Speak Softly, She Can Hear

by Pam Lewis

  “You came!” Naomi shrieked. “I knew you would.” She minced across the lobby in high-heeled boots, arms wide open, still the old Naomi in that huge coat and heavy makeup. Her hair was across her face from the wind, stuck on her pink lipstick. “You look fabulous,” Naomi said, going up on her tiptoes to give Carole a kiss on the cheek. “Come on upstairs.”

  Carole ran her hand across her cheek, where Naomi had just kissed her. “You drag me all the way down to that awful reunion and then you don’t have the courtesy to show up.”

  “Oh, God, I’m sorry.” Naomi glanced up, making a pitiful face. “Forgive?”

  “No, Naomi.” Carole used to forgive Naomi almost everything. It used to enrage her mother the way, as she put it, “Naomi can lead you around by the nose.”

  “We’ll talk upstairs.” Naomi put an arm through Carole’s. She filled up the elevator with her voice, the smell of her perfume, the constant wriggling. “I couldn’t deal with those bitches at the reunion, not with all that’s happening. And maybe they’ve heard. So tell me everything. Louisa and Amanda were there, right? Who else?” She rummaged through the pockets of her coat and pulled out a tortoiseshell barrette with the tags still on it. “I was at Saks. I picked this up for you.” She grinned. She touched Carole’s hair. “It’ll look fabulous on you. Love your hair like that. I had my eye on a better one, but I didn’t dare. Not after what happened. Come on, take it.”

  Carole took the barrette and looked it over.

  “It’s just faux,” Naomi said.

  “Forty dollars for a hair clip?” Carole held out the tag. “I can’t take this.”

  “You have no idea the risk I took for you.”

  “You stole it?”

  “Oh, get with the program,” Naomi said.

  It stung the way it always had. Naomi could make thieving or anything else sound perfectly fine, cool even, as though everybody worth their salt was doing it. Only Carole was too square to have any fun. She had to remind herself, as she stood staring at the elevator gate, that she was a grown woman. She had a house and a business. She had responsibilities. And it was wrong to steal.

  “I’m going to stop. My shrink is working on it.” Naomi took a deep breath. “You see, I got detained at Cartier. That’s what they call it these days. ‘Detained.’ It was just this plain ring, not even that pretty, but they stopped me at the door and I had to go talk to the manager in the office. Said I must have forgotten, but of course they don’t buy that. The thing is, one of the partners in Bax’s firm—Bax is my husband, was my husband—is on the board there, and of course they all got wind of it. The shit hit the fan, and they had to fire Bax. They said it was going to be a big PR problem if they didn’t let him go, much as they loved him, yadda, yadda. So you know what he did instead? He got a divorce. He said it was all my fault. But it’s okay, really. I’m hip with that. We hadn’t been in sync, if you know what I mean.” She made a circle with her thumb and forefinger and ran her other forefinger through it a couple of times. “The thing about a divorce is. By the way, you divorced?”

  “No.”

  “Well, after all the pain, divorce is actually good for you. It makes you take stock. I mean, really look at your whole life and start fresh. Because you lose all the friends you ever had. The parties stop cold. Nobody calls for lunch anymore, except for losers. You just have to think back to what worked in your past.”

  “We’ve got to talk,” Carole said.

  “What do you think I’m doing?” Naomi said as they got off the elevator. In the vestibule, putting the key into the lock, she turned. “Ignore the mess.” It was dark in the apartment, and they had to grope their way down what seemed to be a hallway to a room that was lit by daylight. Carole felt things underfoot. “I think this one works,” Naomi said. She clicked on the light, and Carole looked around. It was appalling. They were in the living room. The windows all had heavy drapes. Around the edges, you could see that the glass was filthy and scarcely let in any light. The furniture was covered with files and books. There was clothing on the floor. Old shopping bags, new clothes with the tags still attached.

  “Everything happened at once,” Naomi said. “My father dies, and then Bax and I get a divorce, and now I have all this shit to deal with. Look.” She pushed through one room after another, turning on the lights as she went, shoving things out of the way with her feet. There were two dining room tables, chairs stacked against the walls. “That’s why I decided to sell it all. Start over, you know? Remember that?” She was pointing to a lacquered Chinese cabinet. “That used to be Daddy’s. I hate it. Always have. You look healthy as hell, by the way.”

  “Will you please calm down,” Carole said.

  “First, a drink.” Naomi led the way through the dining room to the kitchen, and Carole had no choice but to follow. “One more reason to stay away from that reunion, if you ask me. All they serve is those itty-bitty glasses of sherry.”

  She poured out two tumblers of vodka. “Hope you don’t mind the glasses. Bax wanted the crystal, and I didn’t.” Carole put the glass down. “Sit anywhere.” Naomi picked up an open box of Cheerios and offered it. “Want some?”

  Carole moved a stack of paper bags from the chair and sat down. “You can’t move to Montpelier.”

  Naomi fed herself a few Cheerios, put down the box, and shrugged off her coat without unbuttoning it. It fell in a heap at her feet, and she stepped out of it. She had on a black turtleneck and blue jeans. She plunged her whole forearm into the box of Cheerios and rooted around for something. “There’s supposed to be one of those press-on tattoos in here.” She pulled out a little cellophane package and ripped it open with her teeth. “Look,” she said. She wet the tattoo with her tongue and applied it to the back of her hand. “Ta-da!” she said. “Smiley face. Have a nice day.”

  “Did you hear me?” Carole said.

  Naomi’s little face bunched up in a pout. “I heard.” She hopped up on the counter next to the sink and took a long sip. “I hate this stuff, but it’s all I’ve got.”

  “We were friends, sure. But ten years have gone by. Everything has changed. You’re different, I’m different.” She scanned Naomi’s face for a reaction, but Naomi was difficult to read. She plowed ahead anyway, her script in shambles. “You’d hate it up there. There’s no place to shop. People talk about how much wood they burn each winter. They talk about wax for their cross-country skis, for God’s sake.”

  Naomi swung her feet a couple of times, and they banged against the cupboards. She shut her eyes. “My shrink disagrees. He thinks it’s healthy, me moving to Montpelier because I know people there. I know you. We go back. I don’t know anybody here anymore. He said the sick thing to do would be to stay where I’m not wanted. I.e., New York City. I’ll come down to see him twice a month, and I’ll get on the horn twice a week. We’ve already figured all that out.”

  “Stop lying to your shrink, Nay. We don’t know each other. Not anymore.”

  Naomi sighed like a perplexed teacher explaining something to a child. “You have to look at the whole scope of things.” She spread her arms out wide. “Your whole life, not just now, but the past. I never had a friend like you.”

  “That was so long ago. We’re not friends now.”

  “I went around with this real estate agent up there, and she said to me, ‘People like you will want to live in South Burlington or Shelburne.’ And then she tells me who’s who out there and she even drives by their houses and tells me what they cost and which ones she’s been inside and how they’re done up and who has taste and who doesn’t. But no way in hell am I living there. So I ask her to take me to Montpelier because I went to school with someone who lives there and I want to see it, and I find a house! She tells me they’ve got hippies and communes around Montpelier. Except for the insurance company and the state, it’s a backwater town, not for me at all. Said the hippie kids are always getting head lice and roundworm. Is that true, by the way?”

  “Yes. That’s w
hat I’m trying to tell you.”

  “You know the road that goes out past the swimming pool, the one shaped like a dish.” She paused. “You take it to Shady Rill, then hook a left. It’s a dirt road off that, maybe two miles in. It’s old. An old farmhouse. It used to be owned by a bunch of sisters. The last one died about a year ago.”

  “The Rowling house?”

  “Yup. That’s the one.”

  “But you can’t.” Carole’d read the last of the Rowlings had died. The house was in the vicinity. Her vicinity.

  “Well, I did.”

  “Did what?”

  “Bought it.” Naomi turned her head so that Carole could see only her profile, her small upturned nose peeking out from behind a curtain of hair. “You might just be a little nicer,” she said.

  Carole took a desperate breath and said very loudly, because Naomi didn’t seem to hear anything, “Nay. You. Cannot. Do. This! I see this all the time in women who come into Chacha’s. They get a divorce, and they go through a crazy period. Divorce lawyers really ought to warn you. Either they get really depressed or they’re all charged up with liberating rage. They reconnect with old boyfriends or old friends as though they can go back to some earlier time. But they can’t. You can’t. They get over it, and so will you. Believe me. You’d just get yourself up there, and six months down the road you’re going to think, oh, my God, what have I done?”

  “It’s my life, and I’ll do as I damn well please. Anyway, what the hell is Chacha’s?”

  “My bar.”

  “Oh, right.”

  “You can’t come!” Carole shouted. “And you know why too. That other business.” The situation was slipping out of her control. She was just grabbing at straws as she fell.

  “What?”

  “Stowe, Eddie. Don’t pretend you don’t know exactly what I’m talking about either. We have to live our separate lives. It’s safer.”

  “That was a long time ago, and nobody ever found out.” Naomi waved her hand dismissively. “You can’t just let that govern you.”

  “We still—”

  “I never even told Bax. That was the whole point, in case you forgot, which I hope you didn’t, for your sake.”

  Carole took the barrette from her pocket and handed it to Naomi. “I don’t want this stuff. I don’t want you in my life. Can’t you get that through your head?”

  “Hand me that if you’re not going to drink it.” Carole handed over the glass of vodka. “You’ve obviously lost your sense of humor,” Naomi said. “Anyway, I won’t embarrass you up there, if that’s what you’re worried about. I only took the barrette for old times’ sake. I’ve got it under control. Daddy was between wives when he died, so I got everything. I mean everything. It’s taken forever just to figure it all out.”

  “Are you listening at all?” Carole asked.

  “I’ll be good, I promise.” Naomi gave her a bright childish smile. “And what you said? You know, talking about wood or wax or whatever? It sounds good. It’s what I’ve needed all these years. Back to the land. Really, Carole. You’ll hardly even notice me.”

  Carole hesitated. She needed to say something that would break any friendship right smack in half. “You were never my friend, Naomi. You were like this default position, if you must know. I needed you to get through Spence.”

  There were sounds in the hall of the front door opening and slamming shut. “Hello?” a man’s voice said.

  “In the kitchen.” Naomi didn’t seem to have heard a word. She winked at Carole. “Boyfriend du jour,” she said. “Wait till you get a load of him.”

  A man suddenly filled the doorway to the kitchen. He was dark, slight, and smoothly groomed. Longish brown hair and a dark coat with a patterned scarf. He leaned down to kiss Naomi, a kiss that went on for a long time. After they finished, Naomi smiled at Carole, her eyebrows raised in victory.

  “Hi,” the man said to Carole.

  “Can we continue this alone?” Carole said to Naomi.

  The boyfriend left the room. Carole could hear him stumbling through the dining room in the dark, tripping over things. “Sorry I didn’t introduce you,” Naomi whispered, “but I’m always afraid I’ll get the name wrong. You know how that is.”

  “No, I don’t know how that is,” Carole said. “Look, Nay. Maybe I didn’t mean that about a default position, but how many times do I have to say it? Don’t come. That’s the only reason I came down here. To tell you not to come. Not to start the friendship, not to talk about the past. One reason only. You’ve got to stay here. Or someplace, just not Montpelier.”

  Naomi flicked the hair from her eyes and took the last swallow of her drink. “Oh, what the hell,” she said.

  “Did you close on the house yet?”

  Naomi shook her head.

  “So don’t, Nay.”

  Naomi hopped off the counter, toppled slightly, then recovered. “Whatever,” she said.

  The boyfriend wasn’t getting very far out there in the wreckage of Naomi’s apartment, and Carole thought he’d be coming back in any minute. She had to know one more thing. “Did you ever see Eddie again?”

  Naomi grinned and put a finger to her lips. “Sshh,” she said.

  “Well, did you?”

  Naomi narrowed her eyes at Carole. “Lay off already,” she said. “Sheesh!” She went to the kitchen door and called into the dark apartment. Carole could hear the boyfriend finding his way back to the kitchen. “Arthur,” Naomi said. “His name is Arthur.”

  “Yes or no?” Carole said as Arthur blundered back in, and Naomi just smirked as if to say, What’s a girl to do? Carole had no choice but to leave.

  The day outside was colder and grayer than when she’d walked to Naomi’s building. A wind had picked up and was swirling papers and old leaves along the sidewalk. Carole walked to Lexington Avenue. She’d lost all her resolution. She felt disoriented, depleted, and out of place. She hadn’t set foot in New York since her mother died, and it wasn’t that she had an interest in seeing her father, it was more the familiarity of where she was that made it natural to keep walking toward Sixty-second Street just for a glimpse of her old building. The man at the door, portly and red-faced, stood aside for her.

  “Conrad Mason?” she said.

  “I’m sorry, miss,” he said. “Nobody by that name.”

  “Did he move out?”

  “No idea,” the man said. “Never heard the name.”

  Not that she’d have talked to him. But all this time she’d imagined him living in the apartment, working in the Chrysler Building, everything going forward the same as it had before, just without her and her mother. All this time she had assumed that if she ever wanted to find him, she would at least know where to go.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Her truck was a snow-covered lump alone in the train-station parking lot. The snow dragged at the hem of her skirt and spilled into the tops of her boots as she walked, cold trickling down her insteps. She yanked at the door, but it wouldn’t budge. She went around to the passenger side and yanked again. Nothing. She took off her mitten and felt for her keys in the dark, rummaging around the bottom of her bag.

  Never lock the car door in winter, somebody had told her once. “Oh, shut up!” she said to whoever it was. Not Will. Not his style. So she’d locked it. So she forgot. How was she supposed to know everything? Way too much. Every day something new. Some new hazard to avoid. It was on the news at night. It came from people talking in Chacha’s. Don’t burn green wood. Don’t burn soft wood. Don’t flush the toilet if the electricity’s out. Endless. And Will, more subtle, and with much better timing, but still—it was all exhausting information. The keyhole ices over, and you won’t get the key in. She found the key and stuck it into the keyhole, turned it, but not too hard. You can snap a key in half. She peered inside. Her flashlight was in the trunk, along with the battery cables and God knew what else. If Naomi had just left her alone, she wouldn’t be here now, locked out of her lousy truck and str
anded in the cold with no way to get help. The day flooded back, the sights and sounds of New York, her father’s apartment—or not his apartment now. And Naomi and Spence. The smell of everything.

  She gripped the handle and pulled with everything she had, so the door burst open and flung her back. She threw her purse onto the passenger seat and started up the ignition, feeling a blast of cold air from the heat vents, watching lights cast a beam over the white sea ahead. She inched forward, concentrating now on what she knew how to do, to drive ever so slowly across the parking lot at the steadiest possible speed, making the turn so gradually in the untouched snow that there was little chance for a wheel to slip and spin, and then out to the main road, where the plow had come through, where her tires had purchase once again, where she could afford to go a little faster, where everything was normal. She knew what she had to do. She knew the time had come for it.

  She took the left in Montpelier and then the four slow miles up East Hill Road. Halfway there, she turned off the headlights and drove by the light of the moon. When she rounded the corner at the base of the next hill, she could see the faint glow of the porch light from the house on the hill above. Will must have left it on. She pulled to a stop in the little parking area at the base of the hill. There was a buried electrical line from the house for nights like this. She plugged it into the socket under the hood to keep the engine from freezing, then headed up the hill in the pitch dark, hardly making a sound.

  In the mudroom, she dropped her purse, stepped out of her boots, and hung her coat on a hook. The heavy double doors to the living room were ajar, and she brought in an armload of wood, which she dropped into the bin beside the stove. She chucked them into the stove one at a time and pushed them to the back to catch later, then latched the stove gate and went upstairs, pausing before she entered the bedroom to look at Will, massive under several down quilts. He’d leave her if he knew. Everybody would.