Ladder of Years (40 page)

He nodded, although he didn’t risk demonstrating.

“See there? It hasn’t dropped out of use! Teensy,” Delia called, “could we have more cutlery, please?”

“Coming right up,” Teensy said, and behind the counter they heard the rattle of knives and forks.

Delia looked triumphantly at Joel.

“Oh. Well …,” he said.

Noah grinned. “Way to go, Dee,” he told her. And eventually even Joel started smiling.

Delia smiled too, and put her sandwich back together and gave it a pat. Underneath her breath she was making a humming sound—a thin, sweet, toneless hum, not much different from purring.

18

Binky’s baby was born on Labor Day—very fitting, Nat said. He telephoned that same afternoon; he spilled the news in a swelling voice that seemed about to break. “Eight pounds, eleven ounces,” he crowed. “James Nathaniel Moffat.”

“James!” Delia said. “It’s a boy?”

“It’s a boy. Can you believe it?” He gave one of his bearded chuckles. “I’m not sure I’ll know what to
do
with a boy.”

“You’ll do fine,” Delia said. “Noah’s off on a picnic right now, but he’ll be thrilled when I tell him. How’s Binky?”

“Couldn’t be better. She just
sailed
through this, and so did James. Wait till you see him, Delia. He’s got the roundest face, little pocket watch of a face, and lots of blondish hair, but Binky says …”

To listen to him, you would never have guessed he had been through this experience four times.

Delia had overstated when she said Noah would be thrilled. Oh, he was interested, in a mild sort of way—wanted to know who the baby looked like, and what the board of directors had said. But when Wednesday morning rolled around, he asked if he couldn’t put off his regular visit. School had just reopened, and he wanted to try out for the wrestling
team. Delia said, “How about we look in on the baby for just a second, and then I drop you at tryouts afterward?”

“Can’t we do it tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow I have tutoring, Noah, and the day after is the Grade Mothers’ Tea, and if you wait too long your grandpa’s going to think you don’t care. I’ll phone ahead and tell him you can stay just a minute.”

“Well, okay,” Noah said halfheartedly.

When she picked him up at school, he was trying to elbow Jack Newell off the sidewalk, and she had to tap her horn to catch his attention. He disentangled himself, jerked open the passenger door, and fell into the car. “Hi,” she told him, but he just slid down in his seat and jammed his Phillies cap on his head. Then, out on the highway, he said, “I’ve got to stop doing this.”

“Doing what?”

“I can’t spend all my time visiting people! Mom, and Grandpa … I’m in the eighth grade now! I’ve got important activities!”

He cracked froggily on “activities,” and Delia shot him a glance. His voice was about to start changing, she realized. Oh, Lord, here she was with yet another adolescent.

But all she said was, “Maybe you could switch your visits to weekends.”

“Weekends I hang out with my friends! I’d miss all the fun!”

“Well,
I
don’t know, Noah,” she said. “Talk it over with Nat and your mom.”

“And could you please drive something under ninety miles an hour? I’m not going to
live
to talk it over, riding with a maniac.”

“Sorry,” she said. She slowed. “Take a peek at what I found for the baby,” she told him. “It’s on the back seat.”

He glanced back, but he didn’t reach for it. “Why don’t you just
tell
me what it is,” he said.

“A little bitty pair of athletic shoes, not any bigger than thimbles.”

“Huh.”

In the old days, nothing could have stopped him from peeking at that gift.

The day was cool and cloudy, with a forecast of rain, but all they encountered during their drive was a stray drop or two on the windshield. Noah listened to a radio station where the singers screamed insults, while Delia played calmer songs in her mind—a technique she had learned
with her own children. She was just starting “Let It Be” when they turned in at Senior City.

“You’ve got to be kidding,” Noah said.

Next to the double front doors stood a four-foot-tall wooden cutout of a stork, sporting a pale-blue waistcoat and carrying a pale-blue bundle. Pale-blue balloons floated from the portico. The lobby bulletin board (which ordinarily bore cards of thanks from convalescents and sign-up sheets for bus trips to the shopping outlets in York) was plastered with color snapshots of an infant just minutes old. Three women wearing the regulation jaunty neck scarves stood peering at the photos and discussing the significance of hand size. One woman said large hands in infancy meant great height in adulthood, but another said that held true only for puppies.

In the elevator they found Pooky, taking one of her never-ending rides. Today, though, she seemed fully aware that she had reached Floor One, and she said, punching Three for them, “If you hurry you’ll be in time for the burping.”

“Oh, have you seen him?” Delia asked as they rose.

“Seen him twice. I was one of those in the lobby yesterday when they brought him home from the hospital. I hope that gift is not shoes.”

“Well, sort of,” Delia said.

“So far he’s got Swedish leather clogs, inch-long flip-flops, and eentsy little motorcycle boots. And that’s not even counting all we’ve knitted.”

The elevator stopped with a lilt, and the door slid open. “I would come with you,” Pooky called after them, “but I’ve got to get back to my apartment and finish childproofing.”

It was Nat who answered when they rang the doorbell. “There you are!” he said. “Come in, come in!” He was using his cane today, but he walked rapidly and bouncily as he led them toward the bedroom. “James is just having a snack,” he called over his shoulder.

“Should we wait out here?” Delia asked.

“No, no, everyone’s decent. Bink, sweetheart, it’s Noah and Delia.”

Binky was sitting against the headboard of the bed, dressed but in her stocking feet. The receiving blanket draped over her bosom covered the baby’s face, so all they could see was a fiery little ear and a fuzzy head. “Oh, look at him!” Delia whispered. It always seemed the bottom dropped out of her chest when she saw a new baby.

Noah, though, looked everywhere but. He stuck his hands in his
back pockets and studied a distant corner of the bedroom till Binky, winking at Delia, asked, “Want to hold him, Noah?”

“Me?”

She removed the baby from her breast, at the same time adroitly rearranging the blanket. The baby’s eyes were closed, and he made nostalgic little smacking movements with his lips, which were rosebud-shaped, tightly pursed. He did have big hands, with long, translucent fingers knotted just under his chin. “Here,” Binky said, holding him out to Noah. “Just support the back of his head, like this.”

Noah received him in an awkward, jumbled clump.

“He seems to be a very easy baby,” Binky said as she buttoned up. “Most of the day he’s slept, which is miraculous considering all the callers we’ve had. Your mother phoned, Noah; wasn’t that nice? That was so nice. No word from the other three yet, but I hope—”

“Oh, forget it, just forget it, hon,” Nat told her. “Who cares about them!” He gave an angry shake of his head, as he often did when his daughters were mentioned. “Let’s go sit in the living room.”

They followed him—Noah still carrying James, feeling his way with his feet—and settled amid an uncharacteristic clutter of slippers and afghans and gift boxes. Already the apartment had that rainy, sweet, baby-powder smell.

Binky unwrapped the athletic shoes and laughed and passed them to Nat, and then, at Delia’s request, she brought out the baby’s motorcycle boots. A present from her sons, she said; they claimed to be disgusted with her, but Peter had cut classes to deliver these in person. Then Nat reported on their ride to the hospital (“I said, ‘Binky,’ I said, ‘didn’t I say from the start we should have gone to Floor Four?’”), and Binky rehashed the birth, which all in all, she said, had been a cinch compared to her first two. (“I shouldn’t discuss this in mixed company,” she said, “but ever since Peter was born, I just never have known when I needed to tinkle. The best I can do is go every couple of hours, just in case.”)

Noah looked downright queasy by now, so Delia stood up to collect the baby—an excuse to feel, for an instant, the limp, crumpled weight of that little body—and return him to Binky. “We have to get Noah to his tryouts,” she told Binky. “Is there anything I can do for you? Grocery shopping? Errands?”

“Oh, no. Nat’s taking wonderful care of me,” Binky said.

Nat, Delia happened to know, felt the ache of his flashbacks most
keenly when he was driving, but she couldn’t point that out when he was looking so proud of himself.

Joel seemed very nervous about the Grade Mothers’ Tea. He must be wishing for Ellie, Delia thought—for Ellie’s clever, theme-party style of entertaining. But when she proposed phoning Ellie and asking for suggestions, he said, “Why should we do that? We’re surely capable of a simple tea, for God’s sake.”

“Yes, but maybe—”

“All we need from Ellie is her recipe for lemon squares,” he said.

“Lemon squares. I’ll ask.”

“The ones with the crispy glaze on top. Also her cucumber sandwiches.”

“Well,
I
can make a cucumber sandwich,” Delia snapped.

“Oh. Of course.”

After that he let the subject drop—forced himself to drop it, no doubt. On Friday afternoon, though, he paced circles around her as she set up the party-sized percolator on the dining room buffet. “This group will be nothing but women,” he told her.

“Well, so I gathered: grade mothers.”

“There is a grade father, but he’s away on business. It’s one hundred percent women.”

She went to draw the water for tea. He followed. “You do plan to help with the conversation, don’t you?” he asked.

She hadn’t expected to. She had envisioned herself biding her time in the kitchen, like those discreet lady housekeepers in nineteenth-century novels. She had been looking forward to it, in fact. She said, “Oh, um …”

“I can’t do it alone, Delia.”

“Well, I’ll try.”

But no help was needed, she found. Fourteen women showed up—two for each homeroom, minus the traveling father and a mother who couldn’t get off work. All of them were acquainted, most since childhood, and they slid easily into topics so well established that they seemed to be speaking in code. “What did Jessie finally decide?”

“Oh, just what we figured all along.”

“Darn!”

“Yes, but who can say—maybe this will turn out like the Sanderson girl.”

“Well, that’s a thought.”

Delia wore her navy knit, on the assumption that teas were dressy, but the guests wore slacks or even jeans, and one had on a sweatshirt reading
COMPOST HAPPENS
. They all seemed unduly curious about her. They kept coming up to ask, “So how do you
like
it here? How is Noah handling all this? Has he adjusted?” When she answered, the voices nearby would trail off and others would edge closer. “Golly,” one said, “Mr. Miller must be awfully glad to have you. And you help with the tutoring too! You tutor the Brewsters’ youngest! Mr. Miller’s always complaining he can’t find enough math tutors.”

Now she knew how new girls must feel on their first day at school. But she responded politely, keeping a smile on her face, holding the teapot before her like a ticket of admission. She liked Bay Borough very much, thank you, and Noah was getting on well, and she had probably learned more from her pupils than they had learned from her. The usual remarks. She could have made them in her sleep. Meanwhile Joel stood talking with two women at the other end of the room, nodding pensively and from time to time wrinkling his brow. He no longer seemed nervous. And when she approached with a plate of cookies, he said, “You’re doing a fine job, Delia.”

“Thank you,” she said, smiling.

“It may be the best tea we’ve given.”

“Oh! Well, the lemon squares were Ellie’s, remember; Ellie was kind enough to—”

Then one of the women asked Joel what had been planned for the Fall Bazaar, and Delia escaped to the kitchen.

She straightened things up, wiped counters, put a few items in the dishwasher. The cat had taken refuge under the table, and she hauled him forth to cuddle him and scratch behind his ears. For a while she watched the minute hand of the wall clock visibly jerk forward: five-eighteen to five-nineteen to five-twenty. Time for the guests to recall that they should get home and fix supper. In fact, she could detect a certain shift in the blur of voices—the rising notes of leave-taking.

“Didn’t I have a purse?”

“Has anyone seen my keys?”

And then, “Where’s
Delia?
I should say goodbye to Delia.”

She had to drop George and make another appearance, see them all to the door. (“It was good meeting you, too. I’d be happy to give out the recipe.”) Then she returned to the dining room, and Joel unplugged the percolator while that woman who always has to stay longest (there was one at every party) fussily separated the clean spoons from the dirty ones. “Please,” Delia told her, “just let them be. I’ve got a system.” How quickly the old formulas came back to her:
I’ve got a system. Don’t give these a thought. It won’t be a bit of trouble.

The woman was reluctant to leave and stood awhile gazing into her purse, as if searching for instructions on where to go next. She had triplets, Delia had overheard—all boys, all just starting to drive. Easy to understand why she wasn’t rushing home. Finally she said, “Well, thanks, you two. This was a real treat.” And darting a smile in Joel’s direction, she told Delia, “Isn’t he helpful! Why, if I asked
my
husband to clear, he’d think I was joking. He would just act … bemused and go off with his pals.”

Joel waited till she was gone before he snorted. “‘Bemused’!” he echoed. “Discouraging, isn’t it?”

Delia wasn’t sure what he was objecting to. (At least, she thought, he hadn’t seemed to notice the woman’s apparent belief that they were a couple.) She carried a stack of cups to the kitchen and began fitting them into the dishwasher.