Ladder of Years Page 26

  “I’m sorry,” she had told them, when finally sheer embarrassment had sobered her. “I’m so sorry, really I can’t think what—”

  At which point, the second couple arrived. “Why, here you are!” Sam had cried in relief. “Hon, these are my oldest friends, Frank and Mia Mewmew.”

  Oh, Lord.

  But Sam had been very understanding. After the party, he had drawn her into his arms and told her, speaking warmly into the curls on top of her head, that these things could happen to anyone.

  How young he’d been, back then! But Delia hadn’t realized. To her he had seemed fully formed, immune to doubt, this unassailably self-possessed man who had all but arrived on a white horse to save her from eternal daughterhood. Around his eyes faint puckers were already evident, and she had found them both appealing and alarming. If he dies first I don’t want to go on living, she had thought. I’ll find something in Daddy’s office cabinet that’s deadly poison. In those days, she could say such things, not having had the children yet. She used to picture all sorts of catastrophes, in those days. Well, later too, to be honest. Oh, she’d always been a fearful kind of person, full of hunches and forebodings. But look what happened: the night of his chest pains, she hadn’t felt the slightest premonition. She had sat there reading Luanda’s Lover, dumb as a post. Then the phone rang.

  Although the news had not come as a shock, certainly. Listening to the nurse’s diplomatic wording, she had thought, Ah, yes, of course, while a dank, heavy sense of confirmation had solidified inside her. First Daddy, and now Sam. He would die and they would bury him in Cow Hill Cemetery and he would lie there alone till Delia crept up to join him, as on those nights when she stayed awake watching some silly movie and then climbed the stairs afterward and slipped between the covers and laid one arm lightly across his chest while he went on sleeping.

  She sat against her headboard, jostling the cat, and switched on the clock radio. They were playing jazz, at this hour. Lots of lonesome clarinets and plinkety-plonk pianos, and after every piece the announcer stated the place it was recorded and the date. A New York bar on an August night in 1955. A hotel in Chicago, New Year’s Eve, 1949. Delia wondered how humans could bear to live in a world where the passage of time held so much power.

  Nat and Binky were not going to have a June wedding after all. They moved the date up to a Saturday in March. Nat said he had exercised his seniority. “I used your basic how-much-longer-have-I-got approach,” he confided to Noah and Delia. “Your take-pity-on-an-old-geezer approach.”

  Binky adapted cheerfully to the change in plans. “This way,” she told Delia, “I’m Mrs. Nathaniel Moffat three months sooner, that’s all. So what if we skimp some on the frills? They’re not such a very big deal.” The two of them were alone in Nat’s kitchen when she said this, leafing through cookbooks. (The wedding cake was one of the frills she was skimping on.) “And I do mean to be Mrs. Moffat,” she said. “None of this ‘Ms.’ business for me! He’s the first man I’ve ever known who’s just totally, totally loved me.” Then the skin around her eyes grew pink, as if she might start crying, and she turned quickly back to her cookbook.

  “In that case, you ought to marry him this instant,” Delia said.

  “Well, I wish his daughters agreed,” Binky said. “You heard Dudi cut all her hair off.”

  “Cut her hair off?”

  “Threw a tantrum when Nat announced our engagement; ran into his bathroom, grabbed up these little scissors he trims his beard with and cut every bit of her hair off.”

  “Goodness,” Delia said.

  “And Pat and Donna refuse to come to the wedding, and when I asked Ellie to be an attendant—purely out of niceness; I’ve already got my sister and my nieces—she said maybe she wasn’t coming either, she couldn’t be sure, she might or might not, so she’d better say no. Then she went and told Nat he ought to have his lawyer draw up a prenuptial agreement. I guess they all think I’m some kind of … gold digger. It doesn’t occur to them what an insult that is to their father, not to believe a woman might love him for his own self.”

  “They’re just a little surprised,” Delia said. “They’ll get over it.”

  Binky shook her head, smoothing a cookbook page with her palm. “They phone him and the very first thing, ‘Is she around?’ they ask. ‘She,’ they call me; they never use my name if they can help it. They hardly ever come to visit. Donna says it’s because I’m always here. She says I don’t allow them any time alone with him, but I try to; it’s just that—”

  She broke off, blushing, and Delia wondered why until Binky mumbled the end of her sentence. “I do sort of, kind of like, live here now,” she said.

  “Well, of course,” Delia hastened to say. “What do they expect?”

  “Oh, well, I didn’t start out to bore you with all my troubles,” Binky said. “You know why I like to talk to you, Delia? You never interrupt with your experiences. No wonder you’re so popular!”

  “I’m so popular?”

  “Don’t be modest. Noah’s told us how you’re friends with half of Bay Borough.”

  “Good grief! I hardly know anyone,” Delia said.

  Although she was startled to see how her friends did add up, now that she stopped to count.

  “You’re not just marking time while I’m speaking,” Binky said. “Not jiggling your foot till you get a chance to jump in with your life history.”

  “Well, it isn’t as if there’s a whole lot I could jump in with,” Delia told her.

  Last week at supper, Joel had asked what part of Baltimore Delia hailed from. “Oh,” she had said, “here and there,” and he had dropped the subject—or so she’d thought. But a minute later he had said, “Strange, isn’t it? A person who doesn’t discuss her past is automatically assumed to have a past, I mean more of a past than usual, something rich and exotic.”

  “Is that right,” she had said neutrally. It had struck her as an interesting theory; she had considered it until, noticing the silence, she looked up and found his eyes on her. “What?” she had asked.

  “Oh, nothing.”

  Then Noah had reached between them for the salt—a disruptive swoop, a lunge forward on two legs of his chair—and the moment had passed.

  Driving to the wedding, Delia kept glancing in the rearview mirror. She was afraid she might have put on too much makeup. “What do you think of my lipstick?” she asked Noah.

  “It’s okay,” he said without looking.

  He had worries of his own. Periodically he wriggled his fingers between the buttons of his winter jacket, checking for the ring in his shirt pocket.

  “Are you sure it’s not too heavy?” she asked him.

  “Hmm?”

  “My lipstick, Noah.”

  “Nah, it’s okay.”

  “You look nice,” she said.

  “Well, I don’t know why I had to get so dressed up.”

  “Dressed up! You call a shirt and no tie dressed up!”

  “I look like one of those yo-yos who sing in the school chorus.”

  “You should just be thankful Nat didn’t make you buy a suit,” she told him.

  “And what if I drop the ring? You know my hand will shake. I’ll drop the ring and it will clink real loud and roll across the floor and fall into one of those grate things, clang-ang-ang!, and we’ll never get it back again.”

  “I wish I had a fancier outfit,” Delia said. “I look like an old-maid aunt or something.” Under her coat she was wearing her gray pinstripe. “Or at least a necklace or a locket or a string of beads.”

  “You’re okay.”

  In her jewelry box back in Baltimore was a four-strand pearl choker. Fake, of course, but it would have been perfect with the pinstripe.

  How long before she could say that her Baltimore things would have gone out of fashion anyway, or fallen apart or been used up even if she’d stayed? When would the things she had here become her real things?

  She flicked her turn signal and sw
erved onto Highway 50. “U-u-urch!” Noah squealed, grabbing his door handle.

  “Sorry.” She slowed. “So,” she said. “I guess I get to meet your mother, finally.”

  “Yup.”

  “She did decide to come, didn’t she?”

  “Last I heard she did.”

  Recently, Delia had found the Boardwalk Bulletin profile buried in the back of Noah’s closet. (Who’s the gorgeous new weather wench on WKMD? the article began.) But to look at Noah now, you wouldn’t guess he spared his mother a thought. He was yawning and gazing out his window at the remains of last week’s freak snowstorm. The woods were a scrawl of black against white, like an arty photograph.

  A snow warning or a hurricane watch can be a matter of life and death, Ellie had told her interviewer. It gives me a lot of warm fuzzies to know I’m making a contribution to my community.

  Delia wondered what Joel would have said about “warm fuzzies.”

  The red-brick cube of Senior City rose before them. Delia signaled and turned into the parking lot. “What if they want me to make a speech?” Noah was asking.

  “You won’t have to make a speech.”

  “Or what if somebody faints or something? I’m supposed to assist.”

  “Believe me,” Delia said, “this will be a breeze.”

  They got out of the car and crossed the lot, which was not as well plowed as it might have been. Delia, who didn’t own boots, had to hang on to Noah’s arm as they picked their way around icy spots. “See?” she told him. “Already you’re assisting!”

  His arm was thin but fiercely strong, like a band of steel.

  In the lobby, they asked an old man the way to the chapel. “Straight ahead, then left at the end of the hall,” he said. “You must be going to the wedding.”

  They nodded.

  “Well, I’ll be along directly; wouldn’t miss it. Everyone in the building’s been invited, you know.”

  Delia thanked him, and they proceeded down the hall. Passing the elevators, with their gleaming metal doors, she checked her reflection. It seemed to her she looked pale and draggled, her coat a dreary, wilted shape clinging too low on her shins.

  Clothes are my biggest weakness, Ellie had told Boardwalk Bulletin. But luckily my figures the kind that everything hangs really well on, so I don’t have to spend a fortune to look good.

  At the end of the hall they turned left and entered the side door of a small chapel, carpeted wall to wall in beige and lined with sleek beige pews. Already the pews were nearly filled with elderly women and three or four widely spaced men. Most of the women wore stylish dresses; a few wore bathrobes. Several people in wheelchairs formed an extra row at the rear. Delia and Noah stood gazing about until a dark young boy in a suit approached and offered Delia his arm. “We’re seating everyone helter-skelter,” he told her. “Wherever we can find room.”

  “Well, Noah here won’t need a seat. He’s the best man.”

  “Hey there, Noah. I’m Peter. Son of the bride,” the boy said. He had not inherited Binky’s small, pursed features or her rosy coloring; just her easy manner of talking to people. He told Noah, “You’re supposed to go through that door up front. Your grandpa’s already waiting.”

  Noah sent Delia one last imploring glance, and she grinned at him and brushed his hair off his forehead. “Good luck,” she said.

  Then she let Peter escort her to one of the few remaining seats, between a woman in a brown-and-white dress and an old man fiddling with his hearing aid. The old man had the aisle seat and merely moved his bony knees to one side so she could get past. It was the woman who helped her out of her coat. “Isn’t this exciting?” she asked Delia. She had a freckled, finely wrinkled face lit with a gracious expression, and a crimp of orange-sherbet hair that must once have been red. “It’s our very first Senior City wedding! We don’t count Paul and Ginny Mellors; they eloped. Are you a relation?”

  “Just a friend.”

  “The board is in a tizzy, I can tell you. They want to charge Binky higher rates because she’s underage. Otherwise the young folks will be flooding in, they claim, on account of our security and our managed health care. My name’s Aileen, by the way.”

  “I’m Delia.”

  “It’s nice to meet you, Delia. What I say is, hell’s bells, Binky’s such a lambie-pie I think we ought to pay her! She’ll be a huge addition to our Sunday Socials.”

  Just then, Ellie appeared at the side entrance.

  Delia knew her immediately—the tinsel hair, the pulpy red mouth. She wore a long, cream-colored coat just one shade off from her skin, and she stood poised, looking somehow stiller than ordinary women, until an usher approached. This was not Peter but his brother, evidently—someone equally dark but more stockily built. Ellie took his arm and walked toward the front, the hem of her coat swaying classily. Where would she find a seat, though? All the pews were jam-packed. The usher seemed to be informing her of this; she listened, pooching her lips and frowning. They were crossing in front of the pulpit now. On the other side, several people—mostly kitchen staff, in aprons—lined the wall, and Ellie was deposited in their midst. What a pity, Delia thought, that the one daughter who’d shown up should have to stand!

  But no, another daughter was here as well—a wan, wraithlike woman who rose from her seat and edged past a row of knees to join Ellie. The second woman had fair hair too, but it was cut so brutally short that in places it seemed scraped off her skull. Behind cupped fingers, she whispered something to Ellie. Then they both turned and looked straight at Delia.

  Guiltily, Delia lowered her eyes. She should have smiled at the two of them, but instead she pretended to be absorbed in conversation with Aileen. “That’s Mary Lou Simms playing the organ,” Aileen was saying. Delia hadn’t noticed there was an organ, but now she heard a wispy rendition of “Blessed Assurance.” From the old man on her right came a piercing whistle, something to do with his hearing aid. “Oh, and there’s Reverend Merrill,” Aileen said. “Isn’t he striking?”

  Reverend Merrill was not all that striking in Delia’s opinion, but he wore his black robe with a certain flair. He strode toward the pulpit, swinging a Bible in one hand. Behind him came Nat and Noah. Nat held himself rigidly erect; he was doing without his cane today. Noah was getting so tall, Delia realized. Now that he took his position next to Nat, she could see how he had shot up, just in the few months she’d known him.

  The organ slithered into the “Wedding March.” Everyone looked toward the rear.

  First came a stouter, plainer version of Binky—the matron of honor, in a wide blue gown, with square-cut gray hair and a broad, pleasant face. Then Binky herself, in white. She looked lovely. She was carrying pink roses and beaming joyously as she floated down the aisle. Her two nieces, as bulky as their mother, plodded behind with fistfuls of her train.

  “Oh, what a vision!” Aileen said. “Did you ever see anything sweeter?” Delia’s other seatmate was gnawing open a blister pack of batteries. Over by the wall, Ellie’s white face blazed fixedly, but it didn’t seem to be Binky she was watching.

  The bridal procession reached the front, and Nat, proudly stern, gave Binky his arm and turned toward the minister.

  It was a very brief ceremony—just the vows and the exchange of rings. Noah did fine. He produced the ring on cue, and he didn’t drop it. But all of this Delia observed with only part of her attention, while with another part—her tensed, wary, innermost part—she was conscious every moment of Ellie Miller’s unwavering stare in her direction.

  All the guests were invited to Nat’s apartment afterward—anybody who wanted to come. There was a great press of frail bodies milling out of the chapel. Delia offered support to arms as withered and soft as day-old balloons. She packed mothball-smelling woolens into elevators, and then, upstairs, she settled more women than she would have thought possible onto the swampy cushions of Nat’s couch. They were all looking forward to Binky’s cake. It seemed they preferred homemade, and were glad
she hadn’t had time to order the towering pagoda she had dreamed of. “We get store-bought in the cafeteria all the time,” one woman told Delia. “Sent over from Brinhart’s Bakery. Tastes like Band-Aids.”

  Delia looked for Ellie but didn’t see her, or Dudi either. Although in this crush, people were easily missed.

  She threaded her way toward Binky, who was cutting squares of sheet cake, with her train looped over her arm. “Do you think it went all right?” Binky asked. Her headpiece of pink roses slanted toward one ear like a rakish halo.

  “It went perfectly,” Delia said. She started distributing the cake. Nat, meanwhile, was pouring champagne, which he sent around with Binky’s two sons and her nieces. They ran out of stemware and had to open a pack of disposable tumblers.

  When everyone was served, Nat proposed a toast. “To my beautiful, beautiful bride,” he said, and he made a little speech about how life was not a straight line—either downward or upward, either one—but something more irregular, a zigzag or a corkscrew or sometimes a scribble. “And sometimes,” he said, “you get to what you thought was the end and you find it’s a whole new beginning.” He raised his glass toward Binky, and his eyes were suspiciously shiny.