Nora Jane (45 page)

I think I do, Freddy decided. As a hypothesis it’s working for me. Manifestations, fantasy, whatever it is I’ll take all of
it that I can get or that darling old Larry Binghamton will give me, but even if it was the nun, how did that make Little
Larry’s marrow match mine? The match was made when our parents were screwing, long before we started this. Wait a minute,
wasn’t Larry’s birthday always in the summer, like mine? I remember going to a pool party at their house when they got the
first aboveground pool any of us had ever seen and Mary Anne Axelrod fell off the stairs and had to go to the emergency room.
We’re almost astral twins. Isn’t that what the astrological people used to call people born on the same day, same year?

But, even if the match was made when our parents screwed, it doesn’t matter, because, if the physicists are right, time isn’t
going in one direction. There isn’t any time — it’s only matter and energy, as if anyone is prepared to believe that, which
we’re not, thank goodness. We’re all crazy enough without that kind of knowledge.

I love Little Larry with all my heart. I love the bloody angel.

Freddy was frantically trying to find the button he pushed so that the nurse would dial the phone for him, but it had slipped
down in the sheets. Finally he found it and he gave her Nieman’s number.

It was several minutes before the connection was made because of the high volume of calls on this Friday morning in the Bay
Area.

“It’s Larry Binghamton’s marrow,” he said, when Nieman answered. “Little Larry, Nieman. There is a God, old buddy, and he’s
right here, in this town, today. What should I do? I want to call and thank him. I don’t know what to do.”

“Be grateful,” Nieman answered. “You want me to come up there while you call him? I can get there in ten minutes.”

“Find the number. Call me back.”

Nieman grabbed his laptop computer and headed out the door. He called the rabbi while he was pulling out of the parking lot.
By the time he got to the hospital he had Larry’s number. He parked in the visitor’s lot and ran into the hospital and only
slowed down when he got to the elevator. On Freddy’s floor the nurse recognized Nieman and ushered him down to the window
looking into Freddy’s room. He scribbled the phone number on the signboard, although Freddy could hear him as soon as the
nurse turned on the speaker. “I’m here,” Nieman said. “Make the call.”

Freddy held the phone while the nurse made the call. Larry’s secretary put him through. “It’s Freddy Harwood,” Freddy said,
when Larry answered. “What can I say, Larry? How can I thank you for doing this?”

“Get well,” Larry said. “My cousin, Allie, died of this four years ago because they couldn’t find a match. I’m proud I match,
Freddy. I have admired you all my life. I can’t imagine not being happy I can do this. I’m happy about it. I really am.”

“It’s painful, Larry. They’re going to take the marrow out of your hip.”

“I’ve been in pain. I can stand some pain. Nell and I are divorcing. Did you hear about that? She’s trying to take my boys
to live in France, but Jay David and Harold Levi are representing me. I don’t think she’s going to get to do it. Right now
she can’t even take them out of the county. So this is good for me. I know Danen. He won’t let me have any problem. I talked
to him yesterday. Did he tell you that?”

“All he told me was that you are going to save my life. I don’t know what to say, Larry. Nieman’s here. He’s standing outside
this room. I’m in an isolation room. You want to talk to Nieman?”

“Sure I do.”

Freddy flipped the switch and said in a loud voice, “He wants to talk to you too. Say something.”

“Hello!” Nieman yelled into the speaker. “Hey, Larry, let’s have lunch tomorrow. Could you do that?”

“Sure,” Larry said on the phone to Freddy. “Tell him I would like that.”

Two nurses were standing by the window watching and listening. One of them was almost in tears. She was young and had not
been on the oncology ward long enough to get tough.

“Tell him Maggie Bee’s at twelve. I’ll come get him,” Nieman said into the speaker.

“He said can you make Maggie Bee’s at twelve. He’ll come get you at your office.”

“It’s Friday,” Larry said. “I’ll call him after I talk to you and make plans.”

“He’ll call you,” Freddy said into the speaker. “Tomorrow’s Saturday.”

“Larry.” He had turned back to the phone. “Look, I don’t want to take up your whole morning. I just want you to know that
I can’t think of anything to say to thank you except, I don’t know, thank you. Look, is there anything you need? Is there
any way I can help you with the divorce?”

“Just pray she doesn’t find a way to get them to France. I’d never get them back. Her mother has dinner with Jacques Chirac.”

“I can get the prayers,” Freddy said. “I learned how to do that this year. Okay. Hey, what is your birthday?”

“July tenth, nineteen fifty.”

“Mine’s July the fifteenth. I guess our mothers were in the hospital together. I’ll ask mine.”

“I’ll ask mine too. Maybe that’s how the match got made.”

“Ask Nieman. He’ll do research.” They both started laughing at that and then they hung up and suddenly Freddy was so tired
he almost fell asleep with the phone in his hand. The two nurses looked at each other. The younger one was really crying now.

“You have to learn to control that,” the older woman said. “I applaud your humanity and so forth, but don’t let patients see
you cry.”

“I know, but no one is looking at me, are they?”

Danen Marcus called Nora Jane and then Nieman called her. “I was getting dressed to go down there,” she answered. “I don’t
know what to think, Nieman. What if it doesn’t work?”

“It will work. It has to work.”

“Okay. Maybe. The Binghamtons are in the middle of a terrible divorce. Did you know that?”

“No.”

“His French wife is making a lot of trouble. She’s saying bad things about him all over town.”

“That will stop,” Nieman said. “I’ll put a stop to that.”

“Danen said they might do it as soon as next week.”

“Okay.”

“Well, I’d better finish getting dressed. I like to be there by noon.”

“Hold on, N.J. We have a chance now. A real chance. Be grateful if you can.”

“I know. I will.” She put down the phone and went over to her bedside table and turned on the CD player with the meditation
tape by Jon Kabat-Zinn and listened to it as she dressed. She pulled on a pair of Gap jeans, then took them off and put on
panty hose and a silk dress. I have to get dressed as though every day were the main one we’ll ever have. I will not start
looking like someone who needs sympathy. Every thought counts. So does every minute. She put on a pair of two-inch heels that
matched the brown in the print dress and then she put on a string of pearls and went into the bathroom and pulled her mass
of curly black hair back into a ponytail and clasped it with a silver clasp she and Freddy had bought the first time he took
her to New York City. She pushed it firmly into place and went into the bathroom and put on foundation and powder and eye
shadow and mascara and rouge and lipstick, then took a towel and wiped part of it off. She went back into the bedroom and
removed the CD from the CD player and went out the side door to the garage and opened the trunk of the car and put the CD
in the player and got in and listened to it all the way to the hospital. “No matter what is wrong with you,” Dr. Zinn was
saying, “even if you have the worst kind of cancer, there is still more right with you than wrong with you.” There is still
more right with him than wrong with him, there is still more right with him than wrong with him, Nora Jane kept repeating.
Such a world to give us doctors and medicines and Larry Binghamton. I’ll go see his wife in a few days and tell her what he’s
doing and that she ought to quit running him down at cocktail parties because all it does is make people think she’s mean.

The transplant was set for December 23. As the day drew near everyone drew together into a tight circle. Nieman and Stella
were coming to Nora Jane’s for dinner every night. Little Freddy was teaching Scarlett some new card games based on old maid.
Tammili and Lydia had started sleeping together in Lydia’s bed. Freddy’s mother was calling every morning and coming by in
the afternoons. She and Big Judy would come sit in the kitchen and talk to the girls when they came home from school or give
them clothes she ordered for them from her cousin’s shop in New Rochelle, New York. “Just pretend to like them,” Nora Jane
said. “You can give a few things back but keep some of them.”

“Do I have to wear them?” Lydia asked.

“You don’t like that mauve sweater set? I’ll take it if you don’t want it,” Tammili said.

“I like the sweaters. I just don’t like the plaid skirts.”

“Then give her back the skirts,” Nora Jane said. “But keep some ofthe things and wear them when we go over on Friday night.
Think of what pleasure it gave her to have them sent from New Rochelle.”

“Grandmother has to have something to do,” Lydia said. “Days pass slowly when you are in extreme anxiety.”

“All right,” Tammili agreed. “I’ll wear the blue sweaters and I’ll wear those mauve ones if you change your mind.”

Big Judy had convinced Lenora that plain old prayer was better than psychic intervention, and she had started going with him
on Saturday to sing at his church in Marin City. She had really started liking her evenings there. She’d forgotten how nice
it was to be with sober people who had jobs. Lenora was having a real makeover in the spiritual and lifestyle departments.

Mitzi had turned her prayers into confessions and promises and deals. If you will let Freddy Harwood get well, then I will
not entertain sexual thoughts about your priests and servants. I will mind my own business and do a good job helping people
look better so they’ll be in a better mood and I will not keep going to church if I can’t keep unclean thoughts out of my
head about Father Donovan, for Christ’s sake. Hail Mary, Full of Grace, blessed art thou among women and blessed is the fruit
of thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death, amen…”

At seven o’clock in the morning on the twenty-third of December, they rolled Freddy Harwood into an operating room and put
Larry Binghamton’s bone marrow into his body and waited to see if it would take.

Long, long ago in a small town in France the match had been made when their common great-great-great-great-great-great-grandmother
gave birth to twin boys and both of them lived, a rarity in the seventeen hundreds. Now the DNA met again and was not sur-prised,
was even pleased, very pleased, in some smooth chemical version of that emotion we don’t know how to talk about in words but
can imagine if we watch a tree put out its leaves, or cherries ripen, or our own hands when they are at work.

“He keeps quoting Rilke,” Nora Jane was telling Nieman. “He’s quoting it a lot.”

“It’s the hospital,” Nieman answered. “He doesn’t like to be confined and he’s a control freak. I’ve never been in a hospital
to stay. I know it would drive me crazy. Some of the aids seem, well, less than competent. I’m not sure I’d trust half those
people to touch me.”

They were waiting while the transplant was taking place. It was Mrs. Harwood, Big Judy, Nora Jane, Lydia, Tammili, and Nieman.
Stella had Little Freddy at her house with Scarlett.

Lydia and Tammili were sitting very close together on a sofa. They were reading books from school. Tammili was reading The
Return of the King for the fifth time. Lydia was reading a biography of Eleanor Roosevelt for a paper she was writing for
American history. They were snuggled down very close to each other.

“I heard Stuart went back to South Africa,” Nieman said to Mrs. Harwood. “It must have meant a lot to you to have him here.”

“He is good to have around,” she answered. “What time is it, Nieman? How long have they been in there?”

“They took him in at seven. So it’s been fifty-six minutes. I think it takes a while. They have to wait and watch it. Well,
I made that up. I’m sorry.”

“Are you enjoying being at the university?”

“He loves it,” Nora Jane answered. “He is a different man. Can’t you tell, Miss Ann?”

“How long do you think it will take?” she asked.

“I’ll go ask.” Nora Jane got up and left the waiting room and walked down to a nurse’s station. She wasn’t really going to
bother a nurse with a question like that, but she thought it might make Mrs. Harwood feel better if she believed information
was forthcoming.

Nora Jane spoke to the nurses at the station, thanking them for working so hard to help people. Then she went back to the
visitor’s waiting room and told Mrs. Harwood it would not be too much longer.

Twenty minutes later a doctor came to the room and spoke with them. “It went well,” he said. “He’ll be in a recovery room
for the rest of the day. You might as well go home and rest. Tonight or tomorrow morning we’ll move him back to an isolation
room. You can see him then. If you’ll give me a telephone number, someone will call when he’s back in a room.”

Mrs. Harwood stood up. Nora Jane stood up beside her. They gave him both their numbers. Then everyone began to gather his
or her things and move out into the hall and down the hall to an elevator and down the elevator to the lobby and out the doors
to the steps and the parking lot. Nora Jane was crying. Tammili and Lydia were beside her. Bigjudy had Mrs. Harwood’s arm.

“I’d better get back to the lab,” Nieman said. “Call me there if you hear anything.”

They went their separate ways. “But this,” Nieman was quoting from Rilke as he drove, “that one can contain death, the whole
of death, even before life has begun, can hold it to one’s heart gently, and not refuse to go on living, is inexpressible.”

Nora Jane was also thinking of Rilke, but she was thinking of something Freddy had written down for her that was nicer to
think about.

Earth, my dearest, I will. O believe me, you no longer Need your springtimes to win me over—one of them, Ah, even one, is
already too much for my blood….