Enn Tajler - Searching for Caleb

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SEARCHING FOR CALEB

The Pecks are marvelous literally marvelous, by turns heartbreaking and hilarious. . . . It is not possible for me to convey adequately the magic of this book. There is not a wrong word or a false emotion. . . . These people seem part of our own lives and the search for Caleb becomes as important to us as it does to them.

The Washington Post

It is about growing up, mating and breaking away. It is about living by prescription and living by instinct. It is about loving the past and yet defying it, and taking responsibility for terrible things while holding onto joyfulness. It is about rebellion and adjustment, the simultaneous lust to wander and to take root, to move and to stay. Its about trying, up till the moment of death, to discover what it was we rebelled against, what it was we adjusted to, what we loved and what we lost. Anne Tyler has made something magical out of common life, fulfilling our belief that it can be magical. She is the best of magicians, a born artist. She has created an epic. . . . Wonderful . . . Perfect.

The Philadelphia Inquirer

A Fawcett Book

Published by The Random House Publishing Group

Copyright 1975 by Anne Tyler Modarressi

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States of America by Ballantine Books, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.

Fawcett is a registered trademark and the Fawcett colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.

www.ballantinebooks.com

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 96-96698

eISBN: 978-0-307-78838-2

This edition published by arrangement with Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.

v3.1

The fortune teller and her grandfather went to New York City on an Amtrak train, racketing along with their identical, peaky white faces set due north. The grandfather had left his hearing aid at home on the bureau. He wore a black suit, pearl-gray suspenders, and a very old-fashioned, expensive-looking pinstriped collarless shirt. No matter what happened he kept his deep-socketed eyes fixed upon the seat in front of him, he continued sliding a thumb over the news clipping he held in his hand. Either the train had turned his deafness absolute or else he had something very serious on his mind, it was hard to tell which. In any case, he would not answer the few things the fortune teller said to him.

Past his downy white head, outside the scummy window, factories and warehouses streamed along. Occasionally a leftover forest would coast into view and then out again twisted bare trees, trunks ripped by lightning, logs covered with vines, tangled raspy bushes and beer cans, whisky bottles, rusted carburetors, sewing machines, and armchairs. Then some town or other would take over. Men wearing several layers of jackets struggled with crates and barrels on loading docks, their breaths trailing out of their mouths in white tatters. It was January, and cold enough to make the brick buildings appear to darken and condense.

The fortune teller, who was not a gypsy or even Spanish but a lanky, weedy blond woman in a Breton hat and a faded shift, took a National Geographic from a straw bag on the floor and started reading it from back to front. She flicked the pages after barely a glance, rapidly swinging one crossed foot. Half-way through the magazine she bent to rummage through the bag again. She felt her grandfather slide his eyes over to see what she was keeping there. Tarot cards? A crystal ball? Some other tool of her mysterious, disreputable profession? But all she showed was a spill of multicolored kerchief and then a box of Ludens cough drops, which she took out and offered him. He refused. She put one in her mouth, giving him a sudden smile that completely upturned every one of her pale, straight features. Her grandfather absorbed it but forgot to smile back. He returned to his view of the seat ahead, a button-on antimacassar with an old ladys netted hat just beyond.

In his hand, stroked by his puckered thumb, the newspaper clipping first rustled and then wilted and dropped, but the fortune teller knew it by heart anyway.

TABOR

Suddenly on December 18, 1972, Paul Jeffrey, Sr., of New York City, formerly of Baltimore. Beloved husband of Deborah Palmer Tabor. Father of Paul J. Tabor, Jr., of Chicago and Theresa T. Hanes of Springline, Massachusetts. Also survived by five grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren.Services will be held Thursday at the . . .

My throat is dry, Justine, her grandfather said.

Ill get you a soda.

What?

A soda.

He drew back, offended. No telling what he thought she had said. Justine patted his hand and told him, Never mind, Grandfather. Ill just be gone a minute.

She left, sidling between shopping bags and weekend cases along the narrow aisle, holding tight to her saucerlike hat. Three cars up, she paid for two root beers and a sack of Cheez Doodles. She returned walking carefully, opening doors with her elbows and frowning at the plastic cups, which were filled to the brim. Just inside her own car, the Cheez Doodles fell and a man in a business suit had to pick them up for her. Oh! Thank you! she said, and smiled at him, her cheeks grown suddenly pink. At first glance she could be taken for a young girl, but then people saw the fine lines beginning to show in her skin, and the faded blue of her eyes and the veined, parched, forty-year-old hands with the scratched wedding band looking three sizes too large below one knobby knuckle. She had a ramshackle way of walking and a sharp, merry voice. Root beer, Grandfather! she sang out. If he didnt hear her, all the rest of the car did.

She put a cup in his hand, and he took a sip. Ah yes, he said. He liked herby things, root beer and horehound drops and sassafras tea. But when she tore open the cellophane bag and presented him with a Cheez Doodle a fat orange worm that left crystals on his fingertips he frowned at it from beneath a tangle of white eyebrows. He had once been a judge. He still gave the impression of judging everything that came his way. What is this, he said, but that was a verdict, not a question.

Its a Cheez Doodle, Grandfather, try it and see.

Whats that you say?

She held out the bag, showing him the lettering on the side. First he replaced the Cheez Doodle and then he wiped his fingers on a handkerchief he took from his pocket. Then he went back to drinking root beer and studying the clipping, which he had laid flat on one narrow, triangular knee. Theresa, he said. I never cared for that name.

Justine nodded, chewing.

I dont like difficult names. I dont like foreignness.

Perhaps theyre Catholic, Justine said.

Hows that?

Perhaps theyre Catholic.

I didnt quite hear.

Catholic!

Faces spun around.

Dont be ridiculous, her grandfather said. Paul Tabor went to the same church I did, he was in my brothers Sunday school class. The two of them graduated from the Salter Academy together. Then this dissatisfaction set in. This, this newness. I cant tell you how many times Ive seen it come to pass. A young man goes to a distant city instead of staying close to home, he gets a job, switches friends, widens his circle of acquaintances. Marries a girl from a family no one knows, lives in a house of unusual architecture, names his children foreign names that never were in his family in any preceding generation. He takes to traveling, buys winter homes and summer homes and vacation cottages in godforsaken states like Florida where none of us has ever been. Meanwhile his parents die and all his people just seem to vanish, theres no one you can ask any more, Now, what is Paul up to these days? Then he dies himself, most likely in a very large city where theres nobody to notice, only his wife and his barber and his tailor and maybe not even the last two, and whats it for? Whats it all about? Now in Pauls case I just couldnt say for certain, of course. He was my brothers friend, not mine. However I will hazard a guess: he had no