Anne Tyler - Ladder of Years

“I already have a job,” Delia said. “I have a whole life, elsewhere!”

And Bay Borough seemed to float by just then like a tiny, bright, crowded blue bubble, at this distance so veiled and misty that she wondered if she had dreamed it.

“Here’s what I’m hoping,” Driscoll told Delia. “When Courtney hears somebody’s phoned her, she’ll know right off it’s got to be this guy she gave her number to. I mean, he did call you-all’s house three times. So you know he didn’t get the number from the phone book; he must have written it down wrong. Don’t you think?”

“Well, it’s possible, I suppose,” Delia said. In fact, it seemed very likely, but she couldn’t work up the energy to tell him so. For the past forty-five minutes they’d been standing out here in the cold. From time to time she sent a longing glance over her shoulder at Courtney’s white clapboard house, but they had already rung the doorbell and no one had answered. “Driscoll,” she said, “has it occurred to you that Courtney might have after-school sports? I mean, Susie used to come home in the dark, some days.”

“Then we’ll wait here till dark,” he said.

Other students were passing-Gilman boys in their shirts and ties, and teenage girls in Bryn Mawr aqua or Roland Park Country School blue. “We should be holding up one of those signs,” Delia said, “the way they do at airports.”

Driscoll scowled at her.

“Couldn’t you have brought Pearce for this instead?” Delia asked him.

“Who’s Pearce?”

“Your sister, for heaven’s sake!”

“You mean Spence?”

“Spence. Sorry.”

She gave a little laugh. He scowled harder.

“Spence is at work,” he told her. “But I doubt she’d have come anyhow. She doesn’t think I ought to get married.”

“She doesn’t!”

“Well, why is that such a shock?” he asked. “You’re not the only one who’s against this.”

“Did I say I was against it?”

“You sure act like you are. Dragging your heels every step of the way, wishing I’d brought someone else.”

“I’m just getting cold, is all,” Delia told him.

“For your information, my whole family claims I’d be better off single.”

Delia felt stung. She said, “Well, thanks a lot!”

“Oh, they like Susie,” he said. “But, you know… ‘Why get mixed up with those Grinsteads?’ my mom is always asking.”

“There’s nothing wrong with Grinsteads!”

“No, well, but…” He followed a knot of passing schoolgirls with his eyes. “You’ve got to admit,” he said, “you-all are so… you do things such a different way. Not mingling or taking part, living to yourselves like you do; and then you pretend like that’s normal. You pretend like everything’s normal; you’re so cagey and smooth; you gloss things over; you don’t explain.”

Delia breathed again. He could have named flaws much worse, she felt, although she didn’t know exactly what. “Well,” she said, “those sound to me like good qualities, not bad.”

“See there?” Driscoll demanded. “That’s exactly what I mean!”

“Look who’s talking!” Delia said. “Someone who had his wedding canceled and then showed up for it anyway! How’s that for glossing over?”

“At least I didn’t make believe I was nothing but a guest,” Driscoll told her. “Walking in at the very last minute like the bride was some passing acquaintance.”

“I would have come earlier! But nobody asked me!” she told him.

“See what I mean?” he said.

“What do you mean?”

A car drew up at the curb, a station wagon teeming with faces. A girl got out with an armload of books. “Thanks!” she called, and the car honked and pulled away.

“Courtney?” Driscoll asked.

The girl paused on the sidewalk. Delia had known, somehow, that Courtney would be a blonde. She was tall and slim and golden-skinned, and her clothes were just the right degree of unstudied-her blazer expertly tailored but her knee socks falling down. “Yes?” she said.

“My name is Driscoll Avery,” Driscoll said, “and a couple of nights ago I believe I answered a phone call that was meant for you.”

Courtney tilted her head. Her pageboy swung prettily to one side.

“Some guy called, a wrong number,” Driscoll told her, “and now my fiancée is mad because I was, um, maybe a little bit rude. So I need to ask if you know who might have called you.”

Courtney looked over at Delia.

“I’m his fiancée’s mother,” Delia explained. The word “fiancée” brought to her mind someone in a pillbox hat, nothing at all like Susie. She felt herself assuming the flat-faced, wide-eyed expression of a liar. She said, “Driscoll’s telling the truth; I swear it. A boy phoned, asking for Courtney, and Driscoll said you didn’t want to talk to him.”

“You said that?” Courtney asked Driscoll. The smile was gone now. “What if it was someone I was dying to hear from?”

“Well, like who?” Driscoll said. “I mean, was there someone?”

“There’s Michael Garter.”

“Did you give Michael Garter your number?”

“No, but it’s in the book.”

“You think he’s the one who called you?”

“Well, maybe. He could have. Well, sure!” She seemed to be warming to the idea. “In a couple of weeks, there’s this dance?” she told Delia.

Delia said, “But you didn’t actually tell him your number.”

“Well, no.”

“We were thinking it might be someone you’d told.”

“No, but there’s this big homecoming dance? And Michael Garter’s this guy I know? He’s the second-strongest guy in his school.”

“But-” Delia began, at the same time that Driscoll said, “Well, great! Let’s get moving!”

“But was there someone you told?” Delia asked.

“Oh, gosh, guys are always wanting my number. You know? And I give it to them, but, like, I just do it to be nice. I would never actually go out with them.”

“Would you give them the wrong number?” Delia persisted.

“Well, sure, if they’re, like, totally not of interest.”

“You’d just transpose a couple of digits, say.”

“I might.”

“Did you do that recently?”

“Well, maybe to this guy at my Christian fellowship group.”

“What’s his name?”

“But I think it’s more likely Michael Garter,” Courtney said.

“But the name of the boy at your fellowship group…”

“That’s Paul Cates. But he’s, like, a dork. You’d know what I meant if you saw him.”

“I bet anything it was Michael Garter,” Driscoll said soothingly.

Courtney sent him an appreciative look.

“Well, whoever,” Delia said, “you just tell Driscoll all the possibilities, and then he can track down which one it was.”

“And maybe I could come along,” Courtney said. “I could show you exactly where Michael Garter has football practice.”

Anybody with half a brain would look for Paul Cates first. Hoping to convey that, Delia screwed up her eyes at Driscoll. “Huh?” he asked her, and then, “Ah. Does, ah, Paul Cates play football too?”

“Are you serious?” Courtney asked. “Paul Cates? Play football?”

Delia collected herself to go, hitching her handbag strap onto her shoulder. “Good hunting,” she told Driscoll.

“What, you’re not coming with us?”

“You’ll do better by yourselves.”

He opened his mouth to argue, but Courtney said, “Nice meeting you!”

Delia waved and walked off.

She was glad to have some time alone. Had family life always been so cram-packed? she wondered. How had she kept her wits about her? But then she remembered she hadn’t, at least not in Sam’s opinion.