Nora Read online

  Mother, I wish you were here, I thought. I need you. There are lots of things I want to say to you. Questions I would like to ask. I knew it wouldn’t do any good to wish for these things, but still I did. When we were little, Patsy and I thought if you wished hard enough for something, you’d get it. Sometimes I wish I was young and innocent again.

  I would like to discuss the possibility of ghosts with my father, but I know I won’t. Baba would be better. She already believes in ghosts. My father is a very practical man, the most practical of men. He would definitely not believe. I think it would only make him sad if I suggested Mother was there, in our house, checking out The Tooth’s undies.

  And if he knew what Patsy and I had done with them, he really would be pissed.

  Eleven

  On monday after school, Chuck Whipple drove up on his three-speed bike.

  “Patsy’s not here,” I told him. “She’s at the orthodontist. She’ll be back around four-thirty.”

  “That’s okay,” Chuck said.

  The oven timer beeped loudly, so I told him, “Come on in, if you want. I’ve got something burning in the oven.”

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Roberta and her mother driving by. A pale face pressed against the car window, a pale hand waved at me.

  Chuck followed me out to the kitchen and watched while I took out the cookies, just in time.

  “Smells good,” he said.

  “I always make cookies on Monday,” I said. Actually, I make cookies whenever I’m depressed. And sometimes when I’m not. The smell of things baking always cheers me up, makes me think of the days when our house almost always smelled good when Patsy and I got home from school. Our mother timed her baking so stuff would still be warm when we got there.

  If I ever have kids, I’m doing the same. Or if I turn out to be a world-famous anything and I have to go around the world on business, my husband will stay home to take care of the kids. I’ll tell him he has to learn how to make cakes and cookies and maybe even bread. I think it’d be neat to be married to a man who bakes bread.

  “How come you have a three-speed?” I asked Chuck. My cookies today were in the shape of Christmas trees, my favorite. Sometimes I decorated the trees with red and green sprinkles, sometimes I gave them raisins for eyes, the way you do to gingerbread men. Or ladies. And even if trees don’t have eyes, so what. They’re my cookies. I can do what I want.

  “It’s an Iowa bike,” Chuck said. “We don’t have hills out there. It’s flat all the way. Nothing but rows and rows of corn.”

  He seemed to me, at that moment, as exotic a creature as if he’d come straight from Mars. Or California.

  I offered him a cookie.

  “How come Christmas trees when it’s October?” he said.

  I shrugged. “I like the trees best. Sometimes I put in raisins for eyes.”

  He nodded, not finding that odd. “They’re very good,” he said, taking a bite. “Like Mother used to make.”

  “This is my mother’s recipe,” I said. “Only hers were better.”

  Bright patches of color stained Chuck’s cheeks and he said, “I’m sorry.”

  He had on a blue-and-red plaid shirt, and his cheeks matched the red in his shirt. He grabbed hold of the kitchen doorknob, and I figured he wanted out. I could see he felt terrible about what he’d said. Maybe he felt worse than I did.

  “My mother died three years ago,” I said, and I heard my voice tremble. No matter how many times I say it, my voice always trembles when I say “My mother died.”

  “I know and I forgot,” he said. “I’m very sorry.”

  “My father might get married again.” I don’t know why I said that. I hadn’t planned to. “Patsy and I don’t want him to. We don’t like her. We don’t want her for a stepmother. We’re going out for dinner with her on Saturday.” I almost said “I dread it,” but I didn’t.

  Chuck cleared his throat. “Stepmothers aren’t so bad,” he said. “I have one. She’s pretty nice. I always forget she’s not my real mother. I never knew my real mother. She died when I was a baby.”

  That made me feel really rotten. Now it was my turn to say “I’m sorry.”

  “I have a whole brother and a half brother,” Chuck went on. “She loves us all the same. There’s no difference. She has plenty to go around. Can I have another cookie?”

  “Sure. Take all you want. What do you do for fun and games out in Iowa?” I asked him. What Chuck had said seemed to me extraordinary, that his stepmother loved them all the same.

  “Well, we have 4H Club meetings,” he said. “4H Club is a big deal where I come from.”

  “What’s 4H Club?” I said.

  The timer beeped again. I took out the second batch of cookies and they looked better than the first. I set them on a rack to cool and put the last batch in.

  “4H Club is about livestock—cows, calves, pigs, lambs,” Chuck said. “I got the prize last year for the best pig. She was a beauty. Her tail was perfect. No offense, but her name was Nora.”

  I looked at him. He wasn’t smiling or anything.

  “You had a pig named Nora,” I said. “How come?”

  “I just liked the name,” he said. “She took a blue ribbon at the state fair.”

  I couldn’t think of a single thing to say. Oh, your pig named Nora with the perfect tail took a blue ribbon at the state fair. Cool.

  “I never knew a person named Nora before I met you,” he said. “It must be fate.”

  We smiled at each other. I didn’t know what to say, and I don’t think Chuck did either.

  The doorbell rang. Yeah!

  “My hands are all gooky,” I said. “Go see who it is, will you? And if it’s the Avon lady, tell her we don’t need any.”

  Chuck went to the door. I heard him talking to someone. He came back and said, “It’s a girl named Roberta. She says she has to talk to you about something very important.”

  “What does she need, an appointment? Roberta! Get out here, you gross-out! We’re having a feast!” I shouted.

  Roberta was duded up in her new riding skirt her mother ordered from a very exclusive catalog devoted to nothing but expensive riding outfits. Roberta has an anxiety attack if she even gets near a horse, but her mother thought the skirt would elongate Roberta, make her look slim. Slimmer.

  “I didn’t know you had company,” said Roberta, lying through her teeth. I figure she saw Chuck at the door as she and her mother drove by, and her mother let her out of the car at the corner and Roberta zoomed home and changed into her elongating riding skirt in record time.

  “What’s up?” I asked her. “This is Chuck Whipple, Roberta. Chuck, this is Roberta Middleton.”

  Roberta can be quite aggressive, but usually when she meets a boy for the first time, she becomes positively demure. Casting her eyes down, Roberta whispered “Hi,” sort of like a washed-out Scarlett O’Hara, and Chuck said “Hi” back.

  “Chuck was just telling me about the 4H Club in Iowa,” I said.

  The beeper beeped. I took out the last batch of cookies. “Want one?” I asked Roberta.

  “Oh, I can’t. I’m on a diet,” Roberta of the booming voice said so softly I could barely hear her. Behind Chuck’s back I bugged out my eyes at her.

  “These are special nonfattening cookies,” I said.

  In a flash, Roberta snatched up a handful.

  “Tell Roberta about your pig, Chuck,” I said. I don’t know why I said that. It was stupid of me.

  Chuck choked on a cookie. “Could I have a glass of water, please?” he said.

  “You want ice in it?” I asked him.

  “No thanks, this is great.” Chuck took a long time drinking the water.

  “What about your pig?” Roberta said. She is a very curious person, Roberta. She immediately wants to know everything about a person she’s just met.

  Chuck told her.

  Patsy burst in. “I thought that was your bike outside, Chuck,” she cried, grabbing a fe
w cookies. “Qué pasa?”

  “He was just telling us about his pig,” Roberta said.

  “Chuck has a pig? Well, hey, he can take it to show-and-tell next week. How about it, Chuck?” I thought Patsy was going to slap him on the back. Probably he’d get some crumbs stuck and start choking again, poor guy.

  At times Patsy can get a little too hearty. She thought Chuck’s pig was a huge joke. She was making fun of his pig because she was nervous. That was before she even found out its name was Nora.

  “His pig won first prize at the 4H Club fair,” Roberta went on, liking it that she knew things about Chuck Patsy didn’t know. “And guess what the pig’s name was?”

  “Hey.” Patsy ate a few trees. “Like your new skirt, kid. It makes you look positively emaciated. What was your pig’s name, Chuck?”

  “Nora,” Chuck said, probably wondering how he could get out of this joint in one piece.

  Patsy’s hand paused in midair over the cookie plate.

  “How come?” she said.

  “I liked the name,” Chuck said, shrugging. “I think it’s pretty. And she was a pretty pig, so that’s what I called her.” He didn’t say anything about her tail, for which I was grateful.

  “I didn’t know there was such a thing as a pretty pig,” Patsy said. I could see she was jealous—she never had a pig named after her.

  Changing the subject with a clang, Patsy said, “I’ve just had the worst afternoon of my life. He reset my retainer, and now my teeth feel as if they’re nestled up inside my nose. And I have to go back next week so he can reset it again.”

  “Well, I have to go now,” Chuck said quickly. “Thanks for the cookies.”

  When he’d ridden away, Roberta said, “He has very sexy eyes. I didn’t know boys from Iowa had sexy eyes.”

  “I bet he was disappointed I wasn’t here when he got here,” Patsy said. “Wasn’t he?”

  “No,” I said, thinking before I spoke. “I don’t believe he was. Roberta, did Chuck seem disappointed Patsy wasn’t here?”

  “Heck, no,” Roberta said. “Too many folks at the orgy is never a good idea. Right, Nora?”

  Right.

  Twelve

  Men are like streetcars, Baba says. Miss one, you can catch the next one that comes along.

  True or false, I myself think this is a sexist remark.

  Baba says there was no such thing as a sexist remark when she was a girl.

  When Baba was young, it was wartime. World War II, not the Civil War, she adds with a wry smile.

  “We were all in love in those days,” Baba told us. “All the beautiful young men were in uniform, so brave, so patriotic, going off to God knows what. To defend their country. It was hard not to fall in love, I can tell you. And, I hasten to add,” Baba said, making owl eyes at us over the top of her glasses, “we were chaste. We did not fall into the hay with every Tom, Dick, and Harry. I think I can say, in all honesty and relatively speaking, we were, by today’s standards, chaste.”

  Wide-eyed, Patsy said, “What does ‘chaste’ mean?” Patsy liked to put Baba on the spot. Baba was not of the generation that called a spade a spade, sexwise.

  Baba blushed and gave a little laugh and plunged in.

  “‘Chaste’ means you treat your body with respect, which it deserves,” Baba said. “You only have one body. It is yours and no one else’s. You are the boss of that body. You control it completely. You do not let strangers take license with your body. It is very precious and should be treated as such.”

  Baba paused. How to proceed. What more to say to a rapt audience?

  “Does that explain what ‘chaste’ means, girls? Do I make myself perfectly clear?”

  “Sure,” I said. I was embarrassed. I thought Baba had done a pretty good job and that Patsy should let her off the hook.

  But Patsy was not as easily satisfied as I was.

  Innocent as any two-year-old, Patsy said, “What does ‘fall into the hay’ mean, Baba?”

  “Give me a break, Patsy,” Baba said, losing patience. “It means ‘get into bed,’ as you know perfectly well.”

  Baba got to her feet. “I really must run,” she said. “I have a dinner engagement with an old beau.”

  Baba had a lot of old beaus. She’d been engaged six times, she told us. “I had trouble making up my mind,” she said.

  “Can I ask you one more question?” Patsy asked.

  “All right, one,” Baba said.

  “Were you chaste when you married Grandfather?”

  I gasped. Patsy had gone too far. Patsy frequently goes too far, however far “too far” is.

  Baba studied her image in the hall mirror. She bit her lips and pinched her cheeks to make them rosy.

  “That’s impertinent, Patsy,” she said. “And really doesn’t deserve an answer. One rudeness, however, is no excuse for another. My answer is: Need you ask? Your mother would say the same if she were here. Listen to me because I know what I’m talking about.”

  “You are too fresh, Patsy,” I said when Baba went to powder her nose. “She’s our grandmother, after all.”

  “At least she didn’t say ‘Your body is your temple,’” Patsy said. “That’s what some kids’ grandmothers tell them. A temple!” Patsy hooted. “How does that grab you?”

  “Just wait,” I said. “I can see you giving your daughter the straight skinny when she asks you about sex. You’ll hem and haw, and when you’re finished the poor little tyke won’t know squat about the subject. You’ll probably send her screaming from the room and she’ll have bad dreams for about a month.”

  “As I think I have said, I do not plan to have a daughter, or any other kind of child,” Patsy said firmly. “But if I do, I’ll give it to her straight. No beating around the bush. I will simply tell her the facts of life, as I see them.”

  “Ah, that’s the key,” I said. “As you see them. You are warped, not to mention uninformed. You are also off the wall.”

  “Buzz off,” Patsy said.

  “I bet Chuck knows all about sex,” she said, shooting me a sly glance, “being a country boy and all, and a member of the 4H Club. There’s probably nothing he doesn’t know. The 4H Club is loaded with animals, and animals have very active sex lives.”

  “So do plants, jerk,” I said. I didn’t want to talk about sex. I had better things to think about.

  “And insects,” Baba threw in, returning from powdering her nose. “And fish. I do believe, my dears, that sex is here to stay.”

  “For a grandmother, Baba,” Patsy said, “you’re pretty racy.”

  “This is fine talk,” Baba said. She had come to our house for Tuesday dinner. She comes to our house for dinner a lot. Baba has many talents, but cooking isn’t one of them. Patsy and I stuck an onion in the chicken and shoved it into a 350-degree oven. Nothing to it. Baba mashed the potatoes. Her potatoes have lots of lumps. She says she likes them with lumps.

  Daddy bought an apple pie for dessert.

  Our date with The Tooth is on, Daddy told us. For Saturday. We would all go in a merry little band to the dinner theater and have dinner and watch the show.

  “Mrs. Ames said to tell you girls nothing would give her greater pleasure than to spend an evening getting to know you both,” Daddy told us.

  Patsy excused herself. “I have to go burn off my bad karma,” she said.

  After I went to bed I couldn’t sleep.

  There was too much else going on. I wondered why Patsy and I couldn’t find someone to blast The Tooth out of Daddy’s mind. Someone he would love and so would we. There must be plenty of people who’d love to marry Daddy. He is a very excellent and outstanding man.

  Friday night we were going to Dee’s wine and cheese reception, and Saturday we were all tied up with The Tooth and Daddy.

  Life in the fast lane.

  Maybe we could find the girl of Daddy’s dreams at Dee’s wine and cheese thing. I doubt it, though.

  Thirteen

  “Who’s the babe i
n the hat?” I heard a man say. He had a droopy mustache and deep grooves on either side of his mouth. He meant Baba.

  Her new hat, which she’d bought just for the wine and cheese one-man show, was eye-catching. It was black, with a flat crown and a wide brim. Getting into the artsy-craftsy spirit of the evening, Baba also wore her black cape with a red lining and her tall black boots.

  “If only you had a mask, you’d look like Zorro,” Patsy had said as we piled into Daddy’s car, bald tires and all.

  “Zorro who?” Baba said.

  “You know. The Mark of Zorro. We saw it last week on TV,” I said.

  “I always say a hat puts the finishing touch on a costume,” Baba said. “I’m so glad hats are back.”

  “I didn’t know they’d been away,” Daddy said. “We’d better get a move on. I’ve noticed that people who go to art galleries for a one-man show tend to be very big eaters. They gobble up everything in sight. I think it’s because most of them haven’t had a square meal in a week. So if we want some wine and cheese, we’d best move fast.”

  When we got there, sure enough, everyone was eating and drinking. No one was paying any attention to the paintings, the artwork. There were long lines at the refreshment tables. Mother’s portrait had the place of honor. Some people wandered over to it with their drinks and studied it intently, tilting their heads from side to side, squinching up their faces.

  “Who is that woman?” Patsy said in a loud voice, to no one in particular.

  A woman with a baby strapped to her back turned and said, “She’s a mystery woman. Isn’t she wonderful?”

  A man with a baby strapped to his back came over, and he and the woman discussed whether or not the woman should nurse the baby here or in the ladies’ room.

  “I don’t think this is a nursing type crowd,” the man said, looking around critically. “It looks pretty suburban to me.”