Redhead by the Side of the Road

by Anne Tyler

Why! he always thought to himself. What was that little redhead doing by the side of the road? Because even though he knew by now that it was only a hydrant, still, for one fleeting instant he had the same delusion all over again, every single morning.

That was the trouble with houseguests: they took over a person’s space. They seeped into all the corners.

“You’re a lucky man, all right,” Micah said. He was thinking that Joey—pink-faced and chubby, wearing a sweat suit and purple Crocs—seemed dressed for a whole different occasion from the one Lily had dressed for.

“Well, I call that pretty discouraging,” Micah said. “What’s the point of living if you don’t try to do things better?”

He had lost his ability to see that extra shimmer in her, so to speak.

“Did you ever go shopping with your mom when you were a little kid?” he wanted to ask someone. (Ask Rosalie? Ask Cass?) “Did you ever walk with her down a crowded sidewalk, back when you were so small that really you were just walking with her shoes and the hem of her coat? And then—how did this happen?—you chanced to look up, and you were horrified to find that it wasn’t your mom; it was some completely other woman with different-colored hair. It wasn’t who you wanted it to be at all!”

Sometimes when he was dealing with people, he felt like he was operating one of those claw machines on a boardwalk, those shovel things where you tried to scoop up a prize but the controls were too unwieldy and you worked at too great a remove.