Nora and Liz (2 page)

So, she thought, it’s not going to be a calm day after all. “Shall I get you a pill?” she asked. Dr. Cantor, a tall, mournful-looking man who had been the
Tillots
’ doctor for as long as Nora could remember, had prescribed Dramamine for his dizzy spells. “Could be inactivity, could be a tumor, could be Parkinson’s, could be an ear problem,” he’d told her months earlier when the spells had started, his thin lips set in an exasperated line. “But since he won’t go to the hospital for tests, we’ll never know. At least the Dramamine won’t hurt him.”

“Yes, a pill,” Ralph said, so Nora fetched the Dramamine and water, plus a flexible straw since he no longer was sitting.

“It’s cold in here,” he complained, after swallowing.

“I’ll get you another blanket.” Wearily, she fetched one from the chest in the hall.

Several demands later—window open, pillows rearranged, window shut, chair out of position, another bout with the urinal—she was finally able to go to her mother’s room.

Corinne
Tillot
, a diminutive figure in a faded granny gown sprigged with roses, was snoring. Nora put one hand on her shoulder, patting it lightly. “Mama,” she said softly. “Mama, bath time. It’s a beautiful day,” she went on, hoping she was right; it had seemed so, anyway, the little she’d seen of it.

“Goo’ morn’—uh—dearie.” Corinne opened a red-rimmed rheumy eye. Her voice seemed clear, though her speech, affected by the stroke she’d had three years earlier, was slurred and fuzzy.

“Father’s had his bath.” Cheerfully, Nora stripped off the covers and unbuttoned her mother’s nightgown. “And Thomas is out.” She removed the nightgown and the adult diaper her mother wore under it.

“Tom-ass?” A frown furrowed Corinne’s forehead, deepening its wrinkles.

“You remember Thomas.” Nora wet the flannel and wrung it out, applying soap. “The cat. He’s chasing grasshoppers, I imagine.”

“
Izzat
—all right?” Corinne asked anxiously.

“Yes, Mama, it’s all right.” Nora gently sponged her mother’s frail body, the shriveled pendulous breasts, the protruding belly.

“Nora, Nora,” her mother cried, looking down at herself in alarm. “I haven’t anything on!”

“It’s all right, Mama. It’s just you and me. No one’s here to see.”

“But I’m cold!” Corinne wailed, tears pooling in her eyes. “I’m cold!” She reached up, curling her good arm around Nora’s neck in a scissors grip, burying her head in Nora’s collar.

Damn, Nora thought, pulling the sheet up. “I’m sorry, Mama. You’ll be all toasty warm in a moment. There.” She added the blanket. “Better?”

Her mother nodded and closed her eyes.

Nora waited. When her mother was breathing evenly, she continued the bath, lifting the sheet and blanket a little at a time, and sponging her mother’s body under it.

Then, quietly, she glided into the kitchen to make breakfast.

The motel coffee shop was grim, hardly deserving the name. Small
formica
-topped tables were set at angles to one another on a green linoleum floor that had seen better days. Once-colorful plastic chairs, rose and tan mostly, with a couple of dingy yellow ones thrown in, surrounded them, but they, along with the dusty plastic flowers on each table, failed to brighten the room. Fat glass coffee pots, one topped with brown plastic, the other with orange, steamed on a two-burner hotplate alongside baskets of hard-edged muffins, individual-serving-sized cold cereals, and overdone bagels. Smaller baskets held packets of sugar, Equal, and Sweet-and-Lo, along with plastic soufflé cups of half-and-half and envelopes of
Cremora
.

Liz Hardy tossed her jacket over one of the yellow chairs and poured coffee from the brown-topped pot into a chipped white mug. Well, she thought, doubtfully scanning the offered food and plopping a muffin—corn? “plain”?—onto a paper plate, what did you expect? You didn’t exactly choose a five-star-
er
, kiddo!

Still, the bed had been comfortable enough, though she’d felt startled all over again at waking up without Megan beside her. Why, she’d wondered, for she had left Megan three months earlier; surely she should be used to her absence by now! Then she’d realized this was the first time she’d stayed in a motel without her. Not that they’d stayed in many motels in the seven years they’d been together, but a few—enough, I guess, Liz mused, to make it feel strange to be in one without her now.

She sat down, but the coffee was weak and the muffin she’d chosen was dry and tasteless, as if it were at least yesterday’s, if not last week’s. There didn’t seem to be any butter, nor did there seem to be anyone to ask. “Shit,” Liz muttered, fighting off an unexpected wave of grief and self-pity. She crushed the muffin in her fist and was hurling it into the trash can near the coffee pots when a man reeled sleepily into the room, heading for the counter. The muffin went in, but only because the man, grinning, ducked. “Two points,” he said, lurching toward her, holding out his hand. “Mind if I join you?”

“Oh, stuff it,” Liz barked, shoving her chair back and scuffling noisily to her feet.

***

Back in her dismal motel room she stood for a moment, fists clenched, in front of the window. The sun was already making the cars in the parking lot cast shadows on the asphalt, still damp here and there with last night’s rain. Poor guy, she thought; it’s not his fault I’m in a lousy mood.

Late the day before on the phone with Jeff, her brother, she had cried, and he’d said, “Don’t go, Liz; don’t do this. It’s too soon,” and she’d said, “If you don’t want the house, I don’t either. Too many memories.”

“You mean memories of Megan,” he’d said. “I wish she’d take you back.”

“Well, she won’t. Would you go back to someone who ditched you?” Megan was already with someone else anyway; she decided not to remind Jeff of that.

“No,” Jeff had admitted, “but don’t go to the house now, okay?”

The “house” was a cabin, really, a summer retreat Jeff and Liz had grown up in year after year, fishing and rowing and roaming the woods, playing cowboys and astronauts and spies. Even as adults, they’d visited it every summer, till five years ago when their mother had died of breast cancer. After that, their father had been too sad to go back, and when he’d died, recently, of a heart attack, Liz and Jeff had tentatively made plans to put the cabin on the market and split the money when it sold. But before it could be shown, Liz knew, it would need cleaning, and, now that school was almost out (Liz taught biology and physiology in a private school in Manhattan) and now that Megan was gone, she’d decided she might as well tackle that job and also actually meet the real estate agent she’d contacted by phone and e-mail. She’d taken the Thursday and Friday before the long Memorial Day weekend off from school so she could get started. And she’d left as planned despite Jeff’s reservations, stopping overnight at the motel to avoid having to face five years’ worth of dust and mouse leavings in the rain and the dark.

“I wish I could come and help,” Jeff had said on the phone when she’d made it clear that she was going through with her plans.

“I wish you could, too.” But she knew he couldn’t. He’d already taken two weeks when their father died, and she knew he wouldn’t want to be away again from Susan, his wife, and Gus, their two-year-old son.

Liz turned away from the window and dabbed fiercely at the tears that had sprung to her eyes. She wheeled decisively, picked up her suitcase and backpack, and strode out through the lobby to her rental car.

***

A few minutes later, driving the speed limit on the highway toward Providence with the windows open and the wind blowing through her short dark brown hair, she felt better. I can do this, she told herself. I really, truly can do this. She had already learned in the three months since she’d left Megan that it was risky to think too much about the future, to worry about spending the rest of her life alone, or about turning into “a dried-up old schoolteacher,” a hackneyed phrase one of her colleagues liked to use. When Dad had died, Megan had called, all sympathy and warmth, and Liz had wanted to ask her to come back. But Megan was already with
Janey
by then, had moved in with her a scant six weeks after the night when Liz had said, as kindly as possible, “
Meggie
, it’s not working; it’s just not working with us.”

What I meant, Liz thought now, forcing her mind to jump beyond the memory of Megan’s astonished tears, was that I couldn’t do it, couldn’t let myself be one-half of a permanent couple.

“Couldn’t let yourself take the risk,” Jeff had said when she’d told him. “You have to take risks, Lizzie, in love. Susan taught me that. It’s like that song, you know, that Bette Midler
song,‘The
Rose.’”

Liz had played the song and denied that she fit any of its lines, but now, as the car crossed into Rhode Island and a sudden traffic pocket roared and whirred around her, she found she was grateful that she had to concentrate on staying alive instead of on the memories that crowded her mind.

***

But once she was through the city and driving more slowly on suburban streets that soon thinned and gave way to narrow country roads and sleepy, ill-kept towns, the memories crowded back. It didn’t seem as if five years had passed since she’d driven out to the lakeside cabin. No one’s ever believed in paint in this state, she thought fondly, passing familiar shabby houses and smiling at old landmarks: Genovese’s Bakery, Blue Seal Feeds, The New York Department Store, the white clapboard church with the stone front, Casey’s Pharmacy and Drug…

And Bob’s Tackle Shop, where she and Dad and
Jeffie
had
pored
for hours over lures and flies, next to Acme Sporting Goods, where they’d bought baseballs and where Dad had bought her a fielder’s mitt—and then, outside of town, the rutted dirt road leading to the farm where the crazy people lived without electricity or running water—and at last, the hill…

There was a sudden crunching sound and the car bumped rhythmically on one side as if one wheel had turned square, the unmistakable sound of a flat.

“Damn!”

Liz pulled onto the shoulder. The road was deserted and she knew it was miles to the nearest service station that offered more than gas and candy bars. Sighing, she got out. Yes, it was the right front tire, but that’s okay, she told herself; there’s got to be a spare, you know how to change a tire, just get the damn jack and stuff out of the trunk.

But although there was a full-sized spare, there was no jack, no tire iron, no wrenches, no tools of any kind, and she kicked herself “three ways to Sunday,” as her father had often said, for not checking before she’d driven the car away from the rental place.

The old farm, she thought; the crazy people will have a jack. Farm people always have tools.

Besides—she slung her backpack over her shoulder—maybe it’s just a rumor that they don’t have electricity or water.

God, she thought, as she trudged back to the farm’s road, I hope they haven’t died or moved away or anything like that!

The knock at the door was louder the second time.

“What’s that?” Ralph bellowed from his room.

Nora, in the kitchen putting the finishing touches on lunch, wiped her hands wearily on her apron, then took it off and draped it over a chair. “Someone’s at the door, I think.”

“Don’t answer it.”

“Why on earth not?” Nora said, rolling her eyes. Lately she’d been doing that, indulging in little childish expressions of disgust or anger.

“Because you never know who it might be. Some jerk, wanting money.”

Nora stuck her head into her father’s room. “Don’t be silly. It’s probably Mrs. Brice or Mr. Hastings.”

“Or the doctor,” her father said suspiciously, swinging his legs clumsily over the side of the bed. “Did you call him? Your mother’s worse, isn’t she?”

“No, Father, no,” Nora crooned, going into the room as the knock came again, a volley this time, increasingly determined. She bent, lifting his legs up and attempting to swing them back.

Her father kicked her, hard. “Don’t do that!” he shouted, struggling to his feet while she stepped back, shocked, rubbing her jaw where his foot had caught her. He’d never done that before.

“Ouch,” she said deliberately, accusingly. “That hurt.”

“Well, get out of my way. Someone’s got to protect this place.” Reeling, her father stood, the pajama bottoms she’d put on him after his bath slipping below his waist, barely covering his groin.