Nora Jane (14 page)

“I was going out the door.”

“Have you got a tape of
Network
, that movie with Peter Finch as the television announcer who gets all the people yelling out the windows?”

“I think so.”

“Bring it over, will you?”

Freddy laid down the phone and turned the recorder back on. “Bitter,” he said into the microphone. “Bitter, bitter, bitter,
jaded, tired of life and cynical. No good for anything anymore. Nothing works. The system fucks.”

Clouds of vapor were rolling in from the Pacific Ocean. In a petri dish near the Berkeley campus Tammili and Lydia Whittington’s
DNA began to give up its secrets to the Chinese student who was working overtime to make money to bring his sister to the
United States from Singapore. “Very interesting,” he thought. He added one drop of a chemical and watched the life below him
form and re-form.
AB positive, universal donors,
he wrote on a pad. He translated it into Chinese with a few brief strokes of his pen. This case interested him very much.
He wrote down the name, Nora Jane Whittington. Yes, when he got home he would cast the I
Ching
and see what else was in store for these baby girls with the lucky blood. Lin Tan, for that was his name, moved the dish
to one side and picked up the next one.

Sandy got back into bed with Nora Jane and cuddled her up into his arms. He kissed her hair and then her eyes. He arranged
their bodies so they fit against each other very comfortably and perfectly. He heaved a sigh. It was so fragile. It never
stayed. It always deserted him. It always went away. It was here now. It would go away. It would leave him alone. “Calm down,”
she said. “Don’t get scared. We don’t have to be unhappy if we don’t want to.”

“When will you know?”

“They said a month. They’re busy. So what kind of blood do you have anyway? I’m B positive.”

“It’s some weird shit. I’ve forgotten. I’ll call and find out.”

“Go to sleep. We’ll make it.”

“Do you love me?”

“Yes, I do.”

“Well, I love you too.”

Freddy got out of the hot tub. He was the color of a sunset at Malibu when there were plenty of clouds. Buiji Dalton took
a big white towel and began to dry him off. She’d been trying to marry him for his money for five years and she wasn’t giving
up now. Not with all she had to offer. Not after she had divorced Dudley and only kept the house. “I couldn’t believe it when
I read it in the paper. I cut it out and showed it to everyone. I made a hundred copies and mailed them to people. I’m so
proud of you.”

Hey, stop that, will you?”

“What?”

“Drying me. I’m okay. Come on. Let’s go in the bedroom and watch this movie. It’s the greatest movie made in the United States
in four years and Nieman had to go and trash it. He trashed it. Wait till you see it. I want you to tell him what you think
when it’s over.”

“Do you want anything to eat?”

“No, just get me that brandy, will you?” Freddy draped the towel over his shoulder and pulled the other part across his stomach
to cover his reproductive organs and went into his bedroom and got into bed with his best friend and his old girlfriend on
either side of him and pushed a button and the movie started. Freddy had changed his mind about suicide. After all, Nora Jane
was practically illiterate. She had never even read Dostoyevsky. The copyright warning appeared on the screen. His psychiatrist
friend, Teddy, came tearing into the room waving a bag from the deli. He took up the other side of Buiji Dalton and the movie
began.

“This will go away,” Sandy was saying. “It will disappear.”

“It might not,” Nora Jane answered. “Don’t get scared. We don’t have to be miserable if we don’t want to be.”

Down inside Nora Jane’s womb Tammili signaled to her sister. “Nice night tonight.”

“I wish it could always be the same. She’s always changing. Up and down. Up and down.”

“Get used to it. We’ll be there soon.”

“Let’s don’t think about it.”

“You’re right. Let’s be quiet.”

“Okay.”

N
ORA JANE
was seven months’ pregnant when Sandy disappeared again.
Dear Baby,
the note said.
I can’t take it. Here’s all the money that is left. Don’t get mad if you can help it. I love you, Sandy.

She folded up the note and put it in a drawer. Then she made up the bed. Then she went outside and walked along the water’s
edge. At least we are living on the water, she was thinking. I always get lucky about things like that. Well, I know one thing.
I’m going to have these babies no matter what I have to do and I’m going to keep them alive. They won’t die on me or get drunk
or take cocaine. Freddy was right. A decent home is the best thing.

Nora Jane was on a beach fifty miles south of San Francisco, beside a little stucco house Sandy’s old employer had been renting
them for next to nothing. Nora Jane had never liked living in that house. Still, it was on the ocean.

The ocean spread out before her now, gray and dark, breaking against the boulders where it turned into a little cove. There
were places where people had been making fires. Nora Jane began to pick up all the litter she could find and put it in a pile
beside a fire site. She walked around for half an hour picking up cans and barrettes and half-burned pieces of cardboard and
piled them up beside a boulder. Then she went back to the house and got some charcoal lighter and a match and lit the mess
and watched it burn. It was the middle of October. December the fifteenth was only two months away. I could go to Freddy,
she was thinking. He will always love me and forgive me anything. But what will it do to him? Do I have a right to get around
him so he’ll only love me more? This was a question Nora Jane was always asking herself about Freddy Harwood. Now she asked
it once again.

A cold wind was blowing off the ocean. She picked up a piece of driftwood and added it to the fire. She sank down upon the
sand. She was carrying ten pounds of babies but she moved as gracefully as ever. She wiggled around until her back was against
the boulder, sitting up very straight, not giving in to the cold or the wind. I’m one of those people that could go to the
Himalayas, she decided. Because I never give in to cold. If you hunch over it will get you.

Freddy Harwood stood on the porch of his half-finished house, deep it the woods outside of Willits, California, and thought
about Nora Jane. He was thinking about her voice, trying to remember how it sounded when she said his name. If I could remember
that sound, he decided. If I could remember what she said that first night it would be enough. If that’s all I get it will
have to do.

He looked deep into the woods, past the madrone tree, where once he had seen a bobcat come walking out and stop at the place
where the trees ended and the grass began. A huge yellow cat with a muff around its neck and brilliant eyes. A poet had been
visiting and they had made up a song about the afternoon called “The Great Bobcat Visit and Other Mysteries of Willits.” If
she was here I could teach it to her, Freddy thought. So, there I go again. Everything either reminds me of her or it doesn’t
remind me of her, so everything reminds me of her. What good does it do to have six million dollars and two houses and a bookstore
if I’m in love with Nora Jane? Freddy left his bobcat lookout and walked around the side of the house toward the road. A man
was hurrying up the path.

It was his neighbor, Sam Lyons, who lived a few miles away up an impassable road. Freddy waved and went to meet him. He’s
coming to tell me she’s dead, he decided. She died in childbirth in the hands of a midwife in Chinatown and I’m supposed to
go on living after that. “What’s happening?” he called out. “What’s going on?”

“You got a call,” Sam said. “Your girlfriend’s coming on the train. I’m getting tired of this, Harwood. You get yourself a
phone. That’s twice this week.
Two calls in one week!”

In a small neat room near the Berkeley campus a young Chinese geneticist named Lin Tan Sing packed a change of clothes and
his toilet articles, left a note for himself about some things to do when he returned, and walked out into the beautiful fall
day. He had been saving his money for a vacation and today was the day it began. As soon as he finished work that afternoon
he would ride the subway to the train station and get on board the Starlight Express and travel all the way up the California
coast to Puget Sound. He would see the world. My eyes have gone too far inside, Lin Tan told himself. Now I will go outside
and see what’s happening at other end. People will look at me and I will look at them. We will learn about each other. Perhaps
the train will fall off cliff into the ocean. There will be stories in the newspapers. Young Chinese scientist saves many
lives in daring rescues. President of United States invites young Chinese scientist to live in White House and tutor children
of politicians. Young Chinese scientist adopted by wealthy man whose life he saves in train wreck. I am only a humble scientist
trying to unravel genetic code, young Chinese scientist tells reporters. Did not mean to be hero. Do not know what came over
me. I pushed on fallen car and great strength came to me when it was least expected.

Lin Tan entered the Berkeley campus and strolled along a sidewalk leading to the student union. Students were all around.
A man in black was playing a piano beneath a tree. The sky was dear with only a few clouds to the west. The Starlight Express,
Lin Tan was thinking. All Plexiglas across the top. Stars rolling by while I am inside with something nice to drink. Who knows?
Perhaps I will find a girl on the train who wishes to talk with me. I will tell her all things scientific and also of poetry.
I will tell her the poetry of my country and also of England. Lin Tan folded his hands before him as he walked, already he
was on the train, speeding up the California coast telling some dazzling blonde the story of his life and all about his work.
Lin Tan worked at night in the lab of the Berkeley Women’s Clinic. He did chemical analyses on the fluid removed during amniocentesis.
So far he had made only one mistake in his work. One time a test had to be repeated because he knocked a petri dish off the
table with his sleeve. Except for that his results had proved correct in every single instance. No one else in the lab had
such a record. Because of this Lin Tan always kept his head politely bowed in the halls and was extra-nice to the other technicians
and generous with advice and help. He had a fellowship in the graduate program in biology and he had this easy part-time job
and his sister, Jade Tan Sing, was coming in six months to join him. Only one thing was lacking in Lin Tan’s life and that
was a girlfriend. He had what he considered a flaw in his character and wished to be in love with a Western girl with blond
hair. It was only fate, the I
Ching
assured him. A fateful flaw that would cause disaster and ruin but not of his own doing and therefore nothing to worry about.

On this train, he was thinking, I will sit up straight and hold my head high. If she asks where I come from I will say Shanghai
or Hong Kong as it is difficult for them to picture village life in China without thinking of rice paddies. I am a businessman,
I will say, and have only taken time off to learn science. No, I will say only the truth so she may gaze into my eyes and
be at peace. I will buy you jewels and perfume, I will tell her. Robes with silken dragons eating the moon, many pearls. Shoes
with flowers embroidered on them for every minute of the day. Look out the Plexiglas ceiling at the stars. They are whirling
by and so are we even when we are off the train.

* * *

Nora Jane bought her ticket and went outside to get some air while she waited for the train. She was wearing a long gray sweatshirt
with a black leather belt riding on top of the twins. On her legs were bright yellow tights and yellow ballet shoes. A yellow
and white scarf was tied around her black curls. She looked just about as wonderful as someone carrying ten pounds of babies
could ever look in the world. She was deserted and unwed and on her way to find a man whose heart she had broken only four
months before and she should have been in a terrible mood but she couldn’t work up much enthusiasm for despair. Whatever chemicals
Tammili and Lydia were pumping into her bloodstream were working nicely to keep Nora Jane in a good mood. She stood outside
the train station watching a line of cirrus clouds chugging along the horizon, thinking about the outfits she would buy for
her babies as soon as they were born. Nora Jane loved clothes. She couldn’t wait until she had three people to dress instead
of only one. All her life she had wanted to be able to wear all her favorite colors at one time. Now she would have her chance.
She could just see herself walking into a drugstore holding her little girls by the hand. Tammili would be wearing blue. Lydia
would be wearing red or pink. Nora Jane would have on peach or mauve or her old standby, yellow. Unless that was too many
primaries on one day. I’ll start singing, she decided. That way I can work at night while they’re asleep. I have to have some
money of my own. I don’t want anyone supporting us. When I go shopping and buy stuff I don’t want anybody saying why did you
get this stuff and you didn’t need that shirt and so forth. As soon as they’re born I’ll be able to work and make some money.
Nieman said I could sing anyplace in San Francisco. Nieman should know. After all, he writes for the newspaper. If they don’t
like it then I’ll just get a job in a day-care center like I meant to last fall. I’ll do whatever I have to do.

A whistle blew. Nora Jane walked back down the concrete stairs. “Starlight Express,” a black voice was calling out. “Get on
board for the long haul to Washington State. Don’t go if you’re scared of stars. Stars all the way to Marin, San Rafael, Petaluma,
and Sebastopol. Stars all the way to Portland, Oregon, and Seattle, Washington. Stars to Alaska and points north. Stars to
the North Pole. Get on board this train….”