Anne Tyler

by Noah's Compass

  Communing Room, Homecomers … It was almost a foreign language. But Liam was determined to avoid any appearance of disapproval. “Is this like Homecoming Day in high school?” he asked in his most courteous tone. “People coming back who’ve graduated or moved?”

  “There’s nothing high-schoolish about it, Dad!”

  “No, I just meant—”

  “This is for sinners who’ve come to see the error of their ways. Which is a far cry from graduating, believe me.”

  “Yes, of course,” Liam said.

  “I don’t know why you have to try and pick a quarrel about these things.”

  “It must be my contrary nature,” Liam said meekly. He followed her to the door. “Did you bring any snacks?” he thought to ask. “I don’t have all that much around that Jonah will eat.”

  “He’s got Goldfish in his knapsack.”

  “Oh, good.”

  He saw her out and then returned to the living room. Jonah was still standing there, holding his armful of books. They studied each other in silence. “Well,” Liam said finally. “Here we are, I guess.”

  Jonah heaved a deep sigh. He said, “I don’t think Deirdre’s going to take me to the State Fair now.”

  “Why not? She could still do that.”

  “She got married.”

  “Married people go to the fair.”

  “But my mom won’t ever speak to her again.”

  “That’s just talk,” Liam said. “You know how your mom talks.”

  “I didn’t really like Chicken Little anyway,” Jonah said confidingly.

  “You didn’t?”

  “He cheats at soccer.”

  “How can you cheat at soccer?” Liam asked.

  Jonah gave one of his shrugs. “I don’t know; he just does,” he said. “It’s very inappropriate.”

  “Well, tell you what: let’s read some of those books you’ve brought. What did you bring?”

  Jonah held the pile out. Dr. Seuss, Liam saw, and another Dr. Seuss, and a Little Bear book … He said, “Good! You choose which one we’ll start with.”

  Before they could sit down, he had to help Jonah out of his knapsack. Then they settled in an armchair, Jonah squinched tightly into the few remaining inches on Liam’s right side. Jonah was wearing gym shoes today, incongruously large red high-tops. They stuck straight out in front of him, and the left one kept knocking into Liam’s right knee. He really should buy a sofa, Liam thought for the hundredth time. The image of Eunice came to mind, and he had a sudden hollow feeling.

  He was going to be one of those men who die alone among stacks of yellowed newspapers and the dried-out rinds of sandwiches moldering on plates.

  He opened the first book on Jonah’s pile and started reading aloud. The Cat in the Hat, it was. He knew it well. His daughters used to complain that he read too fast and so he made a point of taking his time, enunciating each word and adding plenty of expression. Jonah listened without reacting. His small head gave off a heated smell, like fresh-baked bread or warm honey.

  Hop on Pop. Green Eggs and Ham. Father Bear Comes Home, which Jonah interrupted halfway through to announce that he had to pee. “Go ahead; I’ll wait,” Liam said. He was glad of the respite. Reading with expression was making his throat ache.

  When Jonah came out of the bathroom he didn’t return to the armchair but went instead to his knapsack, which was lying on the floor. He pulled out a plastic bag of Goldfish crackers and sat down on the carpet to eat them, selecting each cracker one by one as if some were better than others. It wasn’t clear whether he’d tired of Little Bear or was merely taking a break. Liam marked their page, just in case. He said, “Would you like to work on your coloring a while?”

  “I’m done with coloring,” Jonah said.

  “You finished the book?”

  “I stopped liking it.”

  “Oh.”

  Jonah turned the bag upside down, emptying the rest of the Goldfish onto the carpet along with a shower of orange dust. “You know Noah?” he asked Liam.

  “Noah in the Bible?”

  Jonah nodded.

  “I know Noah.”

  “He made about a hundred animals die,” Jonah said.

  “He did?”

  “He left them to drown. He only took two of things.”

  “Oh. Right.”

  “He took two giraffes and let all the rest drown.”

  “Well, he didn’t have a whole lot of room, bear in mind.”

  “Where’d he buy gas?” Jonah asked.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Where’d he buy gas for his boat if he was the only guy in the world?”

  “He didn’t need gas,” Liam said. “It wasn’t that kind of boat.”

  “Was it a sailboat, then?”

  “Why, yes, I guess it was,” Liam said. Although he had never noticed sails in the pictures, come to think of it. “Actually,” he said, “I guess he didn’t need sails either, because he wasn’t going anywhere.”

  “Not going anywhere!”

  “There was nowhere to go. He was just trying to stay afloat. He was just bobbing up and down, so he didn’t need a compass, or a rudder, or a sextant …”

  “What’s a sextant?”

  “I believe it’s something that figures out directions by the stars. But Noah didn’t need to figure out directions, because the whole world was underwater and so it made no difference.”

  “Huh,” Jonah said. He seemed to have lost interest. He licked the tip of one finger and started picking up the crumbs from the carpet.

  Liam thought of pointing out that this was only a sort of fairy tale, but he didn’t want Louise any madder at him than she already was.

  Eunice said that sometimes, she wondered if Mr. C.’s memory trouble could be contagious.

  “For instance,” she said. “We’ve just now been to a retirement party for the receptionist. Their receptionist’s retiring. Mr. C. takes a handful of nuts from a bowl and starts to eat them, but then he stops. ‘These nuts are ransomed,’ he says. I say, ‘What?’ ‘They’re ransomed. Take them away.’ ‘Oh,’ I said. ‘You mean—’ But then I couldn’t think of the word. I could not think of the word. I knew it wasn’t ‘ransomed,’ but I couldn’t think what it should be.”

  They were standing in the kitchen alcove, where Liam had gone to fetch the ice water she’d requested the instant she arrived. (Outside it was hot and humid, a typical August afternoon as heavy as mud.) He held a glass beneath the dispenser in the refrigerator door, and Eunice stepped up behind him and wrapped her arms around him and laid her cheek against his back.

  “It’s like I slipped into Mr. C.’s world for a minute,” she said. Her breath was warm and moist against Liam’s left shoulder.

  He filled the glass with water and turned to face her. Instead of taking the glass from him, she unbuttoned the top button of his shirt. He said, “Your water.”

  “It’s like I saw what it must feel like to be him,” she said. “How … evaporating and blurry and scary.”

  “Let’s go to the living room,” he told her.

  He was trying to back away from her, but he was trapped against the refrigerator. Eunice unbuttoned the rest of his buttons, focusing on them intently and not looking up at his face. “Let’s not,” she said. “Let’s go to the bedroom.”

  “We can’t do that,” he told her.

  “There’s no place to sit in the living room.”

  “There are two very comfortable armchairs.”

  “Let’s go to bed,” she said.

  Her fingertips were delicate points of warmth against his skin. She dropped her hands to his belt and undid his buckle.

  “We should sit down,” Liam said. He moved to one side of her.

  “We should lie down,” Eunice told him.

  He started toward the living room, still holding the glass of water, but when she followed him he slowed to a stop and let her press herself to his back and hug him once again. He felt confused by the com
bination of her tight embrace and his loosened waistband. His shirttails had worked themselves free of their own accord, and he thought how good it would feel to be free of all his clothes. He wanted to put the water glass someplace but he didn’t want to separate from her long enough to do that.

  Then the front door burst open and someone caroled, “Knock knock!”

  In walked Barbara, lugging a blue vinyl suitcase.

  Liam jerked away from Eunice and clutched his shirtfront together with his free hand.

  Barbara said, “Oh, excuse me,” but not in a particularly apologetic tone. She seemed amused, more than anything. She set down the suitcase to push back a lock of hair that had fallen over her forehead.

  Liam said, “What are you doing here?”

  “You did leave your door unlocked,” Barbara pointed out.

  “That doesn’t mean you should walk on in!”

  “Well, I said, ‘Knock knock.’ Didn’t I?” Barbara asked Eunice. “I don’t believe we’ve met.”

  Liam said, “This is … a friend of mine, Eunice Dunstead. She was just helping me with my résumé.”

  “I’m Barbara,” Barbara told Eunice.

  Eunice said, “I have to go.” Her cheeks were splotched with patches of red. She snatched up her purse from the rocking chair and rushed toward the door. Barbara moved aside to let her pass, gazing after her thoughtfully. Liam seized her moment of inattention to put down the water glass and buckle his belt.

  “Sorry,” Barbara told him once the door had slammed shut.

  “Honestly, Barbara.”

  “I’m sorry!”

  “What are you here for?” he asked.

  “I brought Kitty’s beach things.”

  “Beach?”

  Casually, as if his mind were on something else, he let a hand drift to his shirtfront again and he felt for each button and buttoned it. Barbara tilted her head to watch.

  “She’s spending a few days in Ocean City with Damian’s aunt and uncle,” she said. “Didn’t she clear this with you?”

  “Um …”

  “Liam, are you not keeping track of Kitty’s comings and goings? Because if that’s the case, she shouldn’t be in your care.”

  “I’m keeping track! I just forgot,” he said.

  “Really.”

  Eunice would be traveling farther away every second, in tears and no doubt despairing of him, reflecting on how cowardly he was and how unchivalrous and disloyal. But Barbara, for once, seemed in no hurry to leave. She went over to the rocking chair and sat down, plucking at her T-shirt where it was clinging to her stomach. Her outfit today was singularly unattractive. The T-shirt was stretched and smudged with grass stains, and her loose khaki shorts revealed her wide white thighs, pressed even wider against the chair seat.

  As if she guessed what he was thinking, she said, “I look a mess. I’ve been cleaning.”

  He said nothing. He sat in the armchair furthest from her, perching on the very edge of it to suggest that he had things to do.

  “So,” she said. “Tell me about this Eunice person. How long have you known her?”

  “What’s it to you?” Liam demanded.

  It felt so good to speak this way—to say what he wanted, for once, without worrying about Barbara’s opinion of him—that he did it again. “What’s it to you, Barbara? What business is it of yours?”

  Barbara rocked back in her chair and said, “My, my!”

  “I don’t ask you about Howie, do I?”

  “Who?”

  “Howie the Hound Dog. Howie the Food Phobe.”

  “Are you referring to Howard Neal?”

  “Right,” Liam said, risking it.

  “Goodness, Liam, where’d you dig him up from?”

  He scowled at her.

  “Gosh, I haven’t thought of Howard in …” She shook her head, looking amused again. “Well. So Miss Eunice is off-limits. Fine. Forget I asked.”

  Liam said, “You and I are divorced, after all. I do have a private life.”

  “You’re always going on about your private life,” Barbara said, “but have you ever considered this, Liam: You’re the only Baltimorean I know who leaves his front door unlocked. Even though you’ve had a burglary! You leave it completely unlocked, but then any time someone walks in you complain that they’re intruding. ‘Tut-tut!’ you say. ‘I’m veddy, veddy private and special. I vant to be alone!’ ”—this last uttered in a bad Greta Garbo accent. “We’re damned if we do and damned if we don’t. Here’s solitary sad old Liam, only God help anybody who tries to step in and get close.”

  “Well, maybe if they knocked first—”

  “And I suppose this poor Eunice person is just like all the rest of us,” Barbara said. “All those benighted females who broke their hearts over you. She imagines she’ll be the one who finally warms you up.”

  “Barbara! She is not poor! She is not ‘this poor Eunice person’! Jesus, Barbara! What gives you the right?”

  Barbara looked startled. She said, “Well, pardon me.”

  “Isn’t it time for you to leave?”

  “Fine,” she said. “Okay.” She rose to her feet. “I only meant—”

  “I don’t care what you meant. Just leave.”

  “All right, Liam, I’m leaving. Have Kitty call me, please, will you?”

  “Okay,” he said.

  Already he was feeling sheepish about his outburst, but he refused to apologize. He stood up and followed Barbara to the door. “Goodbye,” he told her.

  “Bye, Liam.”

  He didn’t see her out to the parking lot.

  He thought of Eunice: how staunch she had been and how forthright. She had not said, “Pleased to meet you,” when she and Barbara were introduced. She had not stuck around and made small talk. “I have to go,” she had said, and she had gone. While he himself, longing though he was to run after her, had cravenly sat down with Barbara and held a meaningless conversation. He was so concerned about appearances, about what Barbara thought of him, that he had failed to show the most basic human kindness.

  The fact was that Eunice was a much better person than he was.

  Everyone knew the St. Paul Arms. It was a shabby gray apartment building a couple of blocks from the Hopkins campus, home to graduate students and instructors and lower-level university staff. From his old place, Liam could have walked there in a matter of minutes. Even from his new place it was not that much of a drive, but this afternoon it seemed to take forever. Every stoplight changed to red just before he reached it; every car ahead of him was trying to make a left turn in the face of oncoming traffic. Liam chafed all over with frustration. He drummed his fingers on the steering wheel as he waited for an elderly pedestrian to inch, inch through a crosswalk.

  It had not been all that long, really, since Eunice had rushed out his door. He had hopes originally of waylaying her in front of her building, intercepting her before she got inside. As the minutes passed, though, he saw that this was unrealistic. All right: he would just stride on into her apartment and state his case. If the husband happened to be there, fine. It wouldn’t change a thing.

  The car radio was playing a Chopin étude that tinkled on endlessly, going nowhere. He switched it off.

  There weren’t any parking spots in front of her building and so he turned into a side street and parked there. Then he walked back up St. Paul and pulled open the heavy wooden door of the St. Paul Arms.

  Drat, an intercom. A locked glass inner door blocking his way and one of those damn fool intercom arrangements where you had to locate a resident’s special code and punch it in. He searched for Dunstead, realizing to his dismay that he’d forgotten what the husband’s last name was; but he was in luck: Dunstead/Simmons, he found. Oh, yes: the hiss between the two s sounds. He stabbed in the code.

  First he heard a dial tone and then Eunice’s overloud “Yes?”

  “It’s me,” he said.

  No response.

  “It’s Liam,” he tried aga
in.

  “What do you want?”

  “I want to come up.”

  In the silence that followed, he frowned down at the collection of footprinted takeout menus that paved the vestibule floor. Finally, a buzzer sounded. He seized the handle of the glass door as if it were about to vanish.

  She lived in 4B, the list in the vestibule had said. The elevator looked unreliable and he decided to take the stairs. Evidently a lot of other people had made the same choice; the marble treads were worn down in the middle like old soap bars. Above the second floor, the marble gave way to threadbare plum-colored carpet. Now he regretted spurning the elevator, because he was growing short of breath. He didn’t want to arrive puffing and panting.

  Probably the husband was a jogger or something. For sure he was younger and fitter.

  On the fourth floor, one door was open and Eunice stood there waiting—a good sign, he thought. But when he reached her, he found her expression set in stone, and she didn’t step back to let him in. “What do you want?” she said again.

  “Are you by yourself?”

  An infinitesimal adjustment to the angle of her head meant yes, he surmised.

  “We need to talk,” he said.

  “Don’t bother; I already know I’m only a ‘friend.’ ”

  “I apologize for that,” he said. He glanced around. The hall was empty, but people could be listening from behind their doors, and she was making no effort to keep her voice down. “Could I come in?” he asked.

  She hesitated and then stepped back, just a grudging few inches. He sidled past her to find himself in a long, narrow corridor with dark floorboards, a braided oval rug, and a claw-footed drop-leaf table littered with junk mail.

  “I am extremely sorry,” he told her.

  She lifted her chin. From the spiked and separated look of her lashes, he could tell she must have been crying, but her face was composed.

  He said, “Please say you forgive me. I hated to let you walk out like that.”

  “Well, get used to it,” she said. “You can’t have things both ways, Liam. You can’t ask me to stay with my husband and then not let me walk out on you.”

  “You’re absolutely right,” he said. “Please, do you think we could sit somewhere?”

  She released an exasperated puff of a breath, but then she turned to lead him down the corridor.