Nora and Liz (18 page)

“But I can’t confirm this,” he said, “unless I put her in the hospital and do some tests.”

“And that,” Nora had said, sighing, “as you know, Father won’t allow.”

Dr. Cantor opened his mouth as if to object, but Nora quickly added, “Besides, it would terrify her. And anyway,
there’s not much you could do for her, is there, even if you knew what was happening?”

“No,” Dr. Cantor admitted, slightly bending his tall body in a courtly, acquiescent half-bow. “I’m afraid there probably isn’t. But”—he handed Sarah a hastily scrawled prescription—“try these. They may help.”

So Sarah picked up the new drug, which did seem to make Corinne calmer and more docile; at least she was less frightened of the hallucinations and more easily soothed when they were explained away. “But she still has them,” Nora told Liz one Friday.

They were sitting on the dock; Liz had lent Nora a pair of shorts, and Nora was dangling her legs, dabbling her feet in the water, which was almost as tepid as the air.

“Poor lady,” Liz said. She splashed Nora’s leg gently. “It must be so hard for you to see her like this.”

“It is,” Nora said. “She was such a sweet, strong woman. Even though she always gave in to Father, she was strong. And she and I used to have little conspiracies whenever he wasn’t around, especially once I was in high school and he got more like he is now. He’d been fun sometimes when I was little, but something must have happened, maybe to do with his work, to make him change. Anyway, Mama and I would take long walks in the woods, looking for wildflowers; we’d cook extravagant desserts—we even invented some; we’d read aloud to each other. She’d make up stories…” Nora felt her eyes fill, and to her horror tears spilled over. “Sorry,” she gasped, batting at them with her fingers. “Sorry, I…”

“
Shh
,” Liz said. “
Shh
.” She put her arm around Nora, and for a moment Nora leaned against her, weeping silently. “It’ll do you good to cry,” Liz said softly, stroking her hair.

“I can’t seem to stop.” Nora pulled away and laughed through her tears in a surprised sort of way. “I’m sorry. Let’s do something.”

“Okay. But no apologies. I know.” Liz stood up. “How about a swim? I could lend you a suit. I’ve got an extra one.”

Nora sniffed; her eyes, Liz saw, were still bright with tears, her cheeks slightly flushed. And her hands still had dirt caked under the nails from weeding. “All right,” Nora said, scrambling to her feet. “But guess what?” She looked embarrassed. Sheepishly, she said, “I don’t know how to swim.”

“Then I’ll teach you.” Liz hesitated, then rushed to say what she’d been thinking for a few days: “I could teach you to drive, too. And if you want, I could get my dad’s mechanic—I found out he’s still in business—to look at your father’s old Ford. If he can make it run, you wouldn’t be dependent on anyone for errands. Or emergencies.”

Nora looked so startled that Liz said quickly, “Just think about it, okay? Come on. Race you to the house!”

***

When they got there, laughing, at almost the same time, Liz steered Nora into Jeff’s old room to change, and went upstairs. Am I crazy, she thought, stripping off her clothes and pulling on her suit. Am I crazy? What do I think I’m doing? What do I think I’m feeling? For she knew that the emotion growing inside her was no longer compassion or pity—well, compassion, sure, was part of it—but it was also admiration for Nora’s pluck, her industry, the way she doggedly carried on despite the obstacles her dreary life cast in her way. It was her enthusiasm, too, that drew Liz to her, when Nora exclaimed with pure joy upon discovering a new plant in the garden, or a new bird, or a sunset; by now Liz had gone to the farm several times in the evenings after the old folks were asleep, and sat with Nora and Thomas in the garden as the setting sun touched the sky with color and made dark silhouettes of the trees. Once, too, at the cabin, when a sudden rainstorm had beaten the lake into a frenzy and sent lightning whips to lash the opposite shore, Nora had watched from Liz’s table, an expression of rapture on her face, without a trace of the fear that Liz had expected and that Liz had even felt herself when a sudden loud crack and flash told her a tree (she hoped it was only a tree!) had been struck nearby.

Just the other night, when they’d been sitting near Nora’s garden, Liz had found herself talking about her own parents, remembering and facing, as she had not before, memories of her mother’s pain, of her mastectomy scars, of the infection that had followed her surgery and of how she, and later, Liz, had had to change the dressing and clean the drain that oozed pus. She’d told Nora about the radiation burns, the chemo nausea, the destroyed hair and appetite, the thinness, and, toward the end, the morphine-induced confusion. And at last she’d broken down for the first time, crying five years’ worth of tears in Nora’s arms.

What’s happening to me, Liz thought now, passing a brush through her hair before going out to meet Nora again, surveying her own swimsuit-clad body in her mirror.

You know damn well, kiddo!

She had never cried in front of Megan, never talked with Megan about anything deeper than the latest fracas at school or the latest political scandal she’d read about in the paper. And it was not only, she knew, that Megan hadn’t really cared, hadn’t really been interested, hadn’t been able to contribute much beyond a kind of generalized sympathy. That was part of it, certainly, but only part…

“Liz?”

“Yes. I’m ready!” Liz opened her door and Nora stood there, clad in Liz’s old red, white, and blue suit. It was a little small, revealing the tops of Nora’s breasts, but it clung smoothly to the rest of her compact figure, softly curving in at the waist and out again where her hips merged into rounded thighs which in turn led to incongruously boney knees and then tapered to gently muscled calves.

“Hi.” Nora turned, an awkward pirouette. “How do I look?”

Liz choked back
beautiful. “
Fine! Come and see.” She turned Nora toward the mirror.

“It’s a little skimpy at the top.” Frowning, Nora tugged at the straps.

“I guess. But, hey,” she said breezily, “as my high school
phys
ed
teacher used to say when she walked into the locker room and a couple of kids shrieked and threw towels around themselves, you don’t have anything I don’t have.”

Nora laughed. “Did they really do that? The kids?”

“Yeah, we had a couple of
weirdos
.” Liz decided not to say that this had happened only after it was rumored, incorrectly, that the
phys
ed
teacher was a lesbian. “So, ready for your lesson?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

***

“Careful,” Liz warned as they waded in. “The bottom’s sandy at first but then it gets rocky. Right about here…”

“
Ow
!” Nora exclaimed, clutching Liz as she hopped on one foot and grabbed her stubbed toe with the other hand. “Yes, I see what you mean!”

“Sorry.” Liz steadied her.

“It’s not your fault.”

“No. But I’m apologizing for my lake, which I told to behave itself for you.”

Nora looked amused. “Did you?” she asked, still holding onto Liz.

“Yup. Now”—Liz dropped Nora’s hand—“out here a little way it gets deeper.”

“It’s so warm!” Nora said, following Liz.

“Wait. You’ll hit a cold spot soon. What’s the matter?” Nora had squeaked and stopped.

“I hit the cold spot.” Nora was breast deep now, and Liz saw her shiver.

“Duck down,” Liz commanded, “so you’ll be wet all over before we start.”

“Yes, teacher,” Nora answered demurely, bending her knees. Then, with a mischievous look, she held her nose and put her head under, walked bent-kneed along the bottom to Liz, and playfully tickled Liz’s leg before she popped up beside her, hair and face streaming.

“Whoa! It’s that way, is it?” For a moment they chased each other, running clumsily in the water away from the rocks, splashing each other.

“Are you sure?” Liz asked, panting after a few minutes, “that you don’t know how to swim?”

“That’s right. And I do want to learn. Okay, lesson one. I bet it involves putting one’s head in the water and tipping it out again to breathe, like this.” She demonstrated.

“You do know how to swim,” Liz said, disappointed.

Nora shook her head. “Wrong. I know how to breathe for swimming. One summer the town offered lessons. Mama let me go, but when Father found out, he made me stop. So I never got beyond the first lesson, which was about breathing—on dry land.”

“Why did he make you stop?”

“The lessons were at a public pool and he was afraid of germs. Or so he said.”

“God! You poor kid.”

“I was pretty upset. But resigned. I mean, it was what he always did anyway whenever I tried anything new. Girl Scouts, too. After I went once, he said he didn’t want me going any more. It was a Commie organization, he said. Come on, let’s swim!” Nora waved her arms enthusiastically, making swimming motions.

“Okay. The first thing you have to do is sort of lie down in the water. At the same time, kick with your feet and make the same motions with your arms that you were making.”

Nora complied, stretching out and saying, “And I’ll sink like a—oh!”

“No, you won’t.” Liz had lunged forward and put her hand under Nora’s stomach. “Now go on with those motions and I’ll hold you up till you’re afloat. Don’t panic, just swim.”

“What about breathing?” Nora gasped.

“Never mind breathing.”

Nora twisted around, looking up at Liz. “What, not breathe?”

“Hey, take it easy!” Liz laughed, struggling to hold her. “Just breathe normally,” she said, when Nora was again lying properly in the water. “You can do the fancy stuff later. There, good. Keep that up. That’s it, keep going.” Liz dropped her hand an inch or two away; Nora turned again, looking at her nervously and beginning once more to sink, but Liz shot her hand up and caught her.

“See?” Liz said. “Whenever you stop the motion and thrash around, you’ll sink. But as long as you keep moving you’ll be okay.” She walked carefully along the bottom, avoiding rocks as Nora moved forward.

“Like riding a bike,” said Nora. “But I thought one could float without moving.”

“One can. That’s the key: not moving. And staying flat on your back or on your stomach. But let’s go on swimming first for a bit.” Liz held her and walked again as Nora swam tentatively forward.

“Hey!” Nora cried after a few minutes. “Where’s your hand?”

Liz held it up. “You’re swimming. Well,” she added when Nora floundered and stood up, “you were swimming. Congratulations!”

“Holy smoke!” Nora grinned, and squeezed Liz’s hand. “I was, wasn’t I?”

“Yup. Come on. Try again.”

Dutifully but still a little uncertainly, Nora stretched out in the water and Liz hovered next to her, her hand barely supporting her this time. “You’re fine,” she said. “Now concentrate.” She removed her hand once Nora was moving steadily forward and stood watching as Nora swam a few yards away before realizing she was on her own again. But then Nora panicked, dunking herself once more.

“You did it!” Liz called when Nora surfaced, sputtering. “You did it! Next thing you know you’ll be swimming across the lake.”

Proudly, Nora swam back to her. “But it was friendlier,” she said, standing up and smiling into Liz’s eyes, “when your hand was under me.”

Nora woke in the night and lay in the dim light of her room, her eyes fixed now on a chair, now on a table, the window, her dresser. That is my chair, she thought, with my clothes on it; that is my dresser. Those lumps are my brushes, my jewelry box; that brighter oblong opposite the window is my mirror.

When she was very small and all the
Tillots
slept upstairs, she’d had a larger room. Objects were harder to identify; she had woken up many nights seeing bears and robbers and had lain frozen in terror, waiting for them to move toward her, attacking, until she could summon enough voice to call her parents.

Like Mama now, she thought.

It was usually her mother who came, bringing a kerosene lamp, soothing Nora and rubbing her back, turning up the lamp and handing her clothes to her to prove there was no bear and that the robber was a bulge in the curtain at the left side of her window. (It was always the left side, though Nora never figured out why.)