"It's scary," Kay said, but her tone was calm, more disapproving than dismayed, the same voice she might have used to talk about someone's divorce. She took Angela, kissed her forehead, and put her gently back into the carriage.
"I know," Norah agreed. She used the same tone, but to her the unrest seemed deeply personal, a reflection of what had been going on within her heart for years. For a moment she felt another sharp, deep pang of envy. Kay lived in innocence, untouched by loss, be?lieving that she would always be safe; Norah's world had changed when Phoebe died. All her joys were set into stark relief—by that loss and by the possibility of further loss she now glimpsed in every moment. David was always telling her to relax, to hire help, not to push herself so hard. He grew irritated with her projects, her com?mittees, her plans. But Norah could not sit still; it made her too un?easy. So she arranged meetings and filled up her days, always with the desperate sense that if she let down her guard, even for a mo?ment, disaster would follow. The feeling was worst in the late morning; she almost always had a quick drink then—gin, some?times vodka—to ease her into the afternoon. She loved the calm, spreading through her like light. She kept the bottles carefully hid?den from David.
"Anyway," Kay was saying. "I wanted to RSVP about your party. We'd love to come, but we'll be a little late. Is there anything I can bring?"
"Just yourselves," Norah said. "Everything's almost ready. Ex?cept I have to go home and take down a wasp's nest."
Kay's eyes widened slightly. She was from an old Lexington family and had "people," as she called them. Pool people and clean?ing people and lawn people and kitchen people. David always said Lexington was like the limestone on which it was built: layers of stratification, nuances of being and belonging, your place in the hierarchy fixed in stone long ago. No doubt Kay had insect peo?ple too.
"A wasp's nest? Poor you!"
"Yes," Norah said. "Paper wasps. The nest is hanging off the garage."
It pleased her to shock Kay, even so mildly; she liked the concrete sound of the task before her. Wasps. Tools. The dismantling of a nest. Norah hoped it would take all morning. Otherwise, she might find herself driving, as she had so often in these last weeks, fast and hard, a silver flask in her purse. She could make it to the Ohio River in less than two hours. Louisville or Maysville or once, even, Cincinnati. She'd park on a river bluff and get out of the car, watch?ing the distant ever-shifting water far below.
The school bell rang and the children began funneling inside. Norah searched for Paul's dark head, watched him disappear. "I just loved our two singing together," Kay said, blowing kisses to Elizabeth. "Paul has such a beautiful voice. A gift, really."
"He loves music," Norah replied. "He always has."
It was true. Once, at three months, while she talked with friends, he had suddenly begun to babble, a cascade of sounds pouring into the room like flowers spilling suddenly from a shaft of light, stop?ping the conversation entirely.
"Actually, that's the other thing I wanted to ask you, Norah. This fund-raiser I'm doing next month. It's a Cinderella theme, and I've been sent out to round up as many little footmen as I can. I thought of Paul."
Despite herself, Norah felt a surge of pleasure. She had given up hope of such an invitation years ago, after Bree's scandalous mar?riage and divorce.
"A footman?" she repeated, taking in the news.
"Well, that's the best part," Kay confided. "Not just a footman. Paul would sing. A duet. With Elizabeth."
"I see," Norah said, and she did. Elizabeth's voice was sweet but thin. She sang with forced cheer, like spring bulbs in January, her anxious eyes darting over the audience. Her voice wouldn't be strong enough without Paul's.
"It would mean such a lot to everyone if he would."
Norah nodded slowly, disappointed, annoyed with herself for caring. But Paul's voice was pure, winged; he would love to be a footman. And at least this party, like the wasps, would provide an?other anchor to her days.
"Wonderful!" Kay said. "Oh, marvelous. I hope you won't mind," she added, "I took the liberty of reserving a little tuxedo for him. I just knew you'd say yes!" She glanced at her watch, efficient now, ready to go. "Good to see you," she added, waving as she walked away, pushing the carriage.
The playground was empty. A candy wrapper flashed, pin-wheeling, across the overgrown spring grass and caught in the flaming pink azaleas. Norah walked past the bright swings and slides to her car. The river, its calming swirl, called to her. Two hours, and she could be there. The lure of the fast drive, the rushing wind, the water, was nearly irresistible, so great that on the last school holiday she had been shocked to find herself in Louisville, Paul frightened and quiet in the backseat, her hair windswept and the gin already wearing thin. There's the river, she had said, standing with Paul's small hand in hers, looking at the muddy, swirlings water. Now we'll go to the zoo, she'd announced, as if that had been her intention all along.
She left the school and drove into town through the tree-lined streets, past the bank and the jewelry store, her longing as vast as the sky. She slowed as she passed World Travel. Yesterday, she had interviewed for a job there. She'd seen the ad in the paper, and she'd been drawn into the low brick building by the glamorous signs in the windows: glittering beaches and buildings, vivid skies and col?ors. She had not really wanted the job until she got there,; and then suddenly she did. Sitting in her printed linen sheath, holding her white purse on her lap, she had wanted this job more than any?thing. The agency was owned by a man named Pete Warren, fifty years old and bald across the top, who'd tapped a pencil on his clip?board and joked about the Wildcats. He had liked her, she could tell, even though her degree was in English and she had no experi?ence. He was supposed to let her know today.
Behind her, someone honked a horn. Norah speeded up. This road went through town and intersected with the highway. But as she neared the university, traffic grew dense. The streets were so full of people she slowed to a crawl and then had to pull over en?tirely. She got out of the car and left it. Distantly, from deeper in the campus, came a dark swelling of voices, rhythmic and rising, a chant full of energy that was somehow akin to the buds bursting open on the trees. Her restlessness and longing seemed answered by this moment, and she fell into the current of moving people.
Scents of sweat and patchouli oil filled the air, and the sunlight was warm on her arms. She thought of the elementary school, just a mile away, the order there and the ordinariness, and she thought of Kay Marshall's disapproving tone, and yet she kept going. Shoul?ders and arms and hair brushed against her. The current began to slow and pool; there was a crowd gathering by the ROTC building, where two young men stood on the steps, one with a megaphone. Norah paused too, craning to see what was happening. One of the young men, wearing a suit jacket and tie, was holding an American flag aloft, the stripes fluttering. As she watched, the other young man, also nicely dressed, held his fist near the edge. The flames were invisible at first, an intensity of shimmering heat, and then they caught in the fabric, rising up against the leaves, the blue and greenness of the day.
Norah watched this happening as if in slow motion. Through the wavering air she saw Bree, moving along the perimeter of the crowd near the building, passing out leaflets. Her long hair was caught in a ponytail that swung against her white peasant top. She was so beautiful, Norah thought, glimpsing the determination and excitement on her sister's face in the instant before she disappeared. Envy rose in her again, flamelike: envy of Bree, for her sureness and her freedom. Norah pushed her way through the crowd.
She glimpsed her sister twice more—the flash of her blond hair, her face in profile—before she finally reached her. By then Bree was standing on the curb, talking to a young man with reddish hair, their conversation so intent that when Norah finally touched her arm Bree turned, puzzled and unseeing, her expression utterly blank for a long instant before she recognized her sister.
"Norah?" she said. She placed her hand on the red-haired man's chest, a gesture so sure and intimate that Norah's heart caught. "It's my sister," Bree explained. "Norah, this is Mark."
He nodded without smiling and shook Norah's hand, assess?ing her.
"They set the flag on fire," Norah said, conscious once again of her clothes, as out of place here as on the playground, for utterly dif?ferent reasons.
Mark's brown eyes narrowed slightly and he shrugged.
"They fought in Vietnam," he said. "So I guess they had their reasons."
"Mark lost half his foot in Vietnam."
Norah found herself glancing down at Mark's boots, laced high up his ankles.
"The front half," he said, tapping his right foot. "The toes and then some."
"I see," Norah said, deeply embarrassed.
"Look, Mark, can you give us a minute?" Bree asked.
He glanced at the stirring crowd. "Not really. I'm the next speaker."
"It's okay. I'll be right back," she said, then took Norah's hand and pulled her a few yards away, ducking beneath a cluster of catalpa trees.
"What are you doing here?" she asked.
"I'm not sure," Norah said. "I had to stop, that's all, when I saw the crowd."
Bree nodded, her silver earrings flashing. "It's amazing, isn't it? There must be five thousand people here. We were hoping for a few hundred. It's because of Kent State. It's the end."
The end of what? Norah wondered, leaves fluttering around her. Somewhere, Miss Throckmorton was calling to the students and Pete Warren sat beneath the glossy travel posters, writing tickets. Wasps swam lazily in the sunny air by her garage. Could the world end on such a day ?
"Is that your boyfriend?" she asked. "The one you were telling me about?"
Bree nodded, smiling a private smile.
"Oh, look at you! You're in love."
"I suppose so," Bree said softly, glancing at Mark. "I suppose I am."
"Well, I hope he's treating you well," Norah said, appalled to hear her mother's voice, right down to the intonation. But Bree was too happy to do anything but laugh.
"He treats me fine," she said. "Hey, can I bring him this week?end? To your party?"
"Sure," Norah said, though she wasn't sure at all.
"Great. Oh, Norah, did you get that job you wanted?"
The catalpa leaves moved like supple green hearts in the wind, and beyond them the crowd rippled and swayed.
"I don't know yet," Norah replied, thinking of the tasteful, color?ful office. Suddenly her aspirations seemed so trivial.
"But how did the interview go?" Bree pressed.
"Well. It went well. I'm just not sure I want the job anymore, that's all."
Bree pushed a strand of hair behind her ear and frowned.
"Why not? Norah, just yesterday you were desperate for that job. You were so excited. It's David, isn't it? Saying that you can't."
Norah, annoyed, shook her head. "David doesn't even know. Bree, it was just a little box of an office. Boring. Bourgeois. You wouldn't be caught dead in it."
"I'm not you," Bree pointed out, impatient. "You're not me. You wanted this job, Norah. For the glamour. For heaven's sake, for the independence."
It was true, she had wanted the job, but it was-also true that she felt anger flaring up again: fine for Bree, who was out here starting revolutions, to consign her to a nine-to-five life.
"I'd be typing, not traveling. It would be years and years before I earned any trips. It's not exactly what I imagined for my life, Bree."
"And pushing a vacuum cleaner is?"
Norah thought of the wild rush of wind, of the Ohio, swirling, only eighty miles away. She pressed her lips together and did not answer.
"You make me so crazy, Norah. Why are you afraid of change? Why can't you just be and let the world unfold?"
"I am," she said. I am being. You have no idea!"
"You're sticking your head in the sand. That's what I see."
"You don't see anything but the next available man."
"All right. We're done." Bree took a single step and was immedi?ately swallowed by the crowd: a flash of color, then gone.
Norah stood for a moment beneath the catalpas, trembling with an anger she knew to be unaccountable. What was wrong with her? How could she envy Kay Marshall one moment and Bree the next, for such completely different reasons?
She made her way back through the crowd to her car. After the turbulence and drama of the protest, the city streets seemed flat, bleached of color, ominously ordinary. Too much time had passed; she had only two hours before she needed to fetch Paul. Not time enough for the river now. At home, in her sunny kitchen, Norah made herself a gin and tonic. The glass was solid and cool in her hand, and the ice tinkled with reassuring brightness. In the living room she paused before the photograph of herself standing on the natural stone bridge. When she remembered that day—their hike and their picnic—she never thought of this moment. Instead, she remembered the world spreading out below her, the sun and the air on her skin. Let me take your picture, David had called, insistent, and she'd turned to find him, kneeling, focusing, intent on preserv?ing a moment that never really existed. She'd been right about that camera, to her own regret. David, fascinated to the point of obses?sion, had built a darkroom above the garage.
David. How was it that he grew more mysterious to her as the years passed, as well as more familiar? He had left a pair of amber cufflinks on the console beneath the photos. Norah picked these up and held them in her palm, listening to the clock tick softly in the living room. The stones warmed in her hand; she was comforted by their smoothness. She found rocks everywhere, clustered in David's pockets, scattered on the dresser, tucked into envelopes in the desk. Sometimes she glimpsed David and Paul in the backyard, their heads bent together over some likely looking stone. Watching them, her heart always opened with a kind of wary gladness. Such moments were rare; David was so busy these days. Stop, Norah wanted to say. Take a minute. Spend some time. Your son is growing so fast.
