Anne Tyler - Ladder of Years

“Do they go to dances together? Do they kiss good night?”

“Now, that I wouldn’t know,” Eliza said tartly, and she bent to take a pitcher from a cupboard.

The twins had reached their goal: a jar of peppermints on the top shelf. Inch by inch, Thérèse maneuvered it through the partially opened door. (Thérèse was the uneven-featured twin, her face less balanced, less symmetrical, which made her appear slightly anxious. There was one in every set, Delia had noticed.) For a moment the jar seemed suspended, but then it arrived safely in Marie-Claire’s outstretched hands. “Do Ramsay and Carroll have sweethearts too?” she asked.

“Well, Ramsay does, I’m sorry to say.”

“How come you’re sorry?” Thérèse asked, and Marie-Claire said, “What’s wrong with her?”-the two of them so alert for scandal that Delia laughed aloud. Thérèse wheeled and said, “Are you sorry too, Aunt Delia? Do you forbid her to darken your door? Is she coming to the beach with us?”

“No, she’s not,” Delia said, answering only the easiest question. “The beach is just a family trip.”

They were leaving for a week at the beach early the following morning, a Sunday. It had come to be an annual event. In mid-June, as soon as the schools closed, Linda arrived from Michigan and they all took off for a cottage they rented on the Delaware shore. Already the front porch was heaped with rubber rafts and badminton rackets; the freezer was stuffed with casseroles; and Sam’s patients were thronging in for lastminute consultations in hopes of avoiding any contact with his backup.

“Delia, could you get the sugar?” Eliza asked. She was running water into the pitcher. “And girls, I’d like five tumblers from that cabinet to your right.”

While Delia was measuring sugar, she secretly checked the clock on the wall above her. Ten minutes till four. She glanced at the twins and cleared her throat. “If Susie isn’t back by the time you finish your lemonade, maybe I could take you to the pool,” she said.

Linda said, “You?” and the twins said, in a single voice, “You hate to swim!”

“Oh, well, I wouldn’t actually go in. I’d just drive you over, and then Susie could pick you up later.”

Eliza clinked ice into the tumblers. Linda took a seat at the head of the table, and the twins claimed the chairs on either side of her. When Delia placed the pitcher of lemonade in front of them, Marie-Claire cried, “Ick! It’s full of shreddy things!”

“Those are good for you,” Linda said as she started pouring.

“And big seeds besides!”

“They won’t hurt you.”

“That’s what she says,” Thérèse told Marie-Claire in an ominous tone. “Really they’ll take root in your stomach and grow lemon trees out your ears.”

“Oh, honestly, Thérèse,” Linda said.

Ignoring her, the twins gazed significantly across the table at each other. Finally Marie-Claire said, “I guess we’re not thirsty after all.”

“We’ll just go change into our swimsuits,” Thérèse added.

They scooted their chairs back and raced out of the kitchen.

“Ah, me,” Linda sighed. “Sorry, Lize.”

“That’s all right,” Eliza said stiffly.

There were times when Delia realized, for an instant, that Eliza was what they used to call an old maid. She looked so forlorn in her eccentric weekend outfit of safari suit and clunky shoes; she pulled out a chair with her head down, her chopped black hair falling forward to hide her expression, and she seated herself and folded her small hands resolutely on the table.

“Well, I’m thirsty!” Delia said loudly, and she sat down too and reached for one of the tumblers. From the hall she heard a series of thumps-the twins’ suitcase, no doubt, being hauled up the stairs. Apparently they still planned to room with Susie, if the creaks that began overhead were any indication.

Outside the open window, a workman’s bearded face popped into view. He looked at the women, blinked, and disappeared. Delia and Linda saw him, but Eliza, who had her back to him, did not. “What is he up to, anyhow?” Linda asked.

Eliza said, “He? Who?”

“The workman,” Delia explained.

“No, not the workman,” Linda said. “I meant Sam. Why is he having all the shrubs torn out?”

“Well, they’re old and straggly, he says.”

“Can’t he just cut them back or something? And central air-conditioning! This house is not the type for air-conditioning.”

“I’m sure we’ll appreciate it once the weather heats up,” Eliza said. “Have some lemonade, Linda.”

Linda took a tumbler, but she didn’t drink from it. “I’d just like to know where he found the money,” she said darkly. “Plus: this house is in our three names, not his. We’re the ones Dad left it to.”

Delia glanced toward the window. (She suspected the workman of lurking beneath it, absorbed as all workmen seemed to be in other people’s private lives.) “Goodness!” she said. “We’d better get to the pool. Anybody want anything from Eddie’s?”

“Eddie’s?” Eliza asked.

“I might stop for some fruit on my way home.”

“Delia, have you forgotten Sam’s mother is coming to dinner? And you still have the Medicare bills to see to! Why don’t I take the twins, instead, and then go to Eddie’s after.”

“No! Please!” Delia said. “I mean, I have plenty of time. And besides, I need to choose the fruit myself because I’m not sure what I-”

She was offering too many explanations-always a mistake. Linda didn’t notice, but Eliza could read her mind, Delia sometimes thought, and she was watching Delia consideringly. “Anyhow,” Delia said. “I’ll see you both in a while. Okay?” And she stood up. Already she heard the twins racketing down the stairs. “Hand me my purse, will you?” she asked. Eliza was still watching her, but she reached for Delia’s purse on the counter and passed it over.

In the hall, the twins were quarreling over a pair of goggles they must have liberated from the beach equipment. They wore identical skinny knit swimsuits in different colors-one red, one blue-and a red-and-blue flip-flop apiece on their long, pale, knobby feet. Neither one had a towel, but the towels were upstairs and so Delia didn’t remind them. “Let’s go,” she told them. “I’m parked out front.” From the kitchen, Linda called, “You do what the lifeguard tells you, girls, hear?”

Delia followed them across the porch, avoiding the shaft of a beach umbrella. Beside the steps, a young man in a red bandanna was hacking at the roots of an azalea bush. He straightened, wiped his face on his forearm, and gave them a grin. “Wisht I was going swimming,” he said.

“Come with us, then,” Thérèse said, but Marie-Claire told her, “Dope, you can see he’s not wearing his bathing suit.” They skipped ahead of Delia down the walk, chanting a routine that she remembered from her childhood:

“Well, that’s life.”

“What’s life?”

“Fifteen cents a copy.”

“But I only have a dime.”

“Well, that’s life.”

“What’s life?”

“Fifteen cents a…”

The weather was perfect, sunny and not too warm, but Delia’s car had been sitting at the curb collecting heat all day. Both girls squealed as they slid across the back seat. “Could you turn on the air-conditioning?” they asked Delia.

“I don’t have air-conditioning.”

“Don’t have air-conditioning!”

“Just open your windows,” she told them, rolling down her own. She started the engine and pulled into the street. The steering wheel was almost too hot to touch.

You could tell it was a weekend, because so many joggers were out. And people were at work in their yards, running their mowers or their hedge trimmers, filling the air with a visible green dust that made Thérèse (the allergic one) sneeze. At Wyndhurst the traffic light changed to amber, but Delia didn’t stop. She had a sense of time slipping away from her. She took the long downhill slope at a good ten miles above the speed limit, and screeched left on Lawndale and parked in the first available space. The twins were in a hurry themselves; they tore ahead of her to the gate, and even before she paid for them they had disappeared among the other swimmers.