Nora (2 page)

“Oh, Patsy!” I wailed, suddenly overcome. “We can't let her marry him. She'd be his wife for the rest of our lives! We've got to stop him!”

Patsy put her chin in her hands and thought hard.

“We could hire an assassin,” she said glumly. “To blow her away.”

“Yeah, right.”

“No, too expensive,” Patsy said, as if she knew. “How about we go the poisonous mushroom route? It's cheaper and there wouldn't be any witnesses. In all the stories I've read, the assassin always squeals. But with the mushrooms, they don't talk. We whip up a little poisonous mushroom omelet for lunch, invite her over, feed it to her with a glass of white wine and a salad.
Perfecto
.” Patsy kissed her fingers. “She'd never know what hit her.”

Then, without warning, Patsy burst into tears. She grabbed a pair of scissors from the table and waved them around her head.

“I do not want this person to be our stepmother!” Patsy said. “You dig? Do I make myself clear? I do not want her, and I will not permit her to marry our father.”

I put one arm around her. Patsy might be bigger than me, but she's still my little sister and I have tried to be a mother to her since our mother died. It isn't easy.

“Maybe it'll be all right, Pats,” I told her. “We can always go live with Baba and visit Daddy on weekends.”

“No!” Patsy roared, leaping from my grasp. “I'm not giving up! This is our house and we're staying right here. She's not forcing us out, and that final.” She pulled her shirttail out and scrubbed the tears from her face.

Patsy poked her scissors at me. “Want me to cut your hair? I feel like cutting hair.”

Sometimes it calms Patsy to cut my hair. “Okay,” I said. I actually needed a haircut anyway and Patsy's a very good haircutter. She leaned close to me, smelling strongly of toothpaste. (Patsy brushes her teeth four times a day and also flosses, as she says she does not want to get gingivitis and receding gums. Having a retainer is bad enough, she says.)

“I tell you this, Norrie, and you can quote me,” she said. “If she thinks I'm calling her ‘Mother,' she can just go suck eggs.”

Two

“Just don't go haywire, okay?” I said. We went into the bathroom, and I put down the lid of the toilet seat and sat on it. Patsy began snipping away furiously, pushing my head down so my chin rested on my chest, what there was of it. I could feel the cold blades of the scissors against my scalp. Sometimes Patsy gets carried away, and I could—and once did—wind up looking like a zonked-out punk rocker or a street urchin in an Italian movie.

Patsy cuts her own hair sometimes. Last year she gave herself one of those super-sophisticated asymmetrical haircuts where one side is short and the other side sort of swoops down and around and drags your head with it so you wind up looking half-witted in a kind of sexy way.

I could never get away with that kind of haircut, but on Patsy it looked sensational. Baba said it made her look wanton.

“I thought ‘wanton' was some kind of Chinese soup,” Patsy had said.

“Look it up,” said Baba.

Patsy's a dirty blond and I'm a mud brunet. She has gorgeous thick hair that swings. I'm getting a henna rinse one of these days to bring out the highlights that might be lurking in my hair.

“Who says she wants you to call her ‘Mother' anyway?” I said in a muffled voice.

“Sit still!” Patsy hissed.

“I only want to see the tips of my ears,” I said meekly. “Don't skin me bald, please.”

“The tips of your ears! Gawd, what do you want to see
them
for? Did I ever tell you your ears remind me of fungus growing on the sides of your head?” Patsy asked me, knowing the answer perfectly well.

“Yeah, lots of times,” I said.

“Old fungus ears, that's you,” Patsy said. “Sit still and I'll turn you into a regular cheerleader type.” Patsy smiled. “And we all know what
they
look like, don't we!”

Cutting my hair gives Patsy a feeling of power, I've decided. The more she cuts, the weaker I become, the further under her spell I fall, like something out of the Bible, sort of.

Finally, she stood back, admiring her work.

“Super!” she cried. “You look absolutely super!” I get nervous when she gets that enthusiastic. It's a bad sign.

“Let me see,” I said. I snuck my hand around to see how much she'd taken off the back and she hollered “Whoa!” and yanked my hand away.

“If you were a real haircutter and I was a real customer,” I said, “you wouldn't dare do that. I'd sue.”

“If I was a real haircutter, you couldn't afford me,” Patsy said. “I am ze great Sebastian, cutter to ze stars. When I cut ze hair, she stays cut.”

She plonked a soap dish in my lap and said, “For ze tip. For ze folding money. I do not like ze sound of small change, you dig?”

Actually, my hair didn't look half bad.

“Put it on my account, Sebastian,” I said. “I'm so rich I never carry money with me. I just charge it.” I fluffed up the back of my hair and flicked my eyelashes at her. I looked like a mysterious stranger, I thought, not displeased. A sexy, mysterious stranger with an interesting past.

Patsy and I don't look anything alike. She looks like Daddy and I resemble Mother's family. A thought I hug to my heart. We're very different in temperament, too. I think things through. Patsy jumps right in. I get better marks than she does, but boys call her up and ask her places. They think she's the older one. Daddy says she's too young to start dating.

Last week Chuck Whipple, new boy in town and already a local sex symbol, called Patsy and asked her to go to a rock concert over in Stamford. His brother was driving, Chuck said.

Daddy said she could go if she was home by dinnertime. He thought the concert was in the afternoon.

Well. Talk about scenes!

Patsy stayed home and sulked.

“It is ze work of art,” Patsy said, stalking me from behind. “Ze …”

The doorbell interrupted. Patsy crept to the window and peered out.

“Oh, my gawd!” she whispered. “It's him. I'm outta here, Nor. Keep him talking. Tie him up if you have to. I'll be back in a flash.”

Patsy bolted.

Three

“Hey.” Chuck Whipple ducked his head and smiled shyly down at his feet. Oozing sex appeal the while. I guess he can't help it, oozing sex appeal like that. I wonder if it gets sort of boring, though.

“Patsy home?”

“Nope. Well, maybe,” I said.

I admired his dark curly hair and his long eyelashes. He had a cute nose and big ears. What the heck, you can't have everything.

“You want to come in?”

He was already in. Upstairs, it sounded as if someone was moving the furniture around. It was Patsy, changing her outfit.

“How'd you know where we live?” I said. Chuck came from some romantic place out west. Utah or Idaho, one of those.

He blushed and his big ears turned red, I was glad to see. He was pretty cool but not as cool as he thought he was. “I was just cruising around,” he said, as if that answered my question.

“How old are you?” I said.

“Fourteen,” he said, blushing some more. “Are you Patsy's sister?”

“Nope. I'm the sitter,” I said. Sometimes I surprise myself.

“Sitter?”

“Well,” I said slowly. “Patsy gets a little, you know”—and I put a finger to my head and twirled it to show how Patsy got—“a little loco.”

Patsy shot into the room. She looked really old. Seventeen, at least. She had on her new black vinyl miniskirt—guaranteed to look and smell like real leather—that Daddy hadn't seen yet, much less paid for. Her denim shirt was unbuttoned practically to her belly button.

Chuck and I both blinked. Patsy, in full flower, was awesome, even I had to admit.

“I see you met my sister, Nora,” Patsy said in her huskiest voice.

“Yeah,” Chuck said. His eyelids flickered, but he didn't wink at me. Good thing. I never would've forgiven him if he'd winked.

The conversation limped along. Chuck had moved in during the summer and didn't know many kids. Patsy filled him in on the school, the teachers, sports, the dos and don'ts of Green Hollow. (That's where we live, Green Hollow, Connecticut. George Washington stopped here on his way to or from Valley Forge. I can't remember which. That's Green Hollow's claim to fame. I don't think he actually
slept
here; he just made a pit stop.)

I settled in on the couch with Daddy's
Wall Street Journal.
I knew Patsy wouldn't want me to hang around, but I wanted to. So I did. Patsy glared daggers at me, but then, when I didn't keel over, she pushed her charm button even harder and pretended I wasn't there. The telephone rang. Usually we fight to see who gets there first. This time I let it ring.

At last Patsy gave in and answered it. “It's Roberta for you,” she said in a frosty voice.

“Take the message,” I said.

“I better split.” Chuck shuffled his feet and his untied shoelaces got tangled. He stayed put.

“She wants to know about Saturday night,” Patsy said. “Here.” She shoved the receiver at me and almost put out my left eye.

“Hey, you old bag,” I greeted Roberta. “What's up? Oh, sure. I guess. You got it. Yeah, we'll be there. Dress warm. Bring lots of cash, kid. I feel lucky. See you.”

I hung up.

“Roberta says the strip-poker party's on for Saturday,” I relayed the message.

Chuck Whipple's Adam's apple bounced up and down.

“Where are you from, anyway?” I asked him.

“Iowa,” he mumbled, heading for the door, fighting his shoelaces. “Near Des Moines.”

We watched him go.

“Sheesh!” Patsy said and stalked out of the room, stiff legged as an angry dog. It was very satisfying.

When Patsy gets really crazy, she reminds me of a snapping turtle, hissing and snapping and threatening to bite. I love her dearly, but sometimes she's tough to take. She gets out of control and needs to be put in her place.

I only wish I knew exactly where her place
is.

Four

Our mother's portrait hangs over the living room mantel. A red shawl is draped over her shoulders, and she's looking down pensively at her hands. Her face is sad, as if she knows what lies ahead. I think of her as a happy person, someone who laughed a lot. But it's strange. In all the pictures we have of her, and in the portrait, she looks sad.

Dee Dulin painted the portrait. Dee and our mother had been friends since they were girls. On the day our mother died, Dee was the first person to come over. She came, she said, to offer her condolences. I absolutely hate that word,
condolences.

“I forgot the nuts,” Dee said, handing us a tin of brownies she'd baked. Her eyes were so swollen with tears she could hardly see. “I forgot to put in the nuts,” Dee told us twice. The three of us sat huddled together in a big chair.

“A light has gone out of our lives,” Dee said, hugging us, rocking back and forth. “Your mother was a joy, a darling girl, and she will always be.”

Dee blew her nose noisily into a tissue and said, “I wonder if you girls have any idea how much she loved you.”

At that, I remember, Patsy lost it. She rocketed around the room barefooted, beating her fists against anything that got in her way. Dee and I sat there, watching, not doing anything to stop her. That was the best way to handle Patsy, my mother always said, just let her go.

When Patsy fell, exhausted, into Dee's lap, Dee held her as if she were a baby, patting her on the back gently.

I wouldn't have minded if Dee had held
me
like that. Nobody, not even Daddy, had held me and comforted me for quite a while.

“There, there,” Dee said. “Things will get better. Not perfect, but better. You girls and your father were her life. She was a lucky woman, you know, having you all. God was good to her.”

That set Patsy off again. “Big deal!” she shouted. “Big damn deal! She's dead. I don't call that lucky. If God is so great, so good and kind and loving and all, what's he doing letting her die? Just answer me that. Forget God. God can just go take a hike, as far as I'm concerned!”

Sometimes I envy Patsy. She gets out all the bad stuff by screaming and shouting and carrying on. Then she gets the hugs and attention. I keep it all in. I wish I could let go the way Patsy does, but I can't. Sometimes I get mad and think Patsy needs a good swat on the behind.

“She made me laugh,” Dee said after Patsy had calmed down. “We made each other laugh. We always wound up laughing. That was part of her gift.” Dee's lips quivered as she told us these things.

Patsy kicked savagely at the leg of the chair, forgetting she was barefooted.

“Ow!” she yelled. “That hurt!” She grabbed hold of her foot and hopped around, swearing.

Dee and I doubled over, laughing. We laughed until our stomachs ached, forgetting everything except how funny Patsy looked.

Patsy glared at us ferociously, then she began to laugh, too.

We were making so much noise I wasn't sure I'd heard it. Then there was a lull and it came again. It was Mother, laughing. I swear I heard her laughing. She was there. She
was.

“Shhh,”
I said, putting my finger against my lips. “Listen.” I closed my eyes. I can hear better with my eyes closed.

“What's your prob?” Patsy said.

“She's laughing,” I whispered. “I heard her just this minute. She was laughing with us.”

“Who?” Dee said.

“Mother. I heard her.” I said.

Our mother had a very joyful laugh that made complete strangers smile when they heard it.

“Bizarro,” Patsy said, rolling her eyes. “You imagined it, Nora.”

“No,” I said. “She was here. I did
not
imagine it. Don't tell me that.”