Free Noah's Compass by Anne Tyler Page A

understand.”
    “Right.”
    “How about the man’s voice? Did you hear him speak?”
    He felt a sudden sense of despair. He said, “Didn’t they tell you I don’t remember? I don’t remember a thing!”
    “Just checking.”
    “What: do you imagine you’ll trip me up?”
    “No need to get excited, sir.”
    He forced himself to take a deep breath. No need at all; she was right, but somehow he felt accused. To this woman he looked inattentive, sloppy, lax. He decided to go on the offensive. “So what will you do next?” he asked her.
    “Well, we have the case in our records now.”
    “Is that it?”
    She stared him down.
    “How about fingerprints? Did they find any fingerprints?” he asked.
    “Oh, well, fingerprints. Fingerprints are overrated,” she said.
    Then she told him to take care (an expression he hated; take care of what?), and she and her partner walked out.
    Back during Liam’s first marriage, when all their friends were having babies, he and Millie knew a woman who experienced some terrible complication during labor and lay in a coma for several weeks afterward. Gradually she returned to consciousness, but for a long time she had no recollection of the whole preceding year. She didn’t even remember being pregnant.
    Here was this infant boy, very sweet and all that but what did he have to do with her? Then one day, a neighbor climbed her porch steps and trilled out, “Yoo-hoo!” Evidently that was the neighbor’s trademark greeting, uttered in a high fluty voice with a Southern roundness to the vowels. The woman rose slowly from her chair. Her eyes widened; her lips parted. As she described it later, it was as if the neighbor’s “Yoo-hoo” had provided a string for her to grab hold of, and when she tugged it, other memories came trailing in besides—not just the previous “Yoo-hoos,” but how this neighbor brought homemade pies to people at the drop of a hat, and how she always labeled her pie tins with her name on a strip of masking tape, and how in fact she’d contributed a pie to the final, celebratory meeting of the childbirth class that they had both attended. Childbirth! And bit by bit, over the course of the next few days, more and more came back, until the woman remembered everything.
    Wouldn’t it be wonderful if Liam could find such a string?
    “Good afternoon, Dr. Morrow’s office,” the voice on the telephone said.
    Liam said, “Ah, hello. Verity? I’m calling on behalf of Ishmael Cope. Mr. Cope has mislaid his appointment card, and he asked me to find out when he’s due in next.”
    “Cope,” the receptionist said. There was a series of clicking sounds. “Cope. Cope. Ishmael Cope. He’s not due in.”
    “He’s not?”
    “Did he say he was?”
    “Well, ah … yes, he seemed to believe so.”
    “But he was just here,” the receptionist said.
    “Was he? Oh, his mistake, then. Never mind.”
    “Ordinarily he waits till closer to the actual time to make the next appointment, since we see him just every three months is all, but if you’d prefer to set something up for him—”
    “I’ll find out and call you back. Thanks.”
    Liam replaced the receiver.
    That evening his sister arrived bearing a cast-iron pot. “Stew,” she announced, and she swept past him into the apartment and stopped short and looked around. “Goodness,” she said. Liam didn’t know why. All his boxes were unpacked now and he thought the place was looking fairly decent. But: “You know,” she said, “just because you live alone doesn’t mean you have to live miserably.”
    “I’m not living miserably!”
    She turned and skinned him with a glance. “And don’t think I can’t see what you’re up to,”
    she said. “You’re trying to come out even with your clothes.”
    “Come out …?”
    “You suppose if you play your cards right, you won’t have to buy more clothes before you d ie. ”
    “I don’t suppose any such thing,” Liam said. Although it was true that the