Anne Tyler

by Noah's Compass

  He tried to read the next caption, but Jonah’s arm was obscuring it. As unobtrusively as possible, Liam reached for the newspaper.

  Drought. War. Suicide bombers.

  At around ten thirty or so, after she had settled Mr. C. in his office, Eunice would be coming to deliver his printed-out résumé. Liam hugged that thought to himself like a package that he was putting off unwrapping. He had something to look forward to, but he didn’t want to examine it too closely. He kept it tucked in the back of his consciousness for later.

  Of course, eventually he would have to tell her that the résumé was unnecessary. By that time, though, they might know each other well enough to be getting together for other reasons. He wondered if she liked movies. Liam really enjoyed a good movie. He found it restful to watch people’s conversations without being expected to join in. But he always felt sort of lonesome if he didn’t have someone next to him to nudge in the ribs at the good parts.

  Security checks at airports were becoming more and more onerous, he read.

  Jonah said, “I’m hungry.”

  Liam lowered his newspaper. “You want your carrot sticks?” he asked.

  “I want something you have.”

  This touched off a faint, nagging echo of annoyance in Liam’s mind. He reached back to retrieve a recollection of Xanthe from long, long ago, from her toddler days, always asking for something, always needing. But he forced himself to say, “Sure enough. Let’s see what I’ve got,” and he set aside his paper and stood up.

  “Celery? Yogurt? Cheese?” he called from the kitchen.

  “What kind of cheese?”

  “Pepperjack.”

  “Pepperjack’s too prickly.”

  Liam sighed and closed the refrigerator door. “Raisins?” he asked. “Toast?”

  “Raisins would be good.”

  Liam scooped some raisins from the box and put them in a cereal bowl. An image came to him of Xanthe standing in her crib, clutching the bars in tight fat fists. Her hair was plastered to her scalp with sweat and her face was beet-red and streaming with tears, her mouth a cavernous black rectangle of misery. He set the bowl on the carpet in front of Jonah and said, “Here, little guy,” and Jonah tossed him a quick glance before he reached for a handful of raisins.

  In Egypt, Joseph became Potiphar’s most trusted slave.

  “So, Joseph was taken to Egypt, where he had to work very hard,” Liam said.

  “Couldn’t he run back home?”

  “I think it was too far to run.”

  He wondered what a child was expected to learn from this story. Was there some sort of moral? He opened out his newspaper again. Concern was being voiced about missiles in North Korea. He thought that maybe, if Eunice happened to be free tonight, he could invite her out for a bite to eat. He could say it was a thank-you for her help with his résumé. What could be more natural? Still, he felt a little gut-twinge of nervousness. Even at his age, the whole rigmarole of dating seemed intimidating. Especially at his age.

  He reminded himself that she was just an ordinary, rather plain young woman, but now her plainness seemed part of her charm. She was so innocent and guileless, so transparent. He remembered how she’d taken leave of him yesterday, after he’d walked her out to the parking lot. She had paused beside her car door and removed her glasses (just why, he couldn’t say; surely she needed glasses for driving?), and her face had suddenly seemed so vulnerable that he’d had to stifle an impulse to reach out and cup her head between his hands. “Bye-bye,” she’d told him, lifting her chin. Even that childish phrase, which he had always found slightly silly, struck him as appealing.

  When the doorbell rang, he imagined for an instant that this might be Eunice now. But no, it was Louise, already walking in before he could get out of his chair. “Did you miss me?” she asked Jonah, swooping down on him.

  Jonah stumbled to his feet for a hug. “I colored about a hundred pages,” he told her.

  “Good for you! How was he?” she asked Liam.

  “He was fine. Though I don’t hold out high hopes for an artistic career.”

  “Dad!”

  “What?”

  She cut her eyes toward Jonah, who was busy cramming his crayons back in their box.

  “Well, I fail to see what the problem is,” Liam told her. “No one’s talented at everything.”

  “Honestly,” Louise said, and she dropped into the rocking chair.

  Not a word about her doctor’s appointment. Should Liam ask? No, that might be seen as intrusive. Instead he said, “Would you like a cup of coffee?”

  Louise said, “No, thanks,” which may or may not have been significant. (Were pregnant women allowed to drink coffee this month?) She patted her skirt, and Jonah climbed onto her lap and wrapped his arms around her. “What else did you do?” she asked him.

  “I ate raisins.”

  “That’s nice.” She looked over his head at Liam. “Your wound seems a lot better. I very nearly can’t see it.”

  “Yes, it’s pretty well healed,” he said. Involuntarily, he glanced down at his injured palm. It still had a curdled texture, but the skin was a normal color again.

  Louise said, “And I assume you’ve gotten over that little obsession about your memory.”

  “I wasn’t obsessed!” Liam said.

  “You most certainly were. For a while there, everyone thought you’d gone nuts.”

  “I just wanted to know what had happened, that’s all. You would too, if you woke up in a hospital without an inkling why you were there.”

  She made a little shivering motion with her shoulders and said, “Let’s talk about something else.”

  “Fine with me,” Liam said. “How’s Dougall?”

  “He’s all right.”

  “Plumbing business going okay?”

  “Oh, yes.”

  Liam liked Dougall well enough—there was nothing not to like—but it was hard to invent any more conversation about him. He was a genial, oversized man with a pathological interest in the workings of inanimate objects, and Liam had never understood why Louise had selected him for a husband. Sometimes he thought that she’d been born with a mental checklist of milestones that she’d sworn to get out of the way as soon as possible. Grow up, finish school, marry the first boy she dated, start a family … She had been in such a hurry, and for what? Here she sat, an intelligent young woman, with no more on her mind than organizing her church’s next bake sale.

  Ah, well. Life was a matter of opinion, according to Marcus Aurelius.

  “You haven’t asked about my doctor’s appointment,” Louise was saying. “Don’t you care why I went?”

  Liam said, “Certainly I care.”

  “You haven’t shown the slightest bit of interest.”

  Oh, it was so tiring sometimes, this business of engaging with other human beings! Liam said, as delicately as possible, “I trust it was nothing life-threatening.”

  “I’m pregnant again.”

  “Congratulations.”

  “Aren’t you happy for us?”

  “Yes, I’m happy.”

  “You don’t act it.”

  Liam sat up straighter and gripped his knees. “I’m extremely happy,” he said. “I think it will be very nice for Jonah to have a sibling.” He glanced at Jonah, who was squatting on the floor to repack his knapsack. “Does he know?” he asked Louise.

  Louise said, “Of course he knows. Don’t you, Jonah.”

  “Huh?”

  “You know about your new baby brother or sister, don’t you?”

  Jonah said, “Mmhmm,” and zipped his knapsack shut. Louise raised her eyebrows meaningfully at Liam.

  “When’s your due date?” Liam asked her.

  “Early February.”

  “February!”

  People announced these things so far ahead nowadays, it made pregnancies seem to last a couple of years or more.

  “If you come up with any good names for girls, let us know,” Louise told h
im. She rose and helped Jonah slip into his knapsack straps. “We’re having trouble agreeing on one. A boy is no problem; but any girl’s name I like, Dougall thinks it’s too froufrou.”

  “What would it be for a boy?” Liam asked her.

  “Madigan, we’ve decided.”

  “Ah.”

  He heaved himself to his feet and followed her toward the door. It was absurd to feel hurt. Madigan had been a very good stepfather. (A very good father, Barbara would have amended if she’d been there.) He’d spared Liam the burden of child support, for one thing; the man had been loaded. Liam said, “Nothing biblical this time?”

  “We’re thinking Jacob for a middle name.”

  “That’s nice.”

  This reminded him; he said, “Louise, what’s the meaning of the Joseph story?”

  “Which Joseph story?”

  “The coat of many colors, the slavery in Egypt—what are people supposed to learn from it?”

  “They’re not supposed to learn anything,” Louise said. “It’s an event that really happened. It’s not made up; it’s not designed for any calculated purpose.”

  “Oh,” he said.

  Best not to pursue that.

  “Why’d you ask?” she said.

  “Just curious.” He opened the door for her and then followed her and Jonah into the foyer. “I saw it in Jonah’s coloring book and I was wondering.”

  “You know,” Louise said, “you’re always welcome to come to church with us on a Sunday.”

  “Oh, thanks, but—”

  “We could pick you up and take you there. We’d be happy to! I’d really love to share my faith with you.”

  “Thanks anyhow,” Liam said. “I guess religion’s just not in my nature, sorry to say.”

  He refrained from telling her that even talking about religion made him wince with embarrassment. Even hearing about it embarrassed him—hearing those toe-curling terms that believers employed, like share, in fact, and my faith.

  But she said, “Oh, Dad, it’s in every person’s nature! We are every one of us born in sin, and till we let Jesus into our hearts we’re condemned throughout eternity.”

  Well, there was no way he could let that pass. He said, “Are you telling me that some little child in Africa is condemned because he’s never been to Sunday school? Or some perfectly good Moslem herding camels in Tunisia?”

  “You cannot be called good until you accept Christ as your personal savior,” she said, and her voice echoed off the cinderblocks with a bell-like, clanging tone.

  Liam’s jaw dropped. “Well,” he said, “I guess …”

  Words failed him for a moment.

  “I guess we’ll just have to agree to disagree,” he said finally.

  Words must have failed Louise too, because she just gazed at him for a moment with an expression he couldn’t read. Then she turned away and opened the outer door.

  Eunice stood on the sidewalk, poised to enter. She took a step backward.

  “Oh. Eunice,” Liam said.

  “Have I come at a bad time?”

  “No, no …”

  Louise gave him a questioning look. Liam said, “Eunice, this is my daughter, Louise, and my grandson, Jonah.” He told Louise, “Eunice is—Why, you’ve seen her before. You saw her in Dr. Morrow’s waiting room.”

  “I did?” Louise said.

  Eunice said, “She did?”

  Oops, a slip. Though not too hard to cover up, as it happened. Liam told Eunice, “I realized that only later. I knew you seemed familiar.”

  Eunice continued to look puzzled, but she held out her hand to Louise and said, “Nice to meet you.”

  “Nice to meet you,” Louise said, shaking her hand. “So, do you two have plans for the day?”

  “Eunice is just helping me with my résumé,” Liam told her.

  “Oh,” Louise said. “Well, good. You’re going to look for a real job! Or at least … I mean, surely the zayda job doesn’t require a résumé, does it?”

  “The …? No, no, no. This would be for something else.”

  “The very last place on earth I can see him is in a preschool,” Louise told Eunice.

  “Preschool?” Eunice asked.

  “That’s what he was talking about the other day.”

  Liam said, “I know you have to be going, Louise. Bye, Jonah! Good luck with the coloring book.”

  Jonah hoisted his knapsack higher on his back and said, “Bye.” Louise said, “Thanks for watching him, Dad.” She seemed to have forgotten their quarrel. She gave him a peck on the cheek, waved to Eunice, and followed Jonah out the door.

  “You saw me at Dr. Morrow’s?” Eunice asked Liam.

  She was still standing on the sidewalk, although he held the door open invitingly. She had her arms folded across her chest and she seemed planted there.

  He said, “Yes, wasn’t that a coincidence?”

  “I don’t recall seeing you,” she told him.

  “You don’t? I guess I’m not very memorable.”

  This made her smile, a little. She unfolded her arms and stepped forward to enter the building.

  She was wearing one of her skirts today, and a blouse that showed her cleavage. Her breasts were two full, soft mounds. When she passed him, she gave off a faint scent of vanilla and he had an urge to step closer in order to get a deeper breath of it. He stood back against the door, however, with his hands pressed behind him. There was something bothering the far corners of his mind, something casting a shadow.

  “I should have accepted her invitation,” he said once they were inside the apartment.

  Eunice said, “What?”

  “Louise invited me to her church just now and I didn’t accept.”

  He dropped into an armchair, feeling disheartened. Too late, he remembered that he was supposed to seat his guest first, and he started to struggle up again but then Eunice sat down in the rocker.

  “I’ve never been a good father,” he said.

  “Oh, I’m sure you’re a wonderful father!”

  “No, a good father would say, ‘So what if I’m not religious? This could be our chance to get on a better footing!’ But I was so intent on my … principles. My standards. I blew it.”

  Eunice said, “Well, anyway. Your grandson is really cute.”

  “Thanks,” he said.

  “I didn’t picture you being a grandfather.”

  He wondered what this signified. He said, “I guess it does make me seem awfully old.”

  “No, it doesn’t! You’re not old!”

  “I must seem pretty old to somebody your age,” he said. He waited a beat, and then he said, “How old are you, if you don’t mind my asking?”

  “I’m thirty-eight.”

  “You are?”

  So she wasn’t younger than Xanthe after all. He would have to tell Kitty.

  When Liam was thirty-eight he already had two children. His first marriage was already behind him, and he’d started to feel his second was behind him. But Eunice still seemed so fresh-faced and so … unwritten on. She sat very straight-backed, with her bulky sandals placed wide apart, her hands clasped in the valley of paisley skirt between her knees. Her glasses reflected the light in a way that turned them white, giving her a blank, open look.

  “You could always change your mind,” she told him.

  “Excuse me?”

  “You could call your daughter on the phone and say you would come to her church after all.”

  “Well, yes.”

  “Would she have reached home by now?”

  “I doubt it.”

  “Does she have a cell phone?”

  “Look,” he said. “I’m not going to call.”

  Eunice rocked back in her rocker.

  “I can’t,” he said.

  “Okay …”

  “It’s difficult to explain.”

  She went on watching him.

  He said, “Did you print up that résumé?”

  He couldn’t have care
d less about the résumé. In fact, the very word was beginning to strike him as annoying. Those pretentious foreign accent marks! For God’s sake, didn’t some term exist in ordinary English? But Eunice immediately brightened and said, “The résumé!” (She even pronounced it foreignly, with a long a in the first syllable.) She bent to dig through her purse, which sat beside her on the floor, and she came up with a crisp sheaf of papers folded in half. “I have to say,” she told him, “I’m not entirely satisfied with it.”

  “Why is that?”

  “I couldn’t seem to give it any focus. If you’re not applying at Cope, I don’t know what particular strengths I should be emphasizing—what areas of interest.”

  He gave a short bark of laughter, and she glanced up from the papers.

  “I wouldn’t know either,” he told her. “Basically, I have no areas of interest.”

  “Oh, that can’t be true,” she said.

  “It is, though,” he said. And then he said, “It really is. Sometimes I think my life is just … drying up and hardening, like one of those mouse carcasses you find beneath a radiator.”

  If Eunice was surprised by this, it was nothing compared to how he himself felt. He seemed to hear his own words as if someone else had spoken them. He cleared his throat and spread his fingers across his knees.

  “Well, only on off days, of course,” he said.

  “I know exactly what you mean,” she told him.

  “You do?”

  “I’m always thinking, Why don’t I have any hobbies? Other people do. Other people develop these passions; they collect things or they research things or they birdwatch or they snorkel. They join book groups or they reenact the Civil War. I’m just trying to make it through to bedtime every night.”

  “Yes,” Liam said.

  “I don’t see myself as a mouse carcass, though, but more like one of those buds that haven’t opened. I’m hanging there on the bush all closed up.”

  “That would make sense,” Liam said. “You’re younger. You have everything ahead of you.”

  “Unless I never open, and fall off the branch still closed,” Eunice said.

  Before Liam could make any comment, she said, “Well, enough of that! I sound like some kind of basket case, don’t I?”

  “No,” Liam said.

  Then he said, “I turned sixty on my last birthday.”