Anne Tyler - Celestial Navigation

“No, of course not,” Laura said.

“I had to slide down all the rack of dresses in her closet.”

“Yes, well.”

“I had to find some, find her undergarments in the bureau. Open up her bureau.”

“Well, Jeremy.”

“Go through her bureau drawers taking things out.”

“Jeremy, honey. There, now. There, there.”

For Jeremy just then leaned over against Laura, set his head alongside that pillow of a bosom. And there sat Laura patting his back and clicking her teeth. She always did pamper that boy. Well, she was only seven when he was born — the age when you look at a baby brother as some kind of super-special doll. It never occurred to her that she was being displaced in Mother’s affection. It occurred to me , of course. I was the oldest. I had been displaced years ago. I saw how Mother had room for only one person at a time, and that one the youngest and smallest and weakest. I saw how, while she was expecting Jeremy, she curled more and more inside herself until she was only a kind of circular hollow taking in nourishment and asking for afghans. In all other situations Mother was a receiver , requesting and expecting even from her own daughters without ever giving anything out, but she spoiled Jeremy from the moment he was born and I believe that that is the root of all his troubles. A mama’s boy. She preferred him over everyone. She gave him the best of her food and the whole of her attention, kept him home from school for weeks at a time if he so much as complained of a stomach ache, which he was forever doing; read to him for hours while he sat wrapped in a comforter — oh, I can see it still! Jeremy on the windowseat, pasty and puffy-faced, Mother reading him Victorian ladies’ novels in her fading whispery voice although she never felt quite up to reading to us girls. By this time our father had left us, but I don’t believe she truly noticed. She was too wrapped up in Jeremy. She thought the sun rose and set in him. She thought he was a genius. (I myself have sometimes wondered if he isn’t a little bit retarded. Some sort of selective, unclassified retardation that no medical book has yet put its finger on.) He failed math, he failed public speaking (of course), he went through eighth grade twice but he happened to be artistic so Mother thought he was a genius. “Some people just don’t have mathematical minds,” she said, and she showed us his report card — A+ in art, A in English, A+ in deportment. (What else? He had no friends, there was no one he could have whispered with in class.) This was when we were in college, working our way through teachers college waiting tables and living at home and wearing hand-me-downs, and he was still in high school. When he graduated — by proxy, claiming a stomach ache, not up to facing a solitary march across the stage to receive his diploma — where did he go? The finest art school in Baltimore, with Mother selling off half her ground rents to pay the tuition. And he was miserable for every minute of it. Couldn’t stand the pressure. Scared of the other students. Stomach was bothering him. He lost one whole semester over something that might or might not have been mononucleosis. (In those days we called it glandular fever.) And even in good health, he rarely went to class. He would come home halfway through the morning and crawl into bed. What can you say to someone like that? What Mother said was, “Those people are just asking too much of you, Jeremy.” Then she made him all his favorite foods for lunch. (His favorite dessert is custard. Boiled custard.) Well, they did like his work, it seems. They gave him top grades and let him graduate. But even after that, he had no way to make a living. Can you imagine Jeremy teaching a class? Finally Mother gathered up strength to place a permanent ad in the newspaper: Trained artist willing to give private lessons in his studio . His studio was the entire third floor, which she had turned over to him without a thought. It had a skylight. Every now and then some poor failure of a pupil might ring the doorbell — girls mostly, anemic stringy-haired girls that scared him half to death. But they never lasted long. It seemed all they had to do was get a whiff of his studio to know that he was a bigger failure than they would ever be. Eventually they left and he would be back where he started: working alone, living off Mother. Relying on her insurance payments and her boarders and the last of her ground rents. To be fair I will admit that he has sold some of his work for money, but not much. An acquaintance from art school showed the good sense to switch from painting to dealing. Opened some sort of gallery. Fortunately for Jeremy. I often tell him he is lucky to have Brian to give him a hand but Jeremy just stares at me. He takes everything for granted, he tosses what he has made in Brian’s general direction and goes on his way without even checking to see if it has landed safely. Well, I suppose we should be grateful he doesn’t view his art too seriously. But still, the amount of money he uses up! Not to mention the time wasted. Do you think Mother would have let Laura or me get away with that? Never for a minute. We were always expected to make our own way in this world. For twenty-five years now I have been entirely self-supporting, and so has Laura ever since she was widowed. Does that seem fair? Well, Jeremy isn’t as strong as we are, Laura always says. That’s for sure. Give him a little time, Laura says. She has never seen him as he really is. She just went right along with Mother, coddled and babied him. Sat on the step now with both arms cradling him, saying, “Now, now, Jeremy,” while he wrinkled the front of her good knit dress.

“How long are you planning to sit here, Jeremy?” I asked him.

He straightened up then, but he didn’t answer.

“We do have things to get done, you know,” I said. “First you’ll have to change and go over to the funeral parlor.”

Laura said, “Amanda—”

“Then we have to make some plans for your future. I don’t know whether you’ve thought yet about what you’re going to do.”

“Do?” Jeremy asked.

“Oh, why don’t we talk about this after supper?” Laura said. “For now we’ll just get you off these stairs, Jeremy. I know you must be ready to come down. Aren’t you?”

It was plain he hadn’t thought of it, but he let her knead and pull him like so much modeling clay until he was finally in a standing position, and then she guided him down the stairs. I came behind. I arrived on the bottom step to find Mr. Somerset still at the front door, gaping at Jeremy. (In this house, I believe everyone does stay just where he wants. As if Mother’s inertia were contagious.) I said, “Mr. Somerset, did you put the suitcases in my mother’s room?”

“What’s that you say?”

“Our suitcases. Did you put them somewhere?”

“I never saw no suitcases.”

“Well, someone did,” I said. I bypassed Jeremy and Laura and went to Mother’s bedroom, off the dining room. There were no suitcases there. Only her unmade bed, stopping me in my tracks for a moment. I slammed the door shut again and said, “Jeremy? I want to know where our suitcases are.”

“Um, what suitcases are those, Amanda?”

I went through the entire first floor, flicking on lights in the kitchen, the bathroom, the dining room, the parlor. No suitcases. And they wouldn’t be upstairs; all the second floor belonged to boarders. “Mr. Somerset,” I said, “think, now. Who else has come in while we were out?”

“Why, nobody,” said Mr. Somerset. “The two ladies have been gone all day, and Howard left at seven this morning and never come back. I heard him go. I heard him whistling at seven A.M. outside my bedroom door, not a particle of consideration, and nights he comes in from a date eleven, eleven-thirty, twelve o’clock sometimes still whistling, never thinks to—”