Ladder of Years Read online

  In front of the Maxwells’ house, she parked. She turned off the headlights but left the engine and the heater on. “Aren’t you coming in?” Sam asked.

  “I’ll wait in the car.”

  “You’ll freeze!”

  “I’m not dressed for company.”

  “Come in, Dee. The Maxwells don’t care how you’re dressed.”

  He was right, she supposed. (And the heater hadn’t even started heating yet.) She took the keys from the ignition and slid out of the car to follow him up the front walk, toward the broad, columned house where those two lone Maxwells must rattle around like dice in a cup. All the windows were blazing, and the inner door stood open. Mr. Maxwell waited just inside, a stooped, bulky figure fumbling to unhook the screen as they crossed the porch.

  “Dr. Grinstead!” he said. “Thank you so much for coming. And Delia too. Hello, dear.”

  He wore food-stained trousers belted just beneath his armpits, and a frayed gray cardigan over a T-shirt. (He used to be such a natty dresser.) Without a pause, he turned to lead Sam toward the carpeted stairs. “It breaks my heart to see her this way,” he said as they started the climb. “I’d suffer in her stead, if I could.”

  Delia watched after them from the foyer, and when they were out of sight she sat down on one of the two antique chairs that flanked a highboy. She sat cautiously; for all she knew, the chairs were purely for show.

  Overhead the voices murmured—Mrs. Maxwell’s thin and complaining, Sam’s a rumble. The grandfather clock facing Delia ticked so slowly that it seemed each tick might be its last. For lack of anything better to do (she had thoughtlessly left her purse at home), she fanned her keys across her lap and sorted through them.

  How many hours had she sat like this in her childhood? Perched on a chair or a bottom step, scratching at the insect bites on her bare knees or leafing through a magazine some grown-up had thrust upon her before leading her father up the stairs. And overhead that same murmur, the words never quite distinguishable. When her father spoke, all others fell silent, and she had felt proud and flattered to hear how people revered him.

  The stairs creaked, and she looked up. It was Mr. Maxwell, descending by himself. “Dr. Grinstead’s just examining her,” he said. He inched down, clinging to the banister, and when he reached the foyer he settled with a wheeze onto the other antique chair. Because the highboy stood between them, all she saw of him was his outstretched trouser legs and his leather slippers, backless, exposing maroon silk socks with transparent heels. “He says he thinks it’s a touch of indigestion, but I told him, I said, at our age … well, you can’t be too careful, I told him.”

  “I’m sure she’ll be all right,” Delia said.

  “I just thank heaven for Dr. Grinstead. A lot of those younger fellows wouldn’t come out like this.”

  “None of them would,” Delia couldn’t resist saying.

  “Oh, some, maybe.”

  “None. Believe me.”

  Mr. Maxwell sat forward to look at her. She found his veiny, florid face peering around the highboy.

  “That Sam is just too nice for his own good,” she told him. “Did you know he has angina? Angina, at age fifty-five! What could that mean for his future? If it were up to me, he’d be home in bed this very minute.”

  “Well, luckily it’s not up to you,” Mr. Maxwell said a bit peevishly. He sat back again and there was a pause, during which she heard Mrs. Maxwell say something opinionated that sounded like “Nee-nee. Nee-nee.”

  “We were Dr. Grinstead’s first house call—did he ever mention that?” Mr. Maxwell asked. “Yessir: very first house call. Your dad said, Think you’ll like this boy.’ I admit we were a mite apprehensive, having relied on your dad all those years.”

  Sam was speaking more briskly now. He must be finishing up.

  “I asked Dr. Grinstead when he came to us,” Mr. Maxwell said dreamily. “I said, ‘Well, young man?’ He’d only been on the job a couple days by then. I said, ‘Well?’ Said, Which one of those Felson girls do you plan to set about marrying?’ Pretty smart of me, eh?”

  Delia laughed politely and rearranged her keys.

  “‘Oh,’ he said; said, ‘I guess I’ve got my eye on the youngest.’ Said, The oldest is too short and the middle one’s too plump, but the youngest,’ he said, ‘is just right.’ So. See there? I knew before you did.”

  “Yes, I guess you did,” Delia said, and then Sam started down the stairs, the instruments in his black bag cheerily jingling. Mr. Maxwell rose at once, but Delia stayed seated and kept her gaze fixed on her keys. They seemed uncannily distinct—dull-finished, ill-assorted, incised with brand names as clipped and choppy as words from another language.

  “Just what I …,” Sam was saying, and, “Nothing but a touch of …,” and, “Left some medication on the …” Then he and Mr. Maxwell were shaking hands, and he said, “Dee?” and she stood up without a word and stepped through the door that Mr. Maxwell held open.

  Outside, the grass had grown white with dew and the air itself seemed white, as if dawn were not far off. Delia climbed into the car and started the engine before Sam was completely settled. “You have to feel for those folks,” he said, shutting his door. “Aging all alone like that, they must dwell on every symptom.”

  Delia swung out into the street and drove slightly above the speed limit, concentrating, not speaking. They were nearly home before she said, “Mr. Maxwell told me they were your very first house call.”

  “Really?”

  “The second day you worked here.”

  “I’d forgotten.”

  “He said he asked which of the Felson girls you planned to marry and you said the youngest.”

  “Hmm,” Sam said, unzipping his bag. He checked something inside and told her, “Delia, remind me tomorrow morning to pick up more—”

  “‘The oldest is too short and the middle one’s too plump,’ you said, ‘but the youngest one is just right.’”

  Sam laughed.

  “Did you say that?” she asked him.

  “Oh, sweetie, how would I remember after all these years?”

  She pulled into their driveway and turned the engine off. Sam opened his door, but then, noticing she had not moved, he looked over at her. The little ceiling bulb cast sharp hollows in his face.

  “You did say it,” she told him. “I recognize the fairy-tale sound of it.”

  “So? Maybe I did,” he said. “Gosh, Dee, I wasn’t weighing every word. I might have said ‘too short’ and ‘too plump,’ but what I probably meant was ‘too unconventional’ and ‘too Francophile.’”

  “That’s not it,” Delia said.

  “Why, Linda spent half the evening speaking French, remember? And when your dad made her switch to English, she still had an accent.”

  “You don’t even know what I’m objecting to, do you?” Delia asked.

  “Well, no,” Sam said. “I don’t.”

  She got out of the car and walked toward the back steps. Sam went to replace his bag in the Buick; she heard the clunk of his trunk lid.

  “And Eliza!” he said as he followed her to the house. “She kept asking my opinion of homeopathic medicine.”

  “You arrived here that very first day planning to marry one of the Felson girls,” Delia told him.

  She had unlocked the door now, but instead of entering she turned to face him. He was looking down at her, with his forehead creased.

  “Why, I suppose it must naturally have crossed my mind,” he said. “I’d completed all my training by then. I’d reached the marrying age, so to speak. The marrying stage of life.”

  “But then why not a nurse, or a fellow student, or some girl your mother knew?”

  “My mother?” he said. He blinked.

  “You had your eye on Daddy’s practice, that’s why,” she told him. “You thought, Til just marry one of Dr. Felson’s daughters and inherit all his patients and his nice old comfortable house.’”

  “Well, sweethea
rt, I probably did think that. Probably I did. But I never would have married someone I didn’t love. Is that what you believe? You believe I didn’t marry for love?”

  “I don’t know what to believe,” she told him.

  Then she spun around and walked back down the steps.

  “Dee?” Sam called.

  She passed her car without slowing. Most women would have driven away, but she preferred to walk. The soles of her flats gritted against the asphalt driveway in a purposeful rhythm, reminding her of some tune she could almost name but not quite. Part of her was listening for Sam (she had a sense of perking one ear backward, like a cat), but another part was glad to be rid of him and pleased to have her view of him confirmed. Look at that, he wont even deign to come after me. She reached the street, turned right, and kept going. Her frail-edged shadow preceded her and then drew back and then fell behind as she traveled from streetlight to streetlight. No longer did she feel the cold. She seemed warmed from inside by her anger.

  Now she understood why Sam had forgotten his actual first glimpse of her. He had prepared to meet the Felson girls as a boxed set, that was why. It had not figured in his plans to encounter an isolated sample ahead of time. What had figured was the social occasion that evening, with marriageable maidens one, two, and three on display on the living-room couch. She could envision that scene herself now. All it took was the proper perspective to bring it back entire: the itchy red plush cushions, the clothlike texture of her frosted sherry glass, and the fidgeting, encroaching, irritating plumpness of the middle sister, next to her.

  On a branch overhead, the neighborhood’s silly mockingbird was imitating a burglar alarm. “Doy! Doy! Doy!” he sang in his most lyrical voice, until he was silenced by a billow of rock music approaching from the south. Teenagers, evidently—a whole carload. Delia heard their hoots and cheers growing steadily louder. It occurred to her that even Roland Park was not absolutely safe at this hour. Also, her housecoat wouldn’t fool a soul. She was running around in her nightclothes, basically. She took a sudden right turn onto a smaller, darker street and walked close to a boxwood hedge, whose shadow swallowed hers.

  Sam would be back in bed now, his trousers draped over the rocking chair. And the children didn’t know she was missing. With their jumbled, separate schedules, they might not know for days.

  What kind of a life was she leading, if every single one of last week’s telephone messages could as easily be this week’s?

  She walked faster, hearing the carload of music fade away behind her. She reached Bouton Road, crossed over, and turned left, and one split second later, whomp! she collided with someone. She ran smack against a stretch of tallness and boniness, overlaid by warm flannel. “Oh!” she said, and she recoiled violently, heart pounding, while somehow a dog became involved as well, one of those shaggy hunting-type dogs shouting around her knees.

  “Butch! Down!” the man commanded. “Are you all right?” he asked Delia.

  Delia said, “Adrian?”

  In the half-dark he had no color, but still she recognized his narrow, distinctly cheekboned face. She saw that his mouth was wider and fuller, more sculptured, than she had been imagining, and she wondered how she could have forgotten something so important. “Adrian, it’s me. Delia,” she said. The dog was still barking. She said, “Delia Grinstead? From the supermarket?”

  “Why, Delia,” Adrian’said. “My rescuer!” He laughed, and the dog grew quiet. “What are you doing here?”

  She said, “Oh, just…,” and then she laughed too, glancing down at her housecoat and smoothing it with her palms. “Just couldn’t sleep,” she said.

  She was relieved to find that he was not so well dressed himself. He wore a dark-hued robe of some kind and pale pajamas. On his feet were jogging shoes, laces trailing, no socks. “Do you live nearby?” she asked him.

  “Right here,” he said, and he waved toward a matted screen of barberry bushes. Behind it Delia glimpsed a porch light and a section of white clapboard. “I got up to let Butch here take a pee,” he said. “It’s his new hobby: waking me in the dead of night and claiming he needs to go out.”

  At the sound of his name, Butch sat down on his haunches and grinned up at her. Delia leaned over to give his muzzle a timid pat. His breath warmed and dampened her fingers. “I ran off with your groceries that day,” she said, ostensibly to the dog. “I felt terrible about it.”

  “Groceries?” Adrian asked.

  “Your orzo and your rotini …” She straightened and met his eyes. “I considered hunting up your address and bringing them over.”

  “Oh. Well … orzo? Well, never mind,” he told her. “I’m just grateful you helped me out like that. You must have thought I was kind of weird, right?”

  “No, not at all! I enjoyed it,” she said.

  “You know how sometimes you just want to, say, keep up appearances in front of someone.”

  “Certainly,” she said. “I ought to start a business: Appearances, Incorporated.”

  “Rent-a-Date,” Adrian suggested. “Impostors To Go.”

  “With blondes to pose as second wives, and football stars to take jilted girls to proms—”

  “And beautiful women in black to weep at funerals,” Adrian said.

  “Oh, why don’t they have such things?” Delia asked. “There’s just nothing like that … what? Like that fury, that prideful sort of fury you feel when you’ve been hurt or insulted or taken for granted—”

  Well. She stopped herself. Adrian was watching her with such peculiar intentness, she worried all at once that she had curlers in her hair. She nearly raised a hand to check, till she remembered she hadn’t worn curlers since high school. “Goodness. I should get home,” she said.

  “Wait!” Adrian said. “Would you like … could I offer you some coffee?”

  “Coffee?”

  “Or tea? Or cocoa? Or a drink?”

  “Well,” she said, “I guess cocoa, maybe. Cocoa might be nice. I mean caffeine at this hour would probably … But are you sure it’s not too much trouble?”

  “No trouble at all,” he told her. “Come on inside.”

  He led her to a gap in the barberry bushes. A flagstone path curved toward the house, which was one of those lace-trimmed Victorian cottages young couples nowadays found so charming. The front door was paned with lozenges of glass in sugared-almond colors impossible to see through. Delia felt a sudden pinch of uneasiness. Why, she didn’t know a thing about this man! And no one else on earth had any inkling where she was.

  “Usually if I’m up at this hour I’m up for good,” Adrian was saying, “so I fix myself a pot of—”

  “What a lovely porch!” Delia exclaimed. “Maybe we could have our cocoa out here.”

  “Here?”

  He paused on the topmost step and looked around him. It was a depressing porch, really. The floorboards were battleship gray, and the furniture was painted a harsh bright shade of green. “Don’t you think you’d be cold?” he asked.

  “Not a bit,” she told him, although now that she had stopped walking, it did seem cold. She stuffed both fists in the pockets of her housecoat.

  He gazed down at her a moment. Then he said, “Ah. I see,” and the corners of his mouth quirked upward with amusement.

  “But if you’re cold …,” she said, flushing.

  “I understand,” he said. “You can’t be too careful.”

  “Oh, it’s not that! Heavens!”

  “I don’t blame you in the least. We’ll have our cocoa out here.”

  “Really,” she said, “why don’t I come in?”

  “No, you wait here. I’ll bring it out.”

  “Please,” she said. “Please let me come in.”

  And because she saw that the argument would otherwise go on forever, she took one hand from her pocket and laid it on his wrist. “I want to,” she said.

  She wanted to come in, she meant. That was what she honestly meant, but the moment the words were out of her
mouth she saw that they implied something more, and she dropped her hand and stepped back. “Or maybe …,” she said. “Yes, the … porch, why don’t we have our cocoa on the …” And she felt behind her for a chair and sat down. The icy, uncushioned seat took her breath away for an instant, as if she had heard a piece of startling news, or glimpsed some possibility that had never crossed her mind before.

  4

  “I told Eliza when she picked us up at the airport,” Linda said. “I told her, ‘Well, one good thing: now that Dad’s gone I won’t have to share a room with you, Eliza.’ Considering how she snores.”

  Delia said, “Yes, but—”

  “’And the twins won’t have to bunk with Susie,’ I said. I figured I could fit both of them in Dad’s big bed with me. Then I get to the house, and guess what.”

  “I did plan at first for you to stay there,” Delia said, “but it seemed so … when I walked in to put the sheets on, it seemed so …”

  “Fine, I’ll put the sheets on myself,” Linda said. “I’ll tell you this much: I am surely not sleeping with Eliza when there’s a whole extra room going empty.”

  They were standing in the doorway of their father’s room at that moment, gazing in on its heartbreaking neatness, the dim air laden with dust motes, the candlewick bedspread unnaturally straight on the mattress. Linda, still in her traveling clothes, had not yet lost that aura of focus and efficiency that travel gives some people. She surveyed the room without a trace of sentiment, as far as Delia could see. “You’ve certainly wasted no time making changes elsewhere,” she said. “Air-conditioning vents every place you look, nursery men tearing out the shrubs, I don’t know what all.”

  “Oh, well, that’s—”

  “I suppose it’s what Sam Grinstead has been waiting for,” Linda said. “He’s finally got the house in his clutches.”