Nora Jane (19 page)

When they were through collecting all the books they went to a coffeehouse across the street from the campus and picked out
a table where they could meet. “I don’t know if this table will be large enough,” Nieman said. “Students will be flocking
to us, don’t you think?”

“Don’t scare me like that,” Freddy said.

“Don’t turn my education into an anecdote,” Nora Jane decreed. “Or I’ll get my own table and have my own following.” She piled
her books up in front her and looked at them. She was proud of them. She was on fire at this beginning.

I
T WAS THE SUNDAY MORNING
after the wonderful Friday when Nora Jane, Freddy, and their best friend, Nieman, spent the afternoon on the Berkeley campus
signing up for classes and being filled with happiness and hope.

It was Sunday morning and Freddy and Nora Jane were on the patio reading the Sunday newspapers and watching Zandia, who was
brandishing a plastic sword in the air. He was standing on a ladder by the fence that separated the houses and pretending
to poke them with the sword to punish them for ignoring him.

Because Nora Jane had saved Zandia’s life he thought he had a claim on her. He thought she was a mean, bad girl to sit there
reading the newspapers when he didn’t have a thing to do. “I’m killing you,” he called out in his annoying, high-pitched voice.
“You are Nora Jane Captain Hook. I’m swording you.”

“You think I should go get him?” Nora Jane asked Freddy. “Clyda said his mother was coming this afternoon. Can you stand him
for a while?”

“Sure. Why not? Did that man call about the new pool cover?”

“He’s coming Monday afternoon. Betty will let him in if I’m not here.” Nora Jane got up from her chair and walked down across
the lawn to Zandia, who was continuing to threaten her. His grandmother met her at the fence.

“Let me take him for a while,” Nora Jane said. “We like to watch him play.”

“If you’re sure you want him. I swear to God I’m worn out with him. I’m going to Maine Chance for two weeks the minute that
he’s gone. I was going to the Golden Door but they’re full.”

“Let us have him for a while. It will keep Freddy from reading the editorial page. It drives him crazy to read the editorials.
Actually he shouldn’t even be allowed to read the papers.” Nora Jane helped Zandia over the fence and he stood beside her,
poking his sword in the direction of his grandmother.

“Claudine ought to be here by three or four. They sent me some stills from the set. You want to see them? She really is a
pretty girl. I guess I’m too proud of her.” Clyda pulled some photographs out of the pocket of her jacket. She handed them
over the fence, still talking. “That’s Kevin Kline in the background. That’s a Mardi Gras parade. These were made while they
were still filming in New Orleans. That’s Claudine and the other one’s her boyfriend, Sandy Wade. They’re pretty handsome,
aren’t they?”

Nora Jane took the photographs. It was Sandy George Wade, her old lover. Ten years older and stronger looking and wider and
twelve times as handsome, if it were possible for anyone that handsome to look any better. It was Sandy, on his way to San
Francisco to ruin her life.

“That’s her boyfriend?”

“Yes. He’s very good-looking, isn’t he? They’ll be here this afternoon to get Zandia. Claudine wants to meet you and thank
you in person. She’ll never forgive me if she doesn’t have a chance to thank you for what you did.”

“I don’t know if we’ll still be here. We’re going to Berkeley starting tomorrow. There’s so much we have to do. Well, thanks
for showing these to me.” Nora Jane handed them back over the fence. “I’ll bring him back in half an hour. We have to leave
pretty soon.” She took Zandia’s hand and hurried back across the lawn to Freddy. Tammili and Lydia were with him. Tammili
had on a blue and white dress and Lydia had on shorts and a white T-shirt advertising an Amos Oz book.

Lydia is his, Nora Jane said to herself. If he sees her he will know. Anyone will know. We know. Freddy will go crazy when
he finds out Sandy’s coming. Well, I can’t wait. I have to tell him now. We have to leave. What hell is this? That we have
to pay for the past forever. The terrible past. The mean past. It’s here every moment of our lives, weighing us down, ruining
everything we do.

“Take Zandia,” she said to Tammili. “Go find him some cookies. I have to talk to your father.”

She pulled Freddy up from his chair and led him into the living room. It was a perfect room. High glass walls that looked
out onto the bay. White marble floors with soft blue handmade cotton rugs. A long gold sofa. A Japanese tea box for a coffee
table. A bowl of white roses beside the fireplace. Nora Jane pushed a button and the music of Johann Sebastian Bach began
to play. Freddy had not spoken. He thought she was going to tell him someone had died. He was going over a list in his head.
It had to be something Zandia’s grandmother told her. It wouldn’t be Nieman, or someone would have called.

“Sit down,” she said. “Don’t go crazy when you hear this. We can deal with this. We are not hopeless in the face of what I’m
going to tell you.”

“Say it.”

“Sandy Wade is the boyfriend of Zandia’s mother. They’re coming here today. This is real, Freddy. I just saw a photograph
of him. We can’t let him see Lydia. He’s a human being. It would break his heart and then I don’t know what he’d do. He’s
in a film with Zandia’s mother. Clyda has photographs of the girls with Zandia at the pool. He’ll see them. We can get the
girls out of here but what about the pictures? Even if we could do something about that, Clyda will talk about them. He thinks
they’re his. Both of them. I lived with him the whole time I was pregnant. Don’t forget that.”

“We’ll steal the photographs. That’s easy. Say you want to borrow them.” He had stood up. He was walking around the room.

“She gave us a set.”

“I’m going to get them now. We’ll sell the house. We’ll move. I’ll sell the house tomorrow.”

“That’s overreacting.”

“No, it’s not. Call Mother. Tell her we’re coming over there for a few days. Then we’ll go get the photographs. You keep her
busy and I’ll steal them.”

Twenty minutes later Nora Jane and Freddy were in the kitchen of Clyda’s house. “We want to see those photographs you took,”
Freddy said. “We need to borrow the negatives. We can’t find the ones you gave us. The girls must have put them somewhere.”

“Oh, they are good, aren’t they? I can’t believe how well they turned out.” Clyda left the room to get the photographs. Zandia
stuck his sword into the space between the refrigerator and the wall. The cat climbed up on a counter and sat beside a plate
of fruit. The doorbell was ringing. Then the phone was ringing also. Nora Jane started to answer it, then couldn’t touch it.
Zandia picked up the phone. It was Lydia, looking for her mother. “Put my mother on the phone, Zandia. Zandia, can you hear
me? Is my mother there?”

There were excited voices in the hall. Zandia dropped the phone and ran down the hall and then they were there. His mother
and his grandmother and Sandy George Wade, moving into the kitchen all talking. Freddy had never met Sandy Wade but he had
lived with Lydia for ten years and it was as though she had stepped into the room. The hair, the eyes, the body English, the
expression on Sandy’s face, quizzical, waiting.

“I have wondered where you were,” Nora Jane began. “I’m glad to see you well. This is my husband, Freddy. Sandy is an old
friend from New Orleans,” she explained to Clyda.” We went to school together.”

“We went to the same church,” Sandy added. “We knew each other a long time ago.”

“We have to be going,” Nora Jane said. “We have people waiting on us.”

“May I borrow the photographs to show them?” Freddy took them from Clyda’s hand and led Nora Jane toward the back door.

“This is who saved Zandia’s life,” Clyda was saying. “This is Nora Jane.”

“I don’t know what to say,” Claudine put in. “I brought you a present. Sandy, go get my suitcase, will you?” She was very
tall, very thin, nervous and excited. She had picked up Zandia but she was not paying much attention to him. She was trying
to figure out what was wrong. “Mother,” she added, “get that goddamn cat off the counter, will you? I told you Zandia’s allergic
to them. Has that cat been inside the whole time?”

“We really have to leave. We’ll see you later.” Freddy put the photographs into his pocket and he and Nora Jane disappeared
through the door.

“I’ll call you later,” Nora Jane called over her shoulder. “We’ll get together later.”

They made it through the gate and started up the hill to their house. “Get the girls,” she said. “Let’s get out of here.”

They walked back across the yard, holding hands, tight against each other’s bodies. Freddy’s shoulders barely came an inch
higher than Nora Jane’s. “Yet I feel the breadth of them,” she said, and he did not ask the meaning. They had grown to talk
this way when they were alone together. In sentence fragments, long hints, musings. Perhaps she had learned it from him, or
perhaps she had only learned to do it aloud, since she had always whispered parts of secrets to herself and to her cats. Lonely
little only child that she had been, always up in trees with a cat, spinning worlds she could inhabit without fear. Now, into
this world she had created with this man, a real world of goodness and light, peace and hope, came this moment and they must
bear it and survive it.

“He cannot mean to harm us,” Freddy answered. “Still, she is his and he will know it. What do we do now? First we think.”

“He thinks they both are his. We should never have kept this secret. Nothing should be a secret. Secrets are dynamite, weapons-grade
uranium.”

“Who would we have told? Tammili and Lydia? We can’t do that.”

“Call your mother and tell her we’re coming over there. We’ll move if we have to. He knows where we live.”

“Leave the house?”

“There are millions of houses. Think of the stuff we could throw away.”

“All right. Go get the girls. Let’s go. A house on the beach. That’s what you’ve always wanted, isn’t it?”

“This is what money is for, Freddy. This is the difference in being rich and being poor.” They had arrived at the cobbled
path that led to the back door. It was sheltered by azalea bushes and they stopped beneath one and moved into each other’s
arms. Frozen still, on guard, but moving. This was the thing Nieman envied them, this marriage, this shield they had created,
the ability to plan and move as one.

Nora Jane disappeared into the house and began to throw clothes for the girls into a suitcase. Freddy got the station wagon
out of the garage and drove it to the side door. He went into the living room and turned on the CD player. Then he called
his mother. The strains of the Sixth Symphony were in the background while he talked to her. “It’s dire, Mother. Someone who
is a threat to us is staying next door. We’re coming there, for perhaps a week.”

“What will you tell the girls?”

“What do you suggest?”

“Say I need them. Say I was frightened.”

“You’ve never been frightened in your life. They’d never believe that.”

“Then tell them they can’t know.”

“I’ll say the air-conditioner’s broken. Hell, I’ll say the power’s going off.”

“Come on then. I’m waiting.”

“We’re going to buy another house. Will you go with Nora Jane this afternoon and help her look?”

“Whatever you need.”

Ann Harwood hung up the phone and sat staring out the leaded glass doors into the morning light. Then she picked up the phone
and called her lover and told him she couldn’t drive to the desert as they had planned. “The children need me,” she said.
“This is why there’s no point in getting married.”

“Can I help?”

“I don’t think so. I’ll call you later.” She hung up the phone and walked down the hall and began to open doors to unused
rooms.

Sandy George Wade stood by himself in Clyda’s pink and white guest bedroom feeling the way he had felt most of his life. Frightened,
deserted, in the way, waiting for the next blow to fall. I guess I’d like to see those kids she had, he decided. See how they
turned out, but what the hell, nobody offered to show them to me, did they?

Zandia came into the room and brandished his plastic sword. Sandy struck a pose and pretended to fence with him. They moved
around the room thrusting and pointing at one another. Zandia began to laugh, he ran in little circles, faster and faster,
then he jumped up on the bed and held the sword in both hands and began to jump on the mattress. Sandy picked him up and carried
him upside down to his mother. “You’ve been had, Zorro,” he said to him. “You’ve met your match when you fence with Captain
Sandy Hook, the master swordsman of the deep.” Zandia whacked him on the leg with the sword, then dissolved in upside-down
giggles.

Sandy set him upright and took his hand. “Back to Montessori for you, old buddy,” he said. “Tomorrow morning bright and early.
And this time don’t bring home any colds while I’m filming.”

Freddy and Lydia had promised to go to movies with Nieman, so only Tammili went with Nora Jane and Ann Harwood to hunt for
houses. “I came to California to live by the ocean,” Nora Jane said. “I want to live where breakers beat upon the shore. I
want to look out the window and see my girls playing in the sand.”

“What’s she been smoking?” Tammili dissolved in laughter. They were in Ann’s Bentley, going to meet a real estate broker.
“It’s because Zandia fell in the pool, I bet,” she added.”She probably wouldn’t let us in the ocean if we lived by it.”

At five-fifteen that afternoon they found it. A three-story frame house on a promontory where the Pacific Ocean beat against
the shore. Nora Jane stood on a slope and watched the waves break against a tall, triangular rock. She walked to the water’s
edge and watched her footprints come and go. She thought, I did mean to live by the water, where the land meets the sea. “I
was on the ocean’s edge when I decided you were about to be born,” she said to Tammili. “I think you should be excited by
the sound of the waves.”