Words drifted on the still morning air.
February ig6^
ORAH STOOD, BAREFOOT AND PRECARIOUSLY BALANCED,
: on a stool in the dining room, fastening pink streamers to the brass chandelier. Chains of paper hearts, pink and magenta, floated down over the table, trailing across her wedding china, the dark red roses and gilded rims, the lace tablecloth, the linen napkins. As she worked the furnace hummed and.strands of crepe paper wafted up, brushing against her skirt, then falling softly against the floor again, rustling.
Paul, eleven months old, sat in the corner beside an old grape basket full of wooden blocks. He had just learned to walk, and all afternoon he'd amused himself by stomping through this, their new house, in his first pair of shoes. Every room was an adventure. He had dropped nails down the registers, delighting in the echoes they made. He'd dragged a sack of joint compound through the kitchen, leaving a narrow white trail in his wake. Now, wide-eyed, he watched the streamers, as beautiful and elusive as butterflies, then pulled himself up on a chair and staggered in pursuit. He caught one pink strand and yanked, swaying the chandelier. Then he lost his balance and sat down hard. Astonished, he began to cry.
"Oh, sweetie, " Norah said, climbing down to pick him up.
"There, there," she murmured, running her hand over his soft dark hair.
Outside, headlights flashed and disappeared and a car door slammed. At the same time, the phone began to ring. Norah carried Paul into the kitchen and picked up the receiver just as someone knocked on the door.
"Hello?" She pressed her lips to Paul's forehead, damp and soft, straining to see whose car was in the driveway. Bree wasn't due for an hour. "Sweet baby," she whispered. And then into the phone she said again, "Hello?"
"Mrs. Henry?"
It was the nurse from David's new office—he'd joined the hospi?tal staff a month ago—a woman Norah had never met. Her voice was warm and full: Norah pictured a middle-aged woman, hefty and substantial, her hair in a careful beehive. Caroline Gill, who had held her hand through the rippling contractions, whose blue eyes and steady gaze were inextricably connected for Norah to that wild and snowy night, had simply disappeared—a mystery, that, and a scandal.
"Mrs. Henry, it's Sharon Smith. Dr. Henry was called into emer?gency surgery just, I swear, as he was about to walk out the door and go home. There was a horrible accident out off Leestown Road. Teenagers, you know; they're pretty badly hurt. Dr. Henry asked me to call. He'll be home as soon as he can."
"Did he say how long?" Norah asked. The air was redolent with roast pork, sauerkraut, and oven potatoes: David's favorite meal.
"He didn't. But they say it was an awful wreck. Between you and me, honey, it may end up being hours."
Norah nodded. Distantly, the front door opened, shut. There were footsteps, light and familiar, in the foyer, the living room, the dining room: Bree, early, coming to pick up Paul, to give Norah and David this evening before Valentine's Day, their anniversary, to themselves.
Norah's plan, her surprise, her gift to him.
"Thank you," she told the nurse, before she hung up. "Thanks for calling."
Bree walked into the kitchen, bringing with her the scent of rain.
Below her long raincoat she wore black boots to her knees, and her thighs, long and white, disappeared in the shortest skirt Norah had ever seen. Her silver earrings, studded with turquoise, danced with light. She'd come straight from work—she managed the office for a local radio station—and her bag was full of books and papers from the classes she was taking.
"Wow," Bree said, sliding her bags on the counter and reaching for Paul. "Everything looks great, Norah. I can't believe what you've done with the house in such a short time."
"It's kept me busy," Norah agreed, thinking of the weeks she'd spent steaming off wallpaper and applying new coats of paint. They had decided to move, she and David, thinking that, like his new job, it would help them leave the past behind. Norah, wanting nothing else, had poured herself into this project. Yet it hadn't helped as much as she had hoped; often, still, her sense of loss stirred up, like flames out of embers. Twice in this last month alone she'd hired a babysitter for Paul and left the house, with its half-painted trim and rolls of wallpaper, behind. She had driven too fast down the narrow country roads to the private cemetery, marked with a wrought-iron gate, where her daughter was buried. The stones were low, some very old and worn nearly smooth. Phoebe's was simple, made from pink granite, with the dates of her short life chiseled deeply beneath her name. In the bleak winter landscape, the wind sharp in her hair, Norah had knelt in the brittle frozen grass of her dream. She'd been paralyzed with grief almost, too full of sorrow even to weep. But she had stayed for several hours before she finally stood up and brushed off her clothes and went home.
Now Paul was playing a game with Bree, trying to catch hold of her hair. 't
"Your mom's amazing," Bree told him. "She's just a regular Suzy Homemaker these days, isn't she? No, not the earrings, honey," she added, catching Paul's small hand in her own.
"Suzy Homemaker?" Norah repeated, anger lifting through her like a wave. "What do you mean by that?"
"I didn't mean anything," Bree said. She'd been making silly faces at Paul, and now she looked up, surprised. "Oh, honestly, Norah. Lighten up."
"Suzy Homemaker?" she said again. "I just wanted to have things look nice for my anniversary. What's wrong with that?"
"Nothing." Bree sighed. "Everything looks great. Didn't I just say so? And I'm here to babysit, remember? Why are you so angry?"
Norah waved her hand. "Never mind. Oh, darn it, never mind. David's in surgery."
Bree waited a heartbeat before she said, "That figures."
Norah started to defend him, then stopped. She pressed her hands against her cheeks. "Oh, Bree. Why tonight?"
"It's awful," Bree agreed. Norah's face tightened, she felt her lips purse, and Bree laughed. "Oh, come on. Be honest. Maybe it's not David's fault. But that's exactly how you feel, right?"
"It's not his fault," Norah said. "There was an accident. But okay. You're right. It does—it stinks. It absolutely stinks, okay?"
"I know," Bree said, her voice surprisingly soft. "It's really rotten. I'm sorry, Sis." Then she smiled. "Look, I brought you and David a present. Maybe it will cheer you up."
Bree shifted Paul to one arm and rummaged in her oversized quilted bag, pulling out books, a candy bar, a pile of leaflets about an upcoming demonstration, sunglasses in a worn leather case, and, finally, a bottle of wine, glimmering like garnets as she poured them each a glass.
"To love," she said, handing Norah one glass and raising the other. "To eternal happiness and bliss."
They laughed together and drank. The wine was dark with berries, faint oak. Rain dripped from the gutters. Years from now Norah would remember this evening, the gloomy disappointment and Bree bearing shimmering tokens from another world; her shiny boots, her earrings, her energy like a kind of light. How beau?tiful these things were to Norah, and how remote, how unreach?able. Depression—years later she would understand the murky light she lived in—but no one talked about this in 1965. No one even considered it. Certainly not for Norah, who had her house, her baby, her doctor husband. She was supposed to be content.
"Hey—did your old house sell?" Bree asked, putting her glass on the counter. "Did you decide to take the offer?"
"I don't know," Norah said. "It's lower than we hoped. David wants to accept it, just to have it settled, but I don't know. It was our home. I still hate to let it go."
She thought of their first house, standing dark and empty with a for sale sign planted in the yard, and felt as if the world had be?come very fragile. She held on to the counter to steady herself and took another sip of wine.
"So how's your love life these days?" Norah asked, changing the subject. "How are things with that guy you were seeing—what was his name—Jeff?"
"Oh, him." A dark expression crossed Bree's face, and she shook her head, as if to clear it. "I didn't tell you? I came home two weeks ago and found him in bed—in my bed—with this sweet young thing who worked with us on the mayoral campaign."
"Oh! I'm sorry."
Bree shook her head. "Don't be. It's not like I loved him or any?thing. We were just good, you know, together. At least I thought so."
"You didn't love him?" Norah repeated, hearing and hating her mother's disapproving voice coming from her own mouth. She did not want to be that person, drinking cups of tea in the orderly silent house of their childhood. But neither did she want to be the person she seemed to be becoming, set loose by grief into a world that made no sense.
"No," Bree was saying. "No, I didn't love him, though for a while I thought I might. But that's not even the point anymore. The point is he turned our whole thing into a cliche. I hate that more than anything—being part of a cliche."
Bree put her empty glass on the counter and shifted Paul into her other arm. Her face, unadorned, was delicate, finely boned; her cheeks, her lips, were flashed pale pink.
"I couldn't live like you do," Norah said. Since Paul was born, since Phoebe had died, she'd felt the need to keep a constant vigil, as if a second's inattention would open the door for disaster. "I just couldn't do it—break all the rules. Blow everything up."
"The world doesn't end," Bree said quietly. "Amazing, but it really doesn't."
Norah shook her head. "It could. At any given moment, any?thing at all could happen."
"I know," Bree told her. "Honey, I know." Norah's earlier irrita?tion was washed away by a sudden rush of gratitude. Bree would always listen and respond, would not demand anything less than the truth of her experience. "You're right, Norah, anything can happen, any time. But what goes wrong is not your fault. You can't spend the rest of your life tiptoeing around to try and avert disaster. It won't work. You'll just end up missing the life you have."
Norah did not know how to answer this, so she reached for Paul, who was squirming in Bree's arms, hungry, his long hair—too long, but Norah couldn't bear to cut it—drifting slightly, as if un?derwater, whenever he moved.
Bree poured more wine for them both and took an apple from the fruit bowl on the counter. Norah cut up chunks of cheese and bread and banana, scattering them across the tray of Paul's high chair. She sipped from her wine as she worked. Gradually, the world around her became clearer somehow, more vivid. She no?ticed Paul's hands, like small starfish, spreading carrots in his hair. The kitchen light cast shadows through the back porch railing onto the grass, patterns of darkness and light.
"I bought David a camera for our anniversary," Norah said, wishing she could capture these fleeting instants, hold them forever. "He's been working so hard since he took this new job. He needs a distraction. I can't believe he has to work tonight."
'You know what?" Bree said. "Why don't I take Paul anyway? I mean, who knows, David might get home early enough for dinner. So what if it's midnight? Why not? You could just skip dinner then, sweep away the plates and make love on the dining room table."
"Bree!"
Bree laughed. "Please, Norah? I'd love to take him."
"He needs a bath," Norah said.
"That's okay," Bree said. "I promise not to let him drown in the tub."
"Not funny," Norah said. "Not funny at all."
But she agreed, finally, and packed Paul's things. His soft hair against her cheek, his large dark eyes watching her seriously as Bree walked out the door with him, and then he was gone. She watched from the window as Bree's taillights disappeared down the street, taking her son away. It was all she could do to keep herself from running after them. How was it possible to let a child grow up and go out into that dangerous and unpredictable world? She stood for several minutes, staring out into the darkness. Then she went into the kitchen, where she put foil Over the roast and turned the oven off. It was seven o'clock. Bree's bottle of wine was nearly empty. In the kitchen, so silent she could hear the clock ticking, Norah opened another bottle, expensive and French, which she had bought for dinner.
The house was so quiet. Had she been alone, even once, since Paul was born? She did not think so. She had avoided such mo?ments of solitude, moments of stillness when thoughts of her lost daughter might come rising up, unbidden. The memorial service, held in the church courtyard beneath the harsh light of the new March sun, had helped, but Norah sometimes still had the sense, in?explicably, of her daughter's presence, as if she might turn and see her on the stairs or standing outside on the lawn.
She pressed her hand flat against the wall and shook her head to clear it. Then, glass in hand, she walked through the house, her footsteps hollow on the newly polished floors, surveying the work she'd done. Outside, the rain fell steadily, blurring the lights across the street. Norah remembered another night, the swirling snow. David had taken her by the elbow, helping her into her old green coat, a raggy thing now but that she could not bring herself to dis?card it. The coat had fallen open around the fullness of her belly, and their eyes had met. He was so concerned, so serious, so charged with nervous excitement; in that moment Norah felt she knew him as she knew herself.
Yet everything^had changed. David had changed. Evenings, when he sat beside her on the couch, browsing through his journals, he was no longer really there. In her former life, as a long-distance operator, Norah had touched the cool switches and metal buttons, listening for the distant ringing, the click of connection. Hold, please, she'd said, and words echoed, were delayed; people spoke at once and then stopped, revealing the wild static night that lay be?tween them. Sometimes she had listened, the voices of people she would never meet spilling out their formal heartfelt news: of births or weddings, illnesses or deaths. She had felt the dark night of those distances and the power of her ability to make them disappear.
