Ladder of Years

by Anne Tyler

  “Yes, I suppose I …,” Delia said abstractedly.

  “So are you going to call the realtor, Mom?”

  “Oh. Right,” Delia said, and after a brief pause, she walked out.

  In Eliza’s old room, she sat on the edge of the bed, lifted the receiver, and then stared into space.

  Imagine Sam pacing the floor. Always before, it had been Delia pacing the floor, and Sam pooh-poohing her and telling her to simmer down. “How can you be so cool about this?” she used to ask him. “What have you got in your veins: ice water?” And it seemed to her that he had given a little smile at that, a gratified, sheepish little smile, as if she had paid him a compliment.

  She dialed the realtor’s number again. “This is Joe Bright,” the machine said. “I can’t come to the …”

  “It’s Delia Grinstead again, Mr. Bright. I’d appreciate your calling me at your earliest convenience,” she said. And just to oblige Susie, she added, “It’s a matter of life and death. Bye.”

  Downstairs, the voices were a woven mass, as if people had given up on the wedding and settled for a party instead. But when she descended to join them, conversation halted for a moment and people turned expectantly. She smiled at them. She was glad now she’d worn the forest-green, with the skirt that swung so alluringly just above her ankles.

  She crossed the hall to the living room, and the others followed. Probably they thought this was a signal of some kind. In fact, Carroll, killingly attractive in his usher’s suit, caught up with her to offer his arm and lead her to a front seat, and a moment later Eleanor joined her, escorted by Ramsay. “Put Aunt Florence in a straight chair,” Ramsay muttered to Carroll. “She says her back is acting up.” Delia heard the usual audience sounds—coughs and rustling skirts. Driscoll’s parents settled on the couch. Dr. Soames took his place on the hearth, smiling benignly toward the room at large and extracting a folded sheet of paper from his breast pocket.

  “Bridal jitters all over now?” Eleanor whispered to Delia.

  “No, um, not exactly.”

  Velma’s colorless child chose a wing chair so big for her that her Mary Janes failed to touch the floor. A young man Delia didn’t know—some relative of Driscoll’s, no doubt—deposited Eliza on the love seat, and Linda plopped next to her unescorted and eased her feet out of her pumps. “Is she coming?” she mouthed when she saw Delia looking at her. Delia merely shrugged and faced front again.

  Now Driscoll was standing beside Dr. Soames, fidgeting with his boutonniere. And the bridesmaids were clustered at the foot of the stairs, where the ushers joined them when the very last guest had been seated.

  Sam bent over Delia. She hadn’t seen him coming; she drew back slightly. “Should I put the record on?” he asked her.

  “Record?”

  “Is she ready?”

  “Oh,” she said. “Well, no, I don’t believe she is.”

  He straightened and stared down at her. He said, “Then shouldn’t you be doing something?”

  “Like what?”

  He didn’t answer. His lips were very dry and white. Delia smoothed her skirt and sat back to observe the next development.

  She had never realized before that worry could be dumped in someone else’s lap like a physical object. She should have done it years ago. Why did Sam always get to be the one?

  Now he turned toward the record player, which was housed in a walnut cabinet at Delia’s elbow. He clicked a button, and a moment later the sound of horns flared out. Delia recognized the theme from Masterpiece Theatre. Privately she found the selection a bit too triumphal, and she suspected from the sniff on her right that Eleanor felt the same way. Everybody else, though, sat in a reverent hush as Sam strode from the room. Delia heard his shoes crossing the hall and crisply mounting the stairs. Why, this wedding must have been planned to duplicate her own: the father of the bride escorting the bride down the stairs and through the double doorway to the center of the living room, to a spot directly beneath the gawky brass chandelier.

  But suppose the bride did not stand waiting in the upstairs hall?

  The footsteps must have continued, but the music drowned them out. Or maybe Sam had stopped at the top of the stairs, just beyond the guests’ view, instead of going in to talk with Susie. That was more like him. In any case, the trumpets blatted on while people smiled at one another (Isn’t this so informal and so family, they were probably thinking), and then the footsteps started down again. But anyone could tell that no bride was keeping pace with that rapid, noisy descent.

  Sam marched to a spot directly in front of Dr. Soames. Delia wondered, for an instant, whether he planned to carry on regardless—take the vows in Susie’s place. But he moistened his lips and said, “Ladies and gentlemen …”

  It was Delia who reached over and lifted the phonograph needle. That was the least she could do, she figured, since it was Sam who announced that he was sorry to have to say this, he hated to put people out like this, but the wedding had been postponed a bit.

  “Postponed” was optimistic, in Delia’s opinion. But people did seem to view it as the most minor readjustment in the couple’s schedule. Linda announced crossly that she and the twins were reserved on a noon flight home two days from now, totally nonrefundable, which she damn well hoped Miss Susie would bear in mind. Dr. Soames, leafing through a pocket diary, muttered something about meetings, visits, Building Fund … but later in the week looked all right, he said; looked quite promising, in fact.

  Even Driscoll’s mother, who seemed more distressed than anyone, turned out to be thinking mainly of a reception she was giving after the honeymoon. “Will they be married by Saturday night, do you think?” she asked Delia. “Could you just, maybe, feel Susie out a little? We’ve got fifty-three of our closest friends coming; you too if you’re still in town.”

  “Maybe Driscoll will know more when they’ve finished talking,” Delia said. “I’ll have him get in touch with you the minute he comes downstairs.”

  For Driscoll had at long last gone up to speak with Susie. He should have done that at the start, if you asked Delia.

  The rain that had been threatening all day was falling now, and people scurried to their cars once they were out the front door. First Dr. Soames left, and then Sam’s aunt and uncle with Eleanor, and Driscoll’s sister with the unnamed usher, and finally Driscoll’s parents. Then Eliza said, “Well! I thought that little sports car of Spence’s had boxed me in for life!” and she swept out, with Linda and the twins in tow. But Ramsay and Carroll stayed on, dogging Delia’s heels as she carried platters of food to the kitchen, which meant that Velma and Rosalie had to stay as well. They made themselves scarce, though, watching TV in the study. Meanwhile Sam set the living-room furniture in order, and Carroll told Delia the entire plot of a movie he and Ramsay had seen. This man, he said, had been stuck in some kind of time warp where he had to keep reliving the same one day over and over. Delia thought that with all the topics they could have been discussing, Carroll had made a mighty peculiar choice, but she just said, “Mmhmm. Mmhmm,” as she flitted around the kitchen, swathing various platters in plastic wrap. Carroll followed so closely that she couldn’t reverse direction without advance notice, and Ramsay wasn’t far behind.

  But then Sam brought in the tablecloth, bunched in a clumsy cylindrical shape, and the atmosphere changed. Carroll stumbled in his recitation. Ramsay got very busy shutting cupboard doors. Both of them seemed to be watching Delia even while they were looking away.

  “Tablecloth,” Sam said. He passed it to her.

  Delia said, “Oh! Good! Thanks!” Then she said, “I’ll just take it down to the …,” and she wheeled and walked through the pantry and down the basement stairs.

  Not that that tablecloth had the slightest need of laundering.

  At the bottom of the stairs the cat was waiting, gazing up at her intently. Vernon always escaped to the basement when there were guests. She said, “Vernon! Have you missed me?” and she bent to cup his ro
und, soft head. “I missed you too, little one,” she whispered. He was purring in that exaggerated way cats have when they want to put humans at ease.

  Footsteps crossed the pantry and started down the stairs. Delia rose and went over to the washing machine. Vernon vanished into thin air. The machine was full of damp laundry, but she stuffed in the tablecloth anyhow and recklessly poured detergent on top.

  Behind her, Sam cleared his throat. She turned. “Oh! Hello, Sam,” she said.

  “Hi.”

  She busied herself with the washing machine, selecting the proper cycle and rotating the dial with a zippery sound. Water started rushing; pipes clanked overhead. Outside the dust-filmed window, ivy leaves bobbed beneath the falling raindrops.

  “As soon as Driscoll comes down,” she said, turning again to Sam, “I’m going to call a cab, but I figured I’ll wait till then so I can say goodbye to Susie.”

  “A cab to where?” Sam asked.

  “To the bus station.”

  “Oh,” Sam said. Then he said, “It would be silly to call a cab, with all these cars at hand. Or rather, I don’t mean silly, but … I could drive you. Or Ramsay could, if you prefer. Ramsay’s been using the Plymouth, you know.”

  “Oh, has he?” Delia asked. “How has it been running, anyway?”

  “All right.”

  “No more electrical problems?”

  He just looked at her.

  “Well, thanks,” she said. “I probably will ask for a lift, if it isn’t too much trouble.”

  She left unanswered the question of who would drive her.

  They went back up the stairs, Delia preceding Sam and moving with self-conscious gracefulness. The kitchen was empty now. The dining-room table had a naked look; Sam had not thought to replace the candelabra after removing the tablecloth. The hall was empty too, but they paused there a minute, gazing toward the silence overhead.

  “I don’t think he’s going to change her mind,” Delia said.

  “It’s only wedding-day nerves.”

  “I think she’s serious. I think she really means this.”

  “You remember how she was when she was little,” Sam said. “She used to get these fixations, remember? Like when she wanted to wear her cowboy pajamas to kindergarten. You said no and she came to breakfast in her underwear, but you pretended not to notice and by schooltime she’d put on a skirt.”

  “A skirt and her pajama tops, which I’d covered partway with a bandanna to hide the snaps,” Delia said. “We compromised. There’s a difference.”

  She was touched, though. She wasn’t sure why. Maybe it was because she herself figured so prominently in his story, as if he had taken notes on what she’d done and then attempted, years later, to do the same.

  She stayed in the hall a moment longer, in case he wanted to tell her anything more, but evidently he didn’t. He turned away and made for the living room. Delia first smoothed her dress and adjusted her belt (not wanting to appear to chase him), and then she followed.

  In the study, the lamps were unlit, and everyone sat in pewter-gray light watching TV—Velma and the boys on the couch, Rosalie on the floor between her mother’s feet. They turned as Sam and Delia entered. “What’s for lunch?” Carroll asked.

  Delia said, “Lunch!”

  “We’re starving.”

  She checked the time. It was after one. She glanced toward Sam for some cue (the kitchen wasn’t hers anymore; the household wasn’t hers to feed), but he didn’t help her. Then footsteps sounded overhead.

  “Driscoll,” Sam said.

  Rosalie continued gaping at a soap opera, but the rest of them went out to the hall—Velma and the boys rising in an elaborately bored, stretching way, everyone moving slowly so as not to seem overeager. They gathered at the bottom of the stairs and watched Driscoll descend.

  He looked distraught. His hair was raked and ropy, and his tie was wrenched askew. When he reached the bottom step he shook his head.

  “No wedding?” Delia asked him.

  “Well, I wouldn’t say no wedding.”

  “What, then?”

  “She says she hates me and I’m not a good person and now she sees she never loved me anyway.”

  “So, no wedding,” Delia mused aloud.

  “But if I want to change her mind, she says, I know what I should do.”

  “What should you do?”

  “I don’t know,” Driscoll said.

  Sam snorted and moved off toward the living room.

  “Send flowers?” Velma suggested. “Send a singing telegram?”

  “I don’t know, I tell you. I said, ’Couldn’t you give me a hint?’ She said, ’It’ll come to you. And if it doesn’t,’ she said, ’it’s a sign we shouldn’t get married.’”

  “Send a Mylar balloon with a message printed on?” Velma pursued.

  “Saying what, though?” Driscoll asked.

  “Driscoll,” Delia said, “I believe your mother wants to talk with you.”

  “Oh. Okay,” he said dully.

  He stood thinking a moment. Then he gave his shoulders a shake and let himself out the front door—no raincoat, no umbrella, nothing. The rain was falling so hard it was bouncing off the porch railing.

  “Hire a skywriter!” Velma said after he’d gone.

  “Mom,” Carroll said, “could we just eat?”

  “I’ll fix something right away,” she told him.

  Might as well. Nobody else was going to do it.

  Delia prepared a tray for Susie and brought it up to her room. She found her asleep on top of the covers—not all that surprising. Susie was the kind of person who retreated into sleep like a drug, losing whole days at times of emotional crisis. Oh, the otherness of Delia’s children never failed to entrance her! She considered it a sort of bonus gift—a means of experiencing, up close, an entirely opposite way of being.

  “Susie, honey,” she said. Susie opened her eyes. “I thought you’d want something to eat,” Delia told her.

  “Thanks,” Susie said, and she struggled blearily to a sitting position.

  Delia placed the tray in Susie’s lap. “It’s all your favorites. Ginger cheesecake, Jewish-grandmother cookies …”

  “Great, Mom,” Susie said, shaking out her napkin.

  “Lemon chiffon tartlets, chocolate mousse cups …”

  Susie looked down at the tray.

  “I had to use the wedding food,” Delia explained. “There weren’t a lot of groceries in the kitchen.”

  “Oh,” Susie said. She said, “So is that… what everyone’s eating?”

  “Well, yes.”

  “They’re eating up my wedding food?”

  “Well … would you rather they didn’t?”

  “No, no!” Susie said too breezily. She picked up a tartlet.

  Delia felt confused. She said, “Did you want us to save them? If you were planning on, um, rescheduling in the near future, why, then I suppose—”

  “No, I said! It’s fine.”

  “Well, what are your plans? I’m not trying to pressure you or anything, but Driscoll did mention … I’m just asking so I can make travel arrangements.”

  In the midst of taking a bite, Susie looked over at her.

  “On account of my job and all,” Delia explained.

  “Oh, just go, if you’re so set on it!” Susie burst out.

  “That’s not what I—”

  “I’m amazed you came at all! You and your stupid job and your man friend and your new family!”

  “Why, Susie—”

  “Gallivanting off down the beach and leaving Dad just wandering the house like the ghost of someone, and your children … orphaned, and me setting up a whole wedding on my own without my mother!”

  Delia stared at her.

  “What did he do, Mom?” Susie demanded. “Was it him? Was it us? What was so terrible? What made you run out on us?”

  “Sweetheart, no one did anything,” Delia said. “It wasn’t that clear-cut. I never meant to
hurt you; I didn’t even mean to leave you! I just got … unintentionally separated from you, and then it seemed I never found a way to get back again.”

  She knew how lame that sounded. Susie listened in silence, gazing over her tartlet, and now that letter she’d sent—the forced gaiety of all those exclamation points, the careful carelessness of See ya! and Luv—made Delia want to weep. “Honeybun,” she said, “if I’d known you wanted help with the wedding, I would have done anything! Anything.”

  But all Susie said was, “Could you please phone the realtor again?”

  “Yes, of course,” Delia said, sighing, and she bent and kissed Susie’s forehead before she left.

  By a process of inaction, of procrastination (much like the one that had stranded her so far from home in the first place), Delia stayed on through the afternoon, waiting for Susie to come downstairs. But time passed, and when she went back up to check, she found Susie asleep again, the tray nearly untouched on the floor beside the cot.

  Sam was in his office, presumably—doing what, she had no idea, since she hadn’t seen any patients arrive. The others sat in the study watching TV, and she settled on the couch next to Velma and pretended to watch too. The good thing about TV was that everyone talked around it in an unthinking, natural way; they forgot that she was listening. She learned that Carroll had gone out three times with a girl from Holland; that Ramsay’s history professor had a grudge against him; that Velma had promised Rosalie a beauty-parlor manicure if she would quit biting her cuticles. It reminded Delia of her car-pool days, when she’d been privy to all the latest gossip because children don’t seem to realize that drivers have ears.