Back When We Were Grownups by Anne Tyler Read Free Book Online Page B

to feel so sorry for me. Behind my back they’ll be telling each other—”
    “Mrs. Border, have you ever stopped to consider what a marvelous purpose a party serves? Think about it! At a moment when you and your daughter would normally not be speaking, when you know she must feel ashamed in front of the world at large and the world is surely wondering what to say to
you,
why, everyone’s thrown together in a gigantic celebration. Everyone’s forced to hug, and kiss, and toast the other graduates, and announce to everyone else that what matters is you all love each other. It’s like that scientific discovery they made a few years back; remember? They discovered that if you fake a smile, your smile muscles somehow trigger some reaction in the brain and you’ll start feeling the way you pretended to feel, happy and relaxed. Remember?”
    “Well . . .”
    “Imagine if you hadn’t had the foresight to schedule this party! Because we’ve been booked for months and months ahead, this time of year. You’d call and say, ‘Do you have an evening this week when we could throw a little fete for our daughter? She’s experiencing such, um . . . low self-esteem’—yes, that’s the term: ‘self-esteem’—‘and we want to show her we love her.’ I would have to say, ‘Sorry, Mrs. Border—‘”
    “And it’s true it’s going to be hard to cancel our guests,” Mrs. Border said. “If I had any hope of reaching just their answering machines I’d start telephoning this instant, but you know how people tend to pick up the receiver precisely when you don’t want to talk. I’d be forced to make all these complicated excuses.”
    “Oh! It would be so difficult!” Rebecca told her.
    “I did consider tacking a note to your front door, saying the party had been postponed due to unforeseen circumstances. Cowardly, I admit, but—”
    “And also wasteful!” Rebecca said. “Wasting that once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to create a memory that will last long, long after your daughter’s made up her chemistry credits and graduated and gone on to college and you’ve forgotten all about her momentary little setback.”
    She stopped for air, and Mrs. Border said, “I guess we do have to remember what’s important here.”
    “Absolutely,” Rebecca said. She squared her shoulders. “Oh, one thing I’d meant to call you about: when shall I expect Binstock to bring the flowers?”
    “Well, they promised them for three o’clock, but now I don’t know if—”
    “Three is fine,” Rebecca said smoothly. “I’ll make sure to be here. See you this evening, Mrs. Border.”
    “Well . . . so . . . well, yes, I suppose,” Mrs. Border said.
    Rebecca hung up and sank into a chair.
    “Way to go, Beck,” Poppy said, setting aside the jam jar.
    “I’m exhausted,” she told him.
    And also . . . what was it she felt? Compromised. She was a fraud.
    Yet when Poppy asked, “Isn’t it time for my nap?” she found herself once again putting on her hostess act. “You are absolutely right!” she told him, all zip and vigor. “Look at that clock! Let me help you to your room.” And she rose to slide his chair back.
    He was light as milkweed, these days. He tilted against her and breathed rapidly and shallowly, clutching his cane in his free hand but relying on her for support. “There’s also the question of aches,” he announced when they reached the stairs. His breath smelled like strawberries. “Take inventory at any given moment and you have to say your back aches, your shoulders ache, your knees are stiff, your neck has a crick—”
    “The moral of the story is, stop taking inventory,” Rebecca told him. “Don’t think about it. Put your mind on something else.”
    “Easy for you to say. You’re still in your forties.”
    “My forties! I’m fifty-three,” she said.
    “You are?”
    She helped him up another step.
    “How did that happen so
fast
?” he asked.
    Rebecca laughed.
    After she had