Nell

by Nancy Thayer

  Jesus. She hadn’t thought about those times, those feelings, for a while. Now she was more financially secure, or at least more relaxed about her financial insecurity.

  Nell stopped her exercises, sat up with her legs crossed lotus-style in front of her, and lay her hands gently, palms up, between her thighs. She took deep breaths, rolled her head slowly from side to side. Calming down. Regaining control. Looking for peace.

  Nell knew that people liked being around her because she was attractive and because she had a sunny disposition. She also knew what work it had become to remain attractive and sunny. Her optimism and figure were no longer given to her free and easily by the fates: both had become matters of daily philosophical choice and hard daily personal labor. Much of that work had to do with going on in spite of the past. Ignoring the past took up a great deal of her energy. For when she stopped to turn around, she saw her past lying behind her in the most awful confusing scramble, she saw her past in a real snarl of people and fears and dead dreams. If she paid close attention to her past, she wouldn’t have the courage to go on into the future.

  Oh no, it hadn’t been that bad. And she had the children: Jeremy, Hannah, and her ex-stepdaughter and friend, Clary. She had true friends and memories that would always make her laugh. It was not so bad. It was just that she had supposed as a child—and now that she thought about it, even as an adult—that she would live her life in one true bright line; her life would make a straight kind of sense like a bold beam of sunshine. Instead, her life had taken on no meaning at all; the years, and the sense of those years, had gotten muddled and tangled and broken and even lost. Her past did not illuminate her future with a steady glow. Instead, it sputtered and flickered behind her like a candle that might burn out, leaving her to pitch forward with the next step into total darkness, or like a strobe light, battering her vision of the future with random spatters of glare and blackness.

  “I am so depressed!” Nell yelled, jumping up from the blue rug, jumping up from her thoughts. She shut off the stereo, stretched one time, then raced up the stairs to her bedroom. She dug through the papers on her desk in the alcove, found her diary, flipped it open to the calendar of the year.

  “Thank God!” she said aloud. “I’m premenstrual!” She slammed the diary back down and hurried into the bathroom. “It’s diuretic time, it’s diuretic time,” she sang to an old Howdy-Doody tune.

  Sometimes she thought the things she loved most in the world were her son, her daughter, her ex-stepdaughter, and her diuretics. They made such a difference in her life. She took one with a full glass of water. Then she went into her bedroom and zipped her old saggy gray sweatshirt robe over her leotard and tights.

  Nell loved this robe like she loved her cats and dog, like she loved a bubble bath. This robe was home. Hannah reminded Nell at every opportunity that Nell looked like a dying elephant in the robe, but then Hannah had always been critical of her mother. Nell knew in her heart that if Hannah had been able to speak at birth, her first words would have been, the instant she was pulled from between her mother’s legs: “Oh gross, Mom, look at you. Your hair’s all wet and tangled, your stomach’s all blubbery, and that hospital gown is really the pits. Couldn’t you at least put some lipstick on?” Hannah smothered compassion on every living thing, and even on nonliving things: she could cry for a rock that Jeremy threw in a pond and thus “drowned.” But she was a pitiless judge of her mother’s looks and seldom could stretch her compassion past her criticism. Still, Nell would wear this robe when she could, when alone in the house cleaning or reading or being sick or paying bills or cooking. It was a comfort, this robe. It just felt right.

  But now, before going down to the kitchen, she sighed and unzipped the robe and took it off in order to strip off her leotard and tights—if she left them on, she’d have a hell of a time getting everything down and off when the diuretic made her rush to the bathroom. She dropped the tights and leotard on a pile of clothes that needed to be hung up or folded and stood for a moment, naked, in her bedroom. The mirror on the back of the closet door gave her a full-length reflection of herself, and Nell turned slowly in front of it, scrutinizing her body.

  Nell was accustomed to mirrors. She worked around them constantly in the boutique and had learned how to ignore her own image while concentrating on that of a customer. All her life she had practiced poses, acting parts in front of mirrors. They had become her familiars and seemed to speak to her in a sort of ghostly feminine whisper. “Pull those shoulders back! Hold in your stomach!” they would say. The voices of course were her mother’s, her dance instructor’s, her acting coache’s, all echoing in her head. It was her own voice, too—her own judgment, really—that was reflected back at her, but now that her parents were aging and far away, she often felt that a mirror gave as much mothering as she got these days.

  Then, too, mirrors reminded her that she was lucky, after all. Directors and friends often said it was her personality that made her so attractive—her intensity, her vivacity—but Nell knew that it was really just that she had been lucky enough to have a body that would always look good in tight jeans. She was tall—five foot eight—and worry had kept her slim, and the early years of dance and the later years of disciplined exercise had kept her limber and taut, so that now as she turned in front of her mirror, she saw that from the back she looked like a smooth young girl. It was on her breasts and belly that time, experience, childbirth, and nursing had made their marks—there the flesh had stretched and now sagged slightly. No amount of exercise would ever bring her small pink-tipped breasts back up to their former plumpness. Never large, her breasts before she’d had the children had at least been firm, even pert. Now—now she had fantasies of having silicone implants, but she knew she could never afford them. And there was a little bowl-like bulge beneath her belly button, a kind of soft round insistency there that would never go away and that, unless Nell exercised diligently, threatened to expand and take over her entire torso. But she looked wonderful in clothes and not repulsive in a bikini, so it was all right, she supposed.

  Also, she liked the colors of her body; she had always liked how everything seemed to be of the same tone. Her skin was creamily pale, covered here and there with freckles, which were of the same reddish-brown color as her eyes. When she had been younger, she had lightened her hair slightly, so that she was a strawberry blonde, and then her large eyes had seemed darker. But now strands of gray were showing up here and there, and Nell had taken to darkening her hair slightly to a deep reddish-brown, dramatic against her pale skin, more sophisticated than the lighter color. Her hair was thick, slightly wavy, and she kept it long so that she had a variety of ways to wear it—it was a lot, after all, to have long lean thighs and thick rich hair.

  When she was younger Nell had worn her hair in odd, extravagant ways: pulled up to the side in a spout of ponytail, or braided when wet so that it frizzed out softly all around her face in the style of a pre-Raphaelite heroine’s. But now she had laugh lines around her mouth and eyes and, when she was tired or worried, little bluish pouches under her eyes; she could seldom get away with flamboyant hairstyles now. When working, she wore her hair pulled back in a chignon or she let it fall down and loose, held off her face demurely with a headband or clasp. The rest of the time she just let it go; she brushed it out full so it flew around her head, and she went around that way happily. She liked the scent and swish of her long hair when she turned her head. It gave her a feeling of exuberance. Men liked her long hair, too, the way it would sometimes fall forward over her bare shoulders.

  She still had fun with her hair, wearing it in different ways, just as she had fun with makeup. She had the definite, slightly exaggerated features that suited an actress or an opera singer: large eyes, high cheekbones, wide mouth. When she first worked in the boutique, she had used her skill with makeup to create an impressively dramatic face that “went” with her clothes each day. But soon she gave that up, believing that the makeup intimidated her
customers—and she preferred to use the early morning half hour for extra sleep. Now she wore some blusher and occasionally a touch of eyeliner, mascara, lipstick. When she worked at it, when she was wearing the perfectly right clothes and makeup, she could look like the sort of woman who would fly to Japan or France to attend a fashion show or an auction of antiques.

  The gray elephant robe was not that sort of garment. Nell pulled it over her head and immediately was enveloped in a tent of shapeless warmth. She felt comfortable and cozy, but in the mirror she saw a new brown stain down the front of the robe.

  “God,” she muttered to herself. “What a glamorous creature I am.”

  She had intended to be a glamorous creature. She even had actually been a glamorous creature. She had been a cheerleader and homecoming queen in high school, an actress in college, and, in her early twenties, then the stunning wife of an important young director. Now she was the not-so-stunning ex-wife of a not-so-important director, and all the acting she did was purely personal. Sometimes she was her only audience.

  Now she grabbed all her long reddish hair and stuck it up in a glob on the back of her head with some long barrettes so that it wouldn’t get in her way while she was cooking. She was having friends to dinner that night.

  “Listen,” she said to her reflection in the mirror as she went out of her room. “God gave you your children and your cheekbones. Don’t expect any other gifts.”

  It was about eleven o’clock. Jeremy had biked off to the school for soccer practice and wouldn’t be home till afternoon. Hannah was in her room, playing “teacher.” This morning she had rounded up the younger children in the neighborhood and brought them up to her room. Before going down to the kitchen, Nell peeked in the door and saw four little children sitting dutifully on the floor while Hannah stood at the other end of her bedroom, holding up a stuffed animal.

  “Squirrel,” she said. “This is a squirrel.”

  “Squirrel,” Hannah wrote on the blackboard.

  “Squirrel,” the four children said.

  “Good!” Hannah said with sugar in her voice. “Now, Heather, you may hold the stuffed squirrel.”

  Hannah was wearing the navy blue suit her grandmother had sent her for Easter and a pair of Nell’s old black high-heeled sandals. She had smeared pink lipstick over her lips and cheeks and stuck her blond hair back in a severe bun that had several bobby pins dangling down, swinging with every definite nod of Hannah’s head. She looked absolutely demented, but the four children at her feet seemed completely at ease and even fascinated, so Nell shut the door without saying a word and went down the stairs to the kitchen.

  When Nell had been married to Marlow, they had bought this old, rickety shambles of a Victorian house, intending to restore it over the years to its former solidity, if not grandeur. Marlow had thought the large high-ceilinged rooms would be perfect for theatrical gatherings. Nell had thought all the bedrooms would be perfect for all the babies she would have. When Nell and Marlow divorced, Nell had gotten the house, along with full custody of the children; she had thought of selling the house immediately—it was so large and falling apart, it needed constant repair.

  But at that time the real estate market changed, and she found that in order to buy a smaller house, she would have to pay a much larger mortgage, much more interest on the principal. She had decided to keep the house and for the first two years had been glad to stay there. It had provided a sense of continuity and stability for her two small children, whose lives had been upset by their parents’ divorce. And when, in desperation, she had begun a babysitting service in her home in order to make survival money and still be with her children, she had been glad of the size of the house.

  She had been especially glad on rainy days, when she had nine children under five years of age and two infants to take care of. What had once been a library became the napping room, where the children sprawled on the antique Oriental rug with their sleeping bags and blankets and comforters. The living room had been for quiet play, the kitchen for juice and snacks and lunch, and the dining room, the once-elegant dining room with the intricate parquet floor and the crystal chandelier, had been where little kids rode their tricycles and scooters around the long oak table during blizzards or rainstorms. The landing to the second floor was large enough for the television set, and the children could gather there in a group, sprawling on rug samples Nell had begged from a furniture store, to watch Captain Kangaroo or Sesame Street.

  My God, what a time that had been.

  That was four years ago. Nell had been ready to go on that way forever, and would have if the parents of one of the children hadn’t intervened. The O’Learys owned one of the best women’s boutiques in Cambridge; they specialized in understated cotton dresses and simple cotton sweaters that cost around two hundred dollars. They had decided to move to Nantucket to open up another shop there, and they asked Nell if she would be interested in running their shop on “the mainland” for them. They would do the major bookkeeping and buying; she would be a saleswoman and manager.

  “I don’t know a thing about running a store!” Nell had responded.

  “But you’ve got such a long, lean body!” Elizabeth O’Leary had said, studying Nell with her buyer’s eye. “You’d look super in our clothes. You’d be the best ad we could get.”

  “Are you kidding?” Nell cried. “I’d never be able to afford the clothes you sell!”

  “Well, honey,” Colin O’Leary said, “you won’t have to buy them. Just wear them—while you’re working in the store.”

  “You don’t want to be stuck here all your life with these—these children,” Elizabeth had said, looking at the horde of jam-smeared midgets who straggled in and out of the kitchen as they talked. The O’Learys’ own child, Priscilla, was a lovely little girl of five who wore immaculate and expensive hand-smocked pinafores and Mary Janes with white socks every day. The O’Learys were sending Priscilla to live with her grandparents in Greenwich, Connecticut, so she could go to a good private school. “We can pay you very well,” Elizabeth had continued.

  And they did pay Nell very well, and she had found, after she grew accustomed to the change, that she quite liked dressing up in fabulous designer clothes and working regular hours with human beings who did not spit up on her. Still, she missed the grand chaotic richness of those babysitting years.

  Not that there wasn’t plenty of chaos in her life still. This afternoon Nell was going to clean out her basement or die. The washer and dryer were in the basement, and a playroom for the children was there, too, in a corner of the basement where the cement was covered by a torn and faded piece of linoleum. Jeremy’s electric train table was in the basement, as were many of Hannah’s dress-up clothes and baby dolls. Still, the basement was not Nell’s favorite place. In fact, it made her skin crawl. The ceiling was low, with old pipes that crossed just above her head, growing cobwebs and dust jungles in spite of all her efforts to clean. It was not a modern basement, and the floor was cracked here and there and the furnace was monstrous and creepy and there was another room leading off the main room, a room that didn’t even have a cement floor, a room with one lightbulb in the middle. Nell hadn’t gone into that dirt-floored room for years. She pretended it didn’t exist. The dark door loomed behind the furnace like the portal to hell. She was always amazed that her children liked playing in the basement. She could scarcely bring herself to stay down there long enough to do the laundry.

  Just last night, on her way down the stairs with a load of laundry in the willow basket, Nell had noticed in one dark corner of the basement an unusual and foreboding object: a bundle of what? Old clothes? A sheet? Blood-covered fabric?

  “Jesus God!” Nell had shouted, dropping the basket and rushing back up the stairs. “Jeremy! Hannah! Help! Come here! I think we have to call the police!”

  Her children had come thumping down the stairs at once. “What’s wrong, Mom?” they had asked.

  “I think there’s a—oh, sweeties
, I don’t want to scare you, but I think there’s something dead in our basement.”

  Jeremy looked at Hannah. Hannah looked at Jeremy.

  “Where?” Jeremy asked.

  “In the corner across from your playroom. By the door.”

  “I, um, don’t think it’s exactly a, um, dead thing, Mom,” Jeremy said.

  “Do you know what it is?” Nell asked, aghast.

  They had known what it was. They had heard at school, from an older child, that if you went to a darkened room and put ketchup on a mirror, a ghost would appear. The ghost of the house would think the ketchup was blood and his spirit would be summoned up. Several nights ago Jeremy and Hannah had sneaked a sixteen-ounce bottle of ketchup to the basement and spread the mirror with ketchup. And spread the mirror with ketchup—they had not realized how ketchup flowed on a surface that did not absorb. In desperation, trying to clean up the mess, they had grabbed whatever was at hand: Hannah’s dress-up clothes, some old baby doll clothes, and a sheet.

  “I have told you never to take food to the basement!” Nell had screamed, freaking out. “Food in the basement will bring rats! God. I’ve told you never to take food to the basement.” Her children looked at each other, conspirators’ looks, looks that indicated they were now going to have to deal with a madwoman’s raving with their superior patience. “I’m serious about this! If you leave food in the basement, rats and mice and moles and God knows what will come. You aren’t taking me seriously. Oh, I just hope you wake up in the night with a rat in bed with you, it would serve you right. No wonder you had a mouse in your umbrella!”