Ten

Nora waits for the elevator, pressing the button with one hand while checking her phone with the other. She knows the phone will tell her nothing new when she flips it open. Welcome, the Sony Ericsson starts to scroll. Nora shuts it when she sees no envelope blinking for new voice mail.

She once read something about the importance of control, even if it is an illusion. People waiting for an elevator need a button to push. There could be no voice mail—the phone would have sounded in her palm—but checking gives her something to do. She glances at the elevator button, a harvest moon, and remembers how her mother used to jab for extra morphine in her sleep, requiring comfort even in her dreams.

The elevator chimes a bright, shrill D. Nora wonders how people would react if it were suddenly switched for a lower octave, a butler with reproachful eyes. The steel doors part.

A man with side-swept hair holds open a copy of the Times. “Kerry Takes Lead in Ohio,” the front page announces above the fold. John Kerry flashes his horsey smile beside an article about E. coli outbreaks. He is trying to look casual in a denim button-­down, the sky vast and blue behind him. A beer in his hand, still in the bottle. Bet he turned down the burgers, though.

“He’s too soft,” Leo had complained last Sunday at brunch. “Soft?” Michael had repeated pleasantly, his eyes narrowing. Leo shrugged, not wanting to pursue it. “This election has everyone’s panties in a twist,” he muttered that night, squeezing toothpaste onto his brush. He never bothered capping the tube, so a dried blob formed at its mouth. The toothpaste came out reluctantly, after a great exertion of pressure.

“People get too heated about politics,” he continued. “All this talk of moving to Canada if Bush wins.” He shook his head and turned to Nora. “You don’t think Stephen’s serious, do you?”

“I think you should’ve told your dad what you think.” Leo had a point, after all; Kerry looked like a strong wind might knock him over. Michael, however, was too filled with policy to notice. “Kerry has to win,” he said grimly, shaking his head at the television. “He has to.” Nora smiled sadly at his conviction. “Why?” she wanted to ask. “Because you and your friends think he should?”

It’s terrible, the first shrink had noted, his long academic fingers steepled, when the narrative doesn’t unfold as we expect. This was his way of alluding to her mother’s death, through language tidy and convenient. She had looked away angrily.

The doors open to the lobby. Miguel mans his post at the front desk and his face lights up upon seeing her. “You have the big party tonight,” he says warmly. The side-swept Times reader hurries past, too important to say hi to the doorman.

“I do,” she affirms, touched that he has remembered. Miguel attends night school at Drexel, an MBA program; his wife is studying to be a nurse. He sets down a picture of her and their newborn son at the start of his shift, clearing space for them on the cluttered desk.

“You want me to call a cab for you? Bad weather today.”

“No, that’s okay. It’s a short walk.” She holds up a foot to show him her practical shoe choice and thinks of the joke that Leo would make: “Flip-flops! Of course!” He was disappointed in Bush but could not abide Kerry.

“Take an umbrella, at least.” Miguel gestures to the stand.

A gem, Miguel, not that anyone in the building would notice. The complex is filled with obnoxious twentysomethings, their laughter echoing through the hallways at 2:00 a.m. on weekends. The place had felt so grown-up when she and Leo moved in. Nora had been impressed by its industrial feel, the exposed pipes and soaring windows suggesting a life pulled from a magazine. But she has started to feel exhausted by the girls in elevators wearing too much perfume, the guys, behind them, scoping out their legs. No cute elderly couples loiter the halls; no families return from the store with groceries.

Nora thinks of Miguel’s wife in her nursing scrubs in their apartment, the baby playing on a quilt. She thinks of Miguel hurrying to make it home before bedtime. She imagines him putting the key in the door, eager to see his family.

Leo, apparently, is in no such rush—Leo, who was supposed to call after his trip to the printer’s and pick her up to avoid precisely the concerns Miguel has so gallantly mentioned. 2400 Locust to 2035 Delancey. It is nothing, a nondistance. Around the corner, really. Unless the skies are darkening and you’re wearing a white dress. Unless you had hoped to arrive at the party looking perfect.

It’s fine. Really, it’s fine. This is what Nora will say to Leo in a breezy, high voice, because that will have more of an effect on him than a hundred angry voice mails (“Where are you? You were supposed to call!”), which he would find a way to dismiss.

Instead she will stroll through Delancey’s double doors and switch into her heels, leaning against the wainscoting. “No big deal,” she will say, an uncomplaining trouper like Miguel.

The building’s automated doors swing open. The air outside is a strange, humid mix, cool but thick. Nora’s nose reacts to the mugginess, her sinuses contracting.

Locust has a small hill, which Nora ascends toward Center City. She spots the bright blue mailbox on the corner and cringes, remembering the undeposited check sitting on the kitchen counter. The lawyer’s accompanying letter informed her that it would be the last one.

She hasn’t looked at the amounts closely or tabulated if the sum matches the number that had been read from the will. Surely, she should verify it. Her mom would be scandalized that she hasn’t. But Nora can’t bring herself to do it. The checks have appeared over the months in absurdly varying amounts: $12.87; $26,423.29. She imagines a group of lawyers standing guard, pulling a lever and letting the pennies pour forth. Life insurance, she thinks. An awful term, because what does it insure?

Death money. They should call a thing what it is. Nora turns right on to Twenty-third. She knows that even if the amounts don’t match, she wouldn’t do anything about it. It could be short by hundreds, even thousands, and she would let it go.

At the lawyer’s office, her father had been cowed, for once. He cleared his throat, convinced an error had been made. “She listed me as her beneficiary,” he said. “Didn’t she?” Nora had almost felt sorry for him. But he wouldn’t learn his lesson or think about his wife’s final rebuke. The money only made him resent Nora more. The lawyer shifted and answered stiffly, a long-winded explanation to avoid having to say, “No. No, she didn’t.”

If she hadn’t died, proceedings of a different nature might have occurred at that law office. “Based on what?” Leo would ask skeptically. Divorce is a dirty word to him. But he doesn’t understand that miserable parents who stay together could be more toxic than parents who separate. “You only think that because yours never did,” he would point out.

Leo idealizes her suburban upbringing. “Look at this place!” he whistled when she first brought him over, trudging down to the basement. He surveyed the old Ping-Pong table and shag carpeting, the beat-up couch and outdated decor. “Just so we’re clear, you actually like all this?” she asked. “Like?” he repeated. “Nora, I love it! This is exactly how a house should be!”

He threw himself onto the couch, and a cloud of dust arose from its cushions, showering him like confetti at a parade. “We never had anything like this. Even when we moved.” She pictured him at fifteen, excited to leave Manhattan, imagining a house (finally, a house!), only to be greeted with austere Delancey. “There was never a place where you could put your feet up and relax, you know?” “Yeah, but, Leo,” she wanted to tell him. “That’s just furniture.” How nice to have problems that could be solved by an ottoman.

A pregnant woman approaches, pushing a stroller, her head tucked into her phone. A child born every minute somewhere. And how casually it is all treated! How nonchalant, the sci-fi act of pregnancy. The woman’s belly balloons out from an orange maternity shirt, the fabric snug, the outline of her navel just visible, circular and deep as a hot tub. Leo would ogle the woman if he were here and nudge Nora unsubtly. Look, look! As though other people’s babies might be theirs. As though they are already a family.

A blinking red hand alerts her to stop. Nora pauses at the corner of Twenty-second and Spruce, not wanting to rush through the intersection. June would never show up sweaty or be seen in flip-flops.

But then, June was one of those women whose feet seemed to have permanently adjusted to the shape of a heel. She traversed the city in them, strolling with Dedalus through Rittenhouse Square, his leather leash swinging jauntily. When someone stopped to admire how well trained he was on the leash, June didn’t explain that he had just been jogged along Museum Mile by the dog-walker. Dedalus swayed his golden tail, too tired to even lift his leg.

“It’s the quality of the heel,” June would say, dubiously eyeing the Payless espadrilles Nora had purchased for the party. BOGO, the signs advertised. What’s the difference? Nora thought, lifting one from the shelf while women swarmed around her with their shopping bags. Could anyone even tell?

June wears Manolos and Louboutins, Stuart Weitzmans and Jimmy Choos, rows of them in tasteful colors arranged on open shelves, an array of calfskin, crocodile, satin, suede. When June and Michael were away, Nora slipped them on. Teetering across the plush carpet, she felt the same pinches and aches.

The light flickers, a blinking man. Go go go.

There is no secret. Nora knows this now. For so long, she’d believed she simply had to master a set of rules. Invest in good footwear. Sit straight in chairs. Reapply lipstick throughout the day. But testing out those constricting slingbacks and riffling through June’s vanity, Nora saw that no magic was behind it all, no sleight of hand or trick. June’s perfumed deodorant didn’t cause Nora to sweat any less. Slipping on a Chanel blouse, she didn’t feel transformed. No, she thought, carefully putting the items back on their hangers and in their compartmentalized drawers. It wasn’t like in the movies, where the downtrodden Jersey girl just needs access to wardrobe and makeup to become Cinderella. Princesses don’t come from Paramus. They are born, not made.

She spots Audrey Claire with its chalky-green shutters ahead. Stephen’s favorite restaurant. “Don’t let her frighten you,” he once counseled, looking at her from across the table. “You probably intimidate her.” Nora smiles at the thought of her friend’s words. But she suspects this is the consolation of the rich to the poor, the beautiful to the ugly. Such advice only goes in one direction.

The jazz café on Manning sits down the street and to the left. She is glad she took Spruce, unconsciously avoiding it. Her palms grow clammy at the thought of her gig tomorrow, a tickle creeping into her throat. “You can’t possibly be nervous!” Leopold would tease, holding up her hand as evidence. “You perform there every week!”

But that’s just it. The regularity of the gig unnerves her. She worries that one of her students will show up and then see her as a two-bit performer. She has a small following now, regulars who come on Saturdays to hear her, mostly retired couples. They ask in encouraging tones if she’s ever thought about putting out a CD, not realizing that their questions depress rather than flatter her.

Choir is different. Everyone at the church knows her through Carol, a longtime member, and from her first rehearsal, Nora was treated like family. They know better than to pry, to ask if she misses opera. Other performers understand that such questions aren’t simple.

If she’s found solidarity at choir, losing herself to the group, she’s found tranquillity in jazz and its wandering riffs. Opera had required her to transform, each performance a metamorphosis. Jazz isn’t like that. She doesn’t have to commandeer the stage, taking the reins of an aria to drive it home, translating the language through her gestures. Jazz is cruise control, singing with her eyes closed. No need to act. The very thought of you / And I forget to do / The little ordinary things / That everyone ought to do.

“Of course you want to do it in B-flat,” the drummer will groan at rehearsal tomorrow. He keeps hoping for a solo, something peppy. But the upright-bass player, who is older, will smile to reassure her. “B-flat it is,” he’ll say, tuning his strings.

Nora turns right and passes a group of men on a stoop. Beautiful town houses line Spruce, but Philly is Philly, and she prays the men don’t call out to her. There are three of them, old black men, one holding a brown paper bag, and they erupt into laughter, a flash of gold teeth. One spits a jet of juice that arcs from his mouth. She resists the urge to touch her hair, check her pins.

She turns the corner unnoticed, relieved. She wonders about the brown bag, why they bother. It’s more of a tell than a disguise.

Carol would scowl at the men if she were with Nora. “Old men drinkin’ in de afternoon!” she would say, loud enough for them to hear. “People be walking by with dey children! People be walking by on dey way to church!” The accent in Carol’s schoolmarm voice of island reproach would heighten with her disdain. “In Trinidad,” she would continue, yanking her garments around her with a huff, “men did not sit around drinkin’.”

Approaching Delancey, Nora wonders if June has ever heard her housekeeper on one of her tirades. Carol slips into a nearly unintelligible stream of gossip when on the phone with her aunts and sisters, punctuated by spurts of laughter. Around June, Carol switches into perfect English, suddenly accentless.

“Yes, of course,” she says, polite, agreeable.

But then, this street might just do that to you. Nora knows she has an irrational love of this block, but she feels it every time she turns the corner: Delancey Place, with its brick and cobblestones, its town houses erect and tall, the arched entrances like horseshoes. Those men wouldn’t have sat on any of these stoops, pristine and maroon. Delancey is a block away from bums sprawled on benches, but that block makes all the difference.

Above her there are gabled windows. Her favorite, across the street, has an expanse of gridded panes set at an angle—windows that can be propped open to let in the air. She imagines a space with exposed beams and knotted-pine floors, the sort of place where she can picture Stephen clacking away at his beloved typewriter. 16 June 2004, he would type, the machine dinging brightly at the end of the line.

Nora comes to a stop at the familiar black double doors and hops up the stairs. She roots in her bag for the key.

The foyer is quiet. Nora pauses before the hall mirror, tilting her head to check that the pins are in place. The study, where the party will be, fills with light in the evening. Leo’s eyes will dart toward her hair uneasily and then look away. Daylight is always the worst.

She sets her bag down and reaches to switch her shoes, but no one is there to express concern. No one to exclaim, “You walked? I thought Leo was picking you up!”

She gazes around the empty foyer.

“Stay busy,” the cognitive therapist had advised. She was a perky redhead with an assured mouth, her office walls lined with modern prints. Two Eames chairs sat across from her glass desk. “If you know the behavior tends to occur when you’re alone, then don’t give it the opportunity.”

Nora liked the personification of her disorder. She imagined a greedy banker who couldn’t be sated, wanting more and more. She imagined a villain with a top hat, tying her to the railroad tracks.

“Identify your stressors,” the woman continued. “Identifying them is half the battle.” She talked about cognitive techniques they might employ, thought records and habit-reversal training. Nora watched her as she spoke, impressed by her authoritative voice and confident demeanor.

“Have you ever treated someone with trichotillomania before?” she asked.

The woman shifted in her chair. “I’ve treated many compulsive behavioral issues. We treat them all essentially the same way.”

Cognitively, Nora had thought, tasting the word in her mouth like a bright penny.

Nora suspects that she has become a broken record to Leo and his family, stalled and skipping. They ignore her. As long as she shows up when she is supposed to and follows the general script (Sunday brunch, the occasional dinner), they don’t mind that she is distracted. You’ll never know / How slow the moments go.

The Portman meals, predictable and polite, she can handle. Any breaks from routine are harder. She can’t stare out windows with strangers or depend on them to make small talk. Strangers don’t know the placement of the mines. “Engaged!” they will exclaim. “Your parents must be thrilled.”

Upstairs, June is likely assembling battle teams. She’d probably roped Leo into some task before he could call Nora. “Help me with this one thing,” June would have simpered, and Leo would have set down his phone and wallet obligingly.

No. It is better that no one had been in the foyer. She won’t give Leo a hard time for forgetting to call, nor will she play the martyr. It was a simple lapse, and poor Leo didn’t mean to forget. “There you are!” June will say sharply when she spots Nora, as though she is late. “Hey,” Leo will say, nodding and wiping sweat from his brow, a cardboard box filled with flowers heavy in his thick arms.

Today isn’t about her. She needs to remember this, to relegate her anxiety to a compartment in her mind. Today she must play the future daughter-in-law, unruffled and at ease. “How are you holding up?” Stephen had asked in the parking lot, and it had come as a relief. Because even if you don’t know the answer, Nora thinks, leaving the foyer, it is nice to be asked.