They set out, news of the war on the car radio. The bombing had begun; you could hear the rat-tat-tat of gunfire, Baghdad exploding behind the measured voices of reporters describing the city now under siege. Nora felt numb to it, though. She was remembering how she’d felt, years ago, riding home on the Greyhound bus after the weekend at Pete’s house, thinking of Tom, of making love with him for the first time. Thinking that if she could just stay in that moment she wouldn’t miss him so desperately, she wouldn’t think about how long it seemed before school started and they would be together again.
She glanced at him, lost in his own thoughts, and remembered making love with him last night, too – so fiercely and for so long that when it was over they both lay back, exhausted, spent. She had never felt the way she felt then: there and not there in the same intense measure. Her body an instrument with which she felt, finally, she had said to Tom all she had wanted and needed to say. Whatever happened, she would have the memory of that, she told herself. But it didn’t seem anywhere near enough to her.
In the middle of the night, she had awakened and slipped out of bed to e-mail Diane that she was coming – half so she wouldn’t back out, she thought. Tom stirred and reached for her, and she went back to the warm bed. “Whatever happens, you’re not going to disappear on me again,” he whispered, drawing her near. “Right?”
“Okay, then. We can do this.” He yawned, rubbed slow circles on her shoulders, and sleep took her toward the morning.
It had been spring-like in Bloomington when they left, crocuses popping in Tom’s yard. If you looked closely, you could see a slight swelling on the branches of the maple trees getting ready to bud. In another few weeks, they’d be offering up those little green bouquets. North of Grand Rapids, though, there was still snow in the fields, and the sky was heavy and gray, promising more to come. At Manistee, there was the first glimpse of the lake, pewter, with silvered choppy waves. Onekema, Arcadia, Frankfort. Route 22, slow-going in the autumn – tourists gawking at the spectacle of changing leaves – was nearly deserted this afternoon. It hugged the western scoop of Crystal Lake, plunged farther north through deep forest. It passed River Rental, closed up and desolate, the Platte River icy at the edges. Soon, a sign said, “Monarch, eleven miles.”
They passed the turnoff to Nora’s house, drove on into town. It was late afternoon by then and, though the sun would not actually set for another hour or so, the windows in the houses they passed were lamp-lit against the gloom. Diane’s shop, usually brightly lit, was dark; the CLOSED sign on the door. But her car was there, and a slice of light outlined the door to the back room, where Nora knew she waited.
She and Tom sat a moment, the engine still on. They had decided he’d just drop her off at Diane’s shop, then turn around and head south, stop when he got tired – though Nora suspected he’d drive on home.
“You’ve got my cell phone,” he said.
She nodded.
“I’ll get a new one tomorrow and send you the number. Call. Or e-mail. Let me know.”
“I will. I promise.”
He leaned over, kissed her. “You’re doing the right thing,” he said. “You’ll be okay. We will.”
Nora took a deep breath, then opened the door of the truck, flooding the cab with light, and raised her hand to wave. Tom raised his hand, too, held it against hers, palm-to-palm.
She grabbed her bag, got out, and closed the door, casting him in darkness again. She was glad it was an ugly afternoon, glad there was nobody on the street to see her stand and watch the truck make its way up Main Street and disappear around the corner, nobody to watch her walk between the buildings to the back door of the shop.
“You look shell-shocked,” Diane said, drawing her in.
“I am. Listen, I’m really sorry to put you in the middle of this. But I didn’t know what else to do. I didn’t think I could go . . . home.”
“God. Don’t worry about that,” Diane said. “Where’s Tom?”
“He’s gone. I – we – thought anything else would have made things worse. Ha! Like they could get worse,” Nora said, sinking into one of Diane’s wicker chairs.
“Hey, things can always get worse,” Diane said, cheerily – which made Nora laugh, in spite of herself. Exactly, she knew, what Diane had intended.
“So –” Diane settled into the other wicker chair. “Can I boss you around?”
“Please,” Nora said. “Someone should.”
“All right, then.” She sat down in the other chair. “Mo and I are leaving for Florida to see Betty the day after tomorrow –”
“Going to see Betty?” Nora echoed. “Together?”
“Yes,” Diane said. “Can you believe it? Anyway. We’ll be gone a week, and you can house sit for us. That way you can get a feel for the way things are with Charlie and Claire without exactly being there.”
“Where’s Mo with all this?” Nora asked.
“You know Mo.” She smiled. “It’s a step-by-step thing with her. When I got the e-mail this morning, I knew what we needed to do. But I waited to tell her until she got home from the clinic; I knew she’d feel bad being with Charlie, knowing you were on your way back. It would have made her mad at both of us.”
“You mean, madder than she already is, right?” Nora asked.
“Well,” Diane waved the question away. “You said Tom wouldn’t stay, so I told her you’d have dinner with us, stay at our house while we were gone – like we’d really have let you stay in a motel! I also told her you’d let Charlie and Claire know you were here. She wouldn’t have to be the one to tell them. Okay? Nora?”
Nora’s teeth had begun to chatter; she’d grown suddenly cold. “I have to,” she said. “I know. Mo shouldn’t have to do that. But – is it really okay for me to come home with you? Are you sure?”
“You’re coming,” Diane said. “Mo’s fixing dinner right now. She’s expecting us. You can’t avoid her forever.” She reached for the phone and offered it to Nora. “Want to just get it over with? The longer you wait –”
Nora took the phone, punched in the familiar numbers. It rang a few times, then Claire answered. “Honey?” Nora said. “Claire?”
“Mom?” Claire said.
“Yes, I –”
“What?” Diane asked, when Nora didn’t go on.
“She hung up,” Nora said.
“Shit.” Diane frowned. “Shit,” she said again. “Well, it’s no surprise. Call back. She probably won’t answer and you can leave a message. It’s all you can do.”
Nora dialed the number again, half afraid to hear her own voice on the answering machine. But Claire had changed the message, which upset her even more.
“Hi, you’ve reached the Quillens. Please leave a message after the beep.”
“Claire, I’m –” She stopped herself before saying “home.” “I’m at Diane’s shop. I just got here, nobody but Diane knew that I was coming and I wanted you to know –”
Claire was listening, she knew. Maybe Charlie, too. Nora waited, half because she didn’t know what to say next, half hoping one of them would pick up the phone and talk to her.
“Well, like I said, I’m here,” went on, into the silence. “I’d just like for us to talk, if we can. I’ll be –”
When Diane saw that she was unable go on, she took the phone. “Claire, it’s Diane,” she said. “We’re going to my house now. That’s where we’ll be. Claire? Would you pick up?” She waited a moment, but when Claire did not respond she set the phone back into the cradle.
She looked at Nora, shrugged. “Okay,” she said. “Well, they know.”
Nora woke at dawn the next morning to the sound of the waves crashing onto the shore and went to the window of the guest room she had helped Diane decorate last summer. A lone figure walked at the edge of the water, stopping now and then to pick up a stone and turn it over in her hand. Mary Matson, Nora saw. Mary walked every morning, as she once had, and occasionally they’d pass and exchange pleasantries, Mary going one way, Nora the other. What would Mary say if they met this morning, she wondered? Would she speak at all? Would anyone in town speak to her? They had taken her in years ago because Jo and Charlie loved her; but it was a small town, after all, their town. Leaving Charlie, she’d betrayed them all.
She retreated from the window and lay back on the bed, listening to the rise and fall of Mo and Diane’s voices as they got up and began the day. Soon, there was the smell of coffee. The clink of dishware being set on the table. Diane knocked lightly on her door. “You’re up, right? Come have breakfast.”
Nora wrapped herself in the robe Diane had left on the bathroom hook for her and padded out to the kitchen in her stocking feet. Mo was dressed in jeans and a big white fisherman’s sweater, briskly efficient, fully awake; Diane was in blue flannel pajamas with pink cows on them, still disheveled, yawning.
She rolled her eyes. “One of the many compromises we’ve made to keep our love alive,” she said, as Mo spooned oatmeal into the three bowls she’d set on the table. “We always start the day with a good breakfast – as opposed to, say, luxuriating in bed till the last possible moment and grabbing a Pop Tart on our way out the door.
“We used to have bacon and eggs,” she went on, dreamily. “Waffles. Cinnamon rolls. Then we turned fifty and she became a food Nazi. Like, we’ll live forever if we eat oatmeal. Like we’d want to live forever, eating oatmeal. I hate fucking oatmeal.”
“Quiet,” Mo said again, spooning on strawberries, but she was smiling.
Nora didn’t like oatmeal much herself, but she ate it – and gratefully, because Mo had made and offered it; because, despite a tense reunion the night before and more than a few anxious moments talking about what the next days might bring, Mo had seemed genuinely glad to see her. She’d been shocked at Charlie’s stubborn refusal to talk to Nora at all since she’d left, Diane had confided, driving to the house the night before – not even about Claire. Upset at his willingness to allow Claire to stay holed up with him at the farmhouse, when she ought to be at school – or, at the very least, out now and then with people her own age.
“She’ll never tell you that,” Diane said. “You know Mo. She’s loyal as a dog. But –”
“I hate it that I spoiled something between them,” Nora said. “They’ve been friends so long. It’s been so important to both of them.”
“It doesn’t hurt Mo to see things the way they really are,” Diane said. “It’s good for her, good for both of us. If it makes you feel any better, your getting into such a mess seems to have jolted Mo every which way – and, in my view, all for the good. I mean, the two of us going to see Betty? Who’d have thought! Not that I’m exactly looking forward to it. It’s warm there and it’s still freezing cold here; that’s what I keep telling myself.”
Still, Nora felt bad about it. After they’d eaten, she watched Mo make her lunch and put it in the backpack she carried to the clinic every day. “What will you do?” she asked. “I mean, when you see Charlie this morning?”
“What I do every day,” she said, putting on her jacket. “Give him a hug and say, ‘Okay, let’s get to it.’ ” She shrugged. “If he wants to say anything about the fact that you’re here, he’ll say it. If he doesn’t, he won’t. I never rush Charlie, you know? I learned that a long time ago. I just wait.”
“Is he okay?” Nora asked – the question she’d been afraid to ask the night before.
“No,” Monique said, simply. “But he wasn’t before, was he? I just didn’t realize it.” She hefted her backpack onto her shoulder before Nora could say anymore, brushed Diane’s cheek with a kiss and left.
“Here.” Diane thrust a sheaf of photographs toward her. “Look at Henry. You can’t possibly be unhappy looking at Henry. He looks a little like a lizard, don’t you think? A really handsome lizard. And extremely intelligent.”
“He’s beautiful,” Nora said.
“Yes, he is,” Diane said. “And without a single one of Bob’s bad genes. I’m absolutely sure of it. Look at him! Don’t you think Grace-the-misnamed has been wiped totally clear of the genetic tableau?”
“Clearly gone,” Nora said. “No trace whatsoever.”
Diane poured a third cup of coffee. “Want to know the really funny thing? Mo’s been sending Betty pictures of Henry and she’s absolutely thrilled about him. She actually knit him a little blanket. Betty! Can you believe it? The grandchild she never had.” She smiled, fully awake now. “We never know what’s going to happen, do we? Really, in fifty-five years that’s all I’ve been able to figure out at all.”
“I wish Jo could –”
“I know,” Diane said. “But I’ll tell you, Nora, she’s just not there. Mo and I go over a couple of times a week to check in on her, but she has no idea who we are. She seems comfortable, she doesn’t seem afraid – which is, I guess, the best you can hope for. But, God.”
“Does Charlie go?”
Diane shook her head. “Not much. Weirdly, I think he’s mad at her. You know, I’ve thought a lot about what he told you about Vietnam – seeing the guy get thrown out of the helicopter, doing nothing. Was there any single thing Jo thought was more important than being good? Could she have believed for ten seconds that Charlie ever did anything really wrong? Ever? No way! If you want a little junior psychology here, I don’t think he did anything so awful in Vietnam, I think it was what he didn’t do that got him all screwed up – but either way he never could have talked about it with Jo. He’d never have risked disappointing her. So she went on assuming he was perfect, and he soldiered on, trying to be perfect, which was what he thought she needed him to be.” Diane sipped her coffee, thoughtfully. “Maybe she did need that. Maybe she couldn’t have dealt with whatever he might have told her about what happened there. I don’t know. And I don’t mean to overanalyze. Or criticize Jo. It’s just, sometimes when things change, what you always thought was true . . . shifts.
“I just mean to say, I guess it makes sense he’d be angry. Jo always protected him, ran interference for him, made things right. Now she’s there, but not there. She can’t help him. He doesn’t know what to do.”
“Do you think he’d want me back,” Nora asked. “If I’d come?”
“Only if you could come back and both of you act as if nothing had happened – and, to be honest, in my most selfish mode that’s exactly what I want. We could all sit out in the gazebo in the summer and drink wine and not talk about Iraq – or anything else that matters. We could dote on Claire, and Carah and Henry when they visit. You know, just drift into old age and decrepitness together. I missed you when you were gone. I mean, I love Mo – but you’re my best friend. You always get my jokes, you always think I’m funny. You gossip. Mo never gossips! Oh, shit.” She wiped away tears. “I don’t mean to lay a guilt trip on you. And it’s not like you won’t still be my best friend, whatever you do. Right? I mean, that’s a given.”
“It’s a given,” Nora said. “Another given is that if Jo were still here, still herself, none of this would have happened in the first place. I never, ever could have brought myself to do anything I knew would hurt her or, worse, make her think less of me. I’d never have started up anything with Tom, never in a million years considered going off with him, which probably tells you more than anything how not right Charlie and I were all along. How not right I was.
“So I’ve got to get right. Whatever that turns out to be – or mean.”
“Well, then,” Diane said, rising. “I will change from my cow pajamas into something more serious and comb my hair, so that I can be the best possible help to you.”