Ladder of Years: A Novel by Anne Tyler

Author:Anne Tyler
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Literary, Psychological, Sagas, Fiction
ISBN: 9780307434340
Publisher: Random House, Inc.
Published: 2010-08-15T07:00:00+00:00

Vanessa said Joel Miller was the most pitiful man she knew of. “Ever since his wife left, the guy has been barely coping,” she told Delia.

“Isn’t anyone in Bay Borough happily married?” Delia wondered.

“Yes, lots of folks,” Vanessa said. “Just not who you choose to hang out with.”

They were sitting in Vanessa’s kitchen the following morning, a cold, sunny Saturday. Really it was her grandmother’s kitchen; Vanessa and all three of her brothers lived with their father’s mother. Vanessa was filling out labels with an old-fashioned steel-nibbed pen. Highly Effective Insect Repellent, she wrote, in hair-thin brown script on ivory paper ovals. Highly Effective was an ancient family recipe. When Vanessa had finished her daily allotment of labels, her youngest brother would glue them onto the slender glass phials in which various dried sprigs and berries bobbed mysteriously underwater. Delia found it hard to believe that people could make a living this way, but evidently the Linleys did all right. The house was large and comfortable, and the grandmother could afford to travel once a year to Disney World. Vanessa said the trick was pennyroyal. “Don’t let this get around,” she’d told Delia, “but insects despise pennyroyal. The other herbs are mostly for show.”

On the floor, Greggie was building a tower with stacks of corks. After Vanessa finished her labels, she and Delia were going to take him to visit Santa. Then Delia might do a little Christmas shopping. Or maybe not; she couldn’t decide. She had always disliked Christmas, with its possibilities for disappointing her family’s secret hopes, and this year would be worse than ever. Should she just, maybe, skip the whole business? Oh, why wasn’t there an etiquette book for runaway wives?

Which brought her back to Mr. Miller. “How come his wife left him, does anyone know?” she asked Vanessa.

“Oh, sure; everyone knows. Here they were, together for years, sweet little boy, nice house, and one day last spring Ellie, that’s his wife, found a lump in her breast. Went to the doctor and he said, yup, looked like cancer. So she came home and told her husband. ‘In the time that I have left to me, I want to make the very best of my life. I want to do exactly what I’ve dreamed of.’ And by nightfall she had packed up and gone. That was her deepest, dearest wish—did you ever hear such a thing?”

“So where is she now?”

“Oh, she’s a TV weather lady over in Kellerton,” Vanessa said. “The lump was nothing at all; they removed it under local anesthetic. Now Mr. Miller and Noah can turn on their TV and watch her every evening. Or you might have seen her in Boardwalk Bulletin. They ran a profile of her last August. Real pretty blond? Hair like that shredded straw we pack our bottles in. Course, no one here was impressed in the slightest—person who’d leave her own child.”

Delia looked down at her lap.

“All the women in town have been trying to help Mr. Miller out,” Vanessa said.

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