Ladder of Years

by Anne Tyler

  Then she made a brief return trip to her room. She didn’t go inside but merely stood in the doorway, claiming it—reveling in its starkness, now that she had it completely to herself.

  Clop-clop back up the street, eyes front, as if she knew where she was headed. Well, she did, more or less. Already the little town held pockets of familiar sights: the faded red soft-drink machine outside the Gobble-Up Grocery, the chipped Fiesta ware in Bob’s Antiques, the stacked bags of kibble for overweight dogs in Pet Heaven. She took a right at the corner, and the green square in the distance seemed as comfortable, as well known and faintly boring, as if she had spent her childhood at the foot of Mr. Bay’s fringed chair.

  Ezekiel Pomfret still had his shade pulled down, but when Delia tried the door it yielded. A steep flight of stairs climbed straight ahead. A ground-floor door to the right bore, on its cloudy, pebbled glass, Ezekiel Pomfret’s name once again and WILLS & ESTATES—DOMESTIC-CRIMINAL LAW. That door, too, opened when Delia tried it. She stepped into a walnut-lined room with a reception desk in the center. No one sat at the desk, she was pleased to see. No one was visible anywhere, but behind another door, this one ornately paneled, she heard a man’s voice. It stopped and started, interspersed by silence, so she knew he must be talking on the phone.

  She crossed to the desk, which was bare except for a telephone and a typewriter. She lifted a corner of the typewriter’s gray rubber hood. Manual; not even electric. (She had worried she would find a computer.) She gave a small, testing spin to the swivel chair behind it.

  Good afternoon, she would say. I’m here to ask if…

  No, not ask. Ask was too tentative.

  She reached up to pat her hair, which felt as crumbly as dry sand on the beach. (The beach! No: shoo that thought away.) She smoothed her skirt around her hips and made sure that the trim on her tote—a flashy pink bow, ridiculous—was hidden beneath her arm.

  It just seemed so fateful, Mr. Pomfret, it seemed almost like a direct command, that I should learn about poor Miss Percy exactly at the moment when …

  The voice behind the door gathered energy and volume. Mr. Pomfret must be winding up his conversation.

  Like having something accidentally break my fall, does that make any sense? Like I’ve been falling, falling all day and then was snagged by a random hook, or caught by an outjutting ledge, and this is where I happened to land, so I was wondering whether …

  Slam of receiver, squeak of caster wheels, heavy tread on carpet. The paneled door swung open, and a big-bellied middle-aged man in a seersucker suit surveyed her over his half-glasses. “I thought I heard someone,” he said.

  “Mr. Pomfret, I’m Delia Grinstead,” she told him. “I’ve come to be your secretary.”

  At four-fifteen she returned to the dime store and bought one cotton nightgown, white, and two pairs of nylon panty hose. At four twenty-five she crossed the square to Bassett Bros. Shoe Store and bought a large black leather handbag. The bag cost fifty-seven dollars. When she first saw the price she considered settling for vinyl, but then she decided that only genuine leather would pass muster with Miss Grinstead.

  Miss Grinstead was Delia—the new Delia; for after one grimacing, acidic “Ms.,” that was how Mr. Pomfret had addressed her throughout their interview. It seemed apt that she should accept this compromise—the unmarried title, the married surname. Certainly the aproned, complacent sound of “Mrs.” no longer applied, and yet she couldn’t go back to being giggly young Miss Felson. Besides, her Social Security card said Grinstead. She had drawn it from her wallet and read off the number to Mr. Pomfret (not having had enough use of it, all these years, to know it by heart). She had told him she was relocating after burying her mother. A whole unspoken history insinuated itself in the air between them: the puttery female household, the daughter’s nunnish devotion. She said she had worked in a doctor’s office her entire adult life. “Twenty-two years,” she told Mr. Pomfret, “and I felt so sad to leave, but I simply couldn’t stay on in Baltimore with all those memories.” She seemed to have been infected with Miss Grinstead’s manner of speaking. She would never herself have used “simply” in casual conversation, and the word “memories” in that context had a certain mealymouthed tone that was unlike her.

  If references had been called for, she was prepared to say that her employer had recently died as well. (She was killing off people right and left today.) But Mr. Pomfret didn’t mention references. His sole concern was the nature of her past duties. Had she typed, had she filed, taken shorthand? She answered truthfully, but it felt like lies. “I typed all the bills and correspondence and the doctor’s charts,” she said. Sam’s worn face rose up before her, along with his mended white coat and the paisley tie that he called his “paramecium tie.” She sat straighter in her chair. “I filed and manned the phone and kept the appointment book, but unfortunately I do not take shorthand.”

  “Well, no matter,” Mr. Pomfret said. “Neither did Miss Percy or Miss What’s-her-name. I’ve always dreamed of having a secretary with shorthand, but I guess it’s not meant to be.”

  There was an uncomfortable moment when he asked for her address, since she had no idea what it was. But when she mentioned Belle Flint he said, “Oh, yes, on George Street.” He added, as he made a notation, “Belle’s a real fun gal.” That was the advantage to a small town, Delia supposed. Or the disadvantage, depending on how you looked at it.

  He said she should start tomorrow; her hours were nine to five. Sorry the pay was just minimum wage, he said (sliding his eyes over subtly to gauge her reaction). Also, she was expected to brew the coffee; he hoped that wasn’t a problem.

  Of course it wasn’t, Delia said brusquely, and she rose and terminated the interview. Her impression of Mr. Pomfret was that he was a man without any grain to him, someone benign but not especially interesting, and that was fine with her. In fact, she didn’t much like him, and that was fine too. For the impersonal new life she seemed to be manufacturing for herself, Mr. Pomfret was ideal.

  Her watch said twenty minutes till five, and she hadn’t eaten since breakfast. Before heading back to her room, therefore, she walked to the café that Belle had recommended. It turned out to be not directly across from Belle’s but a few doors farther west, next to a hardware. Still, she could see the boardinghouse from the window; so she sat in the booth that offered the best view and kept watch against Belle’s return. Maybe she should have purchased a suitcase, just so she could move in openly. But it was foolish to spend money on appearances. Already her five hundred dollars had dwindled to … what? Mentally she tallied it up and then winced. When the waitress arrived, she confined her order to a bowl of vegetable soup and a glass of milk.

  Rick-Rack’s was the kind of place where she might have eaten in high school—a diner, basically, linoleum floored and tile walled, with six or eight booths and a row of stools along a Formica counter. One little redhead served the whole room, and a blue-black young man, gigantically muscled and shaven skulled, did the cooking. He was grilling a cheese sandwich for the only other customer, a boy about Ramsay’s age. The smell of fried food gave Delia hunger pangs even as she was spooning her soup, but she reminded herself that soup provided more vitamins for the money, and she declined the homemade pie for dessert. She paid at the register. The cook, after wiping his hands on his apron, rang up her total without comment. Next time she’d bring something to read, she decided. She had felt awkward, munching her saltines and staring fixedly out the window.

  No sign of Belle back at the house. Delia unlatched the front door and felt a thin, bare silence all around her. She climbed the stairs, thinking, Here comes the executive secretary, returning from her lone meal to the solitude of her room. It wasn’t a complaint, though. It was a boast. An exultation.

  When she opened her own door the hornet’s-nest smell seemed stronger, perhaps because of the afternoon heat that had penetrated the eaves. She set her belongings on the bureau and went to raise both windows. The rear win
dow offered a view of the tiny backyard and an alley. The front window showed the porch overhang and the buildings across the street. Delia leaned her forehead against the screen and picked out the café (B. J. “RICK” RACKLEY, PROP.) and the hardware store and a brown shingled house with the bars of a crib or a playpen visible in one upstairs window. The only sounds were soothing sounds—occasional cars swishing past and footsteps on the sidewalk.

  Belle had left an old-fashioned, spindly key on the bureau, and Delia fitted it into the door and turned the lock. Then she took the tags off her new handbag, dropped her wallet inside, and hung the bag from a hook in the closet. She stowed her other purchases in the bureau. (The drawers stuck and slid out crookedly; they were cheaply made, like the house itself.) She hung Sam’s beach robe on a hanger. She placed her cosmetic kit in a drawer. Her tote, with its remaining litter of sun lotions and swimsuit and rubber bands and such, she boosted onto the closet shelf. Then she closed the closet door and went over to the cot and sat down.

  So.

  She was settled.

  She could look around the room and detect not the slightest hint that anybody lived here.

  It was twilight before Belle returned. Delia heard the clunk of a car door out front, then loud heels on the porch. But neither woman called out a greeting. In fact, Delia, who had been staring into space for who knows how long, rose from the cot as soundlessly as possible, and tiptoed when she went over to collect some things from the bureau, and took care not to creak any floorboards when she crossed the hall to the bathroom.

  While she waited for the shower to run warm, she brushed her teeth and undressed, putting her underwear to soak in the sink. A second towel and washcloth now hung on the other towel bar, she saw. She took the washcloth with her and stepped behind the shower curtain, which was crackly with age and slightly mildewed.

  Grime and sweat and sunblock streamed off her, uncovering a whole new layer of skin. The soles of her feet, which felt ironed flat from all that walking, seemed to be drinking up water. She lifted her face to the spray and let her hair get wet. Finally, regretfully, she shut off the faucets and stepped out to towel herself dry. The new nightgown drifted airily over her scorched shoulders.

  She chose not to leave her toothbrush in the holder above the sink. Instead, she returned it to her cosmetic kit and carried everything back to her room. Her wrung-out underclothes she draped on one of the hangers in the closet. This meant she would have to keep the closet door open during the night—a blot on the room’s sterility. Better that, though, than letting her laundry clutter the bathroom. She approved of Belle’s house rules; she did not intend to “spill over.”

  She turned the bedcovers back and lay down, drawing up just the top sheet. The breeze from the window chilled her damp head, but not so much that she needed a blanket.

  Outside, children were playing. It wasn’t even completely dark yet. She lay on her back with her eyes open, keeping her mind as blank as the ceiling above her. Once, though, perhaps hours later, a single thought did present itself. Oh, God, she thought, how am I going to get out of this? But immediately afterward she closed her eyes, and that was how she fell asleep.

  7

  Baltimore Woman Disappears, Delia read, and she felt a sudden thud in her stomach, as if she’d been punched. Baltimore Woman Disappears During Family Vacation.

  She had been checking the Baltimore newspapers daily, morning and evening. There was nothing in either paper Tuesday, nothing Wednesday, nothing Thursday morning. But the Thursday evening edition, which arrived in the vending box near the square in time for Delia’s lunch hour, carried a notice in the Metro section. Delaware State Police announced early today …

  She folded the paper open to the article, glancing around as she did so. On the park bench opposite hers, a young woman was handing her toddler bits of something to feed the pigeons, piece by piece. On the bench to her right, a very old man was leafing through a magazine. No one seemed aware of Delia’s presence.

  Mrs. Grinstead was last seen around noon this past Monday, walking south along the stretch of sand between …

  Probably the police had some rule that people were not considered missing till a certain amount of time had passed. That must be why there’d been no announcement earlier. (Searching each paper before this, Delia had felt relieved and wounded, both. Did no one realize she was gone? Or maybe she wasn’t gone; this whole experience had been so dreamlike. Maybe she was still moving through her previous life the same as always, and the Delia here in Bay Borough had somehow just split off from the original.)

  It hurt to read her physical description: fair or light-brown hair … eyes are blue or gray or perhaps green … For heaven’s sake, hadn’t anyone in her family ever looked at her? And how could Sam have made her clothing sound so silly? Kind of baby-doll, indeed! She refolded the paper with a snap and then darted another glance around her. The toddler was throwing a tantrum now, a silent little stomping dance, because he’d run out of pigeon food. The old man was licking a finger to turn a page. Delia hated when he did that. Every lunch hour he came here with a magazine and licked his way clear through it, and Delia could only hope that no one else was planning to read it after him.

  Like a commuter who always chooses the same seat on the train, like a guest who always settles in the same chair in the living room, Delia had managed in just three days to establish a routine for herself. Breakfast at Rick-Rack’s, over the morning paper. Lunch in the square—yogurt and fresh fruit purchased earlier from the Gobble-Up Grocery. Always on the southeast park bench, always with the evening paper. Then some kind of shopping task to fill the hour: Tuesday, a pair of low-heeled black shoes because her espadrilles were blistering her heels. Wednesday, a goosenecked reading lamp. Today she had planned to look for one of those immersion coils so she could brew herself a cup of tea first thing every morning. But now, with this newspaper item, she didn’t know. She felt so exposed, all at once. She just wanted to scuttle back to the office.

  She dropped her lunch leavings into a wire trash basket and buried the newspaper underneath them. As a rule she left the paper on the bench for others, but not today.

  The mother was trying to stuff the toddler into his stroller. The toddler was resisting, refusing to bend in the middle. The old man had finished his magazine and was fussily fitting his glasses into their case. None of the three looked at Delia when she walked past them. Or maybe they were pretending, even the toddler; maybe they’d been instructed not to alarm her. No. She gave her shoulders a shake. Get ahold of yourself. It wasn’t as if she’d committed any crime. She decided to go on with her routine—drop by the dime store as she’d planned.

  Funny how life contrived to build up layers of things around a person. Already she had that goosenecked lamp, because the overhead bulb had proved inadequate for reading in bed; and she kept a stack of paper cups and a box of tea bags on her closet shelf, making do till now with hot water from the bathroom faucet; and it was becoming clear she needed a second dress. Last night, the first really warm night of summer, she had thought, I should buy a fan. Then she had told herself, Stop. Stop while you’re ahead.

  She walked into the dime store and paused. Housewares, maybe? The old woman presiding over the cookie sheets and saucepans stood idle, twiddling her beads; so Delia approached her. “Would you have one of those immersion coils?” she asked. “Those things you put in a cup to heat up water?”

  “Well, I know what you mean,” the old woman said. “I can see it just as plain as the nose on your face. Electric, right?”

  “Right,” Delia said.

  “My grandson took one to college with him, but would you believe it? He didn’t read the directions. Tried to heat a bowl of soup when the directions said only water. Stink? He said you couldn’t imagine the stink! But I don’t have any here. Maybe try the hardware department.”

  “Thanks,” Delia said crisply, and she moved away.

  Sure enough, she found it in Hardware, hang
ing on a rack among the extension cords and three-prong adapters. She paid in exact change. The clerk—a gray-haired man in a bow tie—winked when he handed her the bag. “Have a nice day, young lady,” he said. He probably thought he was flattering her. Delia didn’t bother smiling.

  She had noticed that Miss Grinstead was not a very friendly person. The people involved in her daily routine remained two-dimensional to her, like the drawings in those children’s books about the different occupations. She hadn’t developed the easy, bantering relationships Delia was accustomed to.

  Leaving the dime store, she crossed Bay Street and passed the row of little shops. The clock in the optician’s window said 1:45. She always tried her best to fill her whole lunch hour, one o’clock to two o’clock, but so far had not succeeded.

  And what would she do in wintertime, when it grew too cold to eat in the square? For she was looking that far ahead now, it seemed—this Miss Grinstead with her endless, unmarked, unchanging string of days.

  But in Bay Borough it was always summer. That was the only season she could picture here.

  She opened Mr. Pomfret’s outside door, then the pebble-paned inner door. He was already back from his own lunch, talking on his office phone as usual. Wurlitzer, wurlitzer, it sounded like from here. Delia shut her handbag in the bottom desk drawer, smoothed her skirt beneath her, and seated herself in the swivel chair. She had left a letter half finished, and now she resumed typing, keeping her back very straight and her hands almost level as she had been taught in high school.