If it had been her own father, her beloved late father, appearing across the street, Nora too would have run: for her, too, there would have been nothing but his face, his wave. Imagine making the leap toward him, recognizing him but not the objects around him, apprehending the man but not the moving traffic. Only in your mind is there clear space between you and your father; only the mind can make a truck vanish. She did not mention this to James. Yet had she told Lydia this, Lydia would have nodded—yes, love, minds, trucks. Just as, for hazy liminal moments, flying dreams can leave us verging on ascent. But Nora had not called Lydia, or answered Lydia’s phone messages; nor had she sent Lydia the engraved memorial card for Molly (unsent cards waited stacked in a box, death repeated in tasteful script). Even when she’d settled Theo and Katy into school routines, she did not write to Lydia. Because after Rome you do not get other doorways. Because another Nora might exist—this seemed clear now—only if the children were safe; if Molly still existed, if Theo and Katy had lost nothing. It did not surprise her that both Lydia and Molly showed up in dreams, sometimes together, or that they crossed into dreams about Nora’s mother. It seemed that they might all occupy the same unreachable place.
Of course in waking life, the actual Lydia could appear. One October afternoon, she arrived, her presence made palpable by the downshifting of a motor outside the house, a blue VW, quick steps up the stairs. A sunny day, Theo and Katy still at school. Through the kitchen window, Nora saw Lydia’s hair falling loose over a dark suede jacket, then a sheaf of yellow chrysanthemums. She did not want to open the door. She waited, but Lydia was knocking, Lydia had seen her.
“Nora.”
It seemed the light was too bright, dizzying. She opened the door to wind and Lydia, Lydia rushing forward as Nora backed away.
“Nora?”
An odd heat flooded Nora: she propped herself with the curved back of a wooden chair.
Lydia stopped. She slid the sheaf of flowers across the table, took the chair closest to the door. “Will you talk to me?” An herbal scent, the familiar Lydia. “I’m so sorry.”
Nora shook her head, refusing what, exactly? In May, they had talked in a familiar kitchen. Here was another familiar kitchen. Two still points, it seemed, over the chasm of months, ocean, Rome. One might gesture at the chasm; one might peer down, identify shapes.
“Nora. Come on.”
Between them, the table, the chrysanthemums, the muted wind, which seemed to blow pointillist light through the windows and plain kitchen air, onto the flowers, the bowl of apples. She wavered. Perhaps the blowing light might tip her over. Imagine an armful of grass falling onto the table. Imagine it falling to the floor. Lydia repeated her name. Nora had been looking for oranges; she had been distracted. In Rome there had been no Lydia; there, Lydia had been absent. But if oranges were elements of distraction, Lydia was a deeper element. A layer upon which the oranges might float.
And now Lydia watched Nora from the far side of the table, the Lydia who’d found her way to Cambridge with her two girls intact. If one’s kids were intact, one might move. One might then be Lydia; one might accompany Lydia, or visit her.
“Theo and Katy are in school,” Nora said. “Adjusting.”
“Of course,” Lydia said.
It was difficult to suspend certain knowledge. Lydia too, had taken care of Molly, and of Katy and Theo. Loved them. At least, in the Blue Rock kitchen Lydia did not weep or assault Nora with her own grief. Offered no false comforts: chrysanthemums were only themselves. Nora had been distracted, and was now more so. She had Theo; she had Katy. Certain desires could lead to ruin, though how to identify which ones? You could not say ruin began with oranges, only that oranges were present. What was her desire for Lydia? Let’s sit. She had said that in Rome. A flimsy command, hardly words at all. There had been hand-holding, hand-waving. Why recount any of it? You had to accept the ruin: here, this is yours. On the far side of ruin, Lydia wore a fringed jacket. She belonged there. Nora did not.
“I don’t know how to do this,” Nora said. She seemed to be speaking underwater; or perhaps the light had thickened. “Talking,” she said.
“Do you want tea?” Lydia said. “What do you need?”
The kettle stood in the sink; Nora had been filling the kettle. “Oh,” Nora said. Could she drink tea? This was something she did. It seemed irrelevant.
“I’ll rest,” Nora said. “Maybe I’ll just rest.” She heard herself tell Lydia, “Today’s not the best day.”
A space Nora had once associated with Molly remained as an empty quadrant of air, or a kind of silence housing all things Molly or attached to Molly’s death, and therefore ever-deepening. Distraction, yes: regularly, the day’s anchors would slip, Nora would slip with them into that space, and then rediscover her kitchen minutes later. As if she were driving a long distance and, coming upon a tollbooth, realized she’d made no notice of the last fifty miles. What had happened in those miles? There must have been road signs, exits. On the radio a broadcast of some kind. Or, in the kitchen, Katy or Theo, asking a question, or handing her a plate, and the dishwasher now emptied.
So, the territory took shape: solid ground would accumulate after Molly, but that blank air would remain, and Nora would continue to disappear into it and reappear in a different moment. Italy, when it surfaced, was always overlit, the piazzas swimming. Time please for lunch. The hotel. Time to return to the hotel with the family, with Molly, as they had for days without thought. Perhaps this was how they’d gone wrong: delaying lunch.
And James. With the routines of the office, he could skate over the accumulating weekdays. But the grief would open up in him at night: his bad nights seemed all the same repeating night. Once or twice a week, in the early hours, Nora would find him struggling in sleep, overwrought, his breathing labored, his face damp. “What?” He’d be shaking his hands, flapping them around. “Jimmy,” she’d say. His hands. “Jimmy,” she’d repeat. “Bad dream.”
He’d become alert then; for him, the bedroom would define itself as bedroom, Nora as Nora, his dream already becoming a dark cumulous layering pushed into the distance, and his heart racing. And his hands? He’d curl and flex his fingers.
She might be stroking his face. Some nights she’d give him glasses of water. Some nights they’d make love, and his panic would melt into that.