Ladder of Years (16 page)

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, hanging 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.

Authorities do not suspect drowning
, the paper had said. It hadn’t occurred to her they might.
Since Mrs. Grinstead professed a
—how had they put it?—
professed an aversion to water.
Or something of the sort. Made her sound like a woman who never bathed. She slammed the carriage return more violently than was necessary. And that business about Eliza saying she’d been a cat! People must think the both of them were lunatics.

This typewriter had a stiffer action than the one in Sam’s office. Her first day at work, she’d broken two fingernails. After that she had filed all her nails down blunt, which was more appropriate anyhow to Miss Grinstead’s general style. Besides, it had used up twenty minutes of an evening. She was devoting a lot of thought these days to how to use up her evenings.

“Well, let’s do that! We’ll have to get together and do that!” Mr. Pomfret was saying, suddenly louder and heartier. Delia typed the closing (“Esquire,” he called himself) and rolled the letter out of the carriage. Mr. Pomfret burst through the door. “Miss Grinstead, when Mr. Miller shows up I’ll need you in here taking notes,” he said. “We’re going to send a … What’s that you’ve got?”

“Letter to Gerald Elliott?” Delia reminded him.

“Elliott! I met with Elliott back in …”

She checked the date at the top of the page. “May,” she said. “May fourteenth.”

“Damn.”

It had come to light that Delia’s immediate predecessor had stowed her more irksome chores in the filing cabinet under
Ongoing.
Anything red-inked by Mr. Pomfret had conveniently vanished. (And a great deal had been red-inked, since Katie O’Connell couldn’t spell and apparently did not believe in paragraphs.) Mr. Pomfret had turned purple when Delia brought him the evidence, but Delia was secretly pleased. This way she looked so capable herself—so efficient, so take-charge. (She felt
a bit like a grade-school tattletale.) Also, the retyping job amounted to a low-key training course. She would be sorry when she finished.

“Mr. Miller is due at two-thirty,” Mr. Pomfret told her. He was leaning over her desk to sign the letter. “I want you to write down word for word everything he specifies.”

“Yes, Mr. Pomfret.”

He straightened, capping his pen, and gave her a sudden sharp look over his lizardy lower lids. Sometimes Delia carried her secretary act a bit too far, she suspected. She flashed him an insincere smile and gathered up the letter. His signature was large and sweeping, smeared on the curves. He used one of those expensive German fountain pens that leaked.

“And we’ll want coffee, so you might as well fix it ahead,” he told her.

“Yes, Mr.—. Certainly,” she said.

She went into his office for the carafe, then took it to the sink in the powder room. When she came back he was seated at the credenza, short thighs twisted sideways, tapping once again at his computer. For he did have a computer. He had bought it sometime just recently and fallen under its spell, which might explain his failure to notice Katie O’Connell’s filing methods. Theoretically, he was going to learn the machine’s mysterious ways and then teach Delia, but after her first morning Delia knew she had nothing to fear. The computer would sit forever in its temporary position while Mr. Pomfret wrestled happily with questions of “backups” and “macros.” Right now he was recording every dinner party he and his wife had ever hosted—guest list, menu, wines, and even seating arrangements—so their variables could be rotated into infinity. Delia gave the screen a scornful glance and circled it widely, heading for the coffeemaker at the other end of the credenza.

Water, filter, French roast. This coffeemaker was top-of-the-line: it ground its own beans. She supposed it came from one of those catalogs that weighed down the office mail. Whenever Mr. Pomfret spotted an item he liked, he had Delia place an order. (“Yes, Mr. Pomfret …”) She called 1-800 numbers clear across the country, requesting a bedside clock that talked, a pocket-sized electronic dictionary, a black leather map case for the glove compartment. Her employer’s greed, like his huge belly, made Delia feel trim and virtuous. She didn’t at all mind placing the orders. She enjoyed everything about this job, especially its dryness. No one received word of inoperable cancer in a lawyer’s office. No one
told Delia how it felt to be going blind. No one claimed to remember Delia’s babyhood.

She pressed a button on the coffeemaker, and it started grinding. “Help!” Mr. Pomfret shouted over the din. He was goggling at his computer screen, where the lines of text shivered and shimmied. For some reason, it never occurred to him that this always happened when the grinder was running. Delia left the office, closing the door discreetly behind her.

She typed another letter, this one enumerating the corporate bylaws of an accounting firm. (“Buy-laws,” Katie O’Connell had spelled it.)
Pursuant to our discussion
, she typed, and
fiscal liability
, and
consent of those not in attendance.
She sacrificed speed for accuracy, as befitted Miss Grinstead, and corrected her rare mistakes with Wite-Out fluid on original and carbon both.

Mr. Miller arrived—a big, handsome, olive-skinned man with a narrow band of black hair. Delia followed him into Mr. Pomfret’s office to serve their coffee and then perched on a chair, pen and pad ready. She had worried she couldn’t write fast enough, but there wasn’t much to write. The question was how often Mr. Miller’s ex-wife could see their son, and the answer, according to Mr. Miller, was “Never,” which Mr. Pomfret amended to once a week and alternate holidays, hours to be arranged at client’s convenience. Then the conversation drifted to computers, and when it didn’t drift back again, Delia cleared her throat and asked, “Will that be all?”

Mr. Pomfret said, “Hmm? Oh. Yes, thank you, Miss Grinstead.” As she left, she heard him tell Mr. Miller, “We’ll see to that right away. I’ll have my girl mail it out this afternoon.”

Delia settled in her swivel chair, rolled paper into the carriage, and started typing. You could have balanced a glass of water on the back of each of her hands.

The only other appointment was at four—a woman with some stock certificates belonging to her late mother—but Delia’s services were not required for that. She addressed a number of envelopes and folded and inserted the letters Mr. Pomfret had signed. She sealed the flaps, licked stamps. She answered a call from a Mrs. Darnell, who made an appointment for Monday. Mr. Pomfret walked past her, cramming his arms into his suit coat. “Good night, Miss Grinstead,” he said.

“Good night, Mr. Pomfret.”

She sorted her carbons and filed them. She returned what was left
of the Ongoing file to its drawer. She answered a call from a man who was disappointed to find Mr. Pomfret gone but would try him at home. She cleaned the coffeemaker. At five o’clock exactly she lowered all the shades, gathered the letters and her handbag, and left the office.

Mr. Pomfret had given her her own key, and she already knew the crotchets of the pebble-paned door—the way you had to push it inward a bit before it would lock.

Outside, the sun was still shining and the air felt warm and heavy after the air-conditioning. Delia walked at a leisurely pace, letting others pass her—men in business suits hurrying home from work, women rushing by with plastic bags from the Food King. She dropped her letters into the mailbox on the corner, but instead of turning left there, she continued north to the library—the next stop in her routine.

By now she had a sense of the town’s layout. It was a perfect grid, with the square mathematically centered between three streets north and south of it, two streets east and west. Look west as you crossed an intersection, and you’d see pasture, sometimes even a cow. (In the mornings, when Delia woke, she heard distant roosters crowing.) The sidewalks were crumpled and given over in spots to grass, breaking off entirely when a tree stood in the way. The streets farther from the square had a tendency to slant into scabby asphalt mixed with weeds at the edges, like country highways.

On Border Street, the town’s northern boundary, the Bay Borough Public Library crouched between a church and an Exxon station. It was hardly more than a cottage, but the instant Delia stepped inside she always felt its seriousness, its officialness. A smell of aged paper and glue hung above the four tables with their wooden chairs, the librarian’s high varnished counter, the bookcases chockablock with elderly books. No CDs or videotapes here, no spin racks of paperback novels; just plain, sturdy volumes in buckram bindings with their Dewey decimal numbers handwritten on the spines in white ink. It was a matter of finances, Delia supposed. Nothing seemed to have been added in the last decade. Bestsellers were nowhere to be seen, but there was plenty of Jane Austen, and Edith Wharton, and various solemn works of history and biography. The children’s corner gave off a glassy shine from all the layers of Scotch tape holding the tattered picture books together.