Noah's Compass

10

Liam’s father lived off Harford Road, in a neighborhood of unassuming little cottages from the 1940s with drab clapboard siding, squat front porches, and carefully kept plots of grass. Liam could have found the place in his sleep, and not only because it was a straight shot out Northern Parkway. He had been traveling there since his teens. In fact, it was the first address he’d ever driven to, the first day he had his license. He’d asked permission to borrow the family car and then made his escape (was how he thought of it), gripping the steering wheel with both hands and constantly checking the rearview mirror as his driver’s ed instructor had taught him, but the faint tingle down his spine had come less from new-driver nerves than from the knowledge that he was betraying his mother. She would have been so distressed if she had known where he was going. She was, in general, a woman easily distressed. “That hurts my feelings” was her most characteristic remark. Also, “I just don’t seem to have any appetite,” as she pushed her plate away sadly after Liam had done something to disappoint her. He had disappointed her often, although he had tried his best not to.

The scenery hadn’t changed much in all these years. Even the flowers in the yards had a dated look-ball-shaped clumps of blue or white on bushes pruned into balls themselves. There was an abundance of lawn ornaments-plaster gnomes and fawns and families of ducks, birdbaths, windmills, reflective aluminum gazing globes, wooden cutouts of girls in sunbo

Liam parked behind his father’s great long barge of a Chevy and walked up to the porch. He hadn’t phoned ahead. He never did. In his youth he had been aiming for an offhand, happenstance effect, and by now it was a tradition. Anyhow, the couple always seemed to be at home. Bard Pe

It was Esther Jo who answered the doorbell. “Liam!” she said. They had never developed the habit of kissing when they met. For Liam as a teenager, she had seemed too dangerous, too obviously sexy for him to risk it. By now she was a puffy, pigeon-shaped woman in her early seventies, wearing a pinafore apron and cloth mules, but if you knew to look for the clues-the finger waves pressed into her faded blond hair, the eyebrows plucked to unsteady threads-you could still detect the office glamour girl she had once been.

“I hope I haven’t come at a bad time,” Liam told her.

“No, no, not at all. Your dad was just-Bard? It’s Liam! Your dad was just mowing the grass out back. Not that we have much to mow, these days. Hasn’t it been dry! I’ve forgotten what rain feels like, almost.”

She was leading Liam into the living room, which always struck him as an oddly girlish place. A row of stuffed animals lined the brocade love seat, and the dark wooden bookcase held an array of dolls in old-fashioned dresses, with crinolines and pantaloons peeking out from under their hems.

Liam settled in an armchair, but he stood again when his father entered the room. “Well, hi there, stranger!” his father said. He wore a crisply ironed shirt and a striped tie; he wasn’t the kind of man who dressed casually even to mow the lawn. Unlike Liam, he had thi

As they shook hands, Liam said, “I just thought I’d stop by and see how you were doing.”

“We’re doing fine! Not bad at all! This is a nice surprise, son.” Bard lowered himself onto the love seat, reaching behind him without looking to move aside a teddy bear in a cheerleader costume. “How’ve you been? How’re the girls?”

“Everyone’s fine,” Liam said, sitting back down. “They send their love.”

Or they would have, he reasoned, if they had known he was coming here. There was almost no contact between the two parts of Liam’s family.

“I’m just going to fetch some iced tea,” Esther Jo said. She had her arms folded tightly under her bosom, as if she felt the need to warm herself. “You two sit right where you are. Don’t get up! Just sit right here and have a nice talk. I’m going to leave you to it.”

She left the room, her mules making whispery sounds on the floorboards.

“I’d have thought you’d be at work now,” Liam’s father said, glancing at his watch. It was shortly before noon, Liam knew without checking. “Is summer school finished already?”

“I’m not doing that this year,” Liam said.

“Ah. Needed a break, did you.”

“Well… and I’ve been busy moving.”

“Moving! Where to?”

“A smaller place, up near the Beltway. Remind me to give you the phone number.”

His father nodded. “We should move,” he said. “Get shed of all this yard work. But, I don’t know, your stepmother loves her house so.”

Since Liam could never quite co

“She says, ‘Where would I put all my pretty things? Where would my sister stay when she visits?’”

“It’s not as if an apartment couldn’t have a guestroom,” Liam said.

“No, but, you know.”

“In fact, I’ve got Kitty staying with me at this very moment.”

“Do you now!” His father smoothed the point of his tie.

Really the two of them had nothing to say to each other. Why did Liam have to learn this all over again on every visit?

They tried, though. Both of them tried. His father said, “How is Kitty, by the way?”

“She’s fine,” Liam said. “She’s working this summer in a dentist’s office.”

“Thinking of being a dental hygienist, is she.”

“Why, no. It’s just a summer job, is all. Filing charts.”

His father cleared his throat. “And your sister?” he asked.

“She’s fine too.”

Liam found himself listening for some sound from the kitchen, wondering when Esther Jo would be coming back to rescue them. “I actually haven’t seen Julia in a while,” he said.

“Me neither,” his father said, and he gave a dry cough of a laugh, although his face remained unsmiling. (He hadn’t seen Julia in forty-some years, and even then it was just because he’d shown up uninvited at her high school graduation.) He shifted in his seat slightly, as if he regretted his little joke, and smoothed his tie again.

“I’ve been laid off at St. Dyfrig,” Liam said.

At least it was a conversational topic.

“Laid off!”

“They’re folding their two fifth grades into one class next year.”

“But you’ve been there forever!”

“Just about,” Liam said.

“Don’t you have seniority?”

“Oh, well, I don’t know. That’s not how it works there.”

“How does it work?”

“I don’t know, I told you,” Liam said. He looked gratefully toward the kitchen, from where he heard the clink of ice cubes approaching.

“Real brewed tea!” Esther Jo a

Wasn’t it amazing, he thought, that even a species as supposedly evolved as the human race was still so subject to biology. And now here they sat-his ancient father shriveled to a husk, the femme fatale’s swollen feet stuffed into calico mules.