10
During long division, as Mrs. Patterson worked on remainders at the chalkboard, Sean kept spinning around in his desk chair to make sure Norah stayed awake. Even when he was called to the front to demonstrate how to divide 400 by 6, he checked on the progress of her fatigue. Stultifying wet heat off the radiators made her drowsy, and she struggled to hold up her head in the cup of one hand. Her eyelids quivered, then closed in slow motion. Her head slipped from her palm, and then she recovered once before she could not fight off sleep any longer. With every inspiration, her nose whistled, and she began a purring snore, oblivious to the mathematics unfolding all around her. By tacit arrangement, everyone let her rest until art class began. Sean woke her with a whisper and a pad and colored pencils in hand, and she begged him to sit beside her at a table beneath the panoramic window.
She drew with a quick and certain hand, sketching out in a few deft strokes a tensed leopard, flash of tawny spotted coat, and teeth and claws as angry slashes. Cowering in the corner of the page, the gazelle caught in the split second of fear, legs bent, neck torqued as its head made a quarter turn too late toward the predator. Sean watched as she drew, tightened his body like the muscles in the gazelle's flanks. He smelled blood and fear. Lost in her drawing, Norah moved the colored pencils with grave concentration. Work complete, she set the paper aside, took another sheet, ripped it in half, and began folding precise creases.
Mrs. Patterson, making the rounds among the schoolchildren, paused to offer encouragement or advice to each child. When she reached the window and saw what Norah was doing, she broke from the regimen and strode to her, stopping close enough to cast a shadow over the table's pen-pocked surface, transfixed by the drawing of the attacking leopard and the delicate manipulations at hand. When she finished folding, Norah laid an origami crane beside her picture and immediately began work on another. Without a word, Mrs. Patterson slid the drawing into her hands, held it up in disbelief, and walked back to her chair at the front of the room. She considered the craftsmanship of the piece, still staring at its realism, and asked in a loud voice, “Where did you learn to draw like this?”
Norah did not look up from her origami. “I could always draw,” she said, bending over another wing.
The whole class now focused on her paper folding as she built a third bird. When finished, she lined them up across the front edge of her desk, stood, and bent so that her face was inches away from them. She drew a deep breath and blew. The paper birds seemed to float in midair, falling up before fluttering to the ground. Each one landed perfectly on its base before toppling under the weight of wings. Sharon clapped first, then Dori and Gail from the other side of the room, and all at once, the entire class was on its feet, cheering and stomping with sheer delight. Norah stared straight ahead at Mrs. Patterson, challenging her to believe, waiting for the teacher to smile before she returned a broken beam of her own.
Norah watched Sean as he had watched her, and every time he noticed her looking his way, he flinched and reddened. The lonesome, like the mad, know one another on sight. She recognized his broken heart before she knew its cause, and he knew that she knew. Later that afternoon, she sidled up to him to walk her home. As they waited outside the door after the dismissal bell had chimed, Sean asked, “How did you do that trick with the paper birds?”
“Origami. And not a trick,” she said. “What are we waiting for? It's freezing out here.”
“I just like to let the big kids go first.”
“Stick with me. They won't bother you.” She grabbed his hand and pulled, running and laughing as they parted clots of children, and once they were through the crowd, the ice-cold air took their breath away.
Someone slammed hard against the chain-link fence, sending a tremor along its breadth, but no person could be found. They passed through cliques of students walking home along the quiet sidewalks and into the emptiness of three o'clock. A dog barked, invisible behind a tall wooden gate, and Norah shushed it with one curt hush. The distance between houses widened as the school grounds receded, and to get home, they took a shortcut through the woods, a bike path that ran alongside a drainage ditch, not more than a hundred yards long. Hidden by the bare forest of January, travelers were invisible from the streets and prying eyes. Usually Sean lollygagged at spots along the trail, peering over the edge into the frozen creek, dropping stones to shatter the ice along the banks, listening to the trees complain in the shifting wind. When they were alone, Norah stopped suddenly, looked up and down the path, and then produced a single cigarette from her pocket, holding it before him like a sacred artifact. She peeled off her mitten and took out a book of ancient matches.
“You're not going to smoke that!” Sean's eyes widened. “Smoking stunts your growth, that's what my mum says. You don't want to get stunted, do you?”
The flame flared blue from the sulfur, and the cigarette already hung from her lower lip. “I used to smoke a pack a day,” she muttered, lighting up. Norah snapped out the match and threw it on the path. “Just kidding. I only want to show you this—” Forming an O with her lips, Norah exhaled a ring of smoke that widened like a ripple in a pond, and she blew another ring which passed through the first hoop, and then quickly, she exhaled a long trail of smoke that shot through both rings like an arrow piercing a heart.
Glee in his high voice, he asked, “Where did you learn to do that?”
With the toe of one shoe, she stubbed out the cigarette and then looked past him to the high thin clouds stretched across the winter sky. “I know lots of things,” she said, and catching the interest in his eyes, she shrieked and tore off through the woods, her shoes skating across the snow and bare earth, and he did not catch up to her until they reached the back fence of Mrs. Quinn's yard. At a blind corner, they nearly crashed, and as he caught himself short by grabbing her shoulders, Norah screamed at the touch and laughed and screamed again, and he could see stars glistening at the back of her throat.
11
Having managed the most difficult part of their ruse, the beginning, Margaret and Norah looked forward to their first weekend together as a chance to slow the pace and get to know each other better. Come Saturday, the girl pushed open the woman's bedroom door with breakfast, burnt toast and strong coffee, and she sat at the foot of the bed while Margaret crunched and sipped, feigned delight on her pursed lips, and then Norah took the tray and washed the dishes while Margaret bathed and readied herself for the day. Conversation, which had been missing for years, filled the house, questions about school and friends, how nice that Fallon boy turned out to be after all.
Heavy footsteps on the porch, stomping snow from boot treads, announced the presence of the visitors before the first sharp knock. Norah surprised the couple standing outside the door as they unwrapped their coats and gloves. The man, a woolen skullcap over his bald head, seemed embarrassed to be discovered, but the woman craned her neck forward to take a closer look at the girl. “I'm Mrs. Delarosa,” she said. “We're your neighbors. This is my husband, Pasquale.”
“Hello, miss,” he said, offering his hand. “Everybody calls me Pat. What's your name?”
Simonetta tapped him on the elbow for silence. “Is Mrs. Quinn at home?”
“Gramma!” Norah yelled toward the kitchen. “It's the next-doors come to call.”
She waited a beat, and when Margaret did not arrive at once, Norah sped back and found her, flustered and uncertain, struggling from the easy chair. “Follow my lead,” she whispered to her young confederate.
Waiting patiently in the foyer, the Delarosas offered a warm greeting. Simonetta handed over fresh-baked muffins in a wicker basket. Pat presented a bouquet of Peruvian lilies accented by bright orange poppies.
“Pat, Simonetta.” Margaret ushered them inside. “Where did you get these flowers in the middle of winter?”
“Blueberry?” Norah peeked beneath the gingham cloth.
“My granddaughter. Norah.”
Lifting her hand to her mout
h, Simonetta appeared on the verge of tears. “So she came back to you. After all this time. We pray for you every Sunday, and now Erica's come home. Where is she?”
“No, not her, just her daughter. Norah, this is Mr. and Mrs. De-larosa.”
“Pleased to meet you.”
“Oh.” Simonetta shifted her enthusiasm. “What a lovely girl. You must be so happy.”
Marking the passage of the bouquet, Pat Delarosa stepped closer. “You forget I have a flower shop. Flowers flown in from all over the world.”
“You pray every Sunday?” Norah asked.
Bending to the girl's eye level, Simonetta took her hands. “For your grandmother. For your mother.”
The women retreated to the kitchen to brew another pot of coffee. An explanation was hatched over blueberry muffins, elaborations on the story Margaret had prepared for the principal of the elementary school.
In the living room, Norah admired the arrangement in the vase. “Al-stroemeria,” Pat told her. “Don't tell your gramma but I had too many in the shop.”
“She wouldn't mind. She's happy to have any.”
“Hey, look here, I show you something you never known you seen. This kind of lily has twists at the bottom.” He pointed to the resupinate leaves. “So what's the bottom is really the top, and what's the top is the underneath.”
“Things aren't always what they seem.”
“You have a favorite?”
“A favorite flower?”
“Your mama, she liked the scent of jasmine. I knew her since she was a little girl your age.”
“Was she anything like me?”
Pat considered her question, taking her in as for the first time and straining to remember his earlier encounters with Erica. “She was a smart cookie like you, eh? And friendly like you. And Paul, that's her father you never met, she was the apple of his eye. A nice girl, too, and too bad what happened.”
“Was my grandmother very sad when my mother left?”
“Sad? Oh, yes, heartbroken.” The brusqueness of his confession caught up with him. “No, I mean, she was sad, yes. But happy now, right, that you're here?” Turning away from the child's gaze, he went to the window and looked out at the frosty lawn, his rough hands worried together. She did not move toward him but remained by the flowers and their fragrance building in the heat of the room. “I'm sorry,” he said at last. “I don't mean to bring up such things, but we worry about her, your grandmother, kind of lonesome by herself. I keep out an eye, and my wife too. But you know, she don't ask much, and ever since your mother, well, she holds her heart to herself, eh?”
Norah approached from behind and stood next to him, staring at the bare winter scene.“You watch over her.”
“Like a neighbor should. What's a neighbor for, anyhow? She don't go out much lately, and I worry.”
“You make sure she's safe.”
“Like the other night.” With his chin, he gestured beyond the glass. “Simonetta, she hears something in the middle of the night, and I was dead asleep. But she says, Pat, Pat, and wakes me out of the bed to come see through the window, and I don't see nothing. But she tells me there's someone out in the yard. A man? Not so much a man, she says, an ombra. A spirit, maybe? Simonetta, she's so shook up and can't sleep, so I don't know.”
He read the fear on her face, and bent down to her to speak in a low voice.
“Don't be too concerned with what she says she sees. She's from the old country, eh? Superstitious. Not important, what she thought she saw, only to say that a noise over here gets her worried. Then we see you and that boy coming through the snow. So let's go see for ourselves, and you know, everybody loves a mystery.”
She reached out and touched him on the arm. “Until the mystery is solved.”
Her touch alarmed him at first, by the overwhelming sense of rejuvenation he felt at the slight pressure of her hand. Most children dared not even approach him, and he could not place the feeling till later that night, in bed next to Simonetta, as he told her stories of the free and happy days of his own boyhood, tales he had long forgotten, and in the morning, Pat woke with shock at the wet patch on his pillowcase where his dreams had brought him to tears.
12
At dinner each night they went over the lies necessary to protect their fiction.
“You mustn't say you are an orphan,” Mrs. Quinn began that Sunday night. “You are my daughter's daughter and she has sent you here to live with me while she is trying to patch together her life after a broken marriage.”
“I will look sad when I speak of my father.” Norah bowed her head to the mashed potatoes.
“You will behave yourself, that's what you'll do. Stick to our story. Your mother is staying in New Mexico to put her affairs in order.”
“Is that what broke the marriage? Affairs?”
A wicked smile lit her face. “Yes, his affairs. No, no, you wouldn't know. You don't know, only that your mother felt it best, under the circumstances, for me to look after you for a while, and she'll send for you once she's on her feet again.”
Norah speared a broccoli floret, considered its resemblance to a tree in summer, and popped it whole into her mouth. She crunched on as Mrs. Quinn spun out the rest of her tale.
“I can't explain you without explaining her away, and I can't bring myself to say it.”
“That you never hear from her?”
“That I've heard from her exactly twice since she ran away.” She eased herself from her chair, sighing as her knees ached, and left the room. Staring at the blank space across the table, Norah buttered a biscuit, and savored every crumb. Margaret returned clutching an envelope to her bosom, and with great ceremony undid the clasp and slid two items onto the tablecloth. A postcard stood on its narrow end and flopped over, and a thin sheet of paper hit the edge of a glass and fluttered like a leaf to the floor. Margaret could have been no more startled had she dropped a vase that shattered on impact, so Norah fetched the paper and stood at the woman's shoulder to read along.
“Thank you. This postcard came a few weeks after she left, and you see it's from Memphis.” The picture on its face was labeled Historic Elm-wood Cemetery. “Why anyone would send a postcard of a graveyard, of all things, I don't know. But I was so grateful to have it, although my husband was just livid. But Erica thought she was in love, so. Paul swore he'd get on a plane and fly right out there, and it was all I could do to stop him.” A memory made her cut off the sentence. She picked up the letter and started reading it to herself. “They were long gone, you see. Nothing until this, four years later. Paul was dead by then, and I had given up all hope, well, almost beyond hoping, and then this. No return address, just a mention of the town Madrid, and of course, I thought Madrid, Spain. Who wouldn't have thought of Spain?”
“Spain sounds entirely logical.”
“But this Madrid is a flyspeck town with the same name in New Mexico. I was tempted at first to give it to the FBI—especially since that man was shot—but she would have been arrested and ended up in prison, so I kept the letter hidden. Not a soul knows. I was too scared to say anything.”
Without a word, Norah patted Mrs. Quinn on the hand and went to the den to retrieve the atlas. The book hid her body from nose to navel, and when she set it down on the table, a puff of dust rose and settled like silt. “There is old York and New York. London and New London. Athens, Georgia, and Athens, Greece. And at least forty-two Springfields,” she recited while turning the leaves. “But who would have thought to look for Madrid in New Mexico?” Finding the vectors, she zeroed in on the spot. “Right exactly in the center of the middle of nowhere.” Norah pointed to a dot on the map roughly halfway between Albuquerque and Santa Fe and read aloud the legend written along the road. “The Turquoise Trail, doesn't that sound beautiful? Now that you know where she is, why don't you go see her?”
“Who knows if she is still there? And who knows if she would even want to see me anymore? She's made no effort all this time. It's enough to know sh
e was there. I can think she's still alive and well.”
“But you're her mother—”
“She doesn't want me. If she hasn't told me to come for her by now, she doesn't want me in her life.”
“But you should go while you can.”
“That's enough for tonight. I only brought it up so that we might get our stories straight. Your supper's getting cold.”
A truce struck, they finished their meal in silence. Later, side by side, they washed and dried the dishes, and after her bath, Norah curled her small body next to Margaret on the couch, and they read together under a circle of light until the bedtime hour. Well after midnight, Norah moved in whispers down the stairs, found the letters tucked inside the atlas at New Mexico, and read each word by starlight. And after she was finished, she tucked them back in place, closed the book, and began to cry. Outside in the moonlight, the one who watched the house drew in the wings of his camel hair coat and walked away.
13
Down in Washington, bitter weather forced indoors the ceremonies surrounding the second inauguration of President Reagan. The television news that evening showed empty streets, wind whipping plastic bags along the sidewalks, the grandstands silent but for the crisp fluttering of bunting. No recitation of the oath at the Capitol portico. No march down Pennsylvania Avenue. No shining city on a hill. Only the desolate cold.
The telephone rang in the Quinns’ living room, a rare enough occurrence any day, all the more strange in the evening. Norah picked up the receiver and said hello.
“I'm sorry, I must have dialed the wrong number,” the voice said.
“Who were you trying to reach?”
“Margaret Quinn. I could have sworn—”
“Oh, she's here. This is the right number. May I tell her who's calling?”