Nell

by Nancy Thayer

  “Hey, Mom,” Jeremy said, coming up to her as she left the shop. “We’ve been looking all over for you. We want to go ride the escalators.”

  “All right,” Nell said. “Look, meet me at noon at the little pizza shop. Okay? We’ll go there for lunch. And be careful. Don’t lean over the sides too far!”

  “Oh, Mom!” Jeremy said. “Come on, Hannah.” And they were off.

  It took Nell a few moments to stop worrying about her children. Since the accident, she had had to check a desire to follow them everywhere, crying out, “Be careful!” every step of the way. But the presence of other kids their age wandering through the mall reassured her, and finally she turned her mind to other thoughts. She drifted in and out of stores for an hour, checking to see what was on sale, buying warm tights, which Hannah desperately needed, and new socks for Jeremy—she had resisted giving them to him as a Christmas present.

  She met Jeremy and Hannah at the pizza shop, and they had lunch while showing Nell the treasures they had bought at the rock exhibit. The noise level was rising in the mall now and Nell was getting a slight headache from it, but the children were still energetic and the thought of going back out into the freezing cold of the outside or back to the littered mess of her house gave Nell new strength. She agreed to tag along with the children down to the end of the mall they hadn’t yet seen.

  People streamed past the three of them, young women pushing crying babies in strollers, older women wearing their wool coats buttoned up in spite of the warmth of the mall, teenagers with green hair and safety pins in their ears. Nell was smiling to herself, thinking how endlessly amusing people were, when Jeremy yelled, “Wicko! Hey, Mom, look!” and took off from her side. He was headed toward a gigantic exhibit of computer technology that was gathered in the middle of the main section of the mall under a vast metallic banner that read:

  computermania!

  computermagic!

  come see the computer for you!

  Children of all ages were grouped around tables set up with computer games, while in less frantic sections of the exhibition, grown-ups more cautiously touched keyboards and control sticks. A child-size robot with blinking lights, wearing a Santa Claus cap, rotated through the tables and booths, bleeping when he got close to any solid object, his round head whirling this way and that as he announced in an electrified monotone, “Hello. I am Roger, the Roaming Robot. Want to be my friend?”

  “Hey, Mom, look. There’s Andy,” Hannah said.

  “Oh,” Nell laughed. “Sweetheart, I don’t think so. Andy never leaves Nantucket.”

  “Mo-om, look!” Hannah insisted.

  Nell looked in the direction Hannah was pointing. And Hannah was right: There he was. He was wearing a tan corduroy sports jacket with leather elbow patches and a pair of baggy brown slacks; he was sitting on the edge of a table watching intently as a man seated at a keyboard made a graph revolve with three-dimensional reality on the screen in front of them. From time to time the man turned to say something to Andy or to take directions from him.

  Nell plunged forward, making her way through the crowd, the display tables, the giant wastebaskets overflowing with green and black computer printouts. She walked so fast, so intently, that she nearly collided with Roger the Roaming Robot, who slammed to a halt and bleeped at her. Finally, she was at Andy’s side.

  “Hello, Andy,” she said. Her heart was pounding so hard and so much adrenaline pulsed through her that she wouldn’t have been surprised if she had short-circuited every computer in the area.

  Andy turned slowly away from the computer screen. When he saw Nell, he broke into a big grin. “Nell!” he said. “What are you doing here?”

  “I think the question is what are you doing here? Off Nantucket?” Nell asked.

  “Well, I flew over for the day to come to this exhibit,” Andy said. “I read an ad for it in the Globe and knew there were some things I wanted to see here.”

  “But, Andy,” Nell asked. “Why didn’t you call me to tell me you’d be here? On the mainland. Why didn’t you come to see me, too?”

  Andy looked genuinely puzzled. “Well,” he said, shrugging his narrow shoulders, “I guess I just didn’t think of it.”

  Nell drew on all the resources and tricks she had ever learned as an actress. Andy in his bumbling honesty had hurt her so much that she needed to burst into tears—and she was not going to let herself do that. She would not cry now. Her hair was down today, falling slightly over one eye, one cheek, and with a gesture she knew to be graceful, she raised the back of her hand to sweep her hair away from her face.

  “You left Nantucket to come to the Boston area and you just didn’t think of me,” she said. “God, Andy, don’t you know what an insult that is?”

  “Is it?” Andy asked earnestly. “I didn’t mean for it to be.”

  Nell could feel the computer salesman looking up at them from where he sat, hands poised on the keyboard. She looked down at the man, an older fellow in a brown suit. “Perhaps you can help,” she said icily. “My lover here seems to have more in common with robots than with human beings. Perhaps you could explain to him that people who say they love each other usually want to see each other. He’s been my lover for almost eight months now, and the one day he leaves his precious Nantucket island to come to Boston, he just doesn’t think of seeing me. Don’t you think that’s a little odd?”

  The man grinned. “Well, lady, I wouldn’t forget to come see you, that’s for sure,” he said.

  “Did you hear that, Andy?” Nell said. “Did you hear what he said? He wouldn’t forget to come see me.”

  “Nell,” Andy said, flustered. “You don’t understand. This was strictly business. Work. Important to me.” He leaned forward and tried to put his hands on Nell’s shoulders, but she drew back. “There’s a software program I’ve been designing for months now, and I think this company’s already done it. I wanted to check the competition, don’t you see.”

  The man at the computer keyboard hit a button, and the screen above him went blank. He looked up at Andy. “You’re a turkey, mister,” he said.

  “You’re worse than a turkey,” Nell said to Andy. “You’re—you’re a casual user,” she announced, recalling the computer term in a flash of brilliance.

  Andy looked surprised, then disgruntled. “Hell, Nell,” he said. “Let’s go somewhere private where we can sit down and talk.” He took Nell’s hand and led her to where some wooden benches circled a bed of indoor trees and plants. As they walked, Nell desperately tried to use those few seconds to plan some kind of rational speech, but she was shaking all over, and that seemed to have affected her brain. Andy’s hand on hers felt as it always had when any part of his body touched hers—it felt right, absolutely right. There was something about this man that made her want to wrap herself around him.

  And yet some wild voice in her mind was screaming such a vast number of insulting things about Andy and about what kind of sucker Nell was for loving him that she couldn’t think straight. She could sense that Hannah was following them at a distance; she could sense that other people in the mall were staring at her. She knew that her anger and her fierce determination to control her shaking were making her have the kind of blazing good looks that had often served her well onstage. She was brave now because she was truly furious.

  “Nell,” Andy said, turning to her. “Here, sit down.”

  “I don’t want to sit down,” Nell said, yanking her hand away from him, glaring at him.

  “Well,” Andy said. He shoved his hands into his pants pockets so that his jacket bunched up around his arms a little. He always had such an endearingly unaware charm. “I hate to see you so upset,” he said. “I don’t understand.”

  “Okay,” Nell said. “Let me see if I can make it clear to you. You say you love me. Yet you never come to see me. I always have to make the trip to see you. You’ve told me that you hate leaving Nantucket. I’ve accepted that. Yet here you are—oh shit, Andy!” Nell said
, losing her logical pace. “How can you not see how insulting it is to me that you won’t make the trip to see me, but you will make the trip to see a fucking computer! You should have planned to see me, too. If you didn’t want to come to my house because of your allergies to my animals, you should have called and asked me to meet you here for lunch or dinner. If you were making the trip anyway, you should have booked a room in a hotel so we could spend some time together. You should have—oh God!”

  Andy stood there looking worried and sorry, but most of all, perplexed. At last Nell couldn’t take it anymore. “You are not that dumb!” she yelled, so loud that from behind her Hannah whispered, “Mo-om.”

  Andy blinked. Nell wanted to burst into tears. She wanted to jump on him, kick him in the crotch, scratch his eyes out. She wanted him to take her in his arms and kiss her for the rest of her life. She wanted to burst into tears and to blither and whine, to plead, “Oh, Andy, I love you so much, I want you so much, I’d do anything in the world for you, why can’t you love me the way I love you?”

  But she would not let herself do any of those things. She held herself in control so fiercely that she thought she might explode; she held still for one long moment, thinking: Nell, are you sure about this? You’ll never see him again, Nell. Is that what you want? Don’t be rash, Nell. She stood there in the mall, quaking and glaring at Andy, thinking that she was going to end it now, and she was going to do it with some kind of pride.

  “Well,” Andy said slowly, obviously trying to figure something out. “I can still do all those things, Nell. I mean I can still make a hotel reservation. And I’d like to take you out to dinner. You know how I get, my mind just goes along on one track, but, Nell, I never meant to hurt you, to make you so upset. Look, let’s get out of here and go someplace where we can be alone.”

  Nell shook her head. “Oh, Andy,” she said. “You are such—” She stopped, feeling tears shimmering in her eyes. She had used up all her sassy cleverness with the term casual user and now she was just in despair. She held her hands up in front of her in a hopeless gesture, hopeless of finding the word that would express exactly what Andy was.

  “A dumb fart,” Hannah prompted from behind her, her voice calm.

  Nell turned to look at her daughter. Hannah grinned. Nell grinned back. She turned back to Andy.

  “You are such a dumb fart,” she said. And now she really was triumphant. The tears had vanished. “You’ll never meet another woman who could love you as much as I did, as well as I could have,” she said. “Oh, Andy, you really blew it.”

  Andy reached out to grab her shoulders, but Nell stepped back. “Nell,” he said. “Why are you talking this way? It’s not over for us.”

  “Oh yes, yes it is,” Nell said.

  “Because I came to see computers instead of seeing you? Just because of that? That’s crazy,” Andy protested.

  “No, you’re crazy,” Nell said. “You’re crazy not to have loved me better. You’re crazy to have let me get away.” She knew that exits pulled more punch if they were done unexpectedly, and she knew a good exit line when she said it. So she tossed her head and turned around and took Hannah’s hand. “Come on, honey,” she said, and stalked off, majestic in her determination.

  “Nell,” Andy said. He came a few steps after her. She could feel his presence. “Nell,” he repeated. “Don’t go off like this.”

  Nell did not turn around. If he wants me, he’ll pursue me, she thought. In her mind she envisioned him running after her down the length of the mall. In her mind she heard him say at last, “I don’t want to lose you, Nell—marry me!”

  But that was only in her mind. In reality, she felt the invisible bond between her and Andy stretching as she walked, until it snapped and broke in two.

  “He’s standing back by the computers, Mom,” Hannah said.

  “I know,” Nell said, her head held high.

  “How do you know?” Hannah nagged. “You don’t have eyes in the back of your head.”

  “Sometimes I do,” Nell replied. “Sometimes I really do.”

  She strode down the mall, full of energy, purpose, and determination, a madwoman among all the lazy strolling holiday shoppers. Her mind was wild with words and images. At the last moment, before she came to the door leading out to the icy parking lot, she heard someone running toward her. She could feel the crowds of people parting as someone pushed through to her. There was one last nearly ecstatic moment when Nell felt Andy rushing to her, finally desperate with need, and then Nell heard her son yelling, “Hey, Mom! Wait a minute. Where are you going? How come you didn’t come get me?” And she turned to find that her pursuer had been her son. Andy was nowhere to be seen.

  No one spoke while they ran through the freezing air and crammed themselves into the cold Toyota. They sat, teeth chattering, waiting for the engine to warm the little car. Hannah was in the front seat, buckled in with a safety belt so that she could turn only halfway around to see Jeremy.

  “Mom broke up with Andy,” Hannah said to her brother. “She was wicked good.”

  “Andy? Andy was there? I didn’t see him,” Jeremy protested. “Hey, Mom, why did you break up with Andy?”

  “It’s a long story,” Nell said. “I guess you could say I broke up with him because he cares more for computers than for me.”

  “Boy, is he stupid,” Jeremy said loyally.

  “Mom called him a dumb fart,” Hannah said gleefully.

  “She did?” Jeremy grinned. “Mom, did you really say that right to him?”

  “I did,” Nell said, grinning back. “I really did. I said, ‘Andy, you are a dumb fart.’ ”

  “Wow!” Jeremy said, laughing. “I bet no one’s ever called him that before.”

  Hannah and Jeremy got into one of their contagious laughing fits then, saying “dumb fart” whenever they needed inspiration for a fresh burst of laughter. Nell drove home smiling. Her children were right, she knew: Without them she might have told Andy he was an insensitive egotist or a selfish fool or any number of other things that he had undoubtedly been called by other women. She doubted very much that anyone had called him a dumb fart before. It was such a nice, short, definite, disgusting phrase. Nell was pleased with herself for using it. She was very pleased with herself for breaking up with Andy. She would have hated herself if she had weakened.

  At home, she distributed the new underwear to her children and told them to put it away before playing. They ran off, eager to call friends, start games, watch TV. Nell went into the kitchen and fixed herself a celebratory glass of white wine. She stood very still for a moment, holding the wine in her mouth, then letting it slide down inside her, and she waited for a similar cold tang of grief to join the taste of wine. But there was no grief now. She had no tears. She realized that only when she had felt hope had there been sorrow. Now she had neither. Andy was truly gone from her life, and she felt her life expand with his absence, the way a stage expands with light and sound once the heavy curtain has been raised.

  New Year’s Eve, even the cats were sick. Fred and Medusa were disgusting, slinking around the house with watery mucus streaming out of their eyes, staining their fur. Fred even had laryngitis; when he opened his mouth to meow, he could only squeak. It would have been a funny sight if it weren’t so pathetic and if the children hadn’t been feeling as bad as he did. Hannah and Jeremy were both sick, too. They both had a fever, runny nose, congested head, upset stomach, aching arms and ankles, sore throat, the works. Nell had called the doctor, who had said nothing could be done but to wait it out—it was yet another new flu bug. A very contagious flu bug. Nell was so tired and achy tonight that she was afraid she had caught it, too.

  * * *

  For two days now she had been the soul of patience and sympathy, carrying trays with aspirin and ginger ale and chicken broth to her children, rubbing their backs, coddling and cuddling them. But now she was exhausted, and when they crabbed because the orange liquid medicine she gave them tasted so foul, sh
e heard herself snap, “Shut up, damnit, and take this stuff or I’ll kill you.”

  God, what a nasty-mouthed mean old mother I am, Nell thought, carrying the sticky spoon back down to the kitchen. But she knew instinctively that her bad temper came as a sign of relief—the children were over the worst part. They were sick, but not dangerously sick anymore. They would be tired and cranky for the next few days, but they were going to get well. They were not going to die. And that was really the only thing that mattered.

  Thank God, Nell thought, for her children. They drove her crazy, but they saved her life. When she looked at them, she thought, I have done this much in the world, I have made these children and kept them safe and healthy and taught them to be good, and that is a wonderful thing.

  Someday, Nell thought, these children will leave me. They’ll go off to college, to work, to marry. I’ll be really alone then. I’ll manage—I’ll even enjoy it. I’ll be able to travel, to have more freedom. We’ll learn to live without one another. But for now—for now, thank heavens, they were still little children who had to live with her, who needed her love, and who gave love back so naturally.

  Nell poured herself a huge glass of orange juice and carried it upstairs with a handful of chewable Vitamin C. If she could help it, she was going to stay well. She peeked into the children’s bedrooms—both Hannah and Jeremy had drifted off into sleep already, carried away on waves of the decongestant medicine. It was nine-thirty. Nell left all the doors open so she could hear the children if they called her. At least they were old enough now to call her if they needed her; she no longer had to spend the night on the floor wrapped in a blanket, only half sleeping, trying through the night to monitor the breathing of a sick child.