Ladder of Years Read online

  “FRESH, FUNNY, AND POIGNANT.”

  —The Christian Science Monitor

  “Ladder of Years has charm galore. … Tyler does a lovely job painting Delia’s entry into her new world.”

  —Newsweek

  “For the sheer delight of reading wonderful English prose, Anne Tyler has few, if any, peers. Her characters possess quirks that intrigue the reader without overshadowing their essential humanness.”

  —USA Today

  “The French have said that William Wyler, the great director of movies like Dodsworth and The Best Years of Our Lives, had a style sans style. Anne Tyler has this same deceptive ‘style without a style.’ … She does nothing fancy, nothing tricky. But so rigorous and artful is the style without style, so measured and delicate is each observation, so complex is the structure and so astute and open the language, that the reader can relax, feel secure in the narrative, and experience the work as something real and natural — even inevitable. In Ladder of Years, the story that appears to unfold of its own accord is a fairy tale of sorts, a fairy tale with echoes of both the tragedy of ‘King Lear’ and the absurdity of the modern romance novel.”

  —The New York Times Book Review

  “Ladder of Years is the story of a fugue to change one’s life. It is told in Tyler’s characteristic manner, one that no other American writer approaches. Just as she subverts the domestic with fantasy — her situations are earthbound until you notice that they are gliding along two inches above the earth — she subverts fantasy with the domestic.”

  —Los Angeles Times Book Review

  “Universal street-penny poignance is what gives Tyler’s fiction its emotional weight as well as its sheen.”

  —The Boston Sunday Globe

  “Exhilarating … Ladder of Years is not just a novel of middle age; learning how to say goodbye, how to find another path to the harmony one needs to discover are tasks even the young face.”

  —The Dallas Morning News

  “HAUNTING, MELANCHOLY …

  The characters feel so real that we find ourselves thinking about them, worrying if they made the right choices, long after we’ve read about them. … [Tyler] artfully illuminates the complexity burrowing beneath the surface of ordinary lives as people fight off despair and loneliness with ferocious, if misguided, tenacity.”

  —The Miami Herald

  “Well worth reading … Ladder of Years is not about the life of one woman; it is about the American tendency to idealize the traditional family of the ’50s, when men ruled the roost and women were expected to be submissive.”

  —San Francisco Chronicle

  “Tyler mixes some bitter with the sweet … When the sheer dailiness of ordinary life seems terminally humdrum, who has not entertained the fantasy? Just cut and run … That relatively few people actually follow up on this impulse may testify to the power of inertia or the naggings of conscience, or to some tedious combination of both. Thanks to the magic of Anne Tyler’s fiction, Delia Grinstead, the heroine of Ladder of Years, is largely freed from such constraints.”

  —Time

  “What is perhaps most fascinating is that Tyler has the grace and skill to involve readers so deeply that they want to fight with the characters. This is a writer who knows, above all, how to draw people so real that you can’t help but care what becomes of them.”

  —St. Petersburg Times

  “Tyler continues to delight readers with a cast of lovable misfits and elegant, but accessible prose. … She makes mealtime spats and pre-wedding jitters as riveting and vivid as Hollywood car chases.”

  —New York Daily News

  “Ladder of Years is tough to resist.”

  —Detroit Free Press

  “POIGNANT, WARM, AND QUIRKY …

  Perhaps no one writing fiction today can so clearly evoke middle-age angst as Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Tyler.”

  —Library Journal

  “[A] pastel emotional journey of self-discovery … It unfolds so gracefully that its characters seem to blossom and grow almost imperceptibly until they have fully engaged our interest, our sympathy, and our understanding. … [A] poignant, quiet tale.”

  —The State (Columbia, SC)

  “Tyler’s penchant for orchestrating hordes of quirky personalities, her facility with digressive but relevant subplots are hallmarks of all her books.”

  —The News & Observer (North Carolina)

  “One of the satisfactions of this novel is Tyler’s evocation of typical family life. … [She] engages our sympathy and growing respect for a character who finally realizes that ‘the ladder of years’ is a time trip to the future.”

  —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

  “[A] charming, often hilarious, and astute novel … Tyler is in top form here. Her seemingly effortless prose is, like silk, rich in subtle hues and sheeny with dancing light. … [She] offers keen and provocative insights into the cycles of family life, shifting emotional needs, and the process of aging.”

  —Booklist (boxed review)

  “Another agreeably offbeat journey back to Tyler country, where the characters who will fill the big, slightly dowdy, old houses are spellbound by their own homely lives, their routines, their family stories, their recipes for mint pea soup — until something happens to break the spell. … All of Tyler’s trademarks are here: comedy, the sweet, blunt edges of romance, and characters so perfectly, achingly drawn you can never decide whether they’re the most oddball or most everyday people you’ve ever come across.”

  —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

  ALSO BY ANNE TYLER

  If Morning Ever Comes

  The Tin Can Tree

  A Slipping-Down Life

  The Clock Winder

  Celestial Navigation

  Searching for Caleb

  Earthly Possessions

  Morgan’s Passing

  Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant

  The Accidental Tourist

  Breathing Lessons

  Saint Maybe

  BALTIMORE WOMAN DISAPPEARS DURING FAMILY VACATION

  Delaware State Police announced early today that Cordelia F. Grinstead, 40, wife of a Roland Park physician, has been reported missing while on holiday with her family in Bethany Beach.

  Mrs. Grinstead was last seen around noon this past Monday, walking south along the stretch of sand between Bethany and Sea Colony.

  Witnesses of her departure—her husband, Dr. Samuel Grinstead, 55, and her three children, Susan, 21, Ramsay, 19, and Carroll, 15—were unable to recall any suspicious characters in the vicinity. They reported that to the best of their recollection she simply strolled away. Her failure to return was not remarked until late afternoon.

  A slender, small-boned woman with curly fair or light-brown hair, Mrs. Grinstead stands 5’2” or possibly 5’5” and weighs either 90 or 110 pounds. Her eyes are blue or gray or perhaps green, and her nose is mildly sunburned in addition to being freckled.

  Presumably she was carrying a large straw tote trimmed with a pink bow, but family members could not agree upon her clothing. In all probability it was something pink or blue, her husband suggested, either frilled or lacy or “looking kind of baby-doll.”

  Authorities do not suspect drowning, since Mrs. Grinstead avoided swimming whenever possible and professed a distinct aversion to water. In fact, her sister, Eliza Felson, 52, has alleged to reporters that the missing woman “may have been a cat in her most recent incarnation.”

  Anyone with knowledge of Mrs. Grinstead’s whereabouts is urged to contact the Delaware State Police at once.

  1

  This all started on a Saturday morning in May, one of those warm spring days that smell like clean linen. Delia had gone to the supermarket to shop fo
r the week’s meals. She was standing in the produce section, languidly choosing a bunch of celery. Grocery stores always made her reflective. Why was it, she was wondering, that celery was not called “corduroy plant”? That would be much more colorful. And garlic bulbs should be “moneybags,” because their shape reminded her of the sacks of gold coins in folktales.

  A customer on her right was sorting through the green onions. It was early enough so the store was nearly empty, and yet this person seemed to be edging in on her a bit. Once or twice the fabric of his shirt sleeve brushed her dress sleeve. Also, he was really no more than stirring those onions around. He would lift one rubber-banded clump and then drop it and alight on another. His fingers were very long and agile, almost spidery. His cuffs were yellow oxford cloth.

  He said, “Would you know if these are called scallions?”

  “Well, sometimes,” Delia said. She seized the nearest bunch of celery and stepped toward the plastic bags.

  “Or would they be shallots?”

  “No, they’re scallions,” she told him.

  Needlessly, he steadied the roll of bags overhead while she peeled one off. (He towered a good foot above her.) She dropped the celery into the bag and reached toward the cup of twist ties, but he had already plucked one out for her. “What are shallots, anyway?” he asked.

  She would have feared that he was trying to pick her up, except that when she turned she saw he was surely ten years her junior, and very good-looking besides. He had straight, dark-yellow hair and milky blue eyes that made him seem dreamy and peaceful. He was smiling down at her, standing a little closer than strangers ordinarily stand.

  “Um …,” she said, flustered.

  “Shallots,” he reminded her.

  “Shallots are fatter,” she said. She set the celery in her grocery cart. “I believe they’re above the parsley,” she called over her shoulder, but she found him next to her, keeping step with her as she wheeled her cart toward the citrus fruits. He wore blue jeans, very faded, and soft moccasins that couldn’t be heard above “King of the Road” on the public sound system.

  “I also need lemons,” he told her.

  She slid another glance at him.

  “Look,” he said suddenly. He lowered his voice. “Could I ask you a big favor?”

  “Um …”

  “My ex-wife is up ahead in potatoes. Or not ex I guess but … estranged, let’s say, and she’s got her boyfriend with her. Could you just pretend we’re together? Just till I can duck out of here?”

  “Well, of course,” Delia said.

  And without even taking a deep breath first, she plunged happily back into the old high-school atmosphere of romantic intrigue and deception. She narrowed her eyes and lifted her chin and said, “We’ll show her!” and sailed past the fruits and made a U-turn into root vegetables. “Which one is she?” she murmured through ventriloquist lips.

  “Tan shirt,” he whispered. Then he startled her with a sudden burst of laughter. “Ha, ha!” he told her too loudly. “Aren’t you clever to say so!”

  But “tan shirt” was nowhere near an adequate description. The woman who turned at the sound of his voice wore an ecru raw-silk tunic over black silk trousers as slim as two pencils. Her hair was absolutely black, cut shorter on one side, and her face was a perfect oval. “Why, Adrian,” she said. Whoever was with her—some man or other—turned too, still gripping a potato. A dark, thick man with rough skin like stucco and eyebrows that met in the middle. Not up to the woman’s standard at all; but how many people were?

  Delia’s companion said, “Rosemary. I didn’t see you. So don’t forget,” he told Delia, not breaking his stride. He set a hand on her cart to steer it into aisle 3. “You promised me you’d make your marvelous blancmange tonight.”

  “Oh, yes, my … blancmange,” Delia echoed faintly. Whatever blancmange might be, it sounded the way she felt just then: pale and plain-faced and skinny, with her freckles and her frizzy brown curls and her ruffled pink round-collared dress.

  They had bypassed the dairy case and the juice aisle, where Delia had planned to pick up several items, but she didn’t point that out because this Adrian person was still talking. “Your blancmange and then your, uh, what, your meat and vegetables and da-da-da …”

  The way he let his voice die reminded her of those popular songs that end with the singers just absentmindedly drifting away from the microphone. “Is she looking at us?” he whispered. “Check it out. Don’t make it obvious.”

  Delia glanced over, pretending to be struck by a display of converted rice. Both the wife and the boyfriend had their backs to her, but there was something artificial in their posture. No one could find russet potatoes so mesmerizing. “Well, she’s mentally looking,” Delia murmured. She turned to see her grocery cart rapidly filling with pasta. Egg noodles, rotini, linguine—Adrian flung in boxes at random. “Excuse me …,” she said.

  “Oh, sorry,” he told her. He stuffed his hands in his pockets and loped off. Delia followed, pushing her cart very slowly in case he meant for them to separate now. But at the end of the aisle, he paused and considered a row of tinned ravioli until she caught up with him. “The boyfriend’s name is Skipper,” he said. “He’s her accountant.”

  “Accountant!” Delia said. He didn’t fit the image.

  “Half a dozen times, at least, he’s come to our house. Sat in our actual living room, going over her taxes. Rosemary owns this catering firm. The Guilty Party, it’s called. Ha. ‘Sinfully Delicious Foods for Every Occasion.’ Then next thing I know, she’s moved in with him. She claimed she only needed a few weeks by herself, but when she phoned to say so, I could hear him coaching her in the background.”

  “Oh, that’s terrible,” Delia said.

  A woman with a baby in her cart reached between them for a can of macaroni and cheese. Delia stepped back to give her room.

  “If it’s not too much trouble,” Adrian said when the woman had moved away, “I’ll just tag along while you finish your shopping. It would look sort of fishy if I left right now, all alone. I hope you don’t mind.”

  Mind? This was the most interesting thing that had happened to her in years. “Not a bit,” she told him. She wheeled her cart into aisle 4. Adrian strolled alongside her.

  “I’m Adrian Bly-Brice, by the way,” he said. “I guess I ought to know your name.”

  “I’m Delia Grinstead,” she told him. She plucked a bottle of mint flakes from the spice rack.

  “I don’t believe I’ve ever run into a Delia before.”

  “Well, it’s Cordelia, really. My father named me that.”

  “And are you one?”

  “Am I one what?”

  “Are you your father’s Cordelia?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “He’s dead.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry.”

  “He died this past winter,” she said.

  Ridiculously, tears filled her eyes. This whole conversation had taken a wrong turn somewhere. She squared her shoulders and pushed her cart on down the aisle, veering around an elderly couple conferring over salt substitutes. “Anyhow,” she said, “it got shortened to Delia right away. Like in the song.”

  “What song?”

  “Oh, the … you know, the one about Delia’s gone, one more round … My father used to sing me to sleep with that.”

  “I never heard it,” Adrian said.

  The tune on the loudspeaker now was “By the Time I Get to Phoenix,” competing with her father’s gruff voice muttering “Delia’s Gone” in her mind. “Anyhow!” she said again, more brightly.

  They started up the next aisle: cereals on the left, popcorn and sweets on the right. Delia needed cornflakes, but cornflakes were such a family item, she decided against them. (What ingredients were required for blancmange?) Adrian gazed idly at sacks of butterscotch drops and rum balls. His skin had that slight tawniness that you occasionally see in fair-haired men, and it seemed almost without texture. He must not have to sha
ve more than two or three times a week.

  “I myself was named for an uncle,” he said. “Rich Uncle Adrian Brice. Probably all for nothing, though. He’s mad I changed my name when I married.”

  “You changed your name when you married?”

  “I used to be Adrian Brice the Second, but then I married Rosemary Bly and we both became Bly-Brice.”

  “Oh, so there’s a hyphen,” Delia said. She hadn’t realized.

  “It was entirely her idea, believe me.”

  As if summoned up by his words, Rosemary appeared at the other end of the aisle. She tossed something into the red plastic tote basket hanging from Skipper’s fist. Women like Rosemary never purchased their groceries by the cartload.

  “If we went to the movie, though, we’d miss the concert,” Adrian said instantly, “and you know how I’ve looked forward to the concert.”

  “I forgot,” Delia said. “The concert! They’ll be playing …”

  But she couldn’t think of a single composer. (And maybe he had meant some other kind of concert—a rock show, for instance. He was young enough.) Rosemary watched without a flicker of expression as Delia and Adrian approached. Delia was the first to lower her eyes. “We’ll just save the movie for tomorrow,” Adrian was saying. He guided her cart to the left a bit. All at once Delia felt woefully small—not dainty and petite, but squat, humble, insignificant. She didn’t stand much taller than Adrian’s armpit. She increased her speed, anxious to leave this image of herself behind. “They do have a Sunday matinee, don’t they?” Adrian was asking.

  “Of course they do,” she told him, a little too emphatically. “We could go to the two o’clock showing, right after our champagne brunch.”

  By now she was tearing down the next aisle. Adrian had to lengthen his stride to keep up. They narrowly missed hitting a man whose cart was stacked with gigantic Pampers boxes.