Read Online Back When We Were Grownups by Anne Tyler - Free Book Online

ballpoint pen. “When did you
do
this?” she asked.
    “After I woke up from my nap. Can we go on our walk now?”
    “Yes, of course.” And she refolded the paper and tucked it into her pocket, where it rustled against the list he’d given her earlier.
    This spring had been so unseasonably cool that Poppy, from habit, wore his gray V-necked cardigan; but Rebecca didn’t bother with a sweater herself. She had let in enough of the outside world today to know that the weather had turned warm. When they stepped through the door, she told Poppy, “Feel that!” and he tipped his head back and closed his eyes and said, “Ah.” Buttery June sunshine lit his face. The saplings lining the street were a vivid new green, and even above the traffic Rebecca could hear a few birds.
    Funny how walking slowly could tire your muscles more quickly than walking fast. She resisted the impulse to point that out to Poppy, though; he would take it for a complaint. Instead she commented on the scenery, which presented itself inch by inch as they proceeded. “Oh, what a pity, they’ve boarded up the blue-gable house.”
    “Pretty soon the Open Arms will be the only place
not
boarded up,” Poppy said.
    It was true: this peaceful old street, once the height of elegance, was taking on a sort of toothless look. The house next door had turned into a meditation center, with a banner bearing a mandala flying above the front stoop. Around the corner, dignified mansions sported signs for bail bondsmen, palmists, and cut-rate car insurance. A place with an imposing columned porch was undergoing some kind of remodeling, and when they stopped to investigate they found a placard in the window announcing the arrival of a body-piercing parlor.
    “It never reverses, you notice,” Poppy said.
    “Pardon?”
    “Never changes back into something better.”
    “No.”
    “Of course when Joe first started the Open Arms, people were none too happy. They claimed he was bringing the neighborhood down.”
    “Well, he didn’t have a choice!” Rebecca said. “His father died! How else could he support the family?”
    “What he originally set out to do,” Poppy said, “he wanted to make it a tourist home. You remember tourist homes. Now they’re called bed-and-breakfasts and they’re considered very tony, but back then, oh, his mother had a fit. She said, ‘I can’t be changing strangers’ bedsheets! Letting all and sundry spend the night under my roof. Whatever would the neighbors say?’ As I recall, Joe had gone and bought an old sign from some kind of salvage place.
HOTEL NO VACANCY,
it said. With the
NO
removable, for whenever they had a room free. But, ‘Over my dead body!’ his mother said. It was Zeb who thought up giving parties instead. Even that kind of went against Liddy’s grain. Better than the Hotel No Vacancy, though, she had to admit.”
    Rebecca smiled. “This is the first I’ve heard of that,” she said.
    “Oh, you don’t know everything, Miss Beck.”
    She took his arm, and they resumed walking. They were overtaken by others, more able-bodied: a boy on Rollerblades, two girls leading a little dust mop of a dog, a middle-aged couple carrying plastic bags of groceries. The couple stayed just slightly ahead; they weren’t talking, but there was something sympathetic and companionable about the way they kept in step with each other, their shoulders gently touching.
    Sometimes Rebecca had to fight down the feeling that life had treated her unfairly.
    As if he had read her mind, Poppy asked, “Do you ever think of Joe anymore?”
    “Naturally I think of him!” she said, almost offended.
    “But can you hear his voice in your head still? Or get a flash of how he looked at some certain, particular moment, as if he were still here?”
    She tightened her hold on his arm. She said, “Yes, I’ve had that happen.”
    “Joycie used to say to me, ‘Oh, hell’s bells!’ Remember how she’d say that? I hear it sometimes just when