Nora and Liz (16 page)

“No, no science.” Nora chuckled. “I don’t think I could manage that. Not smart enough, I guess.”

There she goes again; Liz turned down the long drive to the cabin. “I don’t think it’s a question of smart,” she said carefully. “I’m smart, but I could never manage poetry.”

“Poetry’s just words,” Nora said absently.

“And thoughts and ideas and feelings. Plus beauty, no?” Liz stopped in front of the cabin and turned toward Nora. “No?”

“Well, yes, that’s right.” Nora seemed surprised. “But when I write it, I don’t think of it that way. It just sort of comes out, you know?”

“Wow! So you write poetry?”

Nora nodded. “I’m taking a correspondence course. I don’t think I’m very good at it. The instructors are told to encourage the students; it’s pretty transparent. But it’s fun. And sometimes a kind of—relief, I guess.”

“Are your poems very private?” Liz switched off the ignition. “Or do you show them to people?”

“Who would I show them to?” Nora looked out the car window at the cabin. “I love it,” she said. “What a sweet little house!”

“It wasn’t so sweet when I arrived,” Liz said, getting out of the car. “At least not inside. But, yeah, I guess it does look pretty nice.” She went around to the passenger side.

Nora had jumped out by then and was looking toward the lake, shading her eyes. “How wonderful,” she said, “it must be to wake up here in the morning. It must be so peaceful, so calm!”

“It is. I usually take my coffee out to the dock. Or I have a swim and then take my coffee out to the dock. If it’s really early, there’s no sound but the birds and there are lots of them. Come.” She held out her hand impulsively, without really noticing. “Come see the garden.”

Nora took her hand, whereupon Liz did notice and felt instantly wary, self-conscious. But she managed to lead Nora around the side of the house to her mother’s perennial plot, with the rock garden beyond.

“Oh,” Nora exclaimed, dropping Liz’s hand and falling to her knees. “Oh, but this is marvelous!”

Liz knelt beside her. “Is it? I wouldn’t know. I mean, it looks pretty and even exciting, with stuff coming up and all, but I only know maybe two or three of these flowers and I have no idea”—she pointed to a cluster of stubby gray-green leaves—“if something like that is a weed or a rare exotic plant.”

“Neither. It’s a sedum. It’ll spend the summer growing and then in the fall it’ll have flowers. They’ll probably be a sort of maroon-reddish, but they might be yellow. There are lots of different kinds of sedum,” Nora explained, carefully moving twigs and leaf mold off some small multi-lobed leaves. “Look,” she said, “here’s a little chrysanthemum plant. It’s been neglected, but if you keep an eye on it and pinch it off several times during the summer, it should form a nice mound and then flower in the fall.”

“Chrysanthemum! You mean those huge fall flowers?”

“Some of them are huge, but this one will probably have lots of smallish ones. That’s the goal of pinching off, usually, to help plants form mounds covered with flowers. Now here”—Nora stood up, brushing dirt from her knees; her legs were bare, Liz noticed, and her feet, with neatly trimmed nails, were in sandals—“here’s phlox coming, lots of it.” She pointed to several tall leafy plants with buds at the ends of their many branches. “These will flower fairly soon. You might put some fertilizer in, though; everything’s kind of spindly, probably undernourished.”

“What kind of fertilizer?” Liz asked, enjoying watching Nora move around the garden, examining, bending over the plants, touching them delicately, confidently.

“You could get some all-purpose commercial stuff at a hardware store. Or you could get a soil test kit and find out exactly what the soil lacks.” Nora cocked her head. “That should interest you,” she said. “Mixing chemicals.”

“I’m not a chemist, but, well, yes, I guess it would. Really? Mixing chemicals?”

“It depends on the kind of kit. Some involve more work than others. They sell all kinds at Greely’s. You know, the hardware store in town.”

Liz nodded. “Maybe we could go there when we’re through grocery shopping. And you could show me which one to buy.”

“Sure,” said Nora, “if there’s time.”

“When do you have to be back?”

“An hour ago, if Father has his way,” Nora answered with a rueful smile. “I’m usually out for about two hours with Mrs. Brice, but this time I tried to tell him it’d be a bit longer. It can’t be too much longer, though; he gets very anxious.”

Liz looked at her watch, swallowing a less-than-charitable reply. “Then I guess we’d better get going. Tell you what. You stay out here and grub around in the garden so you can tell me more about it, and I’ll see to lunch.”

“But can’t I help you?”

“Nope.” Liz scrambled to her feet. “Seems to me you deserve an occasional meal you don’t have to prepare.”

“Thank you. That’s very kind.”

For a moment they looked at each other, and then Liz, struck by the intensity of the look, said, gruffly, “I’ll give you a shout.”

***

Recklessly, Liz served chardonnay with the French bread, the grilled salmon, and the Caesar salad, and they lingered over it, looking out over the lake from the living room. She wondered how often Nora drank wine; not often, she suspected. But she seemed to appreciate it, sipping it delicately, sometimes holding it in her mouth before she swallowed as if savoring its flavor as appreciatively as she’d seemed to savor turning the knobs on the stove and the TV, and examining the refrigerator.

“No motorboats,” Nora commented after a comfortable pause. “I was afraid there’d be many, roaring by.”

“Not yet. But come July, there’ll be more. At least there always were. By August I’ll probably want to scream at them to shut up. I like to watch the water skiers, though. Once one of them let me try her skis. It was terrifying and wonderful, all at once.”

“You seem like a daring sort of person.” Nora held up her glass, squinting through it at Liz. “The kind of person who’d do anything if she had a chance. Climb mountains, traverse the Arctic, cut your way through the jungle.”

Liz laughed and poured them both more wine. “I’m afraid I’m the type who likes to read about adventures more than have them. When I was a kid I used to think I’d do that kind of thing, or maybe become an Olympic athlete. But somehow I never found time to train for anything, and it’s my firm belief that if you put a dream off by saying you don’t have time for it, you really don’t want it enough.”

“You’re probably right.” Nora sipped, then put down her glass. “It must be wonderful to want something that much, enough to work hard for it. I never did. I never knew what I wanted. So it’s just as well I’m doing what I’m doing. No thwarted dreams.”

“No dreams of marrying, even?” Liz asked casually. “Of a husband and kids?”

“Not really.” Nora’s eyes went to the window again. “There was a boy, Peter, in my class in high school. We were friends. But I didn’t date like other girls. Too shy, I guess, or just not interested. And not allowed to anyway.” She turned back to Liz. “What about you?”

Briskly, Liz stacked the plates. “Boys—men—never interested me much either. How about a little carrot cake?”

“Do we have time?” Nora, seeming nervous, glanced at her watch. It was an old-fashioned ladies’ watch, Liz noticed, with a black string-like strap. “Oh, my! Could we have the cake some other time? I think I’d really better get at the shopping.”

“Sure,” said Liz, standing there holding plates. “If you promise that we’ll do this again. Lunch, I mean. The garden.”

Nora stood up. “Oh, we will, don’t you think? And I’ll fix lunch here for you, if you’ll let me. I’d love to learn how to use your stove, and I’d love to run water in your sink, and—oh, and turn lights on and off.” Laughing, she flipped a nearby switch, then said, soberly, “If it’s not too boring for you. If I’m not.”

“You are not,” Liz said before heading for the kitchen, “in the least boring.”

“He’s in rare form,” Patty said, meeting Nora at the door when Liz dropped her off at around 3:30. She was a cheerful girl with a fresh, open face who had graduated from the local high school a year earlier and since then had been earning a meager living by expanding her former baby- and elder-sitting jobs. “He’s on a rampage. I kept telling him you’d said you’d be later than usual, but it didn’t seem to make much difference. Here, let me have one of those.” She took a grocery bag from Nora and followed her into the kitchen. “He even tried to use the phone,” she said, setting the bag down on the table.

“He didn’t!” Nora put her own bag down, her pocketbook next to it.

“Yeah.” Patty grinned. “He did. I thought he was going to, like, rip it off the wall. He grabbed the receiver and then he yelled, ‘Where the hell’s the dial? How do you work this infernal thing?’ I figured he must’ve used old-fashioned phones long ago at work or something, so I tried to, you know, explain about the buttons and stuff, and I gave him the number you left me, but he like freaked and banged at the buttons so hard I was afraid he was going to bust the phone through the wall. So I called the number for him, about eleven times; he kept making me do it again. No answer.”

Nora groaned. “Oh, lord, I’m sorry, Patty! We were out shopping by then, probably. My friend and I.” She said ‘my friend’ carefully, then realized she was savoring it as she had the wine, tasting it, almost.

“Yeah, that’s what I figured. But he—uh-oh.” Patty stepped back as Ralph thumped through the door, his shirt buttoned wrong.

“It’s about time!” he thundered, banging his walker against the floor. “Where the hell were you?”

“Shopping,” Nora said mildly, indicating the bags. “As you can see. I told you I’d be later than usual.”

“Gallivanting!” Ralph roared. “Neglecting your duties.” He reached into a bag, pulled out a package of Oreos, his favorite; Nora had gotten them as a peace offering.

Or, she thought, opening the package for him, as a bribe?

“Want some tea?” she asked him. “Patty?”

“No, thanks. I’ll be going.” Patty glanced at Ralph, who was stuffing cookies, and lowered her voice. “Um, you probably should have a look at your mother; she seems—I don’t know. Kind of, you know, dopey. Not dumb, I mean,” she added hastily. “Like sleepy-dopey. She didn’t say much the whole time I was here, didn’t want much either.”

“I will,” Nora said. “Anything else?”

“Nope. Good luck,” Patty whispered, giving Nora’s arm a little squeeze as she left.

“Thanks,” Nora called.

“For what?” said Ralph, dark brown crumbs cascading down his chin.

Nora reached up and brushed them away. “For looking after you. Sit down, Father. I’ll put the kettle on, then go check on Mama. Come on.” She took his arm and settled him in a chair. She felt calmer, more amused than angry, as if the glow of her afternoon out with Liz was protecting her, insulating her from her father.

“You got those towels,” Ralph said reproachfully, peering into a bag after he was seated.

Nora handed him another cookie. “Yes, I did.” She planted herself in front of him. “Father,” she said boldly, “since I’m the one who does the cooking and cleaning and everything else, don’t you think I ought to be the one who decides what to buy? If I need something in order to make my job more efficient, I think I should get it. Don’t you?”

“Well, Miss Fancy Pants, I’m the one who pays for everything around here.”

“Not quite everything.” But Nora felt the protective wall begin to crumble. She stopped, built it up again, and said, “In any case, what’s done is done. Paper towels are cleaner than rags and cloth towels.” She bent close to him and playfully tweaked his nose. “Fewer germs,” she whispered
sepulchrally
, then turned and filled the kettle.

“My back aches,” Ralph whined. “I have a lot of gas, Nora. I can’t move my bowels. You better find the magnesia or something.”

Nora reached the blue bottle down from the cupboard and handed it to him with a spoon, took the tea out of the canister, and headed for the door leading to Corinne’s room. “I’ll be right back.”

“Help me,” Ralph said softly. “Help me.”

She turned, alarmed; he’d unscrewed the top of the bottle and was holding it out in one hand, the spoon in the other. Both hands were shaking.

In an instant she was at his side and had taken both bottle and spoon, pouring out the dose and feeding it to him.

“Thank you,” he whispered, closing his eyes. “You’re a good girl.”