Nora Jane (15 page)

Nora Jane threw her backpack over her shoulder and ran for the train. Lin Tan caught a glimpse of her yellow stockings and
reminded himself not to completely rule out black hair in his search for happiness.

Freddy Harwood was straightening up his house. He moved the wooden table holding his jigsaw puzzle of the suspended whale
from the Museum of Natural History. He watered his paper-white narcissus. He got a broom out of a closet and began to sweep
the floor. He found a column Nieman did about
My Dinner with Andre
and leaned on the broom reading it. It was two o’clock in the afternoon and there was no reason to leave for the station
before five. They aren’t my babies, he reminded himself. She’s having someone else’s babies and they aren’t mine and I don’t
want them anyway. Why do I want her at all? Because I like to talk to her, that’s why. I like to talk to her more than anyone
in the world. That’s that. It’s my business. Mine and only mine. I like to look at her and I like to talk to her. Jesus Christ!
Could I have a maid? I mean would it violate every tenet if I had a maid once a week?

He threw the broom into a closet and pulled on his boots and walked out into the yard to look for the bobcat.

The house Freddy was stamping out of was a structure he had been building on and off for years. It was in Mendocino County
near the town of Willits and could only be reached by a long winding uphill road that became impassable when it rained. Actually,
it was impassable when it didn’t rain but Freddy and his lone neighbor put their four-wheel jeeps in gear and pretended the
rock-covered path was a road. Sometimes it even looked like a road, from the right angle and if several trips had been made
in a single spell of dry weather.

The house sat on high ground and had several amazing views. To the west lay the coastal ranges of northern California. To
the east the state game refuge of the Mendocino National Forest. In any direction were spruce trees and Douglas fir and Northern
pine. Freddy had bought the place with the first money he ever earned. That was years ago, during the time when he stopped
speaking to his family and smoked dope all day and worked as a chimney sweep. He had lived in a van and saved twelve thousand
dollars. Then he had driven up the California coast until he found Douglas fir on land with no roads leading to it. He bought
as much as twelve thousand dollars would buy. Two acres, almost three. Then he set up a tent and started building. He built
a cistern to catch water and laid pipes to carry it to where the kitchen would later be. He leveled the land and poured a
concrete foundation and marked off rooms and hauled stones for a fireplace. He planted fruit trees and a vineyard and put
in root plants and an herb garden for medical emergencies. He had been working on the house off and on for twenty-three years.
The house was as much a part of Freddy Harwood as his skin. When he was away from Willits for long stretches of time, he thought
about the house every day, the red sun of early morning and the redder sun of sundown. The eyes of the bobcat in the woods,
the endless lines of mountains in the distance. The taste of the air and the taste of the water. His body sleeping in peace
in his own invention.

Now she’s ruined my house for me, he was thinking, leaning against the madrone tree while he waited for the bobcat. She’s
slept in all the rooms and sat on the chairs and touched the furniture. She’s used all the forks and spoons and moved the
table. I’m putting it back where it goes today. Well, let her come up here and beg for mercy. I don’t care. I’ll give it to
her. Let her cry her dumb little Roman Catholic heart out. I guess she looks like hell. I bet she’s as big as a house. Well,
shit, not that again.

He turned toward the house. A redbird was throwing itself against the windows. Bird in the house means bad luck. Well, don’t
let it get in. I’ll have to put some screens on those windows. Ruin the light.

The house was very tall with many windows. It was a house a child might draw, tall and thin. Inside were six rooms, or areas,
filled with books and mattresses and lamps and tables. Everything was white or black or brown or gray. Freddy had made all
the furniture himself except for two chairs by Mies van der Rohe. A closet held all of Buiji Dalton’s pottery in case she
should come to visit. A shelf held Nieman’s books. On a peg behind the bathroom door was Nora Jane’s yellow silk kimono.

When she comes, Freddy was saying to himself as he trudged back up the hill to do something about the bird, I won’t say a
word about anything. I’ll just act like everything is normal. Sam came over and said you’d be on the train and it was getting
into Fort Bragg at eight and would I meet you. Well, great. I mean, what brought you here? I thought you and the robber baron
had settled down for the duration. I mean, I thought I’d never see you again. I mean, it’s okay with me. It’s not your fault
I am an extremely passionate and uncontrollably sensitive personality. I can tell you one thing. It’s not easy being this
sensitive. Oh, shit, he concluded. I’ll just go on and get drunk. I’m a match for her when I’m drunk. Drunk, I’m a match for
anyone, even Nora Jane. He opened the closet and reached in behind one of Buiji Dalton’s hand-painted Egyptian funeral urns
and took out a bottle of Red Aubruch his brother had sent from somewhere. He found a corkscrew and opened it. He passed the
cork before his nose, then lifted the bottle and began to drink. “There ain’t no little bottle,” he was thinking. “Like that
old bottle of mine.”

At about the same time that Freddy Harwood was resorting to this time-honored method of acquiring courage, Lin Tan Sing was
using a similar approach aboard the Starlight Express. He was drinking gin and trying not to stare at the yellow stockings
which were all he could see of Nora Jane. She was in a high-backed swivel chair turned around to look out the glassed-in back
of the train. She was thinking about whales, how they had their babies in the water, and also about Sandra Draine, who had
a baby in a tub of salt water in Sausalito while her husband videotaped the birth. They had shown the tape at the gallery
when Sandra had her fall show. It won’t be like that for me, Nora Jane was thinking. I’m not letting anyone take any pictures
or even come in the room except the doctor and maybe Freddy, but no cameras. I know he’ll want to bring a camera, if he’s
there. He’s the silliest man I have ever known.

But I love him anyway. And I hate to do this to him but I have to do what I have to do. I can’t be alone now. I have to go
somewhere. The train rounded a curve. The wheels screeched. Nora Jane’s chair swiveled around. Her feet flew out and she hit
Lin Tan in the knee with a ballet shoe.

“Oh, my God,” she said. “Did I hurt you?”

“It is nothing.”

“We hit a curve. I’m really sorry. I thought the chair was fastened down.”

“You are going to have a baby?” His face was very close to her face. It was the largest oriental face Nora Jane had ever seen.
The darkest eyes. She had not known there were eyes that dark in all the world, even in China. She lowered her own.

“Yes,” she said. “I am.”

“I am geneticist. This interests me very much.”

“It does me too.”

“Would you like to talk with me?”

“Sure. I’d like to have someone to talk to. I was just thinking about the whales. I guess they don’t even know it’s cold,
do they?”

“I have gone out in kayak to be near them. It is very mysterious. It was the best experience I have had in California. A friend
of mine in lab at Berkeley Women’s Clinic took me with him. He heads a team of volunteers to collect money for whales. Next
summer I will go again.”

“Oh, my God. That’s where I go. I mean, that’s my doctor. I’m going to have twin baby girls. I had an amnio at your clinic.
That’s how I know what they are.”

“Oh, this is very strange. You are Miss Whittington of 1512 Arch Street, is it not so? Oh, this is very strange meeting. I
am head technician at this lab. Head technician for night lab. Yes. I am the one who did the test for you. I was very excited
to have these twin girls show up. It was an important day for me. I had just been given great honor at the university. Oh,
this is chance meeting like in books.” He stood up and took her hand. “I am Lin Tan Sing, of the province of Suchow, near
Beijing, in Central China. I am honored to make your acquaintance.” He stood above her, waiting.

“I am Nora Jane Whittington, of New Orleans, Louisiana, and San Jose, California. And Berkeley. I am glad to meet you also.
What all did the tests show? What did they look like under the microscope? Do you remember anything else about it?”

“Oh, it is not in lab that I learn things of substance. Only chip away at physical world in lab. Very humble. Because it was
a memorable day in my own life I took great liberty and cast I
Ching
for your daughters. I saw great honors for them and gifts of music brought to the world.”

“Oh, my God,” Nora Jane said. She leaned toward him. “I can’t believe I met you on this train.” Snowy mountains, Lin Tan was
thinking. Peony and butterfly. Redbird in the shade of willows.

Later a waiter came through the club car and Lin Tan advised Nora Jane to have an egg salad sandwich and a carton of milk.
“I am surprised they allow you to travel so far along in your pregnancy. Are you going far?”

“Oh, no one said I could go. I mean, I didn’t ask anyone. They said I could travel until two months before they came.” She
put her hand to her mouth. “I guess I should have asked someone. But I was real upset about something and I needed to come
up here. I need to see this friend of mine.”

“Be sure and get plenty of rest tonight. Very heavy burden for small body.”

“My body’s not so small. I have big bones. See my wrists.” She held out her wrists and he pretended to be amazed at their
size. “All the same, be sure and rest tomorrow. Don’t take chances. Many very small babies at clinic now. I am worrying very
much about so many months in machine for tiny babies. Still, it is United States and they will not allow anything to die.
It is the modern age.”

“I want my babies no matter what size they are.” She folded her hands across her lap. “I guess I shouldn’t have come up here.
Well, it’s too late now. Anyway, where did you learn to speak English so well? Did you have it in school?”

“I studied your writers. I studied Ernest Hemingway and William Faulkner and John Dos Passos. Also, many American poets. Then,
since I am here, I am learning all the time with my ears.”

“I like poetry a lot. I’m crazy about it to tell the truth.”

“I am going to translate poetry of women in my country for women of America. I have noticed there is much sadness and menustation
in poetry of women here. But is not sadness in life here. In my country poetry is to overcome sadness, help people to understand
how things are and see beauty and order and not give in to despair.”

“Oh, like what? Tell me some.”

“Here is poem by famous poet of the T’ang Dynasty. The golden age of Chinese poetry.

A branch is torn from the tree

The tree does not grieve

And goes on growing

“Oh, that’s wonderful.”

“This poet is called the White Poppy. She has been dead for hundreds of years but her poems will always live. This is how
it is with the making of beautiful things, don’t you find it so?”

“Whenever I think of being on this train I’ll remember you telling me that poem.” She was embarrassed and lowered her eyes
to be talking of such important things with a stranger.

“A poem is very light.” Lin Tan laughed, to save the moment. “Not like babies. Easy to transport or carry.” Nora Jane laughed
with him. The train sped through the night. The whales gave birth in the water. The stars stayed on course. The waiter appeared
with the tray and they began to eat their sandwiches.

Freddy was waiting on the platform when the train arrived at the Noyo–Point Cabrillo Station. He was wearing his old green
stadium coat and carrying a blanket. Nora Jane stepped down from the train and kissed him on the cheek. Lin Tan pressed his
face against the window and smiled and waved. Nora Jane waved back. “That’s my new friend,” she said. “He gave me his address
in Berkeley. He’s a scientist. Get this. He did the amnio on Lydia and Tammili. Can you believe it? Can anybody believe the
stuff that happens?”

Freddy wrapped the blanket around her shoulders. “I thought you might like to see a movie before we go back.
The Night of the Shooting Stars
is playing at the Courthouse in Willits.”

“He ran off and left me,” she said. “I knew he would. I don’t think I even care.”

“You met the guy on the train that did the amnio? I don’t believe it.”

“He knew my name. I almost fainted when he said it.”

“Look, we don’t have to go to a movie unless you feel like it. I just noticed it was playing. It’s got a pregnant woman in
it.”

“I’ve seen it three times. We went last year, don’t you remember? But I’ll go again if you want to.”

“We could eat instead. Have you eaten anything?”

“I had a sandwich on the train. I guess we better go on to the house. I’m supposed to take it easy. I don’t have any luggage.
I just brought this backpack. I was too mad to pack.”

“We’ll get something to eat.” He took her arm and pulled her close to him. Her skin beneath her sleeve was the same as the
last time he had touched her. They began to move in the direction of the car. “I love the way you smell,” she said. “You always
smell just like you are. Listen, Freddy, I don’t know exactly what I’m doing right now. I’m just doing the best I can and
playing it by ear. But I’m okay. I really am okay. Do you believe everything that’s happened?”

“You want to buy anything? Is there anything you need? You want to see a doctor or anything like that?”

“No, let’s just go up to the house. I’ve been thinking about the house a lot. About the windows. Did you get the rest of them
put in?”

“Yeah, and now the goddamn birds are going crazy crashing into them. Five dead birds this week. They fight their reflections.
How’s that for a metaphor.” He helped her into the car. “Wear your seat belt, okay? So, what’s going on inside there?”