Nora Jane (32 page)

“She forgot her pills,” Gabriela said to Jennifer. “Annie forgot her Ritalin.”

Good,” Allen said. “She doesn’t need any pills. I think that doctor’s crazy to give pills to that child.”

“She’s taking Ritalin?” Stella asked. “I didn’t think they still prescribed that to children. What are they giving her Ritalin
for?”

“To get her adjusted to school,” Jennifer answered. “Why? What do you know that we don’t know?”

“It’s just a very old-fashioned drug. Primitive, compared to the things we have now. How long has she been taking it?”

“A month. Almost a month. What’s wrong with it, Stella?”

I took a couple of them,” Gabriela put in. “It didn’t do anything to me but make me talk all the time. And, yeah, that day
at school I did all that arithmetic so fast. I was wondering if that had anything to do with that.”

“You took one?” All three of the adults leaned her way.

“I sure wasn’t feeding them to Annie without knowing what she was taking. I seen, saw. I saw that happen with a girl in this
place I stayed once. She took some pills this guy gave her and she ended up almost dying.”

“You took a Ritalin?” Allen took both her hands in his. Stella began to breathe into a Zen koan.

“I cut one in two. I know about drugs. I used to help out at the home when kids got sick. Sister Elena Margarite said she
might make a nurse of me.”

“Where are they now?” Stella asked. “I’d like to see these pills.”

“She left them at home. She wouldn’t ever take them if I didn’t remind her.”

“It’s all right,” Jennifer said. “Forget about the Ritalin. When we get home we’ll find another doctor.”

“Was this my mother’s doing?” Stella asked. “Is this some of Momma’s old hippie connections she put you on to? Damn that woman.
She and Dad are at a Ramada Inn waiting to hear from us. I’ve been praying for weeks they wouldn’t come.”

“Stella, how can you talk like that about your parents?”

“I’m an unnatural child. Nieman is too. That’s why we’re marrying each other. I finally met a man who isn’t interested in
meeting my family.”

Annie had slid back into the seat, listening. These were the strangest adults she had ever encountered. All these days and
weeks and they kept on acting just like they had the day she met them. As if life was funny, an adventure, something amazing
to be watched and commented on. As if some light was in them that did not go out. She raised her eyes and they were smiling
on her. Stella was looking at Gabriela.

“You got any crabs on this beach where your house is?” Gabriela asked Tammili. “I went to the beach a couple of times. These
old birds were pecking for food in the sand and there were crabs underneath a log. I’d like to catch one in a bucket and get
a good look at that if I could.”

“We’re almost there,” Tammili told her. “We are almost to our house.”

As soon as they arrived at the Harwoods’ house, Stella excused herself and got into her car and drove to her office in the
biochemistry building and started making phone calls and pulling things up on her computer. In an hour she had talked to child
psychiatrists in New Orleans and New York City and Pittsburgh. She had researched recent antide-pressants and had missed her
appointment for a haircut. She stopped on her way home at a walk-in beauty parlor and let them even up the back and sides
of her very short, severe haircut. She shook out the navy blue dress she was wearing to her rehearsal dinner and got into
the shower still running the statistics on antidepressants through her head. Not good, she decided. Feeding Ritalin to a perfectly
healthy child. She probably needs a shrink and Jennifer and Allen need to find out where she’s been and what happened to her
but I could figure that out if I had her alone for a week. Anxieties are like fingerprints but they are easily traced. What
a fantastic cousin I have to think up something this crazy and wonderful and brave. I really like that girl. And the other
one, the small one, is as pretty as a picture. What a lovely, ancient face. She looks like she’s thirty years old inside.
She took one of the pills! God, the human race. You can’t see that underneath a microscope, Stella. There is nothing in RNA
and DNA to account for our behavior, except the attachments we form are in the pattern, aren’t they? Each of us has our receivers,
what the old Jungians called the anima and animus, and someone comes along that fits the pattern and we meld. I am getting
married in the morning to Nieman Gluuk. I am going to be his wife and make a home with him and be with him when we are old.
Scary and wonderful, I guess.

She turned up the water in the shower and decided to stay there until the hot water ran out. The phone started ringing as
soon as she got comfortable. She got out and answered it. “Stella,” Nieman moaned on the telephone. “Where are you? I can’t
be alone waiting to get married. I’m coming over right this minute.”

“Then I won’t get dressed,” she giggled. “Come on. Let’s see what terror does to the parasympathetic nervous system.”

“I’m in the car. I’ll be there in ten minutes.”

The living room of the Harwoods’ house at the beach was an inspiration of the movers. They had moved all the musical instruments
into one room while they waited for someone to arrive and give them orders. The Harwoods had left it that way. The room contained
two baby grand pianos and a harpsichord and a harp. That was it. Except for a long thin table holding a Bose music system
the size of a book.

“Fucking-A,” Gabriela said when she saw it, forgetting her vow not to curse at the wedding.

“My grandmother bought it for us,” Tammili said. “Don’t worry about it being big. Most of it is wasted space. It was a wreck
when we got it. We had to have the roof replaced and all the plumbing and the windows. The windows were so loose they rattled
when it rained. So, there’s the ocean. I guess that makes up for everything. And the guest house is nice. You’ll like it there.”

“What do you do with all these pianos?” Gabriela asked.

“We play them. Go ahead, try one. Come on. You can’t hurt it. Momma’s got a piano tuner who used to work for the symphony.
He comes out every other month. Go on, play it. See how it sounds.”

Gabriela walked over to the harpsichord and ran her fingers soundlessly across the keyboard. Nora Jane watched them from the
doorway. “Would you like me to show you how?” she asked. “I have all these pianos because I was an orphan too. I have these
pianos so I won’t have to put up with feeling bad in case I ever do. I just come in here and start making noise. Come on,
sit down by me.” She sat down at one of the baby grand pianos. Gabriela sat beside her. Annie came and sat on the other side.
She was still holding the cape over her shoulder like a shawl. Tammili stood behind her and laid her left hand very lightly
on the cape. Nora Jane began to play show tunes, songs from Broadway musicals.

Tammili moved away from the piano. She began to dance. Gabriela got up and danced beside her. When Lydia came in the front
door she found them dancing and joined them.

The wedding of Nieman Gluuk to Miss Stella Ardella Light began with children dancing.

The day of the wedding dawned bright and clear. By nine in the morning all four of the bridesmaids were dressed and wandering
around the house getting in the way of the caterers. “Dahlias,” Freddy Harwood declared. “The house is full of dahlias.” Freddy
was dressed in his morning suit and was videotaping everything in sight. He videotaped the bridesmaids in the music room and
on the patio and in the kitchen. He videotaped the judge arriving with her twenty-six-yearold boyfriend. He videotaped Nieman
and Stella getting out of Nieman’s car and walking up the pathway to the back door. “He’s scared to death,” Freddy said into
the microphone. “He’s terrified. He can barely walk. He’s making it. He’s opening the door for her. It’s nine-fifteen. Forty-five
minutes until ground zero.”

Nieman’s mother arrived in a limousine. Stella’s parents came in their Mazda van. The guests were crowding in. The driveway
became packed with cars. The cars spread out across the lawn. The string quartet was playing Bach. Between nine-thirty and
nine-forty-nine, a hundred and fifty people made their way up the front steps and filled the house. Someone handed bouquets
to the bridesmaids. They formed a semicircle around the altar. The judge stepped into the middle. Nieman appeared. The quartet
broke into a piece by Schubert. Stella joined her groom and the judge read a ceremony in which the bride and groom promised
to do their best to take care of each other for as long as they lived and loved each other. Nieman kissed his bride. The audience
heaved a sigh of relief and champagne began to be passed on silver trays.

“That’s it?” Annie said.

“I guess so,” Lydia answered. “You want to get some petits fours and go play in my room?”

“We had a cape like this,” she was saying later. She and Annie were lying on her bed with a plate of petits fours and wineglasses
full of grape juice on her dresser. “We found a cape like this in this house we have that’s in the hills. We took it on this
hike with us and then we lost it.”

“Your sister said the same thing. She said your dad broke his arm.” “We thought it was a lucky cape. Then we lost it.”

“This one’s lucky. As soon as Gabriela got it we got adopted. Just like that.”

“I wish we could get another one. Do you know where to get them?”

“No. But I can’t let you have this. It’s Gabriela’s. She just let me borrow it to fly on the airplane. So, is your dad going
to take us to this amusement park?”

“He said he would if he could. If it opens before you have to leave tomorrow. I wish you could stay a few more days. There’re
a lot of things we could show you. We could take you on BART” Lydia lay facedown upon the cape, smelling the wonderful smell
of wildflowers. “I think they make these out of some kind of flowers they grow somewhere. Like linen is made of flax. Where
do you think they make them?”

“I think, Italy.” Annie had no idea how she had decided to say Italy, but as soon as she said it she felt it was true. “I
think they have this town in Italy and all they do is grow the flowers to make these capes.”

“They think the cape is magic,” Jennifer was saying. “They think they have a magic cape.”

“What?” Nieman asked. “What are you talking about?”

“Like Michael Jordan wearing number twenty-three,” Allen put in. “They believe in it, but they don’t know we know they think
it’s magic. They just keep dropping hints.”

They were on the side porch of the Harwoods’ house. The wedding was winding down. The guests had nearly all gone home. The
string quartet was in the kitchen talking to Freddy and Nora Jane. Jennifer and Allen Williams and the bride and groom were
on the porch. It was the first time the Williamses had had a chance to be alone with the pair. Nieman had been commenting
on how well the adopted girls had managed to fit into a scene they could not possibly have imagined. “Perhaps they saw it
on a film,” he had been saying. “I’ve written several times about how film teaches manners. Not just the obvious bad things,
like violence, but also niceties, like how to hold your wedding bouquet. Do you think they were exposed to many films?”

“I don’t know about that,” Allen said. “But they have a cape they think is magic.”

“They found the cape in a box of Salvation Army things a few days before we came to the home and met them. So they think it
brought them luck. Technically, it’s Gabriela’s cape, but she lets Annie share it. She let Annie carry it on the plane. They
pretended they wanted it for a blanket.”

“I’m having a déjà vu,” Stella said. She took Nieman’s arm. She pressed herself into his side. “What is this all about?”

“I have it too,” he said. “Just then. When Jennifer started talking about the cape. You have to understand,” he said to Jennifer
and Allen. “The first time we met we had this huge mutual deja vu. Is this part of love, do you think? A harkening back to
the mother–child relationship?”

“It’s probably blood sugar,” Stella said. ’A magic cape. Well, that’s a wonderful thing to believe you have. I found a really
fine psychiatrist in Oklahoma City who will see her, Jennifer. I had to beg, but he’ll see her once a week. Don’t take her
back to that man who gave her Ritalin. Promise you won’t go back to him.”

“Whatever you say, brilliant cousin,” Jennifer answered. “It’s unbelievable how much you learn to love a child, any child.”
She looked at Allen. “It’s hard enough to suffer when you’re old. Eleven years old should be a happy time and we want to make
it one for her. If you found someone, we’ll go and see him. I believe in psychiatry. I always have.”

“I’ve thought of going into it,” Stella said. “Sometimes I think I’ve taken molecular biology as far as it will go. Maybe
I’ll abandon the field to Nieman and get myself a new career.” She closed her eyes, then opened them. “A dog runs across the
street in front of your car. In a nanosecond the entire chemistry of the body changes. There are Buddhist monks who can regulate
their heartbeat, control pain, choose when to die. There is so much to learn, so much to know.” She turned to Nieman and kissed
him on the lips. Jennifer clapped her hands, then kissed Allen long and passionately. It was the best kiss they had kissed
in many months. A storm was brewing on the ocean. The negative ions were thick in the clean, sweet air.

“We’ll come see you in August,” Tammili was saying. ‘And you’ll come here at Christmas when it’s snowing where you live. We’ll
do that every year as long as we live and always be friends.”

“We swear by the cape to be friends,” Lydia added. The four little girls were sitting on the floor in their dresses. The cape
was spread out between them. They were each holding part of it.

“Every time we see each other we’ll get your dad to take videos of us,” Gabriela put in. “In the meantime if he meets any
movie people he can show them the videos and see if they want us to be in movies. Give them Jennifer and Allen’s phone number
if they do.”