Anne Tyler - Noah's Compass

He would phone her at Cope Development and cancel their appointment. “I can’t work there!” he would say. “I wouldn’t fit in. Thanks anyhow.”

When he picked up the receiver, though, he realized he didn’t know her last name. Admittedly, this was not an insurmountable problem. How many Eunices were they likely to have on their payroll? But he deplored the sound of it-“May I please speak to Eunice?” So unprofessional.

“This is Liam Pennywell calling Mr. Cope’s assistant. Eunice, I believe it was.”

They would take him for some kind of stalker.

He didn’t make the call.

Though a part of him knew full well what a weak excuse that was.

After lunch-a peanut-butter sandwich-he vacuumed his apartment and dusted all the furniture and fixed a pitcher of iced tea. He found himself talking silently to Eunice as he worked. Somehow, he progressed from “The fact is that I’m not the developer type” to “I’ve had a hard time with this amnesia issue; maybe you can understand.” He pictured her nodding sagely, matter-of-factly, as if this syndrome were old news to her. “Let’s review this for a moment, shall we?” she might say. Or, “A lot of times, when Mr. C. forgets, I’ve learned that it helps to…” To what? Liam couldn’t invent an end for that sentence.

It dawned on him that what he wanted from her was not so much to recover the burglar incident as to make sense of his forgetting it. He wanted her to say, “Oh , yes. I’ve seen this before; it’s nothing new. Other people have these holes in their lives.”

True, various doctors had said that already, but that was different. Why was it different? He couldn’t explain. Something lurked at the edge of his mind but he couldn’t quite grab hold of it.

He sat down in his rocker and stayed there, empty-headed, hands loose on his thighs. Long ago when he was young he used to envision old age this way: man in a rocker, idle. He had read somewhere that old people could sit in their chairs and watch their memories roll past like movies, endlessly entertaining; but so far that hadn’t happened to him. He was beginning to think it never would.

He was glad he hadn’t canceled Eunice’s visit.

She showed up just before six o’clock-later than he had expected. He’d started growing a little fidgety. She was carrying a bag of fried chicken from a takeout place. “I thought we could have supper while we worked,” she said. “I hope you haven’t already fixed us something.”

“Why… no, I haven’t,” Liam said.

Fried chicken tended to upset his stomach, but he had to admit it smelled delicious. He took the bag from her and placed it on the table, assuming they would eat later. Eunice, however, made a beeline for his kitchen. “Plates? Silver?” she asked.

“Oh, um, plates are in that cupboard to your left.”

She rattled among the cabinets and drawers while Liam drew a wad of paper napkins from the takeout bag. “I brought you some materials describing the company,” she called over her shoulder. “Just so you can sound informed about where you’re applying.”

Liam said, “Ah. The company. Well. I’ve been thinking. I’m not sure the company and I would be such a very good match.”

“Not sure!”

She stopped midway to the table, holding an armful of dishes and silverware.

“I guess at heart I’m still a teacher,” he told her.

“Oh, change is always difficult,” she said.

He nodded.

“But if you just gave this a try; just tried it to see how you liked it…” She set the dishes on the table and began distributing them. “Do you have any soft drinks?”

“No, only iced tea,” Liam said. “Or, wait. I think my daughter may have left some Diet Coke.”

“I didn’t know you had a daughter!” Eunice said. She sounded unduly taken aback, as if she knew everything else about him.

“I have three, in fact,” Liam said.

“So you’re, what? Divorced? Widowed?”

“Both,” Liam said. “Which did you want?”

Eunice said, “Excuse me?” She seemed to be having one of her flushes.

“Iced tea or Diet Coke?”

“Oh! Diet Coke, please.”

Liam found a Diet Coke behind the milk and brought it to the table, along with the pitcher of tea for himself. “My refrigerator dispenses ice directly through the door,” he told Eunice. “Would you like some for your Coke?”

“No, thanks, I’ll just drink from the can.”

She was setting out pieces of chicken on a platter. There were biscuits, too, he saw, but no vegetable. He debated fixing a salad but decided against it; too time-consuming. He sat down in his usual place. Eunice took the chair to his left. She smoothed a napkin across her lap and gazed around. “This is a nice apartment,” she said.

“Thanks. I don’t feel entirely settled yet.”

“You’ve just moved in?”

“A few weeks ago.”

He took a drumstick from the platter and put it on his plate. Eunice chose a wing.

“The burglary happened the first night I was here,” he told her. “I went to sleep perfectly fine, and I woke up in the hospital.”

“That’s terrible,” Eunice said. “Didn’t you want to move out again right away?”

“Well, it was more a matter of… I was more concerned about remembering what had happened,” Liam said. “I felt as if I had leapt this sort of ditch. This gap of time that I had skipped completely. I hate that feeling! I hate forgetting.”

“It’s like Mr. C.,” Eunice said.

“Ah,” Liam said, and he grew very alert.

“You won’t breathe a word of this, will you?”

“No, no!”

“What I do for Mr. C. is, like, I’m his external hard drive.”

Liam blinked.

“But that is not to go beyond these walls,” Eunice said. “You have to promise.”

“Yes, of course, but-”

“Mrs. C. was just worried to bits, was what she told my mother.”

“So… excuse me, you’re saying-”

“But forget I mentioned it, okay? Let’s change the subject.”

Liam said, “Okay…”

“How can you be both divorced and widowed?” she asked him.

He tried to collect his thoughts. He said, “The divorce was the second wife. The first wife died.”

“Oh, I am so, so sorry.”

“Well, it was long ago,” Liam said. “I never think about her anymore.”

Eunice started picking her chicken wing apart with the very tips of her fingers, putting slivers of meat in her mouth while she kept her eyes on his. He didn’t want her to ask what Millie had died of. He could see the question forming in her mind, and so he rushed to say, “Two marriages! Sounds pretty bad, right? I’m always embarrassed to tell people.”

“My great-grandfather had three marriages,” Eunice said.

“Three! Well, I’d never go that far. There’s something… exaggerated about three marriages. Cartoonish. No offense to your great-grandfather.”

“This was back in the old days,” Eunice said. “His first two wives died in childbirth.”

“Oh, then,” Liam said.

“How did-?”

“But!” Liam said loudly, slapping both hands on the table. “We don’t have a vegetable! What am I thinking? I’m going to make us a salad.”

“No, really, I don’t need a salad.”

“Let’s see,” he said, and he jumped up and went to the refrigerator. “Lettuce? Tomatoes? Hmm, the lettuce seems a bit…”

He returned with a bag of baby carrots. “Did you know there’s a store on York Road called Greenish Grocery?” he asked as he sat back down. “I’ve driven past it. I always picture they’d have brown-edged lettuce, shriveled radishes, broccoli turning yellow… Here, help yourself.”

Last month, as it happened, had marked the thirty-second anniversary of Millie’s death. He wouldn’t ordinarily have remembered, but he was writing the date on a check and he happened to notice. June fifth. Thirty-two years; good God. She’d been barely twenty-four when she died. If she were to see him today she would think, Who is that old man?