Free A Patchwork Planet by Anne Tyler Page A

My thirtieth birthday fell on a Monday, which was garbage day for more than half our clients. I hadn’t gotten around to setting out their trash cans the night before, because I’d indulged in this private little one-man birthday bash, instead. So there I was, up before dawn in spite of myself, just opening my door, which is the only place in my apartment I can even see the sky from; and I switched my lights off, and loom!
    I decided turning thirty might not be so bad, after all. I thought maybe I could handle it. I went off to work whistling, even though I had that balsa-mouth feeling that comes from too many beers.
    It was a bitter-cold day, the kind that turns your feet to stone, and after I’d dealt with the trash cans I went home and wrapped myself in a blanket and tried to get back to sleep. Only trouble was, the telephone kept ringing. I let the machine answer for me. First call, Mrs. Dibble wanted me to take the Cartwrights grocery shopping. Second call, she needed a sack of sidewalk salt run over to Ditty Nolan. Third call was my grandparents. “Barnaby, hon,” my grandma said, “it’s me and Pop-Pop, just wanting to wish you a—”
    I leaned over the edge of the bed and picked up the phone. “Gram?” I said.
    “Well, hey there! Happy birthday!”
    “Thanks. Is Pop-Pop on too?”
    “I’m here,” he said. “Hope you got plans to celebrate.”
    “Oh, yeah; well, yeah,” I said in this vague sort of way, because I couldn’t tell if they knew about the dinner Mom was fixing. I never could be certain. Some years she invited them, but other years she thought up reasons not to. (My grandpa had driven a laundry truck till poor vision forced his retirement, and Gram still clerked in a liquor store. “God gave” them—their wording—only one child, my mother, and they were very proud of her, but the feeling didn’t seem to be mutual.) I said, “Probably I’ll just, you know, drop by home for dinner or something.”
    “That’s my boy!” Gram said. “That’s what I like to hear! A visit’ll mean the world to them, hon.”
    “Yes, Gram,” I said.
    Then Pop-Pop asked, “How’s the car doing?”
    “Oh, chugging along just fine,” I said. “Had to take it in and get the steering linkage tightened, but no big deal.”
    “Why, you could have done that yourself!” he said. “That’s what I always did, when she was mine!”
    “Maybe next time,” I told him.
    I’d given up trying to convince him I wasn’t a born mechanic.
    The way the conversation ended was, I would stop by and see them later in the week. They had a little something for me. (A book of coupons good for six take-out pizzas, I already knew. It was their standard birthday gift, and one I counted on.) Then after I hung up I called Mrs. Dibble, because my conscience had started to bother me over the Cartwrights. They tended to feel rushed when somebody else took them shopping. “So,” I said. “Cartwrights’ groceries, Ditty Nolan’s salt. What: she’s expecting snow?”
    “I have no idea,” Mrs. Dibble told me. “We’re just the …”
    We’re just the muscles, not the brains. I said goodbye and stood up to unwind myself from my blanket.
    The Cartwrights were a good example of why Rent-a-Back was so sought after. They weren’t all that old—early sixties, which in this business was nothing—but Mr. Cartwright had permanently ruined his right ankle several years before while stepping off a curb in Towson. So he couldn’t drive anymore, and Mrs. Cartwright had never known how and did not intend to learn, she said, at this late date. Nor could they afford a chauffeur. Rent-a-Back offered just what they needed: somebody (usually me) to drive their big old Impala to the grocery store, and unfold Mr. Cartwright’s walker from the trunk when we got there, and follow behind as the two of them inched down the aisles debating each and every purchase. I could have just waited at the front of the store, but I got a kick out of