Anne Tyler - Ladder of Years

What a lot could be deciphered from a couple of dozen words! For starters, the writing was Susie’s (blue ink, running steeply downhill) and no parents’ names were mentioned-certain proof that she was proceeding on her own. Sam must have acquiesced, though, because the wedding would take place at the house. The date was harder to figure. Why September? Why a Monday morning? And had Susie found a job or had she not?

Delia wished she could phone and ask, but she felt she didn’t have the right. She would have to respond by mail, like any other guest.

Of course she planned to attend.

She looked up and met her own face in the bureau mirror-her eyes wide and stricken, her freckles standing out sharply.

When they told her that her firstborn was a girl, she had been over-joyed. Secretly, she had wished for a girl. She had planned how she would dress her in little smocked dresses; but Susie, it turned out, insisted on jeans as soon as she could talk. She had planned how they would share womanly activities (sewing, baking pies, experimenting with skin-care products), but Susie preferred sports. And instead of a big white wedding, with Susie swathed in antique lace and both her parents beaming as they jointly (in the modern manner) gave her away, here Delia stood in an Eastern Shore ranch house, wondering what sort of ceremony her daughter was inviting her to.

Noah seemed to have grown two inches while he was at camp, and the macramé bracelets he wore around both wrists pointed up the new brownness and squareness of his hands. Also, he’d developed a habit of saying, “Are you inputting that?” in a way that already seemed to be exasperating Joel. They sat in a booth at Rick-Rack’s, Joel and Noah on one side and Delia on the other, and she could observe Joel’s wince even if Noah couldn’t.

“Take my word for it,” Joel told him finally. “I have indeed managed to grasp your meaning, but I would certainly not choose to convey that fact in computer jargon.”

“Huh? So anyhow,” Noah said, “at camp they made us do fifty pushups every morning. Fifty, are you inputting that? I guess they wanted to kill us off and keep our fees for nothing. So me and Ronald went to the infirmary-”

“Ronald and I,” Joel said.

“Right, and tried to get a health excuse. But the dumbhead nurse wouldn’t write one. She goes, like-”

“She said.”

“She said, like-”

Their food came-burgers for Noah and Joel, pork barbecue sandwich for Delia. “Thanks, Teensy,” Noah said.

“Sure thing,” Teensy said cheerfully.

“Mrs. Rackley to you,” his father told him.

Noah glanced across at Delia. Delia merely smiled at him.

“Daddy’s been asking where you got to these last couple of weeks,” Teensy said to Delia.

“I went to Ocean City.”

“Yes, I told him so, but he couldn’t seem to keep it in mind. He said, ‘She never even mentioned it! Just walked on out and left!’ His memory’s a whole lot worse lately.”

“Oh, I’m sorry to hear that,” Delia said.

“He says things are coming at him too fast for him to take in. And Rick tells him, just trying to be nice, tells him, ‘Oh, I know exactly what you-’ but Daddy says, ‘Don’t you poke your black self into this!’ and I said, ‘Daddy!’-”

Teensy broke off, glancing at Joel. “Well,” she said. “I guess I better get back to work.”

She slid her hands down her apron front and hurried away.

“Remarkable,” Joel said.

He seemed to have no inkling that it was his impassive gaze that had sent her rushing off.

“Maybe Mr. Bragg should go live in Senior City,” Noah said.

“I don’t think he can afford it,” Delia told him.

“Maybe they have scholarships. Or grants or something, are you inputting that?”

Joel rolled his eyes.

“So anyhow,” Noah said, picking up his burger. “Next thing, me and Ronald worked out that we’d pretend we were injured. Only we couldn’t do it both at once, because it would look kind of fishy.”

“You went about it all wrong,” Joel told him. “Nothing good ever comes of resorting to subterfuge.”

“To what?”

“Subterfuge.”

“What’s that?”

Joel stared across the table at Delia. His eyebrows were raised so high that his forehead resembled corduroy.

“He means something underhanded,” Delia told Noah. “Something sneaky.”

“Oh.”

“He means you should have protested the rule openly. Or so I assume.” She expected Joel to elaborate, but he was still gaping. “Is that what you meant?” she asked him.

“He doesn’t know what ‘subterfuge’ is!” Joel said.

She took her sandwich apart and started spooning in coleslaw.

“He never heard the word ‘subterfuge.’ Can you believe it?”

She wouldn’t answer. Noah said, “It’s no big deal. Geez.”

“No big deal!” Joel echoed. “Don’t they teach kids anything in school these days? ‘Subterfuge’ is not all that arcane, for God’s sake.”

Delia watched Noah decide not to ask what “arcane” meant.

“Sometimes I think the language is just shrinking down to the size of a wizened little pellet,” Joel told her. “Taken over by rubbish words, while the real words disappear. The other day, I discovered our cafeteria supervisor didn’t know what cutlery was.”

“Cutlery?” she asked.

“It seems the word has dropped out of use.”

“‘Cutlery’ has dropped out of use?”

“That’s the only explanation I can think of. I told him we were ordering a new supply of cutlery, and he said, ‘What’s that?’”

“Oh, fiddlesticks,” Delia said. “You know what cutlery is,” she told Noah.

He nodded, although he didn’t risk demonstrating.

“See there? It hasn’t dropped out of use! Teensy,” Delia called, “could we have more cutlery, please?”

“Coming right up,” Teensy said, and behind the counter they heard the rattle of knives and forks.

Delia looked triumphantly at Joel.

“Oh. Well…,” he said.

Noah grinned. “Way to go, Dee,” he told her. And eventually even Joel started smiling.

Delia smiled too, and put her sandwich back together and gave it a pat. Underneath her breath she was making a humming sound-a thin, sweet, toneless hum, not much different from purring.

Binky’s baby was born on Labor Day-very fitting, Nat said. He telephoned that same afternoon; he spilled the news in a swelling voice that seemed about to break. “Eight pounds, eleven ounces,” he crowed. “James Nathaniel Moffat.”

“James!” Delia said. “It’s a boy?”

“It’s a boy. Can you believe it?” He gave one of his bearded chuckles. “I’m not sure I’ll know what to do with a boy.”

“You’ll do fine,” Delia said. “Noah’s off on a picnic right now, but he’ll be thrilled when I tell him. How’s Binky?”

“Couldn’t be better. She just sailed through this, and so did James. Wait till you see him, Delia. He’s got the roundest face, little pocket watch of a face, and lots of blondish hair, but Binky says…”

To listen to him, you would never have guessed he had been through this experience four times.

Delia had overstated when she said Noah would be thrilled. Oh, he was interested, in a mild sort of way-wanted to know who the baby looked like, and what the board of directors had said. But when Wednesday morning rolled around, he asked if he couldn’t put off his regular visit. School had just reopened, and he wanted to try out for the wrestling team. Delia said, “How about we look in on the baby for just a second, and then I drop you at tryouts afterward?”

“Can’t we do it tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow I have tutoring, Noah, and the day after is the Grade Mothers’ Tea, and if you wait too long your grandpa’s going to think you don’t care. I’ll phone ahead and tell him you can stay just a minute.”