Anne Tyler - Ladder of Years

“What’s life?”

“Fifteen cents a copy.”

“But I only have a dime.”

It rained during their first evening at the beach, and their cottage roof turned out to have a leak. This was not a very fancy cottage, not an oceanfront, resort-style cottage, but a dumpy little house on the inland side of Highway 1. Delia could imagine an ordinary Delaware feed-store clerk living there until about a week ago. The kitchen sink was skirted in chintz, the living-room floor was blue linoleum squiggled to suggest a hooked rug, and all the beds sagged toward the middle and creaked at the slightest movement. Still, Sam said, they shouldn’t have to endure a puddle in the upstairs hall. He phoned the rental agent at once, using the after-hours emergency number, and insisted that the problem be seen to the first thing the following morning.

“What,” Linda asked him, “do you have to have your crew of workmen even on vacation?”

And Eliza said, “Let’s just mop it up and forget it. It surely won’t rain again while we’re here, because if it does I’m going to sue God.”

Delia herself said nothing. She really couldn’t gather the strength.

In their own house back in Baltimore, workmen would be using the week to sand down the floors and refinish them. This meant that Delia had had to bring the cat along. (He wouldn’t tolerate boarding-had nearly pined away the one time they had tried it.) Sam claimed they were sure to be evicted, since pets were expressly forbidden, but Delia told him that was impossible. How would anyone ever guess Vernon was there? For he’d been so incensed by the car trip that the instant he was set down in the cottage, he streaked to the back of a kitchen cabinet. Delia knew enough to leave him tactfully alone, but the twins wouldn’t rest, and after supper they hovered at the cabinet door with a plate of leftovers, trying to coax him out. “Here, Vernon! Nice Vernon.” His only response was that disheartening, numb silence cats seem to radiate when they’re determined to keep to themselves. “Oh,” Marie-Claire wailed, “what’ll we do? He’s going to starve to death!”

“Good riddance,” Sam told her. “It’s only live pets that we’re not allowed.”

Sam had been out of sorts all day, it seemed to Delia.

So that first evening, when they should have been taking a stroll on the beach or walking into town for ice cream, the grown-ups sat in the kerosene-smelling, poorly lighted living room, reading tattered magazines left behind by earlier tenants and listening to the pecking of the rain against the windows. The twins were still in the kitchen, badgering Vernon. Susie and the boys had borrowed the Plymouth and driven to Ocean City, which made Delia anxious because she always pictured Ocean City as a gigantic arena of bumper cars manned by drunken college students. But she tried to keep her mind on American Deck and Patio.

“If tomorrow isn’t sunny,” Linda said, “maybe we could take a little day trip out past Salisbury. I want the twins to get some sense of their heritage.”

“Oh, Linda, not that damn cemetery again,” Eliza said.

“Well, fine, then. Just lend me a car and I’ll take them myself. That’s what happened last year, as I recall.”

“Yes, and last year both twins came back bored to tears and cranky. What do they care for a bunch of dead Carrolls and Webers?”

“They had a wonderful time! And I’d like to find Great-Uncle Roscoe’s place too, if I can.”

“Well, good hunting, is all I can say. I’m sure it’s a parking lot by now, and anyhow, Mother never got along with Uncle Roscoe.”

“Eliza, why do you have to run me down at every turn?” Linda demanded. “Why is it that every little thing I propose you have to mock and denigrate?”

“Now, ladies,” Sam said absently, leafing through Offshore Angler.

Linda turned on him. She said, “Don’t you ’Now, ladies’ me, Sam Grinstead.”

“Sorry,” Sam murmured.

“Mr. Voice of Reason, here!”

“My mistake.”

She rose in a huff and went off to check the twins. Eliza closed her Yachting World and stared bleakly at the cover.

Linda and Eliza were in their Day Two Mode, was how Delia always thought of it-that edgy, prickly stage after the first flush of Linda’s arrival had faded. Once, Delia had asked Eliza why she and Linda weren’t closer, and Eliza had said, “Oh, people who’ve shared an unhappy childhood rarely are close, I’ve found.” Delia was surprised. Their childhood had been unhappy? Hers had been idyllic. But she refrained from saying so.

Linda returned with the twins, who were still fretting over Vernon, and Sam set aside his magazine and suggested a game of rummy. “Did you bring the cards?” he asked Delia.

She had not. She realized it the instant he asked, but made a show of rooting through the shopping bag on the coffee table. Jigsaw puzzles, Monopoly, and a Parcheesi board emerged, but no cards. “Um…,” she said.

“Oh, well,” Sam said, “we’ll play Parcheesi, then.” His tone was weightily patient, which seemed worse than shouting.

At the bottom of the bag, Delia came across her current library book. Captive of Clarion Castle, it was called. She had started it last week and found it slow, but anything was preferable to deck plans. When Sam asked, “Are you playing too, Delia?” she said, “I think I’ll go read in bed.”

“Now? It’s not even nine o’clock.”

“Well, I’m tired,” she told him. She said good night to the others and walked out with the front of her book concealed, although no one made any attempt to see the title.

Upstairs, a new ribbon of water meandered from the sodden bath mat alongside the chimney. She ignored it and proceeded to the room she was sharing with Sam. It was small and musty-smelling, with one, uncurtained window. For privacy’s sake she changed into her nightgown in the dark, and then she washed up in the bathroom across the hall. Back in the bedroom, she switched on the lamp and aimed its weak yellow beam in the direction of her pillow. Then she slid under the covers, wriggled her toes luxuriously, and opened her book.

The heroine of this book was a woman named Eleanora, which unfortunately brought Eleanor to Delia’s mind. Eleanora’s long raven tresses and “piquant” face kept giving way to Eleanor’s no-nonsense haircut and Iron Mama jawline; and when Kendall, the hero, crushed her to him, Delia saw Eleanor’s judging gaze directed past his broad shoulder. Kendall was Eleanora’s future brother-in-law, the younger brother of her aristocratic, suave fiancé. Impetuously, Kendall kidnapped Eleanora the first time he laid eyes on her, which happened to be about fifteen minutes before her wedding. “I will never love you! Never!” Eleanora cried, pummeling his chest with her tiny fists, but Kendall seized her wrists and waited, masterful and confident, until she subsided.

Delia closed the book, leaving one finger inside as a marker. She stared down at the couple embracing on the cover.

Not once, from the moment they met, had Adrian truly pursued her. It had all been a matter of happenstance. Happenstance had led him to ask her to pose as his girlfriend (Who else was remotely eligible? The woman with the baby? The old lady at the checkout counter?), and happenstance had brought them together again a few nights later. In addition, his every act had betrayed that he was still in love with his wife. He loved her so much that he couldn’t face her on his own in the supermarket; he couldn’t sleep in their bedroom after she left. But Delia, like some self-deluded teenage ninny, had chosen not to see.

And she had overlooked other clues as well-clues that revealed the very nature of his character. For instance, his behavior at that first encounter: his rearrangement of her shopping plans, his condescending reference to Roland Park names, his trendy groceries. He was not a bad person, surely, but his mind was on his own concerns. And he was just the least bit shallow.