“Great, Mom,” Zeb groaned. “Let her know how old I am, why don’t you.”
“Well, it’s not a state secret, Zeb. Poppy, could you pass the dip around? I’m going to check on dinner.”
“Why doesn’t Zeb pass the dip?” Aunt Joyce asked Mrs. Davitch. “Poppy’s not on duty tonight.”
“I didn’t say he was, did I? I only asked if he’d help.”
“Be glad to,” Poppy told her, bending for the tray on the coffee table. But Aunt Joyce seized his arm and then wheeled on Mrs. Davitch to say, “Just because he fills in sometimes in a pinch doesn’t mean he has to spend a family night waiting tables, Liddy Davitch.”
“Now, Joycie,” Poppy began, while Mrs. Davitch’s chin started wobbling and she said, “Oh, that’s so unfair of you!”
“Would you ask your doctor to check your appendix if you met him socially?”
“That is so uncalled for!”
“I’ll just pass it myself, why don’t I?” Rebecca suggested, and she stepped between the two women to lift the tray. (Celery sticks and carrot sticks that had been sliced too far ahead of time, from the looks of them, with a bowl of sour-cream-and-onion-soup-mix dip at the center.) “Have some,” she told Zeb, who happened to be standing practically on top of her. Zeb seized a carrot stick, dropped it, and stooped to retrieve it. “Joe?” she said. “Celery? Carrots?”
“Thanks,” he told her, but he stood smiling down at her without taking a thing. Rebecca flushed and moved on, finally.
Mrs. Davitch said, “Well, aren’t you nice.” She dabbed beneath her eyes with her index fingers and gave Rebecca a watery smile. Then Poppy asked, “Drinks, everybody?” and went over to the cocktail cart. This time, Aunt Joyce raised no objection.
Within the next half hour, several more people arrived — two male cousins, another uncle, and a middle-aged woman named Iris, her relationship to the others never specified. Each of them walked in without knocking, slamming the front door into the closet door, and each seemed to know all about Rebecca. “Did you find a summer job yet?” one of the cousins asked, and Iris said, “I majored in history, too; I expect Joe will have mentioned.” They filled the rear parlor, the women perching on the very edge of the couch with their knees set all at the same angle like a chorus line; and they talked about people Rebecca didn’t know, but they kept sending her complicitous smiles so that she felt included.
Dinner, when it was finally served (much too late, after some apparent crisis in the kitchen) was roast beef and mashed potatoes and salad. The roast was dry, the potatoes lumpy, the salad leaves transparent with store-bought dressing. Mrs. Davitch acknowledged all this with a moaning sort of laugh, but her guests said everything was fine. They spent most of the meal arguing about another cousin — an absent cousin — who either had or had not said something rude to Mrs. Davitch about her husband’s death. Mrs. Davitch was of the opinion that his remark had been very hurtful, but Aunt Joyce pointed out that suicide was suicide and she might as well face up to the fact. Mrs. Davitch set her fork down and covered her eyes with one hand.
Rebecca hadn’t known that Joe’s father was a suicide. She looked across the table at Joe, but he appeared to be concentrating on his meal.
Dessert was a chocolate layer cake blazing with twenty candles, the top layer slightly askew and held in place with toothpicks. For that, the little girls were summoned from upstairs — all three in pajamas and squinting crossly from an evening of watching TV in the dark. “Give Beck a birthday kiss, now,” Aunt Joyce ordered, and they hung back at first but eventually obeyed, each leaving a tiny star of dampness on Rebecca’s cheek. Then everybody sang “Happy Birthday,” while Rebecca gazed around the table and pretended that she belonged here — that she was the much-loved member of a large and boisterous family, just as she had yearned to be when she was a child.
Later all the adults settled once more in the parlor, and Mrs. Davitch laid the photo album across Rebecca’s knees so that everyone could explain just who was who. Here was Mrs. Davitch herself, unrecognizably girlish in flared khaki shorts from the forties. Here was Mr. Davitch, with Joe’s broad smile but, yes, perhaps a slightly shadowed look around the eyes. Here was baby Zeb chewing on a teething ring, and here a teenaged Joe — nudge, nudge — in a very loud houndstooth sports coat with shoulders sharp as wings. No attempt had been made at chronological order: the present-day Aunt Joyce, overblown and dumpy, was followed by Aunt Joyce in a willowy, wasp-waisted bridal gown. And there wasn’t a sign of Joe’s ex-wife, although several shots of his children had had someone scissored out of them.
Rebecca sat very straight-backed, and she refrained from touching a picture even when asking a question about it. She didn’t want anyone to think that she was presuming. She knew she was a guest here, she meant. She knew these colorful relatives weren’t hers.
But when Joe walked her out to the car at the end of the evening, he said, “Everybody felt you were like a member of the family. You fit right in, they told me.”
“Well, they were very hospitable,” she said.
“They think I ought to marry you.”
“What?”
“I’d told them ahead that I wanted to.”
She stopped at the curb and turned to him. “Joe—” she said.
“I know,” he said.
All at once she grew conscious of the stillness of the evening, the absence of any traffic, the hushing sound of new leaves on the little tree beside them. When he took a step toward her, she thought he meant to kiss her, and she knew she would kiss him back. Instead, though, he slowly, solemnly, carefully tied the drawstring at her neckline.
Why did that make her knees go limp?
She gave a shaky laugh and turned to get into her car. “Well,” she said, “thanks for dinner. Goodbye.”
“Goodbye,” he said.
He closed her door so gently behind her that she thought at first it wasn’t latched. But it was.
* * *
Friday, there was no word of him. Well, thank goodness. Friday evening she and Will went to the movies. Saturday they shared a pizza for her birthday, and Will gave her a locket with his photograph inside. She kept thinking Joe would pop up somewhere. She walked self-consciously, keeping her head high. But he never appeared.
Sunday, Will’s mother and Rebecca’s met them for brunch at Myrtle’s Family Restaurant. It was a tradition, once a month or so, since Macadam was an easy drive from Church Valley. At the end of the meal, Rebecca’s mother said it was her turn to pay. The bill was not very large, but Rebecca felt a pang when her mother pulled her worn cloth coin purse from her pocketbook. Later, as they were walking back to campus, Rebecca asked Will, “Why don’t we ever pay for brunch?”
“Oh, well, you know how our moms like to give us a little treat,” he said.
It was the word moms that got her — that weak and childish word falling from his lips. “Oh,” she said, “I’m so sick of this eternal… studentness! Each thing in its own time, every stage of our lives waiting for the proper, reasonable moment!”
Will said, “Pardon?”
Didn’t he seem so young, all at once! So loosely constructed, and narrow through the jaw! So half-baked, really.
“Rebecca?” he asked. “Is something the matter?”
“No,” she said. “I’m just tired, I guess.”
It occurred to her that she led an absolutely motionless existence. There was nothing to look forward to in it. Nothing whatsoever.
* * *
Monday evening, as usual, they met in the library to study. Rebecca arrived first, and a few minutes later Will sat down at her table and opened his leather briefcase. Shuffle, shuffle, his notes emerged, and two textbooks arrived with a thud, followed by a loose-leaf binder, followed by a great array of pens and pencils. His red ballpoint for editing, black fountain pen for composing, lead pencil for notes in borrowed books, and blue ballpoint for the books that he owned. Each one he aligned precisely with the others at the head of his place. Watching made Rebecca feel itchy.