Anne Tyler - Ladder of Years

She was wailing now. Eliza said, “Oh, dear, oh, dear… have some tea, why don’t you,” and Linda said, “Well, for God’s sake, Susie, the realtor is the least of it!”

But Delia told Susie, “I’ll take care of it. You just give me his number, and I’ll keep calling till I reach him.”

“Would you?” Susie asked. She jumped up, trailing blankets, and went over to the bureau. “Wait a minute, I’ll find his… Here. Mr. Bright, his name is. Tell him I apologize and I know I said we wanted it but to please, please let me out of this if he has a shred of human decency.”

“You may have to forfeit your deposit,” Delia said, examining the business card Susie handed her.

“Delia! Honest to God!” Linda cried. “Could we address the issue here?”

“Well, I’m not getting married, Aunt Linda,” Susie told her, “so why waste time discussing it? Has anyone seen my jeans?”

She was roaming the room now, rummaging under the cot, scooping up a T-shirt. How shiny the floor was! Delia couldn’t help noticing. Then she recalled the refinishers from last year’s beach trip, and she felt all the more like an outsider. She set her handbag primly on her knees, trying to take up less space. But Linda noticed her anyway. She said, “Tell her, Delia.”

“Tell her what?”

“Tell her all brides go through this.”

Did they? Delia hadn’t. Before her own wedding, her one concern had been that Sam would die before she got to be his wife. Groom Slain on Wedding Eve, the papers would read, or Tragic Accident En Route to Nuptials, and Delia would miss her chance for perfect happiness.

She had never doubted for a moment that it would be perfect.

Susie was dressing now, nonchalantly facing the wall while she peeled off her pajama top and hooked a gray-seamed bra. (Accustomed to locker rooms, she evidently thought nothing of changing in public.) Her back was a beautiful butterscotch color, as sturdy as a tree trunk. She pulled her T-shirt over her head, shook her hair loose, sauntered toward a suitcase on the floor, and bent to study its contents. Everybody watched. Finally Eliza, still holding the mug, said, “Susie has a very nice wedding dress. Don’t you, Susie. Show your mother your wedding dress.”

“It’s a dopey dress,” Susie said, but she turned and crossed the room to fling open the closet door. White chiffon exploded forth. Both twins rose, as if pulled by strings, and floated toward the closet with their lips parted. Susie slammed the door shut again. A filmy white triangle poked through on the hinge side.

“And your veil? Show her your veil,” Eliza urged.

Obediently, Susie stomped over to the wastebasket. “Here’s my veil,” she said, and she pulled out several tatters of gauze and a headband of white silk roses snipped into jagged shreds.

The two aunts sucked in their breaths. Spence said, “Great God Almighty!”

“Allow me to model it for you,” Susie said. She clamped the headband around her neck, then let her head flop to one side and half closed her eyes and stuck out her tongue.

“Susan Grinstead!” Linda shrieked.

“So,” Susie said calmly, removing the headpiece. “Driscoll and I are sitting downstairs last night, watching a movie. Folks had made this big federal case about how I ought to spend my final unwedded hours in my ancestral home.”

“Well, how would it have looked?” Linda demanded.

Susie dropped the headband into the wastebasket. “So the two of us are in the study like old times,” she said, “and the phone rings. It’s this high-school-sounding boy; you can tell the call is taking all his courage. He clears his throat and says, ‘Um, yes! Good evening. May I please speak to Courtney, please?’ I tell him he has the wrong number. Not ten seconds later: ring! Same boy. ‘Um, good evening. May I please-’ ‘You must have misdialed,’ I tell him. So we’re just getting settled again-Driscoll had rented Nightmare on Elm Street; he thinks it’s the major motion picture of our time-when sure enough: ring! ring! Driscoll says, ‘Let me handle this.’ He picks up the receiver. ‘Yeah?’ he says. Listens a minute. Says, ‘Tough luck, feller. Courtney doesn’t want to have anything to do with you.’ And slams the phone down.”

“Oh! How mean!” Delia said involuntarily, and Eliza clucked her tongue. Then everyone looked at Driscoll’s sister. “Well, sorry, Spence,” Delia told her, “but really! That poor boy!”

“Yes, it was mean,” Spence said complacently. She prinked her skirt out around her. “But that’s how guys are, Sooze. What can you do?”

“It is not how guys are,” Susie said. “Or if it is, all the more reason not to marry anyone. But for sure I’m not marrying Driscoll. And don’t you defend him, Spence Avery! There is nothing you can say that will make him look good to me after that.”

Thérèse said, “Couldn’t he just apologize?”

“Apologize to who? Not to me; I’m not the one whose feelings he hurt. No, I see it all now,” Susie said. She was drifting around the room without apparent purpose, wearing her T-shirt and pajama bottoms. She stopped in front of the mirror to yank at a handful of hair; then she continued her travels. “All these things I’ve been trying not to notice all this time. Like when we get ready to go out and he says, ‘How do I look?’ and I say, ‘Fine,’ he just goes, ‘Thanks,’ and never mentions how I look. Or when I’m telling him something that happened, he won’t let me tell it my way. He always has to interrupt, to sort of… redirect. So I’ll say, like, ‘This patient of Dad’s came into the shop today-’ and right away he’s, ‘Wait a minute, you know who your dad’s patients are? Isn’t that a violation of confidentiality?’ and, ‘Now hold on, she asked for this by brand name? Or not,’ and, ‘What you should have told her is…’ Till I feel like saying, ‘Just shut up! Shut up! Shut up and let me get to the end of this story which I’m sorry now I ever began!’ And speaking of my shop-”

What shop? Delia would have asked, except she didn’t want to sound like Driscoll.

“He has never for one minute supported me on that. Oh, at the start he did because he thought it was just a whim, you know? He figured it would pass. But then when I borrowed the money from Gram-”

Eleanor had lent Susie money? (Eleanor didn’t believe in lending money.) Susie must have noticed Delia’s bafflement, because she said, “Oh. I’ve started this kind of like, business. House in a Box, I call it.”

“A darling little business!” Linda chimed in.

“Got a mention in Baltimore magazine,” Eliza said, “two and one-quarter inches long.”

“I’d moved to an apartment,” Susie told Delia, “after that bust-up with Dad. Me and Driscoll found a place on St. Paul Street. Well, I couldn’t have afforded anything by myself. And I was looking for a job, but first I wanted to settle in, you know? Buy supplies for the kitchen and all. We had some furniture from home but no incidental stuff, skillets and stuff; didn’t own so much as a spatula. So there I was, running around the stores, spending a fortune I didn’t have, finding one thing one place and another thing another place… I said, ‘Wouldn’t it be great if they sold a kitchen in a box? Kind of a one-stop purchase?’ And that’s what started me thinking. So now I’ve got this little showroom out past the fairgrounds; well, it’s only about three feet square, but-”

“It’s darling!” Linda said.

“And I sell these boxes: Kitchen in a Box, Bathroom in a Box… just things I buy in bulk and combine in a kit and deliver, you know? I’ve tacked an ad on every campus bulletin board for miles around. I’m open seven days a week and I’m slaving away like a dog; that’s why I set the wedding for a Monday. Didn’t want to miss the weekend shoppers. As it is, I’m closed till Friday, which I hate. But Driscoll acts like this is some kind of hobby. When he heard about Gram’s loan he was, ‘Oh, you wouldn’t want to get in over your head, hon.’ He was, ‘Wouldn’t want to bite off more than you can chew, now, hon.’ So discouraging and dampening; he doesn’t think I’m up to this. Doesn’t credit me with the brains to buy a simple shower curtain for college kids and a few damn rings to hang it with.”