Noah's Compass

7

Early on the fifth of July, Louise phoned and asked Liam if he would babysit. “I know it’s short notice,” she said, “but my regular sitter has called in sick and I’ve got a doctor’s appointment just around the corner from you. I could drop Jonah off at your place on the way.”

“You mean, all by himself?” Liam asked.

“Why, yes.”

“But I don’t have any toys here. I have nothing to amuse him with.”

“We’ll bring some with us. Please? Ordinarily I would cancel, but this appointment means a lot to me.”

Liam supposed, from her phrasing, that it might be an obstetrician’s appointment. He didn’t want to seem nosy, though, so all he said was, “Well, okay, I guess.”

“Thanks, Dad. I appreciate this.”

He wondered why she hadn’t asked Barbara, who could pretty much arrange her own schedule in the summertime. Or why she didn’t just take Jonah along with her to the doctor’s office. Surely that was allowed, wasn’t it? Too bad Kitty had already left for work. He really had no idea what to do with a four-year-old.

They showed up at his door half an hour later-Louise out of breath and rushed-looking, wearing dressier clothes than usual and even a bit of lipstick. Jonah had on a T-shirt and what appeared to be swim trunks, orange Hawaiian-print nylon billowing around his toothpick shins. A knapsack almost bigger than he was loomed on his back. It was obvious from his expression that he would rather be somewhere else. He gazed up at Liam unsmilingly, his eyebrows two worried quirks. “Hi, there,” Liam told him.

Jonah didn’t answer.

Louise said, “I should be back in an hour or so. There’s a snack in Jonah’s bag if he gets hungry.” She planted a kiss on top of Jonah’s head and said, “Bye, sweetheart. Be a good boy.”

When the door had slammed shut behind her, there was an uneasy silence.

“So,” Liam said finally. He frowned down at Jonah.

Jonah frowned back at him.

“Where’s your grandmother?” Liam asked.

Jonah said, “Who?”

“Your Grandma Barbara. Is she working?”

Jonah shrugged. It was an artificial-looking shrug-his sharp little shoulders hitching themselves too high and then staying there too long, as if he had not quite perfected the technique.

“Hard to believe she would have a date so early in the day,” Liam mused.

Jonah said, “Deirdre is in deep, deep trouble.”

“Who’s Deirdre?”

“My sitter. We bet anything she’s not sick. We bet she’s off with her boyfriend someplace. Her boyfriend’s named Chicken Little.”

“He’s what?”

“Sometimes she brings him to my house to visit. Me and him play soccer together out in the backyard.”

“Is that a fact,” Liam said.

“Deirdre wears a jewel in her nose, and she’s got a chain around her wrist that’s really a tattoo.”

“This Deirdre sounds like quite a gal,” Liam said.

“Me and her are going to the State Fair in the fall.”

Was Liam supposed to be correcting Jonah’s grammatical errors? It seemed irresponsible just to let them slide past. On the other hand, he didn’t want to discourage this sudden chattiness.

“Let’s see what’s in your knapsack,” he said. “I hope you brought something to keep busy with.”

“I’ve got my Bible-stories coloring book.”

“Ah.”

“And my crayons.”

“Well, let’s see them.”

Jonah struggled out of his knapsack and laid it on the rug. Unzipping it took some doing-everything seemed to be such hard work, at this age-but eventually he brought forth a box of apple juice, a plastic bag of carrot sticks, a pack of crayons, and a coloring book entitled Bible Tales for Tots. “I just finished Abraham,” he told Liam.

“Abraham!”

Wasn’t that the man who’d been willing to slaughter his own son?

“Now I think I’ll do Joseph,” Jonah said. He started flipping through the coloring book.

“Could I see Abraham?” Liam asked him.

Jonah raised his head and gave him a level stare, as if he didn’t quite trust Liam’s motives.

“Just a peek?” Liam said.

Jonah turned back several pages to show a picture that had been covered over with jagged swaths of purple, nowhere near inside the lines. From what Liam could make out, it was a benign illustration of a man and a boy walking up a hill. Abraham obeys God’s command to deliver Isaac, the caption read.

“Thanks,” Liam said. “Very nice.”

Jonah resumed flipping pages, settling finally on one that read Joseph had a coat of many colors. The coat was a sort of bathrobe affair with wide vertical stripes.

“Do they have your story? Jonah and the whale?” Liam asked.

Jonah gave another of his effortful shrugs and dumped the pack of crayons out on the carpet. All of them seemed untouched except for the purple, which was worn down to a nubbin. “You’re supposed to tell about Joseph while I’m coloring,” he said.

“Who, me?”

Jonah nodded vigorously. He selected the purple crayon and started making wild horizontal marks across the coat. There was an extremely high probability that the purple would stray onto the carpet, but Liam was so relieved to have Jonah occupied that he didn’t intervene. He sat down in an armchair and said, “Okay. Joseph.”

Strange how unconnected he felt to this child. Not that he had anything against him; certainly he wished him well. And it was true there was something fetching about those fragile little ears, and those tiny bare feet in laughably small flip-flops. (The universal appeal of the miniature! Obviously it must serve to perpetuate the species.) But the fact that they were related by blood seemed too much to comprehend. Did other grandparents feel this way? Or maybe it was just that Jonah was growing up in such a different world, with his fundamentalist parents and his Bible Tales for Tots.

Liam couldn’t for the life of him remember the point of the Joseph story.

Still, he did his best. “Joseph,” he said, “had a coat of many colors that was a present from his father, and this made his brothers jealous.”

He wondered if the word jealous would be familiar to a four-year-old. It seemed doubtful. He tried to guess from Jonah’s expression, but Jonah was busily working away, his lower lip caught between his teeth.

“Joseph’s brothers were upset,” Liam clarified, “because they didn’t have any coats of many colors themselves.”

“Maybe Joseph could let them borrow his sometimes,” Jonah said.

“You would think so, wouldn’t you.”

“Did he?” Jonah persisted.

“Well, no, I don’t believe he did.”

Jonah shook his head and paused to peel more paper off his crayon. “That wasn’t very sharing of him,” he told Liam.

“No, it wasn’t,” Liam said. “You’re right. And also-” He was sneaking a look now at the caption on the facing page. “Also, he told his brothers about a dream he’d had where all of them were forced to bow down in front of him.”

Jonah made a clucking sound of disapproval.

He was coloring Joseph’s hair now (another splash of purple), and he seemed engrossed enough that Liam felt he could rise and go off to the kitchen to pour himself a mug of coffee. By the time he returned, Jonah had skipped ahead to Joseph’s brothers sold him into slavery. Aha. “So Joseph’s brothers sold him into slavery,” Liam said, settling into his chair again, “and then they went home and told their father he’d been killed.”

They had soaked Joseph’s coat in an animal’s blood to back up their claim, Liam seemed to recall. What a waste of the beautiful coat! he had thought as a child. Now it was no use to anyone! Evidently these things hung on in the memory longer than he would have supposed. He hadn’t considered that story in decades. His mother had been quite religious (or, at least, she had turned to her church for support after his father left them), but Liam himself had dropped out of Sunday school as soon as he was old enough to be allowed to stay home on his own.

He tried to read the next caption, but Jonah’s arm was obscuring it. As unobtrusively as possible, Liam reached for the newspaper.

Drought. War. Suicide bombers.

At around ten thirty or so, after she had settled Mr. C. in his office, Eunice would be coming to deliver his printed-out résumé. Liam hugged that thought to himself like a package that he was putting off unwrapping. He had something to look forward to, but he didn’t want to examine it too closely. He kept it tucked in the back of his consciousness for later.

Of course, eventually he would have to tell her that the résumé was unnecessary. By that time, though, they might know each other well enough to be getting together for other reasons. He wondered if she liked movies. Liam really enjoyed a good movie. He found it restful to watch people’s conversations without being expected to join in. But he always felt sort of lonesome if he didn’t have someone next to him to nudge in the ribs at the good parts.

Security checks at airports were becoming more and more onerous, he read.

Jonah said, “I’m hungry.”

Liam lowered his newspaper. “You want your carrot sticks?” he asked.

“I want something you have.”

This touched off a faint, nagging echo of annoyance in Liam’s mind. He reached back to retrieve a recollection of Xanthe from long, long ago, from her toddler days, always asking for something, always needing. But he forced himself to say, “Sure enough. Let’s see what I’ve got,” and he set aside his paper and stood up.

“Celery? Yogurt? Cheese?” he called from the kitchen.

“What kind of cheese?”

“Pepperjack.”

“Pepperjack’s too prickly.”

Liam sighed and closed the refrigerator door. “Raisins?” he asked. “Toast?”

“Raisins would be good.”

Liam scooped some raisins from the box and put them in a cereal bowl. An image came to him of Xanthe standing in her crib, clutching the bars in tight fat fists. Her hair was plastered to her scalp with sweat and her face was beet-red and streaming with tears, her mouth a cavernous black rectangle of misery. He set the bowl on the carpet in front of Jonah and said, “Here, little guy,” and Jonah tossed him a quick glance before he reached for a handful of raisins.

In Egypt, Joseph became Potiphar’s most trusted slave.

“So, Joseph was taken to Egypt, where he had to work very hard,” Liam said.

“Couldn’t he run back home?”

“I think it was too far to run.”

He wondered what a child was expected to learn from this story. Was there some sort of moral? He opened out his newspaper again. Concern was being voiced about missiles in North Korea. He thought that maybe, if Eunice happened to be free tonight, he could invite her out for a bite to eat. He could say it was a thank-you for her help with his résumé. What could be more natural? Still, he felt a little gut-twinge of nervousness. Even at his age, the whole rigmarole of dating seemed intimidating. Especially at his age.

He reminded himself that she was just an ordinary, rather plain young woman, but now her plainness seemed part of her charm. She was so innocent and guileless, so transparent. He remembered how she’d taken leave of him yesterday, after he’d walked her out to the parking lot. She had paused beside her car door and removed her glasses (just why, he couldn’t say; surely she needed glasses for driving?), and her face had suddenly seemed so vulnerable that he’d had to stifle an impulse to reach out and cup her head between his hands. “Bye-bye,” she’d told him, lifting her chin. Even that childish phrase, which he had always found slightly silly, struck him as appealing.

When the doorbell rang, he imagined for an instant that this might be Eunice now. But no, it was Louise, already walking in before he could get out of his chair. “Did you miss me?” she asked Jonah, swooping down on him.

Jonah stumbled to his feet for a hug. “I colored about a hundred pages,” he told her.

“Good for you! How was he?” she asked Liam.

“He was fine. Though I don’t hold out high hopes for an artistic career.”

“Dad!”

“What?”

She cut her eyes toward Jonah, who was busy cramming his crayons back in their box.

“Well, I fail to see what the problem is,” Liam told her. “No one’s talented at everything.”

“Honestly,” Louise said, and she dropped into the rocking chair.

Not a word about her doctor’s appointment. Should Liam ask? No, that might be seen as intrusive. Instead he said, “Would you like a cup of coffee?”

Louise said, “No, thanks,” which may or may not have been significant. (Were pregnant women allowed to drink coffee this month?) She patted her skirt, and Jonah climbed onto her lap and wrapped his arms around her. “What else did you do?” she asked him.

“I ate raisins.”

“That’s nice.” She looked over his head at Liam. “Your wound seems a lot better. I very nearly can’t see it.”

“Yes, it’s pretty well healed,” he said. Involuntarily, he glanced down at his injured palm. It still had a curdled texture, but the skin was a normal color again.

Louise said, “And I assume you’ve gotten over that little obsession about your memory.”

“I wasn’t obsessed!” Liam said.

“You most certainly were. For a while there, everyone thought you’d gone nuts.”

“I just wanted to know what had happened, that’s all. You would too, if you woke up in a hospital without an inkling why you were there.”

She made a little shivering motion with her shoulders and said, “Let’s talk about something else.”

“Fine with me,” Liam said. “How’s Dougall?”

“He’s all right.”

“Plumbing business going okay?”

“Oh, yes.”

Liam liked Dougall well enough-there was nothing not to like-but it was hard to invent any more conversation about him. He was a genial, oversized man with a pathological interest in the workings of inanimate objects, and Liam had never understood why Louise had selected him for a husband. Sometimes he thought that she’d been born with a mental checklist of milestones that she’d sworn to get out of the way as soon as possible. Grow up, finish school, marry the first boy she dated, start a family… She had been in such a hurry, and for what? Here she sat, an intelligent young woman, with no more on her mind than organizing her church’s next bake sale.

Ah, well. Life was a matter of opinion, according to Marcus Aurelius.

“You haven’t asked about my doctor’s appointment,” Louise was saying. “Don’t you care why I went?”

Liam said, “Certainly I care.”

“You haven’t shown the slightest bit of interest.”

Oh, it was so tiring sometimes, this business of engaging with other human beings! Liam said, as delicately as possible, “I trust it was nothing life-threatening.”

“I’m pregnant again.”

“Congratulations.”

“Aren’t you happy for us?”

“Yes, I’m happy.”

“You don’t act it.”

Liam sat up straighter and gripped his knees. “I’m extremely happy,” he said. “I think it will be very nice for Jonah to have a sibling.” He glanced at Jonah, who was squatting on the floor to repack his knapsack. “Does he know?” he asked Louise.

Louise said, “Of course he knows. Don’t you, Jonah.”

“Huh?”

“You know about your new baby brother or sister, don’t you?”

Jonah said, “Mmhmm,” and zipped his knapsack shut. Louise raised her eyebrows meaningfully at Liam.

“When’s your due date?” Liam asked her.

“Early February.”

“February!”

People announced these things so far ahead nowadays, it made pregnancies seem to last a couple of years or more.

“If you come up with any good names for girls, let us know,” Louise told him. She rose and helped Jonah slip into his knapsack straps. “We’re having trouble agreeing on one. A boy is no problem; but any girl’s name I like, Dougall thinks it’s too froufrou.”

“What would it be for a boy?” Liam asked her.

“Madigan, we’ve decided.”

“Ah.”

He heaved himself to his feet and followed her toward the door. It was absurd to feel hurt. Madigan had been a very good stepfather. (A very good father, Barbara would have amended if she’d been there.) He’d spared Liam the burden of child support, for one thing; the man had been loaded. Liam said, “Nothing biblical this time?”

“We’re thinking Jacob for a middle name.”

“That’s nice.”

This reminded him; he said, “Louise, what’s the meaning of the Joseph story?”

“Which Joseph story?”

“The coat of many colors, the slavery in Egypt-what are people supposed to learn from it?”

“They’re not supposed to learn anything,” Louise said. “It’s an event that really happened. It’s not made up; it’s not designed for any calculated purpose.”

“Oh,” he said.

Best not to pursue that.

“Why’d you ask?” she said.

“Just curious.” He opened the door for her and then followed her and Jonah into the foyer. “I saw it in Jonah’s coloring book and I was wondering.”

“You know,” Louise said, “you’re always welcome to come to church with us on a Sunday.”

“Oh, thanks, but-”

“We could pick you up and take you there. We’d be happy to! I’d really love to share my faith with you.”

“Thanks anyhow,” Liam said. “I guess religion’s just not in my nature, sorry to say.”

He refrained from telling her that even talking about religion made him wince with embarrassment. Even hearing about it embarrassed him-hearing those toe-curling terms that believers employed, like share, in fact, and my faith.

But she said, “Oh, Dad, it’s in every person’s nature! We are every one of us born in sin, and till we let Jesus into our hearts we’re condemned throughout eternity.”

Well, there was no way he could let that pass. He said, “Are you telling me that some little child in Africa is condemned because he’s never been to Sunday school? Or some perfectly good Moslem herding camels in Tunisia?”

“You cannot be called good until you accept Christ as your personal savior,” she said, and her voice echoed off the cinderblocks with a bell-like, clanging tone.

Liam’s jaw dropped. “Well,” he said, “I guess…”

Words failed him for a moment.

“I guess we’ll just have to agree to disagree,” he said finally.

Words must have failed Louise too, because she just gazed at him for a moment with an expression he couldn’t read. Then she turned away and opened the outer door.

Eunice stood on the sidewalk, poised to enter. She took a step backward.

“Oh. Eunice,” Liam said.

“Have I come at a bad time?”

“No, no…”

Louise gave him a questioning look. Liam said, “Eunice, this is my daughter, Louise, and my grandson, Jonah.” He told Louise, “Eunice is-Why, you’ve seen her before. You saw her in Dr. Morrow’s waiting room.”

“I did?” Louise said.

Eunice said, “She did?”

Oops, a slip. Though not too hard to cover up, as it happened. Liam told Eunice, “I realized that only later. I knew you seemed familiar.”

Eunice continued to look puzzled, but she held out her hand to Louise and said, “Nice to meet you.”

“Nice to meet you,” Louise said, shaking her hand. “So, do you two have plans for the day?”

“Eunice is just helping me with my résumé,” Liam told her.

“Oh,” Louise said. “Well, good. You’re going to look for a real job! Or at least… I mean, surely the zayda job doesn’t require a résumé, does it?”

“The…? No, no, no. This would be for something else.”

“The very last place on earth I can see him is in a preschool,” Louise told Eunice.

“Preschool?” Eunice asked.

“That’s what he was talking about the other day.”

Liam said, “I know you have to be going, Louise. Bye, Jonah! Good luck with the coloring book.”

Jonah hoisted his knapsack higher on his back and said, “Bye.” Louise said, “Thanks for watching him, Dad.” She seemed to have forgotten their quarrel. She gave him a peck on the cheek, waved to Eunice, and followed Jonah out the door.

“You saw me at Dr. Morrow’s?” Eunice asked Liam.

She was still standing on the sidewalk, although he held the door open invitingly. She had her arms folded across her chest and she seemed planted there.

He said, “Yes, wasn’t that a coincidence?”

“I don’t recall seeing you,” she told him.

“You don’t? I guess I’m not very memorable.”

This made her smile, a little. She unfolded her arms and stepped forward to enter the building.

She was wearing one of her skirts today, and a blouse that showed her cleavage. Her breasts were two full, soft mounds. When she passed him, she gave off a faint scent of vanilla and he had an urge to step closer in order to get a deeper breath of it. He stood back against the door, however, with his hands pressed behind him. There was something bothering the far corners of his mind, something casting a shadow.

“I should have accepted her invitation,” he said once they were inside the apartment.

Eunice said, “What?”

“Louise invited me to her church just now and I didn’t accept.”

He dropped into an armchair, feeling disheartened. Too late, he remembered that he was supposed to seat his guest first, and he started to struggle up again but then Eunice sat down in the rocker.

“I’ve never been a good father,” he said.

“Oh, I’m sure you’re a wonderful father!”

“No, a good father would say, ‘So what if I’m not religious? This could be our chance to get on a better footing!’ But I was so intent on my… principles. My standards. I blew it.”

Eunice said, “Well, anyway. Your grandson is really cute.”

“Thanks,” he said.

“I didn’t picture you being a grandfather.”

He wondered what this signified. He said, “I guess it does make me seem awfully old.”

“No, it doesn’t! You’re not old!”

“I must seem pretty old to somebody your age,” he said. He waited a beat, and then he said, “How old are you, if you don’t mind my asking?”

“I’m thirty-eight.”

“You are?”

So she wasn’t younger than Xanthe after all. He would have to tell Kitty.

When Liam was thirty-eight he already had two children. His first marriage was already behind him, and he had started to worry that his second was behind him. But Eunice still seemed so fresh-faced and so… unwritten on. She sat very straight-backed, with her bulky sandals placed wide apart, her hands clasped in the valley of paisley skirt between her knees. Her glasses reflected the light in a way that turned them white, giving her a blank, open look.

“You could always change your mind,” she told him.

“Excuse me?”

“You could call your daughter on the phone and say you would come to her church after all.”

“Well, yes.”

“Would she have reached home by now?”

“I doubt it.”

“Does she have a cell phone?”

“Look,” he said. “I’m not going to call.”

Eunice rocked back in her rocker.

“I can’t,” he said.

“Okay…”

“It’s difficult to explain.”

She went on watching him.

He said, “Did you print up that résumé?”

He couldn’t have cared less about the résumé. In fact, the very word was beginning to strike him as annoying. Those pretentious foreign accent marks! For God’s sake, didn’t some term exist in ordinary English? But Eunice immediately brightened and said, “The résumé!” (She even pronounced it foreignly, with a long a in the first syllable.) She bent to dig through her purse, which sat beside her on the floor, and she came up with a crisp sheaf of papers folded in half. “I have to say,” she told him, “I’m not entirely satisfied with it.”

“Why is that?”

“I couldn’t seem to give it any focus. If you’re not applying at Cope, I don’t know what particular strengths I should be emphasizing-what areas of interest.”

He gave a short bark of laughter, and she glanced up from the papers.

“I wouldn’t know either,” he told her. “Basically, I have no areas of interest.”

“Oh, that can’t be true,” she said.

“It is, though,” he said. And then he said, “It really is. Sometimes I think my life is just… drying up and hardening, like one of those mouse carcasses you find beneath a radiator.”

If Eunice was surprised by this, it was nothing compared to how he himself felt. He seemed to hear his own words as if someone else had spoken them. He cleared his throat and spread his fingers across his knees.

“Well, only on off days, of course,” he said.

“I know exactly what you mean,” she told him.

“You do?”

“I’m always thinking, Why don’t I have any hobbies? Other people do. Other people develop these passions; they collect things or they research things or they birdwatch or they snorkel. They join book groups or they reenact the Civil War. I’m just trying to make it through to bedtime every night.”

“Yes,” Liam said.

“I don’t see myself as a mouse carcass, though, but more like one of those buds that haven’t opened. I’m hanging there on the bush all closed up.”

“That would make sense,” Liam said. “You’re younger. You have everything ahead of you.”

“Unless I never open, and fall off the branch still closed,” Eunice said.

Before Liam could make any comment, she said, “Well, enough of that! I sound like some kind of basket case, don’t I?”

“No,” Liam said.

Then he said, “I turned sixty on my last birthday.”

“I know,” Eunice said.

“Do you think somebody sixty is too old for somebody thirty-eight?”

When she looked at him now, the light was hitting her glasses at a different angle and he could see directly into her eyes, which were wide and steady and radiant. Her mouth was very serious, almost trembling with seriousness.

She said, “No, I don’t think it’s too old.”

“Me neither,” he said.