eight
Bloomfield Hills, April 1963
“It looks like the artist found a garbage can, glued its contents to a board, and used a dead cat to smudge some paint on it. I could have made this—if I were a lunatic.”
Nora let the mixed media painting in her hands drop a little and felt her ire rise.
“What did you pay for this monstrosity?” her father asked.
“It was very reasonable.”
“If it were anything other than free, it couldn’t be that.”
Nora let out an exasperated sigh. “You told me to choose things that were less pedestrian, more eye-catching. I was trying to follow your advice. Anyway, I like it.” She looked around at the bare walls of her new apartment. “Though I’m still not sure where to put it.”
“How about the dumpster out back? Send it back where it came from. I cannot believe you would use the money I gave you for investing on this junk.”
Nora would not tell her father that she had spent most of that money on a camera for a stranger, whom he apparently despised, and so had less than she’d hoped to spend on an actual piece of art.
“What kind of a gallery would display something like that?” he continued.
“It was at the Detroit Artists Market. They just opened a special exhibit of Cass Corridor artists. It’s very avant-garde. Very cutting edge.”
Daniel Balsam shook his head. “I don’t know where I went wrong with you.”
The phrase had been uttered so many times since she’d turned thirteen, she had begun to take it as a compliment.
“Anyway, get your clubs. We’ll be late for our tee time.”
Nora sighed and thought that perhaps she could enjoy golf if she played with anyone other than her father.
“Stop choking the club, Nora. It’s not a baseball bat.”
“Your feet should be farther apart.”
“You’re slicing, Nora.”
“Too much power. Look how close you are to the hole. Lightly, lightly.”
She endured it all in silence as it was the only time they spent together without her mother. Nora preferred her father’s disapproval of her taste in art or her backswing to her mother’s brand of criticism, which tended toward the very personal.
Just two weeks earlier, as they shopped for a new Easter dress, Mallory had frowned at her daughter’s hips in the mirror and declared, “I’m sorry, honey, but you just can’t wear sheath dresses. You’ll have to get the yellow one with the full skirt even if it does make you look washed-out.” Nora had wanted to sew her own Easter dress that year, but a heavy schedule of volunteering and social calls made it difficult to find the time, so it hung unfinished in her closet.
“Your mother wants you to come back to the house with me when we’re done here,” Daniel said as they left for the golf course. “Something about some charity event or other.”
“I have plans with Diane tonight.”
“It will just take a moment.”
It wouldn’t, and they both knew it.
Nora finished their eighteen holes two under par and slid her putter back into her bag. Her father loaded the bags on the cart, and they headed for the clubhouse.
“Nice job out there today,” Daniel said.
“Thanks.” Nora looked out at the lush green grass and smiled.
“Hey!” her father shouted. “Ray!” He lifted a hand in greeting to his favorite groundskeeper and slowed the cart to a stop.
“Mr. Balsam, Miss Balsam,” Ray said as he tipped his hat to reveal a head of tightly curled black hair that had just a little more gray in it than last year. “Good to see you both out here this fine afternoon.”
“Been waiting for weather like this,” Daniel said as he shook Ray’s weathered hand.
“You and me both, sir.” Ray gave Nora a nod. “Glad to see you survived the winter, miss.”
Nora smiled. “Barely. I thought I might go mad in February.”
“Mm-hmm. We’re all a little mad in February.” Ray laughed.
“I thought you were supposed to be managing this year, and here you are out raking the sand and trimming the bushes,” Daniel said.
Ray glanced around. “Boss just don’t think a Negro can do the job, I guess.”
Daniel scowled. “I’ve half a mind to write a letter.”
Ray put up his hand. “Don’t go doing that. I like my job and I’d like to keep it. I’ll see you two again soon, right, Miss Balsam?”
“Probably next week.”
“Excellent. You both have a good evening now.”
Ray went back to his duties and Daniel drove on, frowning the entire way.
“What’s the matter?” Nora asked.
“Ray’s been here fifteen years. He should be a manager by now.”
Nora tried to reconcile the egalitarian before her with the angry man in the photo. “You think he could be a manager?”
“Of course! If a man has the experience, the color of his skin shouldn’t matter.”
Nora scoffed at his hypocrisy.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“Don’t be such an elitist, Nora. It’s unbecoming.”
Nora bit her tongue all the way to her parents’ house. The garage was empty when she and her father pulled in.
“Where’s the Corvette?”
“Your mother has it.”
“I thought you said she needed to ask me something.”
“She’ll be home soon.”
Nora rolled her eyes and trudged into the kitchen.
“Hello, Miss Nora. Good to see you. How did you do your first time out this season?” Wanda pulled a clean glass from the cupboard and began running the cold water before Nora even had time to ask for a drink.
“Two under par.”
Wanda flashed a grin. “Nice job, girl.” She set the water down in front of Nora and wiped her hands on her apron. “Having roast tonight.”
“That seems pretty elaborate for just Mom and Dad.”
“That’s what your mother wanted. She’s expecting guests.” Wanda pulled open a drawer and counted out four forks, four knives, and four spoons. “I assume you’re one of them?”
“I have plans tonight.”
Wanda laughed. “Your mama got plans too.”
She rarely slipped into such informal speech anymore—and never in the presence of Mallory Balsam. As a child Nora had been fascinated by the maid’s two personas.
“Why do you talk like that?” she’d asked when she was five years old.
“Like what?”
“All funny like that. Like you don’t know how to talk.”
Wanda laughed. “Honey, I speak two languages.”
“You do?”
“Yes, I do.” She leaned down to Nora’s height and whispered conspiratorially, “Sometimes I forget where I am and I use the wrong one. What you just heard there was my home language.”
Little Nora chewed on this a moment. “Where do you live?”
“I live in Detroit.”
“Don’t they speak English there?”
“Sure do. And here in Bloomfield Hills they speak Snobbish.”
Wanda had laughed at her own joke, thinking perhaps that Nora was too little to understand it or repeat it. And she was. But later in life that conversation resurfaced in Nora’s memory and she did understand. She lived in a city divided. There was us. And there was them.
“Do you need help with anything?” Nora asked as Wanda arranged the silverware on the table.
“You can take these flowers into the kitchen and cut off the dead ones if you want.”
Nora retrieved the vase from the center of the dining room table and set it on the kitchen counter. She opened and closed three drawers before finding the scissors.
“You’ve rearranged everything.”
“Your mother thought it made more sense this way.”
“But you’re the one who uses it.”
Wanda muttered something Nora couldn’t quite make out. The sound of a door opening put an end to Wanda’s commentary, whatever it was. Mallory Balsam’s arrival in the kitchen was like a wasp visiting a picnic. Maybe if they just kept still, she would get bored and go away.
“Evening, Mrs. Balsam.”
Mallory’s answer to this greeting was a heavy sigh. She plunked her purse onto the counter and tossed a set of keys next to it. “Wanda, I wonder if you would be a dear and see if you can get the box out of Mr. Balsam’s car. The shop boy somehow got it in there, but I can’t get the infernal thing out now. I don’t know why he couldn’t have gotten an Impala.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Wanda disappeared into the garage.
Mallory patted her hair and looked at her daughter with disapproval. “Nora, what are you doing?”
“I’m just freshening up the centerpiece.”
Mallory waved her away. “Wanda can do that.”
Nora continued to trim browned petals and leaves from the arrangement.
“Oh, never mind,” Mallory said, pinching the bridge of her nose with two perfectly manicured fingers. “I can’t argue with you right now. I’ve had a trial of a day. Where is your father?”
“He went up to shower and change.”
Mallory took hold of her daughter’s shoulders and spun her around. “You’re not wearing that to dinner, are you?”
Nora looked down at her cropped pants and golf shirt. “I hadn’t planned on it, no. Diane and I are going out tonight, but Dad said you had to ask me something about a charity event.”
Mallory waved her hand. “We can talk about that later. Why didn’t you bring other clothes?”
Nora went back to the centerpiece and lopped off the head of a dying rose. “I didn’t even know I’d be coming here today.”
Mallory’s nails drummed on the counter. “I guess there may be something suitable left in your closet you could wear.”
Nora closed her eyes and turned her face to the ceiling, bracing herself for what was coming. “For what?”
“For dinner, of course.”
A buzzer sounded. Nora walked over to the stove and turned it off, then opened the door to the garage. “Wanda? The buzzer went off! What should we do?”
No answer. Nora walked back into the kitchen, but Mallory guided her out the other way.
“Go on up to your room and see if you can find something to wear. And do something with your hair.”
“But—”
“Diane will understand. I need you here tonight. Now go.”
Nora headed for the stairs. On her way up she met Wanda coming down. “A buzzer went off.”
In her old bedroom, a few forgotten dresses hung limply in the dark corners of the closet. Nora flipped through them and considered the four places Wanda had been setting at the table. A few minutes later, her hair brushed but not particularly becoming, Nora walked down the stairs in a too-formal green taffeta dress just as the doorbell was ringing. Now she wouldn’t even have time to call Diane to apologize for standing her up. Balsam house rules were unbending when it came to entertaining, and the primary one was that you never leave your guest. When Nora opened the door, she was met with a tall, handsome, undoubtedly eligible young man, and everything became clear.
“You must be Nora,” the man said, his eyes roaming her body. “I’m Michael.”
The next two hours traveled the spectrum of boring to embarrassing, as Mallory Balsam attempted to sell Nora to a potential husband and Daniel Balsam tried to determine how much of his great-uncle’s fortune Michael Kresge might have at his disposal.
When the roast and potatoes and pie and coffee were all consumed and a lull developed in the conversation, Nora jumped in. “Mother, I need to get up early tomorrow. Can you take me home now?”
“I can take you,” Michael offered.
“Lovely.” Mallory beamed before Nora could utter a word. “That’s so kind of you, Michael.”
The drive was made in awkward silence, and Nora wondered if Michael realized the plans her mother had for him. When he stopped in front of Nora’s apartment, she put her hand on the car door and said a quick but polite thank-you.
“That’s it?” Michael said.
“What do you mean?”
“Thank you, good night, and then you’re gone? No time for a little good-night kiss?”
“I hardly know you.”
He leaned closer. “How about you get to know me then?”
Before Nora knew what was happening, he’d grabbed the back of her neck and captured her lips with his. She pushed on his chest until he released her.
“Come on!” he intoned with a playful leer.
Nora slipped out of his grasp, escaped to the sidewalk, and slammed the door shut. Her rejected chauffeur sped off in anger, tearing the hem of her taffeta dress where it had caught in the door. Nora stomped up the steps to her apartment, ready to throw the dress in the garbage can the moment she got inside. Then she remembered that her golf clubs were in Michael Kresge’s trunk. She stifled a scream and pounded on her door in frustration. The phone rang inside.
Nora scrambled for her keys and made it to the phone on the fourth ring, expecting to hear Diane’s irritated voice wondering where she’d been and what was so important that she stood up her best friend.
Instead a vaguely familiar silky voice awaited her on the other end of the line.
“William?”