Ladder of Years (6 page)

“Pardon?”

“I’ll take you in my car.”

“Why on earth would you do that?”

“I just want to, that’s why,” she said. She tied her sash very tight, in hopes her housecoat would pass for streetwear. As she stepped into her flats, she could feel him staring at her, but all she said was, “Ready?” She collected her keys from the bureau.

“Delia, are you doubting my ability to drive my own car anymore?” Sam asked.

“Oh, no! What a thought!” she told him. “But I’m awake, why not come with you? Besides, it’s such a nice spring night.”

He didn’t look convinced, but he offered no more arguments when she led the way downstairs.

It was not a nice spring night at all. It was cool and breezy, and she wished for a sweater as soon as they stepped out the back door. Towering, luminous clouds scudded across an inky sky. But she headed toward her car at a leisurely pace, resisting the urge to hunch her shoulders against the chill. The streetlights were so bright that she could see her shadow, elongated like a stick figure in a child’s drawing.

“This makes me think of Daddy,” she said. She had to speak up, since Sam had walked over to his Buick to retrieve his black bag. She hoped he didn’t hear the shiver in her voice. “All the house calls I used to make with Daddy, just the two of us! Seems like old times.”

She slid behind her steering wheel and reached across to unlock the passenger door. The air inside the car felt refrigerated. It even smelled refrigerated—dank and stale.

“Of course, Daddy never let me drive him,” she said when Sam had
got in. Then she worried this would give him second thoughts, and so she added, laughing slightly, “You know how prejudiced he was! Women drivers, he always said …” She started the engine and turned on her lights, illuminating the double doors of the garage and the tattered net of the basketball hoop overhead. “But whenever I was still up, he’d say I could come with him. Oh, I tagged along many a night! Eliza just never was interested, and Linda was so, you know, at odds with him all the time, but I was ready at a moment’s notice. I just loved to go.”

Sam had heard all this before, of course. He merely settled his bag between his feet while she backed the car out of the driveway.

Once they were on Roland Avenue, she said, “In fact I ought to come with you more often, now the kids are growing up. Don’t you think?” She was aware that she was chattering, but she said, “It might be kind of fun! And it’s not as if you go out every night, or even every week anymore.”

“Delia, I give you my word I am still capable of making the odd house call without a baby-sitter,” Sam told her.

“Baby-sitter!”

“I’m strong as an ox. Stop fretting.”

“I’m not fretting! I just thought it would be romantic, something the two of us could do together!” she said.

This wasn’t the whole truth, but as soon as she said it she started to believe it, and so she felt a bit hurt. Sam merely sat back and gazed out the side window.

There was almost no traffic at this hour, and the avenue seemed very flat and empty, shimmering pallidly beneath the streetlights as if veiled by yellow chiffon. The newly leafed trees, lit from below, had a tumbled, upside-down look. Here and there a second-floor window glowed cozily, and Delia sent it a wistful glance as they passed.

In front of the Maxwells’ house, she parked. She turned off the headlights but left the engine and the heater on. “Aren’t you coming in?” Sam asked.

“I’ll wait in the car.”

“You’ll freeze!”

“I’m not dressed for company.”

“Come in, Dee. The Maxwells don’t care how you’re dressed.”

He was right, she supposed. (And the heater hadn’t even started heating yet.) She took the keys from the ignition and slid out of the car to follow him up the front walk, toward the broad, columned house
where those two lone Maxwells must rattle around like dice in a cup. All the windows were blazing, and the inner door stood open. Mr. Maxwell waited just inside, a stooped, bulky figure fumbling to unhook the screen as they crossed the porch.

“Dr. Grinstead!” he said. “Thank you so much for coming. And Delia too. Hello, dear.”

He wore food-stained trousers belted just beneath his armpits, and a frayed gray cardigan over a T-shirt. (He used to be such a natty dresser.) Without a pause, he turned to lead Sam toward the carpeted stairs. “It breaks my heart to see her this way,” he said as they started the climb. “I’d suffer in her stead, if I could.”

Delia watched after them from the foyer, and when they were out of sight she sat down on one of the two antique chairs that flanked a highboy. She sat cautiously; for all she knew, the chairs were purely for show.

Overhead the voices murmured—Mrs. Maxwell’s thin and complaining, Sam’s a rumble. The grandfather clock facing Delia ticked so slowly that it seemed each tick might be its last. For lack of anything better to do (she had thoughtlessly left her purse at home), she fanned her keys across her lap and sorted through them.

How many hours had she sat like this in her childhood? Perched on a chair or a bottom step, scratching at the insect bites on her bare knees or leafing through a magazine some grown-up had thrust upon her before leading her father up the stairs. And overhead that same murmur, the words never quite distinguishable. When her father spoke, all others fell silent, and she had felt proud and flattered to hear how people revered him.

The stairs creaked, and she looked up. It was Mr. Maxwell, descending by himself. “Dr. Grinstead’s just examining her,” he said. He inched down, clinging to the banister, and when he reached the foyer he settled with a wheeze onto the other antique chair. Because the highboy stood between them, all she saw of him was his outstretched trouser legs and his leather slippers, backless, exposing maroon silk socks with transparent heels. “He says he thinks it’s a touch of indigestion, but I told him, I said, at our age … well, you can’t be too careful, I told him.”

“I’m sure she’ll be all right,” Delia said.

“I just thank heaven for Dr. Grinstead. A lot of those younger fellows wouldn’t come out like this.”

“None of them would,” Delia couldn’t resist saying.

“Oh, some, maybe.”

“None. Believe me.”

Mr. Maxwell sat forward to look at her. She found his veiny, florid face peering around the highboy.

“That Sam is just too nice for his own good,” she told him. “Did you know he has angina? Angina, at age fifty-five! What could that mean for his future? If it were up to me, he’d be home in bed this very minute.”

“Well, luckily it’s not up to you,” Mr. Maxwell said a bit peevishly. He sat back again and there was a pause, during which she heard Mrs. Maxwell say something opinionated that sounded like “Nee-nee. Nee-nee.”

“We were Dr. Grinstead’s first house call—did he ever mention that?” Mr. Maxwell asked. “Yessir: very first house call. Your dad said, Think you’ll like this boy.’ I admit we were a mite apprehensive, having relied on your dad all those years.”

Sam was speaking more briskly now. He must be finishing up.

“I asked Dr. Grinstead when he came to us,” Mr. Maxwell said dreamily. “I said, ‘Well, young man?’ He’d only been on the job a couple days by then. I said, ‘Well?’ Said, Which one of those Felson girls do you plan to set about marrying?’ Pretty smart of me, eh?”

Delia laughed politely and rearranged her keys.

“‘Oh,’ he said; said, ‘I guess I’ve got my eye on the youngest.’ Said, The oldest is too short and the middle one’s too plump, but the youngest,’ he said, ‘is just right.’ So. See there? I knew before you did.”

“Yes, I guess you did,” Delia said, and then Sam started down the stairs, the instruments in his black bag cheerily jingling. Mr. Maxwell rose at once, but Delia stayed seated and kept her gaze fixed on her keys. They seemed uncannily distinct—dull-finished, ill-assorted, incised with brand names as clipped and choppy as words from another language.

“Just what I …,” Sam was saying, and, “Nothing but a touch of …,” and, “Left some medication on the …” Then he and Mr. Maxwell were shaking hands, and he said, “Dee?” and she stood up without a word and stepped through the door that Mr. Maxwell held open.

Outside, the grass had grown white with dew and the air itself seemed white, as if dawn were not far off. Delia climbed into the car and started the engine before Sam was completely settled. “You have to feel for those folks,” he said, shutting his door. “Aging all alone like that, they must dwell on every symptom.”

Delia swung out into the street and drove slightly above the speed
limit, concentrating, not speaking. They were nearly home before she said, “Mr. Maxwell told me they were your very first house call.”

“Really?”

“The second day you worked here.”

“I’d forgotten.”

“He said he asked which of the Felson girls you planned to marry and you said the youngest.”

“Hmm,” Sam said, unzipping his bag. He checked something inside and told her, “Delia, remind me tomorrow morning to pick up more—”

“‘The oldest is too short and the middle one’s too plump,’ you said, ‘but the youngest one is just right.’”

Sam laughed.

“Did you say that?” she asked him.

“Oh, sweetie, how would I remember after all these years?”

She pulled into their driveway and turned the engine off. Sam opened his door, but then, noticing she had not moved, he looked over at her. The little ceiling bulb cast sharp hollows in his face.

“You did say it,” she told him. “I recognize the fairy-tale sound of it.”

“So? Maybe I did,” he said. “Gosh, Dee, I wasn’t weighing every word. I might have said ‘too short’ and ‘too plump,’ but what I probably meant was ‘too unconventional’ and ‘too Francophile.’”

“That’s not it,” Delia said.

“Why, Linda spent half the evening speaking French, remember? And when your dad made her switch to English, she still had an accent.”

“You don’t even know what I’m objecting to, do you?” Delia asked.

“Well, no,” Sam said. “I don’t.”

She got out of the car and walked toward the back steps. Sam went to replace his bag in the Buick; she heard the clunk of his trunk lid.

“And Eliza!” he said as he followed her to the house. “She kept asking my opinion of homeopathic medicine.”

“You arrived here that very first day planning to marry one of the Felson girls,” Delia told him.

She had unlocked the door now, but instead of entering she turned to face him. He was looking down at her, with his forehead creased.

“Why, I suppose it must naturally have crossed my mind,” he said. “I’d completed all my training by then. I’d reached the marrying age, so to speak. The marrying stage of life.”

“But then why not a nurse, or a fellow student, or some girl your mother knew?”

“My mother?” he said. He blinked.

“You had your eye on Daddy’s practice, that’s why,” she told him. “You thought, Til just marry one of Dr. Felson’s daughters and inherit all his patients and his nice old comfortable house.’”

“Well, sweetheart, I probably did think that. Probably I did. But I never would have married someone I didn’t love. Is that what you believe? You believe I didn’t marry for love?”

“I don’t know what to believe,” she told him.

Then she spun around and walked back down the steps.

“Dee?” Sam called.

She passed her car without slowing. Most women would have
driven
away, but she preferred to walk. The soles of her flats gritted against the asphalt driveway in a purposeful rhythm, reminding her of some tune she could almost name but not quite. Part of her was listening for Sam (she had a sense of perking one ear backward, like a cat), but another part was glad to be rid of him and pleased to have her view of him confirmed.
Look at that, he wont even deign to come after me.
She reached the street, turned right, and kept going. Her frail-edged shadow preceded her and then drew back and then fell behind as she traveled from streetlight to streetlight. No longer did she feel the cold. She seemed warmed from inside by her anger.

Now she understood why Sam had forgotten his actual first glimpse of her. He had prepared to meet the Felson girls as a boxed set, that was why. It had not figured in his plans to encounter an isolated sample ahead of time. What
had
figured was the social occasion that evening, with marriageable maidens one, two, and three on display on the living-room couch. She could envision that scene herself now. All it took was the proper perspective to bring it back entire: the itchy red plush cushions, the clothlike texture of her frosted sherry glass, and the fidgeting, encroaching, irritating plumpness of the middle sister, next to her.

On a branch overhead, the neighborhood’s silly mockingbird was imitating a burglar alarm. “Doy! Doy! Doy!” he sang in his most lyrical voice, until he was silenced by a billow of rock music approaching from the south. Teenagers, evidently—a whole carload. Delia heard their hoots and cheers growing steadily louder. It occurred to her that even Roland Park was not absolutely safe at this hour. Also, her housecoat wouldn’t fool a soul. She was running around in her nightclothes, basically. She
took a sudden right turn onto a smaller, darker street and walked close to a boxwood hedge, whose shadow swallowed hers.

Sam would be back in bed now, his trousers draped over the rocking chair. And the children didn’t know she was missing. With their jumbled, separate schedules, they might not know for days.

What kind of a life was she leading, if every single one of last week’s telephone messages could as easily be this week’s?

She walked faster, hearing the carload of music fade away behind her. She reached Bouton Road, crossed over, and turned left, and one split second later,
whomp!
she collided with someone. She ran smack against a stretch of tallness and boniness, overlaid by warm flannel. “Oh!” she said, and she recoiled violently, heart pounding, while somehow a dog became involved as well, one of those shaggy hunting-type dogs shouting around her knees.

“Butch! Down!” the man commanded. “Are you all right?” he asked Delia.

Delia said, “Adrian?”