Anne Tyler - Ladder of Years

Slam of receiver, squeak of caster wheels, heavy tread on carpet. The paneled door swung open, and a big-bellied middle-aged man in a seersucker suit surveyed her over his half-glasses. “I thought I heard someone,” he said.

“Mr. Pomfret, I’m Delia Grinstead,” she told him. “I’ve come to be your secretary.”

At four-fifteen she returned to the dime store and bought one cotton nightgown, white, and two pairs of nylon panty hose. At four twenty-five she crossed the square to Bassett Bros. Shoe Store and bought a large black leather handbag. The bag cost fifty-seven dollars. When she first saw the price she considered settling for vinyl, but then she decided that only genuine leather would pass muster with Miss Grinstead.

Miss Grinstead was Delia-the new Delia; for after one grimacing, acidic “Ms.,” that was how Mr. Pomfret had addressed her throughout their interview. It seemed apt that she should accept this compromise-the unmarried title, the married surname. Certainly the aproned, complacent sound of “Mrs.” no longer applied, and yet she couldn’t go back to being giggly young Miss Felson. Besides, her Social Security card said Grinstead. She had drawn it from her wallet and read off the number to Mr. Pomfret (not having had enough use of it, all these years, to know it by heart). She had told him she was relocating after burying her mother. A whole unspoken history insinuated itself in the air between them: the puttery female household, the daughter’s nunnish devotion. She said she had worked in a doctor’s office her entire adult life. “Twenty-two years,” she told Mr. Pomfret, “and I felt so sad to leave, but I simply couldn’t stay on in Baltimore with all those memories.” She seemed to have been infected with Miss Grinstead’s manner of speaking. She would never herself have used “simply” in casual conversation, and the word “memories” in that context had a certain mealymouthed tone that was unlike her.

If references had been called for, she was prepared to say that her employer had recently died as well. (She was killing off people right and left today.) But Mr. Pomfret didn’t mention references. His sole concern was the nature of her past duties. Had she typed, had she filed, taken shorthand? She answered truthfully, but it felt like lies. “I typed all the bills and correspondence and the doctor’s charts,” she said. Sam’s worn face rose up before her, along with his mended white coat and the paisley tie that he called his “paramecium tie.” She sat straighter in her chair. “I filed and manned the phone and kept the appointment book, but unfortunately I do not take shorthand.”

“Well, no matter,” Mr. Pomfret said. “Neither did Miss Percy or Miss What’s-her-name. I’ve always dreamed of having a secretary with shorthand, but I guess it’s not meant to be.”

There was an uncomfortable moment when he asked for her address, since she had no idea what it was. But when she mentioned Belle Flint he said, “Oh, yes, on George Street.” He added, as he made a notation, “Belle’s a real fun gal.” That was the advantage to a small town, Delia supposed. Or the disadvantage, depending on how you looked at it.

He said she should start tomorrow; her hours were nine to five. Sorry the pay was just minimum wage, he said (sliding his eyes over subtly to gauge her reaction). Also, she was expected to brew the coffee; he hoped that wasn’t a problem.

Of course it wasn’t, Delia said brusquely, and she rose and terminated the interview. Her impression of Mr. Pomfret was that he was a man without any grain to him, someone benign but not especially interesting, and that was fine with her. In fact, she didn’t much like him, and that was fine too. For the impersonal new life she seemed to be manufacturing for herself, Mr. Pomfret was ideal.

Her watch said twenty minutes till five, and she hadn’t eaten since breakfast. Before heading back to her room, therefore, she walked to the café that Belle had recommended. It turned out to be not directly across from Belle’s but a few doors farther west, next to a hardware. Still, she could see the boardinghouse from the window; so she sat in the booth that offered the best view and kept watch against Belle’s return. Maybe she should have purchased a suitcase, just so she could move in openly. But it was foolish to spend money on appearances. Already her five hundred dollars had dwindled to… what? Mentally she tallied it up and then winced. When the waitress arrived, she confined her order to a bowl of vegetable soup and a glass of milk.

Rick-Rack’s was the kind of place where she might have eaten in high school-a diner, basically, linoleum floored and tile walled, with six or eight booths and a row of stools along a Formica counter. One little redhead served the whole room, and a blue-black young man, gigantically muscled and shaven skulled, did the cooking. He was grilling a cheese sandwich for the only other customer, a boy about Ramsay’s age. The smell of fried food gave Delia hunger pangs even as she was spooning her soup, but she reminded herself that soup provided more vitamins for the money, and she declined the homemade pie for dessert. She paid at the register. The cook, after wiping his hands on his apron, rang up her total without comment. Next time she’d bring something to read, she decided. She had felt awkward, munching her saltines and staring fixedly out the window.

No sign of Belle back at the house. Delia unlatched the front door and felt a thin, bare silence all around her. She climbed the stairs, thinking, Here comes the executive secretary, returning from her lone meal to the solitude of her room. It wasn’t a complaint, though. It was a boast. An exultation.

When she opened her own door the hornet’s-nest smell seemed stronger, perhaps because of the afternoon heat that had penetrated the eaves. She set her belongings on the bureau and went to raise both windows. The rear window offered a view of the tiny backyard and an alley. The front window showed the porch overhang and the buildings across the street. Delia leaned her forehead against the screen and picked out the café (B. J. “RICK” RACKLEY, PROP.) and the hardware store and a brown shingled house with the bars of a crib or a playpen visible in one upstairs window. The only sounds were soothing sounds-occasional cars swishing past and footsteps on the sidewalk.

Belle had left an old-fashioned, spindly key on the bureau, and Delia fitted it into the door and turned the lock. Then she took the tags off her new handbag, dropped her wallet inside, and hung the bag from a hook in the closet. She stowed her other purchases in the bureau. (The drawers stuck and slid out crookedly; they were cheaply made, like the house itself.) She hung Sam’s beach robe on a hanger. She placed her cosmetic kit in a drawer. Her tote, with its remaining litter of sun lotions and swimsuit and rubber bands and such, she boosted onto the closet shelf. Then she closed the closet door and went over to the cot and sat down.

So.

She was settled.

She could look around the room and detect not the slightest hint that anybody lived here.

It was twilight before Belle returned. Delia heard the clunk of a car door out front, then loud heels on the porch. But neither woman called out a greeting. In fact, Delia, who had been staring into space for who knows how long, rose from the cot as soundlessly as possible, and tiptoed when she went over to collect some things from the bureau, and took care not to creak any floorboards when she crossed the hall to the bathroom.

While she waited for the shower to run warm, she brushed her teeth and undressed, putting her underwear to soak in the sink. A second towel and washcloth now hung on the other towel bar, she saw. She took the washcloth with her and stepped behind the shower curtain, which was crackly with age and slightly mildewed.