Ladder of Years

by Anne Tyler

  Binky unwrapped the athletic shoes and laughed and passed them to Nat, and then, at Delia’s request, she brought out the baby’s motorcycle boots. A present from her sons, she said; they claimed to be disgusted with her, but Peter had cut classes to deliver these in person. Then Nat reported on their ride to the hospital (“I said, ‘Binky,’ I said, ‘didn’t I say from the start we should have gone to Floor Four?’”), and Binky rehashed the birth, which all in all, she said, had been a cinch compared to her first two. (“I shouldn’t discuss this in mixed company,” she said, “but ever since Peter was born, I just never have known when I needed to tinkle. The best I can do is go every couple of hours, just in case.”)

  Noah looked downright queasy by now, so Delia stood up to collect the baby—an excuse to feel, for an instant, the limp, crumpled weight of that little body—and return him to Binky. “We have to get Noah to his tryouts,” she told Binky. “Is there anything I can do for you? Grocery shopping? Errands?”

  “Oh, no. Nat’s taking wonderful care of me,” Binky said.

  Nat, Delia happened to know, felt the ache of his flashbacks most keenly when he was driving, but she couldn’t point that out when he was looking so proud of himself.

  Joel seemed very nervous about the Grade Mothers’ Tea. He must be wishing for Ellie, Delia thought—for Ellie’s clever, theme-party style of entertaining. But when she proposed phoning Ellie and asking for suggestions, he said, “Why should we do that? We’re surely capable of a simple tea, for God’s sake.”

  “Yes, but maybe—”

  “All we need from Ellie is her recipe for lemon squares,” he said.

  “Lemon squares. I’ll ask.”

  “The ones with the crispy glaze on top. Also her cucumber sandwiches.”

  “Well, I can make a cucumber sandwich,” Delia snapped.

  “Oh. Of course.”

  After that he let the subject drop—forced himself to drop it, no doubt. On Friday afternoon, though, he paced circles around her as she set up the party-sized percolator on the dining room buffet. “This group will be nothing but women,” he told her.

  “Well, so I gathered: grade mothers.”

  “There is a grade father, but he’s away on business. It’s one hundred percent women.”

  She went to draw the water for tea. He followed. “You do plan to help with the conversation, don’t you?” he asked.

  She hadn’t expected to. She had envisioned herself biding her time in the kitchen, like those discreet lady housekeepers in nineteenth-century novels. She had been looking forward to it, in fact. She said, “Oh, um …”

  “I can’t do it alone, Delia.”

  “Well, I’ll try.”

  But no help was needed, she found. Fourteen women showed up—two for each homeroom, minus the traveling father and a mother who couldn’t get off work. All of them were acquainted, most since childhood, and they slid easily into topics so well established that they seemed to be speaking in code. “What did Jessie finally decide?”

  “Oh, just what we figured all along.”

  “Darn!”

  “Yes, but who can say—maybe this will turn out like the Sanderson girl.”

  “Well, that’s a thought.”

  Delia wore her navy knit, on the assumption that teas were dressy, but the guests wore slacks or even jeans, and one had on a sweatshirt reading COMPOST HAPPENS. They all seemed unduly curious about her. They kept coming up to ask, “So how do you like it here? How is Noah handling all this? Has he adjusted?” When she answered, the voices nearby would trail off and others would edge closer. “Golly,” one said, “Mr. Miller must be awfully glad to have you. And you help with the tutoring too! You tutor the Brewsters’ youngest! Mr. Miller’s always complaining he can’t find enough math tutors.”

  Now she knew how new girls must feel on their first day at school. But she responded politely, keeping a smile on her face, holding the teapot before her like a ticket of admission. She liked Bay Borough very much, thank you, and Noah was getting on well, and she had probably learned more from her pupils than they had learned from her. The usual remarks. She could have made them in her sleep. Meanwhile Joel stood talking with two women at the other end of the room, nodding pensively and from time to time wrinkling his brow. He no longer seemed nervous. And when she approached with a plate of cookies, he said, “You’re doing a fine job, Delia.”

  “Thank you,” she said, smiling.

  “It may be the best tea we’ve given.”

  “Oh! Well, the lemon squares were Ellie’s, remember; Ellie was kind enough to—”

  Then one of the women asked Joel what had been planned for the Fall Bazaar, and Delia escaped to the kitchen.

  She straightened things up, wiped counters, put a few items in the dishwasher. The cat had taken refuge under the table, and she hauled him forth to cuddle him and scratch behind his ears. For a while she watched the minute hand of the wall clock visibly jerk forward: five-eighteen to five-nineteen to five-twenty. Time for the guests to recall that they should get home and fix supper. In fact, she could detect a certain shift in the blur of voices—the rising notes of leave-taking.

  “Didn’t I have a purse?”

  “Has anyone seen my keys?”

  And then, “Where’s Delia? I should say goodbye to Delia.”

  She had to drop George and make another appearance, see them all to the door. (“It was good meeting you, too. I’d be happy to give out the recipe.”) Then she returned to the dining room, and Joel unplugged the percolator while that woman who always has to stay longest (there was one at every party) fussily separated the clean spoons from the dirty ones. “Please,” Delia told her, “just let them be. I’ve got a system.” How quickly the old formulas came back to her: I’ve got a system. Don’t give these a thought. It won’t be a bit of trouble.

  The woman was reluctant to leave and stood awhile gazing into her purse, as if searching for instructions on where to go next. She had triplets, Delia had overheard—all boys, all just starting to drive. Easy to understand why she wasn’t rushing home. Finally she said, “Well, thanks, you two. This was a real treat.” And darting a smile in Joel’s direction, she told Delia, “Isn’t he helpful! Why, if I asked my husband to clear, he’d think I was joking. He would just act … bemused and go off with his pals.”

  Joel waited till she was gone before he snorted. “‘Bemused’!” he echoed. “Discouraging, isn’t it?”

  Delia wasn’t sure what he was objecting to. (At least, she thought, he hadn’t seemed to notice the woman’s apparent belief that they were a couple.) She carried a stack of cups to the kitchen and began fitting them into the dishwasher.

  “You realize what’s going to happen,” Joel said. He set the percolator on the counter. “Bit by bit, more and more people will say ‘bemused’ in place of ‘amused,’ thinking it’s just the twenty-dollar version, the same way they think ‘simplistic’ is a twenty-dollar ‘simple.’ And soon enough that usage will start showing up in dictionaries, without so much as a ‘non-standard’ next to it.”

  “Maybe she really did mean ‘bemused,’” Delia said. “Maybe she meant her husband was puzzled; he was perplexed that she’d asked him to help.”

  “No, no. Nice try, Delia, but no, she meant ‘amused,’ all right. Everything’s changing,” Joel said. “It’s getting so we’re hardly speaking English anymore.”

  She looked over at him. He was winding the cord around the percolator, although it hadn’t been emptied yet or washed. “Yes, I’ve noticed that’s what bothers you, most times,” she told him.

  “Hmm?”

  “Most times it’s not grammatical errors—other than the obvious, like ‘me and him.’ It’s the new things, the changes. ‘Input’ and ‘I’m like’ and ‘warm fuzzies.’”

  Joel shuddered. Too late, Delia recalled that he had never to her knowledge mentioned “warm fuzzies”—that it came from Ellie’s interview. She hurried on. “But think,” she said. “Probably hal
f your own vocabulary was new not so long ago. Well, ‘twenty-dollar,’ for instance! These terms pop up for good reason. ‘Glitch.’ ‘Groupie.’ ‘Nickel-and-diming.’ ‘Time-shifting.’”

  “What’s time-shifting?” Joel asked.

  “When you record a TV program to view later. Mr. Pomfret used to say that, and I thought, Oh, how … economical! Don’t you sometimes wish for new words? Like a word for, a word for …”

  “Freckles,” Joel said.

  “Freckles?”

  “Those freckles that are smaller than ordinary freckles,” he said. “And paler. Like gold dust.”

  “And also, um, tomatoes,” Delia said, too quickly. “Yes, tomatoes. You have the true kind and then you have the other kind, the supermarket kind, the same color as the gums of false teeth, and those should be given a whole separate name.”

  “And then,” Joel told her, “that different sort of surface people take on when you really begin to see them.”

  She had nothing to say to that.

  “They get so noticeable,” Joel said. “It seems you can feel every vein and pulse underneath their skin. You think, All at once she’s become … but what word would you use? Something like ‘textured,’ but textured to the vision, instead.”

  His eyes seemed a softer hue of brown now, and that long, notched mouth had grown shapelier, more tender.

  “Goodness!” she said, spinning toward the door. “Is that Noah?”

  Although Noah had gone to Ellie’s and was not due home till bedtime. And anyhow, would be dropped off at the front of the house, not the back.

  Sometimes when Delia said to herself, Only x number of days till Susie’s wedding, she felt a clammy sense of dread. This is going to be so embarrassing. How will I face them? It’s not a situation I’ve been taught to handle. But other times she thought, Pshaw, what’s so hard about a wedding? We’ll have all those other people there as buffers. I can just breeze in, breeze out. Nothing to it.

  For a while she had an idea that Susie might ask her to come early, as much as several days early, to help with preparations. At least that way she wouldn’t feel like a mere guest. She pounced hopefully on the mail every morning, cleared her throat before answering the phone, delayed notifying Joel of her plans till she knew how long she’d be gone. But Susie didn’t ask.

  And sometimes she considered not attending. What purpose would she serve? They wouldn’t even miss her. A day or two after the wedding, one of them might say, “Hey! You know who didn’t show up? Delia! I just now remembered.”

  And still other times, she fantasized that they could hardly wait to see her. “Delia!” they would cry, “Mom!” they would cry, running out onto the porch, letting the door slam behind them, flinging their arms around her.

  No, cancel that. More likely they would ask, “What do you think you’re doing here? Did you imagine you could waltz back in just as if nothing had happened?”

  She should remember to bring her invitation, in case there was any question.

  She broached the subject to Joel at Sunday breakfast, having waited till the very last day for word from Susie. Sunday was a good time anyhow, because Noah was there, wolfing down buckwheat pancakes; the conversation couldn’t get too probing. She said, “Joel, I don’t know if I mentioned or not”—knowing full well she had not—“that I’ll need to take the day off tomorrow.”

  “Oh?” he said. He lowered his newspaper.

  “I have to go to Baltimore.”

  “Baltimore,” he said.

  “Geez, Delia!” Noah said. “I promised my wrestling coach you’d give a bunch of us a ride to the meet tomorrow.”

  “Well, I can’t,” she said.

  “Well, geez! Now what’ll we do?”

  “Your coach will think of something,” Joel told him. “If you wanted to volunteer Delia’s services, you should have asked her first.” But he was keeping his eyes on Delia’s face as he spoke. “Is this a, some kind of emergency?” he asked her.

  “No, no, just a wedding.”

  “Ah.”

  “But it’s one I’d very much like to attend, a family wedding, you know, and so I thought if you didn’t mind …”

  “Of course; not at all,” Joel said. “Could I drive you to the bus station?”

  “Oh, thanks, but I’m going by car,” Delia said. “Baltimore’s on Mr. Lamb’s sales route, it turns out.”

  Joel probably had no idea who Mr. Lamb was, but he nodded slowly, eyes still fixed on her face.

  “So!” she said. “Now, I assume I’ll be back by evening. Maybe suppertime, but I can’t be sure; I’m returning by bus; so I’ve left a chicken salad in the fridge. There’s a tub of Rick-Rack’s coleslaw next to it, biscuits in the bread drawer … But I bet I’ll be back by then, anyhow.”

  “Should I meet your bus?”

  “No; Belle’s doing that. I’ll call her when I get into Salisbury.”

  “You could call me instead.”

  “No, really, I have no idea when … it might be late at night or something. It could even be the next day; who knows?”

  “The next day!” he said.

  “If the reception runs very long.”

  “But you are coming back,” he said.

  “Well, of course.”

  Now Noah was watching her too. He looked up from his pancakes and opened his mouth, but then he didn’t speak.

  Toward noon she set out on a walk, planning to end at the Bay Arms for lunch whenever her ankle grew tired. It had rained in the morning, but now the sun was shining, and the air felt so thick and warm that she regretted wearing her sweater. She pulled it off and swung it loosely from one hand. Everywhere she looked, it seemed, she saw people she knew. Mrs. Lincoln waved to her from the steps of the A.M.E. church, and T. J. Renfro, roaring past on his Harley, called out, “What say, Teach!” and on Carroll Street she ran into Vanessa and Greggie, poking along in matching yellow slickers. “Delia! I was just about to phone you,” Vanessa said. “Want to ride with me to Salisbury tomorrow?”

  “Oh, I’m sorry, I can’t,” Delia said. “I have to go to Baltimore.”

  “What’s in Baltimore?”

  “Well,” Delia said, “my daughter’s getting married.”

  She’d told Belle this too, but nothing more, and now all at once she felt an urgent need to pour it all out. “She’s marrying her childhood sweetheart and I’m so worried how to behave at the wedding but I really want to be there; her father thinks she’s rushing things since she’s only twenty-two years old and I say—”

  “Twenty-two! How old were you when you had her: twelve?”

  “Nineteen,” Delia said. “I married right out of high school, practically.”

  Vanessa nodded, unsurprised. Well, most of the girls in Bay Borough married right out of high school, Delia supposed. And had babies at nineteen or so. And ended up mislaying their husbands somewhere along the line. Vanessa’s only question was, “What’d you buy for a wedding gift?”

  “I thought I’d wait to see what they needed.”

  “That’s always smart,” Vanessa said. “Greggie! Let the bug go where it wants to. That’s what I did with my girlfriend,” she told Delia. “I thought I’d get her a hand-held mixer but then I thought no, why not wait, and I’m so glad I did because the first time I went to visit her I saw she didn’t have one single piece of Tupperware in her whole entire kitchen.”

  Vanessa’s face, above the slicker, glowed with a fine film of sweat, and her eyes seemed very pure and clear, the whites almost blue-white. Delia suddenly felt like hugging her. She said, “Oh, I’d have loved to ride to Salisbury with you!”

  “Well, another time,” Vanessa said. “There’s this place there we buy our barley in bulk, to make Grandma’s gripe water recipe.”

  “Gripe water?” Delia asked.

  “It’s for babies. Soothes the colic and the afternoon frets and the nighttime willies.”

  Delia wished they made gripe water for grown-ups.

&nbs
p; She dreamed she was in Bethany, walking down the beach. Ahead she saw a highway, a sort of narrowing and darkening of the sand until it turned to asphalt, and there sat her old Plymouth, baking in the sun. Sam encircled her upper arm to guide her toward it. He settled her inside. He shut the door gently after her and leaned through the open window to remind her to drive carefully. She woke and stared at the motes of darkness swarming above her bed.

  From Noah’s room she heard a repetitive dry cough, beginning sharply each time as if he’d tried first to hold it in—one of those infuriating night coughs that won’t quit. For half an hour or so, she lay debating whether to get up and bring him the lozenges from the medicine cabinet. Possibly he would stop coughing on his own. Or possibly he was asleep, in which case she hated to wake him. But the cough continued, pausing and then resuming just when she thought it was finished. And then she heard the creak of a floorboard, so she knew he wasn’t asleep.

  She rose and went to open her door. “Noah?” she whispered.

  Instantaneously, almost, Joel was standing in front of her. She couldn’t see him so much as feel him, as the blind are said to feel—a tall, dense, solid shape giving off warmth, his moon-pale pajamas only gradually emerging from the dark of the windowless hall.

  “Yes, Delia?” he whispered.

  He had misunderstood, she realized. “Noah” and “Joel” sounded so much alike. The same thing often happened when she called one of them to the phone. She said, “I thought I heard Noah.”

  “I was just going to see to him,” he said.

  “Oh.”

  “I’ll bring him some of those cough drops.”

  “All right.”

  But neither one of them moved.

  Then he stepped forward and took her head between his hands, and she raised her face and closed her eyes and felt herself drawn toward him and enfolded, surrounded, with his lips pressing her lips and his palms covering her ears so all she could hear was the rush of her own blood.

  That, and Noah’s sudden cough.

  They broke apart. Delia stepped back into her room and reached for her door with trembling hands and shut herself inside.