Nell

by Nancy Thayer

  Ilona tidied herself up, gathered up her packages, and left the store. Nell finished off her afternoon, working with the efficiency of a robot. She was tired. She was also a little cranky. She cared for Ilona, but in her heart of hearts, she also resented her a little. Ilona had so much—beauty, a husband who loved her the best he could, in his own stodgy, reliable, and faithful way, and more money than anyone would ever need. And here Ilona was, throwing herself into Nell’s care, asking Nell to help her. Nell kept looking at her reflection in the mirror, wondering what it was about her that made people come to her as to some wise old nurse. Elizabeth’s words earlier that morning: Nell was so reliable.

  Good old helpful reliable wise old Nell. Nurse Nell. Nanny Nell. Nerd Nell.

  Nell hoped Ilona would have the sense to bring the champagne. She didn’t feel like cooking dinner for Ilona. Since Jeremy was sick, she would have preferred to feed him clear soup, saltines, and ginger ale, and Hannah would have the same, or feel ill-treated. Nell would have preferred to drink a beer, fix any old sandwich, and get into bed with a book and a bowl of popcorn after this day. She thought of calling Ilona, of postponing the dinner; she had a good excuse with Jeremy home sick. Why did she always think she had to fix a dinner for a sad friend?

  But then she thought of Ilona’s tears, Ilona’s face. And she remembered a woman she had known only briefly in Vancouver.

  Marlow had been teaching in Boston then, but he had a summer job as guest professor at a university in Vancouver. It was a beautiful place to spend the summer, and Marlow got to direct three plays of his choice. It should have been a marvelous summer, but Hannah was newborn and Jeremy was just two. The university in Vancouver had found them a rental house in Capilano for the two months. It was a fine house, but isolated, and Marlow had to go off with the car every day. So it was the same old story familiar to many women: the mother stuck at home in a strange place all day with two babies. Nell knew it was for only eight weeks: still, she was miserable. Vancouver was so beautiful; she could feel it spreading all around her in its beauty, and she was imprisoned in the little rental house with babies and bottles and diapers and rash. Of course the children got sick. Of course Jeremy fell, just fell off a rock and cut his leg open. Of course it rained a lot. Nell thought she would have died, would have been one of those mothers who kill their children and then themselves, leaving a note saying: Life isn’t worth living. But the next-door neighbor, a woman named Jackie Grant, saved her. She drove Nell and Jeremy to a doctor when Jeremy cut his leg. She invited Nell over for lazy, sloppy meals with her own family on the nights—and there were so many of them—when Marlow worked late. When she could manage it, for Jackie had three children of her own, she drove Nell and all their children out to parks for afternoon outings. When the time came for them to go back to Boston, Jackie watched Nell’s children all day so Nell could pack and clean the rental house.

  “You have been so kind,” Nell said finally to Jackie that afternoon before she left. She had felt her throat swollen with emotion as she spoke. “You have probably literally saved my life. I don’t understand it. You have given me so much, and there is no way in the world I can ever repay you. I probably won’t ever see you again.”

  “Listen: my husband is with an insurance company,” Jackie said, smiling. “We’ve made eleven moves in nine years. I had three children in those nine years. And I would have died if strangers hadn’t helped me.

  “Once we were in Windsor, a town in the middle of Canada, across the river from Detroit. We were very poor. I had just had my third child, and my life was nothing but food and milk and diapers. I had just moved into the neighborhood—corporations move you at their convenience, not yours. I gave birth to my third child in a town where I knew no one. We were living in a rental apartment. I just stayed in that apartment and took care of my children and sobbed all day every day.

  “Then one day, when my baby was about a month old, someone knocked on the door. It was a woman I had seen only briefly, a woman who lived in the apartment across the hall. She worked. She was always on her way to work in some wonderful dress with matching shoes. I couldn’t imagine what she wanted. She said she wondered if I might like to take a day off. She would come watch the children for me for the day. I could go off and wander, or use her apartment to sleep or read—whatever.

  “Well, I thought she was mad. I was afraid she’d kidnap the children or something. But the offer—I couldn’t refuse it. So I let her babysit for me. I went out and walked all over Windsor, along the river, looking over at the city of Detroit, gaining perspective, thinking of how things could and would change with time and distance. I hadn’t had time to think like that for years. I couldn’t have had a better day if God had personally visited me.

  “When I got home, I asked her how I could possibly repay her. She said she was moving to Ottawa in a week. We probably wouldn’t see each other again. I was so puzzled, I really did think she was mad. I looked around the apartment: she had managed to clean it a bit. The children were happy. I said, ‘I don’t understand.’

  “She said, ‘I’m an executive, but not a rich one. I’ve had to move a lot with my firm. Along the way perfect strangers have been helpful to me in ways I could never repay. Of course I’ve been helpful to you. I wish I could be more helpful. I’ve heard you crying. I’m sorry I’m leaving. At least I gave you today. And of course you can’t repay me. But you can pass it along. Someday you can do a kindness for a stranger who won’t be able to repay you. It’s like a chain letter, you see. It will eventually get back to me in the end.’

  “So, Nell, that’s what I’m doing. I’m repaying that woman executive. I’m passing some kindness along. And your turn will come to do the same someday.”

  Now Nell thought: Ilona was no stranger, but still Nell knew she should pass some kindness along. So she sighed, shut up the boutique, and headed for her car, thinking, all right, Jackie, okay. I’ll make some kind of dinner for Ilona tonight.

  Still, in her heart she knew her charity was grudging. Perhaps it would be easier to help a poor stranger than a wealthy friend. When she got home, after checking Jeremy and hugging Hannah and paying the paper boy and feeding the cats and dog and doing a thousand other chores, she checked her refrigerator and nearly collapsed in front of it, crying. She had milk, eggs, juice, lettuce, cheese, but no meat. What could she cook? She had fed Ilona only Saturday night, for Christ’s sake! Did she have to feed her again so soon? The hell with it, she thought, Jeremy was sick, Nell had not had much sleep, she was tired, she had worked all day—they would send out for pizza.

  As soon as she had this heretical thought, the phone rang.

  “Nell? It’s Ilona. Listen, I can’t come for dinner tonight. I’m going out to dinner with a man. One of the partners in my lawyer’s firm is taking me to the Coq d’Or.”

  “Well,” Nell said, monumentally relieved enough to tease. “If you’d rather go out to dinner with some dull old fogey than spend the evening—”

  “Oh, Nell,” Ilona cut in, all seriousness and intensity. “You know I’d rather be with you. You saved my life today. But I met Bob Jackson in the office today, and he is dull, but he’s handsome and Phillip doesn’t know he’s dull and it won’t hurt him a bit to know I’m going out with other men. It might be the keg of dynamite I’ve been waiting for all my life.”

  Oh, Ilona, Nell thought. Oh God, don’t we women ever give up? Don’t we ever stop trying to manipulate men with our foolish games?

  “… and if that doesn’t work, which I’m not stupid enough to think it will, actually, well then, Bob Jackson is a nice man. I think we’ll have a lovely evening together. And this will get the word out that I am available.”

  Nell and Ilona talked some more, then Nell hung up, relieved but somehow depressed by their conversation. She cheered herself up by making a cheese and tomato sandwich she grilled slowly, to a crisp, in lots of butter. She spent the evening with the children. Jeremy was over his flu in that miraculous
way children have of getting well; he was bright-eyed and wild with energy from sitting around the house all day.

  “Can’t I just go outside and ride my bike a little, Mom?” he pleaded. “I’m really all well.”

  I live in a world of endless decisions, Nell thought. She said no, then relented. The April light was too tempting. Jeremy was well. While he rode off, Nell went out and sat on the wicker swing, and after a few moments Hannah joined her. Hannah chatted happily about her day at school, her friends, the subtraction she was learning, and Nell listened—sort of—and gently pushed her foot against the wooden porch floor so that the old swing moved ever so slowly back and forth. I will not tell these children about Nantucket yet, she thought. Not until I have made arrangements for the summer with Marlow. She would call Marlow and discuss it with him when the children were in bed. Nantucket. She had not had a free moment in her day to think about Nantucket, to let the thought in all its possibilities roll across her mind. She was too tired to think in any acute and sensible manner about it. She could only sit there on the swing, slowly tilting back and forth, listening to her daughter’s light and lilting voice, watching the April light shimmer gold to silver to gray. She could only let the thought of a summer in Nantucket lap at the edge of her consciousness as she imagined the ocean must be out there calmly lapping, this gentle evening, on that island’s sandy shores.

  It was late when she finally got the children into bed. She showered, fixed herself a cup of herb tea, and crawled into bed with her nightgown and robe on. For a few moments she simply sat, relaxing, without a thought in her head. She had her bedroom windows opened a bit, but the temperature was dropping and she didn’t want the furnace to click on, so she reluctantly got out of bed and shut them. When she turned back to her bed, she found that Medusa had confiscated the spot at the end of the bed, where Nell’s feet went. The cat sat there, calm as a Buddha, innocent as a lamb, regally indicating with her slanted cat eyes that Nell was a vulgar intruder, but Medusa would share the bed anyway.

  “My bed, Medusa,” Nell said. She was in no mood to humor the cat. She stuck her feet under the covers and kicked them back and forth so that Medusa rolled over sideways. Medusa would get her back. The cat would sneak up in the night and take this space and Nell would end up curled in a ball or slanted across the bed with her feet sticking out in the cold. This didn’t really make Nell mad; it just seemed part of the normal scheme of things.

  One of the great reliefs to everyone in the family after Marlow and Nell’s divorce was that the animals were allowed to sleep in bed with whomever they deigned to choose. Marlow never had been able to bear this. Nell could see his point. If you hadn’t been raised that way, it did feel a little odd to go in at night to check a sleeping three-year-old and to see a German shepherd bigger than the child curled up next to the boy, the dog’s head hogging the pillow. And Marlow had objected to the animal’s hair on the sheets. But Nell knew that was only because Marlow was too dim to notice the animal hair that lay in wisps across every other surface in the house.

  Nell did not believe that animals were human beings. She did not tell her friends about their clevernesses; in fact she never spoke about her animals at all to her friends. She felt a loyalty to the animals, they were necessarily mute about her, even if they were judgmental. She didn’t knit little coats for the dog or buy rhinestone collars for the cats. She didn’t believe in treating them as if they were people. But she did believe in living with them. They brought such comfort. They were so amazingly beautiful. They were always ready to give themselves over with complete sensual abandon to being petted and stroked. They taught the children the lesson of the necessity of kindness to smaller, weaker creatures. But mostly they were just there: warm breath, furry lives, acute intelligence, carriers of optimism and faith, for while they seemed never wholly convinced of man’s wisdom, they still, with the trust of their lives, gave him the benefit of the doubt.

  Having made her point to Medusa, Nell sighed, sipped her tea, and reluctantly turned to the phone. She had to start making summer plans with Marlow. She dialed his number, and Charlotte answered: Marlow was out at rehearsal. Of course, Nell thought but did not say, he always was. She told Charlotte about Nantucket.

  “Do you have any idea what Marlow’s summer plans will be?” Nell asked. “I mean, will he teach summer school here or direct here or will you be going off on the road?”

  “I really have no idea,” Charlotte said. “You know how it is, Nell.”

  “Well,” Nell said, “please have Marlow call me tomorrow. You and Marlow can have the children for as long or as short as you want them this summer. It’s just that I need to start making arrangements.”

  “Ummn,” Charlotte said. “Okay. I’ll have him call you.”

  Nell hung up, unsatisfied. Charlotte, bony Charlotte, who had once been her best friend. Now she was not Nell’s enemy, but she wasn’t going to give Nell an inch. Oh well, so what, Nell thought. She was too tired to think about another thing. She hung over the side of her bed, searching through the pile of books and magazines that still lay spilled on the floor, and dug out her delicious paperback mystery. She settled back into her pillows. Medusa crept closer, finally curled up on top of Nell’s ankles. Nell didn’t mind. The warmth was sweet.

  The phone rang. It was Clary. Clary in tears.

  “Nell! I’ve lost my job! Can you help me?” Clary wailed. “The grant at Rutgers ran out and it won’t be renewed and I don’t have a job after the middle of May. I don’t know what to do!”

  Not all days are like this, Nell reminded herself. Whole weeks could go by when her friends and relatives went without crises. This was just turning out to be a peculiar day, the sort of day that made her want to start reading her astrological charts. Jupiter must be on the descent or something. Nell wished she’d fixed herself a brandy instead of herb tea. The tea was cold now anyway, and cold, it tasted like nothing more than stale water. She set it on the bedside table and concentrated on Clary’s words.

  Ever since the rat test, Nell and Clary had kept in touch. For four years they had written each other, called when they could afford it or were excited or desperate, sent each other silly greeting cards. Clary had come to visit them all once a year, tying that visit in with one to her father. Nell had gone down to Rutgers one weekend a year ago, leaving the children with Marlow. She and Clary were close; they could discuss everything now: children, lovers, money, life, sex, friendship. Sometimes when Nell was blue, she phoned Clary and Clary played the role of the older and wiser one; she cheered Nell up. But now Nell was definitely being called upon to act the part of the old wise one. Clary was in a fix.

  “Have you thought of talking to Marlow about this?” Nell asked. “Maybe he can help you find a position in one of the labs or colleges around Boston.”

  “I called him,” Clary said. “And he said he’d try to help. But of course he and Charlotte are going to be gone all summer. Summer stock in Illinois. Always summer stock. He said if I can hang on till fall, he can help me then.”

  “When did you talk to Marlow?” Nell asked.

  “This afternoon,” Clary said. “Or this evening, I guess, whatever, around six. Why?”

  “And he told you that he and Charlotte were going to be in the Midwest all summer?”

  “Yeah,” Clary said. “Why?”

  “Oh, it’s nothing,” Nell said, thinking, thanks a lot, Charlotte. “Go on, Clary.”

  “Well, it’s just that I don’t know what to do,” Clary said. “I want to get out of here, and as a matter of fact I’m tired of working with rats. I’d like to try my hand at something new. But on the other hand, Jesus, Nell, do you realize I’m almost thirty years old?” Horror vibrated from Clary’s voice.

  “Clary, you are twenty-six,” Nell said.

  “Still,” Clary went on. “I’m getting awfully old to have my life in such a mess. I’m not married. I’m not engaged. I’m in love, but with the wrong person. Now I don’t even have
a job. Not only do I not have a profession, I don’t even have a job.”

  “Well, have you talked to your mother?”

  “Oh yeah, you know Mom. She’s great. She said, ‘Oh come on out to Denver, honey. Live with us, we’ll get you back on your feet.’ But I don’t want to go out there. I want to stay here in the East. All my friends are here, and besides, I like it here. And I can’t keep going home to Mom every time the bottom falls out of my life. I promised myself the last time I wouldn’t run home to Mother again, I’ve got to grow up sometime.”

  When Marlow had asked Nell to marry him so many years ago, he had said, “There are some things you should know about me. I’m not wealthy. I have an artistic temperament. I don’t think I’m easy to live with. I’m divorced, and for the next nine years I’ll have to pay child support to my ex-wife. I have a daughter, Clarissa, who’s twelve years old. She stays with me in the summer.”

  Clarissa, Nell had thought, what a pretty old-fashioned name, and she remembered Richardson’s epistolary novel, and she envisioned Clarissa St. John: a frail girl, slim and wan, with hair tied back in ribbons, a quiet, shadowy child who would drift around in white, reading novels, writing poetry. Nell could deal with that. Clarissa, Nell had thought, sounds like the type of child who dies a romantic and early death.

  When Nell finally met Clary, Clary was wearing orange polka-dot bell-bottom trousers and an orange-striped pullover shirt. Her blond hair hung lank to her shoulders in some androgynous hippie noncut, and she stood, at thirteen, as tall as Nell, meeting Nell’s gaze eye-to-eye, evenly. She was extremely thin, and long-boned and gawky; she could have been mistaken easily for a boy. Her mouth was clamped shut in a hateful clench that suggested that not even laughing gas would make her smile; Nell did not understand until later that Clary was only trying to hide her dreadful braces. Nell smiled and tried to be friendly to Clary; Clary only stood there, staring at her with a face full of warning. She was thirteen years old, Clary, with an adolescent’s hormonal sullenness and the instinctive distrust of a child of divorce. She had just flown from Denver, where she lived with her newly remarried mother, to Bangor, Maine, where she knew no one, to spend two months with her father and his new wife. She was contemptuous of every single thing in the world. Nell thought Clary was one of the most terrifying things she had ever seen in her life.