Noah’s Compass: A Novel Read online

  She was addicted to bad TV—to reality shows and game shows and spill-your-guts talk shows—and confessed to falling asleep every night to the all-night shopping channel. She couldn’t understand why Liam didn’t own a television set.

  She made a habit of leaving love notes for him to find after she left, always signed with a smiley face topped by a curl and a hairbow.

  She was refreshingly indifferent to domestic matters. She didn’t try to rearrange his furniture, or spruce up his wardrobe, or balance his diet. She thought his tightly made bed was comical. She demonstrated (standing discreetly outside the threshold of his bedroom) the shimmying motion that she imagined he must have to use in order to worm his way between the sheets every night. Liam had to laugh at that.

  He laughed a lot, these days.

  He knew that many of her traits (her lateness, her over-cuteness with the smiley faces and the little dogs) would ordinarily have called forth his most scathing sarcasm, but instead he found himself laughing. And felt, therefore, a bashful sense of pride. He was a better man than he’d realized.

  She routinely left stray belongings behind at the end of the evening, sprinkled about like Hansel and Gretel’s bread crumbs—an umbrella and a stack of bracelets and her glasses case and once, even, her purse. A homely black cardigan of hers stayed draped over a chair back for days, and whenever he passed it he found an excuse to straighten a sleeve or smooth the fabric before he moved on.

  Barbara phoned to ask how things were going with Kitty. It was a good three weeks, by then, since Kitty had moved in. “Very well,” Liam said. “No problems whatsoever.”

  “Is she keeping to her curfew?”

  “Of course.”

  “And you’re not leaving her and Damian unchaperoned.”

  “Certainly not,” he said.

  Or not any more than he could help, he added privately. He failed to see how anyone could be chaperoned every everlasting minute.

  “How about you?” he asked. “Everything going okay?”

  “Oh, yes.”

  “I guess it feels odd to be living on your own,” he said. For the first time, it occurred to him that on her own, she could see more of Howie the Hound Dog. He gave a light cough. “Are you managing to keep busy?”

  “Oh, yes,” she said again.

  She was a fine one to complain about other people’s unforthcomingness.

  It was difficult to tell, from her tone, whether she knew about Eunice. Had Kitty happened to mention her? But he wasn’t sure that Kitty and Barbara even kept in touch these days. Of course, Louise could have said something. He definitely sensed that Louise had her suspicions.

  One evening toward the end of July, Louise and Jonah dropped in unannounced. She claimed they had been shopping at the mall across the street. Well, obviously they had been shopping; Jonah was wearing a new type of combination sneaker and roller skate that he took great pride in showing off. But dropping in was not Louise’s usual style. She arrived as Liam was setting the table for supper. He had placed an order for Indian food—Kitty’s idea—which hadn’t come yet. Eunice was sitting in the living room, reading aloud from the want ads. (Even though they had abandoned the résumé pretext, Eunice made a point of swinging into job-hunting mode whenever Kitty was in earshot.) “Experienced medical assistant,” she read. “But really, you wouldn’t need that much experience if all you had to do was assist somebody.” And Kitty and Damian were in the den, where Kitty’s radio was shouting something like I want it I want it I want it.

  When Louise rang the doorbell, Liam assumed it was their food. Then while Jonah was struggling to demonstrate his roller skates on the carpet, the doorbell rang again and it was their food, and Liam had to spend several minutes dealing with it. By the time he had spread an array of curry-smelling foil containers across the table, Louise was deep in her interrogations. “You don’t like to cook?” she was asking Eunice.

  Very clever: the question implied that Eunice played a regular role in this household, which she would have to either confirm or deny. But Eunice was too cagey for that—or maybe just oblivious. “Cook?” she said, looking bewildered. “Who, me?”

  “I don’t feel Dad gets enough vegetables,” Louise told her.

  Although, in fact, Louise was never around during Liam’s meals and had no inkling what he ate.

  Liam said, “There are plenty of vegetables in Indian food, might I point out.”

  “Listen to this,” Eunice said, raising her newspaper. “Wanted: Driver for my 90-year-old mother. Days only; flexible hours. Must be sober, reliable, punctual and HAVE NO PERSONAL PROBLEMS! OR IF YOU DO, DON’T DISCUSS THEM WITH HER!”

  Liam laughed, but Louise didn’t seem to see the humor.

  “You could do that,” Eunice told him.

  “I’ll keep it in mind,” he said.

  Jonah had decided to try his skates on the kitchen linoleum. He was holding on to the sink while his feet slid away from him in opposite directions. “Help!” he called. By now Kitty had emerged from the den, although Damian was still in hiding, and she rescued Jonah by one elbow. “Hey, Louise,” she said.

  “Hi.”

  The doorbell rang a third time. Jonah said, “Maybe that will be some better kind of food.”

  But already the door was opening (a sure sign it was one of Liam’s daughters; they never waited to be admitted), and in walked Xanthe. She still had on her social-worker clothes, matronly and staid. “Good grief,” she said. “What have you got going here, Dad, some kind of salon?” She gave him a peck on the cheek and then stepped back to study him. “That’s healed up nicely,” she told him.

  For a second, he couldn’t think what she was talking about. Oh, yes: the last time she had seen him, he was still in bandages. “What brings you here?” he asked her.

  “I came because I’ve been phoning for days and the line is always busy. I thought you might be dead.”

  She didn’t seem to have lost any sleep over it. She trilled her fingers at her sisters. Then she turned to Eunice, who had lowered her paper.

  “Xanthe, meet Eunice,” Liam said.

  Xanthe cocked her head. “A neighbor?” she asked Eunice.

  Eunice said, “Sort of,” which was not just cagey, it was an outright lie. (She lived in Roland Park.) She smiled at Xanthe blandly. From where Liam stood, it seemed her glasses were doing that opaque thing they did with reflected light.

  Xanthe turned back to Liam and said, “I called several times last night, and then I called twice this evening. Is something wrong with your phone?”

  “It’s the Internet,” Kitty told her.

  “Dad was on the Internet?”

  “No, I was,” Kitty said. “He doesn’t have broadband and so I have to dial up.”

  “But why are you doing it here?”

  “I’m living here.”

  “You’re living here?”

  “I’m spending the summer.”

  Xanthe seemed about to say something, but at that moment Damian appeared. He looked a little sheepish, and no wonder. Probably he’d figured out he would be discovered, sooner or later, skulking in the den. “Yo. Jo-Jo,” he said to Jonah. He tipped sideways against the wall, jammed his hands in his jeans pockets, and stared defiantly at the others.

  Xanthe said, “Damian.”

  “Hey,” he said.

  “Hello,” she said. She made it sound as if she were correcting him.

  Then she turned to Liam and said, “I’ll be going now.”

  “You just got here!”

  “Goodbye,” she told the room in general.

  She walked out.

  There was a silence. Liam looked from Louise to Kitty. Louise shrugged. Kitty said, “Well, so anyhow, Lou. Do you have your car?”

  “Of course I have my car.”

  “Could you give me and Damian a ride to Towson Commons?”

  “Sure,” Louise said.

  “And then pick us up when the movie’s done?”

  “What?
No! What kind of life do you think I’m living?”

  Adjusting seamlessly, Kitty turned to Liam and said, “Poppy, could you pick us up?”

  “What time?”

  “The movie lets out at eight forty.”

  “I guess I can do that.”

  Damian straightened up from the wall and said, “Okay!” and Kitty told Louise, “Let’s go, then.”

  “This minute?” Liam asked. “What about your supper?”

  “We’re in a hurry. Come on, Jonah.”

  “I can skate much better outdoors,” Jonah told Liam. “Your floors are all wrong.”

  “You should show me the next time you come,” Liam said.

  “I’ll bring my coloring book, too. Yesterday I did Daniel in the lion’s den.”

  “Oh, good.”

  “Come on, Jonah,” Kitty said. “Bye, Poppy. Bye, Eunice.”

  Then everybody was gone. Louise was the last one out and she let the door slam behind her.

  Liam looked at Eunice. Eunice refolded her newspaper and laid it on the coffee table.

  “So that was Xanthe,” she said in a musing tone.

  “You’re thinking it’s a misnomer, aren’t you,” Liam said.

  “What?”

  “Xanthe. It means ‘golden.’”

  “Well, I’m sure she’s very pleasant as a rule,” Eunice said.

  Liam had been referring to Xanthe’s coloring—her brown hair and level dark eyebrows. He was so accustomed to her manner that he hadn’t felt the need to comment on it, but now he said, “She was upset on account of Damian, I guess. She thinks he was the one who attacked me.”

  “Damian?”

  “That’s what she thinks.”

  “He wasn’t, was he?”

  “No, of course not,” Liam said.

  In a grudging way, he was beginning to like Damian. And he’d seen enough of such boys at St. Dyfrig to know he wasn’t bad at heart.

  “Maybe it’s me,” Eunice said.

  “Pardon?”

  “Maybe Xanthe was upset to find me here.”

  “Oh, that can’t be it. Not at her age.”

  “If it came as a surprise, it could,” Eunice said. “But wouldn’t someone have told her? Do she and Kitty not talk?”

  “I don’t think any of them talk,” Liam said. This struck him as odd, all at once. He said, “But I may be mistaken.”

  “At least I can say now that I’ve met your entire family,” Eunice said.

  He didn’t know why he felt a momentary impulse to correct her. He wasn’t thinking of his sister, surely. Was it Barbara? No, how ridiculous. He said, “So you have.” Then he said, “And I’ve met exactly zero of yours.”

  Eunice looked unhappy. She said, “Oh. Right.”

  Although Liam couldn’t really work up much interest in her family. It was just her parents, after all—a couple of right-wing Republicans, from the sound of it—and he felt that he was long past the meet-the-parents stage of life. Besides which (here was the real thing), he was uncomfortably aware that he and Eunice’s father were members of the same generation, more or less. What a bizarre scene: one gray-haired man playing Daughter’s Boyfriend while the other played Stern Dad. Further proof of just how unsuitable this romance really was, at least in the eyes of the outside world.

  So he said, “Maybe when your father’s a little stronger,” and Eunice said, “Yes, maybe when his speech improves.” She looked relieved. “Then you could come for a drink,” she said. “They’ve been dying to meet you. We could all sit out on the terrace and have a nice long visit. You would have so much to talk about! Once they got to know you they would love you, I’m just positive.”

  With every word she uttered, she sounded less convincing. Liam said, “No point rushing though, when he’s been so ill.”

  “Oh, no.”

  “Plenty of time to meet later.”

  “Oh, yes.”

  “How is his speech, by the way?”

  “It’s going well,” she said. “Bit by bit, I mean.”

  “Is he getting any sort of professional help?”

  “Oh, yes, every week. I’m the one who takes him, because my mom has her aerobics class then. He sees this cute little girl who talks with a lisp. Can you believe a speech therapist would lisp?”

  “Maybe that’s why she went into it,” Liam said.

  “She calls him ‘Mithter Dunthtead,’” Eunice said with a giggle. “‘Mithter Thamuel Dunthtead.’”

  She looked pretty cute herself, Liam noticed. Laughter always turned her cheeks pink.

  He tried to picture the four of them sitting on the terrace. Her parents would ask him where he worked, just making polite conversation, but when he said he didn’t work, their expressions would cloud over. Where was he thinking of working, then? Nowhere. And he was twenty-some years older than their daughter, and he’d flubbed up two marriages, and he lived in a rented apartment.

  They would exchange glances. Their eyes would narrow in a certain way he knew well.

  But things were not as bad as they seemed! he wanted to tell them. He was a better man than he looked!

  He did somehow feel, these days, that he was a good man.

  She was even less social than Liam, if you didn’t count those girlfriends of hers. That was another of her traits. When Liam’s old philosophy professor came through town, she claimed Mr. C. had an evening meeting that would keep her from going to dinner with them. When the guidance counselor at St. Dyfrig threw his annual barbecue, she declined on the grounds of the high pollen count.

  But one Friday afternoon, Bundy phoned and asked Liam if he felt like going out for a bite to eat. His fiancée had dumped him, he said, and he was tired of sitting home brooding. In view of the circumstances, Liam felt he couldn’t refuse, although he had already arranged to spend the evening with Eunice.

  “Would you mind if I brought somebody?” he asked.

  “Who’s that?”

  “Oh, just a woman I’ve gotten to know.”

  It occurred to him to wonder if demonstrating his new couplehood at that particular moment showed a lack of tact, but Bundy seemed to find the prospect entertaining. “Whoa!” he said. “This I’ve got to see. Why not? Bring her along.”

  So Liam called Eunice’s cell phone and left a message about the change of plans. He was conscious as he spoke that he was not delivering welcome news; and sure enough, when Eunice called back she sounded less than thrilled.

  “I thought we were eating in tonight,” she said.

  “Well, yes, we were, but Bundy’s getting over a breakup.”

  “You never mentioned any Bundy before,” she told him accusingly.

  “Didn’t I? Oh, Bundy and I go way back. He’s African American,” he added as an enticement.

  But still Eunice said, “Maybe I’ll skip it. I’m not sure how late Mr. C. will be needing me.”

  Liam groaned. From time to time, he had the feeling that Ishmael Cope and he were engaged in a sibling rivalry of sorts. He said, “He’s got to allow you some private life.”

  “Well, but, and also, Tumbleweed, you said. I don’t want to eat at Tumbleweed! It’s too fancy. I don’t have the right clothes.”

  “Tumbleweed is not fancy,” Liam said. “I’m not even wearing a tie. I doubt Bundy owns a tie; he isn’t old enough for a—”

  But then he saw underneath to what was really bothering her. “Eunice,” he said. “Sweetheart. You would look fine, whatever you wore. I’m going to be very proud to introduce you.”

  “Well, I do have something black,” Eunice said. “Black always seems more elegant.”

  “Black would be perfect,” he told her.

  They arranged to meet at the restaurant, because Eunice had to stop off at her parents’ house to change. Since she and Bundy didn’t know each other, Liam made a point of showing up first, and he requested a table in front where he could watch the street for her arrival.

  It was true that Tumbleweed wasn’t fancy. The light
s were fake kerosene lanterns, the decor was Old West (dark, slightly sticky wooden booths and framed Wanted posters), and most of the other diners were Towson University students. Liam couldn’t imagine that Eunice would find it intimidating.

  Through the front window he saw Bundy striding toward him, a long-legged figure scissoring down the sidewalk in a way that didn’t seem particularly heartbroken. A moment later he was settling into the seat opposite Liam. “Where’s your lady?” he asked.

  “She’ll be along.”

  “See how it works: there’s just a limited amount of romance at any one time in the universe. Naomi dumps me; you get lucky. What’s her name?”

  “Eunice,” Liam said.

  All at once the name sounded vaguely embarrassing. The u sound reminded him of urine.

  “So!” he said brightly. “Why’d Naomi break it off? Or would you rather not discuss it.”

  “Not much to discuss. I come in yesterday from the gym, she’s talking on the phone in this low sexy voice. ‘I’m home!’ I call, and quick as a flash she says into the phone, ‘Fine, let’s make that two o’clock. Shampoo and a trim.’ In a voice that’s totally different, real efficient and bossy, like she’d use with her beautician. Then she slams down the receiver. So after she goes off to the kitchen, I press Redial. Man answers. Says, ‘Yo, babe. False alarm?’”

  “Plenty of beauticians call people ‘babe,’” Liam announced with authority.

  “But ‘False alarm’? Why’d he say that?”

  “Uh, maybe …”

  “It was her boyfriend, I tell you. The two of them making a fool of me. I tell you, I’ve been stupid. I say to him, ‘No, man. It wasn’t no false alarm.’ Then I go out to the kitchen. ‘Naomi, you got some explaining to do.’ Know what she says? Says, ‘Why you say that?’ Says, ‘That was just Ron at the beauty shop.’”

  “Well. See there?” Liam said. “It was Ron at the beauty shop. And when she hung up in a hurry he assumed she must have some emergency, so when his phone rang again he said, ‘False alarm?’”

  “How’d he know it was Naomi?” Bundy asked him.

  “He had caller ID, of course.”