In All Deep Places

by Susan Meissner

  “He could talk to God. You could talk to God.” I was embarrassed to be giving such lofty counsel. Who was I to be giving pastoral advice?

  She was thoughtful for a moment. “Sometimes I do talk to God.”

  “Yeah?”

  “It doesn’t feel like He ever talks back.”

  I knew there had to be a good theological comeback for what Norah had just said, but I didn’t know what it was. The moment to respond fluttered away.

  “Kieran was so disappointed when we got here and you were already in South Dakota,” she continued, as if there had been no holy moment just seconds before. “I mean, he was happy to see Ethan and all, but he really wanted to see you. He has really missed you.”

  At the mention of her brother’s missing me, I nearly asked why she hadn’t written to me. But I quickly decided it could only be because of one of two reasons. One, because she didn’t want to write me—or two, because she really did but was afraid I didn’t want her to.

  I really didn’t want to know which one it was.

  “Well, maybe we can go to Goose Pond tomorrow,” I said instead.

  “Just like old times.” Norah smiled.

  When I went to bed that night and said my prayers, I added to my usual list of nighttime supplications the plea that God would indeed break the Janvik curse. That it would stop forever at Darrel. And that the next time Norah tried talking to the heavens, God would talk back.

  Seventeen

  The rest of the summer passed in a lazy, comfortable fashion. When I wasn’t working at the newspaper, I was spending time with a new circle of people that didn’t include Matt. Patti Carmichael’s friends, mostly drama-club extroverts my mother already knew and liked, became my new social world. They were bold and daring without being foolish and delinquent. Best of all, they welcomed Norah into the group from the first day. It was this crowd that joined me and Norah in front of the Texaco station for the Wooden Shoes parade, since Matt and several other friends had moved to a curbside seat closer to the liquor store. And it was this crowd that hung out in my basement playing games, watching movies, and teasing my mother throughout the long summer days and nights.

  I still made regular visits to the tree house on weekday evenings, though I felt like I was getting too old and too tall to be doing such things. Despite my age and height I still loved writing my stories cradled in the tree’s embrace. And it was the only time I could be alone with Norah.

  She continued to fascinate me in all kinds of ways. I still imagined I’d been commissioned in some crazy way to look out for her and Kieran. And I couldn’t deny there was within me a deepening affection and attraction to her, though this unnerved me somewhat. I didn’t want to fall in love with her, and I didn’t think I would. But she had a pull on me that intrigued me as a writer. And as a man. It felt a little dangerous to be on such close terms with her, but I liked it. The feeling of danger was key to my current collection of spy stories, and I found I fed on it. I could tell my mother was worried about my close friendship with Norah, too, that she worried I might fall for her and that nothing good could come from it. I found that intriguing, also. I almost felt challenged to prove my mother wrong. Almost.

  Norah didn’t come every night to the tree house. When she did come, she often didn’t stay long. Sometimes Kieran whined at the window, urging her to come back. She didn’t allow him to take the route across the garage roof, and usually by ten o’clock he was ready for bed, so climbing up from the ground wasn’t an option. Sometimes she came with notebook paper to write her mother a letter. Sometimes she came with cookies she had made. Sometimes she came with nothing.

  One evening I asked her if she still liked to write poetry. She sighed—lightly—but sighed nonetheless.

  “No, not really. I feel like all my good ideas are gone. Or locked up somewhere and I don’t know where they are.”

  The thought of not being able to write frightened me. I didn’t want to know anything more about what that was like, and I didn’t ask her about it again.

  Norah and Kieran spent most of their Sunday afternoons with my family, staying for supper nearly every week. Nell always got the invitation too and always declined. On these occasions I would stealthily look for signs of Tommy’s imaginary presence. Kieran never mentioned him and hardly ever whispered things to the air beside him, but it did happen from time to time. No one else ever seemed to notice, and I was glad they didn’t. Perhaps Norah was right. Perhaps in time Tommy would just fade away.

  As summer neared its end, it appeared to me that Norah and Kieran would be staying. No one ever said anything, but the closer it got to the start of school, the more it seemed Nell was planning on having them stay. I asked Norah about it a couple times, but she just said she didn’t know what her grandma was planning to do. And she was afraid to ask. Her grandma had grown quiet, she said, like she was brooding. Norah was afraid she was teetering on the edge of keeping them or sending them back to live with Eleanor. She didn’t want to say something and push her over the edge. For the first time in her life, Norah had friends. She didn’t want to go back to Albert Lea.

  On a Sunday evening in late August after a meal of barbecued spare ribs, my mom fixed a plate for Nell and handed it to Norah as she and Kieran got ready to go home.

  “School starts next week,” she said to Norah as she gave her a brownie to put on top of the foil-covered paper plate.

  “Yeah,” Norah said.

  “You want me to talk to Nell about getting you and Kieran registered?”

  Norah glanced at me and then turned back to my mother. “No, I can take care of it. Thanks for supper. C’mon, Kieran.”

  “Okay. Glad you came. Say hi to Nell for us.”

  My mother turned to Dad and give him a look. It was the Nell look. I’d seen it pass between them for years.

  After I helped my dad put the grill away, I got out a basketball and started shooting hoops out front. I was looking forward to the start of the new year. I’d be a junior. I had new friends to replace the ones I’d grown apart from. I’d start getting college information in the mail. And I’d be able to drive to away football games. Norah would probably come with me. Kieran, too. And that was okay.

  As I shot the ball over and over, I began to hear voices in between dribbles. The voices got louder. Someone was yelling. I stopped shooting and held the ball to my chest. The voices were coming from Nell’s open kitchen windows.

  “You’ve got a lot of nerve telling me how you think things oughta be. How dare you tell me how to live my life? You don’t know a thing about anything!”

  Nell.

  “I know a lot more than you think!” Norah’s voice was raised, too, but it didn’t match Nell’s in terms of decibels.

  “Oh, really! Well, Miss Smarty Pants, if you think things are so much better over at the Foxbournes, then you be my guest! You go live with them, you ungrateful nuisance!” Nell roared.

  I felt my face grow hot. I’d never heard anyone say my last name with such venom. I heard the screen door to Nell’s kitchen open. Someone was coming out. But Nell wasn’t finished.

  “No one ever asked me if I wanted to live next door to Paradise!” she screamed. “No one! No one asked me if I wanted to raise you kids. No one asked me anything!”

  The back door slammed shut, and Norah emerged, chest heaving. She turned and saw me standing. Her face was flooded with a mix of anger, rejection, and fear.

  I threw the ball onto the grass and motioned with my head for her to follow me. I began to walk toward the garage and my father’s car. She hesitated a moment and then followed. I reached underneath the vehicle to the spot where an extra key was hidden.

  “Come on,” I said as I opened the driver’s side door and got in. “Let’s go for a drive.”

  Again, she hesitated for a moment. Then she opened the passenger door and slipped in.

  “I don’t want to talk about it,” she said, barely above a whisper.

  “I don’t either,�
� I replied.

  I backed the car out of the driveway. I said nothing as we headed toward the water tower and the gravel road to Goose Pond, where the two of us would find peace and quiet.. In my mind I heard Nell’s menacing accusation about my house, my home—over and over.

  No one ever asked me if I wanted to live next door to Paradise!

  Next door to Paradise. My house.

  As if it were really that close.

  I didn’t see Norah again until Tuesday. I came home from the paper for lunch at twelve-thirty and noticed a car I didn’t recognize parked in Nell’s driveway with its trunk open. I stepped into the house where my mother was making egg-salad sandwiches. Ethan was opening a can of Dr Pepper, and he looked up at me.

  “I think Norah and Kieran are leaving.”

  I stood still for a moment, waiting to see if my mother would confirm or deny it, but she did neither. She just continued to mash bits of egg into a yellow Tupperware bowl. I turned and went back outside.

  The woman from Darrel’s funeral—Eleanor—was now outside putting two pillows into the trunk. Norah came out of the house then holding a tired-looking green suitcase. She looked up at me and then looked down, staring at her feet as she walked over to the car with it.

  “Okay, now I’ll just go get your brother’s suitcase, and we’ll be off!” Eleanor said brightly. “Trixie will be so glad to see you kids again! She just went to the groomer! You won’t recognize her!” The woman walked back up the path to the front door and went inside.

  I walked over to the car, where Norah stood like a statue, unmoving. “What’s going on!” I said, but not like a question.

  She shrugged her shoulders. “She’s sending us back.”

  Familiar ripples of revulsion swept across me. I hated Nell Janvik at that moment. Truly hated her.

  “Why!?”

  Again she shrugged. She would not look at me. “I don’t know.”

  The front door opened, and Eleanor came out with another green suitcase, Kieran behind her. Nell was behind Kieran. The three of them stepped out into the sunshine.

  Kieran saw me standing there and turned to Nell. “Can’t we stay, Grandma?” he said softly.

  Nell said nothing.

  “We’ll be back to visit!” Eleanor said brightly. “And Bertie has missed you, Kieran. He always asks about you when I see him!”

  Eleanor walked to the car and then noticed me for the first time.

  “Oh! Hello! Why, you must be Luke. Kieran talks about you all the time. You’re the one with the tree house, right?”

  I just nodded. My eyes were trained on Nell. I wished my eyes were daggers, just like books said eyes could sometimes look.

  “Well, we’ve got a long drive, we’d best be off,” Eleanor said as she put the second suitcase in the trunk and shut it. “Say goodbye to your grandma, kids.”

  Kieran looked up at his grandmother, and there was no mistaking he was silently pleading for one more chance to stay in Halcyon.

  “’Bye, Grandma.”

  Nell reached out and tousled his hair. That was quite possibly the only time I’d ever seen her show any kind of physical affection for either of her grandkids.

  “You mind your Aunt Eleanor, now,” she said, as if Kieran was prone to mischief. She said nothing at all to Norah.

  “Goodbye,” Norah said, but not to Nell. She’d finally raised her eyes to meet mine.

  Before I could say anything in return, she opened the car door and slid inside.

  There had been no time to talk of exchanging addresses this time. As the car began to back up, Ethan joined me on the driveway and he waved goodbye. Kieran’s eyes looked misty as he returned the wave through a half-opened backseat window. Norah was looking straight ahead. Eleanor punched the horn two times in a cheery, two-note farewell.

  Ethan watched as the car drove down Seventh Avenue, but I turned to stare at Nell. I wanted her to feel the heat of my anger, the depth of my scorn for her. I wanted her to feel demoralized by my gaze, to squirm under my scrutiny.

  She met my eyes with her own, and for several long seconds she said and did nothing.

  “What are you looking at?” she finally muttered to me.

  I continued to look down on her, feeling none of the fear and aversion I’d felt when I was younger. Only loathing.

  “Nothing,” I said.

  I hoped there was no mistaking I meant exactly what I said.

  I spent the rest of the day in an irritable mood. My mother had obviously told Dad, when he came home for lunch, what had happened because he told me I could have the afternoon off if I wanted. I didn’t know what I wanted. No, that wasn’t it. I knew what I wanted. I wanted to be free. I longed to be free.

  But I took the afternoon off anyway, and so I was home at three when Nell left for her shift at the paint factory. I saw her get into her car and drive away like it was just an ordinary Tuesday in August.

  I declined an offer by Patti and several others to see a movie that night in Carrow. I didn’t want to watch TV in the basement. I didn’t want to play a game of Risk with my dad.

  When I went to bed a little after eleven, I couldn’t relax. After fifteen minutes of lying awake and frustrated in my bed, I climbed out and stood at the window, looking at my tree house—the symbol of escape. After a moment I opened the window and inched my way out to it. I kept the lantern off as I stretched out on the floor with my arms crossed under my head and began to imagine my future. I started to review my mental list of cities I’d like to live in. Maybe I’d go to college on the East Coast. Maybe California. Maybe I’d start writing screenplays. Or maybe I’d develop a TV series about spies and Interpol—I’d have to travel all around the world to do the research.

  As I mused on the possibilities I became aware of the odor of cigarette smoke. And the sound of muted sobs. I came out of my reverie, sat up, and turned my head. I saw Nell in a square of moonlight, sitting on her back porch… sitting where Norah had stood just two days ago. A lit cigarette dangled from one of her fingers. But she wasn’t smoking it. She was crying. As she tried to stifle her anguish, what came out of her was utterly mournful, the saddest thing I had ever heard. I wanted to scramble out of the tree house, climb back into my room, and shut the window. But I was afraid to move. She would hear me.

  So I just sat there, hearing the agony of thousands of failed days bleed out of Nell. I put my hands over my ears and closed my eyes. I didn’t want to hear her sobbing, didn’t want to acknowledge she felt pain—nor that I knew she’d lived through more pain than anyone else I’d ever known. That maybe she had sent Norah and Kieran away because she knew Eleanor’s home had to be happier than hers. Better than hers. I didn’t want to acknowledge that. I wouldn’t be able to hate her then. I pressed my fingers harder into my ears. But I heard her anyway.

  My own eyes were starting to burn with unshed tears, and I screwed them closed as tight as I could. But the more Nell continued to weep, the more I could not keep them back. I felt my cheeks growing damp.

  Then a thought occurred to me, so surprising that I snapped my wet eyes open and pulled my hands away from my ears. For the first time in my life I saw that Nell and I really weren’t so different from each other in what we longed for.

  My pastor had read something in church on Sunday. It was a strange verse from Ecclesiastes, one I’d never heard before. It had intrigued me then and it pricked me now as I remembered it:

  He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the hearts of men; yet they cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end.

  The words of the ancient scripture tumbled around in my head as below me Nell wept.

  He has also set eternity in the hearts of men.

  Eternity in the hearts of men.

  Nell longed for Paradise. So did I. We were meant to. The desire to be where God dwells had been imbedded in my being. And in hers, too, though I knew she didn’t know it.

  That’s why it felt so close, ju
st next door. Just above us.

  That’s why I longed for Paradise.

  Eighteen

  There were no letters, no phone calls, nothing tangible to remind me I had a friend named Norah, if that is indeed what she was. My parents did not speak of her or Kieran, possibly because they figured I was angry with Nell and they didn’t want to intensify the anger by reminding me of what she’d done. I was angry with her, but my parents did not know that the anger was daily giving way to a strange, compassionless pity.

  That winter, my father asked Ethan instead of me to shovel Nell’s driveway when snow covered it, and it was Ethan who helped our dad put up her storm windows. I didn’t mind keeping my distance. It was sadly refreshing.

  At Christmas, my parents again took the family to Florida, and this time when we returned there were no footprints in the snow to indicate Norah and Kieran had been to Halcyon for the holidays. Nell was gone, too, when we got back. Perhaps she’d gone to Albert Lea to spend Christmas and New Year’s with Eleanor and her grandchildren but there was no way to know for sure. When she came home on the third of January, there was nothing about her mute, aloof presence to indicate where she had been. She was simply not there one minute and there the next.

  Basketball, working at the paper, and helping my mother with the spring play did for me what I hoped—kept me crazily busy. The long winter months and muddy pre-spring weeks passed quickly.

  My new circle of friends decided to go to the prom, which was on the third Saturday in May, as a group, but they agreed to pair off for the Grand March, which was always held in the high-school gym before the prom actually got started. At the urging of one of the other guys in the group, I asked Patti to accompany me, and she had promptly said she would love to.

  The evening of the prom was balmy and slightly breezy, near perfect. Mom got all misty-eyed when I came downstairs in a black tuxedo a few minutes before three.