Nell (52 page)

“How was your Christmas?” Nell asked. She turned to face him on the sofa, and as she did, she realized how she must look in her old elephant robe, with her face smudged from crying, and her hair, well, heaven knew what her hair looked like, she hadn’t brushed it in hours.

“It was wonderful,” Stellios said. “A feast. My aunts cooked for days. We had a huge party, many guests, wonderful food.”

Nell studied Stellios as he talked. He had sharp, slightly slanted eyes and cheekbones that gave him a lean, exotic look, softened by a mouth as full and sensual as if painted by Renoir. He was wearing a thick, intricately knit wool sweater over a turtleneck.

“Beautiful sweater,” she said. “It looks new. And handmade. A Christmas present?”

“Yes,” Stellios said, looking down at the sweater.

“From your aunt?”

Stellios grinned sheepishly. “No,” he admitted. He shrugged. “Just a woman,” he said. “A friend.”

Nell laughed. “Some friend,” she said. “Some
friend
to go to the trouble of knitting you that beautiful sweater.”

“Well,” Stellios grinned again, embarrassed. “I guess she kind of likes me.”

“I guess she kind of does,” Nell said. “Stellios, why aren’t you with her, the sweater-knitter, now? I mean, poor thing, she went to all that work. I bet she expected to be with you tonight?”

“Yes, well,” Stellios said. “I suppose. But I was with her last night. And most of today. I didn’t think she’d do anything like this. I mean, I told you about her in the spring, Nell. She’s a very nice girl. But … I think she’s a little boring. My family likes her more than I do. I don’t want to disappoint my family, but—I can’t be in love with her no matter how I try. And I think she loves me. I don’t want to sound arrogant, but I think she does. It is so
difficult
when someone likes you more than you like them. It’s sort of embarrassing. You begin to feel—
pity
—for the person.” Stellios was silent for a moment, and Nell could almost see an idea blooming in his head, like a flower unfolding on time-lapse film. “God,” he said. “I hope that’s not the way you feel about me. I mean, we
broke off and now here I am, with gifts for you …”

Well, Nell thought, it’s all in the spirit of Christmas.… “Oh no, Stellios,” she said, for she had her own idea blossoming within her at the sight and sound and smell of this handsome, gentle-hearted man. “I have a present for you, too. Wait a moment. I’ll go get it.”

Nell slipped from the sofa and went up to her bedroom. She lit a candle there and smoothed the bed and turned back the sheets. She washed and creamed her face and put on light touches of makeup. She brushed her hair so that it flowed down around her face and shoulders. Then she took off her elephant robe and put on the black lace negligee she had worn for no man other than Andy. Stellios had never seen her in an outfit so romantic. She put on perfume and brushed her hair once more. She checked—both children were sound asleep. She went back down the stairs.

“Merry Christmas,” she said to Stellios as she entered the living room. She was rewarded by the look on his face.

“Nell,” he said, staring at her, and she could tell that he thought she was beautiful. “Nell,” he said again, and his voice broke.

He started to rise, but Nell crossed the room and pushed him back down on the sofa, placing both her hands on his shoulders. Then, keeping her hands on his shoulders and her eyes meeting his, she slowly knelt before him on the floor, her body between his blue-jeaned legs. She slowly brought her hands down from his shoulders to his chest, then to his stomach, until she came to his belt. She undid his belt and leaned forward, her hair and the lace of her gown sliding silkily over his legs. Stellios was a beautiful man, and Nell was not alone now; for a while she would not think about Andy. This Christmas night she would not think about loneliness or about the meaning of love. There were, after all, other things than love in the world—there was kindness and pleasure and the luxury of affectionate flesh.

Four days after Christmas, Nell piled her children into the old Toyota and drove off to a mammoth indoor shopping mall on the outskirts of Boston. It was a clear day, but bitterly cold, too cold for Jeremy and Hannah to play outside for long and yet they needed to get out of the house for a while. They had been good this past week, entertaining themselves
with their Christmas toys while Nell worked at the boutique. Today was her day off and she was feeling cheerful. She was going to treat them all; she would buy a delicious junk-food lunch for the children at the mall and let them ride the escalators as much as they wanted while she scouted around to find some good sales. She was thinking of spending her parents’ Christmas check on some knockout dress to wear on New Year’s Eve at Andy’s.

* * *

Elizabeth O’Leary thought shopping malls were tacky, but Nell knew that what Elizabeth really disliked about them was the competition. Who wanted to face the acidly cold winter air to get to boutiques when one could enter a vast, warm, brightly lighted world like this shopping mall? On certain days the Muzak that blared from all corners irritated Nell, but today she smiled when she heard it and let it carry her along down the wide aisles of the mall with a steady stream of fellow shoppers.

The shops were still flamboyant with Christmas decorations. A ten-foot-tall Frosty the Snowman bobbed an electric smile from a toy store; the shop opposite him was luscious with a display of red, white and green evening gowns for women. The main part of the mall was full of tables, tents, and stalls from special-interest groups that had come to display their wares during this busy holiday season. Blue-haired ladies from a local church offered hand-knitted mittens and caps, hand-decorated candles, and hand-sewn aprons at their charity bazaar set up at one end of the mall. Turning a corner, Nell saw a rock-and-gem display taking up the middle of the L of the mall.

“Here,” she said to Jeremy and Hannah, giving them each a dollar. “You may buy yourselves any kind of pretty rock you can afford, but be sure you look all of them over carefully first so you get just what you want.”

Happily unaware that they were being bribed, the children ran off with their money to inspect the tables and cases glittering with semiprecious stones and metals. Nell went back to the shop that sold evening gowns and spent a long quiet time considering whether to indulge herself. Andy had not said what they would be doing on New Year’s Eve. She didn’t know if they’d go out to a restaurant for dinner, or to a party, or whether
they’d simply stay at home together to see the new year in. She held a full-length red silk dress up against her and studied her reflection in the mirror. The dress was dazzling, with a rhinestone buckle at the waist and a plunging neckline. She didn’t dare try it on or she’d buy it, and it wasn’t practical, and since she didn’t know what they would be doing … She put the dress back on the rack with only a slight tang of regret. It was luxury enough to be thinking this way: to be thinking of the
two
of them, to be planning which dress to wear with the man she loved.

“Hey, Mom,” Jeremy said, coming up to her as she left the shop. “We’ve been looking all over for you. We want to go ride the escalators.”

“All right,” Nell said. “Look, meet me at noon at the little pizza shop. Okay? We’ll go there for lunch. And
be careful
. Don’t lean over the sides too far!”

“Oh, Mom!” Jeremy said. “Come on, Hannah.” And they were off.

It took Nell a few moments to stop worrying about her children. Since the accident, she had had to check a desire to follow them everywhere, crying out,
“Be careful!”
every step of the way. But the presence of other kids their age wandering through the mall reassured her, and finally she turned her mind to other thoughts. She drifted in and out of stores for an hour, checking to see what was on sale, buying warm tights, which Hannah desperately needed, and new socks for Jeremy—she had resisted giving them to him as a Christmas present.

She met Jeremy and Hannah at the pizza shop, and they had lunch while showing Nell the treasures they had bought at the rock exhibit. The noise level was rising in the mall now and Nell was getting a slight headache from it, but the children were still energetic and the thought of going back out into the freezing cold of the outside or back to the littered mess of her house gave Nell new strength. She agreed to tag along with the children down to the end of the mall they hadn’t yet seen.

People streamed past the three of them, young women pushing crying babies in strollers, older women wearing their wool coats buttoned up in spite of the warmth of the mall, teenagers with green hair and safety pins in their ears. Nell was smiling to herself, thinking how endlessly amusing people were, when Jeremy yelled, “Wicko! Hey, Mom, look!” and took off from her side. He was headed toward a gigantic exhibit of computer technology that was gathered in the middle of the main section of the mall under a vast
metallic banner that read:

computermania!

computermagic!

come see the computer for you!

Children of all ages were grouped around tables set up with computer games, while in less frantic sections of the exhibition, grown-ups more cautiously touched keyboards and control sticks. A child-size robot with blinking lights, wearing a Santa Claus cap, rotated through the tables and booths, bleeping when he got close to any solid object, his round head whirling this way and that as he announced in an electrified monotone, “Hello. I am Roger, the Roaming Robot. Want to be my friend?”

“Hey, Mom, look. There’s Andy,” Hannah said.

“Oh,” Nell laughed. “Sweetheart, I don’t think so. Andy never leaves Nantucket.”

“Mo-om,
look
!” Hannah insisted.

Nell looked in the direction Hannah was pointing. And Hannah was right: There he was. He was wearing a tan corduroy sports jacket with leather elbow patches and a pair of baggy brown slacks; he was sitting on the edge of a table watching intently as a man seated at a keyboard made a graph revolve with three-dimensional reality on the screen in front of them. From time to time the man turned to say something to Andy or to take directions from him.

Nell plunged forward, making her way through the crowd, the display tables, the giant wastebaskets overflowing with green and black computer printouts. She walked so fast, so intently, that she nearly collided with Roger the Roaming Robot, who slammed to a halt and bleeped at her. Finally, she was at Andy’s side.

“Hello, Andy,” she said. Her heart was pounding so hard and so much adrenaline pulsed through her that she wouldn’t have been surprised if she had short-circuited every computer in the area.

Andy turned slowly away from the computer screen. When he saw Nell, he broke into a big grin. “Nell!” he said. “What are you doing here?”

“I think the question is what are
you
doing here? Off Nantucket?” Nell asked.

“Well, I flew over for the day to come to this exhibit,” Andy said. “I read an ad for it in the
Globe
and knew there were some things I wanted to see here.”

“But, Andy,” Nell asked. “Why didn’t you call me to tell me you’d be here? On the mainland. Why didn’t you come to see me, too?”

Andy looked genuinely puzzled. “Well,” he said, shrugging his narrow shoulders, “I guess I just didn’t think of it.”

Nell drew on all the resources and tricks she had ever learned as an actress. Andy in his bumbling honesty had hurt her so much that she needed to burst into tears—and she was not going to let herself do that. She would not cry now. Her hair was down today, falling slightly over one eye, one cheek, and with a gesture she knew to be graceful, she raised the back of her hand to sweep her hair away from her face.

“You left Nantucket to come to the Boston area and you just didn’t think of me,” she said. “God, Andy, don’t you know what an insult that is?”

“Is it?” Andy asked earnestly. “I didn’t mean for it to be.”

Nell could feel the computer salesman looking up at them from where he sat, hands poised on the keyboard. She looked down at the man, an older fellow in a brown suit. “Perhaps you can help,” she said icily. “My lover here seems to have more in common with robots than with human beings. Perhaps you could explain to him that people who say they love each other usually want to see each other. He’s been my lover for almost eight months now, and the one day he leaves his precious Nantucket island to come to Boston, he
just doesn’t think of seeing me
. Don’t you think that’s a little odd?”

The man grinned. “Well, lady,
I
wouldn’t forget to come see you, that’s for sure,” he said.

“Did you hear that, Andy?” Nell said. “Did you hear what he said?
He
wouldn’t forget to come see me.”

“Nell,” Andy said, flustered. “You don’t understand. This was strictly business. Work. Important to me.” He leaned forward and tried to put his hands on Nell’s shoulders, but she drew back. “There’s a software program I’ve been designing for months now, and I think this company’s already done it. I wanted to check the competition, don’t you see.”

The man at the computer keyboard hit a button, and the screen above him went
blank. He looked up at Andy. “You’re a turkey, mister,” he said.

“You’re worse than a turkey,” Nell said to Andy. “You’re—you’re a
casual user
,” she announced, recalling the computer term in a flash of brilliance.

Andy looked surprised, then disgruntled. “Hell, Nell,” he said. “Let’s go somewhere private where we can sit down and talk.” He took Nell’s hand and led her to where some wooden benches circled a bed of indoor trees and plants. As they walked, Nell desperately tried to use those few seconds to plan some kind of rational speech, but she was shaking all over, and that seemed to have affected her brain. Andy’s hand on hers felt as it always had when any part of his body touched hers—it felt
right
, absolutely right. There was something about this man that made her want to wrap herself around him.