Nell

by Nancy Thayer

  She looked at Andy sleeping beside her. He was beautiful. She truly loved his long rangy body and his handsome doggy face. There was no good reason for it, but she loved this man and she was certain that she would never again in her life love another man as much. Only with him had she known real joy and days of consistent contentment. She would have given years of her life, she would have given almost anything to be able to live with him, for when she was with him, she was at peace … until this night she had just passed in despair. Oh, she would have given anything to live with him, to stay with him—anything except her children’s happiness.

  And he had not asked, would not ask, her to stay with him. Through this long night he had twice literally shoved her away.

  Nell rose, slipping out of bed quietly. She had brought few things, and it did not take her long to dress and pack. She tiptoed down the hall to wake the children.

  “Sssh,” she said to them as they sat up, rubbing their eyes, confused with sleep. “Ssh. Be as quiet as you can. It’s going to rain all day today and so we’re going to go back to Arlington. Get up now, sweeties. You can sleep on the ferry and the bus. And you can invite friends over this afternoon.”

  She supervised them as they dressed and packed their few belongings in their backpacks. Downstairs, she poured them glasses of apple juice to drink while she called a cab. She kept hushing the children, wanting to leave the house without waking Andy.

  They succeeded. They slipped out of the house as silently as ghosts and ran through streaming rain into the waiting taxi. On the way to the ferry, Nell frantically searched her purse and the children’s packs: She could not find their return tickets for the ferry. The taxi got them to the boat in time; Nell paid the driver and hurried into the office to buy new tickets. They rushed onto the boat just before it pulled up the ramp and away from shore. For a while then they all stood inside, staring out the window at the gloomy sea, at the steady rain, at the lightless day. The world outside the boat was as colorless and cold as old ashes.

  Nell gave the children her only large bill—a ten-dollar bill—and told them to go buy themselves breakfast. She sat on one of the benches, leaning her head against the window, staring at nothing much at all. She felt dead. She had had little sleep, and now the rocking of the ferry as it passed over the stormy waters made her feel slightly sick. She was too exhausted to think anymore, and her cold had come back full force.

  The children came back from eating and curled up in chairs near her. They all snoozed on and off during the rocking voyage. Nell drifted in and out of sleep, stupefied by misery. Just before the boat landed, she decided to buy herself a cup of coffee. But when she asked the children for the change from the ten-dollar bill she had given them for breakfast, they gave her only a one-dollar bill and a quarter.

  “My God,” she said, nearly crying. “What on earth did you two eat for breakfast?” She hadn’t counted on paying for a taxi back to the ferry or on buying more boat tickets. She hadn’t brought enough cash. She decided she couldn’t buy coffee; she needed all the remaining money to pay for a taxi from the ferry to the bus depot. It was raining too hard for them to walk.

  It was pouring rain in Hyannis, too, and they had to stand in the rain looking for a taxi for what seemed hours. At last they found one and got to the bus depot to find they could board a bus to Boston in only twenty minutes. The Hyannis bus depot was one of the grimmer spots on earth, Nell decided. It had public toilets, but it cost money to even get in the door. The children both needed to use them, so Nell fished out her last bits of change from the bottom of her purse. She had been embarrassed to give the taxi driver only a ten-cent tip, but now she was glad to have the change. There was no coffee machine or snack machine in the depot, but Nell had no money left anyway. She was glad the children had eaten on the boat. But while she stood with her children in the depot, which smelled of old cigarettes and damp hair, her stomach growled. It was after ten, and she was hungry. She was tired. She was sad. She had a cold. Her sleepless night had left her stunned, so that she couldn’t think sensibly about herself and Andy, but though thoughts were no longer coming through to her with any force, feelings were. She felt teary and heartbroken and stupid.

  Getting onto the bus was a major project today, because so many people were traveling on this holiday weekend and fewer buses were running. Strangers in wet woolen coats shoved and bumped against Nell and Hannah and Jeremy, trying to get in front to be assured of a place on the bus. Tickets did not mean a seat; it was first come, first served. Nell hated it, hated having to elbow her way along, clasping the hand of each child, dragging them with her. A man hit her in the back with his suitcase, and a woman walking beside them carried a cigarette in her hand. Her arm dropped to her side so that the burning end was right at Hannah’s eye level. If Nell hadn’t kept pulling Hannah close to her, the woman would have burned Hannah’s face. Stupid old bitch, Nell thought crossly. The world suddenly seemed full of stupid, mean, hopeless, nasty people.

  Nell gave the driver her tickets and marshaled her children onto the bus. Jeremy and Hannah were tired and cranky and fussed over who got to sit next to Mom on the trip. Since Hannah had received that honor on the way down, it was logically Jeremy’s turn now. But Nell felt it would be better for her son, who was after all bigger and older, to sit next to some grimy stranger, than Hannah, who was so tired she was practically vibrating with tears. Nell had to decide: She made Jeremy sit alone and was rewarded with a look of pure anger from him. She collapsed in her seat next to Hannah and watched to see which nasty stranger would take the seat next to Jeremy.

  Each new passenger that passed by their row of seats carried his own particular smell: gasoline, dirty feet, cheap perfume, garlic, dead fish. Who rides this bus? Nell thought. She felt as though they had all climbed into the Twilight Zone.

  Then a lovely girl about college age wearing a peacoat and carrying a bag of books came down the aisle and smiled at Jeremy.

  “May I sit here?” she asked.

  Jeremy’s face lit up and he smiled. “Sure,” he said, and scrunched up next to the window so the girl could have her seat and most of his. Hannah, seated by the window next to Nell, watched all this taking place and her eyes narrowed in envy. Hannah loved being around college girls, loved just looking at them.

  “Would you like a doughnut?” the girl asked Jeremy, and pulled out of her bag a big fat sugar-covered doughnut.

  “Sure! Thanks!” Jeremy said.

  Nell watched in childish amazement as her son took the plump sugary doughnut from the girl. Her own stomach growled and rumbled and threatened to revolt: She had been up five hours without any food or liquid. Beside her, Hannah too had noticed the doughnut.

  “Mom,” she whispered. “Jeremy got a doughnut!”

  Jeremy looked over at his mother and sister, grinning triumphantly. Nell and Hannah could only glare back.

  The girl followed Jeremy’s look across the aisle and saw Nell and Hannah. She turned to speak to Jeremy.

  “That’s my mother and sister,” Jeremy admitted grudgingly. “We just got here on the boat from Nantucket and we’re going back to Arlington.”

  “Oh,” said the girl. She turned and leaned forward to talk to Hannah. “Would you like a doughnut?” she asked.

  “Oh yes, please!” Hannah said.

  The girl took another sugary powdery doughnut from her bag and handed it across the aisle to Hannah.

  “Thank you!” Hannah said.

  Nell looked at her daughter’s doughnut. Her mouth watered. Her stomach turned. The bus started up and began rolling down the road, rocking its passengers gently side to side in a lumbering sort of rhythm. The movement of the bus and the mingled smells made Nell’s empty stomach even more demanding.

  Nell lost all her dignity. “You had breakfast on the boat,” she whispered to Hannah under her breath, between clenched teeth. “I gave you all my money for breakfast on the boat. I didn’t even get a coffee.”

  Hannah look
ed at her mother, assessing the seriousness of her implied demand. Nell squinched up her eyes at her daughter, trying to send desperate pleas and threats by ESP. After an eternal moment, Hannah reluctantly pulled her doughnut in half and handed half to her mother. Then she leaned forward, around her mother, to talk to the college girl, who was, Nell discovered, watching them.

  “Mom didn’t have breakfast,” she said. “She’s hungry, and she gets sick when she’s hungry.”

  “Oh, I’m so sorry. I don’t have any more doughnuts,” the girl said. “My friends gave me a bag when they brought me down to the bus, and I ate two of them. I’m really sorry,” she said to Nell earnestly.

  To Nell’s terrible chagrin, this girl’s kindness made tears spring into her eyes and streak down her face. “That’s all right,” she said. “You’re so nice to give the children doughnuts. It’s so nice of you.”

  The girl looked slightly uncomfortable at the extremity of Nell’s gratitude. “Oh it’s nothing, really,” she said. “It’s just doughnuts. I have to watch my weight, you know.”

  “Well, thank you very much,” Nell said. Then she felt compelled to add, “Please don’t mind my crying. I always cry when I’m tired.” She forced a huge false smile on her face.

  The girl smiled back, a gentle puzzled smile. She reached into her bag and took a textbook and began to read. Nell crammed the entire doughnut half in her mouth and chewed. There, she thought, that would hold her until she reached home. She leaned her head back against the bus seat. She would take a long hot bath when she got home. She would make a pot of coffee and drink it thickened with milk and sugar. She’d put on her elephant robe. She’d let the children invite friends over to play. She’d spend the afternoon and evening in bed, trying to recover from her cold, trying to recover from love.

  Ten

  The phone was ringing when Nell and the children arrived home. They had taken the subway from the bus terminal, then walked the five blocks from the stop. It was pouring here in Arlington, too. Nell could hear the phone ringing as she unlocked the door of her house. The sound irritated her. Everything irritated her. She was exhausted and soaked and starving and miserable. She hoped the phone would stop ringing before she got inside the house.

  But the phone kept ringing. Nell told the children to run upstairs and change their clothes. She turned up the thermostat to 67; to hell with the gas bill. Then she trudged in to answer the phone.

  “Nell!” Andy said. “What are you doing? Why are you back in Arlington? What’s the matter?”

  Nell leaned against the wall. She had no energy left. Andy’s voice seemed to be coming to her from so far away, from the moon, from a former life. “I have such a bad cold,” she said. “And it was raining again. I thought it best to come home.”

  “But you should have awakened me,” Andy said. “You didn’t have to sneak out like that.”

  “Andy,” Nell said, “I just got in the house this minute. I’m sick and I’m cold. Let me take a hot bath and call you back.”

  “All right,” Andy said. “Call me back as soon as you can. I’ll be waiting.”

  Nell went to the bathroom, ran a tub of hot water, stripped off her clothes, and sank into the steamy warmth. The children called to her through the door: Jeremy was going over to Bobbie’s, Cathy was coming over to play with Hannah. Good, Nell thought; Cathy was one of Hannah’s quieter friends. The two girls would spend the afternoon playing with dolls.

  Nell lay in the bath until she was warmed to the bone. Then she dragged herself out, dried off, and slipped into the comfort of her old familiar gray robe. She globbed her hair up off her neck with pins and cleaned her face. She saw her reflection in the bathroom mirror. Well, she thought, I’m no movie star, but I’m not exactly a dog, either. She took more aspirin, then went down to the kitchen. She fixed herself hot chocolate instead of coffee, and scrambled eggs and a childish treat: cinnamon toast. She made three pieces just exactly the way she liked it, thick with butter and sugar, heavily speckled with cinnamon, toasted under the oven broiler until the sugar and cinnamon were crunchy on top and soft in the middle. She put out granola bars, apples, peanuts, and crackers spread with cheese for Hannah and Jeremy, in case they got hungry while she slept. Then she carried her tray of food up to the bedroom.

  The house was growing cozy with the heat from the furnace, and from behind Hannah’s bedroom door came the sound of the two little girls playing, whispering, laughing, clues that happiness could exist in the world. Nell sat in bed like a patient, eating her toast and eggs, drinking the hot chocolate, warming up. She felt better, but she did not feel sharp-minded and alert. She longed for rest, oblivion. She slipped down into the covers and fell asleep.

  When she woke up, it was dark. She was disconcerted. For a moment she didn’t know where she was or what had happened in the past few hours. Her room was completely dark, though the hall light was on and she could hear sounds coming from the rest of the house. She rose and stumbled downstairs, trying to shake off the fog of sleep and decongestant. Her mind and body were all rubbery. She found the children in the living room in front of the TV. They had brought in the plates of crackers and fruit she had prepared.

  “What time is it?” she asked.

  “Sssh,” Hannah said. “Oh, this is so sad.”

  Nell looked at the TV. Someone was dying again on Little House. That meant it was somewhere between five and six o’clock at night.

  “Are you kids okay?” she said. “I’m sorry I fell asleep. I have such a bad cold.”

  “Yeah,” Jeremy said vaguely, engrossed in the TV show but knowing he had to make some reply to his mother.

  Nell wandered into the kitchen. She poured herself a large glass of orange juice and just sat at the kitchen table for a while, still stupefied. Then she took a deep breath and dialed Andy’s number.

  “That must have been some bath,” Andy said when he heard her voice.

  “I’m sorry, Andy,” she said. “I have such a terrible cold. I must have some kind of flu. I fell asleep right after my bath. I couldn’t help it.”

  “You should have stayed here and let me take care of you,” Andy said.

  Nell was quiet a moment. I don’t really have the energy for this, she thought. But in a way her cold was a help; it muted her feelings, it made everything numb. “Well,” she said, plunging in. “I don’t think so, Andy. I don’t think you actually wanted me there at all.”

  “What’re you talking about?” Andy said. “How can you say that?”

  “Well, for one thing,” Nell said, “you kept trying to shove me out of bed all night. Face it, Andy, in your deepest subconscious you don’t want me in your life. You don’t even want me in your bed.”

  “Nell,” Andy said. “What has gotten into you? I wasn’t trying to shove you out of bed.”

  “Andy—” Nell began.

  “Nell!” Andy said, his voice harder now. “Nell, I was not shoving you. I was shaking you. I had to shake you all through the night. I was trying to get you to change positions. You were snoring.”

  “I was what?” Nell asked, indignant.

  “You were snoring,” Andy said.

  “I don’t snore,” Nell told him.

  “You do snore,” Andy said. “You snored last night. You snored terribly. You woke me up two or three or four times. You sounded like a chain saw. It must be your cold.”

  This is absolutely the worst thing that anyone has ever said to me, Nell thought. She was mortified. She had tried so hard to be beautiful for Andy, she had even aimed for a little glamour with her black lace nightgown. And there she had been, lying next to him, snoring away like a chain saw.

  “I didn’t hear myself snore,” she said petulantly.

  “Of course not, you were asleep!” he said. “Once or twice I sort of rocked you and you turned over and got in a different position and stopped snoring. I tried to do it as gently as possible so I wouldn’t wake you up. But I guess I did wake you up and you didn’t know what was
going on. Is that why you left? Are you angry?”

  “Oh, Andy,” Nell said. “I don’t know what I am. I don’t think I should talk about anything now. I’m all confused, and mostly I just feel tired and sick.”

  “But, Nell,” Andy began.

  “Look,” Nell said. “It was hard being there with the children in the rain. They were bored and had nothing to do. The trip was difficult. Our whole—relationship, oh God, I hate that word—is just too difficult, I think.”

  “You are tired,” Andy said. “Nell, don’t think that way. You are tired, and you’re sick. Listen, go to bed. Get some rest. Get well. Call me when you feel better and we’ll talk about all of this.”

  “All right,” Nell said.

  “Nell, I love you,” Andy said.

  Nell was quiet for a while. I don’t want to say this to him anymore, she thought, because I don’t want to feel it. It hurts too much to feel it. But she said, in a voice that held no strength, “I love you too.”

  She hung up the phone. The kitchen was a mess of dirty dishes and pans. She spent the evening sitting on the sofa with the children, watching Thanksgiving specials and cartoons. Finally, they all went to bed.

  “You won’t mind if I snore, will you, Medusa,” Nell said to the cat as she crawled back under her covers. She felt so cold that she was wearing socks and a sweater over her robe. The cat looked at her with slanted eyes, indicating neither affection nor dislike, and Nell turned off the light and fell into bland and dreamless, snoring sleep.

  Nell slept almost all Saturday and Sunday. The sun came out over the weekend, so the children played outside during the day. They were good, understanding how sick she was, and made their own lunches. At night Nell staggered down the stairs to heat up soup or canned ravioli for them and to clean up the kitchen from the mess they had made at lunch. Her cold was so bad that she could not taste anything, so she ate very little but drank great amounts of juice. By Monday she felt well enough to go to work.

  * * *

  As she walked the three blocks to the boutique from the subway stop, she noticed how all of Cambridge, just like the rest of the world, was gearing up now for Christmas. Christmas. It seemed to Nell the dreariest of all holidays for a single parent, because it was supposed to mean so much. It was so important to be happy then, and all the commercials on TV showing beautiful people drinking champagne under the mistletoe only emphasized her own lonely state. She enjoyed playing Santa Claus for the children; she loved their excitement and pleasure at opening presents, at finding what was left under the tree. But with all the childishness left inside her, she always felt so sorry for herself, stuck there among the glitter and wrapping paper with so little given to her: books and a small check from her parents, perhaps a consolation present of perfume or fancy chocolates from a thoughtful woman friend, dime-store treasures of heart-shaped soaps from Hannah and Jeremy. Almost always some friend, trying to be kind, gave Nell a fruitcake. Nell hated fruitcake, and the thought that she would go through yet another Christmas with only books, cheap soap, and a fruitcake made her want to cry.