Nora and Liz (8 page)

“Maybe,” Liz said, amused again. “Depends on how many stops I make. But that’s okay. I actually like driving in the dark.”

Nora shuddered. “I’d be afraid,” she said. “Not of the dark itself; I’m used to that. Of the city in the dark. But I suppose there are lots of lights.”

“Yes. There are. Well…” Liz held out the bundle of tools. “Here’s your jack and stuff. Thanks again for helping me out.”

Awkwardly, Nora took the package. “You’re welcome. Um, stop by when you come back. If you want. You know. In the summer.”

“Sure,” Liz said easily, sure that she wouldn’t, then not sure. “That’d be fine. Okay, then. See you.”

“Yes.” Nora smiled. “See you,” she added, more comfortably than she’d said it when Liz had left with the jack.

Nora watched Liz go, and realized only after the car had disappeared that she was still holding the tools. “I wonder if she’ll come back,” she said out loud to Thomas, who had given up on the butterfly and was scratching his neck. “Do you think so, puss?” She put the tools on the ground and picked Thomas up, cuddling him next to her cheek, but he squirmed and leapt down.

Unaccountably, tears sprang to Nora’s eyes. She stood there for a moment, uncertain what to do next, then returned the tools to the barn and ripped the few remaining weeds away from her lettuce rows.

***

She’s halfway to New York now, Nora thought later, beating eggs for supper. She’d made a roast for Sunday noon dinner, putting it in the oven before church and asking Patty, who as usual had sat with her parents while she was out, to make sure that it didn’t burn and that the oven temperature stayed constant. Halfway to New York.

What’s Liz Hardy’s life like, Nora wondered, grating cheese into the eggs. Parties, cocktails, the theater, movies? Or does she go home every night to an empty house? No, an apartment, it would be, in New York City. Wouldn’t it? Maybe she lives with a man, her boyfriend. She doesn’t seem to be married. Or maybe she lives with women, with roommates. Career girls, isn’t that the term? Does she have a job? But she said she’d be here for the summer. Maybe she’s rich and doesn’t need to work. A socialite. Or maybe she’s a teacher.

Yes, that could be it; that way she’d have the summer off to come here…

“Nora!”

Nora put down the grater. “Yes, Father? What is it?”

“I have to piss.”

“I’ll be right there.”

“Hurry up, will you?”

Nora wiped her hands on her apron, a different, smaller one from the one she’d worn for gardening, then went into Ralph’s room and gave him the urinal, although they both knew he was perfectly capable of getting it himself from its spot hanging off the headboard of his bed.

After a minute he handed it back to her, not very full, from under the covers. “Empty it,” he ordered unnecessarily.

Swallowing the impulse to say “Empty it,
please,”
as one would to a rude child, she took the urinal to the outhouse.

“That woman was here again,” Ralph said when she returned. “Wasn’t she?”

“What woman?” Nora asked, although of course she knew. “Mrs. Brice was here taking me to church and bringing me back, as usual. And Patty Monahan was here as usual, too, taking care of you and Mama and the roast while I was gone.”

“I don’t mean them. It’s cold in here. Close the window.”

Nora closed the window.

“I mean that stranger woman. The one with the car trouble. What did she want?”

“She was returning the tools she borrowed.”

Ralph grunted. “She shouldn’t have taken them in the first place!”

“I told you I let her take them. We don’t need them.”

“You’re naive, Nora. She probably didn’t have a flat tire. She was probably casing the joint. Took the tools on purpose so she could come back.”

“
What?”

“
You heard me. That’s how thieves operate. She could have a boyfriend who’s planning to rob us, once she’s told him where the doors are and had a good look at the locks.”

“That’s ridiculous!”

Ralph struggled to a sitting position. “You’ll laugh out of the other side of your face if they steal us blind! I see those papers you get on Sundays. I know about the crime rate. Don’t you let that woman in if she comes back. Don’t talk to anyone who comes. Just come inside if you’re outdoors. Do you hear me?”

“I hear you,” Nora answered, leaving, “but I don’t believe you,” she added under her breath when she was back in the kitchen.

“Nora!” That was Corinne, her thin voice snaking across the room.

Nora sighed. “Yes, Mama, coming.” She poked her head in her mother’s doorway. “What is it?”

Corinne seemed startled. “Why, I’ve forgotten, dearie. Maybe…” She frowned, looking dangerously close to tears. “Oh, what’s wrong with me? Why can’t I remember?”

Nora went all the way into the room and put her arms around her. “Maybe you just wanted to say hello, sweetie,” she said.

Corinne looked up at her, blue eyes swimming. “Hello,” she said, her soft face breaking into a wan smile. “Maybe that was it.” She patted Nora’s hand. “Is it very expansive?”

“Very what?”

“Expansive. Staying here. Do we pay a lot of money?”

“Oh,
expensive
, you mean,” Nora said, then regretted it:
Don’t correct her,
Dr. Cantor had said,
unless you really have to; it’ll disturb her more.
But everyone—Nora, Louise Brice, Sara Cassidy, Ralph—frequently forgot, as they had the other day when she’d had that TIA and thought she was still Corinne Parker. Thank goodness Sarah had said Dr. Cantor had come and checked her over, and that he thought it was no more worrisome than the other little ones she’d had.

“No, it’s not expensive,” Nora told her mother. “We don’t have to pay anything.”

But she was worried now, anyway. What now, she thought. Where does she think she is?

“We don’t? How nice of them. The
Smithsons
. How are they?”

Nora racked her brain, then dimly remembered: the
Smithsons
had owned the house briefly after the deaths of her father’s eccentric parents, who’d sold it to them. Ralph had bought it back when he and Corinne had married, steadfastly refusing, as he said his own father had, to put in electricity and plumbing. “Got to stay true to history,” her grandfather apparently used to say when Ralph was a boy. “And keep the taxes low.” Ralph still quoted him when anyone dared suggest “improvements.”

The
Smithsons
had never actually lived in the house, having bought it with the intention of modernizing it when they could afford to. But they’d lost the money they’d invested for that purpose, and were delighted when Ralph had agreed to take it back, or so Ralph had always said.

“The
Smithsons
are fine,” Nora said, though they’d been dead for at least twenty years, both of them. “And guess what? They’ve let Father buy the house. So now we own it and don’t have to pay anything. Isn’t that wonderful?”

“Oh, yes,” Corinne said sleepily, relaxing in Nora’s arms; Nora laid her back against the pillows. “Very nice.” Corinne closed her eyes, then opened them. “I’m hungry,” she said plaintively.

“I’m just starting supper. Lovely eggs and cheese. It’ll be ready soon. I’ll get you up in a few minutes, okay? And then we’ll sit at the table and eat it, and then I’ll read aloud for a while. Would you like that?”

“Yes, dearie.” Corinne seemed contented now. “Very nice. You’re such a good girl, Nora,” she added, suddenly lucid again. “And it’s so hard for you. You do know how grateful we are, Father and I, don’t you?”

Nora bent and kissed her mother’s soft cheek. “Yes,” she said, “I know.”

Chapter Nine

It was stifling inside the little white clapboard church with the stone front. Mid-June sun burst through the stained glass windows, making hot multicolored splotches on the maroon carpet that ran down the center aisle and between the white, oak-trimmed pews. The day lilies and irises on the altar, a cheerful yellow and blue crazy quilt at the beginning of the service, had by now, as sweaty, shiny-faced ushers passed the collection plates, become a limp and faded blanket.

“Poor Charles Hastings,” Louise Brice whispered to Nora after the service as they made their way with the rest of the congregation to just outside the vestibule, where the minister stood manfully shaking hands and thanking people for liking his sermon. His wife, Marie, who had always reminded Nora of a kindly giraffe, stood off to one side, her straw hat slightly askew, in earnest conversation with the choir director. She was a thin but rawboned woman, with a florid face and knobby features. They were an odd-looking pair, the
Hastingses
, for Charles was much shorter than Marie, and despite his plump cheeks and thick neck, had a slight but strong-looking build, a runner’s body incongruously topped with a decidedly indoor face.

Nora didn’t know if she’d liked the sermon or not; she’d been daydreaming, planning the rest of her garden. Could she get away with putting the second crop of beans along the back fence for another year? Or should she rotate them with the pickling cucumbers, which had been on the side fence the summer before?

“That cassock must be dreadfully hot, Charles,” Louise said when they reached the minister, whose face was streaming sweat. Her own pink features, islands in folds of damp flesh, were shiny with exuded oil that had long since absorbed their liberal ration of powder. “I imagine you’ll be glad to get it off.”

“Oh, I’m used to it, Louise, I’m used to it. And how have your parents been this week?” he asked, turning to Nora and clasping her moist hand with his own.

“Father’s been the same as always, thank you, Mr. Hastings,” Nora said primly. “But my mother’s going downhill, I’m afraid. She’s lucid less and less of the time.”

A concerned frown creased Charles’s forehead and narrowed his otherwise large eyes; he fumbled under his cassock, withdrawing a monogrammed handkerchief with which he delicately blotted his brow. “I am so sorry, my dear. Mrs. Hastings and I will stop in this week, shall we?”

“That would be lovely.” Nora forced a smile and out of the corner of her eye saw Louise nodding vigorous approval. But Nora hated those ministerial visits, full of friendly advice and demanding careful preparations. “Come for tea, perhaps Wednesday?” she asked dutifully, knowing the visit was inevitable. When the
Hastingses
decided to do something, it was as good as done. Putting it off till Wednesday, she calculated, would give her time to make sure the parlor was aired and dusted and would perhaps allow the heat wave to break before she had to make cookies or a cake or whatever she decided to give them. Thank goodness it was easy enough to keep the dining room off the parlor closed even when the parlor was being used; at least she wouldn’t have to dust and air both rooms.

The heat wave hadn’t broken by Wednesday, and Nora had spent Tuesday scrubbing and cleaning, though she’d wanted to plant the beans, which she’d decided to rotate with the cucumbers after all. But of course in this heat, with no rain, that would be foolish, she told herself, momentarily longing for running water, an outside faucet, and a hose.

Wednesday morning she baked, in between answering her father’s calls; he’d seemed unusually demanding after she’d helped him dress, though Corinne slept serenely. Nora had moved her mother’s bed closer to her window in the hope of catching any stray breeze, and had dressed her in her gauziest nightgown, though she’d been tempted to try to convince her to stay nude after her bath till the company was due to arrive.

Just when the cookies were nearly done, Ralph called again and Nora swore softly under her breath as she went to the door of his room—where she stopped, horrified, for he was lying on the floor, eyes closed, his limbs flailing about helplessly—like a downed elephant, Nora thought. She suppressed a giggle even as she rushed to him, worried, and knelt by his side.

“Father, what happened?” she cried, and he said, not opening his eyes, “What the hell does it look like, girl? I fell getting off this damn bed. If you’d come when I called the first time this would never have happened, but no, you had to be pottering around the kitchen making stuff for that ridiculous minister and his wife. God damn it, help me up!”

Nora closed her eyes with relief at his outburst. “Are you hurt?” she asked, opening them, layering her voice with an attempt at serious concern.