Celestial Navigation

by Anne Tyler

  I cleared the bureau of whole handfuls of Kleenex filmed with pinkish-gray powder. I collected hairpins from the rug, worn stockings from the seats of chairs. I found her cameo brooch under a corner of the bedspread and held it up to the light, wondering what to do with it. Maybe Laura would like it. It was more her style. Then I thought of Mother’s will, so-called—the scrap of paper she always kept in her jewelry box, telling which of her personal objects should go to whom. She revised it year by year, and continually moved the jewelry box to new hiding places. I had to hunt for quite a while—I finally located it on the bottom shelf of the glassed-in bookcase—but sure enough, there was a paper folded into a tiny square below Mother’s pearls and her baby bracelet and Grandmother Amory’s glove-button hook. A sheet of her favorite stationery, cream-colored, a row of withered-looking wildflowers strung across the top.

  My dear, darling girls,

  Now if I die I don’t want to be mourned and grieved over. I want my sweet children to just carry on as usual. I like the hymn “Be Still My Soul” if there is any question about what to use in the service.

  I believe I want Laura to have my personal jewelry, all except the little amethyst finger ring for Mrs. Pruitt at the church and Papa’s flip-top pocket watch for Jeremy and some small memento, I just can’t decide which, for Miss Vinton. Maybe Laura could select something. Amanda can take the English china and the silver, except for my teaspoon collection which I think might go to Mrs. Jarrett. Also she may have the wooden rack to keep it in.

  Perhaps my clothing could be distributed to the Poor.

  I hope that my sweet girls won’t feel slighted but I do think Jeremy might like the house and furniture, and I have had the lawyer draw that up into a regular will. Also any financial doings are to go to him. It might seem unfair but I trust that you will understand, as the two of you have always managed so nicely while Jeremy has his mind on his art and such.

  Please take care of him.

  Please see to it that he doesn’t just go to pieces.

  I have thought a long time about what he should do, and I wondered if he would go to you girls but I don’t suppose he will. He still won’t leave this block, you know. Last July I did get him to come with me to Mrs. Pruitt’s, which is two streets away, but that’s the first time since art school that he has done such a thing and it didn’t work out. So maybe he will just want to stay on in this house.

  Please don’t let anything happen to him.

  Love,

  Mother

  I took the letter and marched straight out of the bedroom, past Jeremy, who was slumped in a parlor chair staring at nothing, and into the kitchen, where Laura was doing the dishes. She had one of Mother’s old-fashioned flowered aprons pinned to her front, and who she was talking to was Howard. He was drying plates, if you please. He was saying, “Next year, when I have more freedom—”

  “Take a look at this,” I told Laura, and I handed her the letter.

  She wiped her hands and started reading, and right away her eyes filled. I knew that would happen. “Oh, look,” she said, “she’s thought of everyone. Even Miss Vinton. Even poor old Mrs. Pruitt at the church.”

  “Not that part.”

  She read on.

  “What, the house and furniture?” she said. “Well, that seems fair to me, Amanda. After all, we have always—”

  “No, no. Jeremy.”

  She looked up.

  “See what she says about Jeremy? Where she says he never leaves this block?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you know that?”

  “Well, of course,” Laura said.

  “But not since art school, she says. Art school! Years and years ago!”

  But Laura was rereading the beginning of the letter now. She didn’t seem concerned at all. I turned to Howard, who hadn’t had the tact to leave the room. “Did you know?” I asked him.

  “Oh, why sure.”

  Even strangers knew. How could I have let such a thing slip past me? Because Jeremy never stated it outright as a principle, that’s why. He gave individual excuses, never the same one twice, whenever we invited him to come someplace. To the park, to take the fresh air: “Thank you, but I’m working on a piece right now.” Out shopping at a department store: “Oh, I believe I have a cold coming on.” They never visited us in Richmond because Mother was prey to motion sickness. Or so she said. Protecting him again. Is it possible to live out your life within one block? I thought of what this block contained—a café, a corner grocery, and a shoe repair. Church was off-limits. Also moviehouses, pharmacies, barbershops, clothing stores. Funeral parlors. “How does he get what he needs?” I asked.

  Laura looked up from the letter with her eyes all glassy.

  “Well, there is the mail order,” Howard said. “Also, your mother went a few blocks farther afield now and then.”

  “Has he ever been out of Baltimore? I mean, ever in his life?”

  “Not since I’ve been here,” Howard said.

  And certainly not while I was there. Our father took the car with him when he left.

  I snatched back Mother’s letter, which Laura had started to read for the fourth time running. “Listen to me,” I said. “That is just not normal, Laura.”

  “Oh, Amanda! He’ll hear you.”

  “I don’t care if he hears me or not,” I said, although as a matter of fact I was speaking barely above a whisper. Laura always thinks I’m shouting when she doesn’t like what I’m saying. “You’re taking this so calmly,” I said. “You let things ride because it’s easier, but meanwhile, he’s our brother! Sitting in one spot like a beanbag. Howard, you’re a medical student. Wouldn’t it be to his own good to make him stop this before it gets worse?”

  “Oh, well, I don’t—”

  “You can’t just let it go on indefinitely.”

  “Oh, well, it’s not as if he’s hurting anyone.”

  “I will never understand this world,” I said. “More is tolerated every day. Nobody bats an eye.”

  I left. I went out through the parlor, passing Jeremy, who continued staring into space. Listen here! I wanted to say. Just come out of this, jerk yourself up by your own bootstraps, it’s all a matter of will. Do you think nobody else has days when he wants to give up?

  I went back into Mother’s room, squashed the letter inside the jewelry box and slammed the lid. Keep your English china. I yanked the rug straight and folded an afghan, I shook out Mother’s shapeless gray gabardine coat and took it to hang in the coat closet. And then, as I was just closing the closet door, I chanced to look again at Jeremy. He sat with his hands pressed flat between his knees as if he were cold. His eyes had an empty look. A man without landmarks, except for the unavoidable ones of getting born and dying. You could imagine that dying was what he was waiting for while sitting in that parlor chair, since there didn’t seem to be anything else ahead of him.

  I took my own coat from the closet and put it on. I went over to Jeremy and tapped him on the shoulder. “Come,” I said.

  He raised his head. “Hmm?” Then he saw me buttoning my coat and he drew back and looked alarmed.

  “All I want is for you to come outdoors a minute,” I said.

  “Um, perhaps I—”

  “Surely you’re not afraid to do that much.”

  He rose and stood beside the chair, with his knees bent a little like Mr. Somerset. I took his hand to lead him toward the door. As we passed the closet I thought of getting his coat, but that would have made him suspicious. We went out on the stoop. “My,” I said, “I believe it’s finally going to clear. Don’t you? Smell that air. We may have nice weather for Mother’s funeral after all.” In actuality it was still a bit damp—spray in our faces, the streetlights misty—but I was hardly thinking of what I was saying. And certainly Jeremy was not listening. “Has it been a particularly rainy fall?” I asked him, and he said, “Hmm? No, um—no,” meanwhile looking around him nervously, first at the house and then the street and then
me.

  “We’ve had very nice weather in Richmond,” I said.

  I heard the front door fall shut behind us. Shut and lock, automatically. Jeremy heard it too and said, “Amanda—”

  “Come and look at Mother’s poor rosebush,” I said. I led him down our walk and onto the main sidewalk. “Do you think there’s any life left in it? If it were pruned, perhaps—”

  “Yes, maybe pruned,” he said. He was so eager to agree, so glad we were only going to look at Mother’s rosebush. But I led him on, with my arm hooked through his. I could feel the lumpy weight of his body resisting me, hanging back, although both of us pretended it wasn’t happening. We reached the yard next door. “Who does this belong to?” I asked him.

  “What?”

  “Who lives here now?”

  “It’s been partitioned up, I believe,” he said. He raised his other hand to free his arm from me. I let myself be pried loose, but as he turned back toward the house I took hold of him again. “It’s a shame to see these old houses go,” I told him. “Why, I remember when those two up ahead were owned by a single family. The Edwardses, remember them? They had so many children they needed two houses to hold them all. Catholic. And now look. They’ve been turned into apartments too, I’ll bet you anything. Haven’t they?”

  “What? Oh, yes.”

  We had reached the end of the block, where we stopped to wait for a traffic light. Jeremy’s teeth were chattering and I wished now that I had brought his coat. Yet it wasn’t that cold. And he did have his sweater, his limp gray sweater with that single button fastened. I reached over and buttoned the others. Jeremy backed away from me and said, “I really think I should be going home about now.”

  “Oh, as long as we’ve got this far,” I said, “wouldn’t you like to come the rest of the way?”

  I took tighter hold of him and led him across the street. The light was still red but there were no cars coming, and I didn’t want to delay too long. By now he was resisting more, though still moving forward. “You surely are not scared to come,” I said.

  He didn’t answer. I looked over at him. “Not a big grown man like you,” I said, teasing him. Then he did smile, but just a brief shy unhappy smile directed at his feet. Well, poor soul. There was an enduring look about him. He was trudging along so uncomplainingly, with those little saddle oxfords of his squelching in the puddles. “It’s for you that I am doing this,” I told him. “It’s out of concern for you. You know that, don’t you?” I could feel my strength flowing from my hand to his arm. Someone should have done this long ago, I thought—expended a little time and energy, that was all he needed—and brought him out of his cocoon.

  We had reached the middle of the second block. Jeremy’s teeth were chattering so that I could hear them, and he seemed to be shaken all over by great long rolling tremors. I had no idea that he was so susceptible to cold. I said, “Fortunately the funeral parlor is overheated. You’ll be all right when we get there.”

  “How, how far?” he said.

  “Oh, just a few more blocks. Now, Jeremy. Please come on.”

  For he had stopped. I tugged at his arm but couldn’t move him an inch. “I think that maybe I, I think that I—” he said. Or I believe that’s what he said. His voice came out wavery and chopped by the clicking of his teeth. I lost what sympathy I was beginning to feel for him. “Jeremy,” I said, “this is getting silly, now.”

  Then I gave him a prod in the side, just to get him going, and he crumpled up. Just crumpled in upon himself and folded onto the sidewalk, where he sat in a heap and shook all over. Yet I swear I had no more than touched him. It wasn’t a shove or anything. “Jeremy?” I said. “What’s the matter with you? Jeremy!” For he was looking odder than I had ever seen him; I can’t describe it. His face was yellowish and his mouth hung open. He laid his head down upon his bent knees and stayed that way, shapeless and boneless, and all I could do was call out for help. “Oh, help, someone! Won’t someone please stop?” Cars hissed by, not even noticing. Then footsteps came clattering up behind me. “Help,” I said, turning. I saw Laura running toward us, her apron a flash of white flowers in the dark. And half a block behind her, Howard, with his shirttails out. “Amanda Pauling, I’ll never forgive you for this,” Laura said.

  “But what’s the matter with him?”

  Laura bent down and raised Jeremy’s head in her two hands. He only stared at her. She fished a handkerchief from her apron pocket and wiped his mouth, and by that time Howard had come up out of breath and bent to peer into Jeremy’s face.

  “I don’t understand,” I said.

  All I heard was Jeremy’s teeth chattering.

  “I don’t see what’s going on. Is he ill?”

  “You have no heart at all,” Laura told me. “I always thought that of you and now I know it.”

  “Oh, Laura! How can you say such a thing?”

  Laura tugged at Jeremy but he wouldn’t stand. It took Howard, bending over him from behind and raising him by the armpits. “There now, fellow,” he said. “Come along.”

  “What did I do?” I asked Howard.

  But Howard wouldn’t answer either. He gave all his attention to Jeremy; he stood him upright and turned him toward home, and then Laura took Jeremy’s other elbow. “Laura?” I said.

  “I’m not talking to you right now,” Laura said.

  Jeremy took a faltering step forward. His head was nodding. I saw it bobbing against the streetlights, up and down, up and down, as if it were out of his control.

  I didn’t realize. I am not a cruel woman, I have never intentionally hurt a person in all my life. I said, “Laura, I didn’t realize.” But Laura just walked on with Jeremy, keeping him close to her, and I had to follow after. Nobody seemed to care whether I came or not. I walked six paces behind, all alone. Well, there are worse things than walking alone. Look at Jeremy, propped up on both sides, beloved son of Wilma Pauling. If that is what love does to you, isn’t it possible that I am the most fortunate of us all?

  Once we had reached the house, of course, everything settled back to normal. Laura and Howard put Jeremy to bed while I closed up the house, and wrote a note for the milkman, and lowered the shades. I cleared away what clutter I could in the parlor and fixed us two hot water bottles, and when I got to the bedroom Laura was already stepping out of her dress. “Don’t let the wrinkles set in that,” I told her. (She tends to be careless in her personal habits.) “I suppose we’ll just have to sleep in our slips and make the best of it,” I said, all energy. And I took my own dress off and hung it up neatly. But then, just as I was sitting on the edge of my bed to roll my stockings down—oh, I can’t explain what came over me. Such heaviness, such an exhausted feeling. As if there were no point to moving any more. I looked at my muddy wet stockings and thought, I’ll have to wear these again tomorrow. Have to wash them out and wear them tomorrow, but they will never be the same again and anyway they are only lisle, not fit for church. And here I had put that brand-new pair in my suitcase! They hadn’t even been taken out of the cellophane yet! Quality hose, with fine seams. (We were raised to believe that no true lady wears seamless stockings, although I must say that nowadays people don’t appear to agree.) Now some burglar’s wife was probably trying my nylons on. I pictured her lolling on a brass bed in a red lace slip, one leg in the air, smoothing a stocking up her thigh while the burglar sat in an armchair smoking a fat cigar and watching. “Who did these belong to once?” “Oh, some old biddy.”

  I know what I am. I’m not blind. I have never had a marriage proposal or a love affair or an adventure, never any experience more interesting than patrolling the aisles of my Latin class looking for crib sheets and ponies—an old-maid schoolteacher. There are a thousand jokes about the likes of me. None of them are funny. I have seen people sum me up and dismiss me right while I was talking to them, as if what I am came through more clearly than any words I might choose to say. I see their eyes lose focus and settle elsewhere. Do they think that I
don’t realize? I suspected all along that I would never get what comes to others so easily. I have been bypassed, something has been held back from me. And the worst part is that I know it.

  Here are the other belongings I had in that suitcase: my brown wool suit that was appropriate for any occasion, my blouse with the Irish lace at the collar, the lingerie set Laura gave me for my birthday. Also my travel alarm, the folding one that Mrs. Evans sent the summer I accompanied her twins on a tour of Yosemite. That was gone now. And my flowered duster that packed so well, and my warmest nightgown and the fleece-lined slippers that always felt so good when I came home tired from a long day at school. You couldn’t replace things like that. You couldn’t replace the suitcase itself, which our mother chose entirely on her own and lugged all the way to my graduation ceremony on a very warm spring day a quarter of a century ago. It had brass-buckled straps and a double lock; it was built to last. The handle was padded for ease of carrying. Oh, the thought of that suitcase made me ache all over. I felt as hurt as if Mother had asked for it back again. How would I ever find another one so fine?

  I was tired, that was all. Just tired and chilled. The next morning I rose as bright as a penny and I handled all the arrangements, every detail. But that one night I must have been at a low point and I lay on my back in the dark, long after Laura was asleep, going over all the objects I had ever lost while some hard bleak pain settled on my chest and weighed me down.

  2

  Spring, 1961: Jeremy

  Jeremy Pauling saw life in a series of flashes, startling moments so brief that they could arrest a motion in mid-air. Like photographs, they were handed to him at unexpected times, introduced by a neutral voice: Here is where you are now. Take a look. Between flashes, he sank into darkness. He drifted in a daze, studying what he had seen. Wondering if he had seen it. Forgetting, finally, what it was that he was wondering about, and floating off into numbness again.