Vinegar Girl (Hogarth Shakespeare) - Anne Tyler Page 0,45

a sagging couch, a fake-woodgrain coffee table, and an old-fashioned tube TV on a wheeled metal cart. “Couch looks old but is soft,” he said. He seemed to be studying the couch intently; there was nothing more to be seen in this room, but he made no move to leave.

“One time in high school,” he said, “I went home with classmate to work on project. I slept the night there. In my bed I heard his parents talk downstairs. See, this classmate was not orphan boy but normal.”

Kate glanced at him curiously.

“I heard just the parents’ voices, not words. Parents sat together in the living room. Wife said, ‘Mumble mumble?’ Husband said, ‘Mumble.’ Wife said, ‘Mumble, mumble, mumble?’ Husband said, ‘Mumble mumble.’ ”

Kate couldn’t imagine where Pyotr was heading with this.

He said, “You would maybe sit sometimes in this living room with me? You would say ‘Mumble?’ And I would say ‘Mumble mumble.’ ”

“Or you could say ‘Mumble?’ and I could say ‘Mumble mumble,’ ” Kate suggested. Meaning that she saw no reason why he couldn’t be the tentative one and she the more definite. But she could tell he didn’t get her point. He looked at her with his forehead crinkling. “Sure,” she said finally. “We could do that sometimes.”

“O-kay!” he said, and he let out an enormous breath and started smiling.

“Kitchen?” she reminded him.

“Kitchen,” he said, and he waved her toward the door.

The kitchen lay at the rear of the house, nearest the top of the stairs. It must once have been a storeroom; the walls were cedar, still faintly aromatic. There was a 1950s look to it that was oddly appealing: rusty white metal cabinets, peeling Formica counters, a thickly painted white wooden table with two red chairs. “Nice,” Kate said.

“You like it?”

“Yup.”

“You like the whole place?”

“Yup.”

“I know it is not fancy.”

“It’s very nice. Very comfortable,” she said, and she meant it.

He let out another breath. “Now we go meet Mrs. Murphy,” he said.

Standing back again to let her leave the room first, he drew himself inward to allow an exaggerated amount of space for her to pass, as if to make it clear that he would not presume. Evidently she hadn’t managed to hide the awkwardness she was feeling.

—

Mrs. Murphy was a heavyset, gray-haired woman in a lace-trimmed dress and orthopedic shoes. Mrs. Liu was tiny and wiry, and like many older Asian women she wore what could have been men’s clothes: an untucked khaki work shirt and boxy brown trousers and blindingly white sneakers. The two of them seemed embedded among the antimacassared chairs and the fussy little tables and the shelves of bric-a-brac, and they emerged only by degrees, Mrs. Liu pushing Mrs. Murphy’s wheelchair forward several seconds after Pyotr and Kate stepped through the door. “Is this our Kate?” Mrs. Murphy called out.

Kate almost looked behind her for someone else; it seemed so unlikely that she could be “our” Kate. But Mrs. Murphy was holding out both hands, forcing Kate to step closer and take them in her own. Mrs. Murphy’s hands were large and thick-fingered and meaty. She was so large all over, in fact, that Kate wondered how Pyotr could lift her. “You look just the way Pyoder described you,” Mrs. Murphy was saying. “We thought maybe he was overstating out of smittenness. Welcome, dear Kate! Welcome to your new home.”

“Well…thanks,” Kate said.

“Has he given you the grand tour yet?”

“I have showed her everywhere except yard,” Pyotr said.

“Oh, you have to see the yard, of course. We hear you’re going to be planting up a storm.”

“Well, um, if that’s all right with you,” Kate said. It occurred to her that she had no idea if Mrs. Murphy had been consulted.

“It’s more than all right,” Mrs. Murphy said, at the same time that Mrs. Liu put in, “Will be flowers, though, yes?” Although Mrs. Liu’s accent was very different from Pyotr’s, she seemed to have the same trouble with pronouns. “This Pyoder is all useful things! Cucumbers, cabbages, radishes! She has no poetry.”

“He has no poetry,” Pyotr corrected her. (Not even Pyotr confused his genders.) “Kate will plant flowers and vegetables both. Maybe will someday be botanist.”

“Good! You should be botanist too, Pyoder. Get outdoors in sunshine. See how pale?” Mrs. Liu asked Kate. “He is like mushroom!”

If Mrs. Liu were standing closer to Pyotr, she would have nudged him in the ribs, Kate suspected. In fact, both women were looking at him with amusement and affection, and Pyotr was positively basking under their gaze.