Nora Read online

  “I’m very busy at the office right now. It’ll have to wait.” Daddy spoke in a voice that ended the discussion.

  “Far be it from me to tell you how to run your life, Sam,” Baba said.

  “Ooops.” Daddy patted his pockets. “My wallet must be upstairs.” He took the stairs two at a time. We listened as he closed the door to his room, listened to the little ping sound the telephone makes when someone makes a call from the upstairs phone.

  “How’s the romance going?” Baba asked us, straightening the pillows on the couch.

  “What romance?” Patsy and I said, wide-eyed. We like to tease Baba. She’s extremely teaseable.

  “You two are a tough lot, that’s all I can say,” Baba said, in a huff. “It’s not as if I’m a gossip, after all. I’m your grandmother.”

  When Daddy came back down, he ran Baba home on the bald tires while Patsy and I started to do our homework. Baba had had her driver’s license suspended, due to an excess of speeding tickets.

  “You know what Daddy means when he says ‘later,’ I trust,” Patsy said. She didn’t even give me a chance to say “yes” or “no.” She plunged on. “He means later, when he brings The Tooth home as his bride and carries her over the threshold. When that happens, I’m outta here.”

  “Where will you go?” I said.

  Patsy shrugged. “Maybe I’ll join the army. Or the marines. Or maybe I’ll sign up as an au pair and go to Switzerland so I can go skiing on my day off.” A girl we know did that the summer she was a junior in high school.

  “Yi-yi-yi,” I said. Patsy skis the way Baba drives, totally out of control at all times.

  “You’re too young,” I said. “The army doesn’t want you, or the marines, either. You’re only twelve.”

  “In the Civil War there were plenty of kids my age in uniform,” Patsy said. “Drummer boys and nurses and all.”

  “So? Different days, different times,” I said, knowing perfectly well if Patsy decided to join the army, she’d probably find a way.

  I tuned Patsy out. If Daddy brought The Tooth home as our stepmother, I planned on asking Dee if I could move into her studio and be a caretaker, fix tea for her, wash out her brushes and sweep the floor, and be a general handyperson. In exchange she’d let me sleep on her beat-up couch and fix soup and stuff for me on her hot plate.

  And on weekends, when Daddy was home, I’d go over and we’d have cozy talks while The Tooth was out shopping. Maybe we’d even toast marshmallows. That way, I wouldn’t have to see much of her, and Daddy and I could have quality time together, the way parents are supposed to have with their kids. Which means they don’t see much of the kids, but when they do see them, everyone is friends. Nobody fights or shouts or is mean. Nobody pulls a scene or anything. There’s nothing but love and goodwill.

  I don’t see anything wrong with having quality time with your father.

  Suddenly, Patsy went into her Groucho Marx crouch, knees bent, eyes wild, as she staggered around the kitchen carrying an imaginary person. She slipped a dill pickle out of the jar on the table and stuck it in her mouth for a cigar. She was imitating Groucho imitating Daddy carrying The Tooth over the threshold, I knew. Tears stung my eyes.

  “He better watch it,” I said, “or his bad back will go out on him again.”

  “I bet she tips the scales at a good one-thirty or so,” Patsy said. “And I’m talking nekkid here, Nor, nude!”

  The telephone rang.

  “Tell Sam when he comes in,” Baba’s voice said, “that I managed by a stroke of luck to reach my little man, name’s Mr. Pepper, and he says he’ll stop by tomorrow to give your father an estimate for the painting and the windows.”

  “I’ll tell him, Baba,” I said.

  Patsy went into the dining room to set the table and I opened a can of cream of mushroom soup. Mushroom soup covers a multitude of casseroles, I’ve discovered. Roberta pours it on a can of tuna fish and noodles and tops the mess with crushed potato chips. She swears the crowd goes wild.

  The telephone rang again.

  “Hello,” Chuck Whipple said.

  “Oh, hi, Chuck,” I said. “Just a sec. I’ll get Patsy.”

  “That’s okay,” Chuck said. “I really wanted to talk to you.”

  “What?” I said.

  Patsy was at my elbow, snapping her fingers for me to hand over the receiver.

  I said “What?” again, not believing my ears.

  Patsy grabbed the phone from me. “Hi, Chuck,” she said. “What’s up?”

  I went into the bathroom and threw cold water on my hot cheeks. I washed my hands awhile, until my fingertips began to wrinkle. I waited for Patsy to holler, “He wants to talk to you, Nora!” But she didn’t.

  When I came out of the bathroom, Patsy said, “I really like Chuck. He likes me, too, I can tell.” She grinned at me. “Hey, Nora, I just got an excellent idea. When he asks me on another date, you talk Daddy into letting me go. Okay? Tell Daddy what a super guy Chuck is, how responsible and adult he is, all that crap. Only it’s not crap. I think Chuck is responsible and adult. He’s much more sophisticated than the guys around here. Maybe it’s because he’s from Iowa. I bet you could talk Daddy into letting me go. Please, Norrie, please, please.” Patsy grabbed me and tried to swing me around in time to the music coming from the radio.

  “Stop it,” I said, close to tears. “Let me alone!”

  “What’s your prob?”

  “And don’t say ‘prob,’” I said. “I hate it. The word’s problem.”

  “Boy, you certainly are in a foul mood,” Patsy said.

  I went to my room, put on my nightgown, and went to bed. It was too early to go to sleep, so I lay there, thinking. I had no one to talk to. Patsy didn’t have an idea in the world that I might like Chuck, too, or that he might like me. She was very wrapped up in herself, all right. She was what they call self-absorbed. I hoped she’d grow out of it. Fast.

  I heard Daddy come home. He’d gone out for some cigarettes. I saw the lights of his car on the ceiling. I heard him slam the front door extra hard, making sure it was locked. Then I heard him talking to someone. Patsy, I guess. My bedside clock said it was ten-fifteen. No, he probably was on the phone to The Tooth. It was no good, waiting for him to get off so I could talk to him. I loved him more than anyone, but after a long day he wouldn’t want to listen to me talk about Chuck Whipple and how selfish Patsy was.

  I lay there, thinking about breast cancer and dying, and how it must be to be in love and about Daddy getting married. It was all a jumble in my head. There were so many things to figure out, to understand, and so far, I was coming up zero on all of them. I felt alone—very, very alone.

  A sudden current of air skittered across the floor like a live thing. I wasn’t sure if I was awake or asleep, but I know I heard something. It could be a mouse, I thought. Mice didn’t bother me. The moonlight coming in the window was pale and thin, and the curtains billowed wildly as if a high wind had come up. I hugged myself and said, “Mother.”

  I knew I was getting slightly loony on the subject, but I couldn’t seem to stop. I pulled the covers up to my chin and, though I was getting very sleepy, I forced my eyes to stay open in case she gave me some kind of a sign she was there.

  Someone sighed. Probably it was me. I sigh a lot. I thought about getting up and closing the window. Then something brushed against my forehead, something cold, on the exact spot where Mother had always kissed me good-night. Masses of whispers swirled around my head like fog.

  “Sleep,” the whispers seemed to say. “Sleep, sleep, sleep.”

  Next thing I knew, it was morning.

  Nine

  The thought occurred to me even before I opened my eyes:

  If ghosts returned to the ones they loved, how come Mother hadn’t shown herself to Patsy? Or Daddy? Or Baba?

  I think it’s because I need her and they don’t. Well, of course, Daddy needs her. We all do. I just think right now I need her more than anyone e
lse. And she knows it. Someday I will discuss this with Daddy and Patsy and Baba. Maybe. In the meantime, I’m hanging on to Mother’s ghost for dear life.

  Patsy and I would like for Daddy to marry Dee. Dee and we get along very well. Dee has no children, which is a shame, as she treats children with the greatest respect and never talks down to them. This is rare in an adult with no children. Or even with. Dee loves us and we love her, so why can’t Daddy love Dee, too?

  Dee’s studio is one of my favorite places. It is a large, light, square room. It is also very messy. Dee says it is organized chaos, which I somehow doubt. She says she knows exactly where everything is in that studio. One of the main reasons I like the studio so much is its smell. It is made up of several ingredients: paint, chalk, and turpentine. To me the smell of turpentine is very exciting. It is a kind of greasy smell that makes my nose itch. Once when I was younger, I put a dab of turpentine behind my ears when Dee wasn’t looking, the way I’d seen my mother do with her Shalimar. I put a few drops on my wrists, also. And later, everywhere I went, people scrunched up their faces and sniffed and wondered out loud what it was that smelled so peculiar.

  Turpentine is my Shalimar, I decided.

  “You are weird, Nora, just plain weird,” Patsy said when I told her what I’d done. But I think she was jealous she hadn’t thought of it first. It was a Patsy kind of thing to do, which made it doubly special.

  The invitation to Dee’s reception at the art gallery arrived. It said Wine and Cheese Reception on Friday. Five to Seven. I was still mad at Patsy, but she didn’t pay any attention so I got over it.

  As usual Patsy had it all planned.

  “I will wear a beret and suck on a cigarillo,” she said. “I will wear my black tights and lots of eye makeup. I will drink wine and eat cheese and look at all the art stuff with narrowed eyes so people will think I know what I’m doing. They will probably think I am an artist myself.”

  Daddy, who was doing the crossword puzzle, which always makes him tune out the rest of the world, said, without looking up, “That’s what you think, guys.”

  We like it when he calls us “guys.” It makes him seem very young and jaunty and carefree, none of which he is. Although we have tons of snapshots of him when he was in college and he was all of those things. Back then.

  Baba’s little man had come and gone. When he gave Daddy his estimate on how much it would cost to paint the living room, Daddy whistled and said, “Maybe later, Mr. Pepper. I’ll be in touch. Thanks for coming over.”

  “I will meet a tall, thin dark man with a beard,” Patsy continued. “This bozo has been giving me the eye for some time. At last he speaks.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” I said. “Turns out he wants to borrow ten bucks.”

  “This man is a world-famous artist whose works hang in every museum in the country,” Patsy said. “He would like to paint me. In the nude, of course.” She looked at me, but I refused to look back. “That’s what artists do, they paint people in the nude,” Patsy said. “They think nothing of it.”

  “Who, the nude people or the artists?” I asked. “I have always heard that artists’ models develop chilblains from posing in the nude and die of malnutrition and/or pneumonia.”

  “You are a killjoy, Nora,” Patsy said. “And also a pill.”

  Daddy looked up from his puzzle with unfocused eyes.

  “Bare blank choirs where late the sweet birds sang,” he said in a dreamy way. “Five letters.”

  “Ruin’d,” I said. The word just popped out. “That’s without the e.” I didn’t know I knew it until I said it.

  “That’s from Shakespeare’s sonnet, number seventy-three,” I said.

  “Good Lord.” Daddy filled in the blank. “It fits.” I could see he was tremendously impressed, as I was myself. So was Patsy, I could tell.

  “Where on earth did you learn that, Nora?” Daddy himself can recite “Young Lochinvar” in its entirety, which he used to do when Mother was alive. I haven’t heard him recite it since she died.

  “Our English teacher Ms. Hall read us that sonnet last week,” I said. “She wants us to read a sonnet by Shakespeare every night for a week. And memorize it. She says it’s good discipline to memorize poetry. It’s good for your brain as well as your psyche, she says.”

  “Well, well,” Daddy said. “That is good news. I must meet your English teacher some day and compliment her.”

  Patsy met my eye. We were thinking the same thing. Introduce Daddy to Ms. Hall. So she’s no chicken. She’s nice. About sixty, maybe more, and she leans toward purple eye shadow to match her dress or her scarf or even her lipstick. She and Daddy might fall madly in love and could take turns reciting poetry to each other.

  “I hope you are both free this Saturday,” Daddy said. “I’ve asked Mrs. Ames to go to the dinner theater in Darien. They’re doing Oklahoma!, and I think you’d enjoy it. The music is wonderful. It would be nice if you both came along. It would give you a chance to get to know her better. She’s very fond of you two, you know.”

  Mrs. Ames, aka The Tooth.

  I almost asked Daddy if he was still planning to ask The Tooth to marry him, and if he was still planning on going to Hong Kong with her. But I kept my mouth shut. Maybe he didn’t love her anymore.

  No, that was too much to hope for.

  So far Patsy and I hadn’t come up with a substitute. And we were running out of time.

  “I might have a date,” Patsy whispered. Daddy didn’t hear—or chose not to.

  When we kissed Daddy good-night and went upstairs, I asked Patsy, “Who with might you have a date, if I’m not too curious?”

  “With whom, you mean,” Patsy said in a haughty voice. Without answering the question, she leaned into the mirror and said, “I’m thinking of having cosmetic surgery to change the shape of my face. Make it heart shaped instead of balloon shaped. What do you think?”

  I didn’t answer her question, either.

  “What did Chuck Whipple want when he called the other night?” I said. “He really wanted to talk to me, you know.”

  Patsy laid a finger alongside each eye and pulled the skin tight. Making herself look exotic.

  “I would like to look exotic forever,” she said wistfully. “Like Merle Oberon in Wuthering Heights.”

  “Know something?” I don’t know why I came unglued right then. Maybe it was the way Patsy changed the subject when I told her Chuck had really wanted to talk to me.

  “I’m tired of your selfishness,” I yelled. Patsy looked startled. She wasn’t used to me yelling.

  “How come you never comfort me?” I went on at the top of my lungs. “I need comforting too, you know. Maybe you should think about that!”

  I grabbed a tissue from my pocket and blew my nose noisily.

  “It doesn’t get any better, you know. The way they said it would. It only gets worse.”

  I meant Mother. Patsy knew that.

  “You’re not the only one who misses her,” she said. “Besides, I think I miss her more because I’m younger.”

  That really got me.

  “You little creep!” I shouted. “That’s the biggest lot of horse manure I ever heard!”

  Patsy yelled back, “I wish Mother was here so she could hear the load of crap you’re dishing out.”

  I said calmly, “Maybe she is here and she hears every word you’re saying and sees everything you’re doing.”

  That stopped her. Suddenly, I felt better. Maybe I should lose my temper with Patsy more often, I thought.

  Patsy sighed.

  “So. Saturday night. What do we call her, Mrs. Ames or Hey, you?” Patsy squinted at me.

  “What’s wrong with calling her what we always call her?” I said.

  Ten

  When I was in fifth grade, a girl named Barbara invited me over to her house after school to play. Barbara carried little packets of dry soup mix in her lunch box, into which she dipped slices of apple with the peel still on, and potato chips, and c
heese doodles. Her thermos was filled with V8 juice. Plus she wore socks trimmed with lace and all her hair ribbons were color coordinated with her outfits. She wore pink-and-silver harem pants to school one day, and at recess she wouldn’t go down the slide for fear the pants would get dirty. Barbara had more outfits than any other person in the class.

  Barbara was cool.

  Barbara’s brother was a genius, she said. He played the piano before he could walk and he could read the newspaper when he was two. They took him to a special doctor for geniuses, and the doctor said Barbara’s brother had an IQ of 200.

  “Where’s your brother now?” I asked, not knowing what else to say. An IQ of 200 was good. What was my IQ? Probably about seventy-five or eighty. Around there.

  “He’s at home,” Barbara said. “He’s finding himself.”

  “What happens when he finds himself?” I asked, really wanting to know.

  Barbara shrugged. “Who knows? In the meantime, my parents are treating him like any other genius kid with an IQ of two hundred. If he wants to eat pizza for breakfast, they let him. If he wants to watch an X-rated movie on cable TV, they say, ‘So what harm will it do?’ If he wants his girlfriend to sleep over, my mother says, ‘At least we know where he is at night.’

  “He’s sixteen and he should be in college. He already graduated from a special high school for geniuses. If you want to know the truth,” Barbara turned and looked straight into my eyes, “he’s a mess. I’m glad I’m not a genius.”

  “Me, too,” I said.

  When we got to Barbara’s house, I tiptoed around, worried I might bump into Barbara’s brother. I was both afraid to see him and longing to see him.

  Sort of the same way I felt about seeing my mother’s ghost.

  Ever since I’d said that about Mother hanging around the house, I’ve been a nervous wreck. I think about ghosts, dream about ghosts, and even though I don’t really believe in them, I can’t get them out of my mind.

  I never did see Barbara’s brother that day. I heard music coming from behind his locked door, though. Barbara said he kept his door locked at all times. Her mother left food on a tray outside his room, she said, and when he felt like eating, he unlocked his door and snatched the tray inside. I made several trips to the bathroom while at Barbara’s and each trip I checked the floor outside the brother’s room, hoping to see an empty plate covered with bones, maybe, but there was nothing.