Anne Tyler - Ladder of Years

“The… Larry Watts who was separated?” Delia asked in confusion.

“Oh, I didn’t realize you knew him. Yes, once I put it all together, I recalled he did come back for his raincoat-raincoat he’d left in the downstairs closet. That must be how they met. Next thing anyone knows, he’s flown the coop, leaving that little wife of his for the second time in two years. Not to mention Zeke Pomfret needing to hunt up a whole new girl now, so soon after losing poor Miss Percy.”

She flung open a door at the rear, exposing a shallow closet. Three hangers tinkled faintly. “Bathroom’s off the hall, full bath with tub and shower,” she said, “and you wouldn’t have to share it but on weekends, when Mr. Lamb gets back from his sales trips. I stay downstairs, myself. Rent is forty-two dollars a week. You want it?”

Forty-two dollars was less than a single night in most hotels. And a hotel would not be anything like so satisfyingly Spartan. Delia said, “You mean it’s all right I’m not a man?”

The woman shrugged. “No one else has come along,” she said.

Delia walked over to the cot, which was made up with white sheets and a white woolen blanket washed bald. When she tested the mattress with one palm, it sounded the same tinny note as the hangers.

She said, “Definitely I want it.”

“Well, great. I’m Belle Flint, by the way.”

“I’m Delia Grinstead,” Delia said, and then she wondered if she should have used an alias. But Belle seemed reassuringly uninterested. She was fluffing her curls now in the mirror over the bureau. “So,” Delia said, “would I have to… sign a contract?”

“Contract?”

“I mean…”

It must be painfully apparent that she had never arranged for her own housing before. “I mean a… lease or something?” she asked.

“Lord, no, just pay in advance, every Saturday morning,” Belle said, baring her front teeth to the mirror. “Let’s see. Today’s Monday… Pay me thirty dollars; that’ll cover this week. You plan on staying here long?”

“Oh, maybe,” Delia said, deliberately vague, and she started making a to-do over digging through her tote. Belle was tilting her chin now to study the cushion of flesh beneath it. Her entire face was a cushion; she resembled one of those lush, soft flowers, a peony or a big floppy iris.

“Well, here,” Delia told her, “ten, twenty…,” and only then did Belle turn away from the mirror. If she was surprised to receive cash, she didn’t show it. She folded the bills and tucked them into her breast pocket.

“I guess you’ll want to go fetch your belongings,” she said, “and meantime I’ll put your key on the bureau, just in case I’m out when you get back. I’m showing a house at four-thirty. You won’t be bringing a lot of stuff, I hope.”

“No, I-”

“Because this room doesn’t have much storage space, and I hate for things to spill over. That’s how all that happened with Larry Watts and Katie: his raincoat spilled into the downstairs closet, and so naturally he forgot it when he moved.”

“I’m bringing very little,” Delia said.

She would wait to come back till, say, five o’clock, when Belle was sure to be out. That way Belle wouldn’t see she was really bringing nothing. It was now… Surreptitiously, she checked her watch. Three forty-five. Belle was clattering out of the room in her wedge-heeled sandals. “Rules are, the first floor is mine,” she said, pausing in the hall, “and that includes the kitchen. Café across the street is pretty good: Rick-Rack’s. There’s a laundromat on East Street, and Mrs. Auburn comes Fridays to clean the rooms. We never lock the front door, but that key to your room does work, if you’re the nervous type. You got all that?”

“Yes, thanks.”

“And I don’t suppose you’ll have guests,” Belle said. She gave Delia a sudden appraising look. “Men guests, that is.”

“Oh! No, I won’t.”

“Your private life is your private life, but that forty-two dollars covers utilities for one. Sheets and towels for one, too.”

“I don’t even know anybody to invite,” Delia assured her.

“You’re not a local girl, huh?”

“Well, no.”

“Me neither. Till I came here with a fella, I never heard of Bay Borough,” Belle said cheerfully. “The fella didn’t work out, but I stayed on anyhow.”

Delia knew she should volunteer some information in exchange, but all she said was, “I guess I’ll wash up before I go get my things.”

“Help yourself,” Belle said with a wave. And she went clomping down the stairs.

Delia waited a polite half second before stepping into the bathroom. She hadn’t peed since ten o’clock that morning.

The bathroom wallpaper-seahorses breathing silver bubbles-curled at the seams, and the fixtures were old and rust-stained, but everything looked clean. First Delia used the toilet, and then she patted her face with cool water and let it air-dry. (The one towel belonged to the other boarder, she assumed.) She avoided her face in the mirror; she preferred to hang on to the image she’d seen in the changing booth. She did glance down at her dress, though, checking it for neatness, for secretarial properness. And just before walking out, she slipped her wedding ring off her finger and dropped it into her tote.

Then she made a brief return trip to her room. She didn’t go inside but merely stood in the doorway, claiming it-reveling in its starkness, now that she had it completely to herself.

Clop-clop back up the street, eyes front, as if she knew where she was headed. Well, she did, more or less. Already the little town held pockets of familiar sights: the faded red soft-drink machine outside the Gobble-Up Grocery, the chipped Fiesta ware in Bob’s Antiques, the stacked bags of kibble for overweight dogs in Pet Heaven. She took a right at the corner, and the green square in the distance seemed as comfortable, as well known and faintly boring, as if she had spent her childhood at the foot of Mr. Bay’s fringed chair.

Ezekiel Pomfret still had his shade pulled down, but when Delia tried the door it yielded. A steep flight of stairs climbed straight ahead. A ground-floor door to the right bore, on its cloudy, pebbled glass, Ezekiel Pomfret’s name once again and WILLS & ESTATES-DOMESTIC-CRIMINAL LAW. That door, too, opened when Delia tried it. She stepped into a walnut-lined room with a reception desk in the center. No one sat at the desk, she was pleased to see. No one was visible anywhere, but behind another door, this one ornately paneled, she heard a man’s voice. It stopped and started, interspersed by silence, so she knew he must be talking on the phone.

She crossed to the desk, which was bare except for a telephone and a typewriter. She lifted a corner of the typewriter’s gray rubber hood. Manual; not even electric. (She had worried she would find a computer.) She gave a small, testing spin to the swivel chair behind it.

Good afternoon, she would say. I’m here to ask if…

No, not ask. Ask was too tentative.

She reached up to pat her hair, which felt as crumbly as dry sand on the beach. (The beach! No: shoo that thought away.) She smoothed her skirt around her hips and made sure that the trim on her tote-a flashy pink bow, ridiculous-was hidden beneath her arm.

It just seemed so fateful, Mr. Pomfret, it seemed almost like a direct command, that I should learn about poor Miss Percy exactly at the moment when…

The voice behind the door gathered energy and volume. Mr. Pomfret must be winding up his conversation.

Like having something accidentally break my fall, does that make any sense? Like I’ve been falling, falling all day and then was snagged by a random hook, or caught by an outjutting ledge, and this is where I happened to land, so I was wondering whether…