Noah's Compass

by Anne Tyler

  “So in that case you can’t do it, can you.”

  “But if you talked to her—”

  “I told you I would.”

  “When?”

  “Oh … I’ll call her this afternoon.”

  “No, not on the phone! It’s too easy for her to say no, on the phone. We should go visit her in person.”

  Liam studied her suspiciously.

  “I want her to realize we’re serious,” Kitty said. “You and me should drive over there right this very minute and lay out all our reasons.”

  “What are our reasons?”

  “We don’t get in each other’s hair, for one thing.”

  Liam said, “If by that you mean that I’m more lax, then your mother is going to say that you should be with her. And she would be right.”

  Oops, he had sent Kitty into her prayerful-maiden pose. Plop onto the floor, hands clasped to her breast. Damian stopped chewing and stared at her. “Please, please, please,” she said. “Have I given you any trouble this summer? Have I violated my curfew by one single eentsy minute? I’m begging you, Poppy. Have mercy. All I could think of at the beach was, School’s about to start and I’m going to have to go back home and deal with Mom again. It’s not fair! I should get to live with you a while. I’ve never lived with you, not when I was old enough to know it. In my whole entire life all I’ve had is this little bit of summer—July and part of August. Xanthe and Louise had lots more time than that. And it’s only for a year, you know. After this I’ll be in college. You’ll never have another chance at me!”

  Liam laughed.

  It seemed ages since he had laughed.

  “Well,” he said, “let’s see what your mother says.”

  Kitty clambered to her feet and smoothed her clothes down.

  Damian asked, “Have we got any marmalade?”

  It was proof of how serious Kitty was about all this that she wouldn’t let Damian come with them to Barbara’s. “You would just complicate things,” she told him. “We’ll drop you off at your mom’s house on the way.”

  Damian said, “Thanks a lot!” but Kitty paid no attention; she’d already moved on to Liam.

  “I hope you’re planning to shave,” she told him.

  “Well, I could do that, I guess. Once I’ve had my breakfast.”

  “And how about what you’re wearing?”

  “How about it?”

  “You’re not planning to go out in those clothes, are you?”

  He glanced down at them—a perfectly respectable T-shirt and a pair of pants that he always referred to as his gardening pants, although he didn’t garden. “What’s wrong with them?” he asked. “It’s not as if I’m appearing in public.”

  “Mom will think you look … not reliable.”

  “Fine, I’ll change. Just let me finish my breakfast, will you?”

  Kitty backed off then, but he was conscious of her hovering at the edges of his vision, fidgeting and flouncing about and picking things up and putting them down. Damian, meanwhile, had assumed a horizontal position in an armchair with the sports section from the Sun. Every now and then he read out a baseball score to Kitty, but she didn’t seem to be listening.

  As Liam was shaving, it occurred to him to wonder why he had said yes to her. He didn’t want this child living with him permanently! For one thing, he was tired to death of all these fruity-smelling shampoos and conditioners crowding the rim of his bathtub. And the carpet in the den had not been visible since she’d moved in there.

  But when he emerged, presentably dressed, he found she had washed and dried the breakfast dishes and cleaned up the kitchen. He was touched by the earnestness of the gesture even though he knew it wouldn’t likely be repeated.

  It was an overcast day, but pleasant enough that people were out and about on their Sunday pursuits—tooling down the bike lane along North Charles, jogging, walking, spilling forth from various churches. On the street where Damian’s mother lived, two teenage boys were tossing a football back and forth, and Damian exited the backseat with barely a “Thanks” and went to join them. “I’ll let you know how it goes!” Kitty called after him.

  Damian lifted an arm in acknowledgment, but he didn’t turn around. It was his broken arm—the cast gray with dirt by now and scribbled over with graffiti. Evidently it didn’t hinder him, though, because when one of the boys sent the football his way he caught it easily.

  “On Tuesday they’re cutting his cast down so it’s not covering his elbow anymore,” Kitty told Liam, “and then he can drive again. You won’t have to chauffeur me around after that. See how it’s all working out for me to live with you?”

  “Just don’t get your hopes up,” Liam warned her. “I’m not sure your mother’s going to go for this.”

  “Oh, why are you always so negative? Why do you always expect the worst?”

  He left the question unanswered.

  In Barbara’s neighborhood—his neighborhood, once upon a time, green and manicured and shaded by old trees—the central fishpond was surrounded by children feeding bread crumbs to the ducks. Strollers and tricycles dotted the grass, and blankets were spread here and there for babies to sit on. Liam drove slowly, for safety’s sake. He braked to let a small group cross in front of him, two couples shepherding a little girl and a taller boy who might have been her brother. “It was the same turtle we saw last time; I know it was,” the little girl was saying, and Liam wondered if it was the same turtle he and his daughters used to see. Louise always tried to pet it; she would lean so far over the edge of the pond, reaching a hand toward the water, that Liam had felt the need to grab hold of her overall straps in case she fell in. And once Xanthe actually had fallen in, when the girls went ice skating on a winter afternoon. The pond wasn’t deep enough to be dangerous, but the water had been cruelly cold. She had arrived home in tears, Liam remembered, and Louise had been crying too, in sympathy.

  He turned onto Barbara’s street and parked in front of their old house, which was a modest white clapboard Colonial, not half as large or imposing as most of the others. When she and Madigan married there had been some talk of their buying a place in Guilford, but she hadn’t wanted to leave her neighbors. Secretly, Liam had been glad of that. He would have felt even more rejected, more ousted, if she had moved somewhere he couldn’t picture in his mind’s eye when he thought about her.

  He was just stepping out from behind the wheel when Kitty said, “Oh, shoot.”

  “What is it?”

  “Xanthe’s here.”

  He looked around him. “She is?” he said. “How do you know?”

  “That’s her car in front of us.”

  “That’s Xanthe’s car?”

  It was one of those new sharp-edged, boxy things, pale blue. The last he’d known, Xanthe drove a red Jetta. But Kitty said, “Yup.”

  “What happened to the Jetta?”

  “She traded it in.”

  “Is that a fact,” Liam said. He tried to remember how long it had been since he and Xanthe had seen each other.

  “This is the last thing we need,” Kitty said as they started up the front walk.

  “Why’s that?”

  “She’s mad at me, I don’t know what for. It would be just like her to take Mom’s side against me out of spite.”

  “She’s mad at me too,” Liam said.

  “Great.”

  If Xanthe was including Kitty in this snit of hers, then it must be true that Damian was the reason. Someone ought to inform her that an entirely different person had been arrested for the break-in. Liam started to say as much to Kitty, but he stopped himself. Kitty probably had no inkling of Xanthe’s suspicions.

  They were already at the front door when Kitty said, “Wait, I think I hear them out back,” at the same time that Liam, too, heard voices coming from the rear of the house. They turned to take the path that led through the side yard. When they emerged from under the magnolia tree, they found Barbara and Xanthe eating lunch at the wrought-
iron table on the patio. Nearby, Jonah was squatting on the flagstones to draw lopsided little circles with a stick of chalk. He was the first to spot them. “Hi, Kitty. Hi, Poppy,” he said, standing up.

  “Hi, Jonah.”

  Liam hadn’t realized before that Jonah called him Poppy.

  Barbara said, “Well, look who’s here!” but Xanthe, after the briefest glance, took on a flat-faced expression and resumed buttering a roll.

  “You didn’t use sunblock, did you?” Barbara asked Kitty. “When I told you and told you! Where are your brains? You’re fried to a crisp.”

  “Oh, why, thank you for inquiring, Mother dear,” Kitty said. “I had a perfectly lovely trip.”

  Unruffled, Barbara turned to Liam. “I’ve got Jonah for the weekend,” she said, “because Louise and Dougall are off with their church on a Marriage Renewal Retreat.”

  Liam had a number of questions about this—did their marriage need renewing? should he be worried?—but before he could ask, Barbara rose, saying, “Let me bring out some more plates. You two sit down.”

  “No plate for me, thanks. I just finished breakfast,” Liam said.

  But Barbara was already heading toward the back door, and Kitty was making violent shooing motions in his direction. “Go with her!” she mouthed.

  Dutifully, Liam set off after Barbara. (It was a relief, anyhow, to leave the chilly atmosphere surrounding Xanthe.) He held the screen door open, and Barbara said, “Oh, thanks.”

  As they entered the house, she told him, “I don’t think that child has the least little grain of sense. Just wait till she gets melanoma! Then she’ll be sorry.”

  “Ah, well, we grew up without sunblock.”

  “That’s different,” she said, illogically.

  Liam loved Barbara’s kitchen. It had never once been remodeled, as far as he knew. At some point a dishwasher had been fitted in next to the sink, but the general look of it dated from the 1930s. The worn linoleum floor bore traces of a Mondrian-style pattern, and the refrigerator had rounded corners, and the cupboards had been repainted so many times that the doors wouldn’t quite close anymore. Even the plants on the windowsill seemed old-fashioned: a yellowed philodendron wandering up to the curtain rod and down again, and a prickly, stunted cactus in a ceramic pot shaped like a burro. He could have just sunk onto one of the red wooden chairs and stayed there forever, feeling peaceful and at home.

  But here came Kitty to remind him of his mission. She let the screen door slam behind her and she gave him a conspiratorial glance but then wandered over to the sink, ho hum, and turned the faucet on for no apparent reason.

  “By the way,” Liam said. He was speaking to Barbara’s back; she was reaching into the dish cupboard. She wore white linen slacks that made her look crisper than usual and more authoritative. He said, “I’ve been thinking.”

  It wasn’t clear if she had heard him over the sound of running water. She set two plates on the counter and opened the silverware drawer.

  “I’ve been wondering if Kitty should stay on with me during the school year,” he said.

  Assuming sole responsibility for the question—I’ve been wondering—was meant as a gesture of gallantry, but Kitty spoiled the effect by shutting off the water decisively and spinning around to say, “Please, Mom?”

  Barbara turned to Liam. “Excuse me?” she said.

  “She would stay on at my place,” Liam said, “just for her senior year, I mean. After that she’d be leaving for college.”

  “What, Liam: are you saying you’d be willing to monitor her homework, and drive car pool to lacrosse games, and pick her up from swimming practice? Are you going to meet with her college advisor and make sure she gets her allergy shots?”

  This sounded like more of a commitment than he had realized, actually. He sent an uncertain glance toward Kitty. She took a step forward, but instead of going into the prayerful-maiden act he half expected, she flung a hand in his direction, palm up, and said, “Someone ought to keep a watch. Just look at him!”

  Liam blinked.

  Barbara examined him more closely. She said, “Yes, what’s wrong with you?”

  “What do you mean, what’s wrong with me?”

  “You seem … thinner.”

  He had the impression that she had been about to say something else, something less complimentary.

  “I’m fine,” he told her.

  He scowled at Kitty. He’d be damned if he would say a single word further on her behalf.

  Kitty gazed blandly back at him.

  Barbara said, “Kitty, would you take these things to the patio, please?”

  “But—”

  “Go on,” Barbara said, and she handed Kitty the plates with a cluster of silverware laid on top.

  Kitty accepted them, but as she backed out the screen door her eyes were fixed beseechingly on Liam.

  He refused to give her the slightest sign of encouragement.

  “It’s not for my sake at all,” he told Barbara as soon as they were alone. “She’s trying to put one over on you.”

  “Yes, yes … Liam, I don’t want to be intrusive, but I’m wondering if your life can accommodate a teenager.”

  “Well, maybe it can’t,” Liam said. What the hell.

  “You wouldn’t be able to have a person spend the night with you if Kitty were there; you realize that.”

  “Spend the night?”

  “If I had known you were involved with someone, I never would have let Kitty come stay with you in the first place.”

  “I’m not involved with anyone,” he said.

  “You’re not?”

  “No.”

  “Well, the other day it seemed—”

  “Not anymore,” he said.

  “I see,” she said. Then she said, “I’m sorry to hear that.”

  Something in the tone of her voice—so delicate, so tactful—implied that she assumed the breakup was not his own choice. Her face became kind and sorrowful, as if he’d just announced a bereavement.

  “But!” he told her. “As for Kitty! You know, you might have a point. I would probably make a terrible father over the long term.”

  Barbara gave a short laugh.

  “What,” he said.

  “Oh, nothing.”

  “What’s so amusing?”

  “It’s just,” she said, “how you never argue with people’s poor opinions of you. They can say the most negative things—that you’re clueless, that you’re unfeeling—and you say, ‘Yes, well, maybe you’re right.’ If I were you, I’d be devastated!”

  “Really?” Liam asked. He was intrigued. “Yes, well, maybe you’re … Or, rather … Would you be devastated even if you truly did agree with them?”

  “Especially if I agreed with them!” she said. “Are you telling me that you do agree? You believe you’re a bad person?”

  “Oh, not bad in the sense of evil,” Liam said. “But face it: I haven’t exactly covered myself in glory. I just … don’t seem to have the hang of things, somehow. It’s as if I’ve never been entirely present in my own life.”

  She was silent, gazing at him again with that too-kind expression.

  He said, “Do you remember a show on TV that Dean Martin used to host? It must have been back in the seventies; Millie liked to watch it. I can’t think now what it was called.”

  “The Dean Martin Show?” Barbara suggested.

  “Yes, maybe; and he had this running joke about his drinking, remember? Always going on about his drunken binges. And so one night one of the guests was reminiscing about a party they’d been to and Dean Martin asked, ‘Did I have a good time?’ ”

  Barbara smiled faintly, looking not all that amused.

  “Did he have a good time,” Liam said. “Ha!”

  “What’s your point, Liam?”

  “I might ask you the same question,” he told her.

  “You might ask what my point is?”

  “I might ask if I’d had a good time.”

/>   Barbara wrinkled her forehead.

  “Oh,” Liam said, “never mind.”

  It was a relief to give up, finally. It was a relief to turn away from her and see Kitty approaching—matter-of-fact, straightforward Kitty yanking open the screen door and saying, “Did you decide?”

  “We were just discussing Dean Martin,” Barbara told her drily.

  “Who? But what about me?”

  “Well,” Barbara said. She reflected a moment. Then she said—out of the blue, it seemed to Liam—“I suppose we could give it a try.”

  Kitty said, “Hot dog!”

  “Just conditionally, understand.”

  “I understand!”

  “But if I hear one word about your bending the rules, missy, or giving your father any trouble—”

  “I know, I know,” Kitty said, and she was off, racing toward the front stairs, presumably to go pack.

  Barbara looked over at Liam. “I meant that about the rules,” she told him.

  He nodded. Privately, though, he felt blindsided. What had he gotten himself into?

  As if she guessed his thoughts, Barbara smiled and gave him a tap on the wrist. “Come and have some lunch,” she said.

  He forgot to remind her that he wasn’t hungry. He followed her back through the kitchen and out the screen door.

  On the patio, Jonah had abandoned his chalk and was sitting on the very edge of the chair next to Xanthe. “We saw an animal!” he shouted. “You’ve got an animal in your backyard, Gran! It was either a fox or an anteater.”

  “Oh, I hope it was an anteater,” Barbara said. “I haven’t had one of those before.”

  “It had a long nose or a long tail, one or the other. Where’s Kitty? I have to tell Kitty.”

  “She’ll be here in a minute, sweets. She’s packing.”

  Liam pulled up a chair and sat down next to Jonah. He was directly opposite Xanthe, but Xanthe refused to look at him. “Packing for what?” she asked Barbara.

  “She’s going to stay on with your dad.”

  “Huh?”

  “She’s staying on during the school year. If she behaves herself.”

  Then Xanthe did look at him, openmouthed. She turned back to Barbara and said, “She’s going to live with him?”