Anne Tyler - Celestial Navigation

Moments later, pulled upward by the fading sound of her high heels, Jeremy rose from the stool. He blinked at the slamming of the front door. The memory of some obligation forced his hand out straight in front of him, and he closed it on nothing and looked at it a moment before he let it drop back to his side.

His boarders were comforting, familiar voices milling around him, automatically allowing for the space he took up as he stood in the center of the kitchen. “Has anyone noticed my bread?” said Mrs. Jarrett. “I’ve looked all over for it. I was keeping it in the icebox to guard against mold.” Yet the open refrigerator seemed to contain nothing but mold, row upon row of leftovers in tiny bottles growing green fur, hardened cubes of cheese, doll-sized cans and jars bought for single people’s suppers and never finished. “Last week,” said Mrs. Jarrett, “I sterilized the sink with household bleach and washed all the dishes myself but now look. I wonder if it might be possible to afford a cleaning lady?” Jeremy said nothing. His eyes seemed fastened to Miss Vinton’s lavender cardigan, a restful color. Then when Miss Vinton moved over to the table he scratched his head, searched for some answer he knew he should have given. Nothing came to him.

Mr. Somerset was standing at the stove with a rolled-up copy of Male magazine under one arm. He lit the flame below a skillet full of white grease; he flicked out a drowned cockroach with the corner of his spatula and began laying down strips of bacon, but he seemed to be talking about toast. “Know what I’ve got? Tea-and-toast syndrome. Howard will have heard of it. Went in and said, ‘Doc, I just don’t know what to tell you, seems like nowadays it’s all I can do to get out of the bed in the morning.’ Tea-and-toast syndrome, he tells me. Common among us older folk. Eat more protein. Now I have to have meat at every meal, not easy for a man of my income, and liver twice a week, which I detest. On top of which food don’t taste like it once did, you know. It’s these additives.”

“It’s age,” said Mrs. Jarrett.

“It’s additives.”

“It’s age. Your taste buds are drying up, Mr. Somerset.”

“And with everything else I got to put up with, it turns out it’s no longer possible to get the kind of rest I need in this house. We all know why. I just wish Howard was here and I could give him a piece of my mind. Last night he come in at twelve-thirty. Late even for him. My sleeping is a fragile business, not something you can play around with in such a way. He sleeps like a log. He was up at six, whistling in the bathroom. While he’s shaving he names over the parts of the anatomy. Tells the mirror all the minor bones of the foot. I just want to say one thing, Jeremy: this is an older person’s house. Know what I mean? We got no business boarding medical students.”

Jeremy watched the bacon crinkling in slow motion. He saw wisps of gray smoke rise toward the ceiling, blurring the kitchen. How long had he been here? Was it for lunch or for supper? Had he eaten yet?

Mrs. Jarrett’s plump, ringed hand appeared, bearing a plate. “Have a piece of strawberry shortcake, Jeremy,” she said. “Though it’s only store-bought.” She held the plate out on her fingertips and smiled, fixed in time by a sudden flash of light, imprinted in negative upon his eyelids.

Here is Mrs. Jarrett, all beads and elegance. How gently the planes of her face meet, each meeting prepared for by those little powdery pouches! How perfectly her hair is crimped, how neatly her flowered hat sits upon it! She wears hats everywhere, maybe even to bed. She keeps her cheerfulness even here, even crossing this stained and sticky floor that tries to suck the patent leather pumps off her feet. Mr. Somerset turns a strip of bacon and sighs. Miss Vinton runs the faucet over a tower of jelly glasses in the sink. Mrs. Jarrett says, “A meal is not a meal without dessert at the end,” and Jeremy takes the plate, leaving her graciously curving hands up-ended between them. “Why, thank you,” he says. “Thank you for offering it to me. I would just like to say—” before the light dies away again and the numbness unrolls itself like a window-shade and he is left holding some cold heavy foreign object that his eyes refuse to focus upon.

He was showing his mother’s bedroom to some strangers who must have rung the doorbell, although he could not remember answering it. A man, a very tall woman, and a little girl. “It’s not big enough for a family, I don’t believe,” he said.

“You just said that,” said the man. “We just went through that.”

“John,” said the woman. She turned to Jeremy. He sensed the motion even though he was looking at his mother’s lace curtains. She said, “Mr. Harris is just a friend. This room would be for me and my daughter.”

“Oh yes.”

“Is there a downstairs bathroom?”

He couldn’t seem to fix his mind to her words.

“Mr. Pauling?”

His sisters had cleaned out his mother’s room, but they had not managed to remove her smell. It hung over everything, sweet and damp and dusty. Even the sunlight filtering through the curtains had something of her in it. She had always been translucent, filmy, matte-surfaced like the meshy patterns of light fluttering on the old flowered carpet. There was a lack of body to her that had made him anxious, even as a child, and at any sign of weakness or illness in her his anxiety grew so strong it changed to irritation. (“Jeremy!” she had cried, climbing the stairs, and she laid a veined and trembling hand to her chest while Jeremy climbed on with his heart pounding, terrified and resentful, pretending not to notice. When she fell, there was a soft sound like old clothes dropping. She had not had the weight to roll back down the stairs; she remained where she landed, in a crumpled heap. Jeremy went into the studio and over to the window, where he stood sweating and shaking for a very long time. He chipped at the windowsill with a fingernail, flaking off paint. Then he wiped his forehead with the back of his hand, returned to the stairs, and sat down beside her to lift her by the shoulders.)

“There is plenty of closet space,” the woman said. “Come look, John.”

“You look, Mary. Just tell me if you like it.”

Hangers slid down a length of pipe. The child followed her mother, clutching a handful of her skirt. Jeremy was fond of children, and he would have liked to look at this one but she kept on standing too close to her mother. The mother was very beautiful; not someone he wanted to raise his eyes to. Beautiful women made him uneasy. He received his impressions of her from sidelong glances — brown hair worn in a bun, oval face, scoop-necked dress — and the image that he formed was like an illustration in an old-fashioned novel. The man was square-jawed and handsome, a cigarette ad. Only men like that are comfortable with beautiful women.

“Do you supply the linen?” she asked.

He thought of some nineteenth-century linen closet — ivory sheets in stacks, balls of hand-milled soap, a bunch of lavender dangling from a nail.

“Mr. Pauling? Do you supply the linen?”

“Linen. Yes.”

“Well, I suppose we should take it,” she said.

She was going through a pocketbook of some kind. Jeremy was staring at the nightstand. He saw a photograph of his father, laughing widely from a narrow silver frame. He saw his father lounging on the front stoop, slinging out majestic orders to the scary black men who worked for him. A hand nudged his arm. Crumpled dollar bills were passed to him one by one, as if they were the last of some treasure. He looked down, trying to think what was expected of him. “But the room,” he said.