Anne Tyler - Celestial Navigation

All the doors on the second floor were closed and dark. The only sound was a ragged snore from Mr. Somerset’s room. On the first floor, street lights shining in picked up the shapes of the furniture but not its colors. Everything was a different shade of velvety gray, like what he had imagined a color-blind man must see. Jeremy had often tried to picture color-blindness — the worst affliction he could imagine next to blindness itself — and now, as if this were the only reason he had dressed up and come downstairs, he stood for a while letting his eyes blur and swim. Then the whirring sound started up again. He straightened his shoulders and passed through the parlor and into the dining room, where a knife blade of light shone beneath Mary’s door. His first knock was not heard, but at the second knock the machine stopped. There was a moment of silence. Then, “Is someone there?” she asked.

It’s me, it’s Jeremy.

“Jeremy?”

“I’m sorry to bother you at this—”

The doorknob rattled, so loudly and so close to him that he started. Light flooded the dining room and screwed his eyes up, and Mary stood before him in her blue dress with her hair still knotted as if this were daytime. “Was I disturbing you?” she asked him. “I thought while Darcy was sleeping I might turn out a few extra pairs.”

“No, no.”

Darcy lay sprawled in the double bed, taking up more than her share of it. She was shielded from the light by a blue paper Woolworth’s bag that Mary had fitted over the lamp bulb. Now that Jeremy’s eyes were adjusting he saw that the room was actually dim. He couldn’t imagine how anyone would be able to thread a needle here. “I should have thought,” he said. “You don’t have to keep the machine in your bedroom, you can set it up anywhere. No one will mind. I didn’t guess that you would be doing this while Darcy was asleep, you see—”

He whispered, taking care not to wake Darcy, but Mary spoke in a normal tone. “Why, that’s very nice of you, Jeremy,” she said, “but I don’t believe it bothers her. She’s a very sound sleeper.” They both looked at Darcy, who seemed pale and waxy, with her eyes sealed and her arms and legs still for once. “Thank you for thinking of it, though,” Mary said, turning back and giving him a bright, social smile. She thought that was what he had come for — to offer her space. She expected him to go now. “Maybe I’ll quit for tonight anyway,” she said. “I do feel a little tired.”

“But nobody knows you’re still married,” Jeremy said suddenly.

She stopped smiling.

“They think you’re widowed, or divorced. They don’t know you’re not free to remarry.”

“Jeremy, really I—”

“Please listen. That’s all I’m asking, if you say no I won’t ever trouble you again. Listen. You see how well you fit in here. Sometimes we have had new boarders come in one day and leave the next, they just don’t seem to like it. But you didn’t do that. You’ve stayed a whole season with us.”

“Yes, but you see I really didn’t—”

“You fit in here. Everybody wants you to stay. And you know it has a lot of advantages, kitchen privileges and Mrs. Jarrett babysits. As far as money goes, why, I do make a little money from time to time, not very much I know but enough so that you could stop knitting argyles, and besides Darcy needs a father, they say she’s getting out of hand without one—”

“Who says that?” Mary asked, so loudly that Darcy stirred and murmured.

“Mrs. Jarrett does.”

“Well, I’m very surprised at her.”

“So this is what I was considering,” Jeremy said. “Couldn’t we just pretend to be married?”

Mary stared at him.

“Oh no, please don’t be angry,” he told her, stumbling to get the words out. “I know how it sounds. But you see, to me it would be marriage. It isn’t as if there were any other way we could do it. We could go out one morning all dressed up and then come in and tell the others we’d been married at City Hall. That’s all we’d have to do. Then we would be married in the eyes of everyone we know, and I would take care of you and you would start another life instead of going along on tag ends the way you are now, you could give all your time to Darcy and have more children if you wanted and never have to leave them to go out and work in sweatshops—”

“Jeremy, dear,” Mary said, “I’m sure you are saying all this with the best of intentions—”

“I am,” he said sadly. He understood now that she would refuse, but still he had to go on. “I am proposing, not propositioning. I mean only the deepest respect,” he told her, and he looked up to find her nearly smiling, no longer so severe but kind-faced and amused, gently shaking her head. “Besides,” he said, beginning to mumble, “I love you.”

“Thank you, Jeremy. I do appreciate it.”

“What hope do you have for a better life, if you keep on saying no to everything new?”

But he was speaking mainly to himself now, offering himself consolation, and he had already turned to go. He saw the dining room lit into color from Mary’s doorway, a clump of dusty strawflowers turning orange on the table. Then her face appeared in his mind as it had looked at the moment of his turning — the smile fading, the eyes suddenly darker and more thoughtful. He turned back again. Mary took a breath, and he knew from the sudden shock and panic flooding through him that she was about to say yes.

The way it used to be, I stayed home with the children while Jeremy took Mary to the hospital by taxi. This was before I had bought my little car. Mary would wake me in the night just to let me know I was in charge—“Now don’t get up!” she always said, but of course I did get up, I wouldn’t have missed the excitement for anything. I put on a bathrobe and ran downstairs to say goodbye, only then it would turn out that they weren’t quite ready to go yet. Mary was waiting at the front door with her overnight case and Jeremy was off trying to locate the house keys or change for the taxi. I kept Mary company. We just stood there smiling at each other. We beamed . Never mind that I am an old maid; I can still recognize a happy occasion when I see one. When Jeremy arrived, all worried and shaky, I would find his coat for him and help him into it. “Hurry now,” I’d say. “I hear the taxi. Don’t let him leave you.” I slid back bolts and flung open first the inner door and then the outer door, I burst into the frosty night air ahead of them. I wanted to shout out a fanfare: “Make way! Make way! We have a pregnant woman here! A baby is being born!” Instead I opened the door of the taxi, meanwhile holding my bathrobe collar shut with one hand. “You get in first,” I would tell Jeremy. He always had this moment of hesitation just then, but when I gave him a pat he would climb on in. Mary laid her cheek against mine, leaning across a whole table’s width of stomach and overnight case, which made us laugh. We would have laughed at anything, I believe. Mary glowed all over, lighting up the sidewalk. “Take care of Jeremy for me,” she always whispered. And then, aloud: “I’m off!” She climbed into the cab. She rolled down the window and leaned out, waving. “Goodbye, Miss Vinton! And thank you for getting up! I’m off! Goodbye!”

I bought my little car when my knees grew too rheumatic for bicycling. I chose a ‘51 DeSoto, not much to look at but very steady and reliable. This was when Mary was well into her fourth pregnancy. (Her fifth, counting Darcy.) “One thing,” I told her. “You can go to the hospital in style this time. Well, maybe not style , exactly, but at least you won’t have to depend on the Yellow Cab Company.” Secretly I was a little nervous. I must have checked the route to the hospital a dozen times, although it wasn’t far and I had often been before. I kept reminding Mr. Somerset, “Don’t go anywhere in November. Promise me, please.” He was supposed to watch the children while I was away. Now, Mr. Somerset had not been gone overnight in the fourteen years I’d known him, so you can see how edgy I must have been. I kept wishing that Julia Jarrett were still alive. Or that they had replaced her, at least — found another grandmotherly type for that room instead of turning it into a nursery. What kind of babysitter was an old man with a fondness for bourbon? By October, before Mary had even packed her suitcase, I had laid out a dress on the chair beside my bed and put a pair of shoes beneath it, all ready to hop into. I took to sleeping in tomorrow’s underwear. I kept dreaming that my car ran out of gas halfway to the hospital.