Anne Tyler - Ladder of Years

“Well, okay,” Noah said halfheartedly.

When she picked him up at school, he was trying to elbow Jack Newell off the sidewalk, and she had to tap her horn to catch his attention. He disentangled himself, jerked open the passenger door, and fell into the car. “Hi,” she told him, but he just slid down in his seat and jammed his Phillies cap on his head. Then, out on the highway, he said, “I’ve got to stop doing this.”

“Doing what?”

“I can’t spend all my time visiting people! Mom, and Grandpa… I’m in the eighth grade now! I’ve got important activities!”

He cracked froggily on “activities,” and Delia shot him a glance. His voice was about to start changing, she realized. Oh, Lord, here she was with yet another adolescent.

But all she said was, “Maybe you could switch your visits to weekends.”

“Weekends I hang out with my friends! I’d miss all the fun!”

“Well, I don’t know, Noah,” she said. “Talk it over with Nat and your mom.”

“And could you please drive something under ninety miles an hour? I’m not going to live to talk it over, riding with a maniac.”

“Sorry,” she said. She slowed. “Take a peek at what I found for the baby,” she told him. “It’s on the back seat.”

He glanced back, but he didn’t reach for it. “Why don’t you just tell me what it is,” he said.

“A little bitty pair of athletic shoes, not any bigger than thimbles.”

“Huh.”

In the old days, nothing could have stopped him from peeking at that gift.

The day was cool and cloudy, with a forecast of rain, but all they encountered during their drive was a stray drop or two on the windshield. Noah listened to a radio station where the singers screamed insults, while Delia played calmer songs in her mind-a technique she had learned with her own children. She was just starting “Let It Be” when they turned in at Senior City.

“You’ve got to be kidding,” Noah said.

Next to the double front doors stood a four-foot-tall wooden cutout of a stork, sporting a pale-blue waistcoat and carrying a pale-blue bundle. Pale-blue balloons floated from the portico. The lobby bulletin board (which ordinarily bore cards of thanks from convalescents and sign-up sheets for bus trips to the shopping outlets in York) was plastered with color snapshots of an infant just minutes old. Three women wearing the regulation jaunty neck scarves stood peering at the photos and discussing the significance of hand size. One woman said large hands in infancy meant great height in adulthood, but another said that held true only for puppies.

In the elevator they found Pooky, taking one of her never-ending rides. Today, though, she seemed fully aware that she had reached Floor One, and she said, punching Three for them, “If you hurry you’ll be in time for the burping.”

“Oh, have you seen him?” Delia asked as they rose.

“Seen him twice. I was one of those in the lobby yesterday when they brought him home from the hospital. I hope that gift is not shoes.”

“Well, sort of,” Delia said.

“So far he’s got Swedish leather clogs, inch-long flip-flops, and eentsy little motorcycle boots. And that’s not even counting all we’ve knitted.”

The elevator stopped with a lilt, and the door slid open. “I would come with you,” Pooky called after them, “but I’ve got to get back to my apartment and finish childproofing.”

It was Nat who answered when they rang the doorbell. “There you are!” he said. “Come in, come in!” He was using his cane today, but he walked rapidly and bouncily as he led them toward the bedroom. “James is just having a snack,” he called over his shoulder.

“Should we wait out here?” Delia asked.

“No, no, everyone’s decent. Bink, sweetheart, it’s Noah and Delia.”

Binky was sitting against the headboard of the bed, dressed but in her stocking feet. The receiving blanket draped over her bosom covered the baby’s face, so all they could see was a fiery little ear and a fuzzy head. “Oh, look at him!” Delia whispered. It always seemed the bottom dropped out of her chest when she saw a new baby.

Noah, though, looked everywhere but. He stuck his hands in his back pockets and studied a distant corner of the bedroom till Binky, winking at Delia, asked, “Want to hold him, Noah?”

“Me?”

She removed the baby from her breast, at the same time adroitly rearranging the blanket. The baby’s eyes were closed, and he made nostalgic little smacking movements with his lips, which were rosebud-shaped, tightly pursed. He did have big hands, with long, translucent fingers knotted just under his chin. “Here,” Binky said, holding him out to Noah. “Just support the back of his head, like this.”

Noah received him in an awkward, jumbled clump.

“He seems to be a very easy baby,” Binky said as she buttoned up. “Most of the day he’s slept, which is miraculous considering all the callers we’ve had. Your mother phoned, Noah; wasn’t that nice? That was so nice. No word from the other three yet, but I hope-”

“Oh, forget it, just forget it, hon,” Nat told her. “Who cares about them!” He gave an angry shake of his head, as he often did when his daughters were mentioned. “Let’s go sit in the living room.”

They followed him-Noah still carrying James, feeling his way with his feet-and settled amid an uncharacteristic clutter of slippers and afghans and gift boxes. Already the apartment had that rainy, sweet, baby-powder smell.

Binky unwrapped the athletic shoes and laughed and passed them to Nat, and then, at Delia’s request, she brought out the baby’s motorcycle boots. A present from her sons, she said; they claimed to be disgusted with her, but Peter had cut classes to deliver these in person. Then Nat reported on their ride to the hospital (“I said, ‘Binky,’ I said, ‘didn’t I say from the start we should have gone to Floor Four?’”), and Binky rehashed the birth, which all in all, she said, had been a cinch compared to her first two. (“I shouldn’t discuss this in mixed company,” she said, “but ever since Peter was born, I just never have known when I needed to tinkle. The best I can do is go every couple of hours, just in case.”)

Noah looked downright queasy by now, so Delia stood up to collect the baby-an excuse to feel, for an instant, the limp, crumpled weight of that little body-and return him to Binky. “We have to get Noah to his tryouts,” she told Binky. “Is there anything I can do for you? Grocery shopping? Errands?”

“Oh, no. Nat’s taking wonderful care of me,” Binky said.

Nat, Delia happened to know, felt the ache of his flashbacks most keenly when he was driving, but she couldn’t point that out when he was looking so proud of himself.

Joel seemed very nervous about the Grade Mothers’ Tea. He must be wishing for Ellie, Delia thought-for Ellie’s clever, theme-party style of entertaining. But when she proposed phoning Ellie and asking for suggestions, he said, “Why should we do that? We’re surely capable of a simple tea, for God’s sake.”

“Yes, but maybe-”

“All we need from Ellie is her recipe for lemon squares,” he said.

“Lemon squares. I’ll ask.”

“The ones with the crispy glaze on top. Also her cucumber sandwiches.”

“Well, I can make a cucumber sandwich,” Delia snapped.

“Oh. Of course.”

After that he let the subject drop-forced himself to drop it, no doubt. On Friday afternoon, though, he paced circles around her as she set up the party-sized percolator on the dining room buffet. “This group will be nothing but women,” he told her.

“Well, so I gathered: grade mothers.”

“There is a grade father, but he’s away on business. It’s one hundred percent women.”