Noah’s Compass: A Novel Read online

  They were already at the front door when Kitty said, “Wait, I think I hear them out back,” at the same time that Liam, too, heard voices coming from the rear of the house. They turned to take the path that led through the side yard. When they emerged from under the magnolia tree, they found Barbara and Xanthe eating lunch at the wrought-iron table on the patio. Nearby, Jonah was squatting on the flagstones to draw lopsided little circles with a stick of chalk. He was the first to spot them. “Hi, Kitty. Hi, Poppy,” he said, standing up.

  “Hi, Jonah.”

  Liam hadn’t realized before that Jonah called him Poppy.

  Barbara said, “Well, look who’s here!” but Xanthe, after the briefest glance, took on a flat-faced expression and resumed buttering a roll.

  “You didn’t use sunblock, did you?” Barbara asked Kitty. “When I told you and told you! Where are your brains? You’re fried to a crisp.”

  “Oh, why, thank you for inquiring, Mother dear,” Kitty said. “I had a perfectly lovely trip.”

  Unruffled, Barbara turned to Liam. “I’ve got Jonah for the weekend,” she said, “because Louise and Dougall are off with their church on a Marriage Renewal Retreat.”

  Liam had a number of questions about this—did their marriage need renewing? should he be worried?—but before he could ask, Barbara rose, saying, “Let me bring out some more plates. You two sit down.”

  “No plate for me, thanks. I just finished breakfast,” Liam said.

  But Barbara was already heading toward the back door, and Kitty was making violent shooing motions in his direction. “Go with her!” she mouthed.

  Dutifully, Liam set off after Barbara. (It was a relief, anyhow, to leave the chilly atmosphere surrounding Xanthe.) He held the screen door open, and Barbara said, “Oh, thanks.”

  As they entered the house, she told him, “I don’t think that child has the least little grain of sense. Just wait till she gets melanoma! Then she’ll be sorry.”

  “Ah, well, we grew up without sunblock.”

  “That’s different,” she said, illogically.

  Liam loved Barbara’s kitchen. It had never once been remodeled, as far as he knew. At some point a dishwasher had been fitted in next to the sink, but the general look of it dated from the 1930s. The worn linoleum floor bore traces of a Mondrian-style pattern, and the refrigerator had rounded corners, and the cupboards had been repainted so many times that the doors wouldn’t quite close anymore. Even the plants on the windowsill seemed old-fashioned: a yellowed philodendron wandering up to the curtain rod and down again, and a prickly, stunted cactus in a ceramic pot shaped like a burro. He could have just sunk onto one of the red wooden chairs and stayed there forever, feeling peaceful and at home.

  But here came Kitty to remind him of his mission. She let the screen door slam behind her and she gave him a conspiratorial glance but then wandered over to the sink, ho hum, and turned the faucet on for no apparent reason.

  “By the way,” Liam said. He was speaking to Barbara’s back; she was reaching into the dish cupboard. She wore white linen slacks that made her look crisper than usual and more authoritative. He said, “I’ve been thinking.”

  It wasn’t clear if she had heard him over the sound of running water. She set two plates on the counter and opened the silverware drawer.

  “I’ve been wondering if Kitty should stay on with me during the school year,” he said.

  Assuming sole responsibility for the question—I’ve been wondering—was meant as a gesture of gallantry, but Kitty spoiled the effect by shutting off the water decisively and spinning around to say, “Please, Mom?”

  Barbara turned to Liam. “Excuse me?” she said.

  “She would stay on at my place,” Liam said, “just for her senior year, I mean. After that she’d be leaving for college.”

  “What, Liam: are you saying you’d be willing to monitor her homework, and drive car pool to lacrosse games, and pick her up from swimming practice? Are you going to meet with her college advisor and make sure she gets her allergy shots?”

  This sounded like more of a commitment than he had realized, actually. He sent an uncertain glance toward Kitty. She took a step forward, but instead of going into the prayerful-maiden act he half expected, she flung a hand in his direction, palm up, and said, “Someone ought to keep a watch. Just look at him!”

  Liam blinked.

  Barbara examined him more closely. She said, “Yes, what’s wrong with you?”

  “What do you mean, what’s wrong with me?”

  “You seem … thinner.”

  He had the impression that she had been about to say something else, something less complimentary.

  “I’m fine,” he told her.

  He scowled at Kitty. He’d be damned if he would say a single word further on her behalf.

  Kitty gazed blandly back at him.

  Barbara said, “Kitty, would you take these things to the patio, please?”

  “But—”

  “Go on,” Barbara said, and she handed Kitty the plates with a cluster of silverware laid on top.

  Kitty accepted them, but as she backed out the screen door her eyes were fixed beseechingly on Liam.

  He refused to give her the slightest sign of encouragement.

  “It’s not for my sake at all,” he told Barbara as soon as they were alone. “She’s trying to put one over on you.”

  “Yes, yes … Liam, I don’t want to be intrusive, but I’m wondering if your life can accommodate a teenager.”

  “Well, maybe it can’t,” Liam said. What the hell.

  “You wouldn’t be able to have a person spend the night with you if Kitty were there; you realize that.”

  “Spend the night?”

  “If I had known you were involved with someone, I never would have let Kitty come stay with you in the first place.”

  “I’m not involved with anyone,” he said.

  “You’re not?”

  “No.”

  “Well, the other day it seemed—”

  “Not anymore,” he said.

  “I see,” she said. Then she said, “I’m sorry to hear that.”

  Something in the tone of her voice—so delicate, so tactful—implied that she assumed the breakup was not his own choice. Her face became kind and sorrowful, as if he’d just announced a bereavement.

  “But!” he told her. “As for Kitty! You know, you might have a point. I would probably make a terrible father over the long term.”

  Barbara gave a short laugh.

  “What,” he said.

  “Oh, nothing.”

  “What’s so amusing?”

  “It’s just,” she said, “how you never argue with people’s poor opinions of you. They can say the most negative things—that you’re clueless, that you’re unfeeling—and you say, ‘Yes, well, maybe you’re right.’ If I were you, I’d be devastated!”

  “Really?” Liam asked. He was intrigued. “Yes, well, maybe you’re … Or, rather … Would you be devastated even if you truly did agree with them?”

  “Especially if I agreed with them!” she said. “Are you telling me that you do agree? You believe you’re a bad person?”

  “Oh, not bad in the sense of evil,” Liam said. “But face it: I haven’t exactly covered myself in glory. I just … don’t seem to have the hang of things, somehow. It’s as if I’ve never been entirely present in my own life.”

  She was silent, gazing at him again with that too-kind expression.

  He said, “Do you remember a show on TV that Dean Martin used to host? It must have been back in the seventies; Millie liked to watch it. I can’t think now what it was called.”

  “The Dean Martin Show?” Barbara suggested.

  “Yes, maybe; and he had this running joke about his drinking, remember? Always going on about his drunken binges. And so one night one of the guests was reminiscing about a party they’d been to and Dean Martin asked, ‘Did I have a good time?’”

  Barbara smiled f
aintly, looking not all that amused.

  “Did he have a good time,” Liam said. “Ha!”

  “What’s your point, Liam?”

  “I might ask you the same question,” he told her.

  “You might ask what my point is?”

  “I might ask if I’d had a good time.”

  Barbara wrinkled her forehead.

  “Oh,” Liam said, “never mind.”

  It was a relief to give up, finally. It was a relief to turn away from her and see Kitty approaching—matter-of-fact, straightforward Kitty yanking open the screen door and saying, “Did you decide?”

  “We were just discussing Dean Martin,” Barbara told her drily.

  “Who? But what about me?”

  “Well,” Barbara said. She reflected a moment. Then she said—out of the blue, it seemed to Liam—“I suppose we could give it a try.”

  Kitty said, “Hot dog!”

  “Just conditionally, understand.”

  “I understand!”

  “But if I hear one word about your bending the rules, missy, or giving your father any trouble—”

  “I know, I know,” Kitty said, and she was off, racing toward the front stairs, presumably to go pack.

  Barbara looked over at Liam. “I meant that about the rules,” she told him.

  He nodded. Privately, though, he felt blindsided. What had he gotten himself into?

  As if she guessed his thoughts, Barbara smiled and gave him a tap on the wrist. “Come and have some lunch,” she said.

  He forgot to remind her that he wasn’t hungry. He followed her back through the kitchen and out the screen door.

  On the patio, Jonah had abandoned his chalk and was sitting on the very edge of the chair next to Xanthe. “We saw an animal!” he shouted. “You’ve got an animal in your backyard, Gran! It was either a fox or an anteater.”

  “Oh, I hope it was an anteater,” Barbara said. “I haven’t had one of those before.”

  “It had a long nose or a long tail, one or the other. Where’s Kitty? I have to tell Kitty.”

  “She’ll be here in a minute, sweets. She’s packing.”

  Liam pulled up a chair and sat down next to Jonah. He was directly opposite Xanthe, but Xanthe refused to look at him. “Packing for what?” she asked Barbara.

  “She’s going to stay on with your dad.”

  “Huh?”

  “She’s staying on during the school year. If she behaves herself.”

  Then Xanthe did look at him, openmouthed. She turned back to Barbara and said, “She’s going to live with him?”

  “Why, yes,” Barbara said, but now she sounded doubtful.

  “I cannot believe this,” Xanthe told Liam.

  Liam said, “Pardon?”

  “First you let her stay there all summer. You say, ‘Okay, Kitty, whatever you like. By all means, Kitty. Whatever your heart desires, Kitty.’ Little Miss Princess Kitty lolling about with her deadbeat boyfriend.”

  Liam said, “Yes? And?”

  “When you never let me live with you!” Xanthe cried. “And I was just a child! And you were all I had! I was way younger than Kitty is when you and Barbara split up. You left me behind with a woman who wasn’t even related to me and off you went, forever!”

  Liam felt stunned.

  He said, “Is that what you’ve been mad about?”

  Barbara said, “Oh, Xanthe, I feel related. I’ve always felt you were truly my daughter; you must know I have.”

  “This is not about you, Barbara,” Xanthe said in a gentler tone. “I have no quarrel with you. But him—” And she turned back to Liam.

  “I thought I was doing you a favor,” Liam said.

  “Yeah, right.”

  “You had your two little sisters there, and you seemed so happy, finally, and Barbara was so loving and openhearted and warm.”

  “Why, thank you, Liam,” Barbara said.

  He stopped in mid-breath and glanced at her. She was looking almost bashful. But he needed to concentrate on Xanthe, and so he turned back. He said, “Epictetus says—”

  “Oh, not him again!” Xanthe exploded. “Damn Epictetus!” And she jumped up and began to stack her dishes.

  Liam gave her a moment, and then he started over. In his quietest and most pacifying voice, he said, “Epictetus says that everything has two handles, one by which it can be borne and one by which it cannot. If your brother sins against you, he says, don’t take hold of it by the wrong he did you but by the fact that he’s your brother. That’s how it can be borne.”

  Xanthe made a tssh! sound and clanked her bread plate onto her dinner plate.

  “I’m trying to say I’m sorry, Xanthe,” he said. “I didn’t know. I honestly didn’t realize. Can’t you find it in your heart to forgive me?”

  She snatched up her silverware.

  In desperation, he pushed his chair back and slid forward until he was kneeling on the patio. He could feel the unevenness of the flagstones through the fabric of his trousers; he could feel the ache of misery filling his throat. Xanthe froze, gaping at him, still holding her dishes. “Please,” he said, clasping his hands in front of him. “I can’t bear to know I made such a bad mistake. I can’t endure it. I’m begging you, Xanthe.”

  Jonah said, “Poppy?”

  Xanthe set her dishes down and took a grip on his arm. “For God’s sake, Dad, get up,” she told him. “What on earth! You’re making a fool of yourself!” She pulled him to a standing position and then bent to brush off his knees.

  “Goodness, Liam,” Barbara said mildly. She plucked a leaf from his trousers. All around him, it seemed, there was a flutter of pats and murmurs. “What will you think of next?” Xanthe asked, but she was guiding him back to his chair as she spoke.

  He sank onto the chair feeling exhausted, like a child who had been through a crying spell. He looked sideways at Jonah and forced himself to smile.

  “So,” he said. “Shall we have some lunch?”

  Wide-eyed, Jonah pushed a bowl of potato salad a few inches closer to him.

  “Thank you,” Liam said. He ladled a spoonful onto his plate.

  The two women returned to their seats, but then they just sat watching him.

  “What?” Liam asked them.

  They didn’t answer.

  He chose a deviled egg from a platter and set it on his plate. He reached for a tuna-salad sandwich that had been cut in a dainty triangle.

  It occurred to him that here he was, finally, dining with a couple of Picnic Ladies after all.

  13

  At the window end of the Threes’ room stood a long wooden table that was known as the Texture Table. Every morning as the children came in they headed for the Texture Table first to see what activity had been set up for them. Sometimes they found dishpans of water, and cups and pitchers for pouring. Sometimes they found sand. Often there were canisters of modeling clay, or bins of dried beans and pasta, or plastic shapes, or fingerpaints. Fingerpaints were Liam’s least favorite. He was supposed to monitor the Texture Table while Miss Sarah peeled the newer arrivals away from their mothers, and on fingerpaint days he spent all his time stopping the little boys from laying tiny red and blue handprints up and down the little girls’ dresses, and across the seats of the miniature chairs, and in each other’s hair. It was Liam’s opinion that fingerpaints ought to be abolished.

  Miss Sarah, however, believed that fingerpainting expanded the soul. Miss Sarah was full of such theories. (Overly full, if you asked Liam.) She seemed about twelve years old, and she wore jeans to work, and her round, freckled face generally bore a smudge of ink or chalk or felt-tip pen. She told Liam that fingerpainting was especially beneficial for children who were too fastidious—too “uptight,” as she put it. Most of the uptight ones were girls. They would tug at Liam’s sleeve with tears in their eyes, with looks of outrage on their faces, and say, “Zayda, see what Joshua did?”

  Then Liam would have to assure them that the paints would wash out, after w
hich he would steer Joshua (or Nathan, or Ben) by the shoulders to the other end of the table. “Here, try the tractor,” he would say. “Run the tractor through this puddle of purple and you can make purple tread marks.”

  He never knew ahead of time what the Texture Table would hold, because his hours were eight till three and the next day’s table was not set up until late in the afternoon, after the cleaning staff had come through. So every morning when he arrived, he approached the table feeling mildly curious. After all, it might be a real surprise—something they hadn’t encountered before, a donation from a parent or a local business. Once it was a huge supply of bubble wrap. The children had immediately grasped the possibilities. They had set to work popping, popping bubbles with their little pincer fingers, snap-snap-snap all up and down the table. Even Liam popped a few. There was something very satisfying about it, he found. Then Joshua and his best friend, Danny, conceived a plan to roll up the sheets of wrap and wring them out like dishcloths, popping dozens of bubbles at once, and from there they moved on to setting the rolls on the floor and stamping on them with both feet. “You’re hurting our ears!” the little girls cried, covering their ears with their hands. “Zayda, make them stop!”

  Liam was baffled by the children’s unquestioning trust in him. From the first day of school, it was “I have to pee, Zayda,” and “Zayda, will you fix my ponytail?” No doubt at this age they would trust nearly anyone, but Miss Sarah said it also helped that he didn’t act all fake-chirpy with them. “You talk in a normal grumbly voice,” she said. “Kids like it when grownups don’t try too hard.”

  Though she herself clearly found Liam a bit lacking.

  On Halloween the Texture Table bore pumpkins with their tops cut off, and the children reached in up to their elbows and scooped out fistfuls of seeds and fibers. Then they drew faces on the pumpkins with black markers, because knives, of course, were not allowed.

  At Thanksgiving they had gourds of all shapes and colors and sizes, some smooth and some pebbly and warty. (But there wasn’t a lot you could do with gourds, it soon emerged.)