Ladder of Years

  Or could the same be said for Sam?

  Their food arrived, and the waiter flourished a pepper mill as big as a newel post. He asked, “Would either of you like—?”

  “No, no, go away,” Ellie said, waving a hand. As soon as they were alone again, she turned back to Delia. “Three months after our wedding,” she said, “Joel went to a conference in Richmond. I said to myself, ‘Free!’ I felt like dancing through the house. I almost flew through the house. I played this kind of game with myself, went through all his drawers and packed his clothes in boxes. Packed what hung in his closet too. Pretended I lived by myself, with no one peering over my shoulder. He wasn’t due home till Wednesday, and I planned to put everything back Tuesday night so he’d never guess what I’d done. Except he came home early. Tuesday noon. ‘Ellie?’ he said. ‘What is this?’ ‘Oh,’ I told him, ‘it’s just I wanted to picture what it would feel like to have more drawer space.’ That’s how women get their reputations for ditsiness. The real reason wasn’t ditsy in the least, but who’s going to tell him the real reason?”

  She hadn’t touched her salad. Delia plucked a piece of crab cartilage from her tongue and set it on the side of her plate.

  “In a way, the whole marriage was kind of like the stages of mourning,” Ellie said. “Denial, anger … well, it was mourning. I’d go to parties and look around; I’d wonder, did all the other women feel the same as me? If not, how did they avoid it? And if so, then maybe I was just a crybaby. Maybe it was some usual state of affairs that everybody else gracefully put up with.”

  Finally she speared a lettuce leaf. She nibbled it off her fork with just her front teeth, rabbitlike, all the while fixing Delia with her hopeful blue gaze.

  “That reminds me of Melinda Hawser,” Delia told her. “This woman I met at Belle’s last Thanksgiving. The way she talked, I figured she’d be divorced by Christmas! But I run into her uptown from time to time and she’s still as married as ever. Looks perfectly fine.”

  “Exactly,” Ellie said. “So you can’t help thinking, Wouldn’t I have been fine too? Shouldn’t I have stuck it out? And you get to remembering the good things. The way he loved to watch me put on my face for a party so I always felt I was doing something bewitching; or after the baby was born, when we weren’t allowed to have sex for six weeks and so we just kissed, the most wonderful kisses …” Now the blue eyes were swimming with tears. “Oh, Delia,” she said. “I did make a mistake. Didn’t I?”

  Delia looked tactfully toward a brass lamp. She said, “It’s not as if you couldn’t unmake it. Jump in the car and drive back home.”

  “Never,” Ellie said, and she dabbed beneath each eye with her napkin. “I would never give him the satisfaction,” she said.

  And what would have become of Delia if Ellie had answered otherwise?

  Belle told Delia she hadn’t missed a thing in Bay Borough, not a blessed thing. “Dead as a tomb,” she said, driving languidly, one-handed. “Little fracas in town council—Zeke Pomfret wants to drop the baseball game from Bay Day this year, switch to horseshoes or something, and Bill Frick wants to keep it. But no surprises there, right? And Vanessa swears she’s known about me and Horace all along, but I don’t believe her. And we’ve set the wedding date: December eighteenth.”

  “Oh, Christmastime!” Delia said.

  “I wanted an excuse to wear red velvet,” Belle told her.

  They left the glitter of the beaches behind and rode through plainer, simpler terrain. Delia watched shabby cottages slide by, then staid old farmhouses, then an abandoned produce stand that was hardly more than a heap of rotting gray lumber. She would never have guessed, the first time she traveled this road, that she could find such scenery appealing.

  At the Millers’ house, the front lawn was mowed too short and crisply edged, and each shrub stood in a circle of fresh hardwood chips. Evidently Joel had found himself with an abundance of spare time. Inside, the cat cold-shouldered her and then trailed her footsteps in a guilt-provoking way as Delia walked through the empty rooms. The house was tidy but somehow desolate, with subtle signs of bachelorhood like a huge wet dish towel instead of a proper washrag hanging over the kitchen faucet, and a thin film of grease coating the stove knobs and cupboard handles (those out-of-the-way places men never think to clean). On her bureau, a note read: Delia—I’ve gone to pick up Noah. Don’t fix supper; we’ll all grab a bite out someplace. J. Also, she had mail: a handwritten invitation on stiff cream paper. Driscoll Spence Avery and Susan Felson Grinstead request your presence at their wedding, 11 a.m. Monday, September 27, in the Grinstead living room. R.S.V.P.

  What a lot could be deciphered from a couple of dozen words! For starters, the writing was Susie’s (blue ink, running steeply downhill) and no parents’ names were mentioned—certain proof that she was proceeding on her own. Sam must have acquiesced, though, because the wedding would take place at the house. The date was harder to figure. Why September? Why a Monday morning? And had Susie found a job or had she not?

  Delia wished she could phone and ask, but she felt she didn’t have the right. She would have to respond by mail, like any other guest.

  Of course she planned to attend.

  She looked up and met her own face in the bureau mirror—her eyes wide and stricken, her freckles standing out sharply.

  When they told her that her firstborn was a girl, she had been over-joyed. Secretly, she had wished for a girl. She had planned how she would dress her in little smocked dresses; but Susie, it turned out, insisted on jeans as soon as she could talk. She had planned how they would share womanly activities (sewing, baking pies, experimenting with skin-care products), but Susie preferred sports. And instead of a big white wedding, with Susie swathed in antique lace and both her parents beaming as they jointly (in the modern manner) gave her away, here Delia stood in an Eastern Shore ranch house, wondering what sort of ceremony her daughter was inviting her to.

  Noah seemed to have grown two inches while he was at camp, and the macramé bracelets he wore around both wrists pointed up the new brownness and squareness of his hands. Also, he’d developed a habit of saying, “Are you inputting that?” in a way that already seemed to be exasperating Joel. They sat in a booth at Rick-Rack’s, Joel and Noah on one side and Delia on the other, and she could observe Joel’s wince even if Noah couldn’t.

  “Take my word for it,” Joel told him finally. “I have indeed managed to grasp your meaning, but I would certainly not choose to convey that fact in computer jargon.”

  “Huh? So anyhow,” Noah said, “at camp they made us do fifty pushups every morning. Fifty, are you inputting that? I guess they wanted to kill us off and keep our fees for nothing. So me and Ronald went to the infirmary—”

  “Ronald and I,” Joel said.

  “Right, and tried to get a health excuse. But the dumbhead nurse wouldn’t write one. She goes, like—”

  “She said.”

  “She said, like—”

  Their food came—burgers for Noah and Joel, pork barbecue sandwich for Delia. “Thanks, Teensy,” Noah said.

  “Sure thing,” Teensy said cheerfully.

  “Mrs. Rackley to you,” his father told him.

  Noah glanced across at Delia. Delia merely smiled at him.

  “Daddy’s been asking where you got to these last couple of weeks,” Teensy said to Delia.

  “I went to Ocean City.”

  “Yes, I told him so, but he couldn’t seem to keep it in mind. He said, ‘She never even mentioned it! Just walked on out and left!’ His memory’s a whole lot worse lately.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry to hear that,” Delia said.

  “He says things are coming at him too fast for him to take in. And Rick tells him, just trying to be nice, tells him, ‘Oh, I know exactly what you—’ but Daddy says, ‘Don’t you poke your black self into this!’ and I said, ‘Daddy!’—”

  Teensy broke off, glancing at Joel. “Well,” she said. “I guess I better get back to work.”
br />   She slid her hands down her apron front and hurried away.

  “Remarkable,” Joel said.

  He seemed to have no inkling that it was his impassive gaze that had sent her rushing off.

  “Maybe Mr. Bragg should go live in Senior City,” Noah said.

  “I don’t think he can afford it,” Delia told him.

  “Maybe they have scholarships. Or grants or something, are you inputting that?”

  Joel rolled his eyes.

  “So anyhow,” Noah said, picking up his burger. “Next thing, me and Ronald worked out that we’d pretend we were injured. Only we couldn’t do it both at once, because it would look kind of fishy.”

  “You went about it all wrong,” Joel told him. “Nothing good ever comes of resorting to subterfuge.”

  “To what?”

  “Subterfuge.”

  “What’s that?”

  Joel stared across the table at Delia. His eyebrows were raised so high that his forehead resembled corduroy.

  “He means something underhanded,” Delia told Noah. “Something sneaky.”

  “Oh.”

  “He means you should have protested the rule openly. Or so I assume.” She expected Joel to elaborate, but he was still gaping. “Is that what you meant?” she asked him.

  “He doesn’t know what ‘subterfuge’ is!” Joel said.

  She took her sandwich apart and started spooning in coleslaw.

  “He never heard the word ‘subterfuge.’ Can you believe it?”

  She wouldn’t answer. Noah said, “It’s no big deal. Geez.”

  “No big deal!” Joel echoed. “Don’t they teach kids anything in school these days? ‘Subterfuge’ is not all that arcane, for God’s sake.”

  Delia watched Noah decide not to ask what “arcane” meant.

  “Sometimes I think the language is just shrinking down to the size of a wizened little pellet,” Joel told her. “Taken over by rubbish words, while the real words disappear. The other day, I discovered our cafeteria supervisor didn’t know what cutlery was.”

  “Cutlery?” she asked.

  “It seems the word has dropped out of use.”

  “‘Cutlery’ has dropped out of use?”

  “That’s the only explanation I can think of. I told him we were ordering a new supply of cutlery, and he said, ‘What’s that?’”

  “Oh, fiddlesticks,” Delia said. “You know what cutlery is,” she told Noah.

  He nodded, although he didn’t risk demonstrating.

  “See there? It hasn’t dropped out of use! Teensy,” Delia called, “could we have more cutlery, please?”

  “Coming right up,” Teensy said, and behind the counter they heard the rattle of knives and forks.

  Delia looked triumphantly at Joel.

  “Oh. Well …,” he said.

  Noah grinned. “Way to go, Dee,” he told her. And eventually even Joel started smiling.

  Delia smiled too, and put her sandwich back together and gave it a pat. Underneath her breath she was making a humming sound—a thin, sweet, toneless hum, not much different from purring.

  18

  Binky’s baby was born on Labor Day—very fitting, Nat said. He telephoned that same afternoon; he spilled the news in a swelling voice that seemed about to break. “Eight pounds, eleven ounces,” he crowed. “James Nathaniel Moffat.”

  “James!” Delia said. “It’s a boy?”

  “It’s a boy. Can you believe it?” He gave one of his bearded chuckles. “I’m not sure I’ll know what to do with a boy.”

  “You’ll do fine,” Delia said. “Noah’s off on a picnic right now, but he’ll be thrilled when I tell him. How’s Binky?”

  “Couldn’t be better. She just sailed through this, and so did James. Wait till you see him, Delia. He’s got the roundest face, little pocket watch of a face, and lots of blondish hair, but Binky says …”

  To listen to him, you would never have guessed he had been through this experience four times.

  Delia had overstated when she said Noah would be thrilled. Oh, he was interested, in a mild sort of way—wanted to know who the baby looked like, and what the board of directors had said. But when Wednesday morning rolled around, he asked if he couldn’t put off his regular visit. School had just reopened, and he wanted to try out for the wrestling team. Delia said, “How about we look in on the baby for just a second, and then I drop you at tryouts afterward?”

  “Can’t we do it tomorrow?”

  “Tomorrow I have tutoring, Noah, and the day after is the Grade Mothers’ Tea, and if you wait too long your grandpa’s going to think you don’t care. I’ll phone ahead and tell him you can stay just a minute.”

  “Well, okay,” Noah said halfheartedly.

  When she picked him up at school, he was trying to elbow Jack Newell off the sidewalk, and she had to tap her horn to catch his attention. He disentangled himself, jerked open the passenger door, and fell into the car. “Hi,” she told him, but he just slid down in his seat and jammed his Phillies cap on his head. Then, out on the highway, he said, “I’ve got to stop doing this.”

  “Doing what?”

  “I can’t spend all my time visiting people! Mom, and Grandpa … I’m in the eighth grade now! I’ve got important activities!”

  He cracked froggily on “activities,” and Delia shot him a glance. His voice was about to start changing, she realized. Oh, Lord, here she was with yet another adolescent.

  But all she said was, “Maybe you could switch your visits to weekends.”

  “Weekends I hang out with my friends! I’d miss all the fun!”

  “Well, I don’t know, Noah,” she said. “Talk it over with Nat and your mom.”

  “And could you please drive something under ninety miles an hour? I’m not going to live to talk it over, riding with a maniac.”

  “Sorry,” she said. She slowed. “Take a peek at what I found for the baby,” she told him. “It’s on the back seat.”

  He glanced back, but he didn’t reach for it. “Why don’t you just tell me what it is,” he said.

  “A little bitty pair of athletic shoes, not any bigger than thimbles.”

  “Huh.”

  In the old days, nothing could have stopped him from peeking at that gift.

  The day was cool and cloudy, with a forecast of rain, but all they encountered during their drive was a stray drop or two on the windshield. Noah listened to a radio station where the singers screamed insults, while Delia played calmer songs in her mind—a technique she had learned with her own children. She was just starting “Let It Be” when they turned in at Senior City.

  “You’ve got to be kidding,” Noah said.

  Next to the double front doors stood a four-foot-tall wooden cutout of a stork, sporting a pale-blue waistcoat and carrying a pale-blue bundle. Pale-blue balloons floated from the portico. The lobby bulletin board (which ordinarily bore cards of thanks from convalescents and sign-up sheets for bus trips to the shopping outlets in York) was plastered with color snapshots of an infant just minutes old. Three women wearing the regulation jaunty neck scarves stood peering at the photos and discussing the significance of hand size. One woman said large hands in infancy meant great height in adulthood, but another said that held true only for puppies.

  In the elevator they found Pooky, taking one of her never-ending rides. Today, though, she seemed fully aware that she had reached Floor One, and she said, punching Three for them, “If you hurry you’ll be in time for the burping.”

  “Oh, have you seen him?” Delia asked as they rose.

  “Seen him twice. I was one of those in the lobby yesterday when they brought him home from the hospital. I hope that gift is not shoes.”

  “Well, sort of,” Delia said.

  “So far he’s got Swedish leather clogs, inch-long flip-flops, and eentsy little motorcycle boots. And that’s not even counting all we’ve knitted.”

  The elevator stopped with a lilt, and the door slid open. “I would
come with you,” Pooky called after them, “but I’ve got to get back to my apartment and finish childproofing.”

  It was Nat who answered when they rang the doorbell. “There you are!” he said. “Come in, come in!” He was using his cane today, but he walked rapidly and bouncily as he led them toward the bedroom. “James is just having a snack,” he called over his shoulder.

  “Should we wait out here?” Delia asked.

  “No, no, everyone’s decent. Bink, sweetheart, it’s Noah and Delia.”

  Binky was sitting against the headboard of the bed, dressed but in her stocking feet. The receiving blanket draped over her bosom covered the baby’s face, so all they could see was a fiery little ear and a fuzzy head. “Oh, look at him!” Delia whispered. It always seemed the bottom dropped out of her chest when she saw a new baby.

  Noah, though, looked everywhere but. He stuck his hands in his back pockets and studied a distant corner of the bedroom till Binky, winking at Delia, asked, “Want to hold him, Noah?”

  “Me?”

  She removed the baby from her breast, at the same time adroitly rearranging the blanket. The baby’s eyes were closed, and he made nostalgic little smacking movements with his lips, which were rosebud-shaped, tightly pursed. He did have big hands, with long, translucent fingers knotted just under his chin. “Here,” Binky said, holding him out to Noah. “Just support the back of his head, like this.”

  Noah received him in an awkward, jumbled clump.

  “He seems to be a very easy baby,” Binky said as she buttoned up. “Most of the day he’s slept, which is miraculous considering all the callers we’ve had. Your mother phoned, Noah; wasn’t that nice? That was so nice. No word from the other three yet, but I hope—”

  “Oh, forget it, just forget it, hon,” Nat told her. “Who cares about them!” He gave an angry shake of his head, as he often did when his daughters were mentioned. “Let’s go sit in the living room.”

  They followed him—Noah still carrying James, feeling his way with his feet—and settled amid an uncharacteristic clutter of slippers and afghans and gift boxes. Already the apartment had that rainy, sweet, baby-powder smell.