“My name is Diane Cicogna. With whom am I speaking?”
“Her granddaughter. Norah Quinn.”
“Granddaughter?” A long pause on the line. “Tell your grandmother her sister is on the phone.”
Before speaking, Margaret held the phone against her chest, composing what she would say. With a backhand wave, she sent Norah out of earshot to the living room and the rest of the television coverage. “Diane. I should have known you would call to commiserate. It is a sad day. To think they let a little cold spell—”
Norah moved her finger to the screen, aimed to touch Reagan's face, but a quarter inch away, a spark of static electricity leapt and zapped her. She sat back and considered his half smile. He seemed to understand what he was doing and to enjoy some tremendous personal joke on the rest of the people, the catch in his voice and cant of the head, the stardust in his eyes, and the shining pompadour. More pictures of Washington as a ghost town, patriotic theme music trumpeting as the credits rolled.
A quiz show began. Three people received an answer and had to compose the correct question, a concept that appealed to her philosophical nature, until she realized that there was only one solution. How much more interesting if there were a multiplicity of possible correct questions, just as in real life, where every question had an infinite number of likely answers, dependent entirely on where one wished the conversation to go. Margaret stayed on the phone the entire length of the program, and when the quiz was over, Norah turned off the TV to better eavesdrop.
“The reason I never said anything is because it happened out of the blue… No, she just showed up here one night… No, she's not planning on coming home… Of course, I don't mind in the slightest, she's sweet…. I don't know when Erica will send for her, I don't know if she ever will. It hasn't been decided.”
A long pause. Norah could hear a tiny voice shouting through the handset.
“That's fine, that's fine,” Margaret pleaded. “But hardly necessary. No, no, no, I don't mind. Come. You're always welcome. No, great, come. Next month. You'll love her.”
An even longer pause, an even more animated voice.
“I'm absolutely sick about it too. Such a faker, how anyone could vote—”
When at last she came into the living room, Mrs. Quinn looked older, the joy of the past two weeks drained from her features. She appeared as tired as she was the night Norah had arrived on her doorstep, but seeing the child again, she brightened and smiled, yet could not shake completely her distractions. Sitting next to Norah on the sofa, she stared at the blank television set.
“When I answered, I didn't know that was your sister.”
“That makes you two even. She didn't know I have a granddaughter to take my phone calls. We'll have to be careful with her.”
“Like a leopard. We'll use our spots to mimic the shadows.”
Margaret nodded. “Something like that. She will be visiting for a couple of days in February, and I just now had a hard time with her. She's naturally suspicious. A born skeptic.”
Gathering an afghan about her shoulders, Norah huddled into a ball and rested her head on Mrs. Quinn's lap. The woman sighed and began to stroke the girl's hair while a ticking clock measured their silence. She could not imagine her life without the presence of the child and wondered how she had managed to endure the emptiness that had preceded Norahs arrival. Not just the comfort of another breath in the house, not just the sound of footsteps in the middle of the night when the child crept to the bathroom, not merely the fact of her being. The ruse was more than a game; it was a way of gaining some mastery over what had seemed cruel and arbitrary. She questioned her conscience for the thousandth time and resolved to her own satisfaction her right to claim the girl, just as the girl had seemed to claim her, one the necessity of the other.
When Norah finally spoke, her tone reflected a shifting mood. “I'd like to invite Sean Fallon over to visit. Maybe after school or Saturday.”
“He could come play and stay for dinner.”
“I think having another child here will make it easier for my aunt to believe, and I can practice calling you Grandma with him around.”
Margaret laughed and tapped her on the shoulder, signaling her to sit up. “You have a devious mind, Norah Quinn.”
14
They fell in love with her. Each day illuminated some new aspect of her character that caused the children of the Friendship School third-grade class to wonder what strange creature had landed in their midst. Ordinary marvels abounded. She seemed to know just which questions to ask Mrs. Patterson to make their lessons clear and discussion lively. A pop quiz produced the unexpected result of perfect scores all around, an anomaly that puzzled the teacher well after her second cocktail that evening. A spelling bee dragged on past its appointed hour with no child left out, not even the recalcitrant boys who usually could not accommodate the spelling of their own names correctly. When Mrs. Patterson asked for volunteers for a dramatic reading, a surplus of eager hands shot up. The teacher took note of it all, the swift change in mood since the girl's arrival, the tonal difference between the dregs of post-Christmas school and the unexpected froth before spring. Sworn enemies buried their slingshots. There were no acts of violence, no bullying of the meek, no random or wanton vituperation of the ruling clique. A kind of harmony descended, and the other children recognized the changes brought by the new girl, who astonished them all by her simple and earnest desire to learn. Her crooked smile bestowed a spark of glee to January, as if she were lit within and could cast off gloom. She made fast friends with Sharon Hopper, Gail Watts, and Dori Tilghman, and brought them small treats of peanut butter cups or extra oatmeal raisin cookies or, once, old doll clothes rescued from the Quinns’ hidden troves. During indoor gym, she was the only third grader who could shoot a basketball through a hoop hung ten feet high, and the force of her throw in dodgeball made every boy wary. And yet everyone could sense an innate gentleness in Norah, a lack of malice in word and deed, and more than any other quality, this they regarded as true virtue and were drawn to, even against their own selfish natures.
Mrs. Quinn, too, fell for her. Charmed by the girl and glad for her company, she felt at ease around Norah at once, as if the child embodied a second chance at being the mother she had always intended to be. The very sight of the girl's ragged hair or fogged glasses gave Margaret a thrill, and when the boy began coming around, she felt blessed beyond what she deserved. Unnerving at first, the sound of their two voices quavered in the house, the murmur about homework and classes and other third-grade girls and boys, the edgy debates over play the squeals and shouts and laughter. The shock of the television or radio at four in the afternoon. What was it that Erica used to rush home for at that age? The vampire soap opera? Dark Shadows? The signs of their presence littered the ordinary complacency—coats on the hooks, boots puddling by the door, newspaper comics read and discarded. Two plates of crumbs, glasses filmed with milk. Skin of banana, bright coils of tangerine, core of apple, skeleton of grapes. Margaret was forever picking up their detritus, reordering her custom.
And yet, when Norah was off at school, the absence of commotion unsettled the new equilibrium. She wandered from room to room hearing the echo of childish laughter, anticipating a thump through the ceiling, a flash on the stairs, the front door yawning open and banging against the wall, heralding their arrival, and she welcomed them home each day with quiet relief, the joy in her heart bound by the briefest of smiles. As often as she wished them out from underfoot, Margaret also ached for them when they were gone.
Following the hot chocolate or an apple cored and quartered, they attacked their homework. Sean knew, by some gyroscope of the left brain, every mathematics answer, the difference at once among igneous, sedimentary, and metamorphic rocks, the dates and places of every Pennsylvania battle in the French and Indian War. Norah knew the magic of vanishing-point perspective, where the shadows fell in art by placement of the sun, how to draw without hesitation the c
onfluence of the three rivers—Ohio, Allegheny, and Monongahela—and to distinguish in illustration what Sean would have drawn as identical flowers or birds. They helped each other through suggestion, competitive questioning, and cajolery.
Work completed, play began. Ever since the smoke rings and his baffled reaction, she had slowed the pace, lured him into her confidence with more ordinary games, and he savored her attention and company. Norah preferred the outdoors, even in the dead of January, rolling out snowmen, cracking long icicles from the eaves and leaping away when the points threatened to impale, breakneck sledding, snowball fights, the stinging thrill of being cold beyond caring. For his part, Sean preferred to be warm and at the table, just the two of them, where he could teach her games. He revealed the trick of tic-tac-toe, unlocked the stratagem of checkers, the playful thinking of chess, so that in two weeks’ time she unseated the master as often as she lost. Not having any siblings of his own, Sean brought over every game he had been given but rarely had the chance to play They solved the mysteries of Clue, mastered the Rube Goldberg mechanics of Mouse Trap, and engaged in marathons of Monopoly, lasting hours over the course of several days. Once they tired of his games, they pillaged the closet upstairs and, hearts afire, played the game of Life, backgammon, and once, for nostalgia's sake, an Uncle Wiggily But treasure lay in the attic, beneath a film of dust.
In a bright and brittle box lay Tip It, a balancing act. Players had to remove a single colored ring from one of three stacks while keeping balanced a plastic acrobat—they called him Mr. Tipps—who stood on the tip of his nose at the top of the pole, itself balanced on a fulcrum. Depending upon luck and destiny, the winner was the one who avoided spilling Mr. Tipps and sending the entire contraption crashing to the floor. At five in the afternoon, they had reached the crucial moment yet again. Sean had already won three times in succession and had taken a yellow disk away, just barely managing to keep the fellow from falling. Silence and cunning overtook any notions of sportsmanship; he passed the spinner to her with glee, and she, equally certain that any move was doomed, flicked the arrow and sent it circling madly around to blue. She picked up her plastic fork and pointed it at him.
“You know you're going to win no matter what I do. Why do you keep torturing me?”
“Just go,” he said, then caught himself, swallowed, and smiled. “You never know. If you're real careful…”
“We can but try.” Not budging from her cross-legged seat on the floor, she leaned over and slid the fork beneath the disks opposite from the direction the pole was leaning, keeping Mr. Tipps near her nose. With a saint's patience, she lifted the blue disk, and the plastic acrobat twirled like a pinwheel until slowing to improbable stability.
“You cheated!” Sean shouted. “It's impossible—there's not enough weight on that end. You breathed on him.”
Her mouth was still an O. Glaring at him, she clamped together her lips, but the acrobat refused to fall, and then, closing her eyes, Norah made a new circle and began to gently blow. Mr. Tipps tottered, the pole shivered and slightly bent before heading back to the center until stopping at ninety degrees, and still she blew no harder than the air it takes to launch seeds from a dandelion puffball, and when the acrobat righted himself, steady and still, she inhaled, the wind whistling. Mr. Tipps spun counterclockwise, faster and faster till Sean grew dizzy just watching. When she sealed her lips, the whole apparatus clattered to the living room floor.
“The rabbis say that with every breath, God exhales an angel.” Norah picked up the pieces and placed them in the box.
Eager to know the truth, he pressed the question. “How do you do that?”
The plastic man lay flat in her hand. Pinching his head, she picked him up and balanced his nose on her fingertips. “My grandmother's sister is coming this weekend. She will not believe without some proof.”
Lightly blowing, she spun Mr. Tipps on her finger, and then setting the acrobat inside the box, she replaced the box top and slid the game beneath the coffee table. Though the afternoon light had weakened, she could read Sean's pure delight. Norah switched on a lamp, her hand and face suddenly radiant, and she reflected the glow on her friend. “We have to convince Aunt Diane that I am the real Norah Quinn.”
“But you are Norah Quinn.”
“She doesn't know that, and I want you to be my fearless ally. Partners?”
She spat in her palm and stuck it out; he did the same, and they briefly shook.
“And I'll need a spy to find out more about Erica Quinn. Do you think you could do that?”
A sly grin flashed on his face. “Happily.”
15
The pain, a deep ache that coursed in the bones, began in her fingertips and toes and radiated into her limbs, across the ribcage like static electricity, up the spine and fused stiff the vertebrae in her neck. Margaret dared not move, but when her jaw twitched and the fire reached her skull, her face gave away the inner turmoil through the deep furrows on her brow and the panic in her eyes. Norah had been watching surreptitiously, glancing now and again from her book, and at last, she could bear it no longer. “Is there something wrong?”
“I'm a bit stiff.” Margaret squeezed out the words. “This winter seems to have done me in. It never used to be this cold.”
“Can I get you anything? Will you be all right?”
Margaret hummed an uncertain answer. Even the words were stuck behind her lips, caught behind the soreness that seemed to leach even to the teeth. For the first time, she worried about the symptoms of her ailment and wished she could ask Paul about the mysterious pain that threatened to leave her riven. Laying the book pages-down on the table, Norah rose and without another word quickened to the kitchen. Alone with her misery, Margaret grimaced and wondered what precautionary responses her sister might undertake should she find her hurting so. She wanted no fuss. Steeling herself, she pushed her toes to the floor and flexed the arches of her soles, and then fanned out her fingers, hoping to release the pressure by willpower. In the kitchen, a saucepan clattered on the stove and Norah sang to herself as she searched the spice cabinet. At least the girl is here, Margaret thought, and I will not have to die alone.
The notion surprised her in its sudden clarity and focused her attention away from the ache in the marrow of her bones to true reasons behind her deceptions involving the foundling child. Penitent and confessor, she forgave herself and pushed away the thought, merely grateful that it had banished the seizing pain and restored former feeling. By the time the child returned, a mug in hand, she could manage to move freely and accept the token of comfort. The scent of cardamom and cinnamon rose from the warm milk.
“My own special sleeping potion,” Norah said.
Margaret blew across the surface and sipped the liquid. “Delicious. What's in it?”
“Family recipe. But you'll feel better soon and you should go to bed right away or you'll end up sleeping on the couch.” Norah knelt on the floor beside her and found her place in the book, reading quietly as Margaret nursed the drink.
A pleasant drowse soon overcame her, and Margaret found herself half dreaming and dazed by the confluence of images merging in her consciousness. The boy Sean caterwauling as he chased Norah from one room to the next became a boy she once loved racing after her as a girl in a cherry orchard. Diane, all of four or five, holding her hand as they dashed across hot sand to embrace the cooling sea. The grieving walk around the world over these hills and through these valleys, the long solitary journey with a hundred things to tell her missing daughter, in her dream wishing her home. Through the haze, Margaret beheld the child reading at her knees. “Yes, if you'll lock up and take care of the house, I'm tired and will go to bed now.” She could trust the girl to follow instructions, and in any case, Paul was in his study catching up on his patients’ paperwork. “Goodnight, Erica.”
Allowing her the mistake, the girl held out her hands to help Margaret rise from the couch, and kissed her gently on her papery cheek. Slowly, the
woman took the steps to her bed and to her dreams. Norah switched off the lamp and courted in the dark the fear that she had arrived too late to save anyone.
Upstairs, hours after Margaret had gone to bed, Norah cracked the door to the woman's room to spy her sleeping, the covers drawn to her chin, and an extra blanket draped over her body like a shroud. Darkness obscured her features, but the body remained still, save for the slight lift of her shoulders with each breath. Illuminated by the hallway lamp, her left hand rested flat on the sheets against her chin. A lattice of veins snaked beneath the skin, her long, elegant fingers, and the wedding ring she still wore. Assured of the woman's peace, Norah snuck back down the stairs, unhooked her parka by the door, and stepped out into the night.
Frigid air attacked every exposed opening, stinging eyes and ears, burrowing into her brain through the sinuses and deeper into her lungs with every breath. She threw back her head to take in the stars, bright and sharp. Each exhalation formed a small cloud which dissipated into blackness. Norah fell to her knees and bowed forward till her forehead touched the ground, and her hood rose and fell over her head as she prayed. The one who had been following her moved from his hiding spot and drew closer, secreting himself amid the horns of the bare rosebushes that ran in a thicket along the Delarosas’ property. Danger hummed in her ears, the menace made the short hairs on her arms stand on end, yet she remained steadfast in concentration and prayer.
Not far away from where she had prostrated herself, Sean Fallon awoke from a bad dream. He had been walking across a dry and open savanna, the African sun hammering at his vision, so he had to strain to see through the wavy heat the wonder of wonders: zebras and wildebeests as far as the horizon, with cattle egrets hitching rides on dusty backs, and small clouds of dirt as the animals wandered under a painful blue sky. At the edge of the plain, an ancient baobab grew, a twisted and gnarled sentry in the tall, dry grass; beneath its branches monkeybread had fallen at his feet. The low thunder of the cat rumbled from above, and he turned in time to catch the mad yellow eyes out of the shadow of spots, the teeth white and sharp against the liquid black mouth, claws flexed as it leapt at him, and he woke up, astonished to be in his bed in his room, the starlight seeping through the edges of the window blinds.