Anne Tyler - Ladder of Years

“Oh, I’m not so much as breaking even,” Adrian told her offhandedly. “Pretty soon I’ll have to fold, I guess. Switch to something new. But I’m used to that. Before this, I published a bulletin for rotisserie-baseball owners.”

The closet was filled with Rosemary’s clothes-tops, then dresses, then pants, so there was an orderly progression from short to long; and they hung evenly spaced, not bunched together as in Delia’s closet. According to Adrian, Rosemary had abandoned every single one of her possessions when she left. All she took was the black silk jumpsuit she was wearing and a slim black purse tucked under her arm. Why did Delia find that so alluring? This was not the first time she had stood mesmerized in front of Rosemary’s closet.

“And before that,” Adrian said, “I had a quarterly for M *A *S *H fans.” He was behind her again. He reached out one finger to stroke the point of her bent elbow.

Delia said, “How’ve you been supporting yourself all this time?”

“Well, Rosemary had a bit of an inheritance.”

She closed the closet door. She said, “Did you know that before you married her?”

“Why do you ask?”

“Lately I’ve been wondering if Sam married me for my father’s practice,” she said.

She shouldn’t have told him. Adrian would look at her and think, Yes, she is rather homely, and her elbows are chapped besides.

But he smiled and said, “If it were me, I’d have married you for your freckles.”

She went over to Rosemary’s side of the bed. She knew it was Rosemary’s because a blown-glass perfume bottle sat next to the lamp. First she laid Dr. Adwater’s article on the nightstand, and then, as if it were the logical next step, she opened the little drawer underneath. She gazed into a clutter of manicure scissors, emery boards, and nail polish bottles.

How fitting, the name Rosemary! Rosemary was such a sophisticated herb, so sharp-tasting, almost chemical. Put too much in a recipe, and you’d swear you were eating a petroleum product. There was nothing plain about it, nothing mild or dull. Nothing freckled.

Adrian came up behind her. He turned her to face him and wrapped his arms around her, and this time she didn’t move away but set her hands at his waist and strained upward to meet his kisses. He kissed her mouth, her eyelids, her mouth once more. He whispered, “Lie down with me, Delia.”

Then the phone rang.

He didn’t seem to hear it; he never heard it. And he never answered it. He said it was his mother-in-law, who liked him better than she liked her own daughter and was always trying to get them back together. “How do you know it’s not Rosemary?” Delia once asked, and Adrian, shrugging, said, “The telephone isn’t Rosemary’s instrument of choice.” Now he didn’t flinch, didn’t even tense. Delia would have felt it if he had. He kissed the curve where her neck met her shoulder, and she began to notice the bed pressing the backs of her knees. But the phone continued to ring. Ten rings, eleven. Subconsciously, she must be counting. The realization enabled her, somehow, to pull away, although she felt that she was dragging her limbs through water. “Oh, my,” she said, out of breath, and she made a great business of tucking her blouse more securely into her skirt. “I really should be… did I leave my purse downstairs?”

He was out of breath too. He didn’t speak. She said, “Yes, I remember! On the chair. I have to hurry; Sam’s mother is coming to dinner.”

Meanwhile she was clattering down the stairs. The extension phone in the living room was on its fourteenth ring. Its fifteenth. She reached the front hall and seized her purse and turned at the door to say, “You know we’re leaving tomorrow for-”

“You never stay,” he said. “You’re always rushing off as soon as you get here.”

“Oh, well, I-”

“What are you afraid of?”

I’m afraid of getting undressed in front of someone thirty-two years old, she did not say. She smiled up at him, falsely. She said, “I’ll see you after the beach, I guess.”

“Can’t you ever manage a solid block of time? A whole night? Can’t you tell them you’re visiting one of your girlfriends?”

“I don’t have a girlfriend,” she said.

She really didn’t, come to think of it. When she married Sam she had switched generations and left everyone behind, all her old high-school classmates. “Although it’s true there’s Bootsy Fisher,” she said. (Whom Sam called Bootsy Officious: the thought rose out of nowhere.) “Her kids and mine used to carpool.”

“Can’t you say you’re at Bootsy’s?”

“Oh, no, I don’t see how I-”

And then, because she guessed from the way his mouth seemed to soften that he was about to kiss her again, she gave him a fluttery wave and hurried out the door, nearly tripping over Butch on the mat.

Funny, she thought, as she settled herself in her car, how often lately her high-school days came to mind. It must be this dizzy, damp, rumpled feeling as she rushed home from secret meetings; her telltale flushed cheeks, the used and smushed look of her lips when she risked a glance in the rearview mirror. At a stop sign she made sure that all her buttons were buttoned, and she patted her locket into place between her collarbones. Once again she heard Adrian say, “Why do you always wear a necklace?” And then, “Lie down with me, Delia,” and just as in her high-school days, she felt stirred even more by the memory than by the event itself. If she hadn’t already been seated, her legs might have buckled.

Maybe she could say she was visiting Bootsy. Not for a whole night, of course, but for an evening. Certainly no one in her family would bother checking up on her.

She parked in the driveway, which was clear now of all cars except for Sam’s. Smoke billowed from the yard on the other side of the house. He must be firing up the grill for dinner.

She followed the trail of smoke to the little flagstone rectangle beneath the office windows. Yes, there he was, peering at the grill’s thermometer with his glasses raised. He still wore his shirt and tie and his suit trousers, minus his white coat. He looked so professional that Delia felt a flash of anxiety. Didn’t he know everything? But when he straightened, lowering his glasses, all he said was, “Hi, Dee. Where’ve you been?”

“Oh, I was… running a few errands,” she said.

She was amazed that he didn’t ask why, then, she had returned empty-handed. He just nodded and tapped the thermometer with his index finger.

Climbing the steps to the kitchen door, she felt like a woman emerging from a deep, thick daytime sleep. She walked past Eliza and drifted toward the hall. “Are you going to grill the vegetables too? Or put them in the oven?” Eliza called after her.

There wouldn’t be space for them on the grill. They would have to go in the oven, and she meant to say as much to Eliza but forgot, lost the words, and merely floated into the study. It was unoccupied, thank heaven. She didn’t believe she could have waited till she reached the phone upstairs. She lifted the receiver, dialed Adrian ’s number, let his phone ring twice, and then hung up-her way of letting him know that this was not his mother-in-law. She redialed, and he answered halfway through the first ring. “Is that you?” he asked. His voice sounded urgent, intense. She sank onto a footstool and gripped the receiver more tightly.

“Yes,” she whispered.

“Come back here, Delia.”

“I wish I could.”

“Come back and stay with me.”

“I want to. I do want to,” she said.

Sam’s mother said, “Delia?”

Delia slammed the phone down and jumped to her feet. “Eleanor!” she cried. She thrust her hands in the folds of her skirt to hide their tremor. “I was just-I was just-”