Redhead by the Side of the Road - Anne Tyler Page 0,61

go back to school and face the consequences,” he said, turning once more to Lorna, “and after that I’m going to get down to work and make you proud of me again.”

This had such an inauthentic ring that Micah suspected Roger had dictated the words, but Lorna’s face softened and she said, “Oh, honey, I’ll always be proud of you! Both of us will. Won’t we, Roger?”

Roger said, “Mmm-hmm.”

She stepped forward to give Brink a hug, and he stood motionless within her embrace while Roger looked on benignly, hands in his trouser pockets, jingling keys or coins.

When Lorna drew back, she was suddenly all business. “Let’s get you home,” she told Brink. “We’ll have a nice Sunday evening together, a cozy family evening, and we’ll go to the Dean tomorrow. Oh, the little ones will be so glad to see you!”

She turned to collect Brink’s clothes from the table, one arm still wrapped around him as if she worried he’d get away from her, and then she guided him toward the door. Roger opened it for them, but after he’d followed them out he looked back to say, “Thanks, Micah.”

“Anytime,” Micah said.

“Yes! Oh!” Lorna said, pivoting. “Thank you so much! I don’t know how we can ever…”

Micah tilted a hand to his temple, and then he closed the door after them.

The percolator was merely sighing now. The coffee must be way overbrewed. Next to it sat the empty mugs, the spoons and napkins, everything ready for guests. Only there were no guests.

He put the spoons away in the drawer. He put the napkins back in their cellophane packet. He hung the mugs on their hooks, and then he unplugged the percolator and emptied the coffee down the drain.

8

YOU HAVE TO WONDER what goes through the mind of such a man. Such a narrow and limited man; so closed off. He has nothing to look forward to, nothing to daydream about. He wakes on a Monday morning and the light through the slit-eyed window is a bleak, hopeless gray, and the news on the clock radio is all unspeakably sad. There’s been a mass shooting in a synagogue; whole families are dying in Yemen; immigrant children torn from their parents will never, ever be the same, even if by some unlikely chance they are reunited tomorrow. Micah hears all this dully. It doesn’t surprise him.

He tries to slide into sleep again but it’s a fitful, fretful sleep, broken by fragments of dreams. He dreams he dropped his wallet and it landed in Sofia, Bulgaria. He dreams he swallowed a wad of chewing gum, although he hasn’t chewed gum since grade school.

He gives up and struggles out of bed and trudges to the bathroom, and then he gets into his running clothes and switches off his radio and exits through the basement. Climbing the stairs to the foyer, he feels the need to assist himself by pushing down on his thighs with his palms. He feels heavy.

Outside, the air smells like diesel. The ground is still damp from Saturday’s rain. He starts at a slow, bumbling pace; it seems that some blockage in his chest is restricting his breathing. He crosses the street and heads north. His chest begins to loosen and he speeds up a bit. He sees people waiting at the bus stop, but when he turns west and leaves his own neighborhood the sidewalks are almost deserted. Just a couple of other runners pass on the opposite side of the street, and a workman unloads traffic cones from a truck at an intersection. Not till Roland Avenue does the school crowd begin to appear. Little ones dawdling, mothers urging them along, older children tripping each other and jostling and teasing.

Turning south, finally, on the homeward loop of his run, Micah sees an ancient, stooped man clinging to a wrought-iron railing as he inches down his front steps with his briefcase. The man crosses to an out-of-date Buick and opens the door with one crabbed hand and heaves the briefcase onto the front seat; then he shuts the door inconclusively and makes his way around the hood, both hands maintaining constant contact with the car until he