A Slipping-Down Life Read online

  PRAISE FOR ANNE TYLER

  “One of the most beguiling and mesmerizing writers in America.”

  The Cleveland Plain Dealer

  “Not merely good … she is wickedly good!”

  JOHN UPDIKE

  “A novelist who knows what a proper story is … A very funny writer … Not only a good and artful writer, but a wise one as well.”

  Newsweek

  “Tyler’s characters have character: quirks, odd angles of vision, colorful mean streaks and harmonic longings.”

  Time

  “Her people are triumphantly alive!”

  The New York Times

  By Anne Tyler:

  IF MORNING EVER COMES*

  THE TIN CAN TREE*

  A SLIPPING-DOWN LIFE*

  THE CLOCK WINDER*

  CELESTIAL NAVIGATION*

  SEARCHING FOR CALEB*

  EARTHLY POSSESSIONS*

  MORGAN’S PASSING*

  DINNER AT THE HOMESICK RESTAURANT*

  THE ACCIDENTAL TOURIST

  BREATHING LESSONS

  SAINT MAYBE*

  LADDER OF YEARS*

  *Published by Ivy Books

  An Ivy Book

  Published by The Ballantine Publishing Group

  Copyright © 1969, 1970 by Anne Tyler Modarressi

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by The Ballantine Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.

  A somewhat abridged form of this novel appeared in the January 1970 issue of Redbook magazine.

  http://www.randomhouse.com

  eISBN: 978-0-307-78832-0

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

  v3.1

  Contents

  Cover

  Other Books by This Author

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  1

  Evie Decker was not musical. You could tell that just from the way she looked—short and wide, heavy-footed. She listened to marches without beating time, forgot the tune to “The Star-Spangled Banner,” and moved soddenly around the high school gym in a bumbling two-step. At noon, while Evie munched a sandwich, boys from the band played Dixieland in a corner of the cafeteria. Sharp brass notes pierced the air above the tables; they darted past like red and yellow arrows. Evie ate on, a plump drab girl in a brown sweater that was running to balls at the elbows.

  So when she invited Violet Hayes (her only friend) to a rock show at the Stardust Movie Theater, Violet couldn’t understand it. “What would you go to a thing like that for?” she said. “Are you serious? I don’t believe you even know what a rock show is.”

  “Well, I do listen to the radio,” Evie said.

  And she did. She listened all the time. With no company but her father and the cleaning girl (and both of them busy doing other things, not really company at all) she had whole hours of silence to fill. She turned her radio on in the early morning and let it run while she stumbled into her clothes and unsnarled her hair. In the afternoons, advertisements for liver pills and fertilizers wove themselves in among her homework assignments. She fell asleep to a program called “Sweetheart Time,” on which a disc jockey named Herbert read off a list of names in twos to dedicate each song. “For Buddy and Jane, for Sally and Carl, for George and Sandra, he loves her very much.…” Herbert was an old man with a splintery voice, the only disc jockey the station had. He read the dedications haltingly, as if they puzzled him. “For Paula and Sam, he hopes she’ll forgive last night …” and there would be the rustle of a paper lowered and a pause for him to stare at it. At the end of a song he said, “That was the Rowing—the Rolling Stones.” His faltering made him sound sad and bewildered, but no more bewildered than Evie.

  She listened carefully. She lay on her back in the dark, wearing a great long seersucker nightgown, and frowned at the chinks of light that shone through the radio’s seams. Sometimes the names were familiar to her—couples she had watched floating hand in hand down school corridors in matching shirts, or girls called Zelda-Nell or Shallamoor, so that they couldn’t hope to pass unnoticed. When she knew the names she paid close attention to the songs that followed, ferreting out the words with a kind of possessiveness but ignoring the tunes. Pop songs and hard rock and soul music tumbled out of the cracked brown portable, but the only difference she heard between them was that the words of the pop songs were easier to understand.

  One evening in February there was a guest on the program. He came right after the “News of the Hour.” “I have here a Mr. Bertram Casey,” said Herbert. “Better known as, known as Drumstrings.” He coughed and shuffled some papers. “It’s an honor to have you with us, Mr. Drumstrings.”

  No one answered.

  Evie was sitting on the bed, twisting her hair into scratchy little pincurls. When the silence grew noticeable she took a bobby pin from her mouth and looked at the radio. All she heard was static. Finally Herbert said, “Well. This is the beginning of a new feature on ‘Sweetheart Time’: interviews. May I ask if you are a native North Carolinian, Mr. Drumstrings?”

  Someone said, “Not for long I won’t be.”

  His voice was cool and motionless, like a stone plunked into a pool. Herbert coughed again.

  “Whereabouts in North Carolina?” he asked.

  “Farinia.”

  “Farinia, yes. Off of Highway—”

  “But I’m leaving there,” said Drumstrings Casey.

  “All right. Where is it you’re going?”

  “A city, some city. It ain’t quite clear yet. I aim to cut records and play night clubs, and if I once wiggle out of here I’m never coming back again, not even for Christmas. If my family gets to missing me they can come to where I’m at, I’ll buy them a house with white telephones and a swimming pool.”

  “That’s very nice,” said Herbert. “Have you done much recording yet?”

  “No.”

  “What are the names of your, um, records?”

  “There ain’t none.”

  “Oh. Well, your style, then. Would you care to describe it for us?”

  “Style?”

  “Your style.”

  “Style, ain’t no style.”

  “Well, what, what do you do, exactly?”

  This pause was even longer than the first one. Second after second ticked away in dead air. “If you don’t know what I do,” said Drumstrings finally, “then how come you got me on your program?”

  Herbert mumbled something.

  “What’s that?”

  “Because they told me to, I said. Heavens, boy, just answer the questions. Let’s get this over with.”

  “Oh,” Drumstrings said. “All right.”

  “Only thing they gave me was a little scrap of paper with your name on it.”

  “Well, don’t blame me. I just show up where I’m asked for.”

  “All right, all right. Where was I?”

  “You want to know what I do. I sing and play guitar. Rock.”

  “You have one of those groups,” Herbert said.

  “I sing alone. All I got is a drummer, but I don’t know about him.”

  “How’s that?”

  “He kind of trods the be
at.”

  “Oh, yes,” said Herbert.

  There was a series of tiny explosions; someone was tapping his fingers.

  “You could ask me where I get my material,” Drumstrings said.

  “Where do you get your material?”

  “I make it up.”

  “That’s very interesting.”

  “Some is other people’s, but most is my own. I make it up in my room. I lie on my bed arguing with the strings, like, and sooner or later something comes out. Then my fingers get to hammering, reason they call me Drumstrings. How many people do you know could carry a set of drums singlehanded with one little old electric guitar? Lots will say you can’t do it. I can. I don’t go along with all them others. Well: how my songs start. Words come out. Things I hear. ‘Oh, Lord, why can’t you ever come home on time like decent people do .…’ ” He was singing now, and his fingers kept a beat upon a hard surface. The suddenness of it surprised Herbert into clearing his throat, but Evie listened without changing expression, chewing absently on the rubber tip of a bobby pin. “Nothing more to it,” said Drumstrings. “Just putting hard rhythm to what floats around in parlors, just hauling in words by their tails. Nothing more.”

  “Is that right,” said Herbert.

  Drumstrings Casey was silent again.

  “Do you think we—well, I guess we covered near about everything now. Folks, say good-bye to—”

  “Good-bye,” the cool voice said.

  “And give him a nice hand.”

  But there was no one to give him a hand, of course–only the Beatles, starting up brokenly in the middle of a line, hurried-sounding, without any list of names to lead them in.

  “Do you know a singer named Drumstrings Casey?” Evie asked the boy behind her in algebra class. He was a bongo player. Sometimes she heard him whistling soundlessly at the back of her neck, tapping out the beat on his desk and moving his shoulders in rhythm. But, “Never heard of him,” he said.

  “He’s a rock-and-roll singer.”

  “Rock-and-roll is out now.”

  “Oh, I see,” said Evie.

  She walked most places alone. She carried her books clutched to her chest, rounding her shoulders. Her face, which was pudgy and formless, poked itself too far forward. And like most heavy people, she had long ago stopped expecting anything of her clothes. Her coat was old-fashioned, wide-shouldered, falling in voluminous uneven folds around her calves. The white collar she wore to brighten her complexion had a way of twisting sideways and riding up her neck, exposing a strip of skin above the collar of her coat. When classmates met up with her they passed in a hurry, barely noticing her. Evie never spoke to them. She bent to pull up a swallowed sock, or tied the knotted laces of her oxfords. Then she walked on.

  On her way home from school one day, she saw a poster in a laundromat window. “Rock the Nite Away! “it said. “Pulqua’s first all-local rock show!” Below that was a column of names that she had never heard of: the Huddlers, Spoony and James, Daphne Liggett. And at the bottom, Drumstrings Casey. “Bertram ‘Drumstrings’ Casey.” The name had a worn, vulnerable look, like something she was too familiar with. She pulled a scrap of paper from a frayed zipper notebook and wrote down the time and place of the show. Then she folded the paper and placed it inside her history book.

  “Are you serious?” Violet said on the phone. “I don’t believe you even know what a rock show is.”

  “Well, I do listen to the radio.”

  “What’s that got to do with it? You’re sitting in your bedroom, listening to the radio. But do you know what kind of trash goes to a live rock show?”

  “I don’t care,” Evie said. She was shut up in her closet to avoid being heard by Clotelia, the cleaning girl. Her voice was muffled by clothes and boots and suitcases, and what was meant to sound lighthearted came out secretive and urgent. “It’s at the movie house. What could happen there? I think we should go, Violet.”

  “Well, listen,” said Violet. “My uncle went to one of those shows in Raleigh, back before he was married. He said they danced the dirty bop all up and down the aisles. He said he was so embarrassed he just sat transfixed to his seat, never saw anything like it.”

  “What’s the dirty bop?” Evie asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Well, it’s bound to be out of style by now. They wouldn’t still be doing it.”

  “No, but they’ll have thought of something else,” Violet said.

  “That’s all right. I want to hear just one special singer. Then we can go.”

  “Really? What’s his name?”

  “Oh, it’s nobody famous.”

  “What’s his name?”

  “Bertram Drumstrings Casey.”

  “Drumstrings?”

  “Do you know him?” Evie asked.

  “No. How do you know him?”

  “I don’t. I just heard him on the radio.”

  “What kind of stuff does he do?”

  “I only heard him talking.”

  “Well, for heaven’s sake,” said Violet. But she seemed to be thinking it over, because after a minute she said, “Did you ask your father about it?”

  “No,” Evie said. Her father was a high school math teacher, a vague, gentle man who assumed that Evie would manage just fine wherever she was. In her talks with Violet, though, he kept turning out to be the kind of father who put his foot down. “I don’t think I’ll bother him with it,” she said.

  “Oh-oh.”

  “Will you come?”

  “Oh, well, sure,” said Violet. “Now that I know the reason why.”

  When she had hung up, Evie waited a second and then gave her closet door a sudden shove. But Clotelia was nowhere around. Downstairs a soap-opera star said, “This is going to be very hard for me to tell you, Bertha—”

  “Oh, Bertha, watch out!” Clotelia shouted.

  Evie got to her feet and smoothed her wrinkled skirt down.

  Violet met her in the lobby, wearing a purple spring coat. She was an enormously fat girl with teased black hair and a beautiful face, and she always wore brilliant colors as if she hadn’t read any advice to the overweight. Beside her, Evie seemed almost thin, but lifeless—gray-skinned and dull-haired. She had on her school coat and oxfords. “Are you going to dance in those?” Violet said.

  “Who would I dance with?”

  They were shoved by slick-haired boys in leather jackets, girls in tight sweaters and false eyelashes the size of small whiskbrooms. Almost nobody from school was there. “We are cut off from civilization here. I hope you realize that,” said Violet. “I swear, will you look at that girl’s earrings?” Her voice was rich and and lazy. Every time she spoke, boys turned to see who she was and then slid their eyes away again.

  Inside the theater they had to work their way through more boys who roamed the aisles in packs. Above the “No Smoking” signs, blue smoke was already beginning to haze the ceiling. Couples with their arms around each other leaned against walls and exit doors and the pipe railing down front—anywhere but in the chairs. “Are we supposed to stand during this?” Evie asked, and Violet said, “No, not me.” She flung herself into one of the wooden seats, bought second-hand from a larger town nearby. A boy who was sidling down their row said, “Move sweetie.”

  “Move yourself,” Violet said.

  Oh, nothing bothered Violet. She smiled a beautiful bland smile at the empty stage, and the boy struggled past her large pale knees and then past Evie’s, muttering all the time. “You’d think they would serve popcorn,” Violet said calmly. She smoothed her skirt down and went on gazing at the stage.

  But the popcorn stand was closed tonight. The theater had turned into something else, like a gym transformed for a senior prom or an American Legion hall into a banquet room. There was a cavernous chill from the tongue-and-groove walls, in spite of the heavy velvet window curtains. The ceiling seemed higher and dingier, and when Evie looked up she saw light-fixtures poised dizzyingly far above her, their
bowls darkened by pools of insects that she had never noticed before. Down front the movie screen had been rolled up. The wooden stage with its electric amplifiers looked like a roomful of refrigerators. A man in shirt sleeves was unraveling microphone cords. “Testing,” he said. “Anybody out there?” The volume was high, but it melted away among the voices in the audience.

  When the first group began, only a few people had found seats. Four boys in pink satin shirts came out carrying instruments and stood in a semicircle, and one of them spent some time getting his French cuffs adjusted. Then they began playing. Their music was too loud to be heard. It blended with the voices out front, the volume reaching a saturation point so that it was impossible to separate the notes or distinguish the words. “This is hurting,” said Violet, but she had to shout directly into Evie’s ear. Nobody else seemed to mind. They shuffled about in groups, not quite dancing, or draped themselves on the arms and backs of the seats and snapped their fingers and wagged their heads as they continued their conversations. When the music stopped, they cheered. After three more numbers they clapped raggedly and the musicians gathered their instruments and left. Nobody watched them go.

  “Who was that?” Violet asked. But they had no program to tell them. A few minutes later three boys and a girl came on, and the girl sang a song and did a tiny intricate dance step. The words of the song were slippery and whining: “Oh, ya, ya, my honey knows how.…” Evie felt a sort of seeping discomfort, but the rest of the audience listened carefully and clapped and whistled afterward.

  Following the fourth group, there was an intermission. A phonograph somewhere played a Mantovani record. A few of the boys went out to the Coke machines in the lobby, and others took flat curved bottles from their hip pockets. Only Evie and Violet stayed in their seats. They had kept their coats on, as if they were only dropping in on their way to somewhere else. “Where is Drumstrings Casey?” Violet asked. “Was he one of them?”

  “No. I don’t think so.”

  “How will we know him?”

  “He will only have a drummer. Look, maybe we should go. Do you want to?”