Nora and Liz

  Table of Contents

  About the Author

  Book I

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Book II

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Book III

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Book IV

  NORA & LIZ

  BY

  NANCY GARDEN

  Copyright © 2002 by Nancy Garden

  Bella Books, Inc.

  P.O. Box 10543

  Tallahassee, FL 32302

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper

  First Edition 2002

  Second Printing 2004

  Third Printing 2012

  Cover designer: Bonnie Liss (Phoenix Graphics)

  ISBN: 13-978-1-931513-20-3

  PUBLISHER’S NOTE: The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

  About the Author

  Nancy Garden is the author of around 30 books for children and teens, a number of which feature gay and lesbian characters and issues. Her young adult novel, Good Moon Rising, was a Lambda Book Award winner and her highly acclaimed Annie on My Mind, burned, banned, and tried in Kansas, is listed by the American Library Association as one of the 100 Best of the Best Books for Young Adults.

  A former editor and pre-Stonewall activist, in addition to working on her own books, Nancy today teaches writing and speaks around the country to librarians, teachers and lay people against censorship and in support of GLBT youth. She and her partner of 33 years divide their time between Massachusetts and Maine.

  For Sandy, my sine qua non

  And with thanks to Detective Nancy Iosue of the Carlisle, Massachusetts, Police Department, who advised me about procedural matters. Any errors are mine, not hers.

  Book I

  Chapter One

  It was dim in the kitchen. The sun slanted through the window over the dark sink, picking up dust motes, but Nora Tillot did not allow herself to dwell for long on the joy of their dancing. As her hand curled around the green pump handle, sending a stream of cold water into the pitted aluminum kettle and then into the oversized iron pot, her motions were that of an old woman, slow, careful, deliberate. But at forty, Nora was hardly old, though her face was lined and her dark blond hair, caught up in a severe bun, showed streaks of gray.

  She bent to pat the small black and white cat that was curling himself around her ankles, purring, and filled his dish with kibble from the box beside the sink. “There, Thomas,” she said absently, “sweet kitty.” She knelt in front of the iron cookstove to open the oven, and blew on the glowing coals till they flared. “Careful,” she could remember her father saying authoritatively around the panatela clamped between his teeth. “Careful. You’ll singe your hair.”

  Back then, her usual rejoinder on days when she felt defiant had been, “What about you with your infernal cigars?” But no one smoked any more in the old farmhouse whose clapboards were rotting and whose walls sagged inward, not Corinne, Nora’s invalid mother, and certainly not her eighty-five-year-old father, semi-bedridden for years with what the doctor called “hypochondria, depression, and God knows what.” Ralph Tillot was a disappointed, penny-pinching man who had never managed to make much of himself, despite the “friends in high places” of whom he had often bragged, sometimes at the expense of his one or two actual friends.

  Nora lifted the kettle and the pot onto the stove, after opening two of its “burners”—holes that would be called burners, anyway, on a modern stove like the one Louise Brice, who took Nora to the grocery store on Fridays and to church on Sundays, kept saying Nora should buy despite her father’s objections. “And electricity and plumbing and a telephone,” Mrs. Brice said almost every week, chipping away at Nora’s resolve to keep peace with her parents. “At least a telephone. It’s not safe, dear, you alone in this firetrap of a house with two old people. What if your mother has another stroke?”

  “Then I’ll do what I did before,” Nora had said doggedly last time. “Run to the neighbors’ and call from there.”

  “That’s a half-mile run,” Louise Brice said dryly, “to the Lorens’ house, and you’re no athlete.”

  Nora turned back to the sink, smiling briefly at the memory as she let the cat out. She’d long since stopped explaining to Mrs. Brice and to the minister, the Reverend Charles Hastings, that the way she and her parents lived was, after all, not unlike the way many people had lived as recently as eighty or so years earlier, and certainly the way her father’s forebears had lived when they’d built the house in the late eighteenth century. People had managed then, so why not now? That was one of her father’s arguments, and Nora, when she was challenged, borrowed it defensively, though when she let herself, she longed for electricity, a refrigerator instead of an ice box on the back stoop, an indoor bathroom instead of an outhouse, a furnace, a modern stove, a telephone.

  Oh, especially a telephone, she thought, moving the pile of galley proofs—Nora proofread for pin money—away from the rusty canister under the window and spooning loose tea into the everyday brown pot. Mrs. Brice is right about that. And young Patty Monahan—Nora smiled to herself once more—who sat with her parents while Nora was at church or out shopping, had widened her eyes in obvious shock the first time she’d come, clearly more startled at the absence of a phone than at the lack of electricity and running water.

  But Ralph wouldn’t hear of it.

  After her solitary cup of tea, sipped slowly at the scarred pine table opposite the sink while she watched the sun rise wearily over the woods that edged the back field, Nora enveloped her slender body in a huge coverall apron made of plain unbleached muslin, which she’d found was best for the bathing ritual. That involved pans and pitchers and basins of water, carried to her parents’ bedsides along with sponges, washcloths (“flannels,” Mama had called them before her stroke, as in English books), plus soap (pink geranium for Mama, tan sandalwood for Father), and towels. At least this task, the most odious of all, usually came early in the day.

  Grimly, Nora smoothed down the apron, knotted it around her waist, and ladled hot water from the steaming pot into a white enamel basin, then added cold via a saucepan carried from the sink pump. Draping a clean white towel and a blue “flannel” over her arm, and carefull
y balancing the basin plus the bowl into which she’d poured her father’s shaving water, Nora went into Ralph’s room off one end of the kitchen. Corinne’s was off the opposite end, so both rooms were able to absorb some of the heat from the cookstove. Even in winter Nora rarely lit its potbellied companion, isolated in the largely unused parlor; life in the Tillot household had always centered around the kitchen, and had done so almost exclusively since Nora’s parents had entered old age.

  “Morning, Father,” Nora said cheerfully. “Want the urinal before your bath?”

  Ralph Tillot, so far a lump under the threadbare green blanket and patched patchwork quilt (although it was warm for late May in Clarkston, Rhode Island), grunted noncommittally, so Nora unhooked the curved plastic bottle from the headboard and handed it to him.

  “Umm,” he grunted, taking it and sliding it under the covers.

  “You’re welcome,” Nora said, and went to the window, pulling up the yellowing shade. It snapped out of her hand and flapped, making a whirring noise.

  “Jesus Christ almighty,” her father bellowed, holding the used urinal out to her. “Watch what you’re doing, can’t you?”

  “Sorry,” Nora said evenly. “It slipped right out of my hand.”

  “Well, watch that this doesn’t slip, too,” he growled, shoving the urinal at her. “No, wait,” he said as she took it and turned away. “Any blood in it?”

  “Blood?” Nora asked, surprised; this was a new worry.

  “You heard me; blood. It’s painful,” he whined.

  “What is?” Nora peered down the spout. She couldn’t really see, but the urine seemed its normal early-morning color.

  “Pissing.”

  “I’m sorry, Father.” She stroked his arm briefly. “Want me to tell Dr. Cantor?”

  Her father pulled himself up to a sitting position. “Is there blood?”

  “Not that I can see.”

  “Well, let’s keep an eye on it. Go ahead and dump it.”

  “I’ll just put it here"—Nora hooked it over the back of a chair—“till I finish your bath. Otherwise the water’ll get cold.”

  Her father said something that sounded like “Erumph,” so Nora, taking that for assent, unbuttoned his pajama top (he wore no bottoms), and slowly sponged him. He lay quietly, unmoving, as she passed the warm, dampened cloth over his flaccid body, till she told him to turn. The sheets were dry, thank God (he often wet the bed), so if she was careful she wouldn’t have to change them or have the argument they frequently had about his wearing Depends at night, as did his eighty-two-year-old wife.

  After she’d dried and powdered him, she shaved him, then laid out underwear, shirt, and pants. But he waved them away as he frequently did these days. “Not yet,” he said, making kissing motions with his mouth. “Maybe later. You’re a good girl, Nora. A nice girl. You take good care of your old father. I love you.”

  “I love you, too,” she said automatically, grateful that all signs pointed to its being a calm day, at least as far as Ralph was concerned. “I’ll bathe Mama and then I’ll get your breakfast. Think about what you’d like.”

  “Just toast,” he said as he always did. “And coffee.”

  “Coming right up,” she said cheerfully. “After Mama’s bath.”

  Giving him a little wave, she went back to the kitchen, dumped his bath and shaving water, and poured fresh for her mother. Too late, she remembered the urinal, so she poured her mother’s water into the pot again and returned for the urinal.

  “I feel dizzy,” Ralph whined when she’d emptied and rinsed it, and brought it back.

  So, she thought, it’s not going to be a calm day after all. “Shall I get you a pill?” she asked. Dr. Cantor, a tall, mournful-looking man who had been the Tillots’ doctor for as long as Nora could remember, had prescribed Dramamine for his dizzy spells. “Could be inactivity, could be a tumor, could be Parkinson’s, could be an ear problem,” he’d told her months earlier when the spells had started, his thin lips set in an exasperated line. “But since he won’t go to the hospital for tests, we’ll never know. At least the Dramamine won’t hurt him.”

  “Yes, a pill,” Ralph said, so Nora fetched the Dramamine and water, plus a flexible straw since he no longer was sitting.

  “It’s cold in here,” he complained, after swallowing.

  “I’ll get you another blanket.” Wearily, she fetched one from the chest in the hall.

  Several demands later—window open, pillows rearranged, window shut, chair out of position, another bout with the urinal—she was finally able to go to her mother’s room.

  Corinne Tillot, a diminutive figure in a faded granny gown sprigged with roses, was snoring. Nora put one hand on her shoulder, patting it lightly. “Mama,” she said softly. “Mama, bath time. It’s a beautiful day,” she went on, hoping she was right; it had seemed so, anyway, the little she’d seen of it.

  “Goo’ morn’—uh—dearie.” Corinne opened a red-rimmed rheumy eye. Her voice seemed clear, though her speech, affected by the stroke she’d had three years earlier, was slurred and fuzzy.

  “Father’s had his bath.” Cheerfully, Nora stripped off the covers and unbuttoned her mother’s nightgown. “And Thomas is out.” She removed the nightgown and the adult diaper her mother wore under it.

  “Tom-ass?” A frown furrowed Corinne’s forehead, deepening its wrinkles.

  “You remember Thomas.” Nora wet the flannel and wrung it out, applying soap. “The cat. He’s chasing grasshoppers, I imagine.”

  “Izzat—all right?” Corinne asked anxiously.

  “Yes, Mama, it’s all right.” Nora gently sponged her mother’s frail body, the shriveled pendulous breasts, the protruding belly.

  “Nora, Nora,” her mother cried, looking down at herself in alarm. “I haven’t anything on!”

  “It’s all right, Mama. It’s just you and me. No one’s here to see.”

  “But I’m cold!” Corinne wailed, tears pooling in her eyes. “I’m cold!” She reached up, curling her good arm around Nora’s neck in a scissors grip, burying her head in Nora’s collar.

  Damn, Nora thought, pulling the sheet up. “I’m sorry, Mama. You’ll be all toasty warm in a moment. There.” She added the blanket. “Better?”

  Her mother nodded and closed her eyes.

  Nora waited. When her mother was breathing evenly, she continued the bath, lifting the sheet and blanket a little at a time, and sponging her mother’s body under it.

  Then, quietly, she glided into the kitchen to make breakfast.

  Chapter Two

  The motel coffee shop was grim, hardly deserving the name. Small formica-topped tables were set at angles to one another on a green linoleum floor that had seen better days. Once-colorful plastic chairs, rose and tan mostly, with a couple of dingy yellow ones thrown in, surrounded them, but they, along with the dusty plastic flowers on each table, failed to brighten the room. Fat glass coffee pots, one topped with brown plastic, the other with orange, steamed on a two-burner hotplate alongside baskets of hard-edged muffins, individual-serving-sized cold cereals, and overdone bagels. Smaller baskets held packets of sugar, Equal, and Sweet-and-Lo, along with plastic soufflé cups of half-and-half and envelopes of Cremora.

  Liz Hardy tossed her jacket over one of the yellow chairs and poured coffee from the brown-topped pot into a chipped white mug. Well, she thought, doubtfully scanning the offered food and plopping a muffin—corn? “plain”?—onto a paper plate, what did you expect? You didn’t exactly choose a five-star-er, kiddo!

  Still, the bed had been comfortable enough, though she’d felt startled all over again at waking up without Megan beside her. Why, she’d wondered, for she had left Megan three months earlier; surely she should be used to her absence by now! Then she’d realized this was the first time she’d stayed in a motel without her. Not that they’d stayed in many motels in the seven years they’d been together, but a few—enough, I guess, Liz mused, to make it feel strange to be in one without
her now.

  She sat down, but the coffee was weak and the muffin she’d chosen was dry and tasteless, as if it were at least yesterday’s, if not last week’s. There didn’t seem to be any butter, nor did there seem to be anyone to ask. “Shit,” Liz muttered, fighting off an unexpected wave of grief and self-pity. She crushed the muffin in her fist and was hurling it into the trash can near the coffee pots when a man reeled sleepily into the room, heading for the counter. The muffin went in, but only because the man, grinning, ducked. “Two points,” he said, lurching toward her, holding out his hand. “Mind if I join you?”

  “Oh, stuff it,” Liz barked, shoving her chair back and scuffling noisily to her feet.

  ***

  Back in her dismal motel room she stood for a moment, fists clenched, in front of the window. The sun was already making the cars in the parking lot cast shadows on the asphalt, still damp here and there with last night’s rain. Poor guy, she thought; it’s not his fault I’m in a lousy mood.

  Late the day before on the phone with Jeff, her brother, she had cried, and he’d said, “Don’t go, Liz; don’t do this. It’s too soon,” and she’d said, “If you don’t want the house, I don’t either. Too many memories.”

  “You mean memories of Megan,” he’d said. “I wish she’d take you back.”

  “Well, she won’t. Would you go back to someone who ditched you?” Megan was already with someone else anyway; she decided not to remind Jeff of that.

  “No,” Jeff had admitted, “but don’t go to the house now, okay?”

  The “house” was a cabin, really, a summer retreat Jeff and Liz had grown up in year after year, fishing and rowing and roaming the woods, playing cowboys and astronauts and spies. Even as adults, they’d visited it every summer, till five years ago when their mother had died of breast cancer. After that, their father had been too sad to go back, and when he’d died, recently, of a heart attack, Liz and Jeff had tentatively made plans to put the cabin on the market and split the money when it sold. But before it could be shown, Liz knew, it would need cleaning, and, now that school was almost out (Liz taught biology and physiology in a private school in Manhattan) and now that Megan was gone, she’d decided she might as well tackle that job and also actually meet the real estate agent she’d contacted by phone and e-mail. She’d taken the Thursday and Friday before the long Memorial Day weekend off from school so she could get started. And she’d left as planned despite Jeff’s reservations, stopping overnight at the motel to avoid having to face five years’ worth of dust and mouse leavings in the rain and the dark.