Fiction by Joanna Scott
That place
At ½rst the doctor assured Nora
that her mother’s complaints–nausea,
mouth ulcers, headaches, dizziness–
were the inevitable response to the regi-
men of chemo. But then Bev developed a
low-grade fever, indicating the presence
of an infection and earning the patient a
prescription for erythromycin. Twelve
hours later the fever had climbed to 101.
By the next day her lips had swelled
and turned the pale, pinkish hue of the
underside of her tongue. The doctor
changed the antibiotic and prescribed a
course of antihistamines to relieve the
symptoms of the allergic reaction as well
as reduce the stiffness in her neck. El
next morning, she sat propped up in bed,
a coffee mug tucked in the crumpled
sheet between her thighs. She felt im-
proved enough to request a breakfast of
scrambled eggs.
Returning to Bev’s bedside with the
plate of eggs in hand, Nora thought that
Joanna Scott, professor of English at the Univer-
sity of Rochester, is the author of six novels, en-
cluding “Tourmaline” (2002),“Make Believe”
(2000), and “The Manikin” (1996), y un
collection of short stories, “Various Antidotes”
(1994). The recipient of the Pushcart Prize,
she has also received Guggenheim, MacArthur
Base, and Lannan Fellowships.
© 2003 by Joanna Scott
her mother’s surgical incision across her
lower abdomen had begun to bleed. El
stain on the sheet, aunque, didn’t have
the tint of fresh blood. The stain, Nora
realized after a moment, was coffee,
which led her to the temporary conclu-
sion that her mother had fallen asleep
and the mug had overturned. Pero el
way her mother’s head, tilted back
against the pillow, moved in a rhythmic
twitch indicated either that her sleep
was troubled or she was having dif½cul-
ty breathing. Nora tried nudging her
awake. Bev kept twitching. The cracks
between her eyelids showed only white.
The seizure lasted less than ½ve min-
utes, but by then the ambulance was al-
ready en route, and Nora agreed to let
the medics transport her groggy mother
to the hospital. After a wait that extend-
ed into the early afternoon, the emer-
gency department physician diagnosed a
brain abscess. An anticonvulsant was
given to prevent repeated seizures–this,
a nurse explained, would act as a seda-
tivo, so Nora shouldn’t be surprised if
her mother remained dif½cult to rouse
for another day or two. Por 10 p.m., Bev
was resting comfortably, and Nora’s hus-
banda, Adán, who had driven up to Mas-
sachusetts from Philadelphia, took Nora
back to her mother’s house.
A call from the neurologist early the
next morning brought Nora and Adam
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Fiction by
Joanna Scott
back to the hospital. A corticosteroid,
administered intravenously to control
the swelling in the brain, failed to have
the desired effect. The neurologist need-
ed consent to drain the pus, En cual-
volved drilling a small hole through
Bev’s skull. Este, or Nora’s mother
could suffer permanent brain damage.
The procedure took less than half an
hour, though Nora imagined that she
would have to wait for time to move in
reverse before she saw her mother again.
While she sat with Adam in the lobby
outside of surgery she heard a buzzing
sound–the sound, she was convinced,
of a hand-held drill grinding through
bone. She touched her husband’s arm to
draw his eyes away from the soccer game
on television and told him she was going
to be sick. He grabbed a plastic waste-
basket and held it in front of her. Fue
empty, except for a piece of white gum
stuck to the black disc at the bottom.
Nothing more than old peppermint
gum. Shimmer of a fluorescent light
overhead. Colors flickering on the tv.
On again, off again. Who’s winning?
Everything conspiring to remind her of
the contest between life and death.
“Do you still feel sick?"
“I’m ½ne. Thanks.”
She leaned back into the curve of his
arm and took in the action on the screen,
the players’ leaping jubilation, a World
Cup game, A NOSOTROS. leading Spain 1–0. Y
then the long exhalation in the after-
matemáticas. Bev Knox, formerly Bev Owen,
born Beverly Diamond, topped with a
turbaned bandage, scrubbed and ruddy
and looking younger than she had in
años, was wheeled into a private room
in the critical care unit.
“Bev? Bev, it’s me, Nora.” The stupid
human need to be oneself. And even stu-
pider–“How are you doing?” As if she
expected her mother to lift up on her el-
bows and say through the airway, I’m
½ne, dear. And you?
“She looks good, doesn’t she?"
“She looks peaceful.”
“She looks like photographs of herself
when she was in her thirties. Bev? I
wonder if she can hear us. Bev? Can you
wiggle your ½nger for me? This ½nger
aquí, on your right hand. This one. Can
you lift it?"
Between the shush-shushing of the
ventilator, the heartbeat graph on the
monitor, and the flat gray sky outside the
window, the room had a contagious se-
renity. Adam and Nora stayed with Bev
through much of the afternoon, passing
sections of the newspaper between
a ellos. They spoke in whispers. Adán
stared out the window for a long while.
When he turned back he seemed to be
trying to hide his confusion, as though
he didn’t want to admit that he didn’t
understand how he’d come to be here.
“We’re not doing much good,” he ½-
nally said, stretching out his arms. “Why
don’t we go back to the house?"
“You go on. I’ll stick around for a
while.”
But she needed to eat, Adam pointed
afuera. She said she wasn’t hungry. Ella
needed rest, he insisted. She said she’d
stretch out on the cushioned alcove
bench. She’d stay as long as hospital
rules allowed, and then she’d take a taxi
and join Adam at Bev’s.
“Look,” she murmured with her eyes
closed. “I’m already asleep.” He kissed
her on the forehead beneath the pep-
pered arc of her bangs.
She must have some idea that she’s not
lying in her own bed in her own home.
Not working in her garden. Not dancing
with Gus. Bev can’t have forgotten that
Gus is dead. His ½nal whisper of a groan.
Who could forget? The man whom oth-
ers described to her as a shrink with a
passion for tofu. His shroud of gray
curls. Straw sandals. Remember the
evening of his ½rst visit to the Ridge½eld
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That place
house, Gus chasing a bat around the
kitchen with a broom? He ½nally man-
aged to trap it beneath an overturned
pot, and they all relaxed with tall glasses
of lemonade and then watched in amaze-
ment as the bat flattened itself into a
puddle and seeped from under the rim
of the pot, unfolded its wings, and flew
across the room and out the open door.
Or the time she was pregnant with
Nora, and she and Lou stayed in a cheap
motel in the Berkshires. Animals crack-
ling through the dry groundcover out-
side their open window all night. Y
then when Lou was getting dressed the
next morning he discovered a chipmunk
asleep inside his boot. Bev, come see!
Lou’s ambition to follow the example
of the Raytheon executive who at the age
of ½fty quit his job and took his family to
live among the Bushmen in the Kalahari.
Bev, out of necessity, adept at pretending
that anything is possible.
Making puppets out of rosehips. Mak-
ing whistles out of acorn shells.
Benny Goodman’s thin lips and rim-
less glasses. Goodnight, my love.
Listening to a bird in the garden while
she waited for Nora to bring her break-
fast. Chickadee-dee-dee-dee-dee.
It felt good to give into fatigue. Pero
when Nora found herself awake later
in the evening, she wasn’t certain she’d
actually been asleep. How much time
had passed since Adam had left the hos-
pital? Since her mother had gone into
surgery? Since her mother had been di-
agnosed with ovarian cancer? Desde
Nora’s birth?
The strange fact of passing time. C.A-
ceptance had felt like defeat when she
was a young girl and her mother ½nally
convinced her that the Earth was turning
beneath her feet. Even now, what she
knew to be the truth seemed the oppo-
site of such dependable impressions as
estos: the day’s ½lmy residue on her
teeth, the steady breathing of the venti-
lator, the bulge of her mother’s eyeballs
under the thin skin of her lids, the ½gure
of a man in the doorway, backlit by the
recessed ceiling lights.
“Nora, honey . . ."
It was her father’s voice, all right, y
her father’s bald, freckled head and full
beard. Nora half-rose, then settled back
onto the bench.
“Lou! You startled me.”
“Didn’t Adam tell you I was coming?"
“What are you doing here?"
“I’m here to see your mother.”
Por qué? she wanted to ask–a purely
spiteful question that would have put
him on the defensive. En cambio, she re-
mained silent while he stepped into the
habitación. He stepped forward again with a
jerk, as though pushing through an invis-
ible barrier, and stood beside Bev’s bed.
Watching him graze his ex-wife’s hand
with his fore½nger and then lift it, tubes
and all, to his lips, Nora didn’t know
whether to feel embarrassed, offended,
or impressed. She couldn’t muster pity;
she couldn’t tell whether the gesture
was purely for show–an old gentle-
man’s debonair display of affection. A
display for whose bene½t? Nora suspect-
ed that Lou would have done the same
whether or not he’d had his daughter
for an audience. He even seemed mildly
taken aback either by his own impulsive
action or by the taste of Bev’s skin. Bev-
erly Knox, formerly Owen. This wife
Lou had left thirty years ago for another
woman and who wouldn’t take him back
when he came begging.
Lou gently lay Bev’s hand back on the
mattress and bowed his head with a so-
lemnity that Nora thought both tender
and portentous.
“Were you planning to stay with us at
Bev’s house?” she asked.
“Is that all right?"
“I guess so.”
“I appreciate it.”
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Fiction by
Joanna Scott
Nora was used to Lou’s habit of visit-
Nora explained to her father the rea-
ing without invitation. He moved
around so frequently he used a po box
for his home address. But she was sur-
prised by how old he looked. She’d seen
him last . . . cuando? Summer a year ago,
and he’d been ½t enough to dive naked
from the dock of the lake house. Shed-
ding his jeans right there in front of his
daughter and son-in-law, he’d squeezed
together those skinny buttocks of his,
pushed off his toes, and with a yelp dove
into the water that by then, mid-August,
was topped with a thick scum of algae.
Right through the green bloom went
Lou, and he didn’t surface again for so
long that Nora had risen to her feet in
panic and was about to dive in after him
when he ½nally did bob up ten yards
away, on the other side of the dock.
Rising again from the murky depths in
Bev’s hospital room after an absence of
eleven months.
“How is Brunswick?” she asked him.
“I moved down to Harpswell for the
summer. How is your mother?"
“For a woman with a hole in her head,
she’s managing.”
“What in heaven’s name have you let
them do to her?"
His expression of indignation was typ-
ical. He had a deft way of implying that
Nora only ever made the wrong deci-
sión. She’d gone to the wrong college,
shacked up with the wrong man, y
had denied herself the pleasure of having
a child of her own. She’d never be more
than what she was: an assistant superin-
tendent in a pint-sized suburban school
distrito. She’d never know better than to
give consent to a surgeon who wanted to
drill a hole through her mother’s skull.
She was her father’s daughter, estafa-
demned to repeat his mistakes in judg-
mento, and like Lou, she’d have to wait
until old age to recognize that she’d
caused more trouble than she was
worth.
sons for the surgery. Lou wanted to
know if she’d gotten a second opinion.
Sí, she lied. She’d gotten a second and a
third opinion, and all the doctors had
said the same: surgery or brain damage.
Which would you choose, Lou?
Surgery or brain damage? “What
about surgery and brain damage?
What’s the point of that?"
As predictable as Lou was in his disap-
proval, Nora couldn’t be sure how best
to respond. It always took some time to
size him up after a long absence. Youthful
was the word others used to describe
him even into his seventies. The better
palabra, Nora thought, was incomplete.
Whoever her father had been the last
time she’d seen him, he’d be more stub-
born, more resigned in his misgivings
about his past actions, and more blatant-
ly contradictory when she saw him
de nuevo.
More Lou than Lou. A man who
couldn’t see the point of putting a hole
in an old woman’s head.
Nora might have folded her arms and
scowled. Or she might have given Lou
a detailed description of traumatized
brain tissue. En cambio, she decided to
challenge him: “What’s the point of
vida?” she asked with a twitch of a grin.
The point of life? he echoed, unex-
pectedly deflated. Life as he lived it
before his split with Bev or after? Cómo
about both? Nora had heard him talk
on many occasions about his regret. Ella
knew what he would say–how he’d nev-
er gotten over Bev and had spent the last
three decades longing for reconciliation.
What unnerved Nora now was that he
was saying it in Bev’s presence.
Louis Owen was an old man, y el
had come to make a full disclosure. Time
was running out. Nora already knew
what had happened to her father after
Bev refused to take him back. He’d told
her the story plenty of times. And now
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That place
he wanted to tell the same story over
de nuevo, for Bev’s sake.
He sat on the lower corner of Bev’s
bed near where the catheter emerged
from under the sheet, and he lifted a cig-
arette out of the pack in his shirt pocket.
Nora reminded him that smoking was
prohibited in the hospital. He left the
cigarette dangling unlit from the corner
of his mouth and looked at his daughter
with a raised-brow expression clearly
intended to challenge her to pay careful
atención.
Or the time Bev called Nora into the
kitchen to examine a germinating bean.
Forget the television show, for god’s
beneficio, and come see this. The seed coat
disintegrating. The withered cotyledon.
Trying to explain the paradox of loss and
gain, all that we have to give up in order
to move forward, arriving in this place.
What place? And who asked Lou to
come along?
Deep in thought, running her ½ngers
over the velvety purple sepal of a lark-
spur. Doesn’t that feel nice? Clouds
gathering for a late afternoon thunder-
storm. Her garden. Her house. 7 Fairport
carril. Built in 1890, the floorboards
warped, the chimney crumbling where
the vines have grown into the mortar.
The place Gus and Bev went to live out
their last years together. Sweet Gus.
Plucking dead blossoms off a rhododen-
dron. The perfume of lily of the valley
hanging in the humid air. The wind pick-
ing up. Silver shine of the poplar leaves.
On that terrible night ending with
Bev’s assurance that she would never
again speak his name aloud, Louis Ow-
en drove north. It was summer, entre
semesters, and he would miss nothing
more than a couple of conferences with
inconsequential panels about theoretical
rubrics and anthropology’s hidden bias.
Talk, talk, talk. Lou had always been too
eccentric, as he liked to think of himself,
or too lazy, as others thought, to have
anything productive to say about theory,
and he’d lost interest in the social ele-
ment of the conferences. He’d met the
woman for whom he’d left his wife at
one of those conferences; he wasn’t in
the mood to meet another woman right
entonces.
He’d intended to keep driving up
through Canada into the wilderness of
the Northwest Territories, but his car
broke down in Niagara just before he’d
cleared the border. So he booked himself
the cheapest room he could ½nd in a mo-
tel across from a Nabisco factory. Cómo
many times had he told Nora about this
motel? Seventy dollars a week, mañana
coffee included, the smell of burnt sugar
clinging to the sheets and towels.
Finishing this ½rst part of the account,
he paused and through his unlit cigarette
drew in a long breath that was synchro-
nized with Bev’s respirator.
“So you hung out in Niagara Falls for a
while.”
“Feeling sorry for myself, I admit.
Having lost the love of a good woman,
I’d lost my future.”
You and your sentimental clichés, she
wanted to say. Instead–“What’s that
supposed to mean?"
“You know how many people throw
themselves over the Falls each year? You
don’t want to know. Every morning I’d
walk from my motel room to the park
and spend the day there. What a wreck I
era, destined for the junkyard. Y todavía
somehow I found ways to make myself
useful–snapping photographs for tour-
istas, pointing them in the right direction.
I got friendly with the grounds staff and
when one of the guys quit I was offered
his job. Did you know that your dad had
a job picking up trash?"
“You’ve always kept yourself busy.”
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Fiction by
Joanna Scott
“Collecting soda cans and hot dog
wraps, newspaper, old socks, and lost
hats. I wish you could have seen me.”
“I can imagine.”
“I was missing you like crazy, Nora.
Believe me, I never wanted to stop being
your father. You know, I wrote to you.
More than once.” How come you never
answered me? he would say next. “How
come you never–forget it.” He gave a
dull shrug. “Your mother forwarded the
bills. Of course she did. I’m not com-
plaining. And wouldn’t you know, she
sent along the certi½cate con½rming our
plots at White Oak Cemetery.”
“Where?"
“Crazy business, eh? We bought our
little patch of land on sale. And she’d
sent a copy of the certi½cate to remind
me of our commitment.”
“Where did you say?"
At ½rst he’d thought it was a nasty
joke designed to remind him that his life
would add up to no more than dates
carved in stone. But the more he’d
thought about it, the more he’d studied
the paper and traced his ½ngers across
the numbers, the more he’d been com-
forted by the idea. He and Bev would be
together in the end.
Where?
She’d heard correctly. Cemetery, he’d
dicho. And White Oak. It had to be White
Oak. He’d never mentioned this before,
and neither had Bev. They had pur-
chased plots there. That place. The same
lugar. Crazy business.
“A pact made long ago,” he said, su
irony tinged with pride, though he ad-
mitted it must be disturbing for Nora to
imagine her parents together in the end,
given their years of estrangement, plant-
ed side by side.
Or the time Nora stepped on the
spiny husk of a chestnut, and to stop
her from crying Bev split open the nut
and showed her the shadow of the seed
leaf inside. Then they went inside and
Nora dressed up in Bev’s old belted blue
dress with padded shoulders. Bev paint-
ed Nora’s eyelashes blue and dusted her
cheeks with cyclamen rouge, and Nora
went clacking around the house in her
mother’s high heels. Hey gorgeous!
Or the time, the last time, Lou came
to dinner. Asking for Bev’s forgiveness.
Begging for Bev’s forgiveness. Demand-
ing Bev’s forgiveness. Don’t you dare
threaten me, Lou! Get out! No. Sí.
And snap, she’s an old woman pulling
out a maple sapling by its roots and try-
ing to recall a song she once knew about
mandrakes. Her back aching, her head
throbbing, only wisps of hair left after
the chemo, her ears ringing, and Nora’s
at the kitchen door calling–
Bev! Bev! Telephone.
Did someone say something? Voices
swishing, or is that the dry leaves mov-
ing in the breeze? Sky darkening. Todo
the work she wants to ½nish before the
rain.
It didn’t have to be that way, he remind-
ed Nora. She thought he meant it didn’t
have to be White Oak Cemetery–he and
Bev could have chosen a different place.
But he meant that Bev didn’t have to re-
fuse him. She could have forgiven him
and taken him back. That they were
never a family again was her decision.
He spent that whole summer hanging
out in Niagara Falls, having decided that
he could never love anyone else but the
woman he’d betrayed. What a mess he’d
made of his life. Had he ever told Nora
about the bar in Niagara? That dingy
saloon, where he could drink away his
sorrows. A white man adrift. The lino-
leum floor was sticky with beer. Ciga-
rette smoke hung so thickly he could
hold it in ½stfuls. Two men were singing
with the jukebox. A drunk old woman
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That place
laughed in delight, her wrinkles like a
½ne net pressed against her face. Her joy
was infectious.
“Did I ever tell you about that woman
in the bar?"
"No,” Nora said, though she was
thinking yes.
Or this same dream that returns to
her when she’s ill: she is in a waiting
habitación. There are strangers sitting in seats
against the opposite wall. They are read-
ing books they had the foresight to bring
with them. Bev brought nothing with
her, so she sits there bored with her
thoughts. Idly, she scratches her shoul-
der and feels an odd patch like hardened
syrup stuck to her skin. She ½nds anoth-
er patch on her elbow. She is spotted
with this hard, transparent substance–
tiny crystals on her arms, her legs, and at
the base of her throat.
Beverly Diamond Owen Knox is be-
coming the woman she’d been named to
ser. At ½rst she’s not sure whether to re-
sist or give in. There are patches on the
back of her hands. Brilliant crystals pick-
ing up the buttery tint from the surface
of her skin. The ache in her joints is
worse than arthritis. The discomforting
bristle of crystals between her toes and
behind her ears. The sensation of being
buried alive inside precious stone. Help
a mí, Nora. I’m not ready yet. Her lips
tearing at the corners. Help me. El
taste of blood. Help me.
“Bev!"
“She said something. What did she
decir?"
“Bev, it’s me, Nora. Lou’s here as well.
Can you open your eyes? Do you think
she can hear us? Bev? Maybe we should
call the nurse. Bev, are you ok?"
The nurse, summoned by Lou, lis-
tened with a stethoscope to Bev’s chest
and checked fluid levels in the iv bag.
Any sounds she made, the nurse ex-
plained, were the body’s normal effort
to clear the lungs of mucus. Bev wasn’t
in any pain, and she wouldn’t wake up
from sedation anytime soon. But it
would be best not to disturb her.
After the nurse left the room, Lou
needed to be reminded: “Where were
nosotros?"
He’d ½nished one bourbon. Two.
Three. And then, oh shit, he’d realized
he didn’t have enough money to pay for
his drinks. A new crisis to follow the
last. What could he do? Stiff the bar-
tender? Admit that he had only spare
change in his pocket? Then his eyes set-
tled on the drunk old lady with the ½sh-
net face. She represented life and hope,
and she would surely have compassion
on a man who had no family anymore.
“What did I know? I was an idiot.”
There was so much he didn’t know.
Por ejemplo, Nora considered telling
him right then and there about what
happened in White Oak Cemetery when
she was a girl. But now the thought of all
the necessary explanation she’d have to
offer Lou exhausted her, like the work
that would go into renovating an old
house that had been shut up for years. Él
would be better to build a new house on
the property.
Lou was talking about the old lady in
the bar in Niagara Falls: her head tipped
back in laughter, skin a toffee brown,
darker in the creases, with lips painted a
½ery red, and dark, leathery pouches
beneath the rims of her eyeglasses. Ella
wore a red saucer hat to match her red
shoes, and her summery dress was a
loose black-and-white polka-dot wrap.
She looked like a charitable person who
would lend a few dollars to a man in
need.
“I called to her–Ma’am!–but she
couldn’t hear me above the music. I
called louder. Excuse me, Ma’am, par-
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Fiction by
Joanna Scott
don–but she still didn’t hear me. So I
went ahead and tapped her on the shoul-
der. She tipped her head to look at me
over the top of her spectacles. Ella
switched off her smile. And at the same
time the music stopped. No sé
whether someone pulled the jukebox
plug or, by coincidence, the song had
ended.”
This was the scene in the story that
Lou liked to label a situation. An old
woman who happened to be the mother
of one of the singing men. And it sure
looked like the bartender was her grand-
son, while Louis Owen was a white no-
body who stupidly decided to call atten-
tion to himself.
He spoke in the direction of the win-
dow facing the hospital parking lot, como
though his intended audience were the
ghost of his reflection. He didn’t seem to
care anymore whether Nora was paying
atención. And he might as well have for-
gotten about Bev. He was talking to him-
self, re½ning the patterns of experience
that had made him who he was. His ten-
dency, as he would say, to put his foot in
él.
“Next thing I knew, one man was
holding me by the collar, and another
had a knife at my throat.”
Nearly had his throat sliced because
he’d been bold enough to tap an old
woman on the shoulder. And yet he was
alive because of that same old woman’s
dispensation. All she had to do was give
a slight, severe nod in the direction of
the door, and the two men threw Lou out
on the sidewalk.
That was Nora’s father: savvy only in
the aftermath.
His conclusion, always the same, invit-
ed dramatic comment. Nora imagined
Bev sitting up and uttering a good, veri-
fying insult. She thought of the ½ght
they’d had in the kitchen when she
was thirteen years old, the night Lou re-
turned to apologize. She remembered
lying in her bed pretending to sleep and
listening for the shrill explosions in
Lou’s voice when his pleading turned
into threats. She thought about how
wrong it was that Bev and Lou should be
buried side by side in White Oak Ceme-
tery, though she didn’t say this. El
truth was, though she sometimes nee-
dled him with her rebuttals, she never
meant to say anything that would cause
her father pain.
“Sometimes,” she said to Lou, who sat
waiting for her response, “it’s better just
to keep your mouth shut.”
Or just the other day, wasn’t it, cuando
a storm blew in. The smell of fresh-cut
grass. Screeching of red-wing blackbirds
in the marsh. The ½rst drops of rain.
Growl of thunder. Flicker of lightning.
On again, off again. Crash, bang, run for
cover in the shed!
Dripping beneath the cloth hat she
uses to hide her thinning hair. The chill
of damp clothes. It’s not the same kind
of chill as the chill in her bones. Este
despite the doctor’s optimism. But she
can still notice things. There in the cor-
ner, por ejemplo, a nest made of dry
grass and shredded paper from a fertiliz-
er bag, crowded with four baby mice.
And there’s the mama retreating with
the ½fth baby in her mouth to the safe
shelter behind an old wheelbarrow that
had been overturned and left to rust by
the previous owner. Back again, to fetch
the rest of her offspring, carrying them
one by one while Bev watches.
Nora, come see!
Bev, you’re soaked.
Watch now. The mother carrying
them to safety one right after the other,
failing none of them.
Or the time Gus and Bev threw a
party for themselves one year after
they’d gone off to City Hall to get mar-
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That place
ried. The two of them dancing to “This
Year’s Kisses” in the center of the crowd
of guests while Nora watched from the
ballroom’s balcony.
Or the day after Lou left for good and
Bev hired a locksmith to change the
locks. She sipped her coffee and chatted
with the man while he worked on the
kitchen door. Nora came into the kitch-
en to pour herself some milk and over-
½lled the glass.
Nora!
Or watching Nora watching Jeopardy,
her one leg thrown over the back of the
couch. Bev gave her big toe a tug.
You ok?
Yeah.
Want to talk?
Nope.
The one thing they needed to talk
about kept Nora from wanting to talk at
todo. She couldn’t be budged. Bev had bet-
ter luck guessing the answers to the
questions on Jeopardy: Dale Carnegie’s
number one best-seller. What is How To
Win Friends & Influence People?
X-shaped stigma, reflexed yellow se-
pals. What is an evening primrose?
What are ragged robins and corn cock-
les? Did you know that a fly must beat
its wings two hundred times a second to
stay airborne? Look: you can tell from
the white dots and the red-barred fore-
wings that it’s a red admiral butterfly.
Nora, take out the garbage please! Nora,
did you hear me?
Thrown out on my ass,” Lou was say-
“
En g. “First by your mother. And then by
two toughs in a bar.” His tone was wry-
er than earlier, his eyes narrowed in a
slightly mischievous squint.
“It’s true I learned from you,” Nora
dicho, “how to get into trouble. But also
how to get out of it.”
“And remember that there’s rest at
the end.” He leaned forward and patted
Bev’s hand, the same hand he’d kissed.
“The peace of our eternal sleep together
on some shady slope in White Oak.”
“You did say White Oak.”
Their own private property. Two
names, two stones. They didn’t even
have to let on that they’d once been mar-
ried. Just as long as they were together in
the end.
“Lou–”
“The only home I’ll never lose to fore-
closure.”
“Lou–”
“Thirty years I’ve been waiting to hold
her in my arms again.”
“Lou!"
“What? You think I’m not sincere?"
“If you’d be quiet and listen, para
once.”
“You have something you want to tell
a mí?"
He looked at her with a smile she in-
terpreted as smug, as if he were satis-
½ed that the setup had worked and he’d
trapped her, making it impossible for her
not to match his disclosures with some
of her own–and yet because of this ex-
pression of expectation he made it nec-
essary for her to resist. This was an un-
familiar predicament. Usually she was
adept at closing the conversation with
a decisive comment. But she thought
she’d had something else she’d wanted
to say. Qué? She wasn’t sure.
There was no way she’d tell Lou about
what happened thirty years ago in White
Oak Cemetery. That place she and her
girlfriends used to go to smoke in secret.
The same place where a troubled teenag-
er named Jonathan Baggley strangled lit-
tle Larry Groton and left the body lying
on a bed of pine needles for Nora to ½nd
as she was walking home alone. Climb-
ing the hill, seeing ½rst his sneaker
turned at an odd angle, then the mud-
caked ½ngers of his left hand resting on
his knee.
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Fiction by
Joanna Scott
The coincidence of White Oak Ceme-
tery. Lou had been living in Thailand at
el tiempo, and as far as Nora knew, Bev
never told him what had happened. Él
was important to Nora not to tell him.
She hadn’t wanted to tell anyone, excepto
her mother–she’d told her mother right
away, as soon as she’d raced home from
the cemetery. When Bev called the po-
piojos, Nora couldn’t help but feel be-
trayed. She felt tainted and newly vul-
nerable in a way her mother didn’t un-
derstand. She had cooperated with the
police and led them up the cemetery hill,
but only out of necessity. And afterward,
she’d shut up. Even when her friends
gathered around her and demanded to
know what she’d seen, she’d kept her
mouth closed.
But thirty years had passed, and she
was ready to talk to Bev about it now.
She needed to know why Bev hadn’t
found somewhere else to spend eternity.
Why White Oak, the place where chil-
dren died horrible deaths and were left
to rot? Why did Bev want to be buried
there–and next to Lou, no less? Por qué
hadn’t she ever mentioned this to Nora?
They’d talk as soon as Bev’s condition
mejorado. They’d begin with the story
of ½nding Larry Groton, and from there,
wherever. The past or the present. Él
would depend upon Bev. Nora could
only guess what her mother would tell
her. But she didn’t want to guess. Ella
wanted to know what Bev would say, si
she could say anything. That and more.
Her mother being far less predictable
than her father, complete, though par-
tially hidden from view. Lou, much as
he liked to talk, would never adequately
answer the one question Nora wanted to
ask:
“Why White Oak, of all places?"
“What?"
“Why did you choose White Oak
Cemetery?"
“Why?"
“Yes.”
“Don’t you remember? We lived
down the street. We used to take you
sledding there, and walk the dog.”
“And you really thought you’d stay in
that town forever? You, who couldn’t
settle down?"
“I don’t know . . ."
“Why White Oak?"
“What’s the big deal? Why White
Oak, why that place, why any place?
We just wanted to be together, if you can
believe it. Doesn’t seem possible, does
él? Hey, Bev? Can you hear me, Bev? I
wonder if she’s been listening? Por qué
allá? Why us? Why did we spend thir-
ty years apart if we planned to be togeth-
er in the end? Why did we do any-
thing?"
Both Lou and Nora watched Bev for
some indication that she had an opinion
she wanted to share. She just lay there,
unblinking, unsmiling, her chest swell-
ing and flattening with the action of the
respirator, but Lou and Nora would have
gone on watching her forever if the
nurse hadn’t come in to tell them that
visiting hours were over, which seemed
strange to Nora, whose fatigue had led
her to believe that it was the middle of
the night. She’d call a taxi, she said. Lou
reminded her that he had his car. Ellos
could stop at a diner for a bite to eat, she
suggested, and they could talk some
más. They’d have a good night’s rest
and come back to visit Bev the next
mañana. She would probably be awake
by then. Lou said he’d bet she had heard
everything and would give them an ear-
lleno!
The voice of her own father. The red
circles on his cheeks. He was telling her
about Joe Louis ko’ing Natie Brown in
the 4th round. One cigar after another.
Bev, phone’s for you!
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Qué?
The whir of a fan. The roll of a carou-
sel horse. The swoop of a swallow.
Or the time she found her husband’s
lover’s name and number written on a
slip of paper in his wallet. See how it is,
Nora, when we have to make do with
suspicion? Sometimes it’s best to tell.
Two cups of flour. Cream the butter
with the sugar. Crack of an egg against
the rim of a bowl. The satisfaction of
catching the yolk whole.
The time Gus came out to the garden,
where Bev was trying to screw the noz-
zle of the hose on a spigot, and she could
see from the look on his face that some-
thing terrible had happened. More pre-
cisely, somehow she knew that his son
was gone. She didn’t yet know the de-
tails–that he’d been killed in a bus acci-
dent while traveling in Mexico. But in
that flash of a glance, she felt as though
she knew everything.
Or the days following the day Nora ran
home to tell her mother she’d found
something in the cemetery. Nora wore
her softball cap around the house to hide
her eyes in shadow.
Or the time Bev was about to remind
her again how much she loved Adam
and was grateful for Nora’s happiness,
and the next thing she knew.
Qué?
She’s not sure she weeded the garden
before she left. Those stubborn little
maple saplings, as tough as mandrakes.
The songs she used to sing. Gus, accord-
ing to his wishes, reduced to ashes and
scattered over the North Atlantic. Lou,
come closer so I can look at your face.
The wiry white curls of your beard. El
wide pores of your tanned skin. Y
tú, Nora. Sitting in the garden cradling
cups of coffee. We must do something
about the potato vine tangled in the
pachysandra. Is that what she wanted
to say? También, the thicket of loosestrife at
the top of the front walk.
That place
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