Redhead by the Side of the Road - Anne Tyler Page 0,44

“Like, I see her with one guy one time, another guy another time, you know? And I could swear that once she was drunk.”

“Lorna does not drink,” Micah had said firmly. About the guys, he didn’t even bother arguing. So she was walking someplace with one classmate and then walking with another; so what? At least she didn’t seem to be keeping company with Larry Esmond, Lord forbid. That must have been a passing fancy.

He returned to the kitchen and took the colander from the cupboard. He rinsed a tomato under the faucet; he rinsed two heads of endive. “Awn-deef!” he said in his best French accent. “Zee awn-deef for zee sal-lodd!”

But his heart wasn’t really in it.

6

“WHAT DID YOU THINK OF LILY?” Ada asked. She was calling in the middle of Micah’s breakfast, as it happened. Having wakened in the night to the steady drip-drip of rain on the dead leaves outside his window, he’d turned off his radio alarm and allowed himself to sleep in and skip his morning run. He had to set down a strip of bacon and wipe his fingers before he picked his phone up. “I thought she was nice,” he told her. “Kind of young to get married, though, it seemed to me.”

“She’s twenty-one,” Ada said. “Older than I was when I married. But I know what you mean; she’s a little…innocent, or something. And how is Joey going to support her? Granted, right now she has a job, but she was talking the other day about this dream she’d had: she was trying to fit twin babies into a single car seat, and everybody knows dreaming about a baby means you want one.”

“Dreaming about a baby means you want one?”

“It’s a sign from your subconscious that you’re ready for the next stage of life.”

“Well,” Micah said after a moment, “you’ve been telling me for years that you wish Joey would act his age. Maybe this is the nudge he’s been waiting for.”

“Maybe,” Ada said dubiously. Then, “Reverend Lowry’s officiating, did I mention? Our pastor at Pillar Baptist. Lily’s people don’t have a church, and he said he’d be happy to do it. He came by the house last night to talk about the vows.” She laughed. “He asks Joey, ‘Do you love her?’ And Joey thinks awhile and then he says, ‘Well, sometimes.’?”

“Sometimes!” Micah said.

“Oh,” Ada said breezily, “all in all, I guess that’s about the most a couple can hope for. By the way, I don’t suppose you need an assistant tech guy, do you?”

“I barely need myself,” Micah said. “Who did you have in mind?”

“Well, Joey, I was thinking.”

This didn’t even deserve an answer, in Micah’s opinion. “Speaking of which, I should get busy,” he told her, and she said, “Oh, okay; didn’t mean to keep you.”

He hung up and took another chomp of bacon.

* * *

—

At ten thirty he went out front to greet the carpenter—a man named Henry Bell who specialized in sealing off entry points for rodents. He was a lanky, red-bearded guy about Micah’s age who’d been called in several times before (the mice around these parts were endlessly inventive), and he gave Micah a shy grin and asked, “How you doing, friend?”

“Doing good,” Micah said, ushering him in.

The rain had temporarily stopped, but Henry scuffed his work boots on the mat just inside the front door. “Don’t tell me those rascals found another way into your furnace room,” he said.

“No, that’s okay still, near as I can tell. Right now it’s apartment 1B. Tenant claims they’re in the kitchen.”

“Exterminator been by?”

“He has. He said to tell you he saw some droppings behind the fridge.”

Henry followed him through the foyer, his tool kit clanking as he walked, and Micah pressed Yolanda’s doorbell.

She answered in her bathrobe, or whatever you would call it—a floor-length flowered garment with a long zipper down the front. “Morning!” she said to Henry. “You’re the mouseproofer!”

“I am indeed,” Henry said.

“I didn’t expect you to be