Sara and Delia were distinctly themselves. Nora would say this, believing it—yet still they remained not-Molly. Sara because she slipped first into the space Molly left, Delia because she so resembled Molly. As if she’d been Molly’s twin. The similarity continued through Delia’s toddler years, less eerily exact: the mouth slightly fuller, the face rounder, the eyes gray-blue and long-lashed and a bit more widely set. And yes, Delia’s exuberance was not unlike Molly’s, but absent the aggression, absent the pinching and petty theft. Delia seemed without guile. For Nora there had been occasional breathless instants—the sped-up sensation of losing and regaining balance—when, from the beach blanket, she would glance up at Delia, close by, sculpting sand with a red plastic shovel and yellow bucket, and instead see Molly. As if years had evaporated, leaving Nora again and always with the beach blanket and her youngest girl, the fleeting nearness of a morning at the beach with Molly, the fleeting glimpse of herself untouched by the impending calamity. Then Nora would stand and walk over to Delia: “What are you building, sweetie?” and Delia would gaze up, clearly now Delia, pleased by Nora’s attention, and pat Nora’s arm, and announce, “This fort!” or “Our house!” And Nora would offer to lug sand or arrange a miniature stone path, until the tasks of construction and design settled her back into the present.
Delia always the more exuberant, Sara more pensive, the two a tight pair. In moments when Nora might be housekeeping or cooking, letting her whirring mind momentarily float while her body sliced apples or sorted laundry, the breeze might stir, or the quiet might accumulate into a question, and Nora would glance up, as if waking, to find Sara steadily watching her. Then Nora would summon herself, step forward into her body, find her voice: she’d offer Sara and Delia apple slices, or toss a sock to Sara and say her name, or join the girls at the table with their crayons.
Sara elicited a different kind of breathlessness in Nora. If both girls were playing on the beach, the present did not collapse into the time before Rome. With Sara there, Delia did not become Molly, but on rare days Nora’s vertigo recurred. The fact of Sara and Delia playing in the sand seemed to be the most fragile of realities, one kept aloft by hypervigilance and counted breaths. Any undetected random force might intervene and sweep them away. Nora remained still, waiting for the atmospheric charge to dissipate. And again someone would speak: Nora herself, or one of the girls, and the moment would flip, the day settling into a benign fair-weather day. Here was a bucket of water to splash; here was a neighbor’s dog; here the stack of shells with which to ornament a castle. A few minutes later Nora might laugh, or make the girls laugh, the world again known. Now and then they would ask about Molly—where was she now? Why not here? Nora found herself scrambling, lamely answering “In heaven” and “I don’t know.” Sara asked if Molly might come back. “No, love,” Nora said, and flatly changed the subject.
The night of Delia’s fifth birthday, it was not the sensation of vertigo she felt, but something just beyond; what seemed to be the stunning relief of vertigo allayed, a surer balance. Because Delia was five. This relief had not arrived on Sara’s fifth birthday—hope, yes, but not balance—only Delia’s, because Delia was the youngest, and yes, because of the resemblance to Molly, the perennially four Molly. And even balance, Nora understood, was provisional, but that night balance nonetheless. She thought of James, and in that moment not the James who had divorced her, the James of legal squabbles and late support payments, but the James who had returned without Molly to the hotel in Rome. It was the Rome James she wanted to find. On such a day—in its way transcendent—the desire alone felt potent enough to summon that James, and by telephone, from the house in Blue Rock.
While Delia and Sara slept and Katy finished her homework, Nora dialed from her bedroom, and he answered.
“It’s me,” she said.
“Nora. What is it?”
“Delia’s birthday.”
“Well, I know,” James said. “She got the little bike, right? Katy put her on the phone with me this afternoon.”
At “bike” she knew that she had called the wrong year, the wrong man. Self-flagellation and a cigarette would soon follow.
“Yes,” Nora said. “She’s five.”
“Nora?”
“She’s five, James. Everybody’s five. That’s all.”
James sighed, perhaps in plain exasperation. Or—too late—spliced with comprehension? Did he think or not-think of Molly? Maybe in fact he could keep the past in place, Nora thought; or maybe steady avoidance had cratered his mind.
“The girls will see you next weekend,” Nora said. “I’m going now.”
Here again the recurring paradox; irrefutable, dramatic evidence proved James—the present-day James—was not the James she remembered or imagined, yet she could still lose track. How could she forget? It seemed a form of stupidity. And now the conversation seemed a rebuke she’d provoked. She left the room to check on the little girls, who were both asleep; downstairs at the kitchen table, Katy drew angles on graph paper. At the sink, Nora lit a cigarette and smoked as she waited for the kettle to boil, and the salt wind and the sounds of the waves swept into the room when she opened the window. On the counter, half a chocolate cake sat beneath a domed glass cover. If she could refocus on the house, the chores, the girls, perhaps the sting and self-abasement would fade.
Katy was quietly watching her now; at least today, Katy had been easygoing, sweet with Delia and Sara. She’d made a fuss over Delia, frosted the cake, read Delia’s new books aloud after dinner. There had been, in fact, no brooding or thudding or outbursts over minutiae. Nora stubbed out her cigarette and brought her tea to the table and offered Katy more cake. It was Katy—as she pushed aside her angles and proofs and reached for a plate and fork, Katy who said, “Mom. Delia’s five. You know?” and cut herself a slice.