Ladder of Years Read Free

essential,” Delia said. A reflex: she never gave up trying to protect her husband from his patients.
    Behind her, the scanner said peep … peep … peep , registering her groceries. The music had stopped playing several minutes back, as Delia just now noticed, and the murmuring of shoppers elsewhere in the store sounded hushed and ominous.
    “That’ll be thirty-three forty,” the cashier announced.
    Delia turned to fill in her check and found Adrian handing over the money. “Oh!” she said, preparing to argue. But then she grew conscious of Rosemary listening.
    Adrian flashed her a wide, sweet smile and accepted his change. “Good seeing you,” he told the other couple. He walked on out, pushing the cart, with Delia trailing behind.
    It had been raining off and on for days, but this morning had dawned clear and the parking lot had a rinsed, fresh, soft look under a film of lemony sunlight. Adrian halted the cart at the curb and lifted out two of the grocery bags, leaving the third for Delia. Next came the problem of whose car to head for. He was already starting toward his own, which was evidently parked somewhere near the dry cleaner’s, when she stopped him. “Wait,” she said. “I’m right here.”
    “But what if they see us? We can’t leave in two different cars!”
    “Well, I do have a life to get back to,” Delia snapped. This whole business had gone far enough, it occurred to her. She was missing her baby-food spinach and her cornflakes and untold other items on account of a total stranger. She flung open the trunk of her Plymouth.
    “Oh, all right,” Adrian said. “What we’ll do is load these groceries very, very slowly, and by that time they’ll have driven away. They didn’t have so much to ring up: two steaks, two potatoes, a head of lettuce, and a box of after-dinner mints. That won’t take long.”
    Delia was astonished at his powers of observation. She watched him arrange his bags in her trunk, after which he consumed a good half minute repositioning a small box of something. Orzo, it was—a most peculiar, tiny-sized pasta that she’d often noticed on the shelf but never bought. She had thought it resembled rice, in which case why not serverice instead, which was surely more nutritious? She handed him the bag she was holding, and he settled that with elaborate care between the first two. “Are they coming out yet?” he asked.
    “No,” she said, looking past him toward the store. “Listen, I owe you some money.”
    “My treat.”
    “No, really, I have to pay you back. Only I planned to write a check and I don’t have any cash. Would you accept a check? I could show you my driver’s license,” she said.
    He laughed.
    “I’m serious,” she told him. “If you don’t mind taking a—”
    Then she caught sight of Skipper and Rosemary emerging from the supermarket. Skipper hugged a single brown paper bag. Rosemary carried nothing but a purse the size of a sandwich, on a glittery golden chain.
    “Is it them?” Adrian asked.
    “It’s them.”
    He bent inside her trunk and started rearranging groceries again. “Tell me when they’re gone,” he said.
    The couple crossed to a low red sports car. Rosemary was at least Skipper’s height if not taller, and she had the slouching, indifferent gait of a runway model. If she had walked into a wall, her hipbones would have hit first.
    “Are they looking our way?” Adrian asked.
    “I don’t think they see us.”
    Skipper opened the passenger door, and Rosemary folded herself out of sight. He handed in the sack of groceries and shut the door, strode to the driver’s side, slid in and started the engine. Only then did he shut his own door. With a tightly knit, snarling sound, the little car spun around and buzzed off.
    “They’re gone,” Delia said.
    Adrian closed the trunk lid. He seemed older now. For the first time, Delia saw the fragile lines etched at the corners of his mouth.
    “Well,” he said sadly.
    It seemed crass