“I cleaned everything up,” I said, standing in the doorway. “Can I borrow a couple of these to read? I like history all right.”
“Take any you like. Keep them. I don’t want them.”
“The trunk and the magazines and all. It’s back up in the attic.”
“You should have called me to help.” He turned slowly toward me. “That trunk is too heavy for you.” But he didn’t look ready to get out of that chair. He looked worn-out.
“Oh, no,” I told him. “First of all, no
way
you’re falling down the stairs again. If you want something from up there, you’ve gotta tell me, okay? I’ll go up and get it. And second of all, I hauled the trunk up and
then
put the magazines in it. I’m not stupid.”
“No, you’re not.” It was weird having J. Norm actually be nice to me. It worried me a little. Sitting there at the desk, he looked shrunk up and sad, just staring at the wall again.
“What were you really looking for in that trunk?” I took a step into the room, then another. The wall in front of his desk was crowded with certificates in frames, pictures, and plaques with his name on them. J. Norm went to school at Clemson University once upon a time. His folks must’ve had money, just like he did. The only place I’d ever seen that much official stuff was in the doctor’s office.
“Clues.” The word came out in a long, slow sigh.
“What kind of clues?” I held the little stack of magazines against my chest and moved a little farther in. Beside the college degrees, there was a black-and-white picture of a young guy in a graduation robe standing with his mama and daddy. The face looked a little like J. Norm’s, but sometimes it’s hard to see who somebody was in who they are now. “This you and your folks?”
“Yes.” The word was flat, like he wasn’t really interested in talking about it. “Graduation from Clemson. I went for a master’s degree after that.”
“Man.” There was a big brick building in the back of the picture, an important-looking place like a queen would live in. “You must’ve been some kind of smart.”
“Failure wasn’t an option in my family. Success was expected.”
“You still had to be smart, though.” Next to the diplomas there was a picture of J. Norm and some other guys in front of a rocket like they used to shoot off to the moon. They all had on white shirts and thin neckties and dark pants, and a whole chain of name badges hanging off their shirts.
“I worked hard.” His voice perked up a little. “It was an exciting time. An important time.”
I looked into the eyes of those young guys in the picture and wondered what they were thinking, standing there by that giant rocket. Maybe they wanted to hop in and ride it to Mars. “You shoot rockets into outer space, or is that, like, a missile or something?” Maybe J. Norm invented the A-bomb or the computer. He was probably old enough.
In the corner of my eye, I saw him lean around to see what picture I was looking at. “That’s an Atlas/Centaur rocket.”
“You bomb somebody with it?”
“Just launchpad thirty-six-A. That particular rocket caused the worst explosion in the history of Cape Canaveral.” He rolled the chair up closer, so that he was just behind me and off to one side.
“Whoa, really?”
He rocked back in his chair, and when I glanced over at him, his eyes seemed far away. Lacing fingertips together, he cupped them behind his head. “A tiny, ten-dollar part failed. It’s a bit of a long story.” His hands turned loose, then went down to his lap and hung there.
“You got someplace important to be?” I leaned up against the wall to listen. One of the plaques tipped off square a little, and he watched it like he was afraid it was gonna fall. “’Cause I don’t. I’m here till six.” I caught the plaque with two fingers and pushed it back onto the nail, reading the words underneath the picture:
Let it be recorded that:
When future generations look back on man’s conquest of space, the soft landing of an instrumented spacecraft on the lunar surface will mark a most significant milestone . . . advancing man’s technological capabilities and providing the world its first close-up look at a celestial body, and that
J. Norman Alvord
as a member of the Surveyor team shared in this exciting venture and contributed to the successful achievement of the program goals . . . paving the way for man’s journey to the planets.
“Whoa,” I said. “That’s you.” But J. Norm didn’t answer. When I turned around, he had his grouchy look back.
“We’d better go downstairs now. Deborah may come by,” he said, and scooted to the edge of the chair, pushing himself to his feet, his arms wobbling like licorice ropes. “Straighten that frame properly, will you?”
I fixed the plaque and checked my watch. I didn’t really want to go downstairs. It was more interesting up here. I hadn’t looked over this territory yet. “She’s not usually here till it’s time for me to go.” Lots of nights she didn’t stop by at all when I was there. For a sec, I thought about asking what in the world was the problem with him and his daughter. It seemed like if you lived in a house like this and had all the stuff they had, you could get along. Mostly, Mama and me fought because I cost her money.
I walked out of the office with J. Norm, then followed him to the stairs, carrying my magazines. He caught a toe and stumbled a little, so I slipped around and got in front. “Here, hold on to my shoulder. You already did the backstroke down the stairs once today, remember?”
He put a hand on my shirt and leaned harder than I thought he would, and we moved on. “More of a swan dive, actually,” he said.
I laughed a little. “Well, Mr. J. Norm, I think you just made a joke.” Who would’ve thought it, but J. Norm had a sense of humor—kind of like an appendix, I guess, since he didn’t use it for much. “That was pretty good.”
We got to the halfway point where the stairs turned, and he stopped to rub his leg. “I won’t make a habit of it.”
“I didn’t figure you would.” After that, there didn’t seem to be much to say. I took him to the room off the kitchen, where he could watch TV. He held the chair arms and lowered himself in like a crippled man.
“I could bring your dinner in here if you want,” I said, feeling sorry for him.
He shook his head and grabbed the TV remote. “I’ll get to it later. I do know how to use the microwave.” He slumped back in his chair, like he didn’t want to talk to me, and he turned on a show, then picked up one of those big, thick newspapers he kept piled by his chair. The
New York Times
.
“Whatever.” I knew I’d better go in another room before things got ugly, but for some reason, I stopped halfway to the kitchen door. “Did you really do all the things on the wall up there? Shoot off rockets and stuff?”
He opened the newspaper and disappeared behind it, trying to get rid of me, probably. “Yes.”
“So did you ever, like, bomb anybody?”
Lowering the paper, he frowned like he was really into the
New York Times
and I was bothering him. “It was a different sort of battle. A battle to see who could get there first. To the moon. The fate of the free world depended on it—at least, that was how we felt about it at the time.”
“No joke?” I wondered if he was pulling my leg.
He pointed at my magazines. I’d forgotten I was still carrying them. “There might be a bit about it in some of those. I don’t know if those were my mother’s or Annalee’s. My wife saved everything, too. ‘It’s our history, Norman,’ she always said.”
I looked down at the magazines and thought maybe I shouldn’t take them, after all. Then I guessed it didn’t matter. If he wanted that stuff, it wouldn’t be packed away in the attic. I wondered how long his wife had been dead, but I knew better than to ask. People didn’t like to talk about that kind of thing, and talking with J. Norm felt like walking on ice over a pond. The ice could break any minute, and you’d be up to your nose in cold water. “That why there’s so much junk up there?”
“You collect things over the years.”
“Guess so.” I thought about our little house. There wasn’t anyplace to collect stuff. Everything my mama’d kept—our history—was in a couple boxes stuffed in the corner of a closet. There wasn’t much worth saving, I guessed.
I still wanted to know why J. Norm was up in that attic. “So tomorrow I can help you look in the attic some more.” Maybe it was because I’d been digging in my own family secrets, or maybe it was because J. Norm had some cool stuff up there, but I didn’t want him to find things without me.
“Tomorrow is Saturday.” He chewed the side of his lip, looking toward the stairs. He was thinking about taking himself up there again; I could tell.
“I can come anyway,” I said, and he gave me a suspicious look, like he thought maybe I was trying to pull something over on him. I toned down the enthusiasm. “Well, like, the more days I work, the sooner I can get the money I need and get out of here. It’s not exactly party central. I’ve got a social life, you know.”
He rubbed his chin, turning the idea over in his mind. Finally he leaned back, deflating like a birthday balloon, and the newspaper came up again. “Deborah will be here.”
“Tell her you don’t need her to come,” I said. “Tell her I’m gonna be here, so she can do whatever she likes to do on Saturday.”
The paper lowered. He squinted over it. “She’ll wonder what’s going on.”
I looked down at my magazines, and an idea hit me. “Tell her I’ve got to write a research report this weekend about . . . rockets, and you’re helping me. We do have some stupid semester project. We’re supposed to write about some . . . history . . . something. I forget what the English teacher said. It’s not due Monday, but nobody has to know that except you and me, right? Deborah will think I asked you to help me out.”
J. Norm chewed his lip some more, and then he started to nod real slow. “You’re a clever girl.”
I liked the way he said that—like he was impressed. Mrs. Lora used to tell me I was smart, but in this new school, it didn’t seem like anyone even knew I was there. When you’re toffee brown, and you don’t have all the fine clothes, and you live in a run-down house off the Hill, people don’t think you’re smart. “I just know that the minute I’m not here, you’re gonna go back up those stairs,” I said.
Norman just smiled at me and lifted the
New York Times
so he could hide behind it. He knew I’d figured him out.
Chapter 7
J. Norman Alvord
I see the grand stairway again. This time I am walking up it. The stairs are smooth, polished wood, and my shoes are slick. The stiff leather soles click and slide upon each landing. The stairs are tall, and I’m taking them one at a time, looking down at my feet in the brown leather shoes, a boy’s dress shoes with mud on them. There’s a spate of fear, quick like a charley horse twisting my ribs. The mud shouldn’t be on the shoes. I am afraid I may be punished for it. I’m afraid of being hurt—spanked, perhaps? I stop and look down the stairs and consider not going up at all. But there’s someone at the top I want to see. I have flowers in my hand, the sort a child might pluck from a garden without asking. I look at them, then gaze upward to the hallway. The doors are open, morning light tumbling from them, but it is the closed door that holds my interest. The one with only a dingy gray glow underneath, evidence that the curtains are still pulled in the room. I move up another step, and then two, on tiptoe. I am trying to make the shoes land silently. I don’t want anyone to know I’m here.
Finally, I reach the upper hall, take a few steps toward the door. There’s a crash, and I stop short. My fingers tighten around the flowers, crushing and bending the stems, drawing water into my hand. A rose makes a pinprick on my thumb. I wonder if it’s bleeding, but I cannot look. I’m frozen in place.
Another crash, and then a man’s voice shouts, “Get up out of that bed! You put on this dress. Do you hear me? You harlot! You cheap, stinking scrap of trash. You get out of that bed and make yourself decent today, or I’ll give you what you really deserve. What you ask for every day!” Something strikes the door then, and it vibrates in and out. I catch a breath, move back a step, then two, feeling my way. There’s something warm on my leg. It oozes slowly downward, soaking the fabric of my short pants and draining into the tall socks that lead into my shoes. I look down and see the muddy tracks on the floor. Terror races through me. I can only think to run. I drop the flowers, spin around, prepare to take flight. An arm catches me, robbing my breath so that I cannot cry out.
“Ssshhh!” A hand goes over my mouth. The hand smells of lard and flour, and I am suddenly comforted. Her lips brush close to my ear. “Git on down in the kitchen now, honey-love.” The arm releases me, and I grab the banister to sprint away. From the corner of my eye, I see the gray fabric of a woman’s skirts, her white apron folding as she kneels on the floor and reaches for the flowers. I hear the handle turn in the door down the hall. . . .