"French Braid," Anne Tyler's 24th novel, spans three generations of the Garrett family of Baltimore. At its heart are Robin and Mercy Garrett, married in the 1950s, tacitly separated 20 years later.
Robin is a plumber and Mercy is first a housewife and mother, and then an artist. She paints portraits of people's homes, focusing on one modest detail — a doorstop, a newel post, or the fringed trim of a curtain. "Am I missing something? she thought every now and then. Am I overlooking something?" It's a perfect Anne Tyler metaphor.
Once David, their youngest, heads off to college, Mercy quietly moves into her studio a few miles from home.
She plans the move carefully, avoiding confrontation. She packs lightly. "Not all her clothes. Oh, no. To look in her bureau drawers ... you would never suppose anything was missing."
Gradually, Mercy begins spending occasional nights at her studio until eventually she is there full time. She never discusses any of this with her husband. He never asks.
Life is easier with no confrontation, no arguing. The surface remains smooth, the marriage endures.
Families, as Tyler has shown so brilliantly over her long career — she is 80 now — are private, convoluted things, twisted and knotted together over generations like a braid. And not even a simple three-strand braid; more like a complicated French braid, one that takes in more and more strands as it progresses.
Behaviors and attitudes from one generation are braided into the next, and so the Garrett children and grandchildren absorb their parents' need for avoidance. "Oh, the lengths this family would go to so as not to spoil the picture of how things were supposed to be!" Tyler writes.
