Ladder of Years by Anne Tyler Read Free Book Online Page B

inside and told her, “Delia, remind me tomorrow morning to pick up more—”
    “‘The oldest is too short and the middle one’s too plump,’ you said, ‘but the youngest one is just right.’”
    Sam laughed.
    “Did you say that?” she asked him.
    “Oh, sweetie, how would I remember after all these years?”
    She pulled into their driveway and turned the engine off. Sam opened his door, but then, noticing she had not moved, he looked over at her. The little ceiling bulb cast sharp hollows in his face.
    “You did say it,” she told him. “I recognize the fairy-tale sound of it.”
    “So? Maybe I did,” he said. “Gosh, Dee, I wasn’t weighing every word. I might have said ‘too short’ and ‘too plump,’ but what I probably meant was ‘too unconventional’ and ‘too Francophile.’”
    “That’s not it,” Delia said.
    “Why, Linda spent half the evening speaking French, remember? And when your dad made her switch to English, she still had an accent.”
    “You don’t even know what I’m objecting to, do you?” Delia asked.
    “Well, no,” Sam said. “I don’t.”
    She got out of the car and walked toward the back steps. Sam went to replace his bag in the Buick; she heard the clunk of his trunk lid.
    “And Eliza!” he said as he followed her to the house. “She kept asking my opinion of homeopathic medicine.”
    “You arrived here that very first day planning to marry one of the Felson girls,” Delia told him.
    She had unlocked the door now, but instead of entering she turned to face him. He was looking down at her, with his forehead creased.
    “Why, I suppose it must naturally have crossed my mind,” he said. “I’d completed all my training by then. I’d reached the marrying age, so to speak. The marrying stage of life.”
    “But then why not a nurse, or a fellow student, or some girl your mother knew?”
    “My mother?” he said. He blinked.
    “You had your eye on Daddy’s practice, that’s why,” she told him. “You thought, Til just marry one of Dr. Felson’s daughters and inherit all his patients and his nice old comfortable house.’”
    “Well, sweetheart, I probably did think that. Probably I did. But I never would have married someone I didn’t love. Is that what you believe? You believe I didn’t marry for love?”
    “I don’t know what to believe,” she told him.
    Then she spun around and walked back down the steps.
    “Dee?” Sam called.
    She passed her car without slowing. Most women would have driven away, but she preferred to walk. The soles of her flats gritted against the asphalt driveway in a purposeful rhythm, reminding her of some tune she could almost name but not quite. Part of her was listening for Sam (she had a sense of perking one ear backward, like a cat), but another part was glad to be rid of him and pleased to have her view of him confirmed. Look at that, he wont even deign to come after me. She reached the street, turned right, and kept going. Her frail-edged shadow preceded her and then drew back and then fell behind as she traveled from streetlight to streetlight. No longer did she feel the cold. She seemed warmed from inside by her anger.
    Now she understood why Sam had forgotten his actual first glimpse of her. He had prepared to meet the Felson girls as a boxed set, that was why. It had not figured in his plans to encounter an isolated sample ahead of time. What had figured was the social occasion that evening, with marriageable maidens one, two, and three on display on the living-room couch. She could envision that scene herself now. All it took was the proper perspective to bring it back entire: the itchy red plush cushions, the clothlike texture of her frosted sherry glass, and the fidgeting, encroaching, irritating plumpness of the middle sister, next to her.
    On a branch overhead, the neighborhood’s silly mockingbird was imitating a burglar alarm. “Doy! Doy! Doy!” he sang in his most lyrical voice, until he was silenced by