Ladder of Years Page 23

  A few minutes before six, she took the remote control from the end table and clicked the TV on. WKMD had a one-eyed pirate advertising choice waterfront lots. Then a housewife spraying a room with aerosol. Then a deskful of newscasters—a bearded black man, a pink-faced white man, and a glamorous blonde in a business suit. Delia thought at first the blonde was Ellie Miller, till the black man called her Doris. Doris told about a bank heist in Ocean City. The robber had been dressed as Santa Claus, she said. She spoke in such a way that her lipstick never came in contact with her teeth.

  Delia was disconcerted by the speed at which everything moved. She had lost the knack of watching television, it seemed. She felt her eyes had experienced an overload, and during the next round of commercials she looked away for awhile.

  “Now here’s Ellie with the weather,” the bearded man said. “So tell us, Ellie, any chance of a white Christmas?”

  “Not a prayer, Dave,” Ellie told him in that sporty, bosom-buddy tone that TV people affect. Her face, though, didn’t match her voice. It was too soft, too open—a pretty face with a large red mouth, surprised blue eyes, and circlets of pink rouge. Her hair was silvery fluff. Her white sweater, a scoop-necked angora, seemed uncertain around the edges.

  Delia rose and went to stand in front of the TV. Ellie slid weather maps along an aluminum groove. Somewhere behind that painted backdrop of marsh and improbable cattails, Noah would be sitting, but at the moment Delia wasn’t thinking of Noah. She was memorizing Ellie, trying to see what lay beneath her sky-blue, doll-like stare.

  “Continued cold … gale-force winds …” Delia listened with her head cocked, her fingertips supporting her cheek.

  The weather was followed by sports, and Delia turned and wandered out of the family room and through the kitchen, down the hall to the master bedroom. She opened the closet door and studied the clothes hanging inside. Mr. Miller’s suits straggled across the rod toward the empty space at the right. The shelf above was empty on the right as well. It appeared that Ellie, unlike Rosemary Bly-Brice, had taken everything with her when she went. Even so, Delia next pulled out each drawer in Ellie’s bureau. All she found was a button, trailing a wisp of blue thread.

  Back in the family room, the TV was showing the national news. It was months since she had watched the news, but she could see she hadn’t missed anything: the planet was still hurtling toward disaster. She switched the TV off in midsentence and went to make her supper.

  When she woke the next morning, the sun was out. Something about the hard, bright light told her it was very cold. Also, George lay nestled close under her arm, which he wouldn’t do in warmer weather.

  Not until she was drinking her tea did she consider the fact that it was Christmas. Christmas, all by herself! She supposed that would strike most people as tragic, but to her the prospect was enjoyable. She liked carrying her cup through the silent house, still wearing her nightgown and beach robe, humming a snatch of “We Three Kings” with no one to hear her. In Noah’s room she rooted through the top drawer for a pair of woolen socks to wear as slippers. Then she remembered he’d left her a gift, and she pulled it down from his closet shelf—a squarish shape wrapped in red foil. The tag read, Because you don’t have house-type clothes, which puzzled her till she tore off the foil and saw a canvas carpenter’s apron with pockets across the front. She smiled and slipped the neck strap over her head. Till now she’d been using the cocktail apron she’d found among the dish towels, which protected no more than the laps of her dresses.

  Her gift to Noah had been a survival kit from Kemp’s Kamping Store. Boys seemed to go for such things. And this kit was so ingenious—hardly bigger than a credit card, with streamlined foldout gadgets, including a magnifying lens for starting fires.

  She fed George, and then she dressed and settled on the couch again with Doctor Zhivago. Periodically, she looked up from the book and let her eyes travel around the room. Wintry sunlight, almost white, fell across the carpet. The cat was giving himself a bath in a square of sunlight on the blue armchair. Everything had a pleasantly shallow look, like a painting.

  At home they must be opening their presents now. It was nothing like the old days, when they used to rise before dawn. Now they ambled downstairs in midmorning, and they passed out presents decorously, one person at a time. Then for dinner they always had goose, a contribution from one of Sam’s patients who hunted. For dessert, plum pudding with hard sauce, and they would complain it was too heavy but eat it anyhow and spend the rest of the afternoon moaning and clutching their stomachs.

  Every so often it took her breath away to realize how easily her family had accepted her leaving.

  Although it did seem acceptable, come to think of it. It seemed almost inevitable. Almost … foreordained. In retrospect she saw all the events of the past year—her father’s death, Sam’s illness, Adrian’s arrival—as waves that had rolled her forward, one wave after another, closer and closer together. Not sideways, after all, but forward, for now she thought that her move to the Millers’ must surely represent some kind of progress.

  She had imagined that her holiday would not last nearly long enough, but when Joel and Noah turned into the driveway at dusk, she was already watching at the window. She dropped the curtain as soon as she saw the headlights, and she rushed to open the door and welcome them home.

  13

  Once a week, generally on Wednesday afternoons, Delia drove Noah a few miles west on Highway 50 to visit his grandfather. The old man lived in a place called Senior City—four stories of new red brick on the edge of a marshy golf course. Delia would pull up in the U-shaped drive, let Noah out, and leave, maneuvering past a fleet of gigantic Buicks and Cadillacs. She came back to collect him at the front door an hour later. It was an inconvenient length of time, just slightly too short to make returning to Bay Borough worth her while, and so she formed the habit of heading for a nearby shopping center. There she browsed in a bookstore, or picked up some treat for supper at the gourmet food store.

  She was dropping Noah off one Wednesday in mid-January, when he announced that she should come in with him. “Me? What for?” she asked.

  “Grandpa wants to see you.”

  “Well, but …”

  She glanced down. Beneath her coat she was wearing a housedress, a dark cotton print she had bought at an after-Christmas sale. “How about next week?” she suggested.

  “He asked me to bring you today. I forgot.”

  She pulled into one of the visitors’ parking slots. “If you’d warned me, I would have dressed up,” she said.

  “It’s only Grandpa.”

  “I look a mess! What’s his name?”

  “Nat.”

  “I meant his last name,” she said, getting out of the car. Years of experience had taught her not to rely on children’s formal introductions. “I have to call him Mister something.”

  “Everybody just says Nat.”

  She gave up and followed Noah past a row of Handicapped license plates. “Does he want to see me for any particular reason?” she asked.

  “He says he doesn’t know who to picture when I talk about you.”

  They approached the double doors, which slid open to admit them. The lobby was carpeted with some nubby, hard substance, probably to accommodate wheelchairs. It made a winching sound beneath their feet. On their right was a glassed-in gift shop, and through an entrance at their left Delia glimpsed a cafeteria, deserted at this hour but still giving off that unmistakable steamed-vegetable smell. Several old women waited in front of the elevators. One sat in a motorized cart, and two leaned on walkers. This was like visiting a war zone, Delia thought. But the women were elegantly coiffed and dressed, and at the sight of Noah their faces lit up in smiles. Valiant smiles, they seemed to Delia. She was familiar with old people’s tribulations, having observed Sam’s patients for so long.

  The elevator opened to expose a slim, blue-haired old woman in a designer dress. “Sorry!” she caroled. “I’m goin
g down.”

  “You are down, Pooky,” the woman on the cart said. “This is the bottom floor.”

  “Well, you’re welcome to come along for the ride, but I’ve pressed One, I regret to say.”

  “This is One, Pooky.”

  The others didn’t bother to argue. They entered laboriously, most of them clinging to various surfaces for support. Noah and Delia came last. The door closed behind them, and they began rising. Meanwhile everyone beamed at Noah—even Pooky, who seemed unfazed that they were not, in fact, going down. At the second floor, a woman with a shopping bag got off. At the third floor, Noah said, “This is us,” and he and Delia stepped into a long corridor. Several women followed, with metallic clanking sounds and a whirring of wheels. Pooky, however, remained on board, gazing contentedly straight ahead as the elevator door slid shut.

  “She rides up and down all day sometimes,” Noah told Delia.

  Nothing here seemed any different from a standard apartment building, except for the handrails that ran along both walls. Blond flush doors appeared at intervals, each with a peephole at eye level. Noah stopped at the fourth door on the right. Nathaniel A. Moffat, Photographer, a business card read, with a Cambridge, Maryland, street address crossed out. When Noah pressed the doorbell, a single golden note sounded from within.

  “Is that my favorite grandson?” a man shouted.

  “Yes, it is,” Noah called back.

  “It’s his only grandson,” he told Delia with a giggle.

  The door opened, but instead of the old man Delia had expected, a short, chunky woman stood smiling at them. She could not have been out of her thirties. She had a round apricot of a face and pink-tinted curls, and she wore an orange sweater-dress with a keyhole neckline. Her shoes were orange too—tiny, open-toed pumps, as Delia found when she checked, reflexively, for nurse shoes to explain the woman’s presence. “Hi! I’m Binky,” she told Delia. “Hey there, Noah. Come on in.”

  The living room they entered must have been as modern as the rest of the building, but Delia couldn’t see beyond the furniture, which was dark and tangled, ornate, ponderously antique. Also, there was far too much of it, set far too close together, as if it had once filled several larger rooms. For a moment Delia had trouble locating Noah’s grandfather. He was rising from the depths of a maroon velvet chair with viny arms. A four-pronged metal cane stood next to him, but he moved forward on his own to shake her hand. “You’re Delia,” he said. “I’m Nat.”

  He was one of those men who look better old, probably, than they ever did young—clipped white beard, ruddy face, and a lean, energetic body. He wore a tweed sports coat and gray trousers. His handshake was muscular and brisk.

  “Thank you for coming,” he told her. “I wanted to get a look at this person my grandson’s so taken with.”

  “Well, thank you for inviting me.”

  “Won’t you give Binky your coat?”

  Delia was about to tell him she would keep her coat, she could only stay a second; but then she saw that the table in front of the couch was laid for tea. There were plates of cakes, four china cups and saucers, and a teapot already steeping in a swaddling of ivory linen. Thank goodness Noah had remembered she was invited.

  She handed her coat to Binky and then sat where Nat indicated, at one end of the couch. Nat reclaimed his chair, and Noah took a seat in the little rocker next to him. Binky, when she returned from the coat closet, settled on the other end of the couch and bent forward to unwrap the teapot.

  “Noah always likes mint instead of plain,” she told Delia. “I hope you don’t mind.”

  “Not at all.”

  Noah had this tea party every time he came here, then? Delia had imagined he was, oh, playing checkers or something. She looked over at his grandfather, who nodded gravely.

  “Noah’s been taking tea with me since the days when he drank from a training mug,” he told her. “He’s the only boy in the family! We men have to stick together.”

  Binky handed Delia her cup and said, “So how do you like keeping house for Noah’s father, Delia?”

  “Oh, very much,” Delia said.

  “Joel’s a good man,” Nat said placidly. “I make it a point not to choose sides in my daughters’ domestic disputes,” he told Delia. “Back when they were wee little girls, I swore an oath to myself I would approve of whoever they married.”

  Enough of a pause hung after his words so that Delia felt pushed to ask, “And do you?”

  “Oh, absolutely,” he said. His chuckle, filtered through his beard, had a wheezy sound. “I love my sons-in-law to death! And they think I’m just wonderful.”

  “Well, you are wonderful,” Binky told him staunchly.

  He bowed from the waist. “Thank you, madam.”

  “Maybe not quite as wonderful as they imagine, mind you …”

  He grimaced at her, and she gave Delia a mischievous wink.

  Was this Binky a paid companion? Was she one of the daughters? But her merry face bore no resemblance to Nat’s. And she didn’t seem all that connected to his grandson. “Have some butter,” she was telling Noah, not noticing he had nothing to put it on.

  “Have some low-cholesterol vegetable-oil spread,” Nat corrected her. “First I wolf down my I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter,” he told Delia, “and then I go wash my hair in Gee, Your Hair Smells Terrific.”

  Delia found this remark mystifying, but Noah tittered. His grandfather glanced over at him; his lips twitched as if he were trying not to smile. Then he turned back to Delia. “You’re from Baltimore, I hear.”

  “Yes,” she said.

  “Got family there?”

  “Some.”

  He raised his eyebrows, but she offered nothing further.

  “Ninety percent of the people in this building come from Baltimore,” he said finally.

  “They do?”

  “Rich folks, retiring to the Eastern Shore. Roland Park and Guilford folks.”

  Delia kept her face blank, giving no sign she had ever heard of Roland Park or Guilford.

  “You surely don’t suppose all those chichi ladies are locals,” he said. “Lord, no. I wouldn’t be here myself if I hadn’t married a Murray. That’s Murray as in Murray Crab Spice. You think a two-bit, hole-in-the-wall photographer could afford these exorbitant prices?”

  “They’re going to raise the rates again in July, I hear,” Binky told him.

  Delia was looking around the room. The mention of photography had alerted her to the pictures hanging everywhere—large black-and-white photos, professionally framed. “Are these your work?” she asked him.

  “These? If only.”

  He stood, this time reaching for his cane. “These were taken by the masters,” he said, stumping over to a study of a voluptuous green pepper. “Edward Weston, Margaret Bourke-White …” He pivoted to inspect the picture at his left—factory chimneys, lined up like notes of music. “Me, I photographed brides,” he said. “Forty-two years of brides. Few golden-anniversary couples thrown in from time to time. Then I started getting my, what I call, flashbacks.” He gave a downward jab with his beard. Delia thought at first he was indicating the rug. “Old boyhood polio came bouncing back on me,” he said. “Thelma—that was my wife—she’d passed on by then, but she had put our names on the waiting list when they first drew up the plans for Senior City. Just why, I couldn’t tell you, since she refused to budge from our big old house long after the girls were grown and gone. She always said, what if they wanted to come back for any reason? And come back they did, you know they did: all four of them rushing home at every minor crisis, just because of the very fact they had a home to rush to, if you want my honest opinion. ‘Lord God, Thel,’ I told her, ‘we can’t be rearing those girls for all time! Look at how cats do,’ I told her. ‘Raise up their kittens, wean them, don’t know who the hell they are when they meet them in the alley a few months later. You think humans should be any different?’”

  “Well, of course they sh
ould!” Binky protested, and she and Delia exchanged a smile.

  But Nat hissed derisively behind his beard. “Hogwash,” he told Noah. Noah merely licked a dab of frosting from his thumb. “In any event,” Nat said, “I started getting these flashbacks. Times the one leg would clean give out on me, along about the end of day. Reached the point where I barely made it up the stairs some nights; I knew I couldn’t go on living where I was. So I phoned the people here and said, ‘Listen,’ I said, ‘didn’t my wife put our names on your waiting list once upon a time?’ And that’s how I happened to end up in Senior City. Senior City: God. Abominable name.”

  “It seems very … well-organized, though,” Delia said.

  “Precisely. Organized. That’s the word!” He spun around (there was something explosive, barely contained, about even his most painful movements) and returned to his chair. “Like files in a filing cabinet,” he said, reseating himself by degrees. “We’re organized on the vertical. Feebler we get, higher up we live. Floor below this one is the hale-and-hearty. Some people there go to work still, or clip their coupons or whatever it is they do; use the golf course and the Ping-Pong tables, travel south for Christmas. This floor here is for the moderately, er, challenged. Those of us who need wheelchair-height counters or perhaps a little help coping. Fourth floor is total care. Nurses, beds with railings … Everybody hopes to die before they’re sent to Four.”

  “Oh, they do not!” Binky said indignantly. “It’s lovely up on Four! Have a cupcake, Noah.”

  “‘Lovely’ isn’t the word that first comes to my mind,” Nat told Delia. “Not that I don’t applaud Senior City in theory, understand. It’s certainly preferable to burdening your children. But something about the whole setup strikes me as uncomfortably, shall we say, symbolic. See, I’ve always pictured life as one of those ladders you find on playground sliding boards—a sort of ladder of years where you climb higher and higher, and then, oops!, you fall over the edge and others move up behind you. I keep asking myself: couldn’t Thelma have found us a place with a few more levels to it?”