Back When We Were Grownups by Anne Tyler Page B

there?” he said. “Mr. Neatness.”
    “Good for you, Rick.”
    Mrs. Arnette seemed to be telling Biddy about her parents’ troubled marriage. “In fact it’s kind of a miracle that they are still together,” she said. “Twice that I can recollect, Mom has packed her belongings and gone off to live with her sister.”
    “Do they have any allergies or aversions?” Biddy asked.
    “What? Aversions?”
    “Lots of times my older clients take against hot spices, for instance.”
    Mrs. Arnette said, “No, not as far as I . . . Why, once Mom stayed away two years, back when I was in college. Which might mean this is not their fiftieth anniversary after all, come to think of it. Would you say it still counts as fifty years?”
    “The baby artichokes, for example,” Biddy said. “I serve them with a very spicy curry sauce.”
    Oh, Biddy just
hid
behind food. It was exasperating. Rick, however, was a whole different story: a shameless gossip, as so many workmen seemed to be. “Of course it counts,” he told Rebecca, wiping his trowel on a cloth. “Remember when me and Deena split for six months and got back together? We still considered that year a full year of marriage, though.” He shouted toward the parlor, “You would only subtract those two years if the separation was court-decreed!”
    A slight pause followed, and then Mrs. Arnette lowered her voice and asked about prices.
    *  *  *
    Rebecca phoned the roofer; then the appliance man; then the exterminator. (This house would be the death of her.) Then a woman called to complain about the food at her husband’s business party. It had all been so foreign, she said. Rebecca said, “Foreign?”
    “It was almost . . . vegetarian!”
    “Well, I’m sorry,” Rebecca told her, “but my stepdaughter does attempt to keep up with the latest trends in . . .”
    She didn’t have to think, even, as she spoke. She’d been fielding calls like this from the early days of her marriage, because the Davitches were notoriously mistrustful of the telephone. (Even Joe, to her amazement—Joe who had phoned so persistently while they were courting.) Whenever the phone rang, they spent an inordinate time debating: “Who can it be?” “It’s not for me.” “Well,
I’m
not expecting anyone.” “You get it.” “No, it’s your turn.” Often, the caller hung up before they got around to answering. They dreaded placing calls, as well, and would put them off for days. Monday,
Phone liquor store,
the kitchen calendar read; Tuesday,
Phone liquor store;
Wednesday,
Phone liquor store;
till on Thursday, maybe, or Friday Rebecca would step in—inexperienced though she was, a young and tentative bride with no management skills whatsoever—and phone the liquor store herself. She became, by default, the telephone person. By now it was automatic: “Needless to say, we are very concerned that our guests feel satisfied with our . . .”
    She hung up just as Poppy was starting down the stairs from his nap. She heard the tap of his cane and went to help him. “Here,” he said when he saw her, and he paused to search his pockets. “Wait, now; wait, now, I know I put it . . .” He pulled out another folded square of paper. “Room rates,” he said.
    Rebecca thought at first he’d said “roommates.” “For me?” she asked, puzzled.
    “So you can send a list of hotels with the invitations.”
    “Um . . .”
    “The invitations to my birthday party, Beck! Where is your mind, these days?”
    “Oh. Your birthday party.”
    “You know my second cousins will want to come, Lucy out in Chicago and Keith in Detroit. And other people; there must be other out-of-towners, as soon as I think of their names. You’d never have the space for everybody to stay at the house.”
    “You telephoned all these hotels yourself?” Rebecca asked. She had unfolded the square of paper and was studying the list—a column of names and numbers printed laboriously with a skippy