Anne Tyler - Celestial Navigation

“Nope.”

“I bet you he’s in the studio,” Darcy said.

So while they were busy with breakfast I set off for the third floor. I took Darcy’s teacher’s note with me. I held it in front of me, like a ticket of admission, while I knocked. “Jeremy? It’s Mildred Vinton,” I said. No answer. I knocked again. They put a door on his studio when they moved the first two girls upstairs, to his old bedroom. It used to be that the whole house showed signs of his working, scraps littered everywhere and the smell of glue and construction paper, but the better his pieces get the more he shuts them away from us. Someday, I believe, Jeremy is going to be a very famous man, but it is possible that no one will be allowed to see his work at all by then, not even strangers in museums.

I said, “Jeremy? Are you in there?” Then I said, “Well, I’m not going to disturb you, but I do have to know if you’d like me to stay with the children today.”

Footsteps creaked across the floor. The door opened and there stood Jeremy, unshaven, in a round-necked moth-eaten sweater and a pair of baggy trousers. It was years since I had seen him looking so awful. The funny thing about Jeremy is that he never seems to age, he always has the same smooth plump face, but today that made it all the worse. He looked shocking, like a baby with a hangover. However, I pretended not to notice. “Morning, Jeremy,” I said. “Congratulations.”

“Thank you, Miss Vinton.”

When we heard they were married (and after we got over the surprise), and the house warmed up and we started using first names more, I asked them to call me Mildred but apparently that proved impossible. I am doomed to be Miss Vinton forever.

I stuck out my note, along with a ballpoint pen. “Could you sign this, please?”

He signed, but without even reading it so far as I could see. Then he handed it back. “You didn’t call me,” he said.

“Well, I — she asked me not to, Jeremy.”

“She didn’t even want me with her.”

I couldn’t think what to say. I looked off down the stairs, so as not to embarrass him. Finally I asked, “Would you like me to take care of the children today?”

“You think that I’m not up to it,” he said.

He startled me. I said, “Why, no, Jeremy, I know you are.”

“I can do things like that.”

“Of course, but — if you’re working on something.”

“I’m not working on anything at all.”

He shut the door again. What could I do? It seemed he was too abstracted for me to leave the little girls with him, but in the end that’s what I did — bathed and dressed and went off to the shop. At noon I couldn’t get away, but I called. The phone rang seven times before he answered. “Jeremy?” I said. “Is everything all right?”

“Why, yes.”

His voice sounded more like himself, and I could hear Pippi singing in the background. It seemed I had worried for no good reason.

In the afternoon I took off from work early and went to visit Mary. As you can imagine, I was an old hand at hospital visits by that time. I knew enough not to bring her flowers (extravagance makes her anxious) and to stop off at the nursery first so that I could tell her I’d seen the baby. (She always has me promise that everything is fine, no doctor has drawn me aside to whisper anything dire.) After I had looked at Edward a proper length of time I went down the hall to her ward, where I expected to find her chattering and smiling the way she always was after a baby, but she wasn’t that day. She was lying flat on her back, crying. All up and down the room were women with bows in their hair and lace on their bedjackets, talking softly to their husbands, and there was Mary crying. Well, I nearly left. I would have, if I could. When people cry I back off to give them privacy. But then she saw me and I was trapped. “Oh, Miss Vinton,” she said. She sat up quickly and darted her index fingers underneath her eyes, getting rid of the evidence. I pretended not to notice. “Got quite a son there,” I said. I wished I had brought flowers. Then I would have had something to fuss over, give her time to get her bearings. I said, “Were you asleep? Because I only stopped in for a moment. Wasn’t planning to stay. I’ll be back at the next—”

“I’ve upset Jeremy,” she said.

“Oh. Well, I’m sure he — he’ll get over it.”

“You were right. I should have told him.”

“I really don’t know much about such things,” I said. “I’m sure it will all get straight in the end.”

“I thought I was helping. All I did was hurt his feelings so badly I don’t know what he’ll do. I’ve never seen him so hurt. I called him and—”

Then she started crying again. She couldn’t even talk. I said, “Oh, well. Oh, well.” I spent a long time getting my mackintosh unbuttoned and draping it just so over the back of a chair.

“I called,” Mary said, getting hold of her voice, “and I told him — and he waited a long time and then he said, ‘I see.’ Then he — then—”

Her voice gave way. I felt helpless. I just knew she would lie awake hating herself for exposing her secrets this way. Could I make believe I hadn’t heard? That was ridiculous.

“Then he said, ‘Didn’t you want me with you, Mary?’ ”

“Well, of course you did,” I said, pulling down my sweater cuffs very carefully.

“I tried to make him see. ‘I always want you with me, Jeremy,’ I said, ‘but it’s not as if this is my first baby after all and I know how hard it is for you to—’ ”

Honesty: her one fault. There is such a thing as seeing too deeply, and then telling a man too much of what you see, but I don’t know when she’s going to find that out. “Look,” I wanted to say, “the biggest favor you can do for him is to take him at face value.” But I managed to keep quiet. I just handed her the tissue box and watched her blotting her tears. “This is a postnatal depression, I believe,” I told her finally. Mary laughed and then went on crying. “Shall I come back later?” I said.

“No, Miss Vinton, don’t go. Please don’t go. I promise I’ll stop this.”

It seemed unlikely that she would keep her promise, but I couldn’t think of any decent way to get out of the room. I settled back in my chair. “Now, I’ve been to see the baby,” I told her. “Seems quite healthy, I’d say from the looks of him.”

“Did you see him, Miss Vinton?”

“I told you. I’ve just been by the nursery.”

“I meant Jeremy. Did you see him?”

“Yes, this morning I did.”

“How did he look? Was he all right?”

“He was fine,” I told her. “Just fine.”

“They won’t let me use the phone again until I’m up and about,” Mary said, “and that won’t be till tomorrow. It’s out in the hall. All I want to do is ask how the children are, and get this misunderstanding straightened out. I can’t stand just lying here thinking that—”

“The children are managing beautifully,” I said.

“Are they doing what he tells them to?”

“Of course.”

“He doesn’t always know quite how to handle them, you see, and I worry that—”

“They’re fine,” I told her.

“He said he wanted to come visit me.”

“Oh, good, good,” I said. I thought that was a wonderful sign; before he had always left the visiting to me.

“I told him not to.”

“Mary Pauling! Why ever not?”

“It’s so hard for him,” Mary said. “I told him not to bother.”

Some people take a terribly long time learning things.

I went home and found everything in chaos — Buddy cooking spaghetti, Jeremy changing Hannah’s diaper, Mr. Somerset stroking the carpet with an old bent broom. There is something so pathetic about men trying to figure out the way a house works. “Here,” I said to Jeremy, “let me do that.” He had laid a clean diaper on the floor but he seemed to be having trouble getting Hannah to set herself down on it. I said, “At eight o’clock it will be visiting hour at the hospital. I’ll stay with the children while you go.”