Anne Tyler - Celestial Navigation

“She doesn’t want me to,” he said. He looked at me with his eyes very wide and steady. It nearly broke my heart.

“Jeremy,” I said, “are you sure she doesn’t?”

“She asked me not to come.”

Then Hannah started wandering off toward a stack of blocks. I grabbed her. “Now listen, young lady,” I said, “this has gone far enough, do you hear?” Only Hannah, of course, was not really who I was mad at.

It is very difficult to live among people you love and hold back from offering them advice.

I have never been married and never planned to be, never had the inclination to be. Yet I don’t believe I am an unhappy person. I had a normal childhood, good parents, five fine brothers and sisters. I had the usual number of young men to come calling when I was the proper age. Still, I did not once consider the possibility of marrying any of them. If you were to ask my vision of the future back then, my favorite daydream, it was this: I would be reading a book alone in my room, and no one would ever, ever interrupt me. I realize how antisocial that sounds. But it seemed to me that my life was so crowded , when I was young. There were always so many people around. Everyone knew everyone’s secrets. And then later, when my father died and my brothers and sisters married and moved away, I was the one who nursed my mother through her final illness. I chose to; it wasn’t a case of the put-upon spinster daughter. And my mother was never one of those querulous old ladies. She was kind and cheerful, right to the end. But the sharing we did! The five years of meals shared, house shared, news shared, plans and worries and money problems, even the plots of books shared. I knew everything about her, because I had to: the state of her bowels and the foods that disagreed with her and the thoughts that kept her awake nights. And she knew about me because there was no escaping me; I was perpetually with her. Toward the end I even slept on a cot in her bedroom. When she died I was awakened merely by the silence — the stopping of a breath that I had lived with continually for five long years. Solitude shocked my eyes open. I was alone. I went through her funeral fully composed, and the only thing that disturbed me was the noise of all those brothers and sisters and nieces and nephews that had gathered for the occasion. “Oh, Mildred,” they said, “we know how you feel: you can’t believe it yet.” That was how they explained my not crying. Then Carrie, the sister closest to me, said, “I guess it must be almost a relief to you, her going. None of us would be shocked to hear it.” But it wasn’t the kind of relief she meant. I wasn’t relieved to be free, or to be rid of the work; I was relieved to have my privacy. If you were to shake me awake in the middle of the night and say, “Quick, without thinking: What is the most important thing in the world?” I would say, “Privacy.” I know that’s not right; you don’t have to tell me. I know that the true answer is probably love, or understanding, or feeling needed — even for me. But I am telling you what comes to mind first, and that’s privacy. Sitting alone in a room reading a book, with no one to interrupt me. That is all I ever consciously wanted out of life.

When I first came here, immediately after Mother died, I announced my requirements from the doorstep. “I see you let rooms,” I said. “I’d like one that’s cheap and quiet. No noise, no people in large numbers. Can you provide that?” At the time, I had no way of knowing that everything I said was unnecessary. Jeremy Pauling and his mother were more private than I had ever thought it possible to be. That front door might as well have had a curtain of cobwebs across it, like the Sleeping Beauty’s palace gate, with the two of them inside trying to make as little noise as possible and the rest of the world outside — some large cold frightening force waiting to pounce, something certain to win, superior to them in every way. Mrs. Pauling, going to the grocery store, wore several layers of clothing no matter how hot the weather was, as if she wished for armor. She stopped outside the house and looked all around her with a timid blue startled gaze, checking on what the enemy had in mind for her. She returned pushing a wire tote cart so packed with non-perishables that it seemed she was expecting a siege, and she would scurry inside with them and line them up in rows in her cupboards and then stand back to stare at them a long time, moving her lips as if counting. After one of those trips she might not go to the store again for weeks — or anywhere else, except church occasionally. She and Jeremy stayed inside and drank hot cocoa. Was there any other door in the world so suitable for me to knock upon? Originally I was going to live here only a few months, until I found a job and had saved the money for an apartment. Then I could be truly alone. But the years passed and I just never got around to it, and now I suppose that I never will. I like it here. If you want my opinion, our whole society would be better off living in boarding houses. I mean even families, even married couples. Everyone should have his single room with a door that locks, and then a larger room downstairs where people can mingle or not as they please. For I do like some people. I’m no hermit. I like to watch Jeremy’s and Mary’s children growing up, and the medical students turning into doctors, and Mr. Somerset shuffling through his pension. For such a good life, isn’t it fair that I should have to pay some price? The price is silence. Keeping silent when I am moved to speak, staying out of other people’s affairs, holding back my advice, giving them the privacy I have asked for myself. Often I wonder if I am making a mistake. I think: Am I missing something? Have I forfeited too much? Is there a time when people I love might not want to be left alone? But I resist; I climb the stairs to my room. I turn the key in the lock. One sad thing about this world is that the acts that take the most out of you are usually the ones that other people will never know about.

Mary stayed in the hospital five days, and believe me those were five mighty long days. At home the disorder grew worse, and the children got cranky and the house didn’t feel right any more. Daytimes Jeremy pottered around looking helpless; nights he worked in his studio till nearly dawn, and came to breakfast so tired and pale he could hardly speak. He never did go to the hospital. I went. I went every afternoon and every evening and watched Mary cry. Oh, I don’t mean that’s all she did. She had her cheerful moments, particularly when she’d just been with the baby. She made friends with the mothers in her ward, she received other visitors (Buddy, Buddy’s girlfriend, a few of the women in the park once word seeped out), and she wrote little notes for me to take home to the children. But at least once on every visit she would break down and cry. “Oh, why can’t I just go home to him?” she said once, and then, “Do you think I shouldn’t have had this baby?” One evening she was telling me why she’d wanted such a big family. “I was an only child,” she said (the first mention she had ever made to me of any kind of past), “and I always promised myself I would have at least a dozen children when I grew up. Well, I’m keeping my promise, aren’t I?” Then her eyes glazed over with tears. I wasn’t at all prepared, right then. “But sometimes,” she said, “I feel that every new baby is another rope, tying me down like a tent. I don’t have the option to leave any more. I’m forced to depend on him. He’s not dependable.”

“Hush, now, my goodness,” I said.

“I love him more than I ever loved anyone, do you believe me? But sometimes I start falling in love with my doctor or even the children’s doctor, they’re both so sure of what they’re doing. Even the furnace man, who knows exactly where the leak is, or the man who delivers my groceries. He whistles cheerful songs and slams that big box of groceries on my kitchen table.”