Nora and Liz (23 page)

“Yes, of course.” Morris opened the door for her. “At least I think so. Let me just check. Ken?” he called to an officer Liz could see talking on the phone. Nora was sitting at the table, her back very straight and tense. “All clear?”

The officer named Ken put his hand over the phone’s mouthpiece and said, “All clear.” Then, into the phone (he must be talking to Dr. Cantor, Liz realized), he said, “So you’ve been expecting something of this nature?”

“There you go.” Morris stepped aside to let Liz precede him through the door.

Liz’s legs didn’t feel like her own when she walked to the kitchen, and she felt Morris’s eyes, then his colleagues’, on her as she entered—as if they’re watching my every move, she thought, to see if I walk like a murderer.

Nora jumped up from the table when Liz came in, and hugged her. “Are you okay?” she whispered. “How’s your arm?”

“Oh, my arm,” Liz said. “I’d forgotten it. Are you okay?”

“I think so.” Nora led Liz to the table, and they both sat down.

“Where’s your father?”

“One of
them’s
got him in the other room,” Nora said softly. “He looked at Mama first, and then he took Father to the parlor. There’s a policeman in with Mama. We can’t go in, he said, till the medical examiner’s been here and says we can.” Nora stood up unsteadily and gripped the back of the chair she’d been sitting in. “But she’s my own mother!”

Liz reached for Nora’s hand as Nora looked at her, her eyes liquid and bewildered. “I know; that seems awful,” Liz said lamely. “But I guess it’s because of your father’s—you know, what he said about me. I’m so sorry, Nora.” She could see the officer named Ken with Detective Morris at the other end of the kitchen; they were both rummaging in cupboards.

“After he looked at Mama,” Nora said, “he told me they’d probably want to fingerprint us. ‘Elimination prints,’ he called them. He actually asked for permission.” Nora’s face softened. “I don’t think they suspect you, really,” she whispered. “I told them I certainly don’t. I told them about Mama’s stroke, and they called Dr. Cantor; they had to page him at the hospital. And I told them Father’s, well, pretty near crazy. They know that anyway; they must. Everyone in town does. It’ll be okay, Liz; I’m sure it will. Except Mama…”

Nora’s voice broke.

She turned away, crying quietly. Liz got up and put her arms around her; Nora leaned her head against Liz’s breast and sobbed.

A few minutes later, the state police arrived.

It was a long time before everyone left. While the state police searched the house, Nora and Liz sat in the kitchen—the police still wouldn’t let them into Corinne’s room—and Ralph sat in the parlor with a police officer, who was again questioning him. Nora felt wooden, devoid of emotion, devoid almost of thought. She saw Liz—Liz whom I love, she thought with mild surprise left over from earlier, although it seemed like years since she’d realized it; Liz who loves me—she saw Liz watching her anxiously, but she could manage no more response than a vague pat on Liz’s arm. It had become, after the first flurry and the first reaction, as if it were all happening to other people, as if she herself were someone else. An ambulance came at one point and the police sent it away. So it’s really true, Nora thought, as Liz went to someone who beckoned from the kitchen door; Mama’s really gone, really dead. She knew she’d known that before, of course, but having someone official acknowledge it—although no one had actually said the words, which, Nora thought vaguely, seems odd—having an outsider really acknowledge it somehow made it more true.

“Nora,” Liz said quietly, coming back in and putting a hand, then two hands, on Nora’s shoulders. “The state police want to talk to you for a few minutes. Just a few. It’s all right,” she added with a thin smile when Nora looked up at her. “They’re nice. They already talked to me, and one of
them’s
with your father.” She put a hand under Nora’s elbow and lifted her up—carefully, Nora thought; she’s handling me carefully, as if I might break. I wish I
would
break!

She barely noticed what the state trooper looked like, except the word “grave” popped into her mind when she looked at his face, like “grave Alice” in the poem, and she barely noticed his questions; they seemed the same, anyway, as those the local police had asked. Tiredly, she went through the facts again, sitting outside with Liz, hearing Ralph’s cry, finding Corinne’s body, hearing Ralph’s accusation, seeing the phone swinging on its cord, picking it up, finding the dispatcher still on the line…

“They’re trained to do that, ma’am,” the state trooper explained. So I must have asked about it, Nora thought fuzzily. “Trained to stay on the line when they get a call about—a call like this—till the officers come. Just in case, you know, of danger.”

Then he asked her about Liz, about how long she’d known her, what she thought of her, whether Liz seemed to have an interest in…

“In money?” Nora asked, horrified, her mind now fully engaged. “Why no, of course not, not at all. She…” Then, having realized the implications of what the trooper was saying, she broke down again and wept, and the questions stopped.

Much later, or so it seemed, the two sets of police finally finished combing the house, even going upstairs to Nora’s old bedroom, to her parents’, to the other unused rooms, dusty and mouse-ridden, she was sure; this was after she and Liz and Ralph—whom she realized she hadn’t seen for what seemed like hours—had been fingerprinted. “To eliminate you,” a very young-seeming officer said, rolling Nora’s fingers on a little pad; the “elimination prints,” Nora thought; yes. “You see, you’ll have touched lots of things around the house, and we don’t want to find your prints on something and say you’re a suspect.”

“But I am, aren’t I?” Nora asked. “A suspect?”

“Oh, no, ma’am, I very much doubt it,” the officer said. “I can’t say anything for sure, but I very much doubt it.”

“How about my friend? How about Liz?”

“Well, again I can’t say, ma’am, but, well, we have to take into consideration your father’s—your father’s state of mind. Time will tell.” He snapped his little pad shut and gave Nora a tissue with which to wipe her fingers. “But I wouldn’t fret.”

That was what he’d said: “fret,” as if he were a much older person:
fret!

Then the medical examiner arrived and spent what seemed like a long time in the room with Corinne. He came into the kitchen afterward, a square man, Nora thought, square face, square body, even a square mouth when he smiled as he did now, sympathetically, at her. “You might want to go in to your mother now, ma’am,” he said. “To say goodbye.”

Nora looked up at Liz, who was standing beside her; she couldn’t think what to do. But Liz nodded and squeezed her shoulder, so, obediently, feeling more as if she should than as if she wanted to—but she also did want to—Nora went, alone, into her mother’s room and stood for a long time looking down at her, thinking, This is my mother, and she is dead. Her eyes were dry now, though they stung.

She knelt by the bed and took Corinne’s hand. It was cold and a little stiff. There were her clean nails, neatly trimmed by Nora only yesterday; there was her engagement ring, her wedding ring. (Later the medical examiner would say to her, “You’d best take her jewelry, miss,” and Nora did, slipping her mother’s rings onto her own finger, then giving the wedding ring to Ralph, who asked for the engagement ring as well. So Nora gave that to him, too. She hadn’t wanted it, really, except for the fact that it had been on her mother’s finger and she thought it would be nice to have something that had touched Corinne’s body. But then so must Father, she reasoned, and she felt his was the stronger claim.)

Holding her mother’s hand, looking at her face, vacant and uncannily still in death, touching her hair, Nora tried to summon memories, thoughts that might make her weep again, for she could feel grief knotted painfully inside her. But the memories skittered through her mind, like
waterbugs
, she thought, the memory of
waterbugs
on Liz’s lake interrupting the one of her mother showing her how to grease cookie tins when Nora had been, what? Five, maybe, or six. She remembered the games they’d played with
bedmaking
, with Tisane, one of Thomas’s predecessors, for they’d always had cats—where was Thomas? Nora looked vaguely around the room and noticed there was the barest beginning of light around the edges of the
windowshade
; the false dawn, she thought; where
is
Thomas?

Abruptly men—more ambulance attendants? But why, since Mama was dead? Maybe they were just police?—men brought in a long stretcher on wheels. Liz came in, too, and Nora clung to her, and the police held onto Ralph while the men wheeled Corinne’s body, now an elongated package encased in black plastic, outside. Ralph struggled to get to it, Nora saw without being able to react, and when the ambulance… But it looked like a van. It wasn’t a hearse, surely? Not yet!

When it drove away, Ralph lunged at Liz and another policemen had to help the first one hold him.

“I think,” the first policeman said to Nora, ducking out of range of Ralph’s flailing arms, “that it might be a good idea to give your family doctor another call. Maybe a sedative…”

“Yes,” Nora agreed, obediently again, and dialed Dr Cantor. But his wife answered; Dr. Cantor was still at the hospital, Mrs. Cantor said sleepily; she was so sorry about Corinne; could she help? And Nora, speaking as clearly as she could, oh, very clearly, said, “My father accused my friend Liz Hardy of poisoning my mother. Would you please tell Dr. Cantor about that when he comes home and tell him the police think Father needs a sedative?” She glared at Ralph. “It’s not true, of course, what Father said about Liz.”

Ralph lunged toward her, nearly breaking free of the police, shouting, “She’s bewitched you, you’re under her spell, she’ll destroy us, she’s evil, evil, a murderer!”

“See,” Nora said calmly into the phone. “Did you hear that? He’s snapped. He’s crazy. Please tell Dr. Cantor.”

“Of course,” Mrs. Cantor said, sounding wide awake now. “Oh, Nora, I’m so sorry, dear, so sorry. He shouldn’t be long. I’ll have him paged again and ask him to go straight to your house from the hospital. Are the police still there? You’re not alone, are you? If you are, why don’t I come over?”

“No, no,” Nora said. She realized she’d been rubbing her forehead, hard, with her free hand, and forced herself to stop.
“It’s all right. Thank you. I’m not alone. Thank you, Mrs. Cantor.
I should go now. I—goodbye.” She replaced the phone, smiled at Liz and the police officers without looking at Ralph, who was now slumped in a kitchen chair, sobbing, and said, “Shall I make some coffee?”

She saw the police officers glance at Liz and then nod. Liz handed her the coffee pot and the coffee can and pumped water for her while Nora, wooden again, stirred up the stove.

***

Across town, in the shed where he went nearly every night, especially when he couldn’t sleep, Henry Brice sat staring at his shortwave radio. It was a little hard to piece together from the faint police calls which he’d run into accidentally (I really should buy a scanner, he thought), but it sure sounded to him as if the local police and an ambulance and then the state police and then the medical examiner had been dispatched one by one to the
Tillot
place because Corinne
Tillot
was dead and Ralph had accused that new friend of Nora’s, that New York woman who’d been taking her to the grocery store instead of Louise taking her—Ralph had accused the New York woman of killing her.

By the time the sun came up, the doctor had arrived and had given both Ralph and Nora sedatives. Two police officers were still sitting outside in their cruiser. “Just in case,” one of them had murmured, nodding toward Ralph when the others had left.

“Call me,” Dr. Cantor now said brusquely to Liz, scribbling on a piece of paper. “Here’s my beeper number. Call me if anything happens. Mr.
Tillot
should sleep a good long time, but I gave Nora a lesser dose; she should wake in a few hours. Here are a few more pills.” He shook some from a bottle into an envelope. “If she needs more, give her one, but no more than one till I come back. I’ll need to look at Mr.
Tillot
again later. Don’t give him any more. He might bluster a bit, but he’s too weak to do any real harm. And I’ll come back later, as soon as I can.”

Liz nodded.

“Are you all right?” Dr. Cantor added almost as an afterthought.

“Yes.”
Sure,
she wanted to say,
I’ve just been accused of murder by a crazy old man who wants to kill me, too, probably, and who’s succeeded in terrifying the woman I love. Sure, I’m fine.

“
Sure,” she said out loud, leading Dr. Cantor to the front hall. “Thanks for coming.”