Anne Tyler - Ladder of Years

The light grew dimmer, and she switched on the goosenecked lamp that craned over her shoulder from the windowsill. Now the children across the street, released from the supper table, were playing something argumentative outdoors. Delia heard them for a while but gradually forgot to listen, and when she thought of them again she realized they must have gone in to bed. Night had fallen, and moths were thumping against the screen. Down in the street, a car door closed; heels clopped across the porch; Belle entered the house and went directly to the front room, where she started talking on the phone. “You know it’s got great resale value,” Delia heard, before forgetting to listen to that as well. Later she stopped reading for a moment and heard only silence, inside and out, except for the distant traffic on 380. It was cooler now, and she felt grateful for the lamp’s small circle of warmth.

She came to the end of her book, but she kept rereading the final sentence till her eyes blurred over with tears. Then she placed the book on the floor and reached up to switch the lamp off so she could sit weeping in the dark-the very last step in her daily routine.

She wept without a thought in her head, heaving silent sobs that racked her chest and contorted her mouth. Every few minutes she blew her nose on the strip of toilet paper she kept under her pillow. When she felt completely drained, she gave a deep, shuddering sigh and said aloud, “Ah, well.” Then she blew her nose one last time and lay down to sleep.

It amazed her that she always slept so soundly.

The toddler wanted the pigeons to eat from his fingers. He squatted in their midst, his bulky corduroy bottom just inches from the ground, and held a crouton toward them. But the pigeons strutted around him with shrewd, evasive glances, and when it dawned on him that they would never come closer he suddenly toppled backward, not giving the slightest warning, and pedaled the air in a fury. Delia smiled, but only behind the shield of her newspaper.

Today there was no further mention of her disappearance. She wondered if the authorities had forgotten her that quickly.

She folded the Metro section and laid it on the bench beside her. She reached for the cup of yogurt at her left and then noticed, out of the corner of her eye, the woman who stood watching her from several yards away.

Her heart gave a lurch. She said, “Eliza?”

Eliza moved forward abruptly, as if she had just this second determined something.

There was no one beside her. No one behind her.

No one.

She was wearing a dress-a tailored tan shirtwaist that dated from the time when they still had a Stewart’s department store. Eliza almost never wore dresses. This must be a special occasion, Delia thought, and then she thought, Why, I am the occasion. She rose, fumbling with her yogurt cup. “Hello, Eliza,” she said.

“Hello, Delia.”

They stood awkwardly facing each other, Eliza gripping a boxy leather purse in both hands, until Delia recollected the old man on the east bench. He appeared to be intent on his magazine, but that didn’t fool her in the least. “Would you like to take a walk?” she asked Eliza.

“We could,” Eliza said stiffly.

She was probably angry. Well, of course she was angry. Bundling her lunch things into the trash basket, Delia felt like a little girl hiding some mischief. She sensed she was blushing, too. Hateful thin-skinned complexion, always giving her away. She slung the strap of her handbag over her shoulder and set off across the square, with Eliza lagging a step behind as if to accentuate Delia’s willfulness, her lack of consideration. When they reached the street, Delia stopped and turned to face her. “I guess you think I shouldn’t have done this,” she said.

“I didn’t say that. I’m waiting to hear your reasons.”

Delia started walking again. If she had known Eliza would pop up this way, she would have invented some reasons ahead of time. It was ridiculous not to have any.

“Mr. Sudler thought you were a battered wife,” Eliza said.

“Who?”

“The roofer. Vernon Sudler.”

“Oh, Vernon,” Delia said. Yes, of course: he would have seen the newspaper.

They crossed the street and headed north. Delia had planned to visit the thrift shop, but now she didn’t know where she was going.

“He phoned us in Baltimore,” Eliza said. “He asked for-”

“ Baltimore! What were you doing in Baltimore?”

“Why, we packed up and drove there after you left. Surely you didn’t think we’d stay at the beach.”

Actually, Delia had thought that. But she could see now it would have looked strange: everybody slathering on the suntan lotion as usual, industriously blowing air into their rafts while the policemen gave their bloodhounds a sniff of Delia’s slippers.

“We thought at first you’d gone to Baltimore yourself,” Eliza was saying. “You can imagine the fuss with the floor refinishers when all of us walked in. And when we didn’t find you there… Well, thank goodness Mr. Sudler called. He called the house last night, inquiring how to get in touch with me personally, and as luck would have it I was the one who answered. So he said he could swear you hadn’t been kidnapped, but he hesitated to tell the police because he believed you’d had good cause to run away. He said you got out of his van at a church that counsels battered women.”

“I did?”

Delia stopped in front of the florist’s shop.

“You saw their signboard and asked him to let you out, he said.”

“Signboard?”

“And also there’d been some discussion, he said, something you two were discussing that made him wonder later if… But he wouldn’t tell me your whereabouts, in case your husband was dangerous. ‘Dangerous!’ I said. ‘Why, Sam Grinstead is the kindest man alive!’ I said. But Mr. Sudler was very fixed in his mind. He said, ‘I only called to tell you she’s all right, and I want to say too I didn’t know at the time that she was running away. She just begged me for a ride to this certain town,’ he said, ‘and claimed that she had family there, so I didn’t see the harm.’ Then he said not to tell Sam, but of course I did tell Sam; I could hardly keep it a secret. I told Sam I would come talk to you first and find out how things stood.”

She waited. She was going to make Delia ask. All right. “And what did Sam say back?” Delia asked.

“He said well naturally I should come. He agreed completely.”

“Oh.”

Another wait.

“And he quite understood that I couldn’t divulge which town it was till we’d talked.”

“I see,” Delia said.

Then she said, “But how did you know the town?”

“Why, because you told Mr. Sudler you had family there.”

“Family. Um…”

“Our mother’s family! In Bay Borough.”

“Mother’s family lives in Bay Borough?”

“Well, they used to. Maybe some still do, but nobody I would have heard of. You knew that. Bay Borough? Where Aunt Henny lived? And Great-Uncle Roscoe had his chicken farm just west of?”

“That was in Bay Borough?”

“Where else!”

“I never realized,” Delia said.

“I can’t imagine why not. Shoot, there’s even a Weber Street -Grandmother Carroll’s maiden name. I crossed it coming in from Three eighty. And a Carroll Street just south of here, if I remember correctly. Isn’t there a Carroll Street?”

“Well, yes,” Delia said, “but I thought that was the other Carrolls. The Declaration of Independence Carrolls.”

“No, dear heart, it’s our Carrolls,” Eliza said comfortably. Proving her point had evidently put her in a better mood.

They started walking again, passing the dentists’ office and the optician’s. “In fact, I believe we’re related to the man who started this town,” Eliza said. “But only by marriage.”