Anne Tyler - Noah's Compass

“Never mind,” Liam said.

“That’s okay, I’m finished.” She stood up and went to lift the receiver. “Hello?” she said. “Hi. Sure, just a sec. It’s Eunice, Dad.”

“I’m eating,” Liam told her. And to prove it, he reached for the tomato sauce and ladled a spoonful onto his empty plate.

After a pause, Kitty said, “Eunice? Can he call you back later? Okay. Bye.”

She returned to the table and sat down. Neither she nor Damian spoke.

“I think you were right about the garlic,” Liam said. “I should have added it at the start. I can’t even taste that it’s there.”

He picked up the Parmesan cheese and sprinkled it on his sauce. Out of nowhere, a memory came to him of a spaghetti dinner he’d eaten with Eunice the week before, in a dingy little café in the mall across the street. The waitress had started out by introducing herself. “Hi,” she’d said. “I’m Debbie, and I’ll be your server tonight.” It was a practice that always made Liam roll his eyes, but Eunice seemed quite taken with it. All during their supper she had happily employed the woman’s name. “Debbie, could we have more bread?” and, “That was delicious, Debbie.” At the time, Liam had felt a bit irritated with her. Now, though, it struck him as funny. An actual bubble of laughter escaped him, and he ducked his head lower to hide it and busied himself with his meal.

Liam’s father lived off Harford Road, in a neighborhood of unassuming little cottages from the 1940s with drab clapboard siding, squat front porches, and carefully kept plots of grass. Liam could have found the place in his sleep, and not only because it was a straight shot out Northern Parkway. He had been traveling there since his teens. In fact, it was the first address he’d ever driven to, the first day he had his license. He’d asked permission to borrow the family car and then made his escape (was how he thought of it), gripping the steering wheel with both hands and constantly checking the rearview mirror as his driver’s ed instructor had taught him, but the faint tingle down his spine had come less from new-driver nerves than from the knowledge that he was betraying his mother. She would have been so distressed if she had known where he was going. She was, in general, a woman easily distressed. “That hurts my feelings” was her most characteristic remark. Also, “I just don’t seem to have any appetite,” as she pushed her plate away sadly after Liam had done something to disappoint her. He had disappointed her often, although he had tried his best not to.

The scenery hadn’t changed much in all these years. Even the flowers in the yards had a dated look-ball-shaped clumps of blue or white on bushes pruned into balls themselves. There was an abundance of lawn ornaments-plaster gnomes and fawns and families of ducks, birdbaths, windmills, reflective aluminum gazing globes, wooden cutouts of girls in sunbonnets bending over the flower beds with their wooden watering cans. Liam’s father’s yard had a miniature pony cart planted with red geraniums and hitched to a plaster pony.

Liam parked behind his father’s great long barge of a Chevy and walked up to the porch. He hadn’t phoned ahead. He never did. In his youth he had been aiming for an offhand, happenstance effect, and by now it was a tradition. Anyhow, the couple always seemed to be at home. Bard Pennywell had retired long ago from Sure-Tee Insurance, and Esther Jo had been asked to leave back when they got married.

It was Esther Jo who answered the doorbell. “Liam!” she said. They had never developed the habit of kissing when they met. For Liam as a teenager, she had seemed too dangerous, too obviously sexy for him to risk it. By now she was a puffy, pigeon-shaped woman in her early seventies, wearing a pinafore apron and cloth mules, but if you knew to look for the clues-the finger waves pressed into her faded blond hair, the eyebrows plucked to unsteady threads-you could still detect the office glamour girl she had once been.

“I hope I haven’t come at a bad time,” Liam told her.

“No, no, not at all. Your dad was just-Bard? It’s Liam! Your dad was just mowing the grass out back. Not that we have much to mow, these days. Hasn’t it been dry! I’ve forgotten what rain feels like, almost.”

She was leading Liam into the living room, which always struck him as an oddly girlish place. A row of stuffed animals lined the brocade love seat, and the dark wooden bookcase held an array of dolls in old-fashioned dresses, with crinolines and pantaloons peeking out from under their hems.

Liam settled in an armchair, but he stood again when his father entered the room. “Well, hi there, stranger!” his father said. He wore a crisply ironed shirt and a striped tie; he wasn’t the kind of man who dressed casually even to mow the lawn. Unlike Liam, he had thinned and shrunk as he aged, and the top of his head was completely bald, his hair no more than two tufts of white bracketing a narrow, deeply wrinkled face.

As they shook hands, Liam said, “I just thought I’d stop by and see how you were doing.”

“We’re doing fine! Not bad at all! This is a nice surprise, son.” Bard lowered himself onto the love seat, reaching behind him without looking to move aside a teddy bear in a cheerleader costume. “How’ve you been? How’re the girls?”

“Everyone’s fine,” Liam said, sitting back down. “They send their love.”

Or they would have, he reasoned, if they had known he was coming here. There was almost no contact between the two parts of Liam’s family.

“I’m just going to fetch some iced tea,” Esther Jo said. She had her arms folded tightly under her bosom, as if she felt the need to warm herself. “You two sit right where you are. Don’t get up! Just sit right here and have a nice talk. I’m going to leave you to it.”

She left the room, her mules making whispery sounds on the floorboards.

“I’d have thought you’d be at work now,” Liam’s father said, glancing at his watch. It was shortly before noon, Liam knew without checking. “Is summer school finished already?”

“I’m not doing that this year,” Liam said.

“Ah. Needed a break, did you.”

“Well… and I’ve been busy moving.”

“Moving! Where to?”

“A smaller place, up near the Beltway. Remind me to give you the phone number.”

His father nodded. “We should move,” he said. “Get shed of all this yard work. But, I don’t know, your stepmother loves her house so.”

Since Liam could never quite connect Esther Jo with the term “stepmother,” he experienced a little blank spell before he said, “Oh. Well, that’s understandable.”

“She says, ‘Where would I put all my pretty things? Where would my sister stay when she visits?’”

“It’s not as if an apartment couldn’t have a guestroom,” Liam said.

“No, but, you know.”

“In fact, I’ve got Kitty staying with me at this very moment.”

“Do you now!” His father smoothed the point of his tie.

Really the two of them had nothing to say to each other. Why did Liam have to learn this all over again on every visit?

They tried, though. Both of them tried. His father said, “How is Kitty, by the way?”

“She’s fine,” Liam said. “She’s working this summer in a dentist’s office.”

“Thinking of being a dental hygienist, is she.”

“Why, no. It’s just a summer job, is all. Filing charts.”

His father cleared his throat. “And your sister?” he asked.

“She’s fine too.”

Liam found himself listening for some sound from the kitchen, wondering when Esther Jo would be coming back to rescue them. “I actually haven’t seen Julia in a while,” he said.