Nora Jane (11 page)

She was just past the first long curve of the bridge when it happened. The long roller coaster of a bridge swayed like the
body of a snake, making a hissing sound that turned into thunder. The sound rolled across the bay. Then the sound stopped.
Then a long time went by. The car seemed to be made of water. The bridge of water. Nora Jane’s arms of water. Still, she seemed
to know what to do. She turned off the ignition. She reached behind her and pulled down the shoulder harness and put it on.

The bridge moved again. Longer, slower, like a long cold dream. The little blue convertible swerved to the side, rubbing up
against a station wagon. The bumper grated and slid, grated and slid. Then everything was still. Everything stopped happening.
The islands in the bay were still in their places. Angel Island and Morris Island and the Brothers and the Sisters and the
sad face of Alcatraz. An oil tank had burst on Morris Island and a shiny black river was pouring down a hill. Nora Jane watched
it pour, then turned and looked into the station wagon.

A woman was at the wheel. Four or five small children were jumping up and down on the seats, screaming and crying. “Do not
move from a place of safety,” the radio was saying. “The aftershocks could begin at any moment. Stay where you are. If you
have an emergency call 751-1000. Please do not call to get information. We are keeping you informed. Repeat. Do not move from
a place of safety. The worst shock has passed. If you are with injured parties call 751-1000.” I think I’m in a place of safety,
Nora Jane thought.

The children were screaming in the station wagon. They were screaming their heads off. I have to go and see if they’re hurt,
she thought. But what if a shock comes while I’m going from here to there? I’ll fall off the bridge. I’ll fall into the sea.
“The Golden Gate is standing. The approaches are gone to the Bay Bridge and the Richmond—San Rafael. There is no danger of
either bridge collapsing. Repeat, there is no danger of either bridge collapsing. Please do not move from a place of safety.
If you are with injured parties call 7511000. Do not call to get information. Repeat…”

That’s too many children for one woman. What if they’re hurt? Their arms might be broken. I smashed in her side. I have to
go over there and help her. I have to do it. Oh, shit. Hail Mary, full of grace, blessed art thou among women and blessed
is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Womb, oh, my womb, what about my womb …? Nora Jane was out of the car and making her way
around the hood to the station wagon. Holy Mary Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death…. She
reached the door handle of the backseat and opened the door and slid in. The children stopped their screaming. Five small
faces and one large one turned her way. “I came to help,” she said. “Are any of them hurt? Are they injured?”

“Thank God you’re here,” the woman said. “My radio doesn’t work. What’s happening? What’s going on?”

“It’s a big one. Almost a seven. The approaches to this bridge are gone. Are the children all right? Are any of them hurt?”

“I don’t think so. We’re a car pool. For swimming lessons. I think they’re all right. Are you all right?” she said, turning
to the children. “I think they’re just screaming.” None of them was screaming now but one small boy was whining. “Ohhhhhhhh…”
he was saying very low and sad.

“Well, now I’m here,” Nora Jane said. “They’ll come get us in boats. They’ll come as soon as they can.”

“I’m a doctor’s wife. My husband’s Doctor Johnson, the plastic surgeon. I should know what to do but he never told me. I don’t
know. I just don’t know.”

“Well, don’t worry about it,” Nora Jane said. She set the little whining boy on her lap and put her arm around a little girl
in a yellow bathing suit. “Listen, we’re all right. They’ll come and get us. The bridge isn’t going to fall. You did all right.
You knew to stop the car.”

“I’m scared,” the little girl in the yellow suit said. “I want to go home. I want to go where my momma is.”

“It’s all right,” Nora Jane said. She pulled the child down beside her and kissed her on the face. “You smell so nice,” she
said. “Your hair smells like a yellow crayon. Have you been coloring today?”

“I was coloring,” the whining boy said. “I was coloring a Big Bird book. I want to go home too. I want to go home right now.
I’m afraid to be here. I don’t like it here.”

“He’s afraid of everything,” the little girl said. “He’s my brother. He’s afraid of the dark and he’s afraid of frogs.” “Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhh,”
he cried out, louder than ever. “See,” the girl said. “If you just say frog he starts crying.”

“Celeste, please don’t make him cry,” the plastic surgeon’s wife said. “I’m Madge Johnson,” she went on. “That’s Donald and
Celeste, they belong to the Connerts that live next door and that’s Lindsey in the back and this is Starr and Alexander up
here with me. They’re mine. Lindsey, are you all right? See if she’s all right, would you?”

Nora Jane looked into the back of the station wagon. Lindsey was curled up with a striped beach towel over her head. She was
sucking her thumb. She was so still that for a moment Nora Jane wasn’t sure she was breathing. “Are you all right?” she said,
laying her hand on the child’s shoulder. “Lindsey, are you okay?”

The child lifted her head about an inch off the floor and shook it from side to side. “You can get up here with us,” Nora
Jane said. “You don’t have to stay back there all alone.”

“She wants to be there,” Celeste said. “She’s a baby. She sucks her thumb.”

“I want to go home now,” Donald said, starting to whine again. “I want to go see my momma. I want you to drive the car and
take me home.”

“We can’t drive it right now,” Madge said. “We have to wait for the men to come get us. We have to be good and stay still
and in a little while they’ll come and get us and take us home in boats. Won’t that be nice? They’ll be here as soon as they
can. They’ll be here before we know it.”

“I want to go home now,” Donald said. “I want to go home and I’m hungry. I want something to eat.”

“Shut up, Donald,” Celeste said.

“How old are they?” Nora Jane said.

“They’re five, except Lindsey and Alexander, they’re four. I wish we could hear your radio. I wish we could hear what’s going
on.”

“I could reach out the front window and turn it back on, I guess. I hate to walk over there again. Until I’m sure the aftershocks
are over. Look, roll down that window and see if you can reach in and turn the radio on. You don’t have to turn on the ignition.
Thank God the top’s down. I almost didn’t put it down.”

Madge wiggled through the window and turned on the radio in the convertible. “In other news, actor David Niven died today
at his home in Switzerland. The internationally famous actor succumbed to a long battle with Gehrig’s disease. He was seventy-three….
Now for an update on earthquake damage. The department of geology at the University of California at Berkeley says—oh, just
a minute, here’s a late report on the bridges. Anyone caught on the Bay Bridge or the Richmond—San Rafael bridge please stay
in your cars until help arrives. The Coast Guard is on its way. Repeat, Coast Guard rescue boats are on their way. The danger
is past. Please stay in your cars until help arrives. Do not move from a place of safety. The lighthouse on East Brother has
fallen into the sea…”

“I want to go home now,” Donald was starting up again. Lindsey rose up in the back and joined him. “I want my momma,” she
was crying. “I want to go to my house.”

“Come sit up here with us,” Nora Jane said. “Come sit with Celeste and Donald and me. You better turn that radio off now,”
she said to Madge. “It’s just scaring them. It’s not going to tell us anything we don’t already know.”

“I don’t want to come up there,” Lindsey cried, stuffing the towel into her mouth with her thumb, talking through a little
hole that was all she had left for breath. She was crying, big tears were running down the front of her suit. Madge climbed
out the window again and turned off the radio.

“You’re a big baby,” Celeste said to Lindsey. “You’re just crying to get attention.”

“Shut up, Celeste,” Madge said. “Please don’t say things to them.”

“I want to go to my house,” Donald said. “I want you to drive the car right now.”

’ALL RIGHT,” Nora Jane said. “NOW ALL OF YOU SHUT UP A MINUTE. I want you all to shut up and quit crying and listen to me.
This is an emergency. When you have an emergency everybody has to stick together and act right. We can’t go anywhere right
now. We have to wait to be rescued. So, if you’ll be quiet and act like big people I will sing to you. I happen to be a wonderful
singer. Okay, you want me to sing? Well, do you?”

“I want you to,” Donald said, and cuddled closer.

“Me too,” Celeste said, and sat up very properly, getting ready to listen.

“I want you to,” Lindsey said, then closed her mouth down over her thumb. Starr and Alexander cuddled up against Madge. Then,
for the first time since she had been in California, Nora Jane sang in public. She had been the despair of the sisters at
the Academy of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus because she would never use her voice for the glory of God or stay after school
and practice with the choir. All Nora Jane had ever used her voice for was to memorize phonograph albums in case there was
a war and all the stereos were blown up.

Now, in honor of the emergency, she took out her miraculous voice and her wonderful memory and began to sing long-playing
albums to the children. She sang Walt Disney and Jesus Christ Superstar and Janis Joplin and the Rolling Stones and threw
in some Broadway musicals for Madge’s benefit. She finished up with a wonderful song about a little boy named Christopher
Robin going to watch the changing of the guards with his nanny. “They’re changing guards at Buckingham Palace. Christopher
Robin went down with Alice.”

The children were entranced. When she stopped, they clapped their hands and yelled for more.

“I’ve never heard anyone sing like that in my whole life,” Madge said. “You should be on the stage.”

“I know,” Nora Jane said. “Everyone always says that.”

“Sing some more,” Donald said. “Sing about backwards land again.”

“Sing more,” Alexander said. It was the first time he had said a word since Nora Jane got in the car. “Sing more.”

“In a minute,” she said. “Let me catch my breath. I’m starving, aren’t you? I’ll tell you one thing, the minute we get off
this bridge I’m going somewhere and get something to eat. I’m going to eat like a pig.”

“So am I,” Celeste said. “I’m going to eat like a pig, oink, oink.”

“I’m going to eat like a pig,” Donald said. “Oink, oink.”

“Oink, oink,” said Alexander in a small voice.

“Oink, oink,” said Starr.

“Oink, oink,” said Lindsey through her thumb.

“There’s a seagull,” Nora Jane said. “Look out there. They’re lighting on the bridge. That must mean it’s all right now. They
only sit on safe places.”

“How do they know?” Celeste said. “How do they know which place is safe?”

“The whales tell them,” Nora Jane said. “They ask the whales.”

“How do the whales know?” Celeste insisted. “Who tells the whales? Whales can’t talk to seagulls.” Celeste was really a very
questionable little girl to have around if you were pregnant. But Nora Jane was saved explaining whales because a man in a
yellow slicker appeared on the edge of the bridge, climbing a ladder. He threw a leg over the railing and started toward the
car. Another man was right behind him. “Here they come,” Alexander said. “They’re coming. Oink, oink, oink.”

“Here they come,” Celeste screamed at the top of her lungs. She climbed up on Nora Jane’s stomach and stuck her head out the
window, yelling to the Coast Guard. “Here we are. Oink, oink. Here we are.”

What is that? Tammili Whittington wondered. She was the responsible one of the pair. Shark butting Momma’s stomach? Typhoon
at sea? Tree on fire? Running from tiger? Someone standing on us? Hummmmmmmmmm, she decided and turned a fin into a hand,
four fingers and a thumb.

Here they come, Nora Jane was thinking, moving Celeste’s feet to the side. Here come the rescuers. Hooray for everything.
Hooray for my fellow men.

“Oh, my God,” Madge said, starting to cry. “Here they are. They’ve come to save us.”

“Oink, oink,” Celeste was screaming out the window. “Oink, oink, we’re over here. Come and save us. And hurry up because we’re
hungry.”

F
REDDY HARWOOD SAT IN HIS OFFICE
at his bookstore in Berkeley, California, with his feet up on the desk and chewed the edge of his coffee cup. Francis came
to the door three times to see if he would talk but he wouldn’t even look at her. “You’ve got to send back those calligraphy
books,” she said. “We haven’t sold a single one. I told you not to get that many.”

“I don’t want to send them back,” he said. “I want them right where they are. Don’t talk to me now, Francis. I’m thinking.”

“Are you okay?”

“No. Now go on. Close the door.”

“What’s wrong?”

“Nora Jane’s pregnant.”

“Oh, my God.”

“Leave me alone, Francis. Please shut the door.”

“You need someone to talk to. You need—”

“Go run the bookstore, Francis. Please don’t stand there.”

She left the door open. Freddy got up and closed it. He laid his feet on a stack of invoices and stuck the edge of his thumb
into his mouth. Manic-depressive, he decided. I was perfectly all right five minutes ago, a normal average neurotic walking
down the street on my way to do my share of the world’s work, on my way to add my light to the store of light, on my way to
run the single most financially depressed bookstore in Northern California and maybe the world. Perfectly, absolutely all
right. Normal. And the minute I came in this room I started thinking about her and all she ever did in this room in my life
was try to rob me. My God, I love her.

He raised his hands to his face. He made a catcher’s mitt out of his hands and laid his face into that container. This is
it, he decided, what all the science and art and philosophy and poetry and literature and movies were supposed to deliver
me from and they have failed. A baby inside of her and it might not even be mine. A curved universe, low and inside, coming
at me below the knees.