Anne Tyler - Ladder of Years

Inside the booth-just one of those above-the-waist, partially enclosed affairs that let in every traffic sound-she lined up her coins on the shelf and then dialed the grown-ups’ number. She had never called long distance from a pay phone before, and she was distressed to find that she had to wait to deposit the coins till her party answered. First the phone at the other end rang twice, then Sam said, “Dr. Grinstead,” and then a recording issued instructions and Delia dropped her quarters in. Whang! Whang! It was humiliating-very nearly as bad as calling collect, and made worse by the fact that Sam didn’t grasp what was going on. “Hello?” he kept saying. “Is anyone there?”

His deep, level voice, his habit of slanting downward even on questions.

Delia said, “Sam?”

“Where are you?” he asked immediately.

He assumed this was a plea for help, she realized. He thought she was admitting defeat-calling to say, “Come get me.” He must have been expecting it for months. She stood straighter. “I’m calling about Susie,” she told him.

A dead silence. Then: “Oh. Susie.”

“I wonder if you know what’s troubling her.”

“I believe my feeble brain can encompass that much,” he said icily. “But I suppose you’re going to tell me anyhow, aren’t you.”

“What?” Delia pressed her fingers to her forehead. “No, wait-I mean I’m honestly asking! She wrote me there was some problem, but she didn’t say what it was.”

“Oh,” Sam said again. Another silence. “Well,” he said, “this would have to do with her wedding, I suspect.”

“Susie’s getting married?”

“She wants to. I’m opposed.”

“But-” Delia said. But she didn’t talk to me about this! she wanted to protest. Didn’t even consult me! Unreasonable, she knew; so she changed it to, “But Driscoll’s a very nice boy. It is Driscoll, isn’t it?”

“Who else,” Sam said. “However, that’s not the issue. She can marry whoever she chooses, of course, but I told her she’ll have to live on her own for one calendar year beforehand.”

“A year! Why?”

“I hate to see her jumping straight from school to marriage. From her father’s house to her husband’s house.”

Her father’s house? He hated to see? How about her mother? Oh, all right… but her husband’s house?

And the biggest offense of all: what he meant was, he didn’t want Susie turning out like Delia. Who had never spent so much as a night on her own before she married; and just look at the results.

He’d been mulling that over all year, she supposed. Arriving at his own private theory.

“But if she lives alone,” Delia said, “she’ll be so… unprotected. And also she and Driscoll might… I mean, what if they end up, um, sleeping together or something like that?”

“Don’t you suppose they already sleep together, Delia?”

Her mouth dropped open.

A taped voice said metallically, “To continue your call, please deposit another-”

“Hold on, I’m going to try to get these charges reversed,” Sam told Delia.

She didn’t argue. She was trying to reassemble her thoughts. Well, no doubt they did sleep together. On some level, she’d probably known that. Still, she felt bereft. She pictured herself waving goodbye while Susie and Driscoll dwindled into the distance, never once looking back.

“You know she doesn’t have a job yet,” Sam said when he’d dealt with the operator.

“I wondered about that.”

Amazing, how easy it was to fall back into this matter-of-fact, almost chatty exchange of information. The ordinariness of it struck her as surreal.

“She sleeps till all hours,” he was saying, “and then heads off to the swimming pool. No interviews set up, no mention of careers…”

But if she’s getting married, Delia thought. That too, though, she censored. She asked, “How about Driscoll? Does he have a job?”

“Yes, he’s hired on with his father.”

Delia tried to think what Driscoll’s father did, but she couldn’t remember. Something businessy. She said, “Well, have you and Susie talked about this? Discussed what kind of work might interest her?”

“No,” Sam said.

“And where could she afford to live? I mean, if she isn’t earning money yet.”

“We haven’t gone into that,” Sam said.

“Well, golly, Sam, what have you gone into?”

“Nothing,” Sam said. He gave a slight cough. “It appears that we’re not speaking.”

Delia sighed. She said, “How about Eliza? I know Susie must talk to her.”

“Not necessarily,” Sam said.

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t think they do talk, to tell the truth.”

“They had a fight?”

“I’m not sure. Well, they did, I guess, but I’m not sure if it’s still on or not. Actually, Eliza is out of town right now.”

“Out of town!”

“She’s visiting Linda awhile.”

Delia digested this. She said, “Aren’t you all taking your beach trip this year?”

“No, Delia,” Sam told her, and the iciness was back in his voice. Delia understood his point as clearly as if he’d stated it: Do you really imagine we’d go back to the beach, now that you’ve ruined it for all of us forever?

Hastily she said, “So no one’s sat Susie down and discussed her options with her.”

“I fail to see how I can hold a discussion with someone who walks out of a room the instant I walk in,” Sam said.

You follow her, is how, Delia wanted to tell him. You walk out after her. What’s so hard about that? But for Sam it would be unthinkable, she knew. He wasn’t a man who laid himself open to rebuff. He didn’t like to plead, or bargain, or reverse himself; he had never made a mistake in all his life. (And was that why the people around him seemed to make so many?)

A delivery truck wheezed past, and she covered her free ear. “All right,” she said, “here’s what I propose. I’m going to write and tell her that if she wants you to pay for her wedding, she’ll have to accept your conditions. And if she doesn’t like those conditions, then she can pay for her own wedding. Either way, you will go along with it.”

“I will?”

“You will.”

“But then she might decide to marry him tomorrow.”

“If she does, she does,” Delia said. “That’s up to her.”

Sam was quiet. Delia’s ankle had started to pound, but she didn’t push him. Finally he said, “How about the not-speaking part?”

“How about it?”

“Could you tell her to talk all this over with me?”

“I could suggest it,” she said.

“Thank you.”

She felt uncomfortable in this new role. She said, “So! Everything else all right?”

“Oh, yes.”

“Boys okay?”

“They’re fine.”

“Who’s taking care of the office while Eliza’s gone?”

“I am.”

“Maybe that’s a job for Susie.”

“Never,” he said flatly.

Another stab to the heart. Never, he meant, would I let my daughter follow her mother’s wretched example. And she couldn’t even argue with that. She said, “I guess I’ll be going, then.”

“Oh. Well. Goodbye,” he said.

After she hung up, it occurred to her that on the other hand, maybe he was just saying Susie would be a disaster in the office. It was true that she was hopeless when it came to organizational matters. Unlike Delia, who had a gift for them.

Could that have been what he’d meant?

In her letter to Susie she included one request that she hadn’t mentioned to Sam beforehand. When you do get married, she wrote, whatever kind of wedding it may be, will you let me come? I couldn’t blame you if you didn’t, but…

She wrote that afternoon, using the desk in the family room, choosing a time when she had the house to herself. Before she was finished, though, Joel came home. He said, “Oh, here you are.” Then he stood about for a while, jingling coins deep in his pocket. At last she stopped writing and looked up at him.