Страница 17 из 79
Amanda just laughed as if Abby had been joking, which she hadn’t.
Mrs. Girt was sixty-eight years old, a heavyset, cheerful woman who’d been laid off her job as a lunch lady and needed the extra income. She arrived at nine every morning, puttered around the house awhile, ineffectually tidying and dusting, and then set up the ironing board in the sunroom and watched TV while she ironed. There was not a whole lot of ironing required for two elderly people living on their own, but Amanda had instructed her just to keep herself occupied. Meanwhile, Abby stayed at the other end of the house, showing none of her usual interest in hearing every detail of a new acquaintance’s life story. Any time Abby made the slightest sound, Mrs. Girt would pop out of the sunroom and ask, “You okay? You need something? You want I should drive you somewheres?” Abby said it was intolerable. She complained to Red that she didn’t feel the house was her own anymore.
Still, she never asked why, exactly, this woman was felt to be necessary.
Two weeks into the job, Mrs. Girt forcibly removed a skillet from Abby’s hands and insisted on making her an omelet, during which time the iron she had abandoned set fire to a dish towel in the sunroom. No serious harm was done except to the dish towel, which was plain terry cloth from Target and hadn’t needed ironing in the first place, but that was the end of Mrs. Girt. Amanda said the next person they hired would have to be under forty. She suggested too that they might consider hiring a man, although she didn’t say why.
But Abby said, “No.”
“No?” Amanda said. “Oh. Okay. So, a woman.”
“No man, no woman. Nothing.”
“But, Mom—”
“I can’t!” Abby said. “I can’t stand it!” She started crying. “I can’t have some stranger sharing my house! I know you think I’m old, I know you think I’m feeble-minded, but this is making me miserable! I’d rather just go ahead and die!”
Jea
So: no man, no woman, nothing. Red and Abby were on their own again.
Till the tail end of June, when Abby was discovered wandering Bouton Road in her nightgown and Red hadn’t even noticed she was missing.
That was when Stem a
Well, certainly Amanda couldn’t have done it. She and Hugh and their teenage daughter led such busy lives that their corgi had to go to doggie day care every morning. And Jea
Really, Stem should have been out of the question, too. Not only did he and Nora have three very active and demanding boys, but they were devoted to their little Craftsman house over on Harford Road, which they spent every spare moment lovingly restoring. It would have been cruel to ask them to leave it.
But Nora, at least, was home all day. And Stem was that kind of person, that mild, accepting kind of person who just seemed to take it for granted that life wasn’t always going to go exactly as he’d pla
His sisters barely argued, once they’d absorbed the idea. “Are you sure?” they asked weakly. His parents put up more resistance. Red said, “Son, we can’t expect you to do that,” and Abby grew teary again. But you could see the wistfulness in their faces. Wouldn’t it be the perfect solution! And Stem said, firmly, “We’re coming. That’s that.” So it was settled.
They moved on a Saturday afternoon in early August. Stem and Jea
Nora was a beautiful woman who didn’t know she was beautiful. She had shoulder-length brown hair and a wide, placid, dreamy face, completely free of makeup. Generally she wore inexpensive cotton dresses that buttoned down the front, and when she walked her hem fluttered around her calves in a liquid, slow-motion way that made every man in sight stop dead in his tracks and stare. But Nora never noticed that.
She parked her car down on the street like a guest, and she and the boys and the dog started up the steps toward the house — the boys and Heidi leaping and cavorting and falling all over themselves, Nora drifting serenely behind them. Red and Abby stood side by side waiting for them on the porch, because this was quite a moment, really. Petey shouted, “Hi, Grandma! Hi, Grandpa!” and Tommy said, “We’re going to live here now!” They’d been very excited ever since they heard the news. Nobody knew how Nora felt about it. At least outwardly, she was like Stem: she seemed to take things as they came. When she reached the porch, Red said, “Welcome!” and Abby stepped forward and hugged her. “Hello, Nora,” she said. “We’re so grateful to you for doing this.” Nora just smiled her slow, secret smile, revealing the two deep dimples in her cheeks.
The boys would sleep in the bunk-bed room. They raced up the stairs ahead of the grown-ups and threw themselves on the beds they always claimed when they stayed over. Stem and Nora would occupy Stem’s old room, diagonally across the hall. “Now, I’ve taken down all the posters and such,” Abby told Nora. “You two should feel free to hang whatever you like on the walls. And I’ve emptied the closet and the bureau. Will that give you enough storage space, do you think?”
“Oh, yes,” Nora said in her low, musical voice. It was the first time she had spoken since she’d arrived.
“I’m sorry the bed’s not here yet,” Abby said. “They can’t deliver it till Tuesday, so I’m afraid you’re going to have to make do with the twin beds until then.”
Nora just smiled again and wandered over to the bureau, where she set down her pocketbook. “For supper I’m fixing fried chicken,” she said.
Red said, “What?” and Abby told him, “Fried chicken!” At a lower volume, she said, “We love fried chicken, but you really don’t have to cook for us.”
“I enjoy cooking,” Nora said.
“Would you like Red to go to the grocery store for you?”
“Douglas is bringing groceries in the truck.”
Douglas was what she called Stem. It was his real name, which nobody in the family had used since he was two. They always looked blank for a moment when they heard it, but they could see why Nora might want a more grown-up name for her husband.
When she and Stem had a