Anne Tyler - Celestial Navigation

“You’re just upset,” I said.

I went home upset myself, and lay awake hoping that she would forget she had ever told me such things.

In the beginning, when they were first married, she asked so much of him. It was plain that she didn’t realize he was different from anybody else. “Come with me to pick out curtains,” I heard her say once. And another time, “Why don’t we ever go to movies, Jeremy?” Of course none of us had discussed the subject with her. Julia Jarrett always believed that for Mary’s sake he would change, and you might say that in a sense he did. He does go out more now. Why, presumably he had to go off this block for his wedding, and then there were those trips to the hospital and three years ago he went to Darcy’s school to see her play a flower in Red Riding Hood’s forest. (She gave Red Riding Hood a warning in a silvery little voice — I was there. “Be careful, little girl, remember what your mother told you.” Jeremy walked seven blocks to hear that and applauded all alone the minute she said her line, which naturally made Darcy furious. But I admired him for that. There are other kinds of heroes than the ones who swim through burning oil.) But no, he has never gone to Hecht’s to pick out curtains. He has never taken Mary to a movie. How does she explain that to herself? When did she put two and two together and realize that he never would? I really have no idea. All I can say is that bit by bit, it seemed she stopped asking him. It seemed she grew quieter, older, stronger. There was something more loving in the way she treated him. Then I heard her talking with Buddy, back before he knew us well. He was telling her about a play that she and Jeremy shouldn’t miss. “Oh,” she said, “Jeremy has nearly stopped going to plays. His eyes have been bothering him.” And I knew the pieces had finally fallen into place for her, she had stopped expecting him to be like other people. Still I worried. I realized, of course, that it was none of my business. Yet I was so anxious for Jeremy, so quick to imagine him in all possible scenes of failure with her. During the first few weeks of their marriage I sent her silent, invisible messages: If you are unkind it will be a sin, the worst you’ve ever committed. Don’t forget that this is a very special man you are dealing with. A genius. Not some run-of-the-mill insurance salesman. It wasn’t that I disliked her, you see; I was fond of her even that far back. But in some ways Mary is an everyday kind of woman, and this marriage was as odd for her, as distant from her main road, as it was for Jeremy. Look at the telephone pad in the hall! Her doodles are minute line drawings of steam irons and tricycles and Mixmasters. She adds to their incomes by sending household hints to ladies’ magazines. Is it any wonder I worried? All for nothing, as it turned out. She remained her serene and contented self, while Jeremy seemed ready to burst out of his skin with pride and happiness. I remember one morning she wore a new dress to breakfast, practically the only one I have ever seen her in. She looked just beautiful. I said, “My, that’s attractive. Isn’t it, Jeremy?” But Jeremy was in that mood he gets when he is about to start a new piece — a thousand miles away. He gave her a wide, blank smile and said nothing. I said, “Jeremy? Doesn’t Mary look pretty?” Because now it seemed he had to answer, for Mary’s sake. Jeremy said, “What?” He stood up and left. Now, a thing like that can seem important to some women. But when I looked over at Mary I saw that she was laughing, and she said, “Don’t worry, he loves it. I know because last week he cut a patch from inside the hem and used it for one of his pieces. He thought I wouldn’t notice.”

I was so relieved when I heard that. I thought, “Well, at least she understands him.” I never dreamed she would grow to be too understanding.

On Thursday evening Brian came by for Jeremy’s new batch of work. Brian’s visits are quite an event in this household. He himself is so impressive, in the first place — a handsome kind-faced man with a square-cut beard — and then too it is always the first glimpse we have of what Jeremy has been up to lately. The things they brought down that night were the best I’d yet seen. It’s strange how over the years Jeremy’s pieces have grown up. I mean physically, literally. They have doubled in size, and they are so deeply textured that they are almost sculptures. Ordinary objects are crowded into them — Dixie cups and bus tickets and his children’s plaid shoelaces, still recognizable — and his subjects are ordinary too, the smallest and most unnoticed scenes on earth. I found a man with a rake, a woman ironing a shirt, a child strapping on a roller skate. Their features were gone and they were bare of detail; they were layered over with the Dixie cups and the bus tickets. They made me sad.

Have you ever seen a television show that ends with stills from the scenes you have just finished watching? Music plays and the titles roll over them. The effect is of distance. Moments that you just witnessed are suspended forever while you yourself recede from them with every breath you take. The moments grow smaller, and yet clearer. You see some sorrow in them you had never before suspected. Now, does it make any sense when I say that Jeremy’s pieces affect me in the same way? This man with the rake, slightly stooped and motionless, reminded me that life is nothing but motion and passes too swiftly for us to observe with the naked eye. At least, for me to observe. Jeremy has no trouble whatsoever. He sees from a distance at all times, without trying, even trying not to. It is his condition. He lives at a distance. He makes pictures the way other men make maps — setting down the few fixed points that he knows, hoping they will guide him as he goes floating through this unfamiliar planet. He keeps his eyes on the horizon while his hands work blind. Am I the only one who sees this? Surely Brian never has. Brian merely tapped the pictures with his knuckles and nodded, chewing his pipe. “Good work, good work,” he said. Then he went on to talk about a boat he had bought. “In the spring I’m going to try a real trip on her,” he said. “I’m going to do it old style. I’ll eat what I catch, I’ll sail by celestial navigation.” Jeremy listened with his eyes wide, his expression awed and admiring. He stood beside his very best piece and forgot it utterly. Oh, Jeremy, I wanted to tell him, you too sail by celestial navigation and it is far more celestial than Brian’s.

But, of course, I didn’t say it out loud.

On Friday I went to visit Mary and she said they were letting her come home Saturday. She didn’t seem as happy as you’d expect. “Why, that’s wonderful!” I said. “I have Saturday off this week. I’ll drive everybody over at ten o’clock or so, shall I?”

“Oh well,” Mary said, “this time I think you might just come by yourself if you don’t mind.”

“What, alone?”

“It’s simpler that way.”

“Who asked it to be simple?” I said.

Ordinarily I wouldn’t have spoken out like that, but I could tell this new arrangement wasn’t really what she wanted. She was twining a wisp of hair very slowly around her fingers and not meeting my eyes when she spoke. She looked limp and uncombed. “Look,” I told her. “There’s no law that says you can’t change your mind. Call him up. Tell him you want him to come for you after all.”

“I never told him I did n’t want him to come,” she said.

“Then what’s all this about?”

“I’ve been waiting for him to offer, but he hasn’t.”

“You know it would be hard for him to offer.”

“I mean that he won’t even speak to me on the phone.”