by Nancy Garden
Nora thought of Liz moving smoothly with her around her kitchen and smiled.
“Good,” said Marie. “I’m glad you…”
“But I don’t, Mrs. Hastings,” Nora said quickly. “Please.”
She looked at Charles as he came back into the room. “Please. I’m very tired. Thank you for caring so much, but…”
The telephone rang; its sound still startled Nora, but she was glad for the interruption. Charles gave a little wave and turned to go as Nora reached for it, but his wife hesitated.
It was Detective Morris. “I knew you’d want to know as soon as possible, Miss Tillot,” he said, “though I also know how difficult all this is. Forgive me for sounding clinical. The tests are in on the blood and tissue samples taken from your mother’s body; they’re all negative. I was off duty when they came in. I’m sorry for the delay in getting back to you, especially since the results came in so quickly.”
Nora put her hand to her head; Marie immediately went to her and took her arm. Annoyed, Nora turned away slightly, but Marie still held on and Charles pushed a chair over to her. “What does that mean?” Nora asked, refusing the chair.
“It means that there’s no basis for the accusation that your mother was poisoned. She died solely of a brain hemorrhage, a stroke, as we suspected.”
“So there’s no—no question at all? My friend Liz Hardy is…”
The Hastingses looked at each other anxiously.
“Ms. Hardy is no longer under any suspicion. Actually, she never really was, but we had to make sure. Now may I speak to your father, please? He needs to be told the news.”
“I’ll tell him.”
“I think,” said Detective Morris gently, “it might be better if I did. Begging your pardon, but he might not believe you, since he seems to have a, shall we say, a suspicious turn of mind.”
“You’re right,” Nora said. “I’ll get him. It may take a few minutes.”
“I’ll wait.”
“Thank you.”
Nora laid the receiver on the counter and turned to the Hastingses. “That was Detective Morris,” she explained. “There was no trace of poison. I’ve got to get Father so he can tell him. Then I’d like to call my friend Liz and tell her. I’m sorry, but…”
“But we should leave.” Charles took his wife’s elbow. “We’ll check in with you later. Are you sure you’re all right for now?”
“Yes, I’m sure,” Nora said, her heart leaping with the knowledge that she now had an excuse to call Liz. Would I have called her anyway, she wondered, hoping she would have, to apologize, but doubting it. “Thank you.”
She stood silently in the kitchen while the Hastingses left; then she went into Ralph’s room.
He was sitting by the window, looking morosely out. “Charles Hastings was here again,” he said reproachfully. “And his wife. I don’t want you to see them any more, Nora. We don’t need them. They interfere.”
“Father,” Nora said, “Detective Morris is on the phone. He wants to talk to you.”
Ralph turned his head; his eyes were still red and the skin around them was puffy. In spite of herself, Nora again felt sympathy—or maybe, she thought, it’s only pity—for him.
Had he really loved Corinne? Or had he just loved what Corinne had done for him till she’d gotten sick, cleaned and cooked and washed and solaced and obeyed? Yes, thought Nora, that’s it: obeyed. Made him king. King in his castle, and Mama and I—me, anyway—belonged in the servants’ quarters, “best girls” only as long as we stayed in our place.
“I don’t want to talk to him.”
“You have to, Father. He has important news.”
For a moment Ralph’s eyes gleamed. “About that woman? Did he find the poison?”
“No,” said Nora, relishing it in spite of trying not to. “No, he didn’t. There was no trace of poison. But he wants you to hear it from him.”
The gleam left Ralph’s eyes, or changed. Yes, that’s it, Nora thought; it’s changed. For the light in his eyes showed cleverness now, craftiness, a look that said “you and I know the truth, even if no one else does,” and aloud he said, “She bribed him, then, I bet. They all do that, you know, Nora. Bribes. Tricks. But I won’t be tricked. I know and"—he snatched Nora’s hand, pulling her to him awkwardly, till she almost toppled into his lap—"you won’t be tricked either.”
Roughly, she wrenched herself away. “He wants to talk to you,” she repeated. “You need to hear the truth from him.” She pulled the walker toward him and put her arms around him to pull him up.
He pushed her away, hard. “No! I will not talk to liars. And if you insist on believing him, I will not talk to you either. Go away.”
Unconsciously compressing her lips into a thin, tense line, Nora wheeled and silently left the room.
Chapter Thirty-Six
Her mouth still tense, Nora went back to the phone. “I’m sorry,” she said to Detective Morris. “He won’t talk to you. Maybe you could write him a letter. I told him, but he won’t believe it.”
There was sympathy in the detective’s voice. “Very well. We could get him a copy of the medical examiner’s report.”
“Thank you,” Nora said wearily. “And maybe you could get one to Miss Hardy as well? I think she’d like to know, officially, I mean.”
“Yes, certainly.” There was a pause. “Ms. Tillot? I’m very sorry for your loss. And for all this unnecessary trouble.”
“Thank you. Thank you for calling.”
“You’re welcome. If there’s anything…”
“Thank you.” Nora paused for a second, then said, “Goodbye.”
“Goodbye.”
For a moment after she’d hung up, she stood there. Slowly she realized that her hand was sore from where Ralph had grabbed it and pulled, and that Thomas was mewing and rubbing against her legs. Nora bent to pat him, then picked him up and cradled him against her cheek. “What should we do, Tom?” she whispered. “I don’t think we can go on like this. Can we?” She held the cat out at arm’s length, looking into his green eyes. He blinked, but didn’t struggle, swinging slightly as she held him under his front legs. “He’s crazy, Thomas. Even without that evaluation, we know that, don’t we? Liz knows it, too, and the Hastingses and everyone. He’s really, really crazy. Maybe, after all, Andrew…”
Thomas curled his body into a C, pulling his back legs up, and Nora, seeing he was uncomfortable, put him gently down. But she couldn’t ask Andrew, couldn’t accept his offer. It wouldn’t be fair to bring a crazy man into his household. Surely Andrew didn’t understand how sick Ralph was; she’d have to write and tell him. “A nice letter,” that’s what Corinne would have called it. “Write Aunt Sally a nice letter, dear,” Mama would say the day after Christmas, the day after a birthday, or when someone had done a kindness, like the time the teacher had sent work home when Nora had measles. “A nice letter. That does so much, always remember that, Nora.”
“Mama,” Nora said softly. “Mama.”
A nice letter, she thought dully. I should write a nice letter to Liz, too, to thank her, to thank her for…
No!
Not a nice letter. This isn’t a nice-letter matter. Not a matter for a letter. A letter for a matter. Oh, God, I must be going batty!
Thinking of Liz had made heat and color rise in her cheeks, made her heart pound harder and her breath come faster, and filled her with energy, as if life, she thought, trying to put words to it, as if life is coming back to me.
Decisively, Nora picked up the phone again and dialed, not Liz—for she knew she had to see Liz, though she had no idea what she would say or do when she did, aside from telling her about the autopsy report—but Patty. And yes, Patty could come but not for another hour, so Nora, trying to expel all thought from her mind and trying to use the sudden strength and energy she felt, filled a bucket with warm soapy water and, on her hands and knees, scrubbed the clean kitchen floor.
But expelling thoughts didn’t work; she kept r
eplaying the scene in her father’s room over and over, hearing him say, “She’s evil, Nora—wants to get her hands on this place—I thought keeping the house the old way would protect the land, too—no one would ever want to buy it—your old father has more tricks—you couldn’t sell it—I knew I’d need you.” What did work, though, for only the second time in her life, was ignoring Ralph, who called from the bedroom, pleaded, moaned. “I’m busy, Father,” Nora finally shouted. “You can wait.”
“No, no! Nora, I need you,” he cried, sobbing now “I’m dizzy, I’m so dizzy, I feel sick.”
She heard the bed squeak, the thump of the walker, and deliberately turned her back as he emerged from his room, his pajama top unbuttoned, his bathrobe loosely tied below his hairy belly, one slipper half off.
“Nora, I’m so sick. You’d better go for the doctor. I’m dizzy.” He swiveled the walker awkwardly, positioning it in front of Nora, but then slipped and tumbled, a dead weight, against Nora, forcing them both to the wet floor.
For a moment, Nora couldn’t move or speak. She could barely breathe; he had landed across her chest. Then pain seared through her shoulder and traveled down into her arm, and she realized her arm was pinned under her, backwards, stretching over her head; something had come apart inside.
The pain was unbearable and she felt herself fighting for breath.
“Father, please move,” she gasped. “Please! Can you roll off me?”
Ralph moaned. “Help me,” he said. “Help me.”
With her good arm, Nora pushed him away as hard as she could.
“Don’t, Nora,” he sobbed. “Don’t leave me. Don’t ever leave your old father. You’re a good girl, Nora; I…”
“Father, are you hurt?” she asked coldly, struggling to a sitting position and gasping again as pain shot through her arm, which now, as she sat, dangled by her side. It was not, she discovered, possible to move it without excruciating pain in her shoulder.
“Yes, I… My leg,” he moaned.
Nora tried to bend forward to examine his leg but the pain made her cry out in agony. She reached her hand up and tenderly felt her shoulder. There seemed to be a lump where there shouldn’t be. Holding her breath, she pushed against it and felt something snap, popping back into place. Instantly the pain eased, receding to a dull ache.
Ralph moaned again and Nora, on her knees now, leaned forward to look at his leg. There was a red mark on the shin, as if he’d hit the walker with his leg, but nothing else seemed wrong. “Can you move it?” she asked.
Ralph nodded, and demonstrated.
She touched the red mark.
“Ouch!”
“I think you bumped it,” she said, standing up cautiously, cradling her arm. “On the walker. But I think it’s all right.”
“Help me up.” Ralph writhed on the wet floor. Like a fish, Nora thought, like a huge fish that’s been caught.
“I don’t think I can, Father,” she said. “I’ve hurt my arm. My shoulder.”
“Use the other one,” he growled.
“I’m not strong enough to get you up with one arm. I’m not sure I’d be strong enough with two. Patty should be here very soon. She’ll help me.”
“What the hell am I supposed to do till then?” he snarled. “Just lie here?”
“Yes,” Nora said, trying not to smile. “Just lie there. I’m sorry, but there’s nothing else I can do.”
“Thankless child,” Ralph muttered.
“Thankless parent,” Nora retorted. But she sat down on the floor next to him anyway, and got him to sing “Down by the Old Mill Stream” and “Alice Blue Gown"—though that one made them both cry—till Patty arrived.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
It was hard with only one smoothly working arm, but somehow Nora managed, after she and Patty had settled Ralph in bed, to back the Ford out of the barn and drive to Liz’s cabin. “Shouldn’t you get an X-ray?” Patty had asked anxiously. “My boyfriend hurt his arm once and didn’t get one and it turned out it was, like, cracked and it still really bothers him sometimes.” Nora had replied, “Maybe. But there’s something I’ve got to do first,” and she explained to Patty about the medical examiner’s report.
But when she got to Liz’s, she stopped the car a few yards from the cabin and sat there indecisively. Afraid, that’s what it is, she said to herself: I’m afraid to face her.
She was about to try to turn the car around again and leave—perhaps, she thought, if I drive around a little—when Liz emerged from the cabin in her bathing suit, a towel around her neck.
For a moment Liz stood staring at the car. Then, with a look halfway between joy and anger, she strode to it, around to the driver’s side. Nora rolled down the window, reaching across her body to do it, for it was her left shoulder that was hurt; throbbing now, again, too.
“What’s with your arm?” was the first thing Liz said, which later struck them both as funny, considering.
“Father fell on me. I was washing the floor and he slipped. That’s not important. Detective Morris called. The tissue samples and stuff were negative. You’re cleared.”
Liz smiled tentatively. “Thank you. Thank you for telling me.”
Nora’s eyes filled with tears. “Liz, I don’t know what to do. I’m sorry, I’m sorry for the things I said.”
Liz reached into the car and touched Nora’s good shoulder awkwardly. “What things? About the farm? About solitude? But that’s how you feel, you can’t help that.”
“Yes, I can,” Nora sobbed. “I didn’t mean I couldn’t ever be with you. I just needed time, time alone. It’s all happened so fast. I wanted it not to have changed so quickly: Mama, the farm, father. And you, you’re—oh, I don’t know.” Nora sniffed loudly. “I’m not making any sense, am I?”
“No.” Liz opened the car door. “Will you at least get out and come inside? Please?”
Nora climbed out. “You were going to have a swim.”
“Yes, I was. But I can have a swim any time.” Liz steadied her as she swayed a little; Nora gasped sharply in pain. Liz put a hand on each of Nora’s arms, holding her still. “Wait,” she said. “Wait. You’re really hurt, aren’t you?”
Nora nodded. “I think I might be, yes. Except I’m so glad to see you I almost don’t care.”
“That’s flattering, but I care. First things first. Let’s get you to a doctor.”
***
Two hours later, Nora, with her arm in a sling (a minor dislocation, the doctor said, perfectly in place again but sprained), was sitting on the sofa in Liz’s living room sipping red wine. Liz was sitting beside her, her own wine untouched on the table in front of them. Nora had just called Patty and asked her to give Ralph a meal and stay till she and Liz both got to the farm.
“The options,” Liz was saying. “Let’s list them.”
Nora felt a wave of giddiness; the pain and the shock, she supposed, not to mention the wine on top of the aspirin she’d taken. “Write them down, you mean, like a pro and con thing?”
“Well, maybe not quite like that. But it might help.”
“It might,” Nora said more seriously. “Okay. Father and I could go live with Andrew. But I don’t want to live with Andrew. Father could go live with Andrew and I could stay in the house. But Andrew doesn’t know how crazy Father probably is.”
“True. But maybe he does or maybe when he does he’ll still be willing, if the doctors can find the right medication. So another alternative could be that your father could go live with Andrew and you could sell the house and come back to New York with me. But you don’t want to sell the house, and New York’s no place for anyone who likes solitude, quiet solitude, anyway. And gardening. And who has an outdoor cat. Maybe actually living with me wouldn’t be good for you either. So in that case maybe your father could go live with Andrew and you could stay in the house and I could get a job here and stay in the cabin.”
Nora looked at Liz in astonishment. “In the winter?”
“I cou
ld have the cabin insulated. There might be time, just, before it gets cold.”
“You’d do that?” Nora asked. “You’d leave your job and New York and everything to move here?”
Liz nodded. “I think so,” she said slowly. “I’d been thinking about it, anyway, but then it looked as if we—you know.”
Nora took Liz’s hand. “Or,” she said softly, “you could come and live in the farmhouse with me. We could fix it up. Plumbing, electricity. What would be the good of you living here and me living there if the point is for us to be together?”
“What indeed?” Liz said. “But you want to be alone.”
Impatiently, Nora shook her head. “Not every minute. You could come and live in the house even if Father didn’t go to Andrew’s, maybe.”
“I don’t think so. I think that would really make him crazy. Nora”—she leaned forward—“Nora, do you think maybe he should be in a nursing home or a mental hospital instead of living with you or with Andrew? I know most places like that are awful, but they aren’t all awful, and I don’t know about the money end of it, but—Nora, I don’t think it’s safe for you to be around him, for anyone to be, and it’s probably not safe for him either. We don’t know what that evaluation will find, but…”
“I know,” Nora said softly. “I know it’s not safe. Not any more. I think there might be enough money, especially if we sold the farm. But I don’t know what a nursing home or a mental hospital would cost either. Or what insurance would cover. Medicare. He doesn’t have anything else. And he’d hate it so, being in an institution!”
“Do you think he’s really happy where he is now?”
“No, but…”
“If he were in a nursing home or a mental hospital, a good one, he could get constant professional attention for his problems.”
“He hates doctors. He doesn’t even really trust Dr. Cantor, and he’s known him forever.” Nora shook her head, dropped Liz’s hand, and rubbed her eyes. “I know you’re right. I know I’m being foolish.”
