Noah’s Compass: A Novel

by Anne Tyler

  “Hello, there, Kitty. I’ve brought your dad some beef stew.”

  “But he doesn’t eat red meat.”

  “He can just pluck the meat out, then,” Julia said briskly. She was pulling drawers open; in the third, she found the silverware. “Will you be joining us?”

  “Well, sure, I guess so,” Kitty said, although earlier she’d told Liam not to count on her for supper. (All three of his daughters seemed drawn to Julia’s company, perhaps because she made herself so scarce.)

  Kitty was wearing one of those outfits that showed her abdomen, and in her navel she had somehow affixed a little round mirror the size of a dime. From where Liam stood, it looked as if she had a hole in her stomach. It was the oddest effect. He kept glancing at it and blinking, but Julia seemed impervious. “Here,” she said, handing Kitty a fistful of silver. “Set the table, will you.” No doubt she saw all sorts of get-ups in family court. She slapped a baguette on a cutting board and went back to searching through drawers, presumably hunting a bread knife, although Liam could have told her she wouldn’t find one. She settled on a serrated fruit knife. “Now, I trust you’re researching burglar alarms,” she told Liam.

  “No, not really,” he said.

  “This is important, Liam. If you insist on living in unsafe surroundings, you should at least take steps to protect yourself.”

  “The thing of it is, I don’t think this place is unsafe,” Liam told her. “I think what happened was just a fluke. If I hadn’t left the patio door unlocked, and if some drugged-up guy hadn’t come fumbling around on the off chance he could get in somewhere … But at least I seem to have neighbors who will call the police, you notice.”

  He had met the neighbors that morning—a portly, middle-aged couple heading out to their car just as he was dropping a bag of garbage into the bin. “How’s your head?” the husband had asked him. “We’re the Hunstlers. The folks who phoned 911.”

  Liam said, “Oh. Glad to meet you.” He had to force himself to proceed through the proper steps—thank them for their help, give a report on his injuries—before he could ask, “Why did you phone, exactly? I mean, what was it that you heard? Did you hear me say any words?”

  “Words, well, no,” the husband said. “Just, like, more of a shout. Just a shout like ‘Aah!’ or ‘Wha?’ and Deb says, ‘What was that?’ and I look out our bedroom window and see this guy running away. Kind of a darker shape in the dark, was all I could make out. Afraid I wouldn’t be much of a witness if it ever came to trial.”

  “I see,” Liam said.

  “It was a medium-sized guy, though; I will say that. Medium-sized individual.”

  Liam said, “Hmm,” barely listening, because why would he care what size the man was? It was his own words he’d hoped to hear about. That was it? “Aah!” and “Wha?” Surely he had said more. He felt a flash of exasperation with the Hunstlers.

  As Julia said, setting the bread plate on the table, “You’d be a fool to rely on neighbors.”

  “Well, maybe you’re right,” Liam said. “I’ll give some thought to an alarm.”

  But he knew he wouldn’t.

  “And have any arrests been made?” she asked once they’d taken their seats.

  “Not that I’ve heard of.”

  “Any leads, at least?”

  “Nobody’s told me of any.”

  “Here’s what I think,” she said. “I think it was somebody in this complex.”

  “A neighbor?”

  “You can see this is a down-and-outers’ kind of place. Flimsily built rental units, opposite a shopping mall—imagine the sort of people who live here.”

  “I live here, for one,” Liam said. He started buttering a slice of bread. “And so do the Hunstlers.”

  “Who are the Hunstlers?”

  “Julia, you’re missing the point,” Liam said.

  “What is the point, then? Surely you want to see justice done.”

  “This is more about me,” he said. “Why can’t I remember what happened?”

  “Why would you want to?”

  “Everybody asks me that! You don’t understand.”

  “No, evidently not,” Julia said, and then she turned to Kitty and, in an obvious changing-the-subject tone of voice, started quizzing her about her college plans.

  Which wasn’t much more successful, really. Kitty said, “I don’t have any plans. I’ve just finished my junior year.”

  “I thought you were a senior.”

  “Nope.”

  “Shouldn’t she be a senior?” Julia asked Liam.

  “Nope.”

  Julia turned back to Kitty. “But still you must have visited some campuses,” she said.

  “Not yet. I might not even be going to college. I might decide to travel a while.”

  “Oh? Where would you travel to?”

  “Buenos Aires is supposed to be fun.”

  Julia looked at her blankly for a moment. Then she shook her head and told Liam, “I thought she was a senior.”

  “Just goes to show,” Liam said cheerfully. “This is the kind of thing that happens when you don’t keep in touch with your family.”

  “I keep in touch!”

  Liam raised his eyebrows.

  “I phoned you just this past Saturday, when you were moving in!”

  “So you did,” Liam said.

  “And I’ve brought you this nice beef stew, which you haven’t even tasted!”

  “Sorry,” Liam said.

  It was true; all he had on his plate was the one slice of bread. He helped himself to some stew. There were carrots, potatoes, and celery chunks along with the meat—enough to make a meal of, if he just scraped off the gravy.

  “Your father’s been a picky eater all his life,” Julia told Kitty.

  “It’s not so much that I’m picky as that I’m out of the habit,” Liam said. “If I went back to eating meat now, I doubt I’d have the enzymes anymore to digest it.”

  “See what I mean?” Julia asked Kitty. “There was a period in his childhood when he would eat nothing but white things. Noodles and mashed potatoes and rice. Our mother had to fix him an entire separate meal.”

  Liam said, “I don’t remember that.”

  “Well, you were little. And another period, you would eat only with chopsticks. For one solid year, you insisted on eating everything including soup with these pointy ivory chopsticks they shipped back with Uncle Leonard’s belongings after he died in the War.”

  “Chopsticks?” Liam said.

  “And you had to have this old record played every night before you went to bed: ‘It’s Been a Long, Long Time,’ with Kitty Kallen. Whatever happened to Kitty Kallen? Kiss me once, and kiss me twice,” Julia sang, in an unexpectedly pretty soprano. “It was how Mother taught you to kiss us good night. You would blow kisses in tempo. Kiss to the right, kiss to the left … big smacking sounds, huge grin on your face. Wearing those pajamas with the feet and the trap-door bottom.”

  “How come you always remember so much more than me?” Liam asked.

  “You were only two, is why.”

  “Yes, but you come up with so many details. And some are from when I was ten or twelve, when supposedly I was a fully conscious being; but still they’re all news to me.”

  Although total recall was not an unmixed blessing, he had noticed. His sister could hold a grudge forever. She collected and polished resentments as if it were some sort of hobby. For over half a century now, she hadn’t spoken to their father. (He’d left them to marry a younger woman back when they were children.) Even when he suffered a heart attack, a few years ago, Julia had refused to visit him. Let him go ahead and kick the bucket, she’d said; good riddance if he did. And she insisted on using their mother’s maiden name, although their mother herself had stayed a Pennywell till she died. It may have been this bitter streak that kept Julia single. She had never even seriously dated, as far as Liam knew.

  “I can see you plain as day,” she said now. “Your lit
tle red cheeks, your sparkly eyes. Your fat little fingers flinging kisses. Don’t tell me you didn’t know exactly how cute you were being.”

  There was an acid edge to her voice, but even so, Liam envied how she envisioned this picture so clearly, hovering in the air above the table.

  Cope Development’s offices were on Bunker Street, near the train station, according to the telephone book. You would think Ishmael Cope could have sprung for a better address—something around Harborplace, say. But that was how the rich were, sometimes. It might be why they were rich.

  Shortly before noon on Friday, defying medical orders, Liam drove down to Bunker Street. When he reached Cope Development he pulled over to the curb and shut off the ignition. He had hoped for a little park of some sort, or at least a strip of grass with a bench where he could sit, but clearly this was not that kind of neighborhood. All the buildings were scrunched together, and their wooden doors were chewed-looking, the paint on their trim dulled and scaling, their bricks crumbling like biscuits. The place to the right of Cope Development sold plumbing supplies; the place to the left was a mission for indigent men. (That was how the sign in the window phrased it. Would indigent men know the word “indigent”?) Apart from a hunched old woman dragging a wheeled shopping tote behind her, there wasn’t a pedestrian in sight. Liam’s original plan—to blend in with the crowd on the sidewalk, trailing Ishmael Cope and his assistant unobserved as they strolled to some nearby café—seemed silly now.

  He sat low behind the steering wheel, arms folded across his chest, eyes on the Cope building. It looked as dismal as the others, but the plaque beside the door was brass and freshly polished. Twice the door opened and people emerged—a boy with a messenger bag, two men in business suits. Once a woman approached the building from the direction of St. Paul Street and paused, but she moved on after consulting a slip of paper she took from her purse. It was a warm, muggy, overcast day, and Liam had rolled his window down, but even so, the car began to grow uncomfortable.

  He hadn’t planned what he would do after he’d followed them to lunch. He had imagined finagling a table next to them and then, oh, just worming his way in, so to speak. Joining them. Becoming a member.

  It was just as well that they weren’t showing up, because this would never have worked.

  Still, he went on waiting. He noticed that although he was watching for the two of them, it was the assistant he wanted to talk to. Mr. Cope himself had nothing to teach him; Liam knew all there was to know about forgetting. The assistant, on the other hand … Unconsciously, he seemed to be crediting the assistant with specialized professional skills, as if she were a psychologist or a neurologist. Or something more mysterious, even: a kind of reverse fortune teller. A predictor of the past.

  It was this thought that made him come to his senses, finally. Not for the first time, he wondered if the blow to his head had somehow affected his sanity. He gave himself a little shake; he wiped his damp face on his shirt sleeve. Then he started the car and, after one last glance at the door (still closed), he pulled out into traffic and drove home.

  Barbara called on Saturday morning and said she wanted to come get Kitty. “I’ll stop by for her in, say, half an hour,” she said. “Around ten or so. Is she still asleep?”

  “Yes, I think so.”

  “Well, wake her up and tell her to pack. I’ve got a busy day today.”

  “Okay, Barbara. How have you been?” Liam asked, because he felt a little hurt that she hadn’t inquired about his injuries.

  But she just said, “Fine, thanks. Bye,” and hung up.

  He would be sorry to see Kitty go, in some ways. Having another person around was oddly cheering. And unlike her two sisters, who seemed to adopt a tone of high dudgeon whenever they talked to him, Kitty often behaved as if she might actually enjoy his company.

  On the other hand, it would be good to have his own bed back. He noticed when he stuck his head in to wake her that already the room had taken on her scent—various perfumed cosmetics mingling with the smell of worn clothing—and it was strewn with far more possessions than could have fit into that one duffel bag, surely. Bottles and jars covered the bureau; T-shirts littered the floor; extension cords trailed from the outlets. The bed itself was shingled with glossy magazines. He didn’t know how she could sleep like that.

  “Kitty, your mother will be here in half an hour,” he said. “She’s coming to take you home.”

  Kitty was just a feathery tousle of hair on the pillow, but she said, “Mmf,” and turned over, so he felt it was safe to leave her.

  He laid out breakfast: toasted English muffins and (against his principles) the Diet Coke she always claimed she needed to get her going. For himself he brewed coffee. He was starting on his second cup, seated at the table watching the English muffins grow cold, before she emerged from the bedroom. She still had her pajamas on, and a crease ran down one cheek and her hair was sticking up every which way. “What time is it?” she asked, pulling out her chair.

  “Almost ten. Do you have your things packed?”

  “No,” she said. “Hello-o, did anyone warn me? All at once I’m yanked out of bed and told I’m being evicted.”

  “I guess it’s the only time your mother can come,” Liam said. He helped himself to an English muffin. “She said she had a busy day today.”

  “So she couldn’t inform me ahead? Maybe ask me if it was convenient?”

  Kitty popped the tab on her Diet Coke and took a swig. Then she stared moodily down at the can. “I don’t know why she wants me back anyway,” she said. “We’re not getting along at all.”

  “Well, everybody has their ups and downs.”

  “She’s this, like, rule-monger. Nitpicker. If I’m half a minute late it’s, whoa, grounded forever.”

  “I would have supposed,” Liam said, picking his way delicately between words, “that she would be less concerned with all that now that she has a … boyfriend, did you say?”

  “Howie,” Kitty said. “Howie the Hound Dog.”

  “Hound dog!”

  “He has these droopy eyes, like this,” Kitty said, and she pulled down her lower lids with her index fingers till the pink interiors showed.

  Liam said, “Heh, heh,” and waited to hear more, but Kitty just reached for the butter.

  “So, are they … serious, do you suppose?” Liam asked finally.

  “How would I know?”

  “Ah.”

  “They go to these movies at the Charles that all the artsy people go to.”

  “I see.”

  “He has permanent indigestion and can’t eat the least little thing.”

  Liam said, “Tsk.” And then, after a pause, “That must be hard for your mother. She’s such an enthusiastic cook.”

  Kitty shrugged.

  This was the first boyfriend Liam had heard about since Madigan died—Barbara’s second husband. He had died of a stroke several years ago. Liam had always viewed Madigan as temporary, ersatz, a mere substitute husband; but in fact Madigan had been married to Barbara longer than Liam himself had, and it was Madigan who had occupied the Father of the Bride role at Louise’s wedding. (Everything but the actual walking her down the aisle; that much they had oh-so-graciously allowed Liam.) At Madigan’s funeral the girls had shed more tears than they ever would for Liam, he would bet.

  “I’m just thankful your Grandma Pennywell didn’t live to see your mother marry Madigan,” he told Kitty. “It would have broken her heart.”

  “Huh?”

  “She was very fond of your mother. She always hoped we’d reconcile.”

  Kitty sent him a look of such blank astonishment that he said, hastily, “But anyhow! Shouldn’t you be packing?”

  “I’ve got time,” Kitty said. And even though the doorbell rang at the very next instant, she continued licking butter off each finger in a catlike, unhurried way.

  Before he could get all the way to the door, Barbara walked on in. She wore a Saturday kind of outfit—f
rumpy, wide slacks and a T-shirt. (No doubt she would have dressed differently for what’s-his-name. For Howie.) She was carrying a lidded plastic container and a cellophane bag of rolls. “How’s the head?” she asked, striding right past him.

  “Nobody seems to inquire about it anymore,” he said sadly.

  “I just did, Liam.”

  “Well, it’s better. It doesn’t ache, at least. But I still can’t remember what happened.”

  “When do you get the stitches out?”

  “Monday,” he said. He was disappointed that she had ignored the reference to his failed memory. “I’m hoping maybe when I’m sleeping in my own bed again, it will all come back to me. Do you think?”

  “Maybe,” Barbara said absently. She was putting the container in his refrigerator. “This is homemade vegetable soup for your lunch. Where’s Kitty?”

  “She must be packing. Thanks for the soup.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  “Guess what Julia brought: beef stew.”

  “Ha!” Barbara said. But he could tell her heart wasn’t in it. She said, “How late did Kitty stay out nights?”

  Liam didn’t have time to answer (not that he’d have been able to, since he was generally sound asleep when Kitty got home) before Kitty called from the bedroom, “I heard that!”

  “I was only wondering,” Barbara said.

  “Then why don’t you ask me?” Kitty said. She appeared in the hallway, struggling under the weight of her duffel bag, which was bulging open, too full to zip. “Typical,” she told Liam. “She’s always going behind my back. She doesn’t trust me.”

  Liam said, “Oh, now, I’m sure that’s not—”

  “Darn right I don’t trust you,” Barbara said. “Who was it who changed my bedroom clock that time?”

  “That was months ago!”

  “She snuck into my room before she went out and set my clock an hour behind,” Barbara told Liam. “I guess she thought I wouldn’t notice when I went to bed. I’d wake in the night and look at the clock and think she wasn’t due back yet.”

  Liam said, “Surely, though—”