Anne Tyler: Ladder of Years

“Morning, you two,” Delia said. “Any calls?”

Susie shrugged and flipped another channel. Driscoll yawned out loud. Just for that, Delia didn’t excuse herself when she walked in front of them to the answering machine. She bent to press the Message button, but nothing happened. Electronic devices were always double-crossing her. “How do I-?” she said, and then an old man’s splintery voice filled the room. “Dr. Grinstead, can you get back to me right away? It’s Grayson Knowles, and I told the pharmacist about those pills, but he asked if-”

Whatever the pharmacist had asked was submerged by a flood of Bugs Bunny music. Susie must have raised the volume on the TV. Beep, the machine said, and then Delia’s sister came on. “Dee, it’s Eliza. I need an address. Could you please call me at work?”

“What’s she doing at work on a Saturday?” Delia asked, but nobody answered.

Beep. “This is Myrtle Allingham,” an old woman stated forthrightly.

“Oh, God,” Susie told Driscoll.

“Marshall and I were wondering if you-all would like to take supper with us Sunday evening. Nothing fancy! Just us folks! And do tell young Miss Susie she should bring that darlin’ Driscoll. Say seven o’clock?”

Beep beep beep beep beep. The end.

“We went last time,” Susie said, slouching lower on the couch. “Count us out.”

“Well, I don’t know,” Driscoll said. “That crab dip she served was not half bad.”

“We aren’t going, Driscoll, so forget it.”

“She’s lonesome, is all,” Delia said. “Stuck at home with her hip, no way to get around-”

Something banged overhead.

“What’s that?” she asked.

More bangs. Or clanks, really. Clank! Clank! at measured intervals, as if on purpose.

“Plumber?” Driscoll said tentatively.

“What plumber?”

“Plumber upstairs in the bathroom?”

“I never called for a plumber.”

“Dr. Grinstead did, maybe?”

Delia gave Susie a look. Susie met it blandly.

“I don’t know what’s come over that man,” Delia said. “He’s been re-what’s the word?-rejuvenating, resuscitating…” Fully aware that neither one of them was listening, she walked on out of the room, still talking. “… renovating, I mean: renovating this house to a fare-thee-well. If it’s about that place in the ceiling, then really you’d think…”

She climbed the stairs, halfway up encountering the cat, who was hurrying down in a scattered, ungraceful fashion. Vernon detested loud noises. “Hello?” Delia called. She poked her head into the bathroom off the hall. A ponytailed man in coveralls crouched beside the claw-footed tub, studying its pipes. “Well, hello,” she said.

He twisted around to look at her. “Oh. Hey,” he said.

“What seems to be the trouble?”

“Can’t say just yet,” he said. He turned back to the pipes.

She waited a moment, in case he wanted to add something, but she could tell he was one of those repairmen who think only the husband worth talking to.

In her bedroom, she sat down on Sam’s side of the bed, picked up the telephone, and dialed Eliza’s work number. “Pratt Library,” a woman said.

“Eliza Felson, please.”

“Just a minute.”

Delia propped a pillow against the headboard, and then she swung her feet up onto the frilled pink spread. The plumber had progressed to the bathroom between her room and her father’s. She couldn’t see him, but she could hear him banging around. What information could you hope to gain from whacking pipes?

“I’m sorry,” the woman said, “but we can’t seem to locate Miss Felson. Are you sure she’s working today?”

“She must be; she told me to call her there, and she isn’t here at home.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Well, thanks anyway.”

She hung up. The plumber was whistling “Clementine.” While Delia was dialing Mrs. Allingham, he ambled into the bedroom, still whistling, and she demurely smoothed her skirt around her knees. He squatted in front of the miniature door that opened onto the pipes in the wall. Thou art lost and gone forever, he whistled; Delia mentally supplied the words. One tug at the door’s wooden knob, and it came off in his hand. She could have told him it would. She watched with some satisfaction as he muttered a curse beneath his breath and fished a pair of pliers from his belt loop.

Seven rings. Eight. She wasn’t discouraged. Mrs. Allingham walked with a limp, and it took her ages to get to the phone.

Nine rings. “Hello?”

“Mrs. Allingham, it’s Delia.”

“Delia, dear! How are you?”

“I’m fine, how are you?”

“Oh, we’re fine, doing just fine. Enjoying this nice spring weather! Nearly forgot what sunshine looks like, till today.”

“Yes, me too,” Delia said. She was overtaken suddenly by a swell of something like homesickness; Mrs. Allingham’s chipper, slightly rasping voice was so reminiscent of all the women on this street where she had grown up. “Mrs. Allingham,” she said, “Sam and I would love to come for supper tomorrow night, but we can’t bring the children, I’m afraid.”

“Oh!” Mrs. Allingham said.

“It’s just that they’re so busy these days. You know how it is.”

“Yes, of course,” Mrs. Allingham said faintly.

“But another time, maybe! They always enjoy your company.”

“Yes, well, and we enjoy theirs too.”

“So we’ll see you at seven tomorrow,” Delia said briskly, for she could hear Sam downstairs and she had a million things to do. “Goodbye till then.”

By now the plumber had the little door prized open and was peering into the bowels of the wall, but she knew better than to ask him what he’d found.

In the kitchen, Sam stood propped against a counter, taking off his mud-caked running shoes. He was telling Carroll, “… sort of a toboggan effect when you hit those cedar chips…”

“Sam, how could you go off alone like that?” Delia asked. “You knew I’d worry!”

“Hello, Dee,” he said.

His T-shirt was translucent with sweat, his sharp-boned face glistened, and his glasses were fogged. His hair-that shade that could be either blond or gray, it had faded so imperceptibly-lay in damp spikes on his forehead. “Look at you,” Delia scolded. “You got overheated. You went running all alone and got overheated to boot when the doctor told you a dozen times-”

“Whose car is that in the driveway?”

“Car?”

“Station wagon parked in the driveway.”

“Well, doesn’t it belong to a patient? No, I guess not.”

“Plumber,” Carroll said from behind a glass of orange juice.

“Oh, good,” Sam said. “The plumber’s here.”

He set his shoes on the doormat and started out of the kitchen, no doubt happily anticipating one of those laconic, man-to-man discussions of valves and joints and gaskets. “Sam, wait,” Delia said, for she had a pang of guilt nagging at the back of her mind. “Before I forget-”

He turned, already wary.

“Mr. Knowles phoned-something to do with his pills,” she said.

“I thought he got that straightened out.”

“And also, um, Mrs. Allingham. She wanted to know if we could come for-”

He groaned. “No,” he said, “we can’t.”

“But you haven’t even heard yet! A light Sunday supper, she said, and I told her-”

“I’m sure not going,” Carroll broke in.

“No, I told her that; I told her you kids were tied up. But you and I, Sam, just for-”

“We can’t make it,” Sam said flatly.

“But I’ve already accepted.”

He had been on the point of turning away again, but now he stopped and looked at her.

“I know I should have checked with you first, but by accident somehow I just went ahead and accepted.”