ONE

Once upon a time, there was a woman who discovered she had turned
into the wrong person.

She was fifty-three years old by then--a grandmother. Wide and soft
and dimpled, with two short wings of dry, fair hair flaring almost
horizontally from a center part. Laugh lines at the corners of her
eyes. A loose and colorful style of dress edging dangerously close
to Bag Lady.

Give her credit: most people her age would say it was too late to
make any changes. What's done is done, they would say. No use
trying to alter things at this late date.

It did occur to Rebecca to say that. But she didn't.

. . .

On the day she made her discovery, she was picnicking on the North
Fork River out in Baltimore County. It was a cool, sunny Sunday in
early June of 1999, and her family had gathered to celebrate the
engagement of Rebecca's youngest stepdaughter, NoNo Davitch.

The Davitches' cars circled the meadow like covered wagons braced
for attack. Their blankets dotted the grass, and their thermos jugs
and ice chests and sports equipment crowded the picnic table. The
children were playing beside the river in one noisy, tumbling
group, but the adults kept themselves more separate. Alone or in
twos they churned about rearranging their belongings, jockeying for
spots in the sun, wandering off hither and yon in their moody
Davitch manner. One of the stepdaughters was sitting by herself in
her minivan. One of the sons-in-law was stretching his hamstrings
over by the runners' path. The uncle was stabbing the ground
repeatedly with his cane.

Goodness, what would Barry think? (Barry, the new fianc?.) He would
think they disapproved of his marrying NoNo.

And he would be right.

Not that they ever behaved much differently under any
conditions.

Barry had a blanket mostly to himself, because NoNo kept flitting
elsewhere. The tiniest and prettiest of the Davitch girls--a little
hummingbird of a person--she darted first to one sister and then
another, ducking her shiny dark cap of hair and murmuring something
urgent.

Murmuring, "Like him, please," maybe. Or, "At least make him feel
welcome."

The first sister grew very busy rummaging through a straw hamper.
The second shaded her eyes and pretended to look for the
children.

Rebecca--who earned her living hosting parties, after all--felt she
had no choice but to clap her hands and call, "Okay, folks!"

Languidly, they turned. She seized a baseball from the table and
held it up. No, it was bigger than a baseball. A softball, then;
undoubtedly the property of the son-in-law stretching his
hamstrings, who taught phys ed at the local high school. It was all
the same to Rebecca; she had never been the sporty type. Still:
"Time for a game, everybody!" she called. "Barry? NoNo? Come on,
now! We'll say this rock is home plate. Zeb, move that log over to
where first base ought to be. The duffel bag can be second, and for
third . . . Who's got something we can use for third?"

They groaned, but she refused to give up. "Come on, people! Show
some life here! We need to exercise off all that food we're about
to eat!"

In slow motion they began to obey, rising from their blankets and
drifting where she pointed. She turned toward the runners' path
and, "Yoo-hoo! Jeep!" she called. Jeep stopped hugging one beefy
knee and squinted in her direction. "Haul yourself over here!" she
ordered. "We're organizing a softball game!"

"Aw, Beck," he said, "I was hoping to get a run in." But he came
plodding toward her.

While Jeep set about correcting the placement of the bases, Rebecca
went to deal with the stepdaughter in the minivan. Who happened to
be Jeep's wife, in fact. Rebecca hoped this wasn't one of their
silly quarrels. "Sweetie!" she sang out. She waded through the
weeds, scooping up armfuls of her big red bandanna-print skirt.
"Patch? Roll down your window, Patch. Can you hear me? Is something
the matter?"

Patch turned and gazed out at her. You could tell she must be hot.
Spikes of her chopped black hair were sticking to her forehead, and
her sharp, freckled face was shining with sweat. Still, she made no
move to open her window. Rebecca grabbed the door handle and yanked
it--luckily, just before Patch thought to push the lock down.

"Now, then!" Rebecca caroled. "What's all this about?"

Patch said, "Can't a person ever get a moment of peace in this
family?"

She was thirty-seven years old but looked more like fourteen, in
her striped T-shirt and skinny jeans. And acted like fourteen, too,
Rebecca couldn't help thinking; but all she said was, "Come on out
and join us! We're starting up a softball game."

"No, thanks."

"Pretty please?"

"For Lord's sake, Beck, don't you know how I hate this?"

"Hate it!" Rebecca cried merrily, choosing to misunderstand. "But
you're wonderful at sports! The rest of us don't even know where
the bases go. Poor Jeep is having to do everything."

Patch said, "I cannot for the life of me see why we should
celebrate my little sister's engagement to a--to a--"

Words appeared to fail her. She clamped her arms tight across her
flat chest and faced forward again.

"To a what?" Rebecca asked her. "A nice, decent, well-spoken man. A
lawyer."

"A corporate lawyer. A man who brings his appointment book to a
picnic; did you notice his appointment book? Him and his
yacht-looking, country-club-looking clothes; his ridiculous yellow
crew cut; his stupid rubber-soled boating shoes. And look at how he
was sprung on us! Just sprung on us with no warning! One day it's,
oh, poor NoNo, thirty-five years old and never even been kissed so
far as anyone knew; and the next day--I swear, the very next
day!--she pops up out of the blue and announces an August
wedding."

"Well, now, I just have a feeling she may have kept him secret out
of nervousness," Rebecca said. "She didn't want to look foolish, in
case the courtship came to nothing. Also, maybe she worried you
girls would be too critical."

Not without reason, she didn't add.

Patch said, "Hogwash. You know why she kept him secret: he's been
married once before. Married and divorced, with a twelve-year-old
son to boot."

"Well, these things do happen," Rebecca said drily.

"And such a pathetic son, too. Did you see?" Patch jabbed a thumb
toward the children by the river, but Rebecca didn't bother
turning. "A puny little runt of a son! And it can't have escaped
your notice that Barry has sole custody. He's had to cook for that
child and clean house, drive the car pool, help with homework . . .
Of course he wants a wife! Unpaid nanny, is more like it."

"Now, dearie, that's an insult to NoNo," Rebecca said. "Any man in
his right mind would want NoNo for her own sake."

Patch merely gave an explosive wheeze that lifted the spikes of
hair off her forehead.

"Just think," Rebecca reminded her. "Didn't I marry a divorced man
with three little girls? And see, it worked out fine! I'd be
married to him still, if he had lived."

All Patch said to this was, "And how you could throw a party for
them!"

"Well, of course I'd throw a party. It's an occasion!" Rebecca
said. "Besides: you and Biddy asked for one, if I remember
correctly."

"We asked if you planned to give one, is all, since you're so fond
of engagement parties. Why, Min Foo's had three of them! They seem
to be kind of a habit with you."

Rebecca opened her mouth to argue, because she was almost positive
that Patch and Biddy had requested, in so many words, that she put
together a picnic. But then she saw that she might have
misinterpreted. Maybe they had just meant that since they knew she
would be planning something, they would prefer it to be held
outside. (Oh, the Davitch girls were very unsocial. "I guess you're
going to insist on some kind of shindig," one of them would sigh,
and then they would show up and sit around looking bored, picking
at their food while Rebecca tried to jolly things along.)

Well, no matter, because Patch was finally unfolding herself from
the minivan. She slammed the door behind her and said, "Let's get
started, then, if you're so set on this."

"Thank you, sweetie," Rebecca said. "I just know we'll have a good
time today."

Patch said, "Ha!" and marched off toward the others, leaving
Rebecca to trail behind.

The softball game had begun now, at least in a halfhearted way.
People were scattered across the meadow seemingly at random, with
Rebecca's brother-in-law and Barry so far off in the outfield that
they might not even be playing. The catcher (Biddy) was tying her
shoe. The uncle leaned on his cane at an indeterminate spot near
third base. Rebecca's daughter was sunbathing on first, lounging in
the grass with her face tipped back and her eyes closed.

As Patch and then Rebecca came up behind home plate, Jeep was
assuming the batter's stance, his barrel-shaped body set sideways
to them and his bat wagging cockily. NoNo, on the pitcher's mound,
crooked her arm at an awkward angle above her shoulder and released
the ball. It traveled in an uncertain arc until Jeep lost patience
and took a stride forward and hit a low drive past second. Hakim,
Rebecca's son-in-law, watched with interest as it whizzed by. (No
surprise there, since Hakim hailed from someplace Arab and had
probably never seen a softball in his life.) Jeep dropped his bat
and trotted to first, not disturbing Min Foo's sunbath in the
least. He rounded second, receiving a beatific smile from Hakim,
and headed for third. Third was manned by Biddy's . . . oh, Rebecca
never knew what to call him . . . longtime companion, dear Troy,
who always claimed it was while he was fumbling a pop-up fly at age
five that he first realized he was gay. All he did was wave amiably
as Jeep went trundling past.

By that time, Barry had managed to locate the ball. He threw it
toward Biddy, but she was tying her other shoe now. It was Patch
who stepped forward to intercept it, apparently without effort.
Then she turned back to home plate and tagged her husband
out.

Patch and Jeep might have been playing alone, for all the reaction
they got. Biddy straightened up from her shoe and yawned. NoNo
started clucking over a broken fingernail. Min Foo was probably
unaware of what had happened, even--unless she'd been able to
figure it out with her eyes closed.

"Oh," Rebecca cried, "you-all are not even trying! Where is your
team spirit?"

"For that, we need more than one side," Jeep said, wiping his
forehead on his shoulder. "There aren't enough of us
playing."

To Rebecca, it seemed just then that there were far too many of
them. Such a large and unwieldy group, they were; so cumbersome, so
much work. But she said, "You're absolutely right," and turned in
the direction of the river. "Kids!" she called. "Hey, kids!"

The children were hopping in an uneven line a good twenty yards
away, beyond a stretch of buzzing, humming grass and alongside
flowing water; so at first they didn't hear her. She had to haul up
her skirt again and slog toward them, calling, "Come on, everybody!
Come and play ball! You kids against us grownups!"

Now they stopped what they were doing (some version of Follow the
Leader, it seemed, leaping from rock to rock) and looked over at
her. Five of the six were here today--all but Dixon, the oldest,
who'd gone someplace else with his girlfriend. And then there was
Barry's son, what's-his-name. Peter. "Peter?" Rebecca called. "Want
to play softball?"

He stood slightly apart from the others, noticeably pale-haired and
white-skinned and scrawny in this company of dark, vivid Davitch
children. Rebecca felt a tug of sympathy for him. She called, "You
can be pitcher, if you like!"

He took a step backward and shook his head. Well, no, of course:
she should have offered him the outfield. Something inconspicuous.
The others, meanwhile, had broken rank and were starting toward
her. "Not It, not It," the youngest child was chanting, evidently
confused as to what softball was all about. Patch and Jeep's three
(wouldn't you know) were vying to be first at bat. "We'll draw
straws," Rebecca told them. "Come on, everybody! Winning team gets
excused from cleanup after lunch."

Only Peter stayed where he was. He was balanced on a low rock,
alert and motionless, giving off a chilling silence. Rebecca
called, "Sweetie? Aren't you coming?"

Again he shook his head. The other children veered around her and
plowed on toward the playing field, but Rebecca gathered her skirt
higher and pressed forward. Long, cool grasses tickled her bare
calves. A cloud of startled white butterflies fluttered around her
knees. She reached the first rock, took a giant step up, and leapt
to the next rock just beyond, teetering for a second before she
found her footing on the slick, mossy surface. (She was wearing
rope-soled espadrilles that gave her almost no traction.) So far
she was still on dry land, but most of the other rocks--Peter's
included--turned out to be partly submerged. This meant that the
children had been disobeying instructions. They'd been warned to
stay away from the river, which was unpredictably deep in some
spots and wider than a two-lane highway, not to mention icy cold so
early in the season.

Peter kept as still as a cornered deer; Rebecca sensed that even
though she wasn't looking at him. For the moment, she was looking
at the scenery. Oh, didn't a river rest your eyes! She sank into a
peaceful trance, watching how the water seemed to gather itself as
it traveled toward a sharp bend. It swelled up in loose, silky
tangles and then it smoothed and flowed on, transparent at the
edges but nearly opaque at the center, as yellow-green and sunlit
as a bottle in a window. She drifted with it, dreaming. It could
have been a hundred years ago. The line of dark trees on the
opposite shore would have looked the same; she'd have heard the
same soft, curly lapping close by, the same rushing sound farther
off.

Well. Enough of this. She tore her gaze away and turned again to
Peter. "I've got you now!" she told him gaily.

He took another step backward and disappeared.

For a moment, she couldn't believe what had happened. She just
stood there with her mouth open. Then she looked down and saw a
turmoil in the water. A small, white, big-eyed face gulping air and
choking. A frantic snarl of thin, bare, flailing arms.

She jumped onto the rock he'd been standing on, skidding slightly
and bruising an ankle. She plunged in waist deep and gasped. (The
water was so cold it burned.) First she grabbed Peter's wrist but
lost it. Then she clutched blue denim. She hitched him up by the
seat of his jeans and found the time, somehow, to consider how
absurd this must look: a middle-aged woman plucking a boy from a
river like a sack of laundry, hoisting him aloft for one split
second before her muscles registered his weight and they both went
under. But she still had hold of him. She kept her grip. She fought
to thrust him above the surface even while she was half sitting on
the bottom. Then she was up and struggling shoreward, stumbling and
falling and rising and staggering on, hauling him by his armpits.
(A good thing he was so undersized or she never could have managed,
adrenaline or no.) Between his coughs now he was drawing huge,
rough, scraping breaths, and once or twice he gagged. She dragged
him in a bobbling way across the rocks to the grass, where she
dropped him. She bent double to clear her head and noticed, in that
position, how her skirt was streaming with water; so she collected
a handful of hem and wrung it out.

Excerpted from BACK WHEN WE WERE GROWNUPS © Copyright 2001 by
Anne Tyler. Reprinted with permission by Ballantine, an imprint of
Random House. All rights reserved.