Nora and Liz

by Nancy Garden

  Nora looked so startled that Liz said quickly, “Just think about it, okay? Come on. Race you to the house!”

  ***

  When they got there, laughing, at almost the same time, Liz steered Nora into Jeff’s old room to change, and went upstairs. Am I crazy, she thought, stripping off her clothes and pulling on her suit. Am I crazy? What do I think I’m doing? What do I think I’m feeling? For she knew that the emotion growing inside her was no longer compassion or pity—well, compassion, sure, was part of it—but it was also admiration for Nora’s pluck, her industry, the way she doggedly carried on despite the obstacles her dreary life cast in her way. It was her enthusiasm, too, that drew Liz to her, when Nora exclaimed with pure joy upon discovering a new plant in the garden, or a new bird, or a sunset; by now Liz had gone to the farm several times in the evenings after the old folks were asleep, and sat with Nora and Thomas in the garden as the setting sun touched the sky with color and made dark silhouettes of the trees. Once, too, at the cabin, when a sudden rainstorm had beaten the lake into a frenzy and sent lightning whips to lash the opposite shore, Nora had watched from Liz’s table, an expression of rapture on her face, without a trace of the fear that Liz had expected and that Liz had even felt herself when a sudden loud crack and flash told her a tree (she hoped it was only a tree!) had been struck nearby.

  Just the other night, when they’d been sitting near Nora’s garden, Liz had found herself talking about her own parents, remembering and facing, as she had not before, memories of her mother’s pain, of her mastectomy scars, of the infection that had followed her surgery and of how she, and later, Liz, had had to change the dressing and clean the drain that oozed pus. She’d told Nora about the radiation burns, the chemo nausea, the destroyed hair and appetite, the thinness, and, toward the end, the morphine-induced confusion. And at last she’d broken down for the first time, crying five years’ worth of tears in Nora’s arms.

  What’s happening to me, Liz thought now, passing a brush through her hair before going out to meet Nora again, surveying her own swimsuit-clad body in her mirror.

  You know damn well, kiddo!

  She had never cried in front of Megan, never talked with Megan about anything deeper than the latest fracas at school or the latest political scandal she’d read about in the paper. And it was not only, she knew, that Megan hadn’t really cared, hadn’t really been interested, hadn’t been able to contribute much beyond a kind of generalized sympathy. That was part of it, certainly, but only part…

  “Liz?”

  “Yes. I’m ready!” Liz opened her door and Nora stood there, clad in Liz’s old red, white, and blue suit. It was a little small, revealing the tops of Nora’s breasts, but it clung smoothly to the rest of her compact figure, softly curving in at the waist and out again where her hips merged into rounded thighs which in turn led to incongruously boney knees and then tapered to gently muscled calves.

  “Hi.” Nora turned, an awkward pirouette. “How do I look?”

  Liz choked back beautiful. “Fine! Come and see.” She turned Nora toward the mirror.

  “It’s a little skimpy at the top.” Frowning, Nora tugged at the straps.

  “I guess. But, hey,” she said breezily, “as my high school phys ed teacher used to say when she walked into the locker room and a couple of kids shrieked and threw towels around themselves, you don’t have anything I don’t have.”

  Nora laughed. “Did they really do that? The kids?”

  “Yeah, we had a couple of weirdos.” Liz decided not to say that this had happened only after it was rumored, incorrectly, that the phys ed teacher was a lesbian. “So, ready for your lesson?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  ***

  “Careful,” Liz warned as they waded in. “The bottom’s sandy at first but then it gets rocky. Right about here…”

  “Ow!” Nora exclaimed, clutching Liz as she hopped on one foot and grabbed her stubbed toe with the other hand. “Yes, I see what you mean!”

  “Sorry.” Liz steadied her.

  “It’s not your fault.”

  “No. But I’m apologizing for my lake, which I told to behave itself for you.”

  Nora looked amused. “Did you?” she asked, still holding onto Liz.

  “Yup. Now”—Liz dropped Nora’s hand—“out here a little way it gets deeper.”

  “It’s so warm!” Nora said, following Liz.

  “Wait. You’ll hit a cold spot soon. What’s the matter?” Nora had squeaked and stopped.

  “I hit the cold spot.” Nora was breast deep now, and Liz saw her shiver.

  “Duck down,” Liz commanded, “so you’ll be wet all over before we start.”

  “Yes, teacher,” Nora answered demurely, bending her knees. Then, with a mischievous look, she held her nose and put her head under, walked bent-kneed along the bottom to Liz, and playfully tickled Liz’s leg before she popped up beside her, hair and face streaming.

  “Whoa! It’s that way, is it?” For a moment they chased each other, running clumsily in the water away from the rocks, splashing each other.

  “Are you sure?” Liz asked, panting after a few minutes, “that you don’t know how to swim?”

  “That’s right. And I do want to learn. Okay, lesson one. I bet it involves putting one’s head in the water and tipping it out again to breathe, like this.” She demonstrated.

  “You do know how to swim,” Liz said, disappointed.

  Nora shook her head. “Wrong. I know how to breathe for swimming. One summer the town offered lessons. Mama let me go, but when Father found out, he made me stop. So I never got beyond the first lesson, which was about breathing—on dry land.”

  “Why did he make you stop?”

  “The lessons were at a public pool and he was afraid of germs. Or so he said.”

  “God! You poor kid.”

  “I was pretty upset. But resigned. I mean, it was what he always did anyway whenever I tried anything new. Girl Scouts, too. After I went once, he said he didn’t want me going any more. It was a Commie organization, he said. Come on, let’s swim!” Nora waved her arms enthusiastically, making swimming motions.

  “Okay. The first thing you have to do is sort of lie down in the water. At the same time, kick with your feet and make the same motions with your arms that you were making.”

  Nora complied, stretching out and saying, “And I’ll sink like a—oh!”

  “No, you won’t.” Liz had lunged forward and put her hand under Nora’s stomach. “Now go on with those motions and I’ll hold you up till you’re afloat. Don’t panic, just swim.”

  “What about breathing?” Nora gasped.

  “Never mind breathing.”

  Nora twisted around, looking up at Liz. “What, not breathe?”

  “Hey, take it easy!” Liz laughed, struggling to hold her. “Just breathe normally,” she said, when Nora was again lying properly in the water. “You can do the fancy stuff later. There, good. Keep that up. That’s it, keep going.” Liz dropped her hand an inch or two away; Nora turned again, looking at her nervously and beginning once more to sink, but Liz shot her hand up and caught her.

  “See?” Liz said. “Whenever you stop the motion and thrash around, you’ll sink. But as long as you keep moving you’ll be okay.” She walked carefully along the bottom, avoiding rocks as Nora moved forward.

  “Like riding a bike,” said Nora. “But I thought one could float without moving.”

  “One can. That’s the key: not moving. And staying flat on your back or on your stomach. But let’s go on swimming first for a bit.” Liz held her and walked again as Nora swam tentatively forward.

  “Hey!” Nora cried after a few minutes. “Where’s your hand?”

  Liz held it up. “You’re swimming. Well,” she added when Nora floundered and stood up, “you were swimming. Congratulations!”

  “Holy smoke!” Nora grinned, and squeezed Liz’s hand. “I was, wasn’t I?”

  “Yup. Come on. Try again.”r />
  Dutifully but still a little uncertainly, Nora stretched out in the water and Liz hovered next to her, her hand barely supporting her this time. “You’re fine,” she said. “Now concentrate.” She removed her hand once Nora was moving steadily forward and stood watching as Nora swam a few yards away before realizing she was on her own again. But then Nora panicked, dunking herself once more.

  “You did it!” Liz called when Nora surfaced, sputtering. “You did it! Next thing you know you’ll be swimming across the lake.”

  Proudly, Nora swam back to her. “But it was friendlier,” she said, standing up and smiling into Liz’s eyes, “when your hand was under me.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Nora woke in the night and lay in the dim light of her room, her eyes fixed now on a chair, now on a table, the window, her dresser. That is my chair, she thought, with my clothes on it; that is my dresser. Those lumps are my brushes, my jewelry box; that brighter oblong opposite the window is my mirror.

  When she was very small and all the Tillots slept upstairs, she’d had a larger room. Objects were harder to identify; she had woken up many nights seeing bears and robbers and had lain frozen in terror, waiting for them to move toward her, attacking, until she could summon enough voice to call her parents.

  Like Mama now, she thought.

  It was usually her mother who came, bringing a kerosene lamp, soothing Nora and rubbing her back, turning up the lamp and handing her clothes to her to prove there was no bear and that the robber was a bulge in the curtain at the left side of her window. (It was always the left side, though Nora never figured out why.)

  Her father had come a few times without a lamp, told her she was silly to be imagining things, and left without demonstrating that nothing was threatening her. But then one night he sat on the edge of her bed and told her a funny story about the bear and the robber. It was so funny it made her laugh, and it quelled her fears from then on.

  Nora missed that Ralph. She had loved that Ralph, long ago.

  Nora passed her hands over her body, remembering the feeling of the water as she had lain in it at Liz’s cabin; she rested her hands on her stomach, remembering Liz’s hand there, supporting her till she could support herself.

  “No one has ever touched me there,” she whispered to the unhearing darkness. “I am not a person who is touched.”

  ***

  “Damn!” Liz dropped the potholder with which she’d been about to move the chicken she was roasting so she could baste it (the Davises were coming for dinner), and ran to the phone. She wanted to let it ring. But it might be Nora, she reasoned; Nora had taken to calling sometimes in the evenings just to chat, though she hadn’t called last night, the night after the swimming lesson, when Liz had expected it. No, Liz corrected herself. Wanted it. Not expected.

  It was Jeff.

  “So how’s it going?” he asked, his voice hearty. “You haven’t called in a while, so I thought I’d check in. About ready to go back to the teeming city?”

  She chuckled, though she was mildly annoyed at the interruption and disappointed that it wasn’t Nora. “Nope, happy as a clam. And making dinner for the old Davises, remember them?”

  “Lord, yes! Harry and—what was her name?”

  “Clara. Still is. And they still have the stand. They look older, and Harry’s feeble and deaf as a post, but they’re still sweet. Even if they did try to fix me up with some guy.”

  “That must have been awkward as hell.”

  “It was.” Liz found she could just reach the oven by stretching the phone cord. She opened the oven door, then had to close it again to get the baster. “I wanted to tell him I’m gay, but I didn’t.”

  “Find a chick and make out in front of him,” Jeff said.

  “You’re disgusting,” she answered affectionately. “Anyway, it turns out he was probably more interested in buying the cabin than in me, and he’s left me alone now that he knows it’s not for sale.” She opened the oven again.

  “Good. But hey, at least that shows it’s salable, you know? In case we change our minds. Say, listen, why I called? I can’t talk long, I’m at work, but we’ve been scheduling vacations and I need to know if you still want to invite us to the cabin.”

  Liz paused, the baster dripping in her hand. Did she?

  She’d have to. It was his house, too.

  “Sure.” She squirted the chicken, slid it back in, and closed the oven door.

  “Great, when?”

  “I don’t know.” Her mind leapt ahead. What was going to happen with Nora? Anything?

  No. Probably nothing.

  Still…

  “I’ve got a sort of standing thing on Fridays with this woman who lives at the old Tillot place.”

  “The Tillot place! Whoa! I figured they’d all died off and the house had fallen down long ago.”

  “No, the old couple’s still there and their daughter takes care of them.”

  “And you’ve got a—a ‘standing thing’ with her? Lizzie? What’re you up to?”

  “No, no,” she said hastily. “I’m just, well, sort of helping out. She’s helping me restore Mom’s perennial garden and teaching me to identify cultivated plants, and I’m giving her swimming lessons in return.”

  She could almost hear his raised eyebrows. “Swimming lessons?”

  “Don’t, Jeff,” she said, more defensively than she intended. “She’s really sweet and she’s very lonely. Think of taking care of two sick old folks, one of whom’s crochety as hell.”

  “Okay, okay. So you’d rather we weren’t there on a Friday, right?”

  “Yeah, maybe, except… Look, there’s nothing really going on between us, and there probably won’t be anything. She’s probably straight, if she’s anything. I mean, she must be. And I’m not ready, even though…”

  “Even though you sound like you’re getting ready, and even though she’s sweet and needy, and… Sorry. None of my business.”

  “But it wouldn’t make sense for you guys to come just for a couple of days.”

  “Why not?”

  “All the way from California?”

  “You may not have noticed, babe, but there are lots of neat places in New England for vacationers. How about we come some Saturday in August, stay a couple of days, and then go on to someplace else? The Cape, the Berkshires, Maine, the White Mountains? I want Gus to see where his daddy’s roots are.”

  Liz chuckled. “Like he’s sure to remember what he sees at two.”

  “Going on three.” Jeff’s voice was indignant. “You’d be surprised. Look, sis, I’ve got to go. How about the—oh, say, the third weekend in August? Or the fourth? Yeah, the fourth. That’s right before Labor Day, so we can add Labor Day on.”

  “No,” Liz said quickly; she’d have to go back to New York soon after Labor Day. “The third weekend would be better for me.”

  “Oh, that’s right. You’ll be going back to the city. And you’ll want some time with…”

  “Jeff!”

  “Sorry. But what’s her name, anyway? Just so I’ll know.”

  “Nora.”

  “Nora. God. Sounds like something out of Ibsen. Doesn’t he have a Nora in a play?”

  “Yes. She’s nothing like that Nora.”

  “Thank God! Ibsen’s women are awful.”

  “They weren’t when he wrote them. They were strong for their time.”

  “And suicidal.”

  “That’s Hedda Gabler. But even she was strong. You’d go for Solveig, I bet.”

  “Which one was she?”

  “The one in Peer Gynt. The one who waited forever while her man went off and had adventures.”

  “Yeah, that was pretty cool. Whoops! Now I’ve really got to go. I’ve got a meeting.” He said something to someone else, muffled. “So, see you in August, babe. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do, you hear?”

  “Don’t worry. I wouldn’t even dream of doing half of what you’d do! ’Bye.”

  “ ’
Bye. Love you.”

  “You, too.”

  Liz replaced the receiver and started peeling potatoes. Heavy-handed though Jeff’s kidding could be, she always felt warm and loved when she talked to him. Thank God for him, she thought, now that Mom and Dad are gone.

  What would it be like, having Jeff and Susan and Gus all there? It might be fun; they’d be a family again. She’d give Jeff and Susan the master bedroom upstairs and she’d put a cot in the study for herself; Gus could have one of the downstairs rooms. Or—yes, better—he could sleep in the study and she could move back into her old downstairs room.

  She remembered lying in bed downstairs as a child, falling asleep to the murmur of her parents’ voices in the living room. Mom and Dad had often read up in their bedroom, though, or sat outside when the mosquitoes weren’t too bad, till long after she and Jeff were asleep. Funny arrangement, having the kids’ rooms downstairs off the living room.

  Still, we managed.

  She popped the potatoes into a pot and looked at her watch. Yes, she should start them boiling and then trim the beans she’d bought from the Davises earlier that day.

  What, she wondered, is Nora doing?

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  “That’s right,” Liz said the following Friday, giving Nora a driving lesson. “That’s right. Now ease up on the clutch. Hey, gently!”

  “Sorry. I’m still nervous.”

  “It’s okay. When I was learning I confused the brake and the gas. At least you haven’t done that.”

  “No.” Nora laughed nervously, and, as if driving over eggs, made a cautious right turn.

  “Good! Go back into third now, once you’ve gotten a little more speed. That’s it. Fine. Nothing much happened because luckily when I mixed up the pedals, I was on a back road. But I did leap ahead when Dad wanted me to stop.”

  “You were really close to him, weren’t you?”