Noah's Compass Page 17

  Or else not.

  If he had known from the very beginning that she was married, he wouldn’t be in this predicament. It would have been so easy to turn off his feelings before they got started; he did it all the time, everyone did, without even thinking about it.

  (A memory came to him of Janice Elmer at St. Dyfrig, whose husband was away with the National Guard. She had asked Liam once if he liked Chinese food, and he had said, “I don’t like any food”—a reaction so emphatic that he realized it was his instinctive defense against the possibility, probably imagined, of some compromising invitation.)

  Now, though, it was too late to turn off his feelings for Eunice. Now that he was so used to her.

  He put the tomatoes in the pot to simmer, and he added the empty bag to his grocery bag full of newspapers, which he carried out to the recycling bin. The sun had begun to sink and the air outside was cooler than inside, with a bit of a breeze stirring the pines above the walkway. He saw someone ahead of him carrying an empty cardboard box—a heavyset man in a Hawaiian shirt. “Why, hello there!” the man said, stopping to let him catch up.

  “Hi,” Liam said.

  “How’s it been going?”

  “Uh, fine.”

  “You don’t remember me, do you. Bob Hunstler? The folks who called 911?”

  “Oh! Sorry,” Liam said. He shifted his bag to one side and shook hands.

  “I guess you saw where they caught your guy,” Mr. Hunstler said.

  “They did?”

  “It was in last Saturday’s paper. Did you miss it? Guy right here in the complex.”

  “In this complex?” Liam asked. He looked around him.

  “Well, not actually living here. But his mother does. Mrs. Twill? In Building D? We know the woman, by sight at least. Just as nice as she can be. It’s not her fault she’s got a deadbeat son, now, is it.”

  “No, I suppose not,” Liam said.

  “They caught him over in B, making off with a sound system. Seems every time he came to visit his mom, he’d just nip by someone’s apartment on the way out and pick himself up a little something to take home.”

  “Is that right,” Liam said. “I haven’t heard a thing from the police.”

  “Well, maybe since the fellow in B caught him red-handed, they figure there’s no need to bring in any others.”

  Mr. Hunstler resumed walking, swinging the cardboard box at his side, but Liam slowed to a stop. “Good seeing you,” he called.

  “Oh, weren’t you headed to the bin?”

  “I’m going to check for that paper.”

  Mr. Hunstler raised his arm in half of a wave and plodded on.

  Back in the apartment, Liam dumped his bag upside down in a chair. Saturday, August fifth. Aha. He found the police news listed in the Maryland section. Man Nabbed in County Burglaries; that would have to be it. A paragraph barely an inch and a half long, without a photo.

  The arrest of Lamont Edward Twill, 24, is expected to bring to a halt a recent rash of break-ins in Baltimore County. Mr. Twill was tackled by a resident of the Windy Pines development, where he was seen loading stolen electronic equipment into his panel truck.

  A search of his Lutherville lodgings revealed a number of items reported missing from homes in the Towson and Timonium areas over the past several months.

  “Your tomatoes are popping,” Kitty said, coming into the room.

  “Turn them down, then.”

  “What are all these papers?”

  He held the Maryland section out to her. “My burglar,” he told her.

  “Really?”

  She took the newspaper from him and read where he pointed. “Well, what do you know,” she said. Then she handed the paper back to him and wandered off toward the stove. “I thought you were going to wait for garlic before you started cooking these,” she called a moment later.

  “I’ll add it when it comes.”

  “It won’t do much good at that stage.”

  Liam didn’t bother answering. He was reading the news item over again. He wished they’d included a photograph. Maybe some random detail would have struck a spark in his brain. Just a glimpse of a mustache, say, or a birthmark or a scar, and he would think, Wait! Haven’t I seen that somewhere before?

  The familiar strain of trying to remember what wasn’t there brought him back to Eunice—the original Eunice; Eunice as he had first fantasized her when he’d imagined that she might rescue him.

  And she had rescued him, really.

  He refolded the newspaper and dropped it on top of the others.

  It turned out that combining egg noodles with angel-hair pasta wasn’t such a good idea. Or at least, the two should have been cooked in separate pots. The noodles still showed some resistance in the middle, while the angel hair was overdone. Liam and Kitty plowed through theirs regardless, but Damian, Liam noticed, forked up each strand of angel hair one by one and left the noodles behind. Even though Liam’s policy was never to apologize for his cooking, he did say, “Maybe the noodles should have been given a few more minutes.”

  “Naw, they’re great!” Damian told him.

  Liam felt touched. So did Kitty, evidently, because she reached over and gave Damian a tender pat on the wrist.

  Liam averted his eyes.

  Damian was very interested in the news of the arrest. He thought Liam should go inventory the stolen goods. “You might find something there that you didn’t even know you were missing,” he said.

  “In that case, why bother getting it back?” Liam asked him.

  “Because six months from now you might suddenly think, Hey, didn’t I used to own a what’s-it? And then you’ll be sorry you didn’t go check when you had the chance.”

  “Well, it’s not as if these things are sitting on public display somewhere,” Liam said.

  He wished Xanthe could hear their conversation. She’d been so sure the intruder was Damian! He remembered how she’d flounced off in a huff when she found out Damian was visiting. She hadn’t been back since, in fact. But here Damian sat, blithely unaware that anyone would dream of suspecting him. He was proposing now that Liam attend the lineup.

  “Lineup? What lineup?” Liam asked him. “Why would they have a lineup? You’ve been watching too much TV.”

  “They ought to at least offer to let you meet the guy. Don’t you want to see who it was? Don’t you want to, like, confront him?”

  “Oh, I’m not much of a one for confrontation,” Liam said. “I would be, maybe, if I thought it would bring my memory back—”

  He stopped himself, because he knew everybody felt he was making too much of the memory issue. He said, “But as far as meeting him just to see who he is … well, what’s the point? It’s not as if he singled me out. This was like those accidents you read about in the paper: an overpass collapses and a man driving underneath is instantly killed. He stayed in his lane, obeyed the lights, checked his rearview mirror, observed the speed limit, and still he was killed. These things just happen.”

  “That guy didn’t just happen to hit you on the head,” Damian said.

  “Actually, he did just happen to, because I just happened to be there. No sense going up to him now and asking why.”

  Damian knotted his brow, clearly baffled. He might have continued arguing, but just then the kitchen telephone rang. Liam stayed seated. Kitty said, “Want me to answer that?”

  “Never mind,” Liam said.

  “That’s okay, I’m finished.” She stood up and went to lift the receiver. “Hello?” she said. “Hi. Sure, just a sec. It’s Eunice, Dad.”

  “I’m eating,” Liam told her. And to prove it, he reached for the tomato sauce and ladled a spoonful onto his empty plate.

  After a pause, Kitty said, “Eunice? Can he call you back later? Okay. Bye.”

  She returned to the table and sat down. Neither she nor Damian spoke.

  “I think you were right about the garlic,” Liam said. “I should have added it at the start. I can’t e
ven taste that it’s there.”

  He picked up the Parmesan cheese and sprinkled it on his sauce. Out of nowhere, a memory came to him of a spaghetti dinner he’d eaten with Eunice the week before, in a dingy little café in the mall across the street. The waitress had started out by introducing herself. “Hi,” she’d said. “I’m Debbie, and I’ll be your server tonight.” It was a practice that always made Liam roll his eyes, but Eunice seemed quite taken with it. All during their supper she had happily employed the woman’s name. “Debbie, could we have more bread?” and, “That was delicious, Debbie.” At the time, Liam had felt a bit irritated with her. Now, though, it struck him as funny. An actual bubble of laughter escaped him, and he ducked his head lower to hide it and busied himself with his meal.

  10

  Liam’s father lived off Harford Road, in a neighborhood of unassuming little cottages from the 1940s with drab clapboard siding, squat front porches, and carefully kept plots of grass. Liam could have found the place in his sleep, and not only because it was a straight shot out Northern Parkway. He had been traveling there since his teens. In fact, it was the first address he’d ever driven to, the first day he had his license. He’d asked permission to borrow the family car and then made his escape (was how he thought of it), gripping the steering wheel with both hands and constantly checking the rearview mirror as his driver’s ed instructor had taught him, but the faint tingle down his spine had come less from new-driver nerves than from the knowledge that he was betraying his mother. She would have been so distressed if she had known where he was going. She was, in general, a woman easily distressed. “That hurts my feelings” was her most characteristic remark. Also, “I just don’t seem to have any appetite,” as she pushed her plate away sadly after Liam had done something to disappoint her. He had disappointed her often, although he had tried his best not to.

  The scenery hadn’t changed much in all these years. Even the flowers in the yards had a dated look—ball-shaped clumps of blue or white on bushes pruned into balls themselves. There was an abundance of lawn ornaments—plaster gnomes and fawns and families of ducks, birdbaths, windmills, reflective aluminum gazing globes, wooden cutouts of girls in sunbonnets bending over the flower beds with their wooden watering cans. Liam’s father’s yard had a miniature pony cart planted with red geraniums and hitched to a plaster pony.

  Liam parked behind his father’s great long barge of a Chevy and walked up to the porch. He hadn’t phoned ahead. He never did. In his youth he had been aiming for an offhand, happenstance effect, and by now it was a tradition. Anyhow, the couple always seemed to be at home. Bard Pennywell had retired long ago from Sure-Tee Insurance, and Esther Jo had been asked to leave back when they got married.

  It was Esther Jo who answered the doorbell. “Liam!” she said. They had never developed the habit of kissing when they met. For Liam as a teenager, she had seemed too dangerous, too obviously sexy for him to risk it. By now she was a puffy, pigeon-shaped woman in her early seventies, wearing a pinafore apron and cloth mules, but if you knew to look for the clues—the finger waves pressed into her faded blond hair, the eyebrows plucked to unsteady threads—you could still detect the office glamour girl she had once been.

  “I hope I haven’t come at a bad time,” Liam told her.

  “No, no, not at all. Your dad was just—Bard? It’s Liam! Your dad was just mowing the grass out back. Not that we have much to mow, these days. Hasn’t it been dry! I’ve forgotten what rain feels like, almost.”

  She was leading Liam into the living room, which always struck him as an oddly girlish place. A row of stuffed animals lined the brocade love seat, and the dark wooden bookcase held an array of dolls in old-fashioned dresses, with crinolines and pantaloons peeking out from under their hems.

  Liam settled in an armchair, but he stood again when his father entered the room. “Well, hi there, stranger!” his father said. He wore a crisply ironed shirt and a striped tie; he wasn’t the kind of man who dressed casually even to mow the lawn. Unlike Liam, he had thinned and shrunk as he aged, and the top of his head was completely bald, his hair no more than two tufts of white bracketing a narrow, deeply wrinkled face.

  As they shook hands, Liam said, “I just thought I’d stop by and see how you were doing.”

  “We’re doing fine! Not bad at all! This is a nice surprise, son.” Bard lowered himself onto the love seat, reaching behind him without looking to move aside a teddy bear in a cheerleader costume. “How’ve you been? How’re the girls?”

  “Everyone’s fine,” Liam said, sitting back down. “They send their love.”

  Or they would have, he reasoned, if they had known he was coming here. There was almost no contact between the two parts of Liam’s family.

  “I’m just going to fetch some iced tea,” Esther Jo said. She had her arms folded tightly under her bosom, as if she felt the need to warm herself. “You two sit right where you are. Don’t get up! Just sit right here and have a nice talk. I’m going to leave you to it.”

  She left the room, her mules making whispery sounds on the floorboards.

  “I’d have thought you’d be at work now,” Liam’s father said, glancing at his watch. It was shortly before noon, Liam knew without checking. “Is summer school finished already?”

  “I’m not doing that this year,” Liam said.

  “Ah. Needed a break, did you.”

  “Well … and I’ve been busy moving.”

  “Moving! Where to?”

  “A smaller place, up near the Beltway. Remind me to give you the phone number.”

  His father nodded. “We should move,” he said. “Get shed of all this yard work. But, I don’t know, your stepmother loves her house so.”

  Since Liam could never quite connect Esther Jo with the term “stepmother,” he experienced a little blank spell before he said, “Oh. Well, that’s understandable.”

  “She says, ‘Where would I put all my pretty things? Where would my sister stay when she visits?’ ”

  “It’s not as if an apartment couldn’t have a guestroom,” Liam said.

  “No, but, you know.”

  “In fact, I’ve got Kitty staying with me at this very moment.”

  “Do you now!” His father smoothed the point of his tie.

  Really the two of them had nothing to say to each other. Why did Liam have to learn this all over again on every visit?

  They tried, though. Both of them tried. His father said, “How is Kitty, by the way?”

  “She’s fine,” Liam said. “She’s working this summer in a dentist’s office.”

  “Thinking of being a dental hygienist, is she.”

  “Why, no. It’s just a summer job, is all. Filing charts.”

  His father cleared his throat. “And your sister?” he asked.

  “She’s fine too.”

  Liam found himself listening for some sound from the kitchen, wondering when Esther Jo would be coming back to rescue them. “I actually haven’t seen Julia in a while,” he said.

  “Me neither,” his father said, and he gave a dry cough of a laugh, although his face remained unsmiling. (He hadn’t seen Julia in forty-some years, and even then it was just because he’d shown up uninvited at her high school graduation.) He shifted in his seat slightly, as if he regretted his little joke, and smoothed his tie again.

  “I’ve been laid off at St. Dyfrig,” Liam said.

  At least it was a conversational topic.

  “Laid off!”

  “They’re folding their two fifth grades into one class next year.”

  “But you’ve been there forever!”

  “Just about,” Liam said.

  “Don’t you have seniority?”

  “Oh, well, I don’t know. That’s not how it works there.”

  “How does it work?”

  “I don’t know, I told you,” Liam said. He looked gratefully toward the kitchen, from where he heard the clink of ice cubes approaching.

  “Real brewed t
ea!” Esther Jo announced, appearing with a tray. “I have to say I’ve just never held with instant. Seems to me instant has a sort of dusty taste.” She set the tray on the coffee table and distributed a tall glass to each of them. In the interim, she had put on lipstick. Her shiny, cherry-red lips reminded Liam of the days when she and his father were first together, when she had been movie-star pretty in her buxom sweater sets and her tightly packed straight skirts with the kick pleats.

  Wasn’t it amazing, he thought, that even a species as supposedly evolved as the human race was still so subject to biology. And now here they sat—his ancient father shriveled to a husk, the femme fatale’s swollen feet stuffed into calico mules.

  “Liam’s lost his job,” Bard told Esther Jo.

  “Oh, no, Liam!” Esther Jo said.

  Liam said, “Yep.”

  “What are you going to do?” she asked.

  “Well, I’m thinking that over.”

  “You just know somebody’s going to snatch you up in half a second,” she told him. “How about one of the public schools? They’re dying for good teachers in the public schools.”

  “I’m not certified, though,” Liam said.

  “Well, something’s going to come along, I’m sure of it. You know what?” she said, setting down her glass. “I should tell your fortune.”

  “Oh, yes, hon, good idea,” Bard told her. “You haven’t done that in a long time.”

  “Not for me, at any rate,” Liam said.

  He remembered her telling his fortune when he’d been applying to graduate schools. She had said he would go to a place that was good for him professionally but not personally. What was that all about? you’d have to ask, but never mind; at least if she told his fortune now it would give them something to fill the silence with. He said, “Would you be willing?”

  “Well, if I still know how,” she said. “Seems like the older all our friends get, the less they wonder about. I can’t think when was the last time … Betty Adler, maybe. Was it Betty?” she asked Bard. “Betty was wanting to know if she should move to New Mexico to be near her married daughter. Here, let me skootch this footstool around.”