Anne Tyler - Ladder of Years

“Well, but campgrounds,” Vernon said. “Mostly you’d need to reserve ahead, for a campground.”

“And next morning I’d say, ‘Okay! That’s it for this place!’ And move on.”

“The rates are kind of steep too, if the campground’s halfway decent,” Vernon said. “Durn. Is that the time?”

He was looking at the clock above the sink. Delia was glad to see that the clock, at least, was attached to the wall. In her opinion, there was far too much loose and adrift here-not just the percolator but sloppily refolded newspapers and videotapes out of their boxes and cast-off pieces of clothing. “What I can’t fathom,” she said, “is how you manage to drive with these things sliding all over. Wouldn’t you have flying objects every time you hit a speed bump?”

“Not as I’ve noticed,” Vernon said. “But remember this ain’t my property. And speaking of which, my brother’s due back in like a couple of hours so I reckon I better be going.”

“I wish I could come too,” Delia said.

“Yeah. Right. Well, look, it’s been great talking with you-”

“Maybe I could just ride along for a little tiny part of the way,” Delia said.

“When-now?”

“Just to see how it handles on the road.”

“Well, it… handles fine on the road,” Vernon said. “But I’m going inland, you know? I’m nowhere near any beaches. Going down Three eighty past Ashford, way past Ashford, over to-”

“I’ll just ride to, um, Ashford,” Delia said.

She knew she was making him nervous. He stood staring at her, his eyebrows crinkled and his mouth slightly open, his clipboard dangling forgotten from one hand. Never mind: any moment now she would let him off the hook. She would give a little coming-to-her-senses laugh and tell him that on second thought, she couldn’t possibly ride to Ashford. She did have a family after all, and already they must be wondering where she was.

And yet here stood this van, this beautiful, completely stocked, entirely self-sufficient van that you could travel in forever, unentangled with anyone else. Oh, couldn’t she offer to buy it? How much did such things cost? Or steal it, even-shove Vernon out the door and zoom off, careening west on little back roads where no one could ever track her.

But: “Well,” she said regretfully, “I do have a family.”

“Family in Ashford? Oh, in that case,” Vernon said.

It took her a minute to understand. His eyebrows smoothed themselves out, and he leaned past her to slide the door shut. Then he flung his clipboard on the bench and said, “Long as you’ve got transportation back, then…”

Speechless, Delia made her way to the front. She sat in the passenger seat and perched her tote bag on her knees. Next to her, Vernon was settling behind the wheel. When he switched on the ignition, the van roared to life so suddenly that she fancied it had been jittering with impatience all this time.

“Hear that?” Vernon asked her.

She nodded. She supposed it must be the engine’s vibration that caused her teeth to start chattering.

Traveling down Highway 1 toward the Maryland border, past giant beach-furniture stores and brand-new “Victorian” developments and the jumbled cafés and apartments of Fenwick Island, Delia kept telling herself that she could still get back on her own. It would mean a long walk, was all (which stretched longer moment by moment). And when they entered Ocean City, with its honky-tonk razzle-dazzle-well, Ocean City had buses, she happened to know. She could take a bus to its northernmost edge and then walk back. So she rode quietly, beginning to feel almost relaxed, while Vernon hunched over the wheel and steered with his forearms. He was one of those drivers who talked to traffic. “Not to pressure you or anything, fella,” he said when a car ahead of him stalled, and he clucked at four teenage boys crossing the street with their surfboards. “Aren’t you-all hotshots,” he told them. Delia gazed after them. The tallest boy wore ticking-striped shorts exactly like a pair Carroll owned-that voluminous new fashion that billowed to mid-knee.

When her family discovered she was gone, they would be baffled. Flummoxed. If she stayed away long enough, they would wonder if she’d met with an accident. “Or could she have left on purpose?” Sam would at last ask the children. “Did one of you say something? Did I say something? Was I mistaken to believe she wasn’t the type for an affair?”

An airy sense of exhilaration filled her chest. She felt so lightweight, all at once.

Then after they had had time to get really concerned, she would phone. Find a booth before night fell and, “It’s me,” she would announce. “Just took a little jaunt to the country; could one of you come pick me up?” No harm done.

So when Vernon turned onto Highway 50 and started inland (talking now about the “differential,” whatever that was), she still said nothing to stop him. The percolator clanked on the stovetop; they rattled across a bridge she’d never seen before and entered a bleached, pale country entirely unfamiliar to her. She merely stared out the window. They passed yellowing, papery houses set in the middle of careful lawns that appeared to have been hand clipped, blade by blade. They flickered through leafy woodlands. “One place he flubbed up is not opting for a CB,” Vernon said, referring evidently to his brother, but Delia was just then picturing how Sam’s lips always formed a straight line when he was angry. And it occurred to her that what he might tell the children was, “Well, at least we can get things done right, now she’s gone.”

“Besides which you will notice there’s no stereo,” Vernon said. “That’s my brother for you: he don’t care much for music. I say there’s something lacking in a man who don’t like music.”

Maybe Eleanor would step in (speaking of doing things right). Oh, Eleanor would take over gladly-plan all the menus a year in advance and set up one of her Iron Mama budgets.

“I guess you think that’s awful,” Vernon said. “To pick fault with my own brother.”

Delia said, “No, no…”

Here and there, now, gaunt old dignified farmhouses stood at the end of long driveways, with crops growing all around them and lightning rods bristling on their rooftops. Imagine living in such a place! It would be so wholesome. Delia saw herself feeding chickens, flinging corn or wheat or whatever from her capacious country apron. First she’d have to marry a farmer, though. You always had to begin by finding some man to set things in motion, it seemed.

“But I’ll be honest,” Vernon was saying. “Me and him never have been what you’d call close. He is three years older than me and never lets me forget it. Keeps yammering about head of the family, when fact is he hardly lays eyes on our family from one month to the next. I’m the one takes Mom grocery shopping. I’m the one runs her hither and yon for her bingo nights and her covered-dish suppers and what all.”

Why did everyone maintain that men were uncommunicative? In Delia’s experience, they talked a blue streak, especially repairmen. And Sam was no exception. Sam communicated all too well, if you asked Delia.

She let her eyes follow a trailer park as they passed it. Each trailer was anchored by awnings and cinder-block steps and sometimes a screened extension. Whole menageries of plaster animals filled the little yards.

“Now, you take this fishing trip: know who’s tending his kids? Me and Mom. Course mostly it’s Mom, but time I come home from work nights, she is so wore out the rest is up to me. But don’t expect Vincent to thank me. No, sir. And if he gets wind I drove his van, he’ll have my head.”

In her tote bag Delia had five hundred dollars of vacation money, split between her billfold and a deceptive little vinyl cosmetic kit. She could stay away overnight, if she really wanted to alarm them-take a room in some motel or even a picturesque inn. However, all she had on was her swimsuit. Oh, Lord. Her scrunchy-skirted swimsuit and her espadrilles and Sam’s beach robe. But supposing she kept the robe tightly closed… Viewed in a certain way, it was not all that different from a dress. The sleeves were three-quarter length; the hem covered her knees. And hotels around here must be used to tourists, in their skimpy tourist outfits.