Nora and Liz (5 page)

“That’s all right.” Georgia started down the stairs. “You’ll be turning the water on soon, though, won’t you, if you’re staying here? And cleaning? Or having someone clean? I can recommend someone.” She fished in her bag again, but Liz stopped her.

“No, that’s okay. I’d just as soon see to that myself.”

Georgia nodded. “Maybe you could leave the water on after you leave, so it’ll be on when I come back with clients? People want to see the oddest things. In summer camps especially.” They were at the foot of the stairs now. “Is the phone working?” she asked. “I’ll just give my office a call if it is, tell them I’m on my way. I’ve got a showing in about half an hour. I forgot my cell phone, stupidly.”

Without reason or warning, Liz felt overwhelmed with sadness. “It should be,” she managed to answer. “I called the phone company from New York and asked to have it turned on.” She went to the wall phone in the kitchen, lifted it, then handed it to Georgia. “Yes.”

While Georgia was chirping into the phone, Liz went into the living room and leaned her head against the cold stone of the fireplace. “Mom,” she whispered. “Dad. How can I sell our Piney Haven?”

Noontime rain sluiced past the kitchen window and spattered on the sill, splashing drops against the glass. It was dark enough for a lamp, and Nora, reading poetry earlier—she was taking a correspondence course in writing it—had huddled close to the kerosene lamp, but had blown it out when she’d finished making lunch and before she’d helped her parents to the table. “Waste of good kerosene,” her father would have barked if he’d seen that she’d lit a lamp during the day; the light wasn’t worth his anger.

Now his soup bowl was nearly empty; as soon as she’d seen the rain, Nora had thought clam chowder would be a good idea for lunch. That was one of Ralph’s favorites as long as it wasn’t tomato-based, and he’d slurped it eagerly, ignoring the milky liquid that dribbled down his chin, while Nora spooned chowder carefully into her mother’s mouth. Corinne seemed vague today, more so than usual, and although she often wanted to feed herself, today she sat slumped docilely in her wheelchair, both arms instead of just the one hanging uselessly by her side.

“You’ve got dribbles,” Nora said to her father when he’d taken the last spoonful.

Grunting, he dabbed ineffectively at his chin.

“No, down more,” she told him, and then, laughing, took the napkin from him and mopped up the mess. Quickly finishing her own chowder, she took the bowls to the sink and removed the shopping list from its place on the bulletin board over the table.

“Let me see that,” her father said.

She handed it to him and he peered at it in the dim light while she pumped water into the bowls. Corinne began humming tunelessly.

“What’re you singing, Mama?” Nora asked fondly, returning to the table. “‘Alice Blue Gown’ or ‘Down By the Old Mill Stream’?” Both were songs Nora knew Ralph had often sung to her; lately, Corinne had been reminiscing about the early days of their marriage. She and Ralph had both been in their forties when they’d met and married, but according to Corinne, Ralph had courted her as ardently as any twenty-year-old. He was still affectionate to her, inadvertently reminding Nora that he’d often been loving and fun to be with when she herself had been a small child, before whatever disappointment, fear, or anger that had changed him had taken over. Nora had always meant to ask her mother if she knew what had embittered him, but hadn’t wanted to open old wounds, if wounds there were. And now, of course, it was too late.

“‘Millstream’,” Corinne mumbled with a crooked smile that sent a slow string of spittle down her chin.

“‘Down by the old mill stream,’” Nora sang softly, carefully wiping her mother’s mouth, “‘where I first met you…’”

“‘With your eyes of blue,’” Ralph joined in noisily, “‘dressed in gingham too…’” Here he reached out, smiling, toward his wife, whose hands, however, were still at her sides. He patted the table in front of her instead, keeping time. “‘It was there I knew, that you loved me true…’”

They all three sang the rest of the song, more or less lustily, and after the last line, Ralph, with a rare burst of his former spark, grinned mischievously as he used to do and added under his breath, “Without a shirt.”

Nora laughed.

But Ralph turned back to the shopping list. “Don’t need butter, do we?” he asked.

“I’m afraid we do,” Nora told him. “We’ve only got a quarter of a pound left.”

“Let me see.”

“Father!”

“Daughter! Let me see.”

Sighing, Nora went outside to the back stoop against whose far edge the rain was splashing down off the roof and making puddles in front of the adjacent woodshed; she took the butter out of the ice box.

Ralph eyed it suspiciously when she handed it to him. “You didn’t take some out of the package, did you, to fool me?”

“No, Father, of course not.”

“All right. But we don’t need so much meat. You have three things down here. Hamburger. Chicken. Lamb. We don’t need all that. We’re not made of money, you know.”

“Mrs. Brice told me there are sales this week,” Nora said evenly. “I thought we should take advantage of them.”

“A sale is never an excuse to buy what you don’t need. Meat doesn’t keep that long. You know that.”

Nora sat down at the table again. “Father, Mrs. Brice has offered to let me use part of her freezer. That way I can take advantage of sales and freeze meat to use later. It’ll save money in the long run. I could even freeze vegetables from the garden.”

“What’s wrong with canning? Your mother canned for years. Louise Brice is an interfering old bitch.”

Nora swallowed her temper with difficulty. “Freezing’s quicker and the food tastes better,” she said quietly.

“Ha! And Mrs. Brice will want some of what you freeze to pay for the use of the freezer.”

“No, she won’t, Father. She even said she wouldn’t.”

“Nothing’s free in this life, Nora. You’re old enough to know that. She’ll want something.”

“The more food that’s in a freezer, she says, the better it works. It uses less electricity because it stays colder. So we’d be doing her a favor.”

“No. I won’t be beholden to anyone. It’s bad enough she has to take you to the store and to church.”

“If you’d let me drive,” Nora retorted, noticing that Corinne’s eyes and head were swaying from one of them to the other, “she wouldn’t have to.”

“Driving’s not for women,” Ralph said illogically.

“Plenty of women drive. Patty Monahan drives and she’s only eighteen, still just a girl. In fact, I’m probably the only woman my age who doesn’t.”

A moan from Corinne stopped both of them. “Don’t,” she pleaded. “Don’t.”

Nora got up and hugged her. “I’m sorry, Mama. We both are. Aren’t we, Father?” She glared at him.

He grunted, then said, “Just because that woman who was here yesterday about the tire—just because she drives doesn’t mean you have to. Look what happened to her anyway.”

Nora laughed, hard. She knew she was on the edge of losing control, but she let the laugh go anyway. “Men have flat tires, too, Father.”

“Men don’t let tires get to that point.”

“I imagine any tire can go flat if you run over something. A nail, glass…”

“Men have the right things in their cars.”

“She had a rented car.”

“What do you care, Nora? She’s nothing to you. Is she?”

“Of course not,” Nora said. “I never saw her before in my life, and I’ll probably never see her again.”

“Did she return the jack?”

Nora stared at him. “No.” To her surprise, she felt a smile spread over her face. “No, as a matter of fact, I told her not to hurry to return it.”

“Hah! Probably three states away from here by now. We’ll kiss that jack goodbye.” He wagged his finger at her. “It doesn’t pay to lend things. You can’t trust people these days. There’s the front door again. Don’t answer it.”

But Nora was already up. “It’ll be Mrs. Brice,” she said, “with the nurse.”

“Look out the window to make sure. It might be that woman again.”

Nora turned, hands on hips. “Oh? Does that mean you don’t want the jack if she brings it back?”

“It means I don’t want strangers here. If it’s her, don’t answer. If she’s brought the jack, she’ll leave it in the yard.”

I may go mad, Nora thought as she went to the door. I may scream soon. I may just walk out of here and never come back.

But I can’t leave Mama.

She did not look out the window, and she opened the door to Louise Brice, a stout church-going woman wearing a sensible black raincoat, and Ms. Sarah Cassidy, Visiting Nurse, in a dark blue dress covered with a yellow poncho, over which tumbled quantities of wavy red hair that spewed out from under a wide-brimmed yellow sou’wester. She carried a small black bag.

“Hello, Nora, dear,” Louise Brice said brightly. “Isn’t this rain something?” She wiped her plastic-overshoe-clad feet on the worn sisal doormat, leaving streaks of mud from, Nora realized, what was left of the washed-out front path.

“Come on in out of it,” said Nora, “while I get my coat. Hi, Sarah.”

“How are they today?” Sarah Cassidy shucked off her poncho and sou’wester and held them uncertainly with two fingers while, dog-like, she shook out her hair. “Where…?”

“Oh, anywhere,” said Nora feigning a gaiety she didn’t feel. “What are front halls for if not for rain and mud?” She hung Sarah’s things on the rack beside the hall table.

“There’s plenty of both,” said Louise, opening and flapping her raincoat. That action stretched the jacket of her new-looking light green suit across her ample bosom, threatening the grasp of several buttons. She untied the clear plastic kerchief that covered her limply curled gray hair and shook it vigorously over the doormat before hanging it and her coat next to Sarah’s. “But April showers bring May flowers.”

“Of course,” Sarah whispered to Nora as all three women went through to the kitchen, and Nora handed Sarah a towel for her hair, “it’s already May. Thanks.” Sarah shook out the towel, then rubbed her hair briskly before bundling it into a net that she took out of her pocket. “Any change?”

“Not really,” Nora whispered back; they were still in the doorway. “Father’s argumentative and Mama’s a bit vaguer than usual, but I don’t think there’s anything special wrong. We had a visitor yesterday; maybe that tired them, although Mama didn’t see her.”

“A visitor?” Louise asked with interest as she moved into the room. Smiling at Ralph and Corinne, she raised her voice several decibels and caroled, “Hello, all, how are we today? Was it a nice visitor, the one you had yesterday?”

“Some woman had car trouble,” Ralph grumbled. “I think my blood pressure’s gone up.” He held his arm out to Sarah.

“We’ll just see.” As Sarah whipped out her equipment, she looked toward Corinne, who hadn’t acknowledged her presence; she seemed asleep. “Hello, Mrs.
Tillot
,” she shouted. “How are you today?” She wrapped the cuff around Ralph’s arm, pumped it, and applied the stethoscope. “I hear you had a visitor yesterday.”

“How can you hear through that thing if everyone’s yelling?” Ralph said, shouting himself. “Let’s have a little quiet.”

Nora had already taken her raincoat off its hook by the back door and picked up the list. “I’ll be back in a couple of hours,” she announced to no one in particular.

“Hadn’t you better wait to see what my pressure is?” Ralph whined. “I think it’s probably high.”

“Your pressure’s fine.” Sarah unfastened the cuff; Louise nodded and glanced significantly at Nora as if she’d suspected as much. “Now your turn, dear,” Sarah said to Corinne.

Corinne blinked. “Do I know you? You look famished, but…”

“Familiar, I think you mean.” Sarah patted Corinne’s shoulder. “Yes, you know me. I’m Sarah, your nurse.”

“Sarah
Cassidy,”
Louise confirmed, bending closer. “You remember. Moira Cassidy’s girl, Moira had that wonderful bakery on Main Street.”

But Corinne was
_.
frowning. “Sarah. Sarah, Sarah,” she murmured, then brightened. “What a nice name!” As if with a huge effort, she lifted her good arm and held a limp hand out in Sarah’s general direction. “How do you do? I’m Corinne Parker.”