Anne Tyler - Ladder of Years

“I would love to stay for supper,” Nat said, to Delia’s surprise. He had risen during the introductions, and now he stood holding on to the back of his chair. Sam, who must have had no idea where Nat had materialized from, wore a pleasant, slightly blank expression as they shook hands. “Good to meet you,” he said.

“Good to meet you,” Nat told him. And then he added, darting a mischievous glance at Delia, “I’ve heard so much about you.”

This was lost on Sam, of course. He just smiled politely and asked Linda, “Have I got time for a house call before supper?”

“Ask Delia; she’s the cook,” Linda said.

Sam turned to Delia. “I promised Mr. Knowles I’d check on him,” he said.

“You have plenty of time,” she told him.

They spoke without letting their eyes meet, like people in a play, whose words are meant for the audience.

No one had to tell Delia which boy had turned out to be Courtney’s caller. She knew it was Paul Cates as soon as she saw him-sweet-faced and naive, with a tousle of rust-colored curls. His jeans were a little too short for him, his sneakers too thin-soled and childish, his plaid wool jacket the kind boys wear in elementary school. He followed Driscoll over to Susie, who was perched on a stool chopping water chestnuts for Delia’s Chinese dish. Behind him came Courtney, of all people. She took her place close behind Driscoll and Paul, tucking her hands into the pockets of her blazer and regarding Susie with undisguised curiosity. Susie, who had turned from the counter at their approach, looked only at Driscoll.

“Susie,” Driscoll said, “this is Paul Cates.” Then he faced Paul Cates and said, “Paul, I’d like to apologize. When you phoned here by accident the other night, I let you think you’d reached Courtney’s house, but I was wrong, wrong, wrong.”

Paul was beaming. “That’s okay,” he said.

Formally, Driscoll faced Susie again. “Now will you marry me?” he asked.

Susie said, “Well, I guess.”

One of the twins said, “Hot dog!” and the other said, “Kiss him! Kiss him, Susie!”

Susie planted a kiss to one side of Driscoll’s mouth. She told Paul, “It’s nice of you to be so understanding.”

“Oh, I don’t mind a bit!” he said, and he sent Courtney a shining glance from under his long lashes. Courtney just surveyed him coolly and then turned back to Susie.

“And Courtney, it was nice of you to come along,” Susie told her.

“No problem. Me and your brother Carroll met last spring at a party.”

“Oh, really?”

“My girlfriend asked him to her birthday party; I put it all together when your fiancé told me your name.”

Paul was looking less happy now; so Delia broke in and said, “Can you two stay for dinner? We’re having this Chinese dish that’s infinitely expandable.”

“Well, I might could,” Courtney said.

Paul said, “I’ll just need to phone my mother.”

“Right over here,” Delia told him, and she cupped his elbow protectively as she led him toward the phone. How cruel and baffling-how tribal, almost-young girls must seem to boys! Somehow she hadn’t realized that when she was a young girl herself.

“I propose a toast,” Nat said. He raised his coffee mug. “To the bridal couple!”

Driscoll said, “Why, thanks”-not having the dimmest notion, of course, who this old man might be, but adapting with his usual good humor. “Hello, Ma?” Paul said into the phone, and then Carroll appeared from the dining room just as Eliza stepped through the back door; so both of them had to be filled in on the latest developments. Eliza hadn’t even heard yet what Driscoll’s magic task was. She kept saying, “Who? He brought who?” with her eyebrows quirked in bewilderment, her pocketbook hugged to her chest, and Courtney was sidling toward Carroll to ask, “Carroll Grinstead? I don’t know if you remember me,” and the twins were insisting that this time they should wear lipstick to the wedding.

Delia took her cutting board to a less populated area, and she started chopping ginger. Her Chinese dish required eleven different bowls of ingredients, most minced no bigger than matchstick heads, all lined up in a row for rapid frying. So far she had finished only bowl number four. She was thankful to be occupied, though. She chopped rhythmically, mindlessly, letting an ocean of chatter eddy around her. Tick-tick, the knife came down on the cutting board. Tick-tick, and she slid all her thoughts to one side as she slid the mounds of ginger into a bowl.

With every one of its leaves in place, the table filled the whole dining room. (“This tablecloth came from your grandma’s hope chest,” Linda told the twins. “The stain is where your aunt Delia set a bowl of curry. She doesn’t give a damn; she was your grandpa’s favorite; she treats these things like Woolworth things.”) Twelve place settings marched the length of it-five at each side, one each at head and foot. There had been talk of inviting Eleanor, but Susie didn’t want to jinx her entire marriage with thirteen at table; and no one answered the phone when they called Ramsay.

“Courtney, I’ll put you in the middle here,” Delia said. “Then Paul, you’re next to Courtney…”

Courtney, however, had obviously made up her mind to sit with Carroll, which left Paul stuck between the twins; not that the twins weren’t delighted. And the others remained standing while they continued a discussion they’d started in the living room-something about Mr. Knowles’s tingly arm. “Didn’t Daddy always say the same thing!” Eliza was exclaiming. “He used to say he wished he had a dictionary of pains. Those symptoms people came up with-‘Pepsi-bubble stomach’ and ‘whiny argumentative back’!”

“Driscoll, you’re beside Linda,” Delia said, but Driscoll, feigning engrossment in the conversation, kept his face turned toward Eliza and sneakily drew out the chair beside Susie. Delia gave up. “Oh, just sit,” she told Nat, and Nat sat down where he was, which happened to be exactly where she’d intended, at her right hand. “Help yourself to some rice,” she said, passing him the bowl, and she told the others, “Everything’s getting cold!”

Eliza settled at Sam’s left, shaking her head at what Sam was saying. “Who knows, anyhow?” he was saying. “Maybe it’s all equal: hangnail for one, cancer for another. Everything on the same level, just barely within endurance.”

“Sam Grinstead, you don’t believe that for a minute!” Linda squawked. “What a bizarre suggestion!”

Delia said, “Paul, will you have some rice and pass it on, please? Everybody! Sit down!”

Very suddenly, the rest of them sat. They seemed to have run out of steam, and there was a pause, during which Paul dropped the serving spoon to the table with a loud clunk. He bared all his teeth in embarrassment and picked it up.

Nat said, “Do any of you know the photographs of C. R. Savage?”

The grown-ups turned courteous, receptive faces in his direction.

“A nineteenth-century fellow,” he said. “Used the old wet-plate method, I would suppose. There’s a picture I’m reminded of that he took toward the end of his life. Shows his dining room table set for Christmas dinner. Savage himself sitting amongst the empty chairs, waiting for his family. Chair after chair after chair, silverware laid just so, even a baby’s high chair, all in readiness. And I can’t help thinking, when I look at that photo, I bet that’s as good as it got, that day. From there on out, it was all downhill, I bet. Actual sons and daughters arrived, and they quarreled over the drumsticks and sniped at their children’s table manners and brought up hurtful incidents from fifteen years before; and the baby had this whimper that gave everybody a headache. Only just for that moment,” Nat said, and his voice took on a tremor, “just as the shutter was clicking, none of that had happened yet, you see, and the table looked so beautiful, like someone’s dream of a table, and old Savage felt so happy and so-what’s the word I want, so…”