Ladder of Years by Anne Tyler Read Free Book Online

used to make with Daddy, just the two of us! Seems like old times.”
    She slid behind her steering wheel and reached across to unlock the passenger door. The air inside the car felt refrigerated. It even smelled refrigerated—dank and stale.
    “Of course, Daddy never let me drive him,” she said when Sam hadgot in. Then she worried this would give him second thoughts, and so she added, laughing slightly, “You know how prejudiced he was! Women drivers, he always said …” She started the engine and turned on her lights, illuminating the double doors of the garage and the tattered net of the basketball hoop overhead. “But whenever I was still up, he’d say I could come with him. Oh, I tagged along many a night! Eliza just never was interested, and Linda was so, you know, at odds with him all the time, but I was ready at a moment’s notice. I just loved to go.”
    Sam had heard all this before, of course. He merely settled his bag between his feet while she backed the car out of the driveway.
    Once they were on Roland Avenue, she said, “In fact I ought to come with you more often, now the kids are growing up. Don’t you think?” She was aware that she was chattering, but she said, “It might be kind of fun! And it’s not as if you go out every night, or even every week anymore.”
    “Delia, I give you my word I am still capable of making the odd house call without a baby-sitter,” Sam told her.
    “Baby-sitter!”
    “I’m strong as an ox. Stop fretting.”
    “I’m not fretting! I just thought it would be romantic, something the two of us could do together!” she said.
    This wasn’t the whole truth, but as soon as she said it she started to believe it, and so she felt a bit hurt. Sam merely sat back and gazed out the side window.
    There was almost no traffic at this hour, and the avenue seemed very flat and empty, shimmering pallidly beneath the streetlights as if veiled by yellow chiffon. The newly leafed trees, lit from below, had a tumbled, upside-down look. Here and there a second-floor window glowed cozily, and Delia sent it a wistful glance as they passed.
    In front of the Maxwells’ house, she parked. She turned off the headlights but left the engine and the heater on. “Aren’t you coming in?” Sam asked.
    “I’ll wait in the car.”
    “You’ll freeze!”
    “I’m not dressed for company.”
    “Come in, Dee. The Maxwells don’t care how you’re dressed.”
    He was right, she supposed. (And the heater hadn’t even started heating yet.) She took the keys from the ignition and slid out of the car to follow him up the front walk, toward the broad, columned housewhere those two lone Maxwells must rattle around like dice in a cup. All the windows were blazing, and the inner door stood open. Mr. Maxwell waited just inside, a stooped, bulky figure fumbling to unhook the screen as they crossed the porch.
    “Dr. Grinstead!” he said. “Thank you so much for coming. And Delia too. Hello, dear.”
    He wore food-stained trousers belted just beneath his armpits, and a frayed gray cardigan over a T-shirt. (He used to be such a natty dresser.) Without a pause, he turned to lead Sam toward the carpeted stairs. “It breaks my heart to see her this way,” he said as they started the climb. “I’d suffer in her stead, if I could.”
    Delia watched after them from the foyer, and when they were out of sight she sat down on one of the two antique chairs that flanked a highboy. She sat cautiously; for all she knew, the chairs were purely for show.
    Overhead the voices murmured—Mrs. Maxwell’s thin and complaining, Sam’s a rumble. The grandfather clock facing Delia ticked so slowly that it seemed each tick might be its last. For lack of anything better to do (she had thoughtlessly left her purse at home), she fanned her keys across her lap and sorted through them.
    How many hours had she sat like this in her childhood? Perched on a chair or a bottom step, scratching at the insect bites on her bare