Noah’s Compass: A Novel Read online

  “It’s just up Charles near the Beltway.”

  “Perfect! Write your phone number too. Darn it, where’s my pen?”

  “I have a pen,” he said.

  “Hello? Hello?” she shouted.

  Liam was startled, until he realized she was calling their waitress. “Can we get our bill?” she asked when the woman appeared.

  Without speaking, the woman dug in her housecoat pocket and handed over a chit of paper that seemed as unofficial as Eunice’s memo page. Liam said, “Please, let me pay.”

  “I wouldn’t think of it,” Eunice said.

  “No, really, I insist.”

  “Liam!” she barked, and she sent him a mock frown. “We’ll hear no more about this. You can buy me coffee once you land a job.”

  Liam looked up at their waitress and found her frowning at him too, but with an expression of utter contempt. He bent meekly over the memo page and wrote down his address.

  There was no way on earth that he could work for Cope Development, even if they were misguided enough to offer him a position. And it was nice of Eunice to take an interest, of course; but face it: she was really sort of … hapless. People like Eunice just never had quite figured out how to get along in the world. They might be perfectly intelligent, but they were subject to speckles and flushes; their purses resembled wastepaper baskets; they stepped on their own skirts.

  Actually, Eunice was the only person he could think of who answered to that description. But still, there was something familiar about her.

  He would phone her at Cope Development and cancel their appointment. “I can’t work there!” he would say. “I wouldn’t fit in. Thanks anyhow.”

  When he picked up the receiver, though, he realized he didn’t know her last name. Admittedly, this was not an insurmountable problem. How many Eunices were they likely to have on their payroll? But he deplored the sound of it—“May I please speak to Eunice?” So unprofessional.

  “This is Liam Pennywell calling Mr. Cope’s assistant. Eunice, I believe it was.”

  They would take him for some kind of stalker.

  He didn’t make the call.

  Though a part of him knew full well what a weak excuse that was.

  After lunch—a peanut-butter sandwich—he vacuumed his apartment and dusted all the furniture and fixed a pitcher of iced tea. He found himself talking silently to Eunice as he worked. Somehow, he progressed from “The fact is that I’m not the developer type” to “I’ve had a hard time with this amnesia issue; maybe you can understand.” He pictured her nodding sagely, matter-of-factly, as if this syndrome were old news to her. “Let’s review this for a moment, shall we?” she might say. Or, “A lot of times, when Mr. C. forgets, I’ve learned that it helps to …” To what? Liam couldn’t invent an end for that sentence.

  It dawned on him that what he wanted from her was not so much to recover the burglar incident as to make sense of his forgetting it. He wanted her to say, “Oh, yes. I’ve seen this before; it’s nothing new. Other people have these holes in their lives.”

  True, various doctors had said that already, but that was different. Why was it different? He couldn’t explain. Something lurked at the edge of his mind but he couldn’t quite grab hold of it.

  He sat down in his rocker and stayed there, empty-headed, hands loose on his thighs. Long ago when he was young he used to envision old age this way: man in a rocker, idle. He had read somewhere that old people could sit in their chairs and watch their memories roll past like movies, endlessly entertaining; but so far that hadn’t happened to him. He was beginning to think it never would.

  He was glad he hadn’t canceled Eunice’s visit.

  She showed up just before six o’clock—later than he had expected. He’d started growing a little fidgety. She was carrying a bag of fried chicken from a takeout place. “I thought we could have supper while we worked,” she said. “I hope you haven’t already fixed us something.”

  “Why … no, I haven’t,” Liam said.

  Fried chicken tended to upset his stomach, but he had to admit it smelled delicious. He took the bag from her and placed it on the table, assuming they would eat later. Eunice, however, made a beeline for his kitchen. “Plates? Silver?” she asked.

  “Oh, um, plates are in that cupboard to your left.”

  She rattled among the cabinets and drawers while Liam drew a wad of paper napkins from the takeout bag. “I brought you some materials describing the company,” she called over her shoulder. “Just so you can sound informed about where you’re applying.”

  Liam said, “Ah. The company. Well. I’ve been thinking. I’m not sure the company and I would be such a very good match.”

  “Not sure!”

  She stopped midway to the table, holding an armful of dishes and silverware.

  “I guess at heart I’m still a teacher,” he told her.

  “Oh, change is always difficult,” she said.

  He nodded.

  “But if you just gave this a try; just tried it to see how you liked it …” She set the dishes on the table and began distributing them. “Do you have any soft drinks?”

  “No, only iced tea,” Liam said. “Or, wait. I think my daughter may have left some Diet Coke.”

  “I didn’t know you had a daughter!” Eunice said. She sounded unduly taken aback, as if she knew everything else about him.

  “I have three, in fact,” Liam said.

  “So you’re, what? Divorced? Widowed?”

  “Both,” Liam said. “Which did you want?”

  Eunice said, “Excuse me?” She seemed to be having one of her flushes.

  “Iced tea or Diet Coke?”

  “Oh! Diet Coke, please.”

  Liam found a Diet Coke behind the milk and brought it to the table, along with the pitcher of tea for himself. “My refrigerator dispenses ice directly through the door,” he told Eunice. “Would you like some for your Coke?”

  “No, thanks, I’ll just drink from the can.”

  She was setting out pieces of chicken on a platter. There were biscuits, too, he saw, but no vegetable. He debated fixing a salad but decided against it; too time-consuming. He sat down in his usual place. Eunice took the chair to his left. She smoothed a napkin across her lap and gazed around. “This is a nice apartment,” she said.

  “Thanks. I don’t feel entirely settled yet.”

  “You’ve just moved in?”

  “A few weeks ago.”

  He took a drumstick from the platter and put it on his plate. Eunice chose a wing.

  “The burglary happened the first night I was here,” he told her. “I went to sleep perfectly fine, and I woke up in the hospital.”

  “That’s terrible,” Eunice said. “Didn’t you want to move out again right away?”

  “Well, it was more a matter of … I was more concerned about remembering what had happened,” Liam said. “I felt as if I had leapt this sort of ditch. This gap of time that I had skipped completely. I hate that feeling! I hate forgetting.”

  “It’s like Mr. C.,” Eunice said.

  “Ah,” Liam said, and he grew very alert.

  “You won’t breathe a word of this, will you?”

  “No, no!”

  “What I do for Mr. C. is, like, I’m his external hard drive.”

  Liam blinked.

  “But that is not to go beyond these walls,” Eunice said. “You have to promise.”

  “Yes, of course, but—”

  “Mrs. C. was just worried to bits, was what she told my mother.”

  “So … excuse me, you’re saying—”

  “But forget I mentioned it, okay? Let’s change the subject.”

  Liam said, “Okay …”

  “How can you be both divorced and widowed?” she asked him.

  He tried to collect his thoughts. He said, “The divorce was the second wife. The first wife died.”

  “Oh, I am so, so sorry.”

  “Well, it was long ago,” Liam said. �
�I never think about her anymore.”

  Eunice started picking her chicken wing apart with the very tips of her fingers, putting slivers of meat in her mouth while she kept her eyes on his. He didn’t want her to ask what Millie had died of. He could see the question forming in her mind, and so he rushed to say, “Two marriages! Sounds pretty bad, right? I’m always embarrassed to tell people.”

  “My great-grandfather had three marriages,” Eunice said.

  “Three! Well, I’d never go that far. There’s something … exaggerated about three marriages. Cartoonish. No offense to your great-grandfather.”

  “This was back in the old days,” Eunice said. “His first two wives died in childbirth.”

  “Oh, then,” Liam said.

  “How did—?”

  “But!” Liam said loudly, slapping both hands on the table. “We don’t have a vegetable! What am I thinking? I’m going to make us a salad.”

  “No, really, I don’t need a salad.”

  “Let’s see,” he said, and he jumped up and went to the refrigerator. “Lettuce? Tomatoes? Hmm, the lettuce seems a bit …”

  He returned with a bag of baby carrots. “Did you know there’s a store on York Road called Greenish Grocery?” he asked as he sat back down. “I’ve driven past it. I always picture they’d have brown-edged lettuce, shriveled radishes, broccoli turning yellow … Here, help yourself.”

  Last month, as it happened, had marked the thirty-second anniversary of Millie’s death. He wouldn’t ordinarily have remembered, but he was writing the date on a check and he happened to notice. June fifth. Thirty-two years; good God. She’d been barely twenty-four when she died. If she were to see him today she would think, Who is that old man?

  “I understand these carrots aren’t really babies at all,” he told Eunice. “They’re full-sized but they’ve been whittled down by machines to make them little.”

  “That’s all right,” Eunice said, and she laid the single carrot she’d selected onto her plate. For someone so well padded, she seemed a very dainty eater. “Now, I haven’t spoken yet to Mr. McPherson,” she said.

  “McPherson. Oh. At Cope.”

  “I thought first you could write him a letter of inquiry, and then I would stop by his office and put in a word of recommendation.”

  “Well, but—” Liam began.

  He was interrupted by the sound of the front door opening. Maybe he was edgier these days than he realized, because his heart gave a sudden thump. Someone called, “Poppy?”

  Kitty came staggering in with her duffel bag and a large canvas tote. She still wore her work clothes—the pink polyester tunic she always complained about. Her mascara or whatever it was had blurred so she seemed to have two black eyes. “Oh!” she said when she saw Eunice.

  Liam said, “Eunice, this is Kitty, my daughter. Kitty, this is Eunice, um …”

  “Dunstead,” Eunice said. She was sitting almost sway-backed now with her hands folded under her chin. She looked a little bit like a chipmunk. “It’s such a thrill to meet you, Kitty!”

  “Hi,” Kitty said flatly. Then she turned to Liam. “I’ve reached the end of the line, I tell you. I’m not staying under that woman’s roof another minute.”

  “Well, why not have a piece of chicken,” Liam said. “Eunice here was kind enough to bring a—”

  “First of all, I am seventeen years old. I am not a child. Second, I have always been an extremely reasonable person. Wouldn’t you say I’m reasonable?”

  “Should I go?” Eunice asked Liam.

  She spoke in a low, urgent voice, as if hoping Kitty wouldn’t hear. Liam glanced at her. In fact, he did wish all at once that she would go. This was not working out the way he’d imagined; it was getting complicated; he felt frazzled and distracted. But he said, “Oh, no, please don’t feel you have to—”

  “I think I should,” she said, and she rose, or half rose, watching his face.

  Liam said, “Well, then, if you’re sure.”

  She stood up all the way and reached for her purse. Kitty was saying, “But some people just take this preconception into their heads and then there’s no convincing them. ‘I know you,’ they say; ‘I don’t trust you as far as I can—’”

  “Sorry,” Liam told Eunice as he followed her toward the door.

  “That’s all right!” she said. “We can always get together another time. I’ll phone you tomorrow, why don’t I. Meanwhile, you can be looking through those materials I brought. Did I give you those materials? What’d I do with them?”

  She stopped walking to peer down into her purse. “Oh. Here,” she said, and she pulled out several sheets of paper folded haphazardly into a wad.

  Liam accepted them, but then he said, “Actually, Eunice … you know? I really don’t think I’ll apply there.”

  She stared up at him. He took another step toward the door, meaning to urge her on, but she held her ground. (He was never going to get rid of her.) She said, “Are you saying that just because Mr. C. forgot he had met you?”

  “What? No!”

  “Because it means nothing that he forgot. Nothing at all.”

  “Yes, I understand. I just—”

  “But we won’t go into the particulars,” she said, and she slid her eyes in Kitty’s direction. “I’ll phone you in the morning, okay?”

  “Fine,” he said.

  Fine. He would deal with it in the morning.

  “Bye-bye for now, Kitty!” she called.

  “Bye.”

  Liam opened the door for Eunice, but he didn’t follow her out. He stood watching her cross the foyer. At the outer door she turned to wave, and he lifted the wad of papers and nodded.

  When he went back inside he found Kitty sitting at the table, grasping a chicken breast with both hands and munching away at great speed. She said, “Any chance you’ll be going by an ATM any time soon?”

  “I hadn’t planned to.”

  “Because I spent my very last dollar on the taxi.”

  “You came by taxi?”

  “What do you think, I carried all this luggage on the bus?”

  “I gave it no thought at all, I suppose,” he said, and he dropped back down on his chair.

  Kitty set her chicken breast on the bare table and wiped her hands on a paper napkin. The napkin turned into a greasy shred. “That woman’s younger than Xanthe,” she told him.

  “Yes, you’re probably right.”

  “She’s way too young for you.”

  “For me! Oh, goodness, she’s got nothing to do with me!”

  Kitty raised her eyebrows. “Think not?” she asked him.

  “Good Lord, no! She came to help with my résumé.”

  “She came because she has this big huge crush on you that sticks out a mile in every direction,” Kitty said.

  “What!”

  Kitty eyed him in silence as she took a carrot from the bag.

  “What a notion,” Liam said.

  He didn’t know which was more shocking: the notion itself, or the slow, deep sense of astonished pleasure that began to rise in his chest.

  6

  Now he saw that Eunice had certain subtle attractions. In looks, for instance, there were qualities that might not be apparent at first glance: the creamy, cushiony softness of her skin, the pale matte silk of her unlipsticked mouth, her clear gray eyes framed by long brown lashes. The dimple in each of her cheeks resembled the precisely drilled dent that forms at the center of a whirlpool. Her nose, which was more round than pointed, added a note of whimsy.

  And wasn’t her occasional lack of grace a sign of character? Like an absentminded professor, she concentrated on the intangibles. She was too busy with more important matters to notice the merely physical.

  She showed a kind of trustfulness, too, that was seldom seen in grownups. The way she had rushed after him on the street, and flung herself into his problems, and thought nothing of coming alone to his apartment … In retrospect, Liam found that touching.

 
; It had been years since he had had any sort of romantic life. He’d more or less given up on that side of things, it seemed. But now he remembered the significance that a love affair could lend to the most ordinary moments. The simplest activities could take on extra color and intensity. Days had a purpose to them—an element of suspense, even. He missed that.

  He rose too early the following morning, after a restless night. Kitty was still asleep in the den. (That much he had insisted on: he wasn’t forfeiting his bedroom a second time.) At first he contented himself with making a great deal of noise over breakfast, but when she hadn’t appeared by seven thirty, he tapped lightly on her door. “Kitty?” he called. He opened the door a few inches and peered in. “Shouldn’t you be getting up?”

  The blanket on the daybed stirred, and Kitty raised her head. “What for?” she asked him.

  “For work, of course.”

  “Work! It’s the Fourth of July.”

  “It is?” he said.

  He thought a moment. “Does that mean you have the day off?” he asked.

  “Well, duh!”

  “Oh.”

  “The plan was, I’d get to sleep as long as I wanted,” she said.

  “Sorry,” he said.

  He closed the door.

  The Fourth of July! So, well, what about Eunice? Would she call anyhow? And was Kitty going to hang around all morning?

  He poured himself another cup of coffee, even though it would give him the jitters. In fact, maybe he had the jitters already, because when the telephone rang, he actually jumped. The coffee sloshed in his cup. He picked up the receiver and said, “Hello?”

  “Liam?”

  “Oh. Barbara.”

  “Is Kitty with you?”

  “Why, yes.”

  “You might have thought to tell me,” she said. “I got up this morning and looked in her room: no Kitty. And her bed had not been slept in.”

  “I’m sorry; I thought you knew,” he said. “I gathered you two had an argument.”

  “We did have an argument, and she flounced off to her room and slammed the door. And then I had to go out, and it was past midnight when I got home so I just assumed she was in her bed.”

  Another time, Liam might have asked what had kept Barbara out so late. (Not that she would necessarily have deigned to answer.) But he wanted to free the telephone line, so he said, “Well, she’s here, and she’s fine.”