The Courts of Love

by Ellen Gilchrist

  Nieman’s mother arrived in a limousine. Stella’s parents came in their Mazda van. The guests were crowding in. The driveway became packed with cars. The cars spread out across the lawn. The string quartet was playing Bach. Between nine-thirty and nine-forty-nine, a hundred and fifty people made their way up the front steps and filled the house. Someone handed bouquets to the bridesmaids. They formed a semicircle around the altar. The judge stepped into the middle. Nieman appeared. The quartet broke into a piece by Schubert. Stella joined her groom and the judge read a ceremony in which the bride and groom promised to do their best to take care of each other for as long as they lived and loved each other. Nieman kissed his bride. The audience heaved a sigh of relief and Champagne began to be passed on silver trays.

  “That’s it?” Annie said.

  “I guess so,” Lydia answered. “You want to get some petits fours and go play in my room?”

  “We had a cape like this,” she was saying later. She and Annie were lying on her bed with a plate of petits fours and wineglasses full of grape juice on her dresser. “We found a cape like this in this house we have that’s in the hills. We took it on this hike with us and then we lost it.”

  “Your sister said the same thing. She said your dad broke his arm.”

  “We thought it was a lucky cape. Then we lost it.”

  “This one’s lucky. As soon as Gabriela got it we got adopted. Just like that.”

  “I wish we could get another one. Do you know where to get them?”

  “No. But I can’t let you have this. It’s Gabriela’s. She just let me borrow it to fly on the airplane. So, is your dad going to take us to this amusement park?”

  “He said he would if he could. If it opens before you have to leave tomorrow. I wish you could stay a few more days. There’re a lot of things we could show you. We could take you on BART.” Lydia lay facedown upon the cape, smelling the wonderful smell of wildflowers. “I think they make these out of some kind of flowers they grow somewhere. Like linen is made of flax. Where do you think they make them?”

  “I think, Italy.” Annie had no idea how she had decided to say Italy, but as soon as she said it she felt it was true. “I think they have this town in Italy and all they do is grow the flowers to make these capes.”

  “They think the cape is magic,” Jennifer was saying. “They think they have a magic cape.”

  “What?” Nieman asked. “What are you talking about?”

  “Like Michael Jordan wearing number twenty-three,” Allen put in. “They believe in it, but they don’t know we know they think it’s magic. They just keep dropping hints.”

  They were on the side porch of the Harwoods’ house. The wedding was winding down. The guests had nearly all gone home. The string quartet was in the kitchen talking to Freddy and Nora Jane. Jennifer and Allen Williams and the bride and groom were on the porch. It was the first time the Williamses had had a chance to be alone with the pair. Nieman had been commenting on how well the adopted girls had managed to fit into a scene they could not possibly have imagined. “Perhaps they saw it on a film,” he had been saying. “I’ve written several times about how film teaches manners. Not just the obvious bad things, like violence, but also niceties, like how to hold your wedding bouquet. Do you think they were exposed to many films?”

  “I don’t know about that,” Allen said. “But they have a cape they think is magic.”

  “They found the cape in a box of Salvation Army things a few days before we came to the home and met them. So they think it brought them luck. Technically, it’s Gabriela’s cape, but she lets Annie share it. She let Annie carry it on the plane. They pretended they wanted it for a blanket.”

  “I’m having a déjà vu,” Stella said. She took Nieman’s arm. She pressed herself into his side. “What is this all about?”

  “I have it too,” he said. “Just then. When Jennifer started talking about the cape. You have to understand,” he said to Jennifer and Allen. “The first time we met we had this huge mutual déjà vu. Is this part of love, do you think? A harkening back to the mother–child relationship?”

  “It’s probably blood sugar,” Stella said. “A magic cape. Well, that’s a wonderful thing to believe you have. I found a really fine psychiatrist in Oklahoma City who will see her, Jennifer. I had to beg, but he’ll see her once a week. Don’t take her back to that man who gave her Ritalin. Promise you won’t go back to him.”

  “Whatever you say, brilliant cousin,” Jennifer answered. “It’s unbelievable how much you learn to love a child, any child.” She looked at Allen. “It’s hard enough to suffer when you’re old. Eleven years old should be a happy time and we want to make it one for her. If you found someone, we’ll go and see him. I believe in psychiatry. I always have.”

  “I’ve thought of going into it,” Stella said. “Sometimes I think I’ve taken molecular biology as far as it will go. Maybe I’ll abandon the field to Nieman and get myself a new career.” She closed her eyes, then opened them. “A dog runs across the street in front of your car. In a nanosecond the entire chemistry of the body changes. There are Buddhist monks who can regulate their heartbeat, control pain, choose when to die. There is so much to learn, so much to know.” She turned to Nieman and kissed him on the lips. Jennifer clapped her hands, then kissed Allen long and passionately. It was the best kiss they had kissed in many months. A storm was brewing on the ocean. The negative ions were thick in the clean, sweet air.

  “We’ll come see you in August,” Tammili was saying. “And you’ll come here at Christmas when it’s snowing where you live. We’ll do that every year as long as we live and always be friends.”

  “We swear by the cape to be friends,” Lydia added. The four little girls were sitting on the floor in their dresses. The cape was spread out between them. They were each holding part of it.

  “Every time we see each other we’ll get your dad to take videos of us,” Gabriela put in. “In the meantime if he meets any movie people he can show them the videos and see if they want us to be in movies. Give them Jennifer and Allen’s phone number if they do.”

  II

  Stories

  New Orleans

  Nora Jane was hiding in the goldenrain tree waiting for her mother to go back in the house. “Nora Jane, come in here. I’m warning you, if you don’t come back in this house you will regret it. This time I’m not kidding.”

  Nora Jane had been hiding in the laundry room drawing on her drawing pad when the phone began to ring. She knew it was the school. The sisters always called the minute they knew someone wasn’t there. As soon as Nora Jane heard the first ring she slipped out the back door and went up into the tree. The cat had followed.

  “She’ll give up in a minute,” Nora Jane whispered to the cat. The cat was cradled in her arms. They were lying on the platform in the top of the tree. “She’s too hung over to look for me. She’ll go back to bed in a minute.” The cat wiggled out of her arms and took a position about a foot away. She raised a paw to her mouth and licked it clean.

  “That’s it, you know,” Nora Jane continued. “It’s final. I’m never going to school on Wednesday as long as I live. I’m not going over to that damn old Home for the Incurables and read to those people. That old man was spitting on me. If God wants those old people to have some company, he can go himself. It’s not my fault they’re in there.” Nora Jane rolled over on her back and stretched out her legs until they touched the branch that held the platform. It was turning out okay. As soon as her mother went inside she’d go over to the park and find something to do. She might end up getting her fortune told, or meeting some interesting people, or taking her money and buying a snowball at the zoo. Except she had left her money inside. Not to mention her shoes. “That’s okay,” she told the cat. “She was so drunk last night she’ll sleep all day. If she doesn’t call Grandmother and get her worried. Well, she won’t call her. They hate each other. Maybe after she goes to sleep I’ll take the kitchen phone off the hook
. Then the sisters won’t keep calling and getting her stirred up.”

  Her mother slammed the back door and the yard was quiet. Nora Jane took off her top shirt and used it as a rag to clean the debris off the platform. It was an old uniform shirt with the Sacred Heart seal on the pocket. Underneath it she was wearing a white undershirt stained with red from the time her mother put all the clothes in the washer with a red sock. Nora Jane couldn’t think about that. It had ruined all her white uniform shirts and a pair of Chinese pajamas her grandmother had given her for Christmas.

  “You won’t always live in that mess,” her grandmother had consoled her. “As soon as you’re old enough we’ll get a court order and you can live with me.”

  Nora Jane thought about that a lot. The court was the portrait of her grandfather in his robes, but he was dead now. She didn’t see how he was going to come order Madelaine around.

  “You need to clean up this house,” Lydia always said to Madelaine if she had to come inside to wait for Nora Jane. “This house is a disgrace. What happened to the maid I arranged for you?”

  “Nora Jane leaves her clothes and things all over the floor,” Madelaine protested. “How can I clean up with all her stuff thrown all over the place?”

  “Shame on you to blame this on the child,” Lydia had said to her one day. She had grabbed Nora Jane and taken her off for four days that time. Since that day Lydia and Madelaine were really at war.

  “She’s trying to turn you against me so she can collect your father’s government check,” Madelaine told the child. “I know you like her, honey, but you don’t know how she is. She’s a bitch to everyone but you.”

  “I didn’t put all this stuff on the floor,” Nora Jane answered. “Most of this stuff belongs to you.”

  Nora Jane cleaned every twig and leaf and cobweb off the platform. Then she rolled back over on her stomach and let her head drop down to look at the earth beneath the tree. There were deep gulleys in the dirt and Nora Jane imagined they were the Mississippi River going down to the Gulf. If she came out here when it rained she could make little boats and see where they went. “I’m about to starve to death,” she told the cat. “I could go over to Grandmother’s house and get her to make some poached eggs, but she’d make me go to school. We’ll go back down in a minute. She couldn’t catch me anyway. She won’t run out in her nightgown.”

  Some time went by. The sun moved higher in the sky and the patch of light that had been on the platform faded into darkness. A line of ants moved across a board and Nora Jane let them go. It might be unlucky to kill those ants. You couldn’t take a chance on things like that.

  When the shaft of light was completely blocked by the canopy of leaves, Nora Jane climbed down out of the tree and walked into the house and found her shoes and a clean shirt and stopped in the kitchen to get a dollar out of her mother’s purse and then found two cold biscuits on a plate and a jar of honey and a spoon and went back out into the yard. She put the honey on the biscuits and ate them. Then she put on the shirt and shoes and walked out the front gate. The sun was high now. People had gone in off their porches. It must be ten o’clock. She had the day to herself. Anything could happen.

  The first thing that happened was a lady in her yard on Henry Clay Avenue. A lady as old as her grandmother, standing on a stone porch watering her azaleas. She was as beautiful as a picture and her long thin fingers were covered with diamond rings. She looked like someone from another world. She didn’t look like anyone from New Orleans.

  “Good morning,” the lady said. “Are you all out of school today?”

  “I am,” Nora Jane said. “I’m going to the zoo.” She stopped by the side of the yard and examined the lady more closely. She was wearing a long white negligee and robe like a bride would wear. The rings were so big you could see them from the sidewalk. It was hard to tell if the lady was young or old but she had a beautiful smile and she didn’t look like someone who would yell at you. Besides, Nora Jane never told a lie to anyone but her mother. No matter what happened, she never lied about a thing she did.

  “I didn’t know they had a zoo,” the lady answered. “I’m not from around here.”

  “When did you come here?”

  “Two days ago. I am from California. I married Doctor Monroe and moved here. I don’t know a thing about this place.” The lady started laughing. She put the hose down on the porch and stepped over the hedge and walked over nearer to Nora Jane. “Is that a uniform you’re wearing?”

  “Yes ma’am. It’s the Academy of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus. My name is Nora Jane Whittington. I’m in the fifth grade. Are you doing okay? Since you moved here.”

  “My name is Sally Ladner Monroe. I just got married and I’m sixty-two years old. Isn’t that outrageous? It’s the most outrageous thing I’ve ever heard of, don’t you agree?”

  “Where’s your husband?”

  “He’s at the hospital.”

  “Did you bring anyone with you?”

  “Like who?”

  “Any children you have or cats or anything?”

  “I brought my dog. I’m afraid to let him out. I’m afraid he’ll run away.”

  “He could run around the park. What kind is he?”

  “A sheltie. He’s very nervous about being here. He isn’t used to being on a leash but I guess I’ll have to get him one so I can take him walking.”

  “Bring him on out. Let’s look at him.” The woman began to laugh. She laughed a beautiful long laugh that made her look very young and funny.

  “I’ll do it,” she said. She went back into the house and returned in a few minutes with the dog. She had put on a pair of white shorts and a white silk blouse and was carrying a pair of little sandals. She sat down on the steps and put on the sandals, and the small sheltie dog ran all over the yard in circles.

  Nora Jane moved nearer to the steps. “He’s cute,” she said. “He’s a very attractive pet. I’m glad you brought him with you.”

  “Why is that?”

  “I would take something with me if I moved away from my home.”

  “Why are you going to the zoo?”

  “Because it’s Wednesday. I don’t go to school on Wednesdays anymore. They make us go to the Home for the Incurables and read to them. This old man was spitting on me. I won’t put up with that.”

  “Well, I don’t blame you for that. There.” She had buckled the last buckle on the sandals. She stood up. “Shall we walk the dog for a while? Will you accompany me?”

  “Sure. If you want me to.” They walked along together with the sheltie running in circles in front of and behind them. They walked along the tree-lined street and arrived at the park and began to walk the dog along the sidewalk of Exposition Boulevard.

  “What’s it like in California?” Nora Jane asked. “Did you like it there?”

  “I liked it until my husband died. Then it was very lonely and I met Doctor Monroe at a party and he asked me to marry him and so I did. I’ve only been here two days. But I told you that.”

  “You won’t need to get a leash,” Nora Jane said. “Look at him. He’s doing fine. He isn’t running away. Well, there’s the turn to the zoo. I’m going up that way. You want to go that way with me?”

  “I’d better be going back. I have to get dressed for a luncheon.” They stopped on the sidewalk. Nora Jane stood a few feet away, looking at the woman’s rings. One was a big square diamond with small diamonds on the side. The other was a band of diamonds, each one as large as her mother’s ring. There was a third ring, but the stone was turned into the palm of her hand.

  “I’ll probably see you again,” Nora Jane added. “I hope you have a good time in New Orleans. I never moved anywhere. I don’t know what it would be like.”

  “It’s very odd really. The furniture in the house isn’t mine. It’s not what I’m used to. There is a great deal of furniture in that house. I don’t know how I’m going to get rid of it.” She laughed delightedly at the thought and Nora Jane i
magined her squeezing through the heavy rooms.

  “Well, I hope it turns out all right. It was nice meeting you. I’ll probably be seeing you again.” Nora Jane was moving off in the direction of the curve at Magazine Street. The lady stood for a long time staring after her.

  “That was an interesting adventure,” Nora Jane said to herself as she crossed Magazine and began to work her way back toward the zoo. She was moving toward the shell road between the levee and the back of the zoo. “I guess when you get old you have to do anything you can to have fun. At least she can go for a walk. Grandmother can’t even go for walks anymore. I don’t want to get old. It looks like a really horrible thing to do.”

  She walked along Magazine on the river side, walking as straight as she could so no one would wonder why she wasn’t in school. Two ladies in tennis dresses pushing baby carriages walked by. Their heads were turned to each other. “So I said, Then it will never be my turn, will it?” the shorter lady was saying. “It has always been your turn and it always will be.” Nora Jane pretended not to hear. She stopped at a water fountain and got a drink of water. She turned onto the shell road and walked along it until she came to the back of the zebra cage. She could see the zebras’ heads sticking up above the fence and she spoke to them. “I’d be glad to turn you loose,” she said. “But you wouldn’t have anywhere to go.”

  She turned and took a shortcut past the biggest live oak tree in New Orleans. It sat out in the middle of a clearing and the roots were wonderful natural benches. She stopped and patted the tree for luck and then she went on across the clearing and hurried down the street to the front of the zoo. It was deserted except for a man in uniform behind a ticket counter and two black men painting a fence. Nora Jane decided she didn’t want to go in after all. All I’d be doing is feeling sorry for the animals, she decided. I have better things to do than that. She walked by the ticket cage as though she were on an errand of great importance. The edge was wearing off her feeling of adventure.