Ladder of Years Read Online Free PDF Page A

thought.”
    Eliza looked over at Carroll. He raised that eyebrow again.
    “You called and left a message on the machine,” Delia said, “asking me to find an address.”
    “That was ten days ago, at least. I needed Jenny Coop’s address, remember?”
    “Then why did I just get it off the answering machine?”
    “Mom,” Carroll said. “You must have been playing back old calls.”
    “Well, how is that possible?”
    “You didn’t have the machine turned on in the first place, see, and then when you pressed the Message button—”
    “Oh, Lord,” Delia said. “Mrs. Allingham.”
    “Is there coffee?” Eliza asked her.
    “Not that I know of. Oh, Lord …”
    She went over to the wall phone and dialed Mrs. Allingham’s number. “I’m snug in bed,” Eliza was telling Carroll, “thinking, Goody, Saturday morning, I can sleep till noon —when who should come crawling through that door in the back of my closet but another one of your father’s blasted repairmen.”
    “Mrs. Allingham?” Delia said into the phone. “This is Delia again. Mrs. Allingham, I feel like such a dummy but it seems I got my calls mixed up and it was last week you invited us for. And of course last week we went, and a lovely time we had too; did I write you a thank-you note? I meant to write you a thank-you note. But this week we’re not coming; I mean I realize now that you didn’t invite us for—”
    “But, Delia, darlin’, we’d be happy to have you this week! We’d be happy to have you any old time, and I’ve already sent Marshall off to the Gourmet To Go with a shopping list.”
    “Oh, I’m so sorry,” Delia said, but then the coffee grinder started up—a deafening racket—and she shouted, “Anyhow! We’ll have to invite you to our place, very soon! Goodbye!”
    She replaced the receiver and glared at Eliza.
    “If only coffee tasted as good as it smells,” Eliza said serenely when the grinder stopped.
    Sam and the plumber were descending the stairs. Delia could hear the plumber’s elasticized East Baltimore vowels; he was waxing lyrical about water. “It’s the most amazing substance,” he was saying. “It’ll burst out one place and run twenty-five feet along the underside of a pipe and commence to dripping another place, where you least expect to see it. It’ll lie in wait, it’ll bide its time, it’ll search out some little cranny you would never think to look.”
    Delia placed her hands on her hips and stood waiting. The instant the two men stepped through the door, she said, “I certainly hope you’re satisfied, Sam Grinstead.”
    “Hmm?”
    “I called back poor Mrs. Allingham and canceled supper.”
    “Oh, good,” Sam said absently.
    “I broke our promise. I ducked out of our commitment. I probably hurt her feelings for all time,” Delia told him.
    But Sam wasn’t listening. He was following the plumber’s forefinger as it pointed upward to a line of blistered plaster. And Eliza was measuring coffee, so the only one who paid any heed was Carroll. He sent Delia a look of utter contempt.
    Delia turned sheepishly to her grocery bags. From the depths of one she drew the celery, pale green and pearly and precisely ribbed. She gazed at it for a long, thoughtful moment. “Aren’t you clever to say so!” she heard Adrian exclaim once again, and she held the words close; she hugged them to her breast as she turned back to give her son a beatific smile.

3
    “Aren’t you clever to say so,” he had said, and, “Why, you’re very pretty!” and, “You have such a little face, like a flower.” Had he meant that she had such a flowerlike face, which incidentally was little? Or had its littleness been his sole point? She preferred the first interpretation, although the second, she supposed, was more likely.
    Also, he had praised her marvelous blancmange. Of course the blancmange did not really exist, but still she felt a lilt of pride, remembering that he had found it marvelous.
    She studied her