Anne Tyler - Celestial Navigation

If he tried to conquer the very worst of his dreads — set out on a walk, for instance, ignoring the strings that stretched so painfully between home and the center of his back — his legs first became extremely heavy, so that every movement was a great aching effort, and then his heart started pounding and his breath grew shallow and he felt nauseated. If he succeeded, in spite of everything, in finishing what he had set out to do, he had no feeling of accomplishment but only a trembling weakness, like someone recently brushed by danger, and an echo of the nausea and a deep sense of despair. He took no steps forward. It was never easier the second time. Yet all through July, the hottest and most difficult month of the year, he kept attempting things he would not have considered a few weeks ago. He went at them like a blind man, smiling fixedly ahead of him, sweating and grim-faced, pretending not to notice that inwardly, nothing changed at all. He drew from wells of strength that he did not even own. And the reason, of course, was Mary Tell.

Did she know how much courage went into his daily good morning? How even to meet her eyes meant a suicidal leap into unknown waters? “Good, good morning, Mrs. Tell,” he said. Mary Tell smiled, serene and gracious, never guessing. He held tight to the doorframe and kept his knees locked so that she would not see how they trembled. Face to face with her, he felt that he was somehow growing smaller. He had to keep tilting his chin up. And why did he have this sensation of transparency? Mary Tell’s smile encompassed the room — the dusty furniture, the wax fruit on the sideboard, and Jeremy Pauling, all equally, none given precedence. Her eyes were very long and deep. The fact that there was no sparkle to them gave her a self-contained look. It was impossible that she would ever need anyone, especially not Jeremy.

Yet at night, as he lay in bed, he went over and over that moment when she had put her arms around him. She had needed him then, hadn’t she? Like an old-time heroine in one of the Victorian novels his mother used to read to him, she had come in desperation, with no one else to turn to — and out of shock he had responded only scantily and too late. He tied his top sheet into knots, wishing the moment back so that he could do the right things. He tried to recall the smallest details. He took apart each of her movements, each pressure of her fingers upon his ribcage, each stirring of breath against his throat. He turned over all possible meanings and sub-meanings. He wondered if he had made some magical gesture that caused her to think of him in a time of trouble, and what gesture was it? what trouble was it? What made women cry in modern times, in real life?

But most of all, he wondered if it might ever happen again.

Flat on his back in the dark, sleepless after his inactive days, he spent hours constructing reasons for her to turn to him. He imagined fires and floods. He invented a sudden fever for her little girl. Mary Tell would panic and come pound on his door, carrying an antique silver candlestick. He would be a rock of strength for her. He would go for the doctor without a thought, no matter how many blocks from home it took him. He would keep watch beside the sickbed, a straight line of confidence for her to lean against. Her hair would just brush his cheek. What color was her hair? What color were her eyes? Away from her, he never could remember. He saw her in black-and-white, like a steel engraving, with fine cross-hatching shading her face and some vague rich cloak tumbling from her shoulders. Her clearest feature was her forehead — a pale oval. In the novels his mother read to him, a wide ivory brow stood for purity and tranquillity.

Oh, if only he had a horse to carry her away on!

Mrs. Jarrett said, “That poor Mrs. Tell, she doesn’t get out much. Her friend hardly comes at all any more, have you noticed?”

Jeremy, watching television with the boarders, revived Mary Tell from a swoon and held a glass of brandy to her lips. He didn’t answer.

“I had been hoping he was more than a friend,” Mrs. Jarrett said.

“Who is this we’re speaking of?” asked Miss Vinton.

“The gentleman Mrs. Tell was seeing. Remember? Now he hardly comes at all. Have you noticed him lately, Mr. Pauling?”

Jeremy said, “Well …”

After a while they gave up waiting for the rest of his answer.

Nowadays his collages filled him with impatience. He became conscious of the way his eyes tightened and ached when he looked at them too long. He started wishing for more texture, things standing out for themselves. He had an urge to make something solid. Not a sculpture, exactly. He shied away from anything that loomed so. But maybe if he stacked his scraps, let them rise in layers until they formed a standing shape. He pictured irregular cones, their edges ridged like stone formations on canyon floors. He imagined the zipping sound a fingernail would make running down their sides. But when he tried stacking his scraps they turned into pads, mounded and sloping. He took them away again. He went to stand by the window, but his impatience grew and extended even to his physical position: his moon face gazing out from behind the tiny clouded panes, his hands limp by his sides, fingers curled, his feet so still and purposeless, pointing nowhere in particular.

How did people set about courtships? All he had to go on were those novels. When he thought of courting Mary Tell he imagined taking her for a drive in a shiny black carriage. Or dancing across a polished ballroom — and he didn’t even know which arm went around his partner’s waist. Yet it seemed as if some edginess were pushing him forward, compelling him to take steps he would never ordinarily think of. He pictured a high cliff he was running toward with his arms outflung, longing for the fall, not even braced to defend himself against the moment of impact. Then maybe the edginess would leave him, and he could relax again.

He returned to the collage. He slid colors ceaselessly across the paper, like a man consulting a Ouija board. Imaginary voices murmured in his ear. Scraps of conversation floated past. He was used to that when he was working. Some phrases had recurred for most of his life, although they had no significance for him. “At least he is a gentle man,” one voice was sure to say. He had no idea why. Of course he was a gentle man. Yet the voice had kept insisting, year after year. Now that he was trying to concentrate, pushing away the thought of courting Mary Tell in an opera box, he absently spoke the words in a whisper. “At least he is a—” Then he caught himself and straightened his shoulders. Other voices crowded in. “If in any case and notwithstanding the present circumstances—” “I don’t know how to, don’t know how to, don’t know how to—” “If in any case—”

Mary Tell sat beside him smelling of handmade lace and fine soap, lifting her mother-of-pearl opera glasses, but her dress was out of Jane Austen’s time and the opera she was watching had not been shown for a century.

Monday morning Jeremy got up early, dressed very carefully, and went to Mr. and Mrs. Dowd’s grocery store, where he bought a pound of chocolates. They were left over from Valentine’s Day — a heart-shaped box, a little dusty, but Mrs. Dowd wiped it off for him with a dishrag. “Somebody’s found himself a sweetheart,” she said. Jeremy was still knotted up from the ordeal of making a purchase, and he only gave a flicker of a smile and kept his eyes lowered. He returned home by way of the alley, so that he arrived in his backyard. There wild chicory flowers were waving among a tangle of sooty weeds, and he squatted and began gathering a bouquet. This was something he had thought out the night before. He had rehearsed it so thoroughly that now it seemed he was picking each flower for the second time. In a shady spot by the steps he found glossy leaves that he inserted between the chicory, making a pattern of blue and green. Then he rose, hugging the candy box to his chest, and went into the house. Through the kitchen, through the dining room, straight to Mary Tell’s bedroom, where he instantly knocked. If he gave himself time to think, he would fail. He would run away, scattering flowers and chocolates behind him.