Ladder of Years

  Logically, she should have found that a comfort. (She used to be so afraid of dying while her children were small.) But instead, she had suffered pangs of jealousy. Why was it Sam, for instance, that everybody turned to in times of crisis? He always got to be the reasonable one, the steady and reliable one; she was purely decorative. But how had that come about? Where had she been looking while that state of affairs developed?

  She read another story, which contained several lengthy nature descriptions. She enjoyed nature as much as the next person, but you could carry it too far, she felt.

  And was anybody keeping an eye on Sam’s health? He had that tendency, lately, to overdo the exercise. But, It’s none of my concern, Delia reminded herself. His letter had freed her. No more need to count cholesterol grams; pointless to note that the Gobble-Up carried fat-free mayonnaise.

  She called back some of the letter’s phrases: You cannot have been unaware and Nor am I entirely clear. Bloodless phrases, emotionless phrases. She supposed the whole neighborhood knew he hadn’t married her for love.

  Again she saw the three daughters arrayed on the couch—Sam’s memory, originally, but she seemed to have adopted it. She saw her father in his armchair and Sam in the Boston rocker. The two of them discussed a new arthritis drug while Delia sipped her sherry and slid glances toward Sam’s hands, reflecting on how skilled they looked, how doctorly and knowing. It might have been the unaccustomed sherry that made her feel so giddy.

  Just a few scattered moments, she thought, have a way of summing up a person’s life. Just five or six tableaux that flip past again and again, like tarot cards constantly reshuffled and redealt. A patch of sunlight on a window seat where someone big was scrubbing Delia’s hands with a washcloth. A grade-school spelling bee where Eliza showed up unannounced and Delia saw her for an instant as a stranger. The gleam of Sam’s fair head against the molasses-dark wood of the rocker. Her father propped on two pillows, struggling to speak. And Delia walking south alongside the Atlantic Ocean.

  In this last picture, she wore her gray secretary dress. (Not all such memories are absolutely accurate.) She wore the black leather shoes she had bought at Bassett Bros. The clothes were wrong, but the look was right—the firmness, the decisiveness. That was the image that bolstered her.

  “Whenever I hear the word ‘summer,’” one of the three marriageable maidens announced (Eliza, of course), “I smell this sort of melting smell, this yellow, heated, melting smell.” And Linda chimed in, “Yes, that’s the way she is! Eliza can smell nutmeg day at the spice plant clear downtown! Also anger.” And Delia smiled at her sherry. “Ah,” Sam murmured thoughtfully. Did he guess their ulterior motives? That Eliza was trying to sound interesting, that Linda was pointing out Eliza’s queerness, that Delia was hoping to demonstrate the dimple in her right cheek?

  The washcloth scrubbing her hands was as rough and warm as a mother cat’s tongue. The squat, unhappy-looking young woman approaching Miss Sutherland’s desk changed into Delia’s sister. “I wish …,” her father whispered, and his cracked lips seemed to tear apart rather than separate, and he turned his face away from her. The evening after he died, she went to bed with a sleeping pill. She was so susceptible to drugs that she seldom took even an aspirin, but she gratefully swallowed the pill Sam gave her and slept through the night. Only it was more like burrowing through the night, tunneling through with some blunt, inadequate instrument like a soup spoon, and she woke in the morning muddled and tired and convinced that she had missed something. Now she thought what she had missed was her own grief. Why that rush toward forgetfulness? she asked herself. Why the hurry to leap past grief to the next stage?

  She wondered what her father had been wishing for. She hadn’t been able to figure it out at the time, and maybe he had assumed she just didn’t care. Tears filled her eyes and rolled down her cheeks. She made no effort to stop them.

  Didn’t it often happen, she thought, that aged parents die exactly at the moment when other people (your husband, your adolescent children) have stopped being thrilled to see you coming? But a parent is always thrilled, always dwells so lovingly on your face as you are speaking. One of life’s many ironies.

  She reached for her store of toilet paper and blew her nose. She felt that something was loosening inside her, and she hoped she would go on crying all night.

  In the house across the street, a child called, “Ma, Jerry’s kicking me.” But the voice was distant and dreamy, and the response was mild. “Now, Jerry …” Gradually, it seemed, the children were dropping off. Those who remained awake allowed longer pauses to stretch between their words, and spoke more and more languidly, until finally the house was silent and no one said anything more.

  Independence Day had passed nearly unobserved in Bay Borough—no parades, no fireworks, nothing but a few red-white-and-blue store windows. Bay Day, however, was another matter. Bay Day marked the anniversary of George Pendle Bay’s famous dream. It was celebrated on the first Saturday in August, with a baseball game and a picnic in the town square. Delia knew all about it because Mr. Pomfret was chairman of the Recreation Committee. He had had her type a letter proposing they replace the baseball game with a sport that demanded less space—for instance, horseshoes. The square, he argued, was so small and so thickly treed. But Mayor Frick, who was the son and grandson of earlier mayors and evidently reigned supreme, wrote back to say that the baseball game was a “time-honored tradition” and should continue.

  “Tradition!” Mr. Pomfret fumed. “Bill Frick wouldn’t know a tradition if it bit him in the rear end. Why, at the start it was always horseshoes. Then Ab Bennett came back from the minors with his tail between his legs, and Bill Frick Senior got up a baseball game to make him look good. But Ab doesn’t even play anymore! He’s too old. He runs the lemonade stand.”

  Delia had no interest in Bay Day. She planned to spend the morning on errands and give the square a wide berth. But first she found everything closed, and then the peculiar weather (a fog as dense as oatmeal and almost palpably soft) lured her to keep walking, and by the time she reached the crowd she felt so safe in her cloak of mist that she joined in.

  The four streets surrounding the square were blocked off and spread with picnic blankets. Food booths lined the sidewalks, and strolling vendors hawked pennants and balloons. Even this much, though, Delia had trouble making out, because of the fog. People approaching seemed to be materializing, their features assembling themselves at the very last instant. The effect was especially unsettling in the case of young boys on skateboards. Elated by the closed streets, they careened through the crowd recklessly, looming up entire and then dissolving. All sounds were muffled, cotton-padded, and yet eerily distinct. Even smells were more distinct: the scent of bergamot hung tentlike over two old ladies pouring tea from a thermos.

  “Delia!” someone said.

  Delia turned to see Belle Flint unfolding a striped canvas sand chair. She was wearing a vivid pink romper and an armload of bangle bracelets that jingled when she sat down. Delia hadn’t been sure till now that Belle remembered her name; so she reacted out of surprise. “Why, hello, Belle,” she said, and Belle said, “Do you know Vanessa?”

  The woman she waved a hand toward was the young mother from the square. She was seated just beyond Belle on a bedspread the same color as the fog, with her toddler between her knees. “Have some of my spread,” she told Delia.

  “Oh, thanks, but—” Delia said. And then she said, “Yes, maybe I will,” and she went over to sit next to her.

  “Get a load of the picnic lunches,” Belle told Delia. “It’s some kind of contest; they ought to give prizes. What did you bring?”

  “Well, nothing,” Delia said.

  “A woman after my own heart,” Belle said, and then she leaned closer to whisper, “Selma Frick’s brought assorted hors d’oeuvres in stacked bamboo baskets. Polly Pomfret’s brought whole fresh artichokes on a bed of curried crayfish.”

  “Me, I’m with the tee
nagers,” Vanessa said, handing her son an animal cracker. “I grab something from a booth whenever I get hungry.”

  She reminded Delia of those girl-next-door movie stars from the 1940s, slim and dark and pretty in a white blouse and flared red shorts, with shoulder-length black hair and bright-red lipstick. Her son was overdressed, Delia thought—typical for a first child. In his corduroys and long-sleeved shirt, he looked cross and squirmy, and for good reason; Delia could feel the heat of the pavement rising through the bedspread.

  “How old is your little boy?” she asked Vanessa.

  “Eighteen months last Wednesday.”

  Eighteen months! Delia could have said. Why, she remembered that age. When Ramsay was eighteen months, he used to … and Susie, that was when Susie learned to …

  Such a temptation, it was, to prove her claims to membership—the labor pains, the teething, the time when she too could have told her baby’s age to the day. But she resisted. She merely smiled at the child’s shimmer of blond hair and said, “I suppose he gets his coloring from his father.”

  “Most likely,” Vanessa said carelessly.

  “Vanessa’s a single parent,” Belle told Delia.

  “Oh!”

  “I have no idea who Greggie’s father might be,” Vanessa said, wiping her son’s mouth with a tissue. “Or rather, I have a few ideas, but I could never narrow it down to just one.”

  “Oh, I see,” Delia said, and she turned quickly toward the ball game.

  Not that there was much to look at, in the fog. Apparently home plate lay in the southeast corner. It was from there she heard the plock! of a hit. But all she could discern was second base, which was marked by a park bench. While she watched, a runner loped up to settle on the bench, and the player already seated there rose and caught a ball out of nowhere and threw it back into the mist. Then he sat down again. The runner leaned forward with his elbows on his knees and stared intently toward home plate, although how he hoped to see that far Delia couldn’t imagine.

  “Derek Ames,” Belle informed her. “One of our best hitters.”

  Delia said, “I would think the statue would get in the way.”

  “Oh, George plays shortstop,” Belle said, giggling. “No, seriously: there’s a rule. Bean the statue and you walk to first. It used to count as an automatic run till Rick Rackley moved here. But you know professional athletes: they excel at any sport. It got so every time Rick came to bat, he laid old Georgie low.”

  “Rick Rackley’s a professional athlete?”

  “Or was, till his knee went. Where’ve you been living—Mars? Of course, his game was football, but believe me, the Blues are lucky to have him on their side. That’s who we’re watching, in case you didn’t know: the Blues versus the Grays. Blues are the new folks in town; Grays have been here all along. Whoops! That sounds to me like a homer.”

  Another plock! had broken through from the southeast corner. Delia gazed upward but saw only opaque white flannel. In the outfield, such as it was (a triangle of grass behind second base), one player called to another, “Where’s it headed?”

  “Damned if I know,” the second player said. Then, with a startled grunt, he caught the ball as it arrived in front of him. “Got it,” he called to the first man.

  “You see it?”

  “I caught it.”

  “It came down already?”

  “Right.”

  “Bobby caught that!” the first man shouted toward home plate.

  “What say?”

  “He caught it,” someone relayed. “Batter’s out.”

  “He’s what?”

  “He’s out!”

  “Where is the batter?”

  “Who is the batter?”

  Vanessa fed her son another animal cracker. “Fog on Bay Day is kind of a rule here,” she told Delia. “I don’t believe anyone’s ever once got a good look at that game. So! Delia. How do you like working for Zeke Pomfret?”

  “Well … he’s okay,” Delia said. She supposed she should have expected that her job would be common knowledge.

  “He’s a real fine lawyer, you know. If you decide to go ahead with your divorce, you could do worse than hire Zeke.”

  Delia blinked.

  “Yes, he did just great with my ex-boyfriend’s,” Belle told her. “And he got Vanessa here’s brother Jip out of jail, when Jip hit a spell of bad luck once.”

  “I haven’t given much thought to, um, divorce,” Delia said.

  “Well, sure! No hurry! And anyhow, my ex-boyfriend’s case was totally different from yours.”

  What did they imagine Delia’s case was? She decided not to ask.

  Belle was rummaging through her big purse. She pulled forth a pale-green bottle and a stack of paper cups. “Wine?” she asked the others. “It’s a screw top. Don’t tell Polly Pomfret. Yes, Norton’s case was so straightforward, for one thing. He’d only been married a year. In fact, we met on his first anniversary. Met at a Gamblers’ Weekend Special in Atlantic City, where he’d brought his wife to celebrate. He and I just sort of … gravitated, you know?” She passed Delia a cup of white wine. “It helped that his wife was one of those people who end up soldered to their slot machines. So one-two-three I move to Bay Borough, and we rent a little apartment together, and Zeke Pomfret goes to work on Norton’s divorce.”

  The wine had a metallic aftertaste, like tinned grapefruit juice. Delia cradled the cup in both hands. She said, “I’m not really planning anything that definite just yet.”

  “Well, of course you’re not.”

  “I’m really feeling sort of … blank right now. You know?”

  “Of course you are!” both women said simultaneously.

  In the square, the inning must have ended. The players they had been watching vanished and new players took shape, a new second baseman floating up by degrees and solidifying on the bench.

  She dreamed Sam was driving a truck across the front lawn in Baltimore and the children were playing hide-and-seek directly in his path. They were little, though; not their present-day selves. She tried to call out and warn them, but her voice didn’t work, and they were all run over. Then Ramsay stood up again, holding his wrist, and Sam climbed out of the truck and he fell down and tried to get up again, fell down and tried to get up, and the sight made Delia feel as if a huge, ragged wound had ripped open in her chest.

  When she woke, her cheeks were wet. She had thought she was starting to lose her habit of crying at night, but now tears flooded her eyes and she gave in to wrenching sobs. She was haunted by the picture of Ramsay in those little brown sandals she’d forgotten he’d ever owned. She saw her children lined up on the lawn, still in their younger versions before they’d turned hard-shelled and spiky, before the boys had grown whiskers and Susie bought a diary with an unpickable brass lock. Those were the children she longed for.

  One evening in September, she returned from work to find several envelopes bearing her name scattered across the hall floor. She knew they must be birthday cards—she was turning forty-one tomorrow—and she could tell they were from her family because of the wordy address. (House w/ low front porch …) The first card showed a wheelbarrow full of daisies. A BIRTHDAY WISH, it said, and inside, Friendship and health / Laughter and cheer / Now and through / The coming year. The signature was just Ramsay, with the tail of the y wandering off across the page in a halfhearted manner.

  She carried the rest of her mail upstairs. No sense facing this in public.

  Susie, the next card was signed. (Heartiest Congratulations and Many Happy Returns.) And nothing at all from Carroll, though she riffled through the envelopes twice. Well, it was easy to see what had happened. These cards were Eliza’s idea. She had coaxed and cajoled the whole family into sending them. “All I’m asking,” was a phrase she would have used. Or, “No one should have to pass a birthday without …” But Carroll, the stubborn one, had flatly refused. And Sam? Delia opened his envelope next. A color photo of roses in a blue-and-white porcelain
vase. Barrels of joy / Bushels of glee … Signed, Sam.

  Then a letter from Linda, in Michigan. I want you to know that I sincerely wish you a happy birthday, she wrote. I don’t hold it against you that you absconded like that even though it did mean we had to cut short our vacation which is the twin’s only chance each year to get some sense of their heritage but anyhow, have a good day. Below her signature were Marie-Claire’s and Thérèse’s—a prim strand of copperplate and a left-hander’s gnarly crumple.

  Dear Delia, Eliza wrote, on yet another rhymed card.

  We are all fine but we hope you’ll soon be home. I am taking care of the office paperwork for now, and all three kids have started back to school.

  Bootsy Fisher has phoned several times and also some of the neighbors but I tell everyone you’re visiting relatives at the moment.

  I hope you have a good birthday. I remember the night you were born as if it were just last week. Daddy let Linda and me wait in the waiting room with the fathers, and when the nurse came out she told us, “Congratulations, kids, you can form a singing trio now and go on Arthur Godfrey,” and that’s how we knew you were a girl. I do miss you.

  Love, Eliza

  Delia kept that one. The others she discarded. Then she decided she might as well discard Eliza’s too. Afterward she sat on her bed a long while, pressing her fingertips to her lips.

  On her actual birthday, a package arrived from Sam’s mother. It was roughly the size of a book, too thick to fit through the mail slot, so it stood inside the screen door, where Delia found it when she came home. She groaned when she recognized the writing. Eleanor was known for her extremely practical gifts—a metric-conversion tape measure, say, or a battery recharger, always wrapped in wrinkled paper saved from Christmas. This time, as Delia discovered when she took the package upstairs, it was a miniature reading light on a neck cord. Well, in fact …, she reflected. It would probably work much better than her lamp. She tucked it under her pillow, next to her stash of toilet paper.