Nora and Liz

  “No,” said Liz. “I wouldn’t want him to. I don’t think I’ll be changing my mind for a long time, Georgia, if at all. So Roy should probably go ahead and buy something else. There are other cabins on the lake.”

  “Actually,” said Georgia, “there aren’t any available, especially not any with land. The only thing on the market is a bit of acreage across…”

  “Georgia,” Liz interrupted, “I don’t want to be rude, but I really have to go. Thanks for calling.”

  “Oh, no trouble, no trouble at all.” But Georgia’s voice still sounded strained and disappointed. “I’m glad you told me. And I do hope you’re enjoying your charming little camp. I can understand your wanting to hold onto it. But if that changes…”

  “I’ll let you know,” Liz said. “Goodbye, Georgia. Thanks again. And my apologies to both you and Roy for not letting you know sooner.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  Dingy, Nora thought at noon on Friday, brushing her hair and eyeing the faded flower-sprigged paper covering the walls of the maid’s room, now her room, off the kitchen. They hadn’t used the old house’s second floor since Ralph had begun to complain about dizziness, long before Corinne’s stroke.

  But it doesn’t matter, she thought; Liz Hardy will never see this room.

  Will she?

  Of course not, Nora admonished herself sharply, rummaging in her narrow closet for a clean dress.

  Or a blouse and skirt; yes, she thought, pulling out a calico skirt, green with tiny blue and white flowers. “Like the wallpaper,” she muttered, amused, as she pulled it on and topped it with a white scoop-necked blouse she hadn’t worn in years.

  But it, she was glad to see, unlike the wallpaper, wasn’t dingy.

  The time was twelve-fifteen.

  Thomas, perched on the sill under the open window that looked out over the back yard, barn, outhouse, and the neglected fields beyond, jumped down and wound around her legs, mewing plaintively.

  “You’ve got plenty of food, you old faker.” Nora picked him up and cuddled him, her cheek against his purring side.

  There is no reason to be nervous, she said silently to herself, putting the cat down. Reaching to the bureau for her old gray pocketbook, she checked inside for money, the house keys she seldom had to use but always carried, and the shopping list that she’d already looked over many times. No reason to be nervous. None. What could happen? What could happen today, with Patty here the way she’s been every Friday for ages, that hasn’t happened before? Why should today be different?

  But she felt it was; the fluttering in her stomach told her it was, the dampness on her palms, the catch in her throat.

  “See you, Tom,” she said to the cat, decisively closing her pocketbook and darting into the kitchen, stopping to look around the corner into her mother’s room. Corinne, freshly bathed, breakfasted, and nightgowned, was snoring lightly. Nora tweaked the sheet to one side; it had slipped. Quickly, she crossed the kitchen to her father’s room.

  “I’m just going,” she announced. “As soon as Patty comes.” And Liz, she added silently, swallowing guilt for not saying it out loud.

  But why should I feel guilty?

  “Ermmm.” Ralph, in his chair by the window, grunted and held out his hand. “Let’s see that list.”

  “You already looked at it.”

  “Don’t remember. List.”

  Nora snapped open her pocketbook and handed it to him. A car drove up outside; a car door slammed.

  “Father, it’s time. Here’s Patty.”

  He looked up from the list and peered out the window. “That’s not Patty,” he said. “That’s your precious Miss Hardy. We don’t need those paper towels.” He held the list out to her. “What’s wrong with cloth ones?”

  “Cloth ones need washing. And I don’t like to use them for wiping up spills and accidents.”

  “What’s wrong with rags, then? No paper towels. That’s an extravagance.”

  There was a firm knock at the door.

  Nora took the list, resisting the impulse to snatch it roughly. “I may be back a little later than usual,” she said. “Come in,” she shouted, though she doubted that Liz would be able to hear her.

  “Oh, you may, may you? And if I fall or have a bad dizzy spell, what then?”

  “Patty will be here.”

  “I don’t want you off gallivanting.”

  “I promised Liz I’d have a look at her mother’s old garden.”

  “And a generous promise that was,” Liz said, appearing in Ralph’s doorway. “Hi, Nora. Good afternoon, Mr. Tillot. I brought in my newspaper just in case you’d like to have a look at it. I’ve finished with it.”

  “Harumph! Infernal lies in papers. I would not like to have a look at it.”

  “Father!” Nora admonished him sharply. “You could at least say thank you.”

  “Why? I didn’t ask for the paper.”

  “Sorry,” Nora said to Liz in an undertone.

  Liz shrugged, and whispered, “It’s okay. I didn’t mean to offend you, Mr. Tillot,” she said to him. “You’re right that there’s a lot of ridiculous stuff in the papers these days. But I didn’t know but what you might be interested in the sports or the business section or something like that.”

  “Sports are a waste of time,” he said gruffly. “Have been ever since big money took them over. And business is full of crooks. Politics, too.”

  Liz grinned. “I guess that about covers it, then, unless you like recipes and movie reviews.”

  Nora suppressed a laugh; Ralph eyed Liz suspiciously, grunted, and turned back to the window.

  With immense relief, Nora heard Patty drive up, and tugged Liz out of the room.

  “I probably shouldn’t say this,” Liz said a few minutes later as she drove Nora out toward the main road, “but, again, I don’t know how you stand it.”

  “Sometimes I don’t. Mostly I don’t think about it. And they sleep so much, Mama does, anyway. In the summer I can stay outside a lot, and that helps; Father does make more demands when I’m in the house. In the summer I try not to think about the winter.” Nora glanced at Liz. “That must sound pretty Pollyanna-ish.”

  “No. But I still can’t help thinking you must be some kind of saint.”

  “You wouldn’t think that if you could read my mind sometimes.” Nora looked out the window, watching the trees. Liz drove smoothly, confidently, unlike Mrs. Brice, who tended to weave and look from side to side as much as straight ahead. “My mother’s a sweetheart. And Father wasn’t always so gruff. And I do like it here. Besides, I don’t know what I’d do if I didn’t have them,” she added. “My parents, I mean. I know I won’t always. But it’s hard to imagine life without them.”

  “Yes,” said Liz. “I suppose it is.” She turned onto the main road. “Think of all the free time, though. Unless you got a job or something.”

  “I have a job now,” Nora said—proudly, defensively, Liz thought. “Not much of one, but I’ve been thinking of expanding it. Proofreading,” she added before Liz could ask. “For a small publisher. They send me galleys and I correct them. The author corrects them, too, of course, and so does someone at the typesetter’s, but the publisher doesn’t have a very big staff so they use freelancers. I’ve been thinking of asking for more work from them, or asking another publisher.”

  “What kinds of books?” Liz asked.

  “Oh, everything. Novels, poetry. Poetry’s hard, because of course some things that look like errors, aren’t, so you have to read against the manuscript. Nonfiction, too. I did a Civil War history last winter, a big thick book, but it was fascinating.”

  Nora’s cheeks had flushed and her eyes sparkled; she’s come alive, Liz thought, suddenly no longer sorry for her; she’s not a dowdy careworn drudge at all now.

  “Sounds great,” Liz said. “Any science? I’m biased,” she explained hastily, “being a bio teacher and all.”

  “No, no science.” Nora chuckled. “I don’t thin
k I could manage that. Not smart enough, I guess.”

  There she goes again; Liz turned down the long drive to the cabin. “I don’t think it’s a question of smart,” she said carefully. “I’m smart, but I could never manage poetry.”

  “Poetry’s just words,” Nora said absently.

  “And thoughts and ideas and feelings. Plus beauty, no?” Liz stopped in front of the cabin and turned toward Nora. “No?”

  “Well, yes, that’s right.” Nora seemed surprised. “But when I write it, I don’t think of it that way. It just sort of comes out, you know?”

  “Wow! So you write poetry?”

  Nora nodded. “I’m taking a correspondence course. I don’t think I’m very good at it. The instructors are told to encourage the students; it’s pretty transparent. But it’s fun. And sometimes a kind of—relief, I guess.”

  “Are your poems very private?” Liz switched off the ignition. “Or do you show them to people?”

  “Who would I show them to?” Nora looked out the car window at the cabin. “I love it,” she said. “What a sweet little house!”

  “It wasn’t so sweet when I arrived,” Liz said, getting out of the car. “At least not inside. But, yeah, I guess it does look pretty nice.” She went around to the passenger side.

  Nora had jumped out by then and was looking toward the lake, shading her eyes. “How wonderful,” she said, “it must be to wake up here in the morning. It must be so peaceful, so calm!”

  “It is. I usually take my coffee out to the dock. Or I have a swim and then take my coffee out to the dock. If it’s really early, there’s no sound but the birds and there are lots of them. Come.” She held out her hand impulsively, without really noticing. “Come see the garden.”

  Nora took her hand, whereupon Liz did notice and felt instantly wary, self-conscious. But she managed to lead Nora around the side of the house to her mother’s perennial plot, with the rock garden beyond.

  “Oh,” Nora exclaimed, dropping Liz’s hand and falling to her knees. “Oh, but this is marvelous!”

  Liz knelt beside her. “Is it? I wouldn’t know. I mean, it looks pretty and even exciting, with stuff coming up and all, but I only know maybe two or three of these flowers and I have no idea”—she pointed to a cluster of stubby gray-green leaves—“if something like that is a weed or a rare exotic plant.”

  “Neither. It’s a sedum. It’ll spend the summer growing and then in the fall it’ll have flowers. They’ll probably be a sort of maroon-reddish, but they might be yellow. There are lots of different kinds of sedum,” Nora explained, carefully moving twigs and leaf mold off some small multi-lobed leaves. “Look,” she said, “here’s a little chrysanthemum plant. It’s been neglected, but if you keep an eye on it and pinch it off several times during the summer, it should form a nice mound and then flower in the fall.”

  “Chrysanthemum! You mean those huge fall flowers?”

  “Some of them are huge, but this one will probably have lots of smallish ones. That’s the goal of pinching off, usually, to help plants form mounds covered with flowers. Now here”—Nora stood up, brushing dirt from her knees; her legs were bare, Liz noticed, and her feet, with neatly trimmed nails, were in sandals—“here’s phlox coming, lots of it.” She pointed to several tall leafy plants with buds at the ends of their many branches. “These will flower fairly soon. You might put some fertilizer in, though; everything’s kind of spindly, probably undernourished.”

  “What kind of fertilizer?” Liz asked, enjoying watching Nora move around the garden, examining, bending over the plants, touching them delicately, confidently.

  “You could get some all-purpose commercial stuff at a hardware store. Or you could get a soil test kit and find out exactly what the soil lacks.” Nora cocked her head. “That should interest you,” she said. “Mixing chemicals.”

  “I’m not a chemist, but, well, yes, I guess it would. Really? Mixing chemicals?”

  “It depends on the kind of kit. Some involve more work than others. They sell all kinds at Greely’s. You know, the hardware store in town.”

  Liz nodded. “Maybe we could go there when we’re through grocery shopping. And you could show me which one to buy.”

  “Sure,” said Nora, “if there’s time.”

  “When do you have to be back?”

  “An hour ago, if Father has his way,” Nora answered with a rueful smile. “I’m usually out for about two hours with Mrs. Brice, but this time I tried to tell him it’d be a bit longer. It can’t be too much longer, though; he gets very anxious.”

  Liz looked at her watch, swallowing a less-than-charitable reply. “Then I guess we’d better get going. Tell you what. You stay out here and grub around in the garden so you can tell me more about it, and I’ll see to lunch.”

  “But can’t I help you?”

  “Nope.” Liz scrambled to her feet. “Seems to me you deserve an occasional meal you don’t have to prepare.”

  “Thank you. That’s very kind.”

  For a moment they looked at each other, and then Liz, struck by the intensity of the look, said, gruffly, “I’ll give you a shout.”

  ***

  Recklessly, Liz served chardonnay with the French bread, the grilled salmon, and the Caesar salad, and they lingered over it, looking out over the lake from the living room. She wondered how often Nora drank wine; not often, she suspected. But she seemed to appreciate it, sipping it delicately, sometimes holding it in her mouth before she swallowed as if savoring its flavor as appreciatively as she’d seemed to savor turning the knobs on the stove and the TV, and examining the refrigerator.

  “No motorboats,” Nora commented after a comfortable pause. “I was afraid there’d be many, roaring by.”

  “Not yet. But come July, there’ll be more. At least there always were. By August I’ll probably want to scream at them to shut up. I like to watch the water skiers, though. Once one of them let me try her skis. It was terrifying and wonderful, all at once.”

  “You seem like a daring sort of person.” Nora held up her glass, squinting through it at Liz. “The kind of person who’d do anything if she had a chance. Climb mountains, traverse the Arctic, cut your way through the jungle.”

  Liz laughed and poured them both more wine. “I’m afraid I’m the type who likes to read about adventures more than have them. When I was a kid I used to think I’d do that kind of thing, or maybe become an Olympic athlete. But somehow I never found time to train for anything, and it’s my firm belief that if you put a dream off by saying you don’t have time for it, you really don’t want it enough.”

  “You’re probably right.” Nora sipped, then put down her glass. “It must be wonderful to want something that much, enough to work hard for it. I never did. I never knew what I wanted. So it’s just as well I’m doing what I’m doing. No thwarted dreams.”

  “No dreams of marrying, even?” Liz asked casually. “Of a husband and kids?”

  “Not really.” Nora’s eyes went to the window again. “There was a boy, Peter, in my class in high school. We were friends. But I didn’t date like other girls. Too shy, I guess, or just not interested. And not allowed to anyway.” She turned back to Liz. “What about you?”

  Briskly, Liz stacked the plates. “Boys—men—never interested me much either. How about a little carrot cake?”

  “Do we have time?” Nora, seeming nervous, glanced at her watch. It was an old-fashioned ladies’ watch, Liz noticed, with a black string-like strap. “Oh, my! Could we have the cake some other time? I think I’d really better get at the shopping.”

  “Sure,” said Liz, standing there holding plates. “If you promise that we’ll do this again. Lunch, I mean. The garden.”

  Nora stood up. “Oh, we will, don’t you think? And I’ll fix lunch here for you, if you’ll let me. I’d love to learn how to use your stove, and I’d love to run water in your sink, and—oh, and turn lights on and off.” Laughing, she flipped a nearby switch, then said, soberly, “If it’s
not too boring for you. If I’m not.”

  “You are not,” Liz said before heading for the kitchen, “in the least boring.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  “He’s in rare form,” Patty said, meeting Nora at the door when Liz dropped her off at around 3:30. She was a cheerful girl with a fresh, open face who had graduated from the local high school a year earlier and since then had been earning a meager living by expanding her former baby- and elder-sitting jobs. “He’s on a rampage. I kept telling him you’d said you’d be later than usual, but it didn’t seem to make much difference. Here, let me have one of those.” She took a grocery bag from Nora and followed her into the kitchen. “He even tried to use the phone,” she said, setting the bag down on the table.

  “He didn’t!” Nora put her own bag down, her pocketbook next to it.

  “Yeah.” Patty grinned. “He did. I thought he was going to, like, rip it off the wall. He grabbed the receiver and then he yelled, ‘Where the hell’s the dial? How do you work this infernal thing?’ I figured he must’ve used old-fashioned phones long ago at work or something, so I tried to, you know, explain about the buttons and stuff, and I gave him the number you left me, but he like freaked and banged at the buttons so hard I was afraid he was going to bust the phone through the wall. So I called the number for him, about eleven times; he kept making me do it again. No answer.”

  Nora groaned. “Oh, lord, I’m sorry, Patty! We were out shopping by then, probably. My friend and I.” She said ‘my friend’ carefully, then realized she was savoring it as she had the wine, tasting it, almost.

  “Yeah, that’s what I figured. But he—uh-oh.” Patty stepped back as Ralph thumped through the door, his shirt buttoned wrong.

  “It’s about time!” he thundered, banging his walker against the floor. “Where the hell were you?”

  “Shopping,” Nora said mildly, indicating the bags. “As you can see. I told you I’d be later than usual.”