Redhead by the Side of the Road - Anne Tyler Page 0,19
and left.
* * *
—
When he was halfway down the stairs to the basement, his phone rang and he stopped to dig it out of his pocket. ADA BROCK. His oldest sister, the family’s “linker-upper,” as his other sisters called her. He answered. “Ada,” he said.
“Hi, hon. How you doing?”
“I’m good.”
“Well, guess what! You’ll never guess in a million years.”
“What.”
“Joey’s getting married.”
“What!”
Joey was Ada’s youngest—her baby, she always said, although he must be in his twenties by now. He still lived at home (a theme seemed to be developing this morning), and Micah had assumed he was too pudgy and vacant and aimless even to have a casual girlfriend, let alone get married. But no: “He met her in a grocery store months ago, it turns out, but he never said word one to us. Remember some months back, when he thought he might try food management?”
“Food management?”
“And I guess they’ve been dating ever since, but did he happen to mention it? Not a word. And then last night at dinner he tells us, ‘Me and Lily want to get married; can I switch out my single bed for a double?’ ‘Lily?’ I said. ‘Who’s Lily?’ and he said, ‘Lily’s my fiancée.’ Like, duh, right? ‘So I gather,’ I tell him, ‘but we’ve never heard her name before.’ ‘Well, now you have,’ he says. Mr. Wise Guy. I mean, isn’t that just like a boy? With the girls it’s talk, talk, talk all day long; Lord, I could tell you the color of their fellas’ underwear, but here’s Joey up and springing a totally foreign person on us with no warning whatsoever.”
“She’s foreign?”
“What? No, she’s American.”
“But you just said—”
“An outside person, I meant. Unknown.”
“Ah.”
“So can you come to dinner tomorrow night? Bring Cass. Phil is going to make his famous grilled pork.”
“Come to dinner because…?”
“To meet Lily, of course. I told Joey to invite her. I said, ‘I refuse to wait till your bride is walking down the aisle before I first lay eyes on her.’?”
“Am I going to have to go to the wedding?” Micah asked. He disliked weddings; they always felt so crowded.
“Of course you have to go to the wedding. You’re family.”
“I didn’t have to go to Nancy’s wedding.”
“Nancy isn’t married.”
“She’s not?”
Micah took a moment to adjust to this. Nancy had three children.
“Six p.m.,” Ada said. “Bring Cass, because she’s so good at drawing people out. I don’t know shit about this girl and all of a sudden I’m going to be living with her.”
“Well,” Micah said, “okay. See you later, I guess.”
“No guess about it,” Ada told him.
He hung up, although she was probably still talking.
* * *
—
When he got back to his apartment, Brink’s phone on the kitchen counter was making its dinging sound. He walked over to check it. A new text had arrived: If I don’t hear from you by…For the first time he noticed that the telephone icon at the bottom of the screen bore a little red 24. Twenty-four unanswered calls; Lord above.
He disconnected the charging cord and took the phone with him to the office door, where he knocked heavily three times. No response. The phone gave another ding. Micah knocked again and then opened the door onto dimly lit chaos—blazer in a heap on top of the printer, more clothes on the floor, one shoe near the desk and the other near the daybed, which at first glance seemed no more than a tangle of blankets. Wasn’t it amazing how an adolescent boy without a stitch of luggage could still mess up a room! Micah strode across to plop the phone down next to Brink’s sleeping profile. “Call your mother,” he said.
Brink opened his eyes and stared blankly at the phone, just inches from his nose. He groaned and struggled to a sitting position. “Huh?” he said.
Even after a night’s