Nell

by Nancy Thayer

  Nine

  Apparently, the fleas had been bad that summer. At least that was what Donna, the college girl who had lived in Nell’s house and taken care of the animals, said. The cats and especially the dog were miserable. Donna had sprayed them, had checked to be sure they wore flea collars, but still the fleas had come. Nell had called her friend the vet the day she came home and had been advised to get an insecticide bomb for the house. Everyone who owned animals was having the same problem, she reassured Nell. Nell sighed: Bombing the house meant that they would all have to keep out of it for several hours. They had only just gotten back into it, and school had started. She didn’t know when she’d be able to bomb the house. So the animals continued to scratch.

  “Breakfast!” Nell screamed at the top of her voice. It was the third time she had called her children this morning. If they didn’t hurry, they would all be late. “Come on!”

  Jeremy came down the stairs, his face sullen.

  “Honey, what’s wrong?” Nell asked.

  “You know,” he said.

  “Oh, go eat your breakfast,” she told him. He was still sulking because she had told him he could not have guinea pigs. A child at school was giving them away free, with a cage and food. That should tell you something, Nell had said to Jeremy the night before when they had discussed the matter. If she’s so desperate to get rid of them that she’ll give away a cage, they must be troublesome or something.

  “Guinea pigs are not troublesome!” Jeremy had stormed. “They are interesting and beautiful!”

  “No,” Nell had said. “We have enough animals.”

  “Medusa sleeps with you and Fred sleeps with Hannah,” Jeremy had pointed out.

  “But you can have Ginger to sleep with you,” Nell had said. “Ginger always slept with you when you were little.”

  “Ginger farts,” Jeremy had said, glaring.

  Nell had sighed. It was true. Now that their German shepherd was approaching her first decade, she did seem to be having more intestinal gas. Nell couldn’t blame Jeremy. She didn’t want Ginger sleeping in her bedroom, either. The occasional smell was unbelievable. Yet they all loved the dog.

  Now Ginger sat beneath the kitchen table, scratching and digging and snurfling at her fleas. It was a disgusting and unsanitary sound, not the sort of thing one wanted to hear at breakfast.

  “Come on, Ginger, let’s go outside, honey,” Nell said, and put the dog out. “It’s a beautiful fall day,” she called to her children. She stood for a moment, taking in the flawless blue sky, the leaves just beginning to be tinged with red, the sweet crisp air. The old yellow baby dress Fred had worn still hung from the shrub, she noticed. She’d have to be sure to get that down today when she came home from work. And Jeremy could get the shovel out and pick up the dead squirrel Medusa had laid on the back steps. She went back inside.

  Back to real life, she thought, looking at her kitchen with despair. The first few days home Nell had been almost euphoric, driven by Jeremy’s accident to vow that from now on she would live each day fully, treasuring each moment, being the perfect mother to her children. But after all, not all moments were as sweet as others, and some moments were absolutely grueling. The college girl had taken care of the animals, but had not done anything to clean the house—and Nell couldn’t blame her, that hadn’t been part of the deal. She had simply camped out in the house. And she had done her part: the animals were alive and not any more neurotic than usual. But the bathrooms were scummy, the stove was grimy, the entire house was dusty, and the kitchen floor was coated with several layers of oily filth. Nell had already mopped the floor, but that had done little good. She was going to have to scrub it with a brush, on her hands and knees. They had been home only ten days, and in that time Nell had gotten the children ready for school, unpacked, done some basic cleaning when she got home from work—but she still had so much left to do.

  Hannah came into the kitchen. She was walking like a hunchback so she could scratch her legs as she walked. Oh Lord, Hannah thought. She had been planning to attack the kitchen floor when she got home from work, but now she’d have to go see what else she could do about Hannah’s room.

  “There are still fleas in my bed,” Hannah told her mother.

  “I know,” Nell said. “I’ll see what I can do.” Ginger had apparently slept on Hannah’s bed all summer. They had come home to find Hannah’s bed speckled with fleas. “Oh, gross,” Hannah had cried. “Damn old Ginger!”

  Nell had reassured Hannah. She had run all the bedding through the hot water cycle with strong detergent. She had vacuumed and sprayed Hannah’s room. She had scrubbed the baseboards and walls and windowsills and closet. Now she would have to see what else she could do.

  “Please eat your breakfast,” she said, sipping her coffee and buttoning the cuffs of Hannah’s shirt in an absentminded routine.

  “I don’t see why I can’t have a guinea pig,” Jeremy said.

  “Mom, didn’t you hear me?” Hannah said. “There are still fleas in my room!”

  “Oh, good!” Nell shrieked. “That’s wonderful. That’s just wonderful. More pets for the house. Sure you can have the guinea pigs, Jeremy. Why not? And let’s name the fleas. Let’s not kill them, for heaven’s sake, let’s make them little bonnets! Why don’t you go out and see if you can resuscitate the dead squirrel? It can live in here with us too!”

  Jeremy and Hannah looked at each other. They sighed. They bent their heads and began eating their breakfast.

  Nell stormed through the house, collecting her purse, the children’s lunch money, her car keys, noticing as she passed the hall mirror that her tan had already faded a great deal. Just like the sweeter memories of the summer.

  “Mom, do you know where my sneakers are?” Jeremy said.

  “I told you, you left them in the bathroom last night when you took your bath.”

  “I looked. They’re not there.”

  “Oh Jesus,” Nell said. “We’re going to be late.” She streaked up the stairs. “Here they are!” she yelled. “They’re under the goddamn towel. You dropped your towel on top of them after your bath. How in the world can you expect me to think you can take care of guinea pigs when you can’t even keep track of your own sneakers? I have to follow you around, telling you to hang up your towel, brush your teeth, I have to find your sneakers for you. You are too irresponsible for guinea pigs. Do you have your violin?”

  Finally they were all out of the house and on the way to their destinations. Nell drove to work in a funk, hating herself for haranguing Jeremy so awfully. Two weeks ago her son had nearly died, and already she was breaking her promise to herself to treat him like the precious child he was. He would grow up to tell his wife that his mother was an old nag, she thought. But if she didn’t nag him, he’d vague out and never get anything done. Although, she reminded herself, he was in the top groups in all his schoolwork and was making excellent grades. And his teacher said he was doing beautifully on the violin. And this year he had started coordinating his clothes by himself, actually wearing blues with blues and browns with browns. Maybe there was hope, she thought. Probably he would turn into an organized human being after all, even if she had to come apart at the seams helping him get there.

  After the mess of the house, the calm of the boutique seemed like heaven. Nell opened the shop and slowly began the day. She didn’t expect many customers in this early, and at least it would never be as rushed and crowded as the boutique on Nantucket had been. Nell practically felt she was resting when she came into this airy store; she was never plagued with the needs of children or the hair of animals here. She moved around the shop, dusting, straightening, being sure that the clothes were hung on the correct racks. The UPS man wouldn’t be in for another hour. She didn’t expect it to be a busy day. She let her thoughts wander. Like a nurse checking for the vital signs of a patient, she checked the vital signs of her life.

  First of all, her children were alive and well and happy; that was most impor
tant. Nell had written long thank-you letters to the lifeguards, and the doctor and nurses at Nantucket hospital. She had sent the nurse who spoke with them a large box of expensive chocolates and asked her to share them with everyone at the hospital. She had written a long letter of gratitude to all those concerned, which was published in the Nantucket Inquirer and Mirror. Now she was more than ready for another discussion with Andy about the goodness and evil of nature and of human beings.

  Andy had called several times in the past ten days, and he had been charming and pleasant; she would fly down to see him the weekend after next, when the children went to stay with Marlow. He had said he loved her, but he had not seemed to miss her desperately, he did not seem to ache for her, as she ached for him, and Nell felt a certainty growing within her, like an ugly bitter weed, that she would end this relationship soon because she could not bear to be wanted in such a lukewarm way. She could not take the insecurity, the ambiguity. She would rather face the hard long flat road of loneliness than the roller coaster of hope and loss.

  At least that was what she told herself, but still she waited each night, hoping Andy would call. And she had made plane reservations for the next weekend.

  But she was determined not to make Andy all-important in her life. She was determined to somehow forge ahead on her own. Three nights ago she had gone to a meeting of a local community theater. An announcement in the paper stated that this was the theater group’s fourth year and that they were holding auditions for the play they would put on in November, Charley’s Aunt. That was one of Nell’s favorite plays, and she thought perhaps she could get some part in it, and she was encouraged by the fact that the group seemed relatively new. She knew no one who belonged to the theater group, but she summoned all her courage, hired a babysitter for the children, and went. It would be fun to act again, she thought. She remembered the way her heart always whipped about inside her just before she went onstage. Even a bit part, she had thought …

  But they had not cast her for even a bit part. The theater group had been surprisingly close-knit. She was a newcomer, an outsider, and as soon as she entered the church hall where the meeting was held, she realized this. She felt very much like a kindergarten child entering a new school in the middle of the year. She almost walked right out again. But she auditioned and then forced herself to stay for the chatter that took place after auditions.

  During that time, the director, an enormous young woman with equally enormous energy, approached Nell and asked her if she would be interested in working with the theater in any other way. They especially needed help with costumes for this play, the woman said. It was a period piece; they needed someone who might be willing to sew. Nell had told the woman she would let her know, and after talking with her for a while, had fled the building. Driving home in the dark, she had cried. I used to be an almost professional actress, she thought, and at the least I used to be good. No one’s ever heard of me, and I can’t get a part in even a small community production—all my childhood dreams have come to nothing.

  But today, as she moved around the boutique, she thought perhaps she would take on the job of helping with costumes. It would not be so different from what she did every day of her life—fitting, sewing, cutting, working with materials, arranging fabric on bodies. It would be pleasant and she would get to know people and eventually she could become part of the group, perhaps, eventually she might be given parts. That was the way those things worked, she knew that. It would be a pleasure to be around the theater again, even if from behind the scenes. She called Susan, the director, and told her she would help with costumes. Susan was delighted and gave her the name of the woman in charge of costuming, and Nell said she would get in touch with her that night after work.

  Nell hung up, cheered. Charley’s Aunt was Victorian; the costumes would require lace and satin and ribbons, long dresses, top hats and morning coats. It would be fun to work with fancy elaborate clothes. And the play was so funny that rehearsals, she knew from past experience, would be amusing, sometimes hilarious. This play would allow the cast to enjoy one another; they would be involved in entertainment rather than serious drama that strained to get across some heavy message. Nell could vaguely remember a line about “Brazil, where the nuts come from …” She grinned to herself and looked up to see Charlotte coming in the door of the boutique.

  Charlotte was looking rather strange these days. She was letting her short spiky hair grow out a bit, or at least she had decided not to dye it again, and so the hair near her scalp was brown but the ends were all orange. She didn’t look quite sane. On the other hand, she was pretty enough so that she didn’t look frightening, either.

  “Hi, Nell,” Charlotte said. “Listen, can we go to lunch today? I want to talk to you.”

  Nell stared. She had not gone out to lunch with Charlotte or done anything alone with Charlotte since Marlow had announced he was going to marry her. She and Charlotte were polite to each other, even amicable, because of Hannah and Jeremy. But Nell had no desire to become intimate with this woman again. They had managed to coexist peacefully, a pair of countries that shared Marlow as their common boundary, for the five years that Marlow and Charlotte had been married.

  “Charlotte,” Nell began. She intended to say something definite but not unkind, perhaps simply: I stopped having lunch with you years ago.

  But Charlotte interrupted her. She leaned on the jewelry counter toward Nell, looking as imploring and pathetic as one of Dickens’s orphans. “Nell,” she said. “Please.”

  So at lunch Nell found herself seated in a ferny café facing Charlotte over quiche lorraine and a glass of wine. Charlotte made small talk about the summer while they ordered, twisted her napkin until it looked like a piece of origami, and alternatively avoided meeting Nell’s eyes and leaned forward, catching Nell in staring contests.

  Finally Nell said, “Charlotte, what is this all about? What’s up?”

  Charlotte took a sip of wine, paused for dramatic effect—as if the entire morning already hadn’t been a giant buildup—and announced, “I’m leaving Marlow.”

  “You’re leaving Marlow?” Nell echoed, astounded.

  “Divorcing him,” Charlotte said.

  Nell’s first thoughts were for her children. Because the adults had been pleasant to one another, Hannah and Jeremy had had a relatively smooth transition from living with Mommy and Daddy and having Charlotte as a friend to living alone with Mommy and visiting Daddy, who had married Charlotte. If it has been confusing for them, at least they had known Charlotte, were accustomed to her, understood her quirks, even liked her. Now Marlow would be going out with other women—he would, Nell knew, sooner or later marry again, because he was a man who liked being married. This meant that Hannah and Jeremy would have to get used to yet another stepmother.

  Nell’s second thoughts were for herself. Damn, she thought. If Charlotte leaves Marlow, that means I won’t be able to get over to Nantucket very often. Marlow loved his children, but in an abstracted way; he wasn’t very good at the basics of feeding and entertaining, not when they were still so young. If Charlotte left him, he soon would be involved in a series of new affairs—he would be far too busy with all that to want to give his weekends over to playing Chutes and Ladders with his kids.

  Nell pulled her thoughts away from herself and focused again on Charlotte, who by now had taken out a cigarette and was smoking it in a long black holder. The cigarette holder gave her a very dramatic, 1920s effect. Where on earth did she find it? Nell wondered. She must have stolen it from some props department, she decided, and Nell thought to herself, in spite of herself, what a really marvelous creature Charlotte was. She was unique, a jazzy, crazy, and not unkind stick-figure of a girl.

  “I can tell you’re surprised,” Charlotte said.

  Nell laughed. “Well of course I am,” she said. “Shouldn’t I be? I had no idea you and Marlow weren’t happy together. Shall I ask why you’re leaving him, or do you want to keep that to yoursel
f?”

  To Nell’s dismay, Charlotte began to cry. She did it, however, with great style, arching her head disdainfully at her own display, inhaling deeply on her cigarette, letting the tears just run down her face to plop on her blouse. Nell watched, entranced, because Charlotte’s nose didn’t run: How does she manage that? Clever Charlotte, she thought, admiring her.

  “Oh, Nell,” Charlotte said, in a dramatically defeated voice, “I envy you so much.”

  “What?” Nell said. The shock of this statement made her smile, the way she had sometimes smiled as a child when she heard that a person had died.

  “You have so much,” Charlotte went on. “You have all the things I want.”

  Nell stared at Charlotte, silent. She couldn’t imagine what in the world the girl would say next.

  “I mean you have children,” Charlotte went on. “Jeremy and Hannah. They are so beautiful, so clever. Oh, Nell, I want children more than anything in the world. I want to have a kitchen like yours, with children’s drawings on the refrigerator and sunny little toys on the floor and those sweet dimpled hands holding mine.”

  “Jeremy and Hannah don’t have sweet dimpled hands anymore,” Nell said.

  “Oh, you know what I mean. I mean, if I had children, they’d have sweet dimpled hands when they were little. Oh, Nell, I want to have a baby.”

  “And Marlow doesn’t,” Nell said.

  “Marlow’s a sneaky old Scrooge,” Charlotte said. “All I had to do was to mention to him that I was thinking I wanted to have children, and do you know what he did?”

  “I can’t imagine,” Nell said.

  “He started using condoms,” Charlotte announced. “Now I can’t even have a mistake. He hardly makes love to me anymore, he’s so terrified I might get pregnant. I’ve been trying for about a year now to sort of, oh, you know, overwhelm him with lust, get him when he’s wanting it and when I don’t have my diaphragm in. But he’s always so careful now with those damn condoms. And now he says he’s going to get a vasectomy. Nell, he’s made the appointment.”