Anne Tyler - Ladder of Years

Driving back up the hill, she kept plucking at the front of her blouse and blowing toward the damp frizz sticking to her forehead. If only she could stop by home and freshen up a bit! But she would never manage to escape her sisters a second time. She turned south, not so much as glancing northward to Eddie’s. She traveled through a blessedly cool corridor of shade trees, and when she reached Bouton Road she parked beneath a maple. Before she got out, she blotted her face on a tissue from her purse. Then she walked through Adrian ’s front yard and climbed the porch steps and rang the doorbell.

By now the dog knew her well enough so he merely roused himself from the mat to nose her skirt. “Hi, Butch,” she said. She dabbed at his muzzle ineptly, at the same time backing off a bit. The front door opened, and Adrian said, “Finally!”

“I’m sorry,” she told him, stepping inside. “I couldn’t get away till Linda came, and wouldn’t you know her plane was late, and then of course I had to make sure that she and the children were…”

She was talking too much, but she couldn’t seem to stop herself. These first few minutes were always so awkward. Adrian took her purse from her and set it on a chair, and she fell silent. Then he bent and kissed her. She supposed she must taste of salt. They had not been kissing for very long-at least not like this, so seriously. They had started with the breeziest peck on the cheek, pretending to be just friends; then day by day more parts of them became involved-their lips, their open mouths, their arms around each other, their bodies pressing closer until Delia (it was always Delia) drew back with a little laugh and a “Well!” and some adjustment of her clothes. “Well! Did you get much work done?” she asked now. He was looking down at her, smiling. He wore khakis and a faded blue chambray shirt that matched his eyes. Over these past few weeks of sunshine his hair had turned almost golden, so that it seemed to give off a light of its own as he stood in the dark hallway-one more detail to make her spin away abruptly and walk on into the house as if she had some business to attend to.

Adrian ’s house always struck her as only marginally inhabited, which was odd because until three months ago his wife had lived here too. Why, then, did the rooms have this feeling of long-term indifference and neglect? The living room, viewed from the hall, never enticed her inside. Its walls were bare except for a single bland still life above the mantel, and instead of a couch, three chairs stood at offended-looking angles to each other. The tabletops bore only what was useful-a lamp, a telephone; none of the decorative this-and-thats that would have taken the chill off.

“I finished printing out the Adwater piece,” Adrian was saying. “I thought you might look it over and tell me what you think.”

He was leading her up the narrow stairway and across the hall, into an area that must once have been called the conservatory or the sunroom. Now it was his office. Cloudy windows lined three walls, their sills piled high with papers. Along the fourth wall ran a built-in desk that held various pieces of computer equipment. This was where Adrian produced his newsletter. Subscribers from thirty-four states paid actual money for Hurry Up, Please, a quarterly devoted to the subject of time travel. Its cover was a glossy sky blue, its logo an arched wooden mantel clock on spoked wheels. Each issue contained an assortment of science fiction and nonfiction, as well as reviews of time-machine novels and time-machine movies, and even an occasional cartoon or joke. In fact, was this whole publication a joke, or was it for real? Reading the letters to the editor, Delia often wondered. Many of the subscribers seemed to believe in earnest. At least a few claimed to speak from personal experience. And she detected an almost anthropological tone to the article Adrian handed her now-an essay by one Charles L. Adwater, Ph.D., proposing that the quality known as “charisma” was merely the superior grace and dash found in visitors from the future who are sojourning in the present. Consider, Dr. Adwater wrote, how easily you and I would navigate the 1940s, which today seems a rather naive period, by and large, and one in which a denizen of our own decade could hope to make a considerable impact with relatively little effort.

“Would you say the 1940s seem?” Adrian asked. “Either one has arguments for and against it.”

Delia didn’t answer. She paced the room as she read, chewing her lower lip, squinting at draft-quality print as dotty and sparse as the scabs on an old brier scratch. “Well…,” she said, and pretending absent-mindedness, she wandered out to the hall while she flipped to the second page.

Adrian followed. “In my opinion, Adwater’s style is kind of stuffy,” he was saying, “but I can’t suggest too many changes because he’s one of the biggest names in the field.”

How would you make a name for yourself in the time-travel field? Delia was intrigued, but only briefly. Her visit to Adrian ’s office was a ruse, in fact, as even Adrian must know. It was being upstairs that mattered: roaming the second floor, the bedroom floor, and peeking through each doorway. Adrian slept in a drab little dressing room; he had moved there after Rosemary left him, so Delia felt free to stroll into the master bedroom while flipping to page three. She went over to stand near a bureau-just trying to get more reading light from the window above it, she could argue. Behind her, Adrian straightened her collar. His fingers made a whispery sound. “Why do you always wear a necklace?” he asked, very close to her ear.

“Hmm?” she said in a small voice. She turned another page, blindly.

“You always wear a string of pearls, or a cameo, or today this heart-shaped locket. Always something snug around your throat, and these little round innocent collars.”

“It’s only habit,” she said, but her thoughts were racing. Did he mean that she looked silly, unsuited to her age?

He had never asked how old she was, and although she wouldn’t have lied to him, she didn’t feel any need to volunteer the truth. When he’d told her that he himself was thirty-two, she had said, “Thirty-two! Young enough to be my son!”-a deliberate exaggeration, calculated to make him laugh. She had not mentioned the ages of her children, even. Nor had he inquired, for like most childless people, he seemed ignorant of the enormous space that children occupy in a life.

Also, he had a slightly skewed image of her husband. She could tell from some of his remarks that he was picturing Sam as beefy and athletic (because he jogged) and perhaps possessed of a jealous disposition. And Delia had not set him straight.

All it would take was bringing the two men together once-inviting Adrian for supper, say, as a neighbor left wifeless and forced to cook for himself-and the situation would lose all its potential for drama. Sam would start referring to “your pal Bly-Brice,” in that sardonic way of his; the children would roll their eyes if she talked to him too long on the phone. But Delia made no move to arrange such a meeting. She had not so much as spoken his name to anyone in her family. And when Adrian ’s hands left her collar to settle on both her shoulders and draw her closer, she didn’t resist but tipped her head back to rest it against his chest. “You’re such a little person,” he said. She heard the rumble of his voice within his rib cage. “You’re so little and dainty and delicate.”

Compared with his wife, she supposed he meant; and the notion pulled her upright. She walked away from him, briskly realigning pages. She circled the bed (Rosemary’s bed! covered with a rather seedy sateen quilt) and approached the closet. “What I want to know,” she said over her shoulder, “is can you really make a living this way? Because a magazine like yours is kind of specialized, isn’t it?”