Ladder of Years Read online

  Delia laughed, and Nat sat back in his chair and grinned at her. “Well,” he said, “don’t let me ramble on. I’m glad we finally got to meet you, Delia. Noah’s told me how much you’ve done for the two of them.”

  She recognized her cue. “It was good to meet you too,” she said, rising.

  “From now on, stop in and have tea whenever you come for Noah, why don’t you?”

  “I’ll do that,” she promised.

  She slid her arms into the coat Binky held for her, and Noah wrangled his jacket on. “Drive carefully, now,” Binky said as she opened the door. Her keyhole neckline showed a teardrop of plump, powdered pink, bisected by the tight crevice between her breasts. Was it that, or was it the memory of Nat’s roguish grin, that made Delia wonder suddenly whether Binky might in fact be his girlfriend?

  Joel told her he had no idea who Binky was. He hadn’t realized she existed, even. “Binky? Binky who?” he asked. “What kind of a name is Binky?”

  They were eating supper in the kitchen, just the two of them. Noah had accepted a last-minute invitation to the Mosses’. At first Delia had contrived to be on her feet most of the time, but finally Joel said, “Sit down, Delia,” in a kindly tone that made her feel he’d seen straight through her. “Tell me how you think Noah’s doing,” he said.

  That took about three seconds. (Noah was doing fine.) Then they had to find a new topic, and so Delia thought to mention Binky.

  “How old is she, would you guess?” Joel asked.

  “Oh, thirty-five, thirty-six …”

  “So: too young to be a fellow resident. And I doubt Nat needs a nurse. What did Noah say about her?”

  “He said she’s just ‘around.’ I asked who she was, and he said, ‘I don’t know; someone who’s just around a lot.’”

  “Hmm.”

  “Well, anyhow,” Delia said. “It’s really none of my business. I can’t think why I brought it up.”

  But then she remembered why, because they were back to an uneasy silence.

  “His wife was a paragon of virtue,” Joel said while he was helping himself to another roll. “Noah’s grandma, that is.”

  “Oh, really?”

  “To hear her tell it.”

  “Oh.”

  “I never could abide that woman. Always interfering. Nudging into our lives. Inquiring after the welfare of her gifts. ‘Do you ever use the such and such?’ ‘How come I never see you in the so-and-so?’”

  Delia laughed.

  “So if this Binky is his mistress,” Joel said—the bald, bold word giving Delia a slight shock—“I say more power to him. He deserves a little happiness.”

  “Well, I didn’t mean—”

  “Why not? He’s only sixty-seven. If it weren’t for those damn flashbacks, he’d be out sailing his boat still.”

  Delia hadn’t known that Nat sailed, but she could easily picture it: his spiky figure all over the deck, everywhere at once.

  “She liked to say she was ‘there’ for people,” Joel was reminiscing. He must be on the subject of Noah’s grandma again. “First person I ever heard say that, though Lord knows it’s grown common enough since. ‘I’m always there for my daughters,’” he mocked. “You want to ask, ‘Where’s that, exactly?’ It’s one of my least favorite terms.”

  Delia hoped she hadn’t used it herself. She was fairly sure she had not.

  “That and ‘survivor,’” Joel said. “Well, unless it’s meant in the literal sense.”

  “Survivor?”

  “Nowadays you’re a survivor if all you did was make it through childhood.”

  “Ah.”

  “And another word I hate is …”

  It was lucky he held so many strong opinions. Delia wouldn’t need to make conversation after all. Instead, she sat watching his mouth, that long, firm, fine-edged mouth with the distinctive notch at the center of the upper lip, and she reflected that for someone so absorbed in questions of language, he certainly didn’t reveal very much.

  ———

  Now when she went to the gourmet food store after dropping Noah off on Wednesday afternoons, she chose some additional item—sour French cornichons, hot-pepper jelly—and paid for it with her own money and brought it to tea at Nat’s. “How did you guess I like such things?” Nat would ask. “Most people come with chocolates. Fruit preserves. Sweet stuff.”

  She didn’t tell him it was because her father, too, had been fond of pickly foods, for something gallant and slightly flirtatious in Nat’s manner suggested he didn’t view himself as all that old. Often he poked fun at Senior City, as if to prove he didn’t really belong there. “House of the Living Dead,” he called it. He claimed to believe that the seagulls drifting above the building were vultures, and he spoke jocularly of the “poor dears” on floor Four. And then there was his romance with Binky.

  For Binky was his girlfriend; Delia couldn’t doubt that. Three times Delia arrived for tea and found her perched on his couch, playing hostess. And the fourth time, when she was missing, Nat found it necessary to explain that she’d been called away at the last minute. Her son had chipped a tooth, he said.

  “Binky has a son?” Delia asked.

  “Two sons, in fact.”

  “I didn’t know that.”

  “So Noah has been doing the honors today.”

  Delia settled on the couch, laying her coat over the arm. She watched Noah pour an unsteady stream of tea.

  “I didn’t even know she was married,” she said.

  She chose her words carefully; she didn’t say had been married, because it could be that Binky was married still. And Nat’s response left her none the wiser. “Oh, yes,” was all he said. “To a dentist.”

  Inspired, she said, “Well, then, the chipped tooth should be no problem.”

  “Correct,” Nat said. He sent her a glint of a look from under his tufted gray eyebrows. Then he relented. “Assuming she doesn’t mind flying her son to an office in Wyoming.”

  “Oh.”

  “They’re divorced.”

  “Oh, I see.”

  “Bitterly divorced,” Nat said with some relish. “Months in court, lawyers and replacement lawyers, forty thousand dollars spent to win five thousand … you get the picture.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that.”

  “She ended up almost penniless, had to take a job in the Senior City gift shop.”

  “She works in the gift shop?”

  “Well, for now.”

  He glanced over at Noah, who was passing around a plate of brownies at a perilous tilt. “Fact is,” Nat said, “Binky and I are getting married.”

  Noah let the plate tilt more sharply. Delia said, “Oh! Congratulations,” and bent to pick a brownie off the rug.

  “Honest?” Noah asked his grandfather.

  “Honest. But don’t mention it to the girls yet, will you? I should have told your mom and your aunts before anyone.”

  “So then will you move out of here?” Noah asked.

  “Afraid not, son.” Nat turned to Delia. “Noah liked my old place better,” he said.

  “The old place had this real cool tree house out back,” Noah told her.

  “However, it did not have an elevator. Or a handgrip above the bathtub. Or a physical-therapy room for ancient codgers.”

  “You’re not an ancient codger!” Noah said.

  “Plus there’s the little detail of my contract with Senior City,” Nat told Delia. “Bit of a problem with the board of directors, as you might imagine. All my life savings are sunk in this apartment, but the minimum age of entrance is sixty-five. Binky’s thirty-eight.”

  “And how about her sons?” Delia asked.

  “Yes, that would have been a poser! Rock music in the cafeteria, skateboards down the halls … However, her sons will stay on with her parents. One is already in college, and the other’s about to go. But even so, the board is having hissy fits, and then a few neighbors are mad at me too, because men are mighty scarce in these par
ts. Plan was, I would marry one of the residents, not some luscious babe in the gift shop.”

  “Well, I think you’ve made the perfect choice,” Delia said.

  She meant it, too. She had developed a liking for Binky, who edged all their conversations with a ruffle of admiring murmurs and encouraging remarks.

  So when Delia stopped by the following week, she made a point of telling Binky that Nat was a lucky man.

  “Well, thank you,” Binky said, bearning.

  “Have you set a date yet?”

  “We’ve talked about maybe June.”

  “Or March,” Nat amended.

  Binky rounded her eyes comically at Delia. March was right around the corner; they were halfway through February. “He has no idea what goes into these things,” she said.

  “Oh, are you planning a big wedding?”

  “Well, not that big, but … My first wedding, I eloped. I was a freshman at Washington College and wore what I’d worn to class that day. So this time I’d like all the trimmings.”

  “I’m going to be best man,” Noah told Delia.

  “You are!”

  “I get to hold the ring.”

  “You’ll come too, won’t you, Delia?” Nat asked.

  “If I’m invited, of course I will.”

  “Oh, you’ll be invited, all right,” Binky said, and she patted Delia’s hand and gave her a dimpled smile.

  But later, riding home, Noah told Delia that Binky had been crying when he got there.

  “Crying! What about?”

  “I don’t know, but her eyes were all red. She pretended she was fine, but I could tell. And then when she was in the kitchen the phone rang and Grandpa shouted out, ‘Don’t answer that!’ and she didn’t. And he didn’t either, just let it ring and ring. So finally I said, ‘Want me to get it?’ but he said, ‘Nah, never mind.’ Said, ‘It’s probably just Dudi.’”

  “Who’s Dudi?”

  “One of my aunts.”

  “Oh.” Delia thought that over. “But why wouldn’t he talk to her?”

  He shrugged. “Beats me,” he said. “You want to watch your speedometer, Delia.”

  “Thanks,” Delia said.

  She’d been issued two tickets in the last three weeks. It was something to do with this open country, she believed. The speed just seemed to inch up on her, and before she knew it she was flying.

  Back in Bay Borough, Joel was already home and waiting to hear the latest. He took a rather gleeful interest in Nat’s wedding plans. “Noah’s going to be best man,” Delia told him as she hung up her coat.

  “No kidding!” He turned to Noah. “Where are you throwing the stag party?”

  “Stag party?”

  “Have you thought out your toasts yet?”

  “Toasts!”

  “Don’t you pay any attention,” Delia told Noah. He was looking worried.

  It occurred to her that she was bound to run into Ellie at the wedding. Scandalous that they hadn’t met before; Delia was in charge of Ellie’s son. What kind of mother entrusted her son to a stranger?

  A couple of weeks before, passing through Nat’s bedroom to use his bathroom, Delia had noticed a color photo of his daughters on the highboy. At least she assumed they were all his daughters—Ellie and three other blondes, linking arms and laughing. Ellie was the most vivid, the one you looked at first. She wore a cream dress splashed with strawberries that matched her strawberry mouth. Her shoes, though, were not very flattering. They were ballerina flats, black ballerina flats, papery and klutzy. They showed the bulges of her toes. They made her ankles look thick.

  Why did Delia find this so gratifying? She had nothing against Ellie; she didn’t even know her. But she bent closer to the photo and spent several moments hunting other flaws. Not that she found them. And not that she would have occasion, anyhow, to point them out to Joel.

  14

  On a Friday morning at the tail end of February—a day so mild and sunny that she would have supposed spring was here, if she hadn’t known the tricky ways of winter—Delia walked to the Young Mister Shop to exchange some pajamas for Noah. (She had bought him a pair like an Orioles uniform, not realizing that for some strange reason, Noah preferred the Phillies.) And then, because it felt so pleasant to be out in nothing heavier than a sweater, she decided to walk to the library and visit with Mrs. Lincoln awhile. So she cut across the square and started up West Street. At the florist’s window she slowed to admire a pot of paper-whites, and at Mr. Pomfret’s window she slid her eyes sideways to check out his new secretary. Rumor had it he was limping along with a niece of his wife’s who couldn’t even type, let alone run a computer. But the way the light hit the glass, Delia would have had to step closer to see inside. All she could make out was her own silhouette and another just behind, both ivy-patterned from the sprawling new plant the niece must have set on the sill. Delia increased her speed and crossed George Street.

  The window display in the Pinchpenny was little girls’ dresses this week; so now the two silhouettes were made up of rosebud prints and plaids. She noticed that the second silhouette was storky and gangling, mostly joints, like an adolescent boy. Like Carroll.

  She turned, and there he was. He looked even more startled than she felt, if that was possible. His expression froze and he drew back sharply, hands thrust into his windbreaker pockets, elbows jutting.

  She said, “Carroll?”

  “What.”

  “Oh, Carroll!” she cried, and the feeling that swept through her was so wrenching, like the grip of some deep, internal fist, that she understood for the first time how terribly much she had missed him. His face might have been her own face, not because it resembled hers (although it did), but because she had absorbed its every detail over the past fifteen years—the sprinkle of starry freckles across his delicate nose, the way the shadows beneath his eyes would darken at fraught moments. (Right now they were almost purple.) He raised his chin defiantly, and so at the very last second she merely reached out to lay a hand on his arm instead of kissing him. She said, “I’m so happy to see you! How’d you get here?”

  “I had a ride.”

  She had forgotten that his voice had changed. She had to adjust all over again. “And what are you doing on West Street?” she asked.

  “I tried your boardinghouse first, but no one answered, and then I happened to see you crossing the square.”

  He must not have told the family he was coming, therefore. (She had sent Eliza her new address weeks ago.) She said, “Is something wrong at home? Are you all right? It’s a school day!”

  “Everything’s fine,” he said.

  He was trying, unobtrusively, to step out from under her hand. He was darting embarrassed glances at passersby. Much as she hated to, she let go of him. She said, “Well, let’s … would you like some lunch?”

  “Lunch? I just had breakfast.”

  Yes, it was morning still, wasn’t it. She felt dizzy and disoriented, almost drunk. “A Coke or something, then,” she said.

  “Okay.”

  Turning him in the direction of Rick-Rack’s gave her an excuse to touch him again. She loved that hard tendon at the inside crook of his arm. Oh, she might have known it would be Carroll who finally came for her! (Her most attached child, when all was said and done—her most loving, her closest. Although she would probably have thought the same if it had been either of the other two.)

  “There’s so much you have to bring me up-to-date on,” she told him. “How’s tenth grade?”

  He shrugged.

  “Has your father had any more chest pains?”

  “Not that I know of.”

  “Ramsay and Susie all right?”

  “Sure.”

  Then what is it? she wanted to ask, but she didn’t. Already she was falling back into the veiled, duplicitous manner required for teenage offspring. She led him west on George Street, very nearly holding her breath. “Is Ramsay still seeing that divorcée person? That Velma?” she said.<
br />
  Another shrug. Obviously, he was.

  “And how about Susie?”

  “How about her.”

  “Has she figured out yet what she’ll do after graduation?”

  “Huh?” he said, looking toward a Bon Jovi poster in the record store.

  He was as frustrating as ever, and he hadn’t lost that habit of ostentatiously holding back a yawn each time he spoke. She forced herself to be patient. She steered him past Shearson Liquors, past Brent Hardware, and through the door of Rick-Rack’s.

  “Dee-babe!” Rick hailed her, lowering his copy of Sports Illustrated. She would have known from his greeting alone that his father-in-law was sitting at the counter. (Rick always put on a display for Mr. Bragg.) “Who’s that you got with you?” he asked.

  “This is my son Carroll.” She told Carroll, “This is Rick Rackley.”

  “Hey, your son!” Rick said. “How about that!”

  Carroll looked dazed. Delia felt a prickle of annoyance. Couldn’t he at least act civil? “Let’s sit in a booth,” she said brusquely.

  Teensy was nowhere in sight, so Delia took it upon herself to grab two menus from the pile on a stool. As soon as they were seated, she passed one to Carroll. “I know it’s early,” she said, “but you might want to try the pork barbecue sandwich. It’s the North Carolina kind, not a bit sweet or—”

  “Mom,” Carroll whispered.

  “What.”

  “Mom. Is that Rick-Rack?”

  “What?”

  “Rick Rackley, the football player?”

  “Well, yes, I think so.”

  Carroll gaped at Rick, who was topping off his father-in-law’s mug of coffee. He turned back to Delia and whispered, “You know Rick-Rack in person? Rick-Rack knows you?”

  This was working out better than she could have hoped. She said, “Yes, certainly,” in an airy tone, and then, showing off, she called, “Where’s Teensy got to, Rick?”

  “She’s over at House of Hair,” he said, setting the coffeepot back on the burner. “You-all going to have to shout your order direct to me.”

  “Well, is it too early to ask for pork barbecue?”