Nora Jane (16 page)

“They just move around all the time. If I need to I can sell the car. I don’t want anybody supporting us, even you. I’m really
doing great. I don’t know all the details yet but I’m figuring things out.” He started the motor and began to drive. She reached
over and touched his knee. They drove through the town of Fort Bragg and turned onto the road to Willits. Nora Jane moved
her hand and fell asleep curled up on the seat. She didn’t wake again until they were past Willits and had started up the
long hill leading to the gravel road that led to the broken path to Freddy’s house. “He said they were going to give great
gifts to the world, gifts of music,” she said when she woke. “I think it means they won’t be afraid to sing in public. I want
to call Li Suyin and talk to her about it. I forgot you didn’t have a phone. I need to call and tell her where I am. If she
calls San Jose she’ll start worrying about me.”

“You can call tomorrow. Look, how about putting your hand back on my leg. That way I’ll believe you’re here.” He looked at
her. “I want to believe you’re here.”

“You’re crazy to even talk to me.”

“No, I’m not. I’m the sane one, remember, the control in the modern world experiment.” She was laughing now so he could afford
to look at her as hard as he liked. She looked okay. Tired and not much color in her face, but okay. Perfect as always from
Freddy Harwood’s point of view.

“I
WANT TO TAKE THEM
on the grand tour as soon as they’re old enough,” Freddy was saying. They were lying on a futon on top of a mattress in the
smallest of the upstairs rooms. “My grandmother took me when I was twelve. She took my cousin, Sally, and hired a gigolo to
dance with her in Vienna. I had this navy blue raincoat with a zip-in lining. God, I wish I still had that coat.” Nora Jane
snuggled down beside him, smelling his chest. It smelled like a wild animal. There were many things about Freddy Harwood that
excited her almost as much as love. She patted him on the arm. “So, anyway,” he continued. “I have this uncle in New Orleans
and he’s married two women with three children. He’s raised six children that didn’t belong to him and he’s getting along
all right. He says at least his subconscious isn’t involved. There’s a lot to be said for that.…What I’m saying is, I haven’t
lived in Berkeley all my life to give in to some kind of old worn-out masculine pride. Not with all the books I’ve read.”

“All I’ve ever done is make you sad. I always end up doing something mean to you.”

“Maybe I like it. Anyway, you’re here and that’s how it is. But we ought to go back to town in a few days. You can stay with
me there, can’t you?” He pulled her closer, as close as he dared. She was so soft. The babies only made her softer. “I ought
to call Stuart and tell him you’re here.”

“He’s a heart doctor. He doesn’t know anything about babies.”

“Wait a minute. One of them did something. Oh, shit, did you feel that?”

“I know. They’re in there. Sometimes I forget it but not very often. Tell me some more about when you went to Europe. Tell
me everything you can remember, just the way it happened. Like what you had to eat and what everyone was wearing.”

“Okay. Sally had a navy blue skirt and a jacket and she had some white blouses and in Paris we got some scarves. She had this
scarf with the Visigoth crowns on it and she had it tied in a loop so a whole crown showed. She fixed it all the time she
wore it. She couldn’t leave it alone. Then they went somewhere and got some dresses made out of velvet but they only wore
them at night.”

“What did you wear?” She had a vision of him alone in a hotel room putting on his clothes when he was twelve. “I bet you were
a wonderful-looking boy. I bet you were the smartest boy in Europe.”

“We met Jung. We talked to him. So, what else did you talk about to this Chinese research biologist?”

“A genetic research biologist. He’s still studying it. He has to finish school before he can do his real work. He wants to
do things to DNA and find out how much we remember. He thinks we remember everything that ever happened to anyone from the
beginning of time because there wouldn’t be any reason to forget it, and if you can make computer chips so small, then the
brain is much larger than that. We talked all the way from Sausalito. His father was a painter. When his sister gets here
they might move to Sweden. He believes in the global village.”

“He says they’re musicians, huh?”

“Well, it wasn’t that simple. It was very complicated. He had the biggest face of any oriental I’ve met. I just love him.
I’m going to talk to him a lot more when we both get back to San Francisco.” Her voice was getting softer, blurring the words.

“Go to sleep,” Freddy said. “Don’t talk anymore.” He felt a baby move, then move again. They were moving quite a bit.

“I’m cold,” she said. “Also, he said the birth process was the worst thing we ever go through in our life. He told me about
this boy in England that’s a genius, his parents are both doctors and they let him stay in the womb for eighteen months for
an experiment and he can remember being born and tells about it. He said it was like someone tore a hole in the universe and
jerked you out. Get closer, will you. God, I’m tired.”

“We ought to go downstairs and sleep in front of the fire. I’m going to make a bed down there and come get you.”

Freddy went downstairs and pulled a mattress up before the fireplace and built up the fire and brought two futons in and laid
them on top of the mattress and added a stack of wool blankets and some pillows. When he had everything arranged, he went
back upstairs and carried her down and tucked her in. Then he rubbed her back and told her stories about Vienna and wondered
what time it was. I am an hour from town, he told himself, and Sam is twenty minutes away and probably drunk besides. It’s
at least three o’clock in the morning and the water’s half frozen in the cistern and I let her come up here because I was
too goddamn selfish to think of a way to stop it. So, tomorrow we go to town.

“Freddy?”

“Yes.”

“I had a dream a moment ago… a dream of a meadow. All full of light and this dark tree. I had to go around it.”

“Go to sleep, honey. Please go to sleep.”

When she fell asleep he got up and sat on the hearth. We are here as on a darkling plain, he thought. We forget who we are.
Branching plants, at the mercy of water. But tough. Tough and violent, some of us anyway. Oh, shit, if anything happened to
her I couldn’t live. Well, I’ve got to get some air. This day is one too many.

He pulled on a long black cashmere coat that had belonged to his father and went outside and took a sack of dog food out of
the car and walked down into the hollow to feed the bobcat. He spread part of the food on the ground and left the open sack
beside it. “I know you’re in there,” he said out loud. “Well, here’s some food. Come and get it. Nora Jane’s here. I guess
you know that by now. Don’t kill anything until she leaves.” He listened. The only sound was the wind in the trees. It was
very cold. The stars were very clear. There was a rustle, about forty yards away. Then nothing. “Good night then,” Freddy
said. “I guess this dog food was grown in Iowa. The global village. Well, why not.” He started back up the hill, thinking
the bobcat might jump on him at any moment. It took his mind off Nora Jane for almost thirty seconds.

At that moment the Starlight Express came to a stop in Seattle, Washington, and Lin Tan climbed down from the train and started
off in search of adventure. Before the week was over he would fall in love with the daughter of a poet. His life would be
shadowed for five years by the events of the next few hours but he didn’t know that yet. He was in a wonderful mood. All his
philosophical and mystical beliefs were coming together like ducks on a pond. To make him believe in his work, fate had put
him on a train with a girl whose amnio he had done only a few months before. Twin baby girls with AB positive blood, the luckiest
of all blood. Not many scientists have also great feeling for mystical properties of life, he decided, and see genetic structure
when they gaze at stars. I am very lucky my father taught me to love beauty. Moss on Pond, Light on Water, Smoke Rising Beneath
the Wheels of Locomotive. Yes, Lin Tan concluded, I am a fortunate man in a universe that really knows what it is doing.

* * *

Freddy let himself back into the house. He built up the fire, covered Nora Jane and lay down beside her to try to sleep. This
is not paranoia, he told himself. I am hyper-aware, which is a different thing. If it weren’t for people like me the race
would have disappeared years ago. Who tends the lines at night? Who watches for the big cats with their night vision? Who
stays outside the circle and guards the tribe?

He snuggled closer, smelling her hair. “What is divinity if it can come only in silent shadows and in dreams?” Barukh atah
Adonai eloheinu, melekh ha-olam. Praised be thou, Lord our God, King of the Universe, who has brought forth bread from the
earth. Nora Jane, me. Jesus Christ!

It was five-thirty when she woke him. “I’m wet,” she said. “I think my water broke. I guess that’s it. You’d better go and
get someone.”

“Oh, no, you didn’t do this to me.” He was bolt upright, pulling on his boots. “You’re joking. There isn’t even a phone.”

“Go use one somewhere. Freddy, this is serious. I’m in a lot of pain, I think. I can’t tell. Please go on. Go right now.”

“Nora Jane. This isn’t happening to me.” He was pulling on his boots.

“Go on. It’ll be okay. This Chinese guy said they were going to be great so they can’t die. But hurry up. How far is it to
Sam’s?”

“Twenty minutes. Oh, shit. Okay, I’m going. Don’t do anything until I get back. If you have to go to the bathroom, do it right
there.” He leaned fiercely down over her. His hands were on her shoulders. “I’ll be right back here. Don’t move until I come.”
He ran from the house, jumped into his car, and began driving down the rocky drive. It was impossible to do more than five
miles an hour over the rocks. The whole thing was impossible. The sun was lighting up the sky behind the mountains. The sky
was silver. Brilliant clouds covered the western sky. Freddy came to the gate he shared with the other people on the mountain
and drove right through it, leaving it torn off the post. He drove as fast as he dared down the rocky incline and turned onto
gravel and saw the smoke coming from the chimney of Sam Lyons’s house.

Nora Jane was in great pain. “I’m your mother,” she was pleading. “Don’t hurt me. I wouldn’t hurt you. Please don’t do it.
Don’t come now. Just wait awhile, go back to sleep. Oh, God. Oh, Jesus Christ. It’s too cold. I’m freezing. I have to stop
this. Pray for us sinners.” The bed filled with water. She looked down. It wasn’t water. It was blood. So much blood. What’s
going on? she thought. Why is this happening to me? I don’t want it. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and
at the hour of our death, Amen. Hail Mary, Mother of God, blessed art thou among women and blessed is the fruit of your womb,
Jesus. Oh, Christ, oh, shit, oh, goddamnit all to hell. I don’t know what’s so cold. I don’t know what I’m going to do. Someone
should be here. I want to see somebody.

The blood continued to pour out upon the bed.

Sam came to the door. “A woman’s up there having babies,” Freddy said. “Get on the phone and call an ambulance and the nearest
helicopter service. Try Ukiah but call the hospital in Willits first. Do it now. Sam, a woman’s in my house having babies.
Please.” Sam turned and ran back through the house to the phone. Freddy followed him. “I’m going back. Get everyone you can
get. Then come and help me. Make sure they understand the way. Or wait here for them if they don’t seem to understand. Be
very specific about the way. Then come. No, wait here for them. Get Selby and tell him to come to my house. I’m leaving.”
He ran back out the door and got back into his car and turned it around and started driving. His hands burned into the wheel.
He had never known anything in his life like this. Worse than the earthquake that ruined the store. He was alone with this.
“No,” he said out loud as he drove. “I couldn’t love them enough to let them call me on the phone. No, I had to have this
goddamn fucking house a million miles from nowhere. She’ll die. I know it. I have known it from the first moment I set eyes
on her. Every time I ever touched her I knew she would die and leave me. Now it’s coming true.” The car hit a boulder. The
wheel was wrenched from his hand but he straightened it with another wrench and went on driving. The sky was lighter now.
The clouds were blowing away. He parked the car a hundred yards from the house and got out and started running.

Lydia came out into the space between Nora Jane’s legs. Nora Jane reached for the child and held her, struggling to remember
what you did with the cord. Then Freddy was there and took the baby from her and bit the cord in two and tied it and wrapped
the baby in his coat and handed it to her. Tammili’s head moved down into the space where Lydia’s had been. Nora Jane screamed
a long scream that filled all the spaces of the house and then Nora Jane didn’t care anymore. Tammili’s body moved out into
Freddy’s hands and he wrapped her in a pillowcase and laid her beside her sister, picking up one and then the other, then
turning to Nora Jane. Blood was everywhere and more was coming. There was nothing to do, and there was too much to do. There
wasn’t any way to hold them and help her too. “It’s all right,” she said. “Wipe them off. I don’t want blood all over them.
You can’t do anything for me.”

“I want you to drink something.” He ran into the kitchen and pulled open the refrigerator door. He found a bottle of Coke
and a bottle of red wine and held them in his hands trying to decide. He took the wine and went back to where she lay. “Drink
this. I want you to drink this. You’re bleeding, honey. You have to drink something. They’ll be here in a minute. It won’t
be a minute from now.”

She shook her head. “I’m going to die, Freddy. It’s all right. It looks real good. You wouldn’t believe how it looks. Get
them some good-looking clothes… get them a red raincoat with a hood. And yellow. Get them a lot of yellow.” He pulled her
body into his. She felt as if she weighed a thousand pounds. Then nothing. Nothing, nothing, nothing. “Wake up,” he screamed.
“Wake up. Don’t die on me. Don’t you dare die on me.” Still, there was nothing. He turned to the babies. He must take care
of them. No, he must revive Nora Jane. He laid his head down beside hers. She was breathing. He picked up the bottle of wine
and drank from it. He turned to the baby girls. He picked them up, one at a time, then one in each arm. Then he began to count.
One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. He laid Lydia down beside Nora Jane, and, holding Tammili, he began to throw
logs on the fire. He went into the kitchen and lit the stove and put water on to boil. He dipped a kitchen towel in cold water,
then threw that away and took a bottle of cooking oil and soaked a rag in it and carried Tammili back to the fire and began
to wipe the blood and mucous from the child’s hair. Then he put Tammili down and picked up Lydia and cleaned her for a while.
They were both crying, very small yelps like no sound he had ever heard. Nora Jane lay on the floor covered with a red wool
blanket soaked in blood and Freddy kept on counting. Seven hundred and seventeen. Seven hundred and eighteen. Seven hundred
and nineteen. He found more towels and made a nest for the babies in the chair and knelt beside them, patting and stirring
them with his hands until he heard the cars drive up and the helicopter blades descending to the cleared place beside the
cistern. Barukh atah Adonai eloheinu, melekh ha-olam, he was saying. Praised be thou, Lord our God, King of the Universe,
who has brought forth bread from the earth. Praised be thou, inventor of helicopters, miner of steel, king of applied science.
Oh, shit, thank God, they’re here.