Nora Read online

  Chuck and I both blinked. Patsy, in full flower, was awesome, even I had to admit.

  “I see you met my sister, Nora,” Patsy said in her huskiest voice.

  “Yeah,” Chuck said. His eyelids flickered, but he didn’t wink at me. Good thing. I never would’ve forgiven him if he’d winked.

  The conversation limped along. Chuck had moved in during the summer and didn’t know many kids. Patsy filled him in on the school, the teachers, sports, the dos and don’ts of Green Hollow. (That’s where we live, Green Hollow, Connecticut. George Washington stopped here on his way to or from Valley Forge. I can’t remember which. That’s Green Hollow’s claim to fame. I don’t think he actually slept here; he just made a pit stop.)

  I settled in on the couch with Daddy’s Wall Street Journal. I knew Patsy wouldn’t want me to hang around, but I wanted to. So I did. Patsy glared daggers at me, but then, when I didn’t keel over, she pushed her charm button even harder and pretended I wasn’t there. The telephone rang. Usually we fight to see who gets there first. This time I let it ring.

  At last Patsy gave in and answered it. “It’s Roberta for you,” she said in a frosty voice.

  “Take the message,” I said.

  “I better split.” Chuck shuffled his feet and his untied shoelaces got tangled. He stayed put.

  “She wants to know about Saturday night,” Patsy said. “Here.” She shoved the receiver at me and almost put out my left eye.

  “Hey, you old bag,” I greeted Roberta. “What’s up? Oh, sure. I guess. You got it. Yeah, we’ll be there. Dress warm. Bring lots of cash, kid. I feel lucky. See you.”

  I hung up.

  “Roberta says the strip-poker party’s on for Saturday,” I relayed the message.

  Chuck Whipple’s Adam’s apple bounced up and down.

  “Where are you from, anyway?” I asked him.

  “Iowa,” he mumbled, heading for the door, fighting his shoelaces. “Near Des Moines.”

  We watched him go.

  “Sheesh!” Patsy said and stalked out of the room, stiff legged as an angry dog. It was very satisfying.

  When Patsy gets really crazy, she reminds me of a snapping turtle, hissing and snapping and threatening to bite. I love her dearly, but sometimes she’s tough to take. She gets out of control and needs to be put in her place.

  I only wish I knew exactly where her place is.

  Four

  Our mother’s portrait hangs over the living room mantel. A red shawl is draped over her shoulders, and she’s looking down pensively at her hands. Her face is sad, as if she knows what lies ahead. I think of her as a happy person, someone who laughed a lot. But it’s strange. In all the pictures we have of her, and in the portrait, she looks sad.

  Dee Dulin painted the portrait. Dee and our mother had been friends since they were girls. On the day our mother died, Dee was the first person to come over. She came, she said, to offer her condolences. I absolutely hate that word, condolences.

  “I forgot the nuts,” Dee said, handing us a tin of brownies she’d baked. Her eyes were so swollen with tears she could hardly see. “I forgot to put in the nuts,” Dee told us twice. The three of us sat huddled together in a big chair.

  “A light has gone out of our lives,” Dee said, hugging us, rocking back and forth. “Your mother was a joy, a darling girl, and she will always be.”

  Dee blew her nose noisily into a tissue and said, “I wonder if you girls have any idea how much she loved you.”

  At that, I remember, Patsy lost it. She rocketed around the room barefooted, beating her fists against anything that got in her way. Dee and I sat there, watching, not doing anything to stop her. That was the best way to handle Patsy, my mother always said, just let her go.

  When Patsy fell, exhausted, into Dee’s lap, Dee held her as if she were a baby, patting her on the back gently.

  I wouldn’t have minded if Dee had held me like that. Nobody, not even Daddy, had held me and comforted me for quite a while.

  “There, there,” Dee said. “Things will get better. Not perfect, but better. You girls and your father were her life. She was a lucky woman, you know, having you all. God was good to her.”

  That set Patsy off again. “Big deal!” she shouted. “Big damn deal! She’s dead. I don’t call that lucky. If God is so great, so good and kind and loving and all, what’s he doing letting her die? Just answer me that. Forget God. God can just go take a hike, as far as I’m concerned!”

  Sometimes I envy Patsy. She gets out all the bad stuff by screaming and shouting and carrying on. Then she gets the hugs and attention. I keep it all in. I wish I could let go the way Patsy does, but I can’t. Sometimes I get mad and think Patsy needs a good swat on the behind.

  “She made me laugh,” Dee said after Patsy had calmed down. “We made each other laugh. We always wound up laughing. That was part of her gift.” Dee’s lips quivered as she told us these things.

  Patsy kicked savagely at the leg of the chair, forgetting she was barefooted.

  “Ow!” she yelled. “That hurt!” She grabbed hold of her foot and hopped around, swearing.

  Dee and I doubled over, laughing. We laughed until our stomachs ached, forgetting everything except how funny Patsy looked.

  Patsy glared at us ferociously, then she began to laugh, too.

  We were making so much noise I wasn’t sure I’d heard it. Then there was a lull and it came again. It was Mother, laughing. I swear I heard her laughing. She was there. She was.

  “Shhh,” I said, putting my finger against my lips. “Listen.” I closed my eyes. I can hear better with my eyes closed.

  “What’s your prob?” Patsy said.

  “She’s laughing,” I whispered. “I heard her just this minute. She was laughing with us.”

  “Who?” Dee said.

  “Mother. I heard her.” I said.

  Our mother had a very joyful laugh that made complete strangers smile when they heard it.

  “Bizarro,” Patsy said, rolling her eyes. “You imagined it, Nora.”

  “No,” I said. “She was here. I did not imagine it. Don’t tell me that.”

  Dee and Patsy listened very hard.

  “I can’t hear anything,” Patsy said crossly.

  “It’s possible her spirit was here with us for a moment,” Dee said. “How wonderful.”

  We sat still as stone, listening, but Mother didn’t laugh again. She had gone. She didn’t make a sound.

  Patsy was nine and I was ten when our mother died. Baba came to stay with us until Daddy found a housekeeper we liked. Mrs. Murty was first. She watched TV and knitted while Patsy and I racketed around the house freely. We checked our closets and drawers, looking for clues to what had happened to us. Someone, Baba perhaps, had cleared out all our mother’s things. Everything was gone. I couldn’t even find the red shawl, though I ransacked every bureau drawer, every hiding place in the whole house.

  Our mother’s closet, though, still smelled of Shalimar, her favorite perfume. So while Mrs. Murty was clucking over the goings-on in Leftover Life to Live, Patsy and I shut ourselves in our mother’s closet and cried as we took turns stuffing our feet into a pair of her black satin high-heeled shoes we found tucked away, forgotten, in a corner.

  Mrs. Moseley was next. She spent most of her time on the telephone, talking to her daughter who had just had her first baby.

  “Check the stool,” we heard Mrs. Moseley say over and over. “Just don’t forget to check the stool.”

  “I thought a stool was something you put your feet on,” I said.

  Mrs. Moseley looked at me over the top of her glasses and said sternly, “The stool’s a BM, missy.”

  “What’s a BM?” I asked, though I knew the answer. I liked to give Mrs. Moseley a hard time.

  She threw up her hands and said, “Tell your sister what a BM is, missy,” to Patsy. I think she called us both “missy” because she didn’t remember our names.

  From then on, every time Patsy an
d I went to the bathroom, one of us said to the other, “Check the stool. Just check the stool.” I guess you could say it was kind of our mantra.

  That kind of thing kept us from freaking out.

  One fine Saturday morning when Mother had been dead about a year, Patsy said, “We could ask Dee.”

  “Ask her what?” I said.

  “If she knows anyone for Daddy to marry,” Patsy said. “She has lots of friends. She might know of someone. Then we wouldn’t have to have all those lousy housekeepers. I hate housekeepers.”

  “Who doesn’t?” I said.

  We always went to Dee’s studio for tea on Sunday afternoon. We didn’t have to cross any streets, just run through the fields in back of our house. Dee gave us tea and sandwiches with the crusts cut off and little cakes. It was a very festive thing. Plus, Dee’s studio was a fascinating place.

  “Daddy is very lonely,” Patsy said practically before she bit into one of Dee’s super cucumber sandwiches.

  “Poor man,” Dee said. She has this colorful hair, streaked with various shades of whatever paint she’s been using. She uses her hair as a sort of rag to wipe her hands on. So her hair is red and green and black and sometimes yellow. Or purple.

  She is a real original.

  “Have you ever been married?” Patsy asked Dee.

  “Once,” Dee answered cheerfully. “For about thirty minutes. Long enough. I’m a loner. I like my own company. I like eating when and what I choose. I don’t want any hassle about should we have pork chops or chicken. Heck with it. The truth is, I’m selfish.” Dee grinned at us.

  “We think Daddy should get married to somebody so he won’t be so lonely,” I said.

  “Give him time,” Dee said. “Your mother was his heart’s love. There will never be anyone to replace her. Poor man, of course he’s lonely. Even with you girls around. Don’t worry, darlings, he’ll find someone.”

  There we were, looking for someone for Daddy to marry. Now he’s found someone and we’re thinking of ways to eliminate her.

  How’d we know he was going to pick a person we couldn’t stand? The thing is, we really do want our father to get married again. It’s just that we want him to marry someone we like.

  I don’t think that’s too much to ask.

  Five

  The days were getting longer. It was mid-April and cold and blowy. Pretty soon daylight saving time would begin and then it would be summer. I leaned my head against one of the small stained-glass windows on either side of our front door. My mother had told us she wouldn’t have bought this house if it hadn’t been for those windows.

  “When the sun hits them, they dance,” she’d said, as if that explained it all.

  Daddy came home and found me there. It was a week since he’d told us he was going to Hong Kong with The Tooth. He hadn’t mentioned it again.

  “Are you reasonably happy?” he said. “Your mother always claimed those windows made her happy.”

  “Yes, Daddy.”

  He brushed his hand against my cheek. He was not a hugging, kissing man, but when he touched my cheek like that, I knew he was telling me how much he loved me. He would never say it in so many words, but there it was. He loved us, Patsy and me, very much. He would lay down his life for us. I wonder if I will ever love anyone enough to lay down my life for them. If I could have saved my mother’s life by dying myself, would I have had the courage? If God had said to me, “Your mother’s life will be spared if you die in her place,” what would I have done?

  I don’t know.

  I have only recently begun to think of these things.

  I thought Daddy was very lonely. I didn’t think he would ever get over Mother’s death. He said he hadn’t been happy since she’d died. Maybe if he actually did marry The Tooth, he’d be so happy he’d forget all about Mother. And if by some fluke he didn’t marry her, what would happen to him when Patsy and I grow up and take off, go out into the world to begin our world-famous careers as environmentalists or epidemiologists? Mothers, even. (Patsy says you won’t catch her changing dirty diapers, but I think when the loud ticking of her biological clock keeps her awake nights, she might change her mind.)

  “Why would he even think of marrying her?” Patsy and I asked each other endlessly. “She’s not even good-looking!”

  “She has a certain style,” Patsy said reluctantly. Patsy thought she had the answer. “Two reasons,” she said. “The first is sex, S-E-X, pure and simple.”

  “But Daddy’s almost fifty,” I said. I don’t care what I read about people having sex well into their sixties and seventies. To that I say, “BS.”

  “BS, BS, BS.” I like the way those letters roll off my tongue. If you use the letters instead of saying the word, you can get away with it.

  I gave it one more “BS” for good measure. It drives Patsy nuts when I do that. I like driving her nuts.

  “Daddy has his needs,” Patsy said primly. “He is a gentleman of the old school. The Tooth seduced him, and now she’s laying a guilt trip on him. That’s what gentlemen of the old school do. They marry whoever seduces them because it’s expected of them.”

  “Daddy is too old to be seduced,” I said.

  Patsy’s eyebrows soared. “Who says?” Then, in that special irritating tone she uses when she’s the professor and I’m the student, she said, “You have to understand, Nora. The Tooth is a woman of the world. She’s also a manipulator. She knows how to manipulate men, especially. She’s got Daddy painted into a corner. There’s no way out except marriage. She seduced him, so Daddy figures he has to marry her to make an honest woman out of her.”

  “You’re so full of it, you make my eyes smart,” I said.

  “Too bad that doesn’t happen to the rest of you,” Patsy said smugly. “Plus, Daddy is good-looking in a sort of middle-aged way. He has all his hair, and he doesn’t have a big gut. He makes pretty big bucks, and his manners are lovely. Baba even says so. Let’s face it, if it wasn’t for me and you, Norrie, he’d probably have been snapped up long ago. They take one look at us and figure ‘Whoa! Who needs these two gross teenagers? They are nothing but bad news.’ Then they back off and look elsewhere.”

  “You’re the one that’s bad news,” I said. “I’m a pussycat.”

  That night Daddy was going to be late, so Patsy and I pigged out on home fries and banana-and-bacon sandwiches. Mash a couple of really ripe bananas with a fork and mix in crisp bacon and toast the bread. A real taste treat.

  We ate the sandwiches as we strolled through the downstairs, pretending to be real-estate people showing the house to prospective buyers.

  “And this,” Patsy made a swooping gesture, “is the drawing room. We simply live in this room, although we do not draw here. Isn’t this room done in excellent taste? It also gets the afternoon sun and can take a party of thirty or so with no sweat. And who is this lovely woman?” We stood looking at Mother’s portrait, as if seeing it for the first time.

  “I wonder what The Tooth’s going to do about that?” I said. “Suppose she’ll turn it to the wall? Or banish it to the attic? Second wives should never live in the first wife’s house. I’ve heard that’s death to romance. Too many memories chill out love.

  “Like in Rebecca. Remember, Pats? When Joan Fontaine got so freaked out about how lovely and wonderful Rebecca was that she dressed up like Rebecca’s portrait and almost blew the whole thing?”

  Oh, how I love that movie. It’s so romantic.

  Patsy pointed her one long red fingernail at me. The others are all painted black. Patsy got the one long red nail idea from some rock star. Daddy threatened to sit on her stomach and cut the nail off, but so far he hasn’t.

  “Know something, Nor? I wouldn’t be surprised if Mother’s hanging around this house, catching the vibes, checking out The Tooth’s undies.”

  A month ago Patsy and I discovered the bottom drawer in our guest room seething with The Tooth’s lingerie.

  “How dare she!” Patsy shrieked, wavin
g a filmy bra and a silk nightgown in my face. “How dare she! Does this mean she plans on coming again? What exactly does leaving your underwear in a strange bureau drawer mean? Think on it, my love.”

  “Remember Louise,” I said.

  Louise had been our baby-sitter. We loved her. She’s married now, with a baby of her own. After Mother died Louise taught us practically everything we know about life, love, and the battle of the sexes. I guess she thought it was her duty. One of the bits of info Louise dished out was to always leave an article of clothing, like an earring or a scarf or a stray shoe, in a boy’s car or pocket, if necessary, so he’ll have to call you to tell you he found it and should he bring it over. Or, Louise advised, if you really like the guy and he doesn’t call, you can call him and ask if he found whatever it was you left and you’d like it back. This, Louise assured us, almost always wound up with the guy asking for another date. Or maybe his older, cuter brother asking for a date, depending on the sexiness of the lost article. Once, Louise said, she’d tucked a pair of bikini panties with big red lips printed on them under the passenger seat and she got three calls, including one from the date’s father.

  “Damn straight I remember Louise!” Patsy roared, dumping The Tooth’s undies in a pile on the floor. She was threatening to torch them, but I stopped her. Instead, we stuffed everything into a paper bag and put it in the Goodwill drop box at the A&P.

  We waited for The Tooth to inquire about the whereabouts of her undies, but she never said a word. She knew. She was too smart to ask, though. Too cagey. She was playing a waiting game, Patsy and I decided.

  Was Mother hanging around, as Patsy had said?

  “And if our mother is hanging around,” Patsy went on, “and you really did hear her laughing that time, she knows what’s going on. She knows about The Tooth and everything. Maybe her spirit has returned to those she loved, and that’s us, Nor. She wants to let us know she still loves us even if she is no longer here on earth.”

  I’ve thought about how I’d feel if Mother’s ghost was roaming through the house. I might be afraid, though I don’t know why. She would never harm us in any way. I want to see Mother again more than anything. There are piles of things I want to ask her, talk to her about. But I wonder.