by Holley Trent
So, Nora killed two birds with one stone. She dropped her painting off in D.C., received gushing accolades from Spence, who was thrilled to finally meet her in the flesh, and then made it north to Baltimore by two-thirty for her court appearance.
She walked away from her lawyer in a curious state of half-joy, half-terror and cried there in the parking lot for half an hour before starting her car. After a short pep talk to herself, she started her car and drove to the house she’d shared with her now ex-husband for a year. He’d won the house, only because Nora didn’t fight for it, but there were a few objects in the attic she wanted to retrieve.
She stood there on the stoop, forcing her key into the lock when the sound of cracking ice on the sidewalk behind her made her turn. There Elvin stood: tall, dark, and thin and wearing an expression of utter arrogance Nora had once found sexy but now found pretentious. Nora wanted to knock that cocked eyebrow right off his face, and she probably could do it. He’d taught her how.
“Changed the locks,” he said.
“That fast?”
Elvin shrugged. “You were gone.”
Nora fidgeted her keys in her hands and ground her teeth. “I just want my grandmother’s frame and the paintings in the attic.”
Elvin walked past her and put his back to the door. He crossed his arms over his chest. “I’ll ship them to you, if they’re even there.”
“Why wouldn’t they be?”
Elvin rubbed the little soul patch beneath his bottom lip and narrowed his nearly black eyes at her. “Had to clean up. Pizarra limpia.”
“You cleaned the slate every time you left the house when we were married. Janelle. Arianne. Marla. Who else?” Nora forced the house keys off the ring and flung them in the general direction of Elvin’s head, one by one. He swatted them away.
“There’s your fucking clean slate, pendejo. Send me my shit.”
Elvin scoffed.
Nora stormed down the steps. The confusion she’d felt earlier had dissipated. Now she was just pissed. It was about time.
*
When Nora turned into her gravel driveway at nearly midnight, spent from the long day, she was happy to see her porch lights shining and craved the softness of the new sheets on the bed inside the house. When she stepped out of the car, she noticed a faint light shining through the trees, flickering as the holder ambled closer. When Matt got close enough to see Nora’s eyes he turned off his flashlight. “Hey,” he said.
“Hey, you want to come in?” Nora asked tiredly, assessing his thin tee shirt and the flannel pants he’d obviously put on for bed. It was so late. She wondered, briefly, if he’d stayed up waiting on her. After her encounter with Elvin she needed a calming presence around her. One that didn’t make her feel inadequate with every stare.
Matt cringed. “I can’t stay, baby, though I’d like to stick around and have a beer with you. I gotta get up early for work. I just wanted to find out what happened.”
Nora felt the blood drain from her face, although thankfully she knew Matt couldn’t tell in the dim light. “What happened?”
“With the painting. Did they like it?” He smirked, obviously noting the confusion she wore on her face.
“Oh,” she said, feeling her eyes widen. “Yes. They liked it a lot. The first painting doesn’t go up until January sixteenth, so I can ease up a bit now that I have two in. It’ll be nice to spend some time getting the house fixed up for the holidays and getting my luggage unpacked.” She chuckled and relaxed her shoulders. “Maybe I’ll actually find my nightgown in this mess.”
He smiled. “Maybe. Hey, speaking of the holidays, that’s why I came over,” he said, fixing the collar of Nora’s wool coat so it lay flat. Nora resisted the urge to caress his hand with her chin like a cat. If she touched him, she knew she wouldn’t want to stop, and she had to stop or it would all end badly. Again.
“You want to go to the Edenton Christmas parade with me?” He shone the light of his flashlight in his face so Nora could see him wink. “I get a special seat.”
“Christmas?” Nora climbed her porch steps and wriggled free the exterior paint swatch cards the contractor had left shoved into her screen door while she was out. “Isn’t it a bit early to be thinking about that?”
Matt looked down at his large hands and studied his nails. “Well, not exactly. The parade is the second weekend in December and after this Friday I’m going to be out of town for three weeks.”
“Three weeks?” Nora didn’t see much of Matt, but she’d always taken for granted he’d be around if she wanted to.
“Yeah. I take all my vacation time at once every year. Me and Karen go to Kansas to stay with my mom’s family. I’m going alone this year since Karen has to work.”
“Wow. Have a good time, I guess. I’m going on a working vacation next month with my friend. A cruise. I think Kansas actually sounds like the more desirable location between the two.” She rolled her eyes and scoffed. “Are your parents going to be there?”
“Our parents are dead, baby.”
Nora gaped with embarrassment and worked her mouth open and shut repeatedly, trying to squeeze out an appropriate apology but coming up with nothing.
“It’s okay. They’ve been gone for a long time, Nora.”
“Still, it must be … ” She didn’t know what to say, so she just dropped the subject altogether. “Maybe I’ll take Karen some meals while you’re gone, assuming I’m not up to my elbows in paint.”
Matt put a hand out and tweaked the bill of Nora’s hat. “I’m sure she’d like that. She’d probably starve to death otherwise, and she’s skinny enough as it is. So, you’ll go to the parade with me when I get back?”
“Yes. Certainly,” she answered quickly, thinking perhaps if she did that small thing with him it would make up for her carelessness in the conversation. How did she not think to ask about their parents in all that time? Anyone else would have found it odd that two siblings, ages widely spaced, would be living together in a four-bedroom ranch house with no family around. Nora thought that if she had been a better friend, she would have asked. Perhaps she didn’t deserve to have friends with the lifestyle she kept. And when she looked up into Matt’s kind gaze, she thought she didn’t deserve for him to be looking at her with as much tenderness as he was … even if she needed it so badly.
*
Matt was a moving target until he left on Saturday, running endless errands and doing house repairs after work every day, so Nora didn’t see him until he folded himself uncomfortably into the front passenger seat of Karen’s small car and waved at her as they drove slowly past her yard on the way to the airport. Nora had been on her porch assessing paint swatches on the siding and trim when he left. She’d looked up at the last minute, so flustered by the varying shades of white and taupe smeared across the siding that she almost missed him. Nora couldn’t tell if he’d seen her waving back or if he assumed she was seriously that aloof.
“Damn it! I should have gotten his number,” she said to herself, snapping her fingers. Not that she knew what she would say if she called, but maybe a friendly text message or two would keep him wondering about her. She knew it was selfish to lead him on, but at the same time she didn’t know what her own intentions were. She just knew that thinking of him cleared away all the vitriol she was feeling about Elvin. Thoughts of one man brought her down. The other propped her up.
Nora woke up her phone and dialed Bennie’s number.
“Hey, you seen Chad?” Bennie asked in lieu of saying “Hello?”
Nora rolled her eyes and put Bennie on speaker. “No, hon. I don’t go looking for him, either. As long as my satellite dish does what it’s supposed to, I have no reason to be anywhere near his field of gravity.”
“Geez, you make it sound like he’s some sort of leper.”
Nora held her tongue. If she thought Bennie was more serious about the blond weirdo than the occasional roll in the hay whenever she drove down to visit Nora, she would have to let
her down gently about Chad’s true nature. If she was just in it for the dick — well, they deserved each other. “Listen, I wanted to get your opinion about the paint choices we’ve narrowed down for the house,” Nora said, steering the conversation away from Bennie’s potential conquests. “The shingles are a moss green color, so I’m trying to figure out how bold I want to go with the trim.”
“Send it.”
Nora stepped down from the porch and walked out into the yard to get a bit of the porch roof and the paint swatches together in the same shot. “Can you see that?” she asked at the exact moment an old hatchback coupe puttered slowly past the property. The driver craned her head out the window as if she had an ostrich neck. Nora didn’t pay much attention; it wasn’t unusual for people to see her in the yard and slow down to see what was going on. The property had been unoccupied for so long that people were rightfully curious about their new community member and the rapid series of changes going on to the house. Money greases the construction wheels, she quickly learned.
“Are you going to paint the barn?” Bennie, the graphics designer, asked sagely.
“You think I should?”
“Should, shouldn’t, doesn’t matter. Point is the trim should match the barn color.”
“Huh. I hadn’t thought of that.”
“Of course you didn’t. You’re too busy looking at fine brushstrokes to see the big picture in the real world. I’m a big-picture person, Nora. That’s why I get paid the big bucks to push pixels around.”
Nora couldn’t niggle about the statement. It was true: Nora sometimes couldn’t see the forest for the trees. Back when she and Elvin were newly married, she might have said that Bennie was wrong, but Nora learned from her own mistakes.
“That gives me some room for creativity, I guess. I wonder if I could get away with painting it black.”
“Uh, no. You going all emo on me? Our people don’t do emo.”
“Our people? I didn’t realize you were descended from African slaves. My bad.”
“Don’t go there, you wretch. You’ve got like, what, two slaves in that side of your family tree? Don’t start going all militant Black Panther on me. I was referring to the old Baltimore clique: our people, man! Anyway, you can’t have a black barn unless you’re going to hang strobe lights and shit inside it and throw raves.”
That actually didn’t sound like a bad idea, but Nora didn’t say so out loud. She loved to dance. Still, she suggested dark gray as an alternative barn color, but didn’t hear anything Bennie said in response because the little hoopty coupe was back and pulling into Nora’s driveway.
“Let me call you back,” she said, ending the call before Bennie could respond and starting to walk the long driveway. A thin dark-skinned woman got out and waved wildly. Nora identified the visitor before she got close enough to see her missing teeth or read the logo on her heather gray sweatshirt. “Hey, Miss Hattie. Whatcha doing on this side of the county line?”
“Ooh, girl. Ain’t you gon’ offer me a cup of coffee? Cold as shit out here today.”
Nora laughed. “Sure. Come on in. I think I’ve got some sludge left in the pot.”
Once Hattie was settled onto one of Nora’s four kitchen chairs with a cup of milky coffee warming her hands, she said, “You ain’t come by the store since you dropped off that picture you printed off wit’ the painting. Oooh, girl, we was so tickled.” Hattie flicked a hand at Nora as if to emphasize that point. “Bossman wanted to know how he could get the real painting and another one besides, so he sent me out to fetch you.”
“You know, you could have just called,” Nora said, nursing a cup of coffee of her own. No one ever called her anymore. It was either email, text, or they just popped by if they saw her standing in the yard, apparently.
“Oh, I know. I made like I didn’t know the number, though, so I could haves me a little break. Bossman’s behind the grill right now, and oooh, girl. It is fun-nee. He ain’t put a hot dog together since he was no bigger than a tick’s dick.”
Nora snorted and sprayed tepid coffee through her nose at the bad mental imagery. When she managed to clear the caffeinated dreck from her sinuses she said, “You know, it may be possible for him to buy the painting, but that’s assuming it doesn’t sell at the gallery. It’ll be up for at least five weeks before the owner entertains any offers of purchase. If it doesn’t sell within a couple of months, it’ll be up to me to sell it or not.”
“Likely he’ll get it?”
“Hard to say. Art buyers are unpredictable. When all is said and done, though, if he wants to hire me to paint something, I’ll certainly consider the offer for what it’s worth.”
“Now let me make sure I got this right, because he gon’ ask me two o’ t’ree times. That painting goes up January sixteenth.”
“Right. In D.C.”
“It hang there for five weeks then he might could buy it.”
“Right. The gallery owner sets the price according to what the market might bear, so it might be a bit steep.”
“Oh, okay. I tell him. He don’t want nobody else to have that painting.” Hattie laughed as if the idea truly amused her. “He was talkin’ about sellin’ postcards and posters of the painting down at the chamber o’ commerce. You think anybody’d buy it?”
“Hattie, there’s no telling what people would buy. I bought these pants, right?” They both looked down at Nora’s acid wash jeggings and said nothing. Point proven.
Chapter Six
Matt had listened to Nora’s tentative, halting message at least ten times in the seven days immediately after arriving in Lenora. The trip had been grueling, as always, since his destination was in the middle of absofuckinglutely nowhere and the closest major airport was several hours away by car. The ride from the airport with his aunt, Minnie, was always painful with her non-stop chattering about people he didn’t know nor have any desire to. When she started asking about whether or not he’d met any nice girls since he wasn’t “getting any younger, ya know,” he answered vaguely and steered the conversation elsewhere.
Matt didn’t want to talk about Nora with meddling Aunt Minnie or anyone in Lenora for that matter. Liberal bunch that they were, he wasn’t sure they’d wouldn’t wig out at the prospect of browning the family tree, even if just by a shade. “It’s always hardest for the children,” he expected they’d say, and of course they would in a place that had a black population of about one percent. He’d always lived in Chowan County, so he was used to one out of every two people being some shade of brown or tan or red. It seemed natural to him. Nora would have been a novelty to his Lenora family.
Matt had a hunch that Karen might have mentioned Nora in vague terms to his grandmother but had left the details up to Matt to sort out, God bless her. She kept asking questions like “I hear you got a new neighbor. That’s so nice. Is she single?”
The folks visiting at his grandmother’s house hadn’t left him alone for more than five minutes in nearly a week except for when he was fast asleep, and he hadn’t had a chance to sneak away to call Nora back. He just kept playing back the same message over and over:
“Hi, Matt? It’s Nora. Karen gave me your number. I hope that’s okay? I took her dinner and asked if you’d made it okay, so, here I am. I’ve been outside all day watching the painters tackle the barn. It’s kind of fascinating watching them up on the ladders, but I’m a bit wind chapped now. Um … Chad was poking around your house right after you left, so I don’t know if you expected him, but I thought I’d tell you. I … well. Call me back, okay? I never showed you that painting and want to text you a picture of it if you still want to see. Oh my God, I’m rambling. I’m sorry. Hey, just checking in. Bye.”
Then she clicked off. He wanted to call her back and ask her about her painting and her barn and Chad, especially, but the best he could do was lock himself in his grandmother’s powder room and send a fairly inadequate, in his opinion, text back: “I’m not ignoring you, Nora, I swear. I’m being stalked by
nosy old bitties who think smartphone technology is fascinating. Every time my phone buzzes they drop what they’re doing and run over with their reading glasses. I really don’t want these nuts witnessing me courting you over the phone.”
About four minutes later, Nora responded: “Are we courting?”
Matt flushed the toilet to justify his occupation of the room and sent back: “Feels that way to me. Your mileage may vary.”
About seven minutes later, Nora returned, “There are some things you really need to know about me. I’m not a cut-and-dried girl.”
Matt, by then hiding in the back seat of his grandmother’s town car, sent “Good. I’d like you less if you were. Don’t worry about the skeletons. They’ll stay put until I get back. If I make it back. These people are intent on nagging me to death. I have to go figure out what’s wrong with the hay baler now.”
*
“So, how often do you come to these things?” Nora asked Karen as she took in the sloppily applied fall décor in the old armory.
Karen had wanted to go out and insisted Nora join her. “I like you, Nora,” Karen had said, giving Nora a reassuring pat on the back that’d made Nora raise a brow. Nora conceded just from pure curiosity.
The armory interior looked like someone had raided the clearance artificial flower bin at A.C. Moore and went to town with their hot glue gun. Nora assessed the gaggles of women dressed in various levels of skank-chic around her, and suddenly felt very overdressed in her fitted sweater dress. Some pop hit from the nineties was blaring through inadequate speakers propped atop flimsy particleboard stands and most people in the expansive room weren’t even bothering to sway — forget about dancing.
Nora had thought she’d be a dancer up until college. Drawing was an elective she took for fun. First class in, some professor figured out she had talent and guided her toward studio art. She changed her major after determining art would be a better long-term career. Still, she was a dancer at heart and the awful music just wouldn’t do for her. She looked around for the deejay and found a middle-aged woman sitting behind a plastic-covered card table squinting at CD cases.
