swear, some woman telephoned saying I should send four dozen cookies into class with him this morning. And now this grandparent thing — would somebody please clue them in? What about kids like Peter, who don’t happen to have grandparents available at the drop of a hat?”

“Peter has me, though,” Rebecca said, “and I’m looking forward to it enormously.”

He gave her a grateful smile, and his shoulders lost some of their tightness.

Then Poppy was back with the ice cream — a half-gallon drum tucked under his arm, a scoop in his free hand. “Vanilla,” he said bitterly. “You’d think there would be something a little more imaginative. Oh, hello, NoNo. Hello, youngster.” He set the carton and the scoop in front of Zeb. “Good to see you again,” he told Will.

“Well… thanks.”

“Been keeping busy lately? Still enjoying your work?”

Will glanced across at Rebecca. She gave a slight movement of her eyebrows that amounted to a shrug, and he turned back to Poppy and said, “Yes, I enjoy my work very much.”

“Don’t count on that lasting forever,” Poppy told him. “Me, I got burned out in the end. Too many students asking, ‘Will we be tested on this, or not?’ And you knew if you said, ‘Not,’ they’d figure it wasn’t worth writing down, even. No sense of joy in learning for its own sake, is my diagnosis.”

He must have taken Will for one of his old teaching colleagues, but Will couldn’t have known that. He looked again at Rebecca. Perversely, she refused to come to his rescue. “Uh, you’re probably right,” he said finally.

“Too durn much TV, is what I tell folks.”

Why did Poppy insist on speaking in that homespun way? Rebecca wondered for the first time. He was an educated man; he had a college degree. She sent him her narrowest, meanest look, which he ignored.

“Rebecca,” Zeb said, brandishing the scoop, “will you be having ice cream?”

“No, I will not,” she said in a forbidding tone.

“Five servings, then,” he said cheerfully. “Because I know you will, NoNo, and—”

“I’ve put you on the guest list for my birthday party,” Poppy told Will, “but I don’t suppose Beck has sent the invitations yet. I’m turning a hundred years old in December.”

“A hundred!” Will exclaimed.

By now, Rebecca’s annoyance had spread even to Will. She disliked the counterfeit note of admiration in his voice, and the eager way he reached for the bowl Zeb passed him. Zeb himself, she thought, was behaving like a barbarian, licking ice cream off his knuckles before he dug the scoop back into the carton; and NoNo and Peter had pulled out two chairs as if they had every right to horn in whenever they wanted. As for Poppy: he was beyond forgiveness. “It’s my fondest wish,” he was telling Will, “that I’ll be able to say I’ve seen two centuries change over: the nineteenth and the twentieth. Not that I consciously remember when the nineteenth changed, of course, but I was there, I can say! I was there!”

“That’s amazing,” Will said.

And as he lifted his spoon he opened his mouth to expose his large, square, wolfish teeth, unattractively yellowed now with age.

* * *

By the time they’d finished their ice cream, Rebecca had revised all her expectations of the evening. This was just another family melee with an extra person added, and she heartily wished it were over. She was tired of acting nicer than her true self. Wouldn’t it come as a relief to be alone, finally! To be upstairs in the family room, playing a game of solitaire! She longed to kick her shoes off, and let her stomach stick out, and allow her face to go slack.

None of the others, though, seemed in any hurry to go. Zeb was telling Will about his work; Poppy was repeating the ice-cream incident to Peter; NoNo was asking Rebecca what kind of plant that was in the foyer. “It’s not an anthurium, although it’s certainly grotesque enough; too big to be a pilea, in spite of those warty leaves…”

“Ask Will. He’s the one who brought it.”

“… surely can’t be a dracaena, though it does have that mottled, diseased look of the Dracaena godseffiana …”

When NoNo and Peter finally rose to leave, Rebecca stood up too and said, “Yes, it is late, isn’t it. I can hardly keep my eyes open.”

Even Will couldn’t miss that. He untangled himself from his chair and said, “Ah. All right. So, I guess…”

Everybody waited, but he just stood there. It was Zeb who completed his sentence for him. “I guess we should all be going,” he said helpfully.

Then they headed in a group toward the door, leaving Poppy alone at the table scraping out the ice-cream carton.

Outside, Rebecca folded her arms across her bosom and watched as Zeb climbed into his car (a Volvo so old it had the humpbacked shape of the earliest models) and NoNo and Peter walked on down the street to NoNo’s minivan. “Good night,” NoNo called back, her voice floating across the twilight, and “Good night,” Zeb called.

But Will stayed next to Rebecca, and so she was forced to say, finally, “Well, I should be going in now.”

“You used to have this long cloak,” he told her. “Do you remember that?”

“Cloak,” she repeated.

“It was a color called champagne. Your mom and your aunt sewed it for you the year we started college. I can see you in that cloak to this day. It matched your hair exactly. You wore your hair coiled in a braid on top of your head. You wore that cloak and these soft brown boots that crumpled around your ankles. You looked like somebody out of King Arthur’s time, I often thought; or Robin Hood’s. Very self-possessed and calm.”

Rebecca still faced the street, but she was listening.

“I guess this sounds presumptuous,” he said, “but I can’t help feeling that that woman in the cloak is who you really are, and I’m the only person who knows it. I feel that I can see you, in a way other people can’t. I don’t mean to sound presumptuous.”

She turned to look at him. With the streetlight shining behind him, she couldn’t tell what his expression was. She had to rely more on feeling than on sight — feeling the steady focus of his regard, and then his dear, familiar warmth as he stepped forward to hug her. They clung together for maybe a minute, like people consoling each other for some loss. Then he pulled away and said, “I’ll call you! I’ll call tomorrow! Thanks for supper!”

He plunged off down the street, clanging against a garbage can as he hurtled around the corner and disappeared.

Rebecca stood there for some time after he had gone. She was shivering slightly, even on this hot summer night, and she felt happy but also dismayed, and bashful, and confused.

At that moment, it seemed she actually had managed to become her girlhood self again.