Noah’s Compass: A Novel Read online

  “Or your life,” Bard said.

  “No, of course not,” Liam said finally.

  “So! What do you call this little thing?” Bard asked. He was looking at Liam’s car.

  “I call it a Geo Prizm,” Liam said. He took his keys from his pocket.

  “I prefer something a bit more substantial, myself,” Bard said. “Especially on the Beltway. They drive like maniacs on the Beltway! And not a cop in sight. I wish you kids would stop acting like I walked out on you or something.”

  The change of topic was so sudden that Liam almost missed it. He was about to step around to the driver’s side when he stopped short and said, “Pardon?”

  “I didn’t desert, you know. I did play fair and square. I leveled with your mother and asked her for a divorce. I sent her money every month as regular as clockwork, and I tried to stay in touch with you and Julia. You think I had it easy? It was hell, there, for a while. And everybody looking at me like I was the villain—some bad guy in a dime novel. I was no villain. I just couldn’t bear to go to my grave knowing I’d wasted my life. I just wanted my share of happiness. Can’t you understand how I felt?”

  Liam didn’t know how to answer that.

  “Nothing wrong with you getting a share of happiness too,” Bard said. Then he winced, as if he had embarrassed himself. He raised a hand in a kind of salute and turned and started back up the walk, and Liam got into his car.

  Damn, he’d forgotten to leave his new telephone number. Well, he could do that some other time. They seldom talked on the phone anyhow. The unspoken assumption was that the number was for dire emergencies, most likely involving Bard’s health. Of course, by now even Esther Jo—once the scandalously younger woman—was a candidate for such emergencies; but Liam could more easily imagine that it would be she making the fateful phone call one morning, notifying him that she couldn’t wake his father. And that would be the end of the grand, heroic love story that had rocked the little Pennywell household and the Sure-Tee Insurance Company.

  He stopped for a light on Northern Parkway and watched a young mother crossing in front of him with her baby in a carrier on her chest—an arrangement that always struck him as boastful. Here I am! Look at what I’ve got! The baby leaned forward like a figurehead, and perhaps to balance his weight the mother leaned backward, which gave her a cocky, strutting gait. You would think she had invented parenthood. Liam supposed that he must once have felt that way himself, although he couldn’t remember it. He did remember collecting Millie and the newborn Xanthe from the hospital and marveling at how only two of them had walked in but three of them were leaving.

  And now Xanthe was in her mid-thirties and mad at him about something.

  We live such tangled, fraught lives, he thought, but in the end we die like all the other animals and we’re buried in the ground and after a few more years we might as well not have existed.

  This should have depressed him, but instead it made him feel better. The light turned green and he started driving again.

  11

  Eunice said that her husband made a hobby of being miserable.

  She said he was the kind of man who took bad weather personally.

  The kind who asked, “Why me, God?” when his assistant was hit by a car.

  And he was always railing against other people’s grammatical errors.

  “He has a thing about dangling modifiers,” she told Liam. “You know what a dangling modifier is?”

  “Of course.”

  “Well, I didn’t. Like ‘At the age of eight, my mother died.’ They drive him crazy.”

  “Oh, I agree,” Liam said. “And, ‘Walking on the beach, a shark appeared.’”

  “What? Last spring he kept a day-to-day tally of all the dangling modifiers in the Baltimore Sun, and at the end of a month he sent the list to the editor. But it was never published.”

  “Such a surprise,” Liam murmured.

  “So the next month I kept a tally of my own, in one of those little appointment books that come in the mail for free. Every single day I wrote either ‘Added’ or ‘Subtracted.’ ‘Added’ meant my husband had added something positive to my life that day. ‘Subtracted’ meant he’d been a negative. His Added’ rating was twelve percent. Pretty pathetic! But you know what he did when I showed him? He just pointed out the mistakes in my method of computation.”

  Liam massaged his forehead with his fingertips.

  “Well, it was a month with thirty-one days in it,” Eunice said. “Anybody would have had trouble.”

  Liam made no comment.

  “He completely ignored the real issue, which was that I’m not happy with him.”

  “Yes, but still,” Liam said, “you are with him.”

  “I can leave, though, Liam! I don’t have to stay. Why don’t you ask me to leave him?”

  “Why don’t I go out in the street and ask a stranger for his billfold.”

  “What?”

  “You’re somebody else’s wife, remember? You’re already committed.”

  “I can undo the commitment! People undo them all the time. You undid yours.”

  “That was just between me and Barbara. There wasn’t any third party stealing one of us away.”

  “Look,” Eunice said. “All I have to do is go through a little spell of legal this-and-that and then you and I can be together, aboveboard. Don’t you want to marry me?”

  They were traveling in circles, Liam thought. They were like hamsters on an exercise wheel. Day after day they hashed all this out—Eunice showing up puffy-eyed at six a.m., or telephoning in an urgent whisper from Ishmael Cope’s office, or arriving straight from work already talking as Liam opened the door to her. How about if this very minute she went to live on her own? she asked. Then would it be all right for them to marry? And what sort of interval would he require? A month? Six months? A year?

  “But still,” he said, “the fact would remain that you were married when I met you.”

  “Well, what can I do about that, Liam? I can’t un-ring the bell!”

  “My point exactly.”

  “You’re impossible!”

  “The situation is impossible.”

  They argued so long sometimes that the apartment grew dark without their noticing, and they neglected to turn on the lights until Kitty walked in and said, “Oh! I didn’t know anybody was here.” Then they would hasten to greet her, using their most everyday voices.

  It was Liam’s own fault that this was dragging on. He knew that. He could have said, “Eunice, enough. We have to stop seeing each other.” But he kept procrastinating. He told himself that first they needed to talk this over. They had to get squared away. They didn’t want to leave any loose threads trailing.

  Pathetic.

  At the end of their conversations he generally had a headache, and his voice was fogged and elderly-sounding from overuse. But really there was no end to their conversations. The two of them just went on and on until they’d worn themselves out, or till Eunice broke down in tears, or till Kitty interrupted them. Nothing was ever resolved. The week crawled past, the weekend came, another week began. Everything remained the same as the day he’d found out she was married.

  What did this remind him of? The final months with Millie, he realized—their repetitive, pointless wrangling during the period just before she died. Now he could see that she must have been severely depressed, but all he knew then was that she seemed dissatisfied with every facet of their life together. She would carp and complain in a monotone, going over and over the same old things, while the baby fussed in the background and, yes, the light in the apartment slowly faded, unnoticed. “You always …” Millie said, and “You never …” and “Why can’t you ever …?” And Liam had defended himself against each charge in turn, like someone hurrying to plug this leak, that leak, with new leaks eternally springing up elsewhere. Then often he would give up and leave—just walk out, feeling bruised and damaged, and not come back until he was sure that she had
gone to bed.

  Although Eunice and Millie were not the least bit similar. Eunice had more energy; she was more … defined, Liam supposed you could say. Yet somehow she gave him that same feeling that he was the person responsible. She had that same way of looking to him to straighten out her life.

  As if he were capable of straightening out anybody’s life, even his own!

  He said, “Eunice. Sweetheart. I’m trying to do the right thing, here.” But what was the right thing? Was it possible, in fact, that he was being too rigid, too moralistic, too narrow-minded? That the greater good was to make the very most of their time here on earth? Yes! Why not? And he felt a flood of joyous recklessness, which Eunice must have guessed because she sprang up and crossed the room to throw herself in his lap and wrap her arms around his neck. Her skin was warm and fragrant, and her breasts were squashed alluringly against his chest.

  Did she sit like this in her husband’s lap?

  Her husband’s name was Norman. He drove a Prius, from the first year Priuses were manufactured. He had a twin sister, Eunice said, who was developmentally disabled.

  Liam set Eunice gently aside and stood up. “You should go,” he told her.

  Louise phoned on Friday morning and asked if he could watch Jonah. “My sitter has up and eloped,” she said, “without a word of notice.”

  “Did she marry Chicken Little?” Liam asked.

  “How do you know about Chicken Little?”

  “Oh, I have my sources.”

  “I could strangle her,” Louise told him. “Tomorrow’s Homecoming Day at our church and I promised I’d help decorate. Dougall says just take Jonah along, but that way I’d be more of a hindrance than a help.”

  “Sure, bring him here,” Liam said.

  “Thanks, Dad.”

  In fact, he welcomed the diversion. It would be something to think about besides Eunice. He felt the two of them had spent this past couple of weeks in some cramped and airless basement.

  Louise was beginning to look noticeably pregnant. Thin as she was, she had no place to hide a baby, Liam supposed. She wore a short skirt and a skimpy tank top, and her collarbones stuck out so far you could almost wrap your fingers around them. Behind her, Jonah trailed listlessly with an armful of picture books. “Hi there, Jonah,” Liam said.

  “Hi.”

  “Are we going to be coloring again?”

  Jonah just gave him a look.

  “Someone got up on the wrong side of bed today,” Louise murmured.

  “Well, never mind; we’ll be fine,” Liam said. “Should I give him lunch? How long will you be gone?”

  “Just till noon or so, I hope. It depends how many others turn up. We’re in charge of decorating the Communing Room; that’s where they’re feeding the Homecomers.”

  Communing Room, Homecomers … It was almost a foreign language. But Liam was determined to avoid any appearance of disapproval. “Is this like Homecoming Day in high school?” he asked in his most courteous tone. “People coming back who’ve graduated or moved?”

  “There’s nothing high-schoolish about it, Dad!”

  “No, I just meant—”

  “This is for sinners who’ve come to see the error of their ways. Which is a far cry from graduating, believe me.”

  “Yes, of course,” Liam said.

  “I don’t know why you have to try and pick a quarrel about these things.”

  “It must be my contrary nature,” Liam said meekly. He followed her to the door. “Did you bring any snacks?” he thought to ask. “I don’t have all that much around that Jonah will eat.”

  “He’s got Goldfish in his knapsack.”

  “Oh, good.”

  He saw her out and then returned to the living room. Jonah was still standing there, holding his armful of books. They studied each other in silence. “Well,” Liam said finally. “Here we are, I guess.”

  Jonah heaved a deep sigh. He said, “I don’t think Deirdre’s going to take me to the State Fair now.”

  “Why not? She could still do that.”

  “She got married.”

  “Married people go to the fair.”

  “But my mom won’t ever speak to her again.”

  “That’s just talk,” Liam said. “You know how your mom talks.”

  “I didn’t really like Chicken Little anyway,” Jonah said confidingly.

  “You didn’t?”

  “He cheats at soccer.”

  “How can you cheat at soccer?” Liam asked.

  Jonah gave one of his shrugs. “I don’t know; he just does,” he said. “It’s very inappropriate.”

  “Well, tell you what: let’s read some of those books you’ve brought. What did you bring?”

  Jonah held the pile out. Dr. Seuss, Liam saw, and another Dr. Seuss, and a Little Bear book … He said, “Good! You choose which one we’ll start with.”

  Before they could sit down, he had to help Jonah out of his knapsack. Then they settled in an armchair, Jonah squinched tightly into the few remaining inches on Liam’s right side. Jonah was wearing gym shoes today, incongruously large red high-tops. They stuck straight out in front of him, and the left one kept knocking into Liam’s right knee. He really should buy a sofa, Liam thought for the hundredth time. The image of Eunice came to mind, and he had a sudden hollow feeling.

  He was going to be one of those men who die alone among stacks of yellowed newspapers and the dried-out rinds of sandwiches moldering on plates.

  He opened the first book on Jonah’s pile and started reading aloud. The Cat in the Hat, it was. He knew it well. His daughters used to complain that he read too fast and so he made a point of taking his time, enunciating each word and adding plenty of expression. Jonah listened without reacting. His small head gave off a heated smell, like fresh-baked bread or warm honey.

  Hop on Pop. Green Eggs and Ham. Father Bear Comes Home, which Jonah interrupted halfway through to announce that he had to pee. “Go ahead; I’ll wait,” Liam said. He was glad of the respite. Reading with expression was making his throat ache.

  When Jonah came out of the bathroom he didn’t return to the armchair but went instead to his knapsack, which was lying on the floor. He pulled out a plastic bag of Goldfish crackers and sat down on the carpet to eat them, selecting each cracker one by one as if some were better than others. It wasn’t clear whether he’d tired of Little Bear or was merely taking a break. Liam marked their page, just in case. He said, “Would you like to work on your coloring a while?”

  “I’m done with coloring,” Jonah said.

  “You finished the book?”

  “I stopped liking it.”

  “Oh.”

  Jonah turned the bag upside down, emptying the rest of the Goldfish onto the carpet along with a shower of orange dust. “You know Noah?” he asked Liam.

  “Noah in the Bible?”

  Jonah nodded.

  “I know Noah.”

  “He made about a hundred animals die,” Jonah said.

  “He did?”

  “He left them to drown. He only took two of things.”

  “Oh. Right.”

  “He took two giraffes and let all the rest drown.”

  “Well, he didn’t have a whole lot of room, bear in mind.”

  “Where’d he buy gas?” Noah asked.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Where’d he buy gas for his boat if he was the only guy in the world?”

  “He didn’t need gas,” Liam said. “It wasn’t that kind of boat.”

  “Was it a sailboat, then?”

  “Why, yes, I guess it was,” Liam said. Although he had never noticed sails in the pictures, come to think of it. “Actually,” he said, “I guess he didn’t need sails either, because he wasn’t going anywhere.”

  “Not going anywhere!”

  “There was nowhere to go. He was just trying to stay afloat. He was just bobbing up and down, so he didn’t need a compass, or a rudder, or a sextant …”

  “What�
�s a sextant?”

  “I believe it’s something that figures out directions by the stars. But Noah didn’t need to figure out directions, because the whole world was underwater and so it made no difference.”

  “Huh,” Jonah said. He seemed to have lost interest. He licked the tip of one finger and started picking up the crumbs from the carpet.

  Liam thought of pointing out that this was only a sort of fairy tale, but he didn’t want Louise any madder at him than she already was.

  Eunice said that sometimes, she wondered if Mr. C.’s memory trouble could be contagious.

  “For instance,” she said. “We’ve just now been to a retirement party for the receptionist. Their receptionist’s retiring. Mr. C. takes a handful of nuts from a bowl and starts to eat them, but then he stops. ‘These nuts are ransomed,’ he says. I say, ‘What?’ ‘They’re ransomed. Take them away.’ ‘Oh,’ I said. ‘You mean—’ But then I couldn’t think of the word. I could not think of the word. I knew it wasn’t ‘ransomed,’ but I couldn’t think what it should be.”

  They were standing in the kitchen alcove, where Liam had gone to fetch the ice water she’d requested the instant she arrived. (Outside it was hot and humid, a typical August afternoon as heavy as mud.) He held a glass beneath the dispenser in the refrigerator door, and Eunice stepped up behind him and wrapped her arms around him and laid her cheek against his back.

  “It’s like I slipped into Mr. C.’s world for a minute,” she said. Her breath was warm and moist against Liam’s left shoulder.

  He filled the glass with water and turned to face her. Instead of taking the glass from him, she unbuttoned the top button of his shirt. He said, “Your water.”

  “It’s like I saw what it must feel like to be him,” she said. “How … evaporating and blurry and scary.”

  “Let’s go to the living room,” he told her.

  He was trying to back away from her, but he was trapped against the refrigerator. Eunice unbuttoned the rest of his buttons, focusing on them intently and not looking up at his face. “Let’s not,” she said. “Let’s go to the bedroom.”

  “We can’t do that,” he told her.