Ladder of Years

“And Courtney, it was nice of you to come along,” Susie told her.

“No problem. Me and your brother Carroll met last spring at a party.”

“Oh, really?”

“My girlfriend asked him to her birthday party; I put it all together when your fiancé told me your name.”

Paul was looking less happy now; so Delia broke in and said, “Can you two stay for di

“Well, I might could,” Courtney said.

Paul said, “I’ll just need to phone my mother.”

“Right over here,” Delia told him, and she cupped his elbow protectively as she led him toward the phone. How cruel and baffling-how tribal, almost-young girls must seem to boys! Somehow she hadn’t realized that when she was a young girl herself.

“I propose a toast,” Nat said. He raised his coffee mug. “To the bridal couple!”

Driscoll said, “Why, thanks”-not having the dimmest notion, of course, who this old man might be, but adapting with his usual good humor. “Hello, Ma?” Paul said into the phone, and then Carroll appeared from the dining room just as Eliza stepped through the back door; so both of them had to be filled in on the latest developments. Eliza hadn’t even heard yet what Driscoll’s magic task was. She kept saying, “Who? He brought who?” with her eyebrows quirked in bewilderment, her pocketbook hugged to her chest, and Courtney was sidling toward Carroll to ask, “Carroll Grinstead? I don’t know if you remember me,” and the twins were insisting that this time they should wear lipstick to the wedding.

Delia took her cutting board to a less populated area, and she started chopping ginger. Her Chinese dish required eleven different bowls of ingredients, most minced no bigger than matchstick heads, all lined up in a row for rapid frying. So far she had finished only bowl number four. She was thankful to be occupied, though. She chopped rhythmically, mindlessly, letting an ocean of chatter eddy around her. Tick-tick, the knife came down on the cutting board. Tick-tick, and she slid all her thoughts to one side as she slid the mounds of ginger into a bowl.

With every one of its leaves in place, the table filled the whole dining room. (“This tablecloth came from your grandma’s hope chest,” Linda told the twins. “The stain is where your aunt Delia set a bowl of curry. She doesn’t give a damn; she was your grandpa’s favorite; she treats these things like Woolworth things.”) Twelve place settings marched the length of it-five at each side, one each at head and foot. There had been talk of inviting Eleanor, but Susie didn’t want to jinx her entire marriage with thirteen at table; and no one answered the phone when they called Ramsay.

“Courtney, I’ll put you in the middle here,” Delia said. “Then Paul, you’re next to Courtney…”

Courtney, however, had obviously made up her mind to sit with Carroll, which left Paul stuck between the twins; not that the twins weren’t delighted. And the others remained standing while they continued a discussion they’d started in the living room-something about Mr. Knowles’s tingly arm. “Didn’t Daddy always say the same thing!” Eliza was exclaiming. “He used to say he wished he had a dictionary of pains. Those symptoms people came up with-‘Pepsi-bubble stomach’ and ‘whiny argumentative back’!”

“Driscoll, you’re beside Linda,” Delia said, but Driscoll, feigning engrossment in the conversation, kept his face turned toward Eliza and sneakily drew out the chair beside Susie. Delia gave up. “Oh, just sit,” she told Nat, and Nat sat down where he was, which happened to be exactly where she’d intended, at her right hand. “Help yourself to some rice,” she said, passing him the bowl, and she told the others, “Everything’s getting cold!”

Eliza settled at Sam’s left, shaking her head at what Sam was saying. “Who knows, anyhow?” he was saying. “Maybe it’s all equal: hangnail for one, cancer for another. Everything on the same level, just barely within endurance.”

“Sam Grinstead, you don’t believe that for a minute!” Linda squawked. “What a bizarre suggestion!”

Delia said, “Paul, will you have some rice and pass it on, please? Everybody! Sit down!”

Very suddenly, the rest of them sat. They seemed to have run out of steam, and there was a pause, during which Paul dropped the serving spoon to the table with a loud clunk. He bared all his teeth in embarrassment and picked it up.

Nat said, “Do any of you know the photographs of C. R. Savage?”

The grown-ups turned courteous, receptive faces in his direction.

“A nineteenth-century fellow,” he said. “Used the old wet-plate method, I would suppose. There’s a picture I’m reminded of that he took toward the end of his life. Shows his dining room table set for Christmas di

But now his voice failed him completely, and he covered his eyes with one shaking hand and bent his head. “So anticipatory!” he whispered into his plate, while Delia, at a loss, patted his arm. “I’m sorry! I’m sorry!” he said. Everyone sat dumbstruck. Then he said, “Ha!” and straightened, bracing his shoulders. “Postpartum depression, I guess this is,” he said. He wiped his eyes with his napkin.

“Nat has a three-week-old baby,” Delia explained to the others. “Nat, would you like-”

“Baby?” Linda asked incredulously.

Sam said, “I thought Nat was your friend, Linda.”

“No, he’s mine,” Delia said. “He lives on the Eastern Shore and he’s just had a baby boy, a lovely boy, you ought to see how-”

“Most irresponsible thing I’ve ever done in my life,” Nat said hoarsely. “What could I have been thinking of? Oh, not that it was anything I pla

“Floor Five? Oh,” Delia said. “Oh, Nat! Don’t even think it!” she said, patting his arm all the harder.

She should have realized at his wedding, she told herself, that someone so elated would have to end in tears, like an overexcited child allowed to stay up past his bedtime.

“Yes. Well,” Sam said, clearing his throat. “It’s really very common now, this more senior class of parent. Why, just last week I was reading, where was it I was reading…”

“The important thing to remember is, this is your assignment,” Eliza said in ringing tones. She was all the way up near Sam, and she had to lean forward, bypassing a row of tactfully expressionless profiles, to search out Nat’s face. “It’s my belief that we’re each assigned certain experiences,” she said. “And then at the end of our lives-”

“The New England Journal of Medicine!” Sam a

Nat asked Delia, “Do you have a place where I might lie down?”