Ladder of Years (31 page)

“Well, I think you’ve made the perfect choice,” Delia said.

She meant it, too. She had developed a liking for Binky, who edged all their conversations with a ruffle of admiring murmurs and encouraging remarks.

So when Delia stopped by the following week, she made a point of telling Binky that Nat was a lucky man.

“Well, thank you,” Binky said, bearning.

“Have you set a date yet?”

“We’ve talked about maybe June.”

“Or March,” Nat amended.

Binky rounded her eyes comically at Delia. March was right around the corner; they were halfway through February. “He has no idea what goes into these things,” she said.

“Oh, are you planning a big wedding?”

“Well, not
that
big, but … My first wedding, I eloped. I was a freshman at Washington College and wore what I’d worn to class that day. So this time I’d like all the trimmings.”

“I’m going to be best man,” Noah told Delia.

“You are!”

“I get to hold the ring.”

“You’ll come too, won’t you, Delia?” Nat asked.

“If I’m invited, of course I will.”

“Oh, you’ll be invited, all right,” Binky said, and she patted Delia’s hand and gave her a dimpled smile.

But later, riding home, Noah told Delia that Binky had been crying when he got there.

“Crying! What about?”

“I don’t know, but her eyes were all red. She pretended she was fine, but I could tell. And then when she was in the kitchen the phone rang and Grandpa shouted out, ‘Don’t answer that!’ and she didn’t. And he didn’t either, just let it ring and ring. So finally I said, ‘Want me to get it?’ but he said, ‘Nah, never mind.’ Said, ‘It’s probably just Dudi.’”

“Who’s Dudi?”

“One of my aunts.”

“Oh.” Delia thought that over. “But why wouldn’t he talk to her?”

He shrugged. “Beats me,” he said. “You want to watch your speedometer, Delia.”

“Thanks,” Delia said.

She’d been issued two tickets in the last three weeks. It was something to do with this open country, she believed. The speed just seemed to inch up on her, and before she knew it she was flying.

Back in Bay Borough, Joel was already home and waiting to hear the latest. He took a rather gleeful interest in Nat’s wedding plans. “Noah’s going to be best man,” Delia told him as she hung up her coat.

“No kidding!” He turned to Noah. “Where are you throwing the stag party?”

“Stag party?”

“Have you thought out your toasts yet?”

“Toasts!”

“Don’t you pay any attention,” Delia told Noah. He was looking worried.

It occurred to her that she was bound to run into Ellie at the wedding. Scandalous that they hadn’t met before; Delia was in charge of Ellie’s son. What kind of mother entrusted her son to a stranger?

A couple of weeks before, passing through Nat’s bedroom to use his bathroom, Delia had noticed a color photo of his daughters on the highboy. At least she assumed they were all his daughters—Ellie and three other blondes, linking arms and laughing. Ellie was the most vivid, the one you looked at first. She wore a cream dress splashed with strawberries that matched her strawberry mouth. Her shoes, though, were not very flattering. They were ballerina flats,
black
ballerina flats, papery and klutzy. They showed the bulges of her toes. They made her ankles look thick.

Why did Delia find this so gratifying? She had nothing against Ellie; she didn’t even know her. But she bent closer to the photo and spent several moments hunting other flaws. Not that she found them. And not that she would have occasion, anyhow, to point them out to Joel.

14

On a Friday morning at the tail end of February—a day so mild and sunny that she would have supposed spring was here, if she hadn’t known the tricky ways of winter—Delia walked to the Young Mister Shop to exchange some pajamas for Noah. (She had bought him a pair like an Orioles uniform, not realizing that for some strange reason, Noah preferred the Phillies.) And then, because it felt so pleasant to be out in nothing heavier than a sweater, she decided to walk to the library and visit with Mrs. Lincoln awhile. So she cut across the square and started up West Street. At the florist’s window she slowed to admire a pot of paper-whites, and at Mr. Pomfret’s window she slid her eyes sideways to check out his new secretary. Rumor had it he was limping along with a niece of his wife’s who couldn’t even type, let alone run a computer. But the way the light hit the glass, Delia would have had to step closer to see inside. All she could make out was her own silhouette and another just behind, both ivy-patterned from the sprawling new plant the niece must have set on the sill. Delia increased her speed and crossed George Street.

The window display in the Pinchpenny was little girls’ dresses this week; so now the two silhouettes were made up of rosebud prints and plaids. She noticed that the second silhouette was storky and gangling, mostly joints, like an adolescent boy. Like Carroll.

She turned, and there he was. He looked even more startled than she felt, if that was possible. His expression froze and he drew back sharply, hands thrust into his windbreaker pockets, elbows jutting.

She said, “Carroll?”

“What.”

“Oh,
Carroll
!” she cried, and the feeling that swept through her was so wrenching, like the grip of some deep, internal fist, that she understood for the first time how terribly much she had missed him. His face might have been her own face, not because it resembled hers (although it did), but because she had absorbed its every detail over the past fifteen years—the sprinkle of starry freckles across his delicate nose, the way the shadows beneath his eyes would darken at fraught moments. (Right now they were almost purple.) He raised his chin defiantly, and so at the very last second she merely reached out to lay a hand on his arm instead of kissing him. She said, “I’m so happy to see you! How’d you get here?”

“I had a ride.”

She had forgotten that his voice had changed. She had to adjust all over again. “And what are you doing on West Street?” she asked.

“I tried your boardinghouse first, but no one answered, and then I happened to see you crossing the square.”

He must not have told the family he was coming, therefore. (She had sent Eliza her new address weeks ago.) She said, “Is something wrong at home? Are you all right? It’s a school day!”

“Everything’s fine,” he said.

He was trying, unobtrusively, to step out from under her hand. He was darting embarrassed glances at passersby. Much as she hated to, she let go of him. She said, “Well, let’s … would you like some lunch?”

“Lunch? I just had breakfast.”

Yes, it was morning still, wasn’t it. She felt dizzy and disoriented, almost drunk. “A Coke or something, then,” she said.

“Okay.”

Turning him in the direction of Rick-Rack’s gave her an excuse to touch him again. She loved that hard tendon at the inside crook of his arm. Oh, she might have known it would be Carroll who finally came for her! (Her most attached child, when all was said and done—her most loving, her closest. Although she would probably have thought the same if it had been either of the other two.)

“There’s so much you have to bring me up-to-date on,” she told him. “How’s tenth grade?”

He shrugged.

“Has your father had any more chest pains?”

“Not that I know of.”

“Ramsay and Susie all right?”

“Sure.”

Then what is it?
she wanted to ask, but she didn’t. Already she was falling back into the veiled, duplicitous manner required for teenage offspring. She led him west on George Street, very nearly holding her breath. “Is Ramsay still seeing that divorcée person? That Velma?” she said.

Another shrug. Obviously, he was.

“And how about Susie?”

“How about her.”

“Has she figured out yet what she’ll do after graduation?”

“Huh?” he said, looking toward a Bon Jovi poster in the record store.

He was as frustrating as ever, and he hadn’t lost that habit of ostentatiously holding back a yawn each time he spoke. She forced herself to be patient. She steered him past Shearson Liquors, past Brent Hardware, and through the door of Rick-Rack’s.

“Dee-babe!” Rick hailed her, lowering his copy of
Sports Illustrated.
She would have known from his greeting alone that his father-in-law was sitting at the counter. (Rick always put on a display for Mr. Bragg.) “Who’s that you got with you?” he asked.

“This is my son Carroll.” She told Carroll, “This is Rick Rackley.”

“Hey, your son!” Rick said. “How about that!”

Carroll looked dazed. Delia felt a prickle of annoyance. Couldn’t he at least act civil? “Let’s sit in a booth,” she said brusquely.

Teensy was nowhere in sight, so Delia took it upon herself to grab two menus from the pile on a stool. As soon as they were seated, she passed one to Carroll. “I know it’s early,” she said, “but you might want to try the pork barbecue sandwich. It’s the North Carolina kind, not a bit sweet or—”

“Mom,” Carroll whispered.

“What.”

“Mom. Is that
Rick
-Rack?”

“What?”

“Rick Rackley, the football player?”

“Well, yes, I think so.”

Carroll gaped at Rick, who was topping off his father-in-law’s mug of coffee. He turned back to Delia and whispered, “You know Rick-Rack in person? Rick-Rack knows you?”

This was working out better than she could have hoped. She said, “Yes, certainly,” in an airy tone, and then, showing off, she called, “Where’s Teensy got to, Rick?”

“She’s over at House of Hair,” he said, setting the coffeepot back on the burner. “You-all going to have to shout your order direct to me.”

“Well, is it too early to ask for pork barbecue?”

“Naw, we can do that,” Rick said.

Carroll said, “I just had breakfast, Mom. I told you.”

“Yes, but this is something you wouldn’t want to miss,” she said. “Not a drop of tomato sauce! And it comes with really good french fries and homemade coleslaw!”

She didn’t know why she was making such a fuss about it. Carroll was clearly not hungry; he was still staring at Rick. But she called, “Two platters, please, Rick, and two large Cokes.”

“You got it.”

Mr. Bragg spun his stool around so he could study them. His thin white crew cut stood erect, giving him the look of someone flabbergasted. “Why!” he cried. “What’s happened with this
boy
?”

Delia glanced toward Carroll in alarm.

“How’d he shoot up so fast?” Mr. Bragg asked. “How’d he get so big all at once?”

She wondered if the old man had somehow read her mind, but then he said, “Last Christmas he was only yea tall,” and he set a palm down around the level of his shins.

“Oh,” Delia said. “No, that’s Noah you’re thinking of.”

It was common knowledge by now that Mr. Bragg was failing, which was why poor Rick and Teensy couldn’t send him back wherever he came from.

“Who’s Noah?” was his next question.

“Who’s Noah?” Carroll echoed.

“Just the boy who …” She felt rattled, as if she had been caught in some disloyalty. “Just the son of my employer,” she said. “So! Carroll. Tell me all that’s been going on at home. Has the Casserole Harem descended? Lots of apple pies streaming in?”

“You haven’t asked about Aunt Liza,” Carroll told her.

“Eliza? Is she all right?”

“Well. All
right
, I guess,” he said.

“What is that supposed to mean? Is she sick?”

“No, she’s not sick.”

“Last Christmas you were just a shrimp,” Mr. Bragg called. “You and her were drinking coffee together, tee-heeing over the presents you’d bought.”

“Eliza is still taking care of the house, isn’t she?” Delia persevered.

But Carroll seemed distracted by Mr. Bragg. He said, “Who’s he talking about?”

“I told you: my employer’s son.”

“Is that why you’ve got that bag with you? Tasteful Clothing for the Discerning Young Man’? You buy this kid clothes? You tee-hee together? And what’s that you’re wearing, for God’s sake?”

Delia looked down. She wasn’t wearing anything odd—just her Miss Grinstead cardigan and the navy print housedress. “Wearing?” she said.

“You’re so, like,
ensconced.
”

Two plates appeared before them, clattering against the Formica. “Ketchup, anyone?” Rick asked.

“No, thanks.” She told Carroll, “Honey, I—”

“
I
would like ketchup,” Carroll announced belligerently.

“Oh. Sorry. Yes, please, Rick.”

Carroll said, “Have you forgotten you have a son who puts ketchup on his french fries?”

“Honey, believe me,” she said, “I would never forget. Well, maybe about the ketchup, but never about—”

A plastic squirt bottle arrived, along with their Cokes in tall paper cups. “Thank you, Rick,” she said.

She waited till he had left again, and then she reached across the table and touched Carroll’s hand. His knuckles were grained like leather. His lips were chapped. There was something too concrete about him; she was accustomed to the misty, soft-edged Carroll of her daydreams.

“I would never forget I have children,” she told him.

“Right. That’s why you sashayed off down the beach and didn’t once look back at them.”

Someone said, “Delia?”

She started. Two teenage girls stood over their table—Kim Brewster and Marietta something. Schwartz? Schmidt? (She brought Joel homemade
fudge so sweet it zinged through your temples.) “Well! Hello there!” Delia said.

“You won’t tell Mr. Miller you saw us here, will you?” Kim asked. Kim was one of Delia’s remedial pupils; lately, Delia had been volunteering as a math tutor over at the school. “He would kill us if he found out!”

“We’re cutting class,” Marietta put in. “We saw you in here and we figured we’d ask: you know how Mr. Miller’s birthday is coming up.”

Delia hadn’t known, but she nodded. Anything to get rid of them.

“So a bunch of us are chipping in on a present, and we thought you might could tell us what to buy him.”

“Oh! Well…”