Nora stayed in her chair on the porch as the other women dispersed, held in place by an anxiety that pressed against her chest like an oversize hand. How was all of this supposed to be working, exactly? Had they really come all this way just to bicker and argue with one another? Or was it necessary, like brushing cobwebs out of an attic before settling in to open the boxes? She knew she’d be annoyed—devastated, really—if she went back to Turning Winds after a weekend in which they’d all sat around exchanging banal pleasantries and acting their politest selves. The bickering was hard to listen to, harder to still to be a part of. But it also meant they were being honest. Which brought her back around to herself. Was she really going to keep up the fake boyfriend story? There was bound to be more talk about everyone’s significant others as the weekend progressed. Could she really keep it going? Did she want to? If she had to come clean to anyone without worrying about judgment, it was these women. None of them would care that she was single. So why did she?
She got up from her chair and began walking around the room. They hadn’t even laid eyes on her yet, but what would she do if Grace’s baby started in on some inconsolable crying jag? They’d only been here a few hours, and it was still early. Nora knew firsthand that there was something about the lateness of the day that seemed to throw kids off balance. She’d seen babies as young as two weeks old have meltdowns in the library; one cried so loudly and for so long that Nora had to leave the building altogether, sitting on a side bench across the street until the helpless sound faded in her ears. It was strange how that particular time of day seemed to unleash some kind of weird energy over kids. Trudy called it the “witching hour.” She said her own children had been the same way when they were little, falling apart at the seams as soon as the sun started to set. It was almost three o’clock now, which meant that they had a good two or three hours until dusk rolled in, but Nora wasn’t about to take any chances. She had to get ready. She had to be prepared.
Behind her, Ozzie stalked across the yard as she talked on the phone. Her voice rose and fell as the conversation dragged on; Nora could make out snippets of it through the screen door—words like “until” and “absolutely.” Suddenly Ozzie stopped and looked straight up into the sky. Nora could see the tips of her fingers turning white as she clenched the cell phone against her ear.
“Please don’t make me feel like I have to ask your permission here, okay, Gary? I’m thirty-two years old, not a kid.” She paused, shading her eyes with her free hand, as if studying something overhead. “I already told you. I’m planning on coming back tomorrow. I’m just putting it out there, in case we need an extra day or two. That’s all. Yes. Yes. I told you that, yes.”
Nora walked into the living room. Eavesdropping made her uneasy. And for some reason, the voice Ozzie was using now—the pleading one—didn’t sound like her at all. She thought about what Ozzie had said before, that her husband called her Chubbers since she’d put on weight. She knew there were all kinds of fond little nicknames that couples shared between themselves, but that one didn’t seem cute. In fact, it sounded rude to her.
She made her way down the hall, pausing outside the last door where Henry had said the bathroom was. Monica was inside, leaning toward the mirror, plucking her eyebrows with a pair of tweezers in one hand and holding her iPhone in the other. The interlocking Cs on the back of it had small jewels at the tip of each one. “Wait, who?” She arched her eyebrows and tilted her chin as she regarded her profile in the mirror. “What’d he say?” Her voice dropped an octave as she stood up straight. The tweezers fell to the floor. “Did he say why?” She listened for a moment, her back rigid, the fingers of her other hand creeping around to clutch the front of the phone. “No, I have no idea.” She glanced in the mirror, catching Nora’s gaze, and reached out with one hand to shut the door.
Nora moved quickly back down the hall, embarrassed at having been seen. She passed Henry and Grace’s room; just inside the door, which was partially ajar, they were embracing. She pulled on her ear and headed for the front door. The center of her chest ached, and a roaring sounded in her ears. But she was the one, she reminded herself, who had ended both of her relationships in the past few years, who said no every time a man had asked her out since. There hadn’t been many offers—maybe three or four—but she’d always said the same thing. No thanks. Not up for it. And she hadn’t been, not really. If there was someone who had been interested in just keeping things platonic, she might have responded differently. But things never changed, no matter who it was. Eventually, after enough time had passed, they always expected her to sleep with them. It was just the way it was, the natural course of events. Tom had held out the longest—almost two months, and she’d given in to Sinclair after one because she was so physically attracted to him—but the suffocating feeling she’d felt with both, the stifling sensation that overwhelmed her as soon as their bodies began to rise and then arch over hers, was always the same.
She would shut her eyes and count to ten, force herself to think of fields of yellow tulips or of walking down the street with Alice Walker, but inevitably as they began to push her legs apart and slide their way inside her, the feeling would overpower her until everything inside her head had disappeared into a roaring sea of white noise. Quietquietquietandthenitwillbeover. Until they finished, it was all she could do not to scream at the top of her lungs. She never did, of course, clenching her fists and biting the inside of her cheeks, but afterward she would excuse herself and retreat into the bathroom, where she would lock the door and crawl under the sink, holding her knees to her chest and pressing her forehead against the silver drainpipes until the panic subsided.
Theo had wanted it too, of course, something that Nora held against him for a while until she reminded herself that he was a normal seventeen-year-old boy and not Daddy Ray. He loved her too, which would make it okay, wouldn’t it?
Maybe if he hadn’t tried so hard, she thought later, if it had just happened quickly, naturally, a sensible progression instead of one long, drawn-out plan involving candles and new sheets, even a special Springsteen soundtrack he’d put together for the first time, maybe then it would have been better. She might not have felt so hopeful. Except that deep down, she knew this was a lie, too. Nothing anyone could have done would have made it better.
Theo had had the house to himself that weekend since his parents and younger brothers were away visiting relatives. There was a track meet the next morning that he couldn’t miss; he was running the anchor leg in the 400-meter relay to try to qualify for districts, and he had to get to bed early. Still he’d made a special dinner for the two of them—hamburgers, baked potatoes with sour cream, and a salad. He’d even bought a peach pie for dessert, one of Nora’s favorites, and served it up to her with a big scoop of vanilla ice cream on top. They’d eaten slowly, nervously, and then after they put the dishes in the sink, he led her up to his room.
Nora could smell the faint scent of pine and musk against his sheets and she wondered if he had sprayed them with cologne. There were white votive candles on top of his dresser, and she could see his hands trembling as he lit them. She was nervous too, but it hadn’t occurred to her that he would be. Tunnel of Love played faintly in the background, the soft pulse of it thrumming between them. She kissed him hard as he took her in his arms, hoping he didn’t notice the tremor in her lips, and helped him pull off his shirt. Shadows from the candles danced across his bare chest and the same familiar longing she felt when he held her close stirred again.
They lay naked for a long time, pressed together, kissing. She was acutely aware of the slenderness of his arms wrapped around her back, how the faint hair on his legs tickled against hers, and of his hardness against her stomach. When the time came, she closed her eyes, but for some reason, she hadn’t thought it would hurt as much as it had with Daddy Ray, and the pain, combined with a nearly suffocating apprehension at this point, triggered other dark pictures inside her head. She squeezed her eyes and willed them to leave, but they only got worse, growing more and more vivid as Theo began to move in and out of her, until by the time he gasped and shuddered, she was weeping silently. He’d rolled off her, trying to pull her hands away from her face so that she could tell him what was wrong, but she could not look at him. Despite his continued protests, she begged him to take her home, and after a while he did. They’d tried twice more, but each time, it ended similarly. After the third time, they’d broken up. It had been a mutual decision, initiated by Theo, who seemed both horrified and helpless by Nora’s reaction to him. They’d only spoken once afterward, and when he’d left for college, she’d never seen him again.
Yes, it was her fault she was thirty-two and alone. Her choice. And yet right now, the thought of calling Trudy and Marion—who were the only people in the entire world who knew of her absence—made her want to scream. Or kick something.
Instead, she took her cell phone out of her purse and dialed the library.
“Well, hello there!” Trudy said. “How’s it going? And why in the world are you calling me so soon?”
Nora blushed. “Oh, I just wanted to let you know I made it okay. And to see how Alice Walker’s doing.”
“Oh, she’s fine. Actually, she’s more than fine. Marion is coming over tonight with three T-bone steaks. Two for us, one for Alice Walker. She’s never going to want to leave me, you know.”
Nora felt a pang of something inside her chest. “Tell her I miss her, will you? And tell her the moon is going to be a waxing gibbous tonight. It’s one of her favorites.”
“A waxing what?” Trudy repeated.
“Just take her outside when it gets dark. Out in the backyard or something, okay? And point at the moon so she can look at it. It’ll be almost full. She likes to stare at it for a while.”
“Done.” Trudy’s voice was soft. Nora wondered if the older woman thought she was crazy. Or maybe just weird. Did it matter?
“So how’s the friend?” Trudy asked. “You all reconnecting?”
“Yeah. There’s three of them, actually.”
“Three of them?” Trudy repeated. “All from high school?”
“Yep.”
“How come you never mentioned any of them before?”
“I don’t know.” Nora let herself out the front door and sat down on the brick steps next to one of the potted chrysanthemums. “I guess it just never came up.”
The chrysanthemum plant was enormous, like a gigantic cloud, but up close, Nora could see the individual blossoms, small and tight, with pale yellow centers. She ran her fingertips along the surface of one, cradling the tip of it. She had never told Trudy or Marion about Turning Winds, or about any of the girls she’d met there. It wasn’t important—or relevant—to anything.
“They’re . . . okay people, though, right?” Trudy asked. “You’ll be in good hands? No nuts in the bunch?”
Nora smiled. “We’re all a little nuts, I think. In the same kinds of ways, though. Sort of like you and Marion.”
“Okay,” Trudy said. “Just making sure.”
“Okay, then.” She did not want to hang up for some reason, did not want to lose the connection just yet. “You know, I’m the only . . .” She stopped mid-sentence, biting down hard on the tip of her tongue. What was she doing?
“Yeah?” Trudy asked. “The only what?”
Nora cleared her throat. She looked up as a car drove by, some kind of blue station wagon with wide windows and rusty wheels. The driver, who didn’t look much older than Nora, kept alternating glances between the road and the keypad on her phone. In the backseat, a young girl was reading a book. Her head was pressed up against the window, and she held the book out in front of her, as if to get the best light from outside.
“Nora?”
She blinked. “I’m the only single one,” she said in a rush. “Everyone else is either married or in some kind of long-term thing. Which isn’t the end of the world or anything. I don’t even know why I’m saying this. I guess it just makes me feel . . .” She stopped talking again, leaning over the front of her knees and tracing an invisible line on the step beneath her. “God, I don’t know.” She closed her eyes. The silence on the other end was unbearable. Mortifying.
“It makes you feel . . .” Trudy encouraged. Her voice was soft. Almost gentle.
“Like a failure.” Nora sat back up. “Which is stupid, of course. There isn’t anything wrong with being single at my age. Or any age. I guess just being the only one . . .”
“All right now, you listen to me,” Trudy said. “There’s a reason you’re not attached to someone yet, and that reason is no one’s business but yours. I know I fret and worry about the whole situation, too, but the truth is, it’s none of my business either. And it certainly doesn’t mean you’ve failed at anything. My God, how many idiots are locked in some kind of sad, pitiful relationship just so they can say they’re in one? Now that’s failing, in my opinion. You relax and enjoy yourself, all right? The last thing you need to do right now is to start fretting about the fact that you don’t have some man hanging off your arm. God Almighty.”
Nora smiled, despite herself. She could always count on Trudy to set things straight. Even when she hadn’t asked her to. And even if she insulted her in the process.
“You have yourself a good time, you hear?” Trudy was on a roll now. “Have some real fun! Let yourself loose! Spend some of that goddamned money you work so hard for. I want to hear all about it when you get back!”
Nora plucked one of the tiny flowers off the stem. It looked so fragile apart from the rest, so solitary and unsure. She put it back among the others, where it stuck out at an awkward angle. “I’ll try,” she said. “Thanks, Trudy.”