Nell (50 page)

“Yes, but you didn’t answer my question,” Clary said accusingly. Seeing Nell’s confusion, she said, “How can I be sure Bob won’t betray me again?”

At that moment their main dishes arrived, and Nell was grateful. She needed the time that the changing of plates and tasting of their food gave her. She had a feeling that her answer would carry more weight for Clary than it should: Perhaps Clary, having seen Nell marry and divorce Marlow, having gained some idea of what these past five years had been like for Nell, thought that Nell had some bit of wisdom, or at least experience, that would make her sage and perceptive to the point of clairvoyance. It was obvious that Clary was not going to be satisfied with easy answers, and now was not the time for Nell to be cynical. It was not even the time to be truthful; Nell could not say, “Clary, no one really knows that she won’t be betrayed by her lover. It’s always a matter of trust.” Clary wasn’t going to get a wedding shower or an engagement ring or any of those ritualistic presents of optimism. Nell felt, in her champagne wisdom, that she had changed in responsibility to Clary. She was no longer stepmother; she was fairy godmother, who was about magically to present Clary with a gift of hope, hope which would determine the way Clary stepped into her marriage. But how to do it right? What were the right words to say?

“Clary,” she said, “do you remember the Christmas you were fifteen?”

“No,” Clary said. “Not really. I’d have to think about it.”

“Well, I’m talking about that whole hassle we had with the money I sent you. Remember, I sent you a fifty-dollar bill in a Christmas card with a letter suggesting you spend some of it on a present for Marlow, because I knew you never had any money to buy Christmas presents for Marlow and me, and Marlow, in spite of the fact that he often forgot all sorts of holidays, always felt miffed because you never sent him a present. I
thought I’d be this wonderful human being and bring us all closer together by sending you fifty dollars without Marlow knowing it, and you could get him a present and he’d be thrilled and everyone would live happily ever after. But Christmas came and went and you not only did not send Marlow a present, you didn’t even send us a card. So I wrote you a snotty letter saying that I was deeply disappointed that you wouldn’t spend even five dollars of the fifty I sent you to send your father a present. And that you would take the money and not even write me a thank-you note. God, I really was furious at you.”

“Oh yeah,” Clary grinned. “I remember that letter. It really was pretty heavy-duty. You were trying to make me feel about one inch high.”

“I slaved over that letter,” Nell said. “I was so mad at you.
Then
I got a phone call from your mother, and was
she
mad. She said you were crying, heartbroken, because I had hurt your feelings—and that you had never received that fifty dollars.”

“It’s true,” Clary said. “I didn’t.”

“I know,” Nell said. “It must have gotten lost in the mail. Or been found by someone else. Who knows? We’ll never know. But your mother was so furious with me for hurting your feelings, and she said a lot of terrible things to me over the phone.”

“Yeah, I remember that too,” Clary said. “I remember standing there in the kitchen, watching Mom go red with indignation. I had let her read your letter. Then she called you, and she got madder and madder. She got carried away. I felt so bad for you. She didn’t mean all those names she called you. She was just upset.”

“Your mother told me that you hated me even before my snotty letter,” Nell said. She put her fork down and went still with the bleakness of that particular memory. “Your mother told me that you hated me and thought I was a vain, stupid, snot-nosed old witch. She said that you had never respected me at all before, but now you certainly would have nothing but disdain for me.”

“Oh God,” Clary said, laughing helplessly and looking miserable at the same time. “Oh God, I remember. Oh, Nell, I
never
said any of that stuff. I never told Mother I hated you. Well, maybe I did once after that snotty letter. But I never called you a vain, stupid, snot-nosed old witch.
Never
.”

“She said you had nightmares about coming to stay with Marlow because of me. She said—”

“Nell, I never said any of that—” Clary exclaimed.

“—that when I was coming down the stairs on opening night, in
The Little Foxes
, I tripped and fell all the way down the stairs and looked like a complete clumsy fool—”

“Oh, Nell,” Clary said, biting her lip, for Nell
had
fallen down the stairs on opening night in
The Little Foxes
.

“She said when I took you swimming in the ocean in Maine that summer, I had nearly drowned and came staggering out of the water with the top part of my swimsuit hanging off me so that my breasts showed and it embarrassed you so much you didn’t want to be around me ever again because I was such a klutz—”

“Oh, Nell,” Clary said, leaning back, for it was true that Nell had been hit by a wave that summer and nearly drowned and staggered out of the ocean with her suit half off her.

“She said that she knew that I had applied to an acting school in California and that
that
meant I was willing to leave Marlow, so that my marriage was not very good, and that I had furthermore been rejected, so that meant my acting was not very good.”

“Oh shit,” Clary said.

“And I knew that you couldn’t have known any of that unless you had gotten into my desk and looked through my papers and letters and diary,” Nell said. “Not even Marlow knew I had applied to that school. I was twenty-six that year; I thought I still had a chance to act in movies, onstage. I never told
anyone
I was rejected. And she said that I kept photographs of old lovers, so she knew I wasn’t happy with Marlow.”

“I did go through your desk,” Clary said.

“I know,” Nell said. “And you told your mother every single thing.”

Two fat tears rolled down Clary’s face. “What a little shit I was.”

“Not really any shittier than I,” Nell said. She sighed and leaned back from the table, remembering. “That letter I wrote you about the fifty dollars was pretty spiteful. I had just been hoping something like that would come along, to prove you were really a terrible child. I didn’t want Marlow to love you. I wanted him to love only me.”

“Well, you were successful at that.”

“No, Clary, you know that’s not true. Marlow’s always loved you as much as he could ever love a child.” Nell and Clary sat in silence for a while. Then Nell laughed.
“The funny thing is that Marlow never knew that any of that happened. He was out of town when your mother called me. I did apologize to your mother and to you for the letter. Then I spent several days weeping and gnashing my teeth and wondering what to do. I couldn’t believe you’d gotten into my desk.”

“But you didn’t tell Marlow on me,” Clary said.

“And you didn’t tell him about my snotty letter,” Nell said. “We never mentioned it again. You came that summer to stay with us, and we both acted as if it had never happened.”

“That was the summer we took golf and tennis lessons in New Hampshire,” Clary said.

“And you were sixteen and trying to act eighteen so you could go out with that yummy tennis coach.”

“And you persuaded Marlow to let me go,” Clary said. “He was a hunk. What was his name? Chip, Chuck, something like that. But Nell, I never looked in your desk again. I never read your diary again.”

“I’m sure you didn’t. I hid it,” Nell grinned.

“I haven’t thought about this stuff for a
long
time,” Clary said. “I don’t really enjoy thinking about it, you know. It was so awful, it still makes me sort of sick to think about it.”

“Yeah,” Nell said. “It was terrible. But it did happen a long time ago. And it never happened again.”

“Oh, Nell,” Clary said, and just sat there considering the implications. After a while she said, “You’re so fucking pretty and so fucking smart and so fucking nice: why aren’t you married?”

Nell laughed. “Maybe,” she said, “maybe
marriage
isn’t the prize we were brought up to believe it is. Maybe we get rewarded with something else for being wise and good.”

“What?” Clary said. “What? What could be a better reward than getting to live your life with the man you love?”

Nell looked at Clary. She was feeling strangely numb from all the champagne. “I don’t know,” she said. “I’ll have to think about that.”

Nell was dehydrated that night from too much champagne. She woke up at four in the morning and went down to the kitchen in her elephant robe to drink as much water as she could hold. It was the middle of December, and the furnace hummed. She did not turn on any lights, but moved through the rooms of her house with the easy navigation of familiarity. The kitchen was dark; the windows framed a silvery outdoors. She sat drinking water, watching the trees in her yard, which were bare, and a shrub by the house tapping against a windowpane. Tap-tap-tap. She could see the long arms, narrow wrists, elongated, multiplied fingers of trees gesturing eloquently in the winter wind. The movements were repetitive and definite. It looked as if the trees were trying to send a signal through some kind of code.

* * *

Nell drank a lot of water, went to the bathroom, came back to sit in the dark kitchen and drink more water. Medusa and Fred and Ginger gradually all padded quietly in to join her. They chose places in various corners of the kitchen, made themselves comfortable, then fell asleep. Nell sensed them more than she saw them. She could hear their breathing—Ginger was snorfling with a cold—she could feel their living presence. Outside, the trees tapped and motioned.

Nell liked the kitchen dark like this. She realized she liked her house dark like this, liked the world dark like this. As she sat in her kitchen drinking water, she could not see the school menu Scotch-taped on the refrigerator or the children’s pictures displayed on the cupboard doors; could not see the animal fur under the table and in the corners; could not see hanging on the kitchen door the calendar full of necessary dates (choir practice, skating lessons, piano lessons, birthday parties—all for the children). She could not see the mess of the house around her; could not see the back porch steps, which still had not been fixed; could not see the cold of the December air. Her house and the yard outside were familiar to her, and she was safe here, yet not everything was exposed. Her house and the world itself held a bit of mystery now. She had a deep sense of contentment in being in a place that was safe yet not completely discovered, a refuge not without considerable possibilities. Here in the dark she knew the world still held
undiscovered pleasures for her; she sensed how the entire world lurked with opportunity.

Lights gleamed in little splashes off the faucet and the stove and from the streetlight onto the road. But in the dark there was no mirror, not even a bit of shiny metal, to reflect Nell’s body and face. She was not being seen. She was only sitting there, warm, drinking water. She could have been beautiful or ugly. She could have been any age. She was there, awake, because her body, with its complicated network of checks and balances, had awakened her to the need for water. It seemed to Nell in the silence that she could actually feel the cool liquid floating down into her stomach and then somehow into her circulatory system, cleansing her blood, bringing all those chemical and electrical systems back to normal. She was glad her body worked so well.

She thought of an exercise she had seen on a Jane Fonda videotape. It was necessary to lie on the floor, raise one’s legs and bottom and back into the air, balance on one’s shoulders with hands and arms flat on the floor, and slowly bring the legs, held together, down over the head so that the feet touched the floor. Nell got down on the floor and tried it. She could do it, though her legs quivered. She lay there, holding this pose for a while. She had been told this was good for flexibility of the spine and that flexibility of the spine was crucial for a youthful appearance. Medusa came padding over to her and looked down at Nell’s face, so close to Nell that the cat’s whiskers tickled Nell’s cheek. Medusa’s eyes were wide; the black pupils fully expanded in the dark room. She purred.

Clary’s getting married, Nell thought, her bottom in the air and her legs quivering down over her head. And I’m not. But if it had to be one or the other of us, I’m genuinely glad it’s Clary, Nell thought: She’s young.

Nell had been thinking of her diaries since the dinner with Clary. After that awful telephone call from Clary’s mother, Nell had written less and less in her diary, afraid someone else would find and read it. Afraid Marlow would find and read it. For as her marriage had gone along, month by month, year by year, Nell had begun to wish she weren’t married after all. She had begun to long to be free. It was not that she wished to have affairs. It was more that she simply wished to be free.
To have freedom
, if that was possible. To be as free as one could be in this world. Then, “having a husband” meant nothing to her, or meant an encumbrance.

Nell straightened her legs, rolled up to a sitting position, and took a deep breath.
She was pleased that she could do that exercise. She stood up and drank more water. The wind whispered around the corner of the house. The trees tapped.
I am alive
, Nell thought, smiling,
and I am free. Nothing, and no one, is between me and the world
.

At times when she was younger, in her twenties, she had been terrified to walk through a dark house. She especially had hated walking up the stairs, thinking that something, someone, was following her. But now as she went through her darkened house and up the stairs to her bedroom, she felt nothing but contentment. If something was following her—a ghost, a poltergeist, a spirit, a dog or cat—that was only natural. She had finally come to realize that mute, inhuman things were just part of her life, that there was more in the world than she had known, that she could walk through the dark alone.