Nora and Liz (9 page)

“Probably. Everything aches.” He groaned, watching her carefully. “Are you going to help me or am I going to have to die here?”

Nora put her hands under his shoulders and tugged, but he was too heavy, a dead weight. She could smell the cookies burning.

“Father, you’re going to have to help me. I’m not strong enough to lift you. Try to sit up.”

He made a feeble attempt and then fell back, groaning again. But that morning he had sat up, unaided, in bed when Nora went in to rouse him for breakfast, and he hadn’t seemed impaired physically despite all his demands.

“Try again, Father, please. You sat up this morning.”

“This morning,” he said angrily, “I hadn’t fallen. Oh! My back!”

“Does it hurt? I’m sorry. Where?”

“My back, I said, damn it!”

“I meant where on your back does it hurt?” she asked patiently.

“All over. I’m afraid something’s broken, Nora.”

“Maybe strained, Father, or twisted; I’m sure it does hurt. But you were moving your arms and legs and head before”—again she stifled a giggle—“so I doubt that it’s broken.”

The burnt smell escalated, then died away. There was probably nothing left of the cookies.

“I think you’d better go for the doctor,” Ralph moaned, closing his eyes.

“But Mr. and Mrs. Hastings; the cookies…”

“Damn the cookies and damn the
Hastingses
! Aren’t I more important? Let me have the urinal.” He fumbled at his trousers.

Nora got the urinal and held it for him. “I don’t think you have to go,” she said after about three minutes. “Maybe the shock of falling, you know? Sometimes I feel I have to go, too, when something like that happens.”

“I do have to go,” he whined. “And my back hurts. And”—he looked at her reproachfully—“‘it is sharper than a serpent’s tongue to have a thankless child’.”

“Father,” she said tiredly, “Mr. and Mrs. Hastings will be here any minute. The cookies have burned. You are obviously not seriously hurt. You could help me get yourself up, but you won’t. I can’t get you up alone. I think the best thing for me to do is to leave you here until the
Hastingses
come, and then Mr. Hastings can help me get you back onto your bed or into a chair. Meanwhile, I’m going to go back to the kitchen, start the water for the tea, and cut some bread for cinnamon toast. The cookies are cinders by now.”

Ralph’s eyes filled with tears. “I’m such a burden to you,” he moaned, seizing her hand. “You’re a good girl, Nora. You’ll see. You’ll miss me when I’m gone. I feel it won’t be long, dear. I feel so weak. I’m dizzy. I think I might have banged my head. Don’t bother getting the doctor. Just stay with me, sweetheart.”

She studied him doubtfully. Could he really have hurt himself seriously? One other time when he’d fallen and she’d had to leave him for some reason (her mother had called, she thought), he’d gotten himself up by the time she returned to him. But this time, in her annoyance over the cookies and the impending ministerial visit, had she misjudged him?

He squeezed her hand. “It’s nice sitting here with you,” he said dreamily. “You’re a good girl, Nora. I know it’s hard for you, seeing your old father so sick and weak. You work hard, taking care of your old parents.” He opened his eyes and smiled. “How’s your mother today?”

“Sleepy,” Nora said. Then craftily, she asked, “Would you like to go and see her?”

For a second he moved, lifting himself to a partial sitting position. Then, watching her face, he exclaimed, “Oh,
ow
! No, I can’t.” And he sank back down.

The hell you can’t, she thought. And then, mercifully, there came a knock at the door.

“That’ll be the
Hastingses
.” She extricated herself, squeezing his hand and releasing it. “I’ll just let them in and we’ll have you up again in a jiffy.”

She ran to the door.

“Why Nora, what’s that smell?” Marie Hastings said immediately, pausing with one large hand still on the doorknob.

“Cookies. I’ve cut bread for cinnamon toast to replace them. But I’m afraid Father’s fallen off his bed,” she explained grimly.

“I’ll see to the toast and the tea,” Marie announced with her usual competence, releasing the doorknob and bustling inside. “And Charles, you go with Nora and get Ralph up.” Shaking her head, Marie strode briskly down the hall to the kitchen.

Ralph was sitting up, leaning against his bed, when they reached his room.

“Father!” Nora exclaimed angrily. “I’m sorry,” she said, turning to Mr. Hastings. “How did you manage that?” she asked her father.

“I didn’t want Charles to strain himself lifting me,” Ralph said.

“What about your poor daughter straining herself?” Charles said severely. He bent from the waist, grasped Ralph under the arms, pulled him up with surprising strength given his slight build, and seated him on the edge of his bed. “Hmm? Did you expect her, a mere slip of a girl, to get you up without help?”

“No, no. I realized she couldn’t. We decided to wait till you came, but I didn’t want to trouble you.” Ralph seized the minister’s hand. “Thank you, Charles,” he said. “You’re always so kind.”

“Ralph, are you hurt or not?” Charles demanded.

“My back aches and my head aches and I think I scraped my arm. But it’s not bad,” he added bravely, closing his eyes and wincing.

“Do you need the doctor? X-rays?”

Ralph’s eyes flew open. “Not X-rays. Not the hospital! If I go there, I won’t come back alive. You know what they do there. There was that woman they gave the wrong pills to, and she died. They make mistakes all the time.” His voice dropped
conspiratorily
. “I know. I won’t go there, ever. Nora’s promised neither of us will, haven’t you, Nora?”

“I’ve promised to try,” Nora corrected him. “To try to keep you out. But I can’t promise you’ll never have to go.”

“There are portable X-ray machines.” Charles turned to Nora. “I can arrange for one if you like.”

“I don’t think that’s necessary. Is it, Father? I don’t think you’re really hurt. Right? Tell the truth now.”

Ralph closed his eyes. “I can’t tell,” he said weakly. “My back does ache.
Ohhhhh
!”

“In most nursing homes,” Charles said quietly, pulling Nora into the doorway, “they X-ray patients automatically when they fall. It’s hard to tell with some old folks whether they’re hurt or not. As you can see.”

“What?” called Ralph. “What? I can’t hear you!”

“Mr. Hastings is just saying it might be a good idea for you to have some x-rays anyway. He can have a machine come here. I think it would be a good idea, Father, just in case.”

“No. Too expensive. I won’t hear of it.”

The minister went back to the bed. “It’ll be paid for, Ralph. I’m sure Medicare will cover it, or most of it. I really do think it would be wise. Put your mind at rest, and Nora’s, and mine.”

“Tea’s ready.” Marie appeared in the doorway, filling it with her large frame. “Well, Ralph, there you are back on your bed! Feeling better?”

“Yes,” Ralph said gruffly. “Thanks to your good husband.”

“And your good daughter, too, I should think,” Marie said. “Shall we have our tea in here, make a little bedside party of it?”

“No tea for me.” Ralph closed his eyes. “I’m feeling dizzy again. You go on, though. Enjoy yourselves.” He swept his arm dramatically across the bed, dismissing them, and leaned back against the pillows. “Nora…”

Nora moved to his side, swung his legs up onto the bed, this time without incident, removed his shoes, and covered his feet lightly with a summer blanket that she kept draped over the chair by his window.

Ralph sighed and opened his eyes again as the three of them retreated to the newly cleaned and aired parlor.

***

“I really think,” said Charles, putting down his cup so carefully that it made no sound against the saucer, “that you must have a telephone now, Nora. What if he really
had
been hurt?”

“Or what if your mother has another stroke?” Marie put in, repeating Louise Brice’s frequent warning. “It’s foolish, Nora, and downright dangerous for you not to have one.”

“I know,” Nora told them, “but as I’ve said before, he won’t have it.”

“Well, he’s just going to have to have it, isn’t he? I’ll talk to him. You let me handle it.” Angrily, Marie selected a piece of cinnamon toast.

“He needn’t even know.” Charles took a piece himself. “Good toast.”

“Thanks to your wife.” Nora smiled at Marie. “Father would know. He’d know people were inside the house, installing it, and he’d hear it ringing.”

“All right,” said Marie, “but what can he do about it, really? I mean, the man is helpless!”

“Ah, but he’s not as helpless as he makes out he is,” said Charles. “Look at today. I agree with Nora that there wasn’t a single thing wrong with him. In fact, Nora, I’m not even sure he fell off his bed. Did you hear a thump?”

“No. As a matter of fact I didn’t.”

“There you are.” Charles drained the remaining tea in his cup. “I think he faked the whole thing to get your attention. Got off the bed and carefully lowered himself to the floor. I’d like to get that X-ray machine in just to prove to him that he’s not hurt and to perhaps discourage him from trying such antics again.”

“Charles, really!” exclaimed Marie. “We can’t be positive he was faking. Anyway, that’s neither here nor there. If something really does happen, Nora, you might not be able to leave to get help. And what about thunderstorms, winter, all sorts of things? You can’t run out in a blizzard to get the doctor if your mother has a stroke in the middle of one. And suppose there’s a fire? With that old stove…”

“But even if he’d agree,” said Nora, “he’d never stand for the expense. You know how he is about money. Just the other day he complained about the town taxes again.”

“Humph,” Marie grunted. “I shouldn’t think he’d have to pay much, without town water or sewage or anything.”

“That’s the plan, isn’t it?” Charles said. “Doing without those things in order to keep the taxes down? After all, there’s all that land. Fifty or so acres, isn’t it? But that’s beside the point,” he went on. “The parish fund can easily manage a telephone.”

Nora shook her head. “He’d call it charity.”

Marie patted Nora’s hand, momentarily enveloping it. “He’ll just have to accept it, then.”

“No,” Nora said firmly. “If there’s to be a phone, I’ll pay for it out of my proofreading money.”

“And,” Marie said just as firmly, “the parish fund will reimburse you, pay part of it, something. You need that money for other things, Nora, and you know it.”

“No, really,” Nora protested, embarrassed. “I insist.”

“And so do I. We can work out the details some other time. Meanwhile, I’ll call the phone company. So”—Marie got up and fanned her legs once or twice surreptitiously with her skirt—“that’s settled then, isn’t it? You really do need to be sensible about this, Nora. For your parents’ sake as well as your own. Think of them, if not of yourself.”

Nora felt too tired to resist any more. “All right,” she said dully.

But she knew it would be she, not the
Hastingses
, who would bear the brunt of her father’s wrath.

The traffic was murderous leaving New York, but Liz had expected that. It thinned out on the Connecticut Turnpike—probably because there’s more room for it, she mused. Still, given that it was the first nice Friday that June, she suspected that many of the cars whizzing past her, zipping in and out of lanes, were vacation- or at least free-weekend-bound.

And so am I. She settled back, elbow out of the window of her newly purchased secondhand Toyota, head momentarily against the anti-whiplash headrest. So, if you ignore the botany texts and sketch pads, am I.

***

Outside Hartford the traffic picked up again, and Liz, daydreaming about the last day of school when her seniors had actually clapped for her at the end of class, had a near miss when a truck, passing, cut her off as it zoomed in front of her. “Jerk!” she shouted, banging her foot down on the brake and stifling the urge to give him the horn. But then a plaid-shirted arm shot out of the truck’s cab, waving, and she grinned good-naturedly as she muttered, “But you’re still a jerk, buddy boy.”