Nora Jane (42 page)

“Hello, cousin,” Father Donovan said. “I was in New Orleans last week for a conference at Loyola. Everyone sends their love.”

“I’m going crazy,” Nora Jane said. “I can’t pretend I’m not, but my main thing is to keep the children well. It’s what Freddy
wants me to do.”

“Then let’s feed them and cut their hair and see if they want to talk to us,” Mitzi said. “I’ll go round them up. What are
you cooking for dinner?”

“Baked chicken and mashed potatoes. I’ve reverted to comfort foods for the duration.”

“I’ll finish those potatoes,” Father Donovan said. “I know how to do it.” He moved to the sink and took the pan of boiled
potatoes Nora Jane had been mashing and began to expertly mash them. “I use lots of butter,” he said. “I hope you don’t mind.”

“Take off your jacket and let me give you an apron.” Nora Jane helped him with the jacket and then opened a pantry and brought
out an apron that one of Freddy’s salesmen had given him for Christmas. “Life is the urge to ecstasy,” it said in Old English
script.

“Oh my,” Father Donovan said, and reversed it so the writing didn’t show.

Don’t take his coat off, Mitzi was thinking. If I look at his arms I can’t stand it. “Well, I’ll go set up in the hall by
the breakfast nook,” she said. “Bring on the victims.”

Mitzi set up her scissors and capes and brushes and combs on a side table, and Little Freddy appeared and allowed her to trim
the back and sides of his hair without complaining. He liked Mitzi and thought she was interesting. Also, he didn’t like it
when he had to waste time combing his hair, and right after it was cut he could always get away with not combing it, sometimes
for weeks. Mitzi finished with Freddy and then trimmed Lydia’s bangs and clipped the ends off her curly black hair.

Dinner was ready before she could get to Tammili. They all sat together at the dining room table and held hands and said grace
and then ate the chicken and mashed potatoes and green peas and carrots and French bread.

After dinner Tammili got in the chair and asked Mitzi to cut four inches off her hair so she would have a short bob like one
she had seen in a magazine.

Then Nora Jane had a trim and then Father Donovan got into the chair and Mitzi cut his soft red curls. She was praying the
whole time he was in the chair. You did this to me, she prayed, and for that I forgive you, so forgive me. Why did you make
half the good-looking men in the world into priests when there aren’t enough men to go around? I am only twenty-six years
old and I want to get married and have children, but, oh no, you just keep throwing priests at me instead.

It was nine o’clock when Mitzi put all her supplies into her bag and received her thanks and the check Nora Jane always made
her take whether she wanted it or not. “Give it to the poor if you don’t want it,” Nora Jane said. “I won’t let you do this
unless you let me pay you.”

“You are so nice to do that for them,” Father Donovan said when they were driving back to where she had left her automobile.
“It’s very kind of you.”

“Nora Jane got me back into the business,” Mitzi answered. “I was a waitress in an all-night bar when I met her and she found
out I had a degree from a beauty school. She saved my life. I owe her a lot.”

“How did you meet her?”

“I was down at the bookstore trying to find a book about how to stop drinking and she waited on me. After that we got to be
friends.I’m from Louisiana too. I didn’t tell you that, did I? I’m from Alexandria, and New Orleans.”

“Here’s your car,” he said. He came to a stop on the deserted street. “I’ll watch until you get on the way. Think about coming
to help me at the crisis center. I could really use someone like you.”

Mitzi didn’t answer for a minute. She went over her options. They all seemed equally bad. “I’ll think about it,” she said.
“I’m pretty busy. I might just work extra and give you some money. I don’t like to hear people’s troubles. I have to do that
all day.”

“I guess you do,” he answered. He got a whiff of gardenia perfume that was coming from the hand cream Mitzi had applied after
she finished cutting everyone’s hair. “Thank you so much for cutting my hair. That was nice.”

“You’re nice,” she said, and got out of the car and got into her own and started the motor and did not look his way again.
Been there, done that, she kept repeating. Devil, get out of my way. Devil, devil, devil.

I
T WAS FRIDAY MORNING
. “We have to tell Mother,” Freddy said. He was sitting on the edge of the bed putting on his socks. “I guess I’ll go by there
on the way to the hospital and just tell her something.”

“If she doesn’t already know. Her canasta game was yesterday. What do you think the chances are it isn’t all over the Jewish
community by now?”

“If she knew she would have called.”

“It’s seven in the morning.”

“That’s never stopped her yet.” He finished the socks and pushed his feet into his leather shoes and stood up and started
buttoning the Brooks Brothers shirt that was his uniform for the store. Old tweed jackets, button-down Oxford cloth shirts,
leather shoes. Freddy’s daytime attire had not changed in years. He got up, he got dressed. Short-sleeved shirts in summer,
long-sleeved shirts in winter. That was it. He was dressed for Boston, New York City, Chicago, Seattle, or San Francisco.
Once or twice it had occurred to Nora Jane to ask him to change, but she had never gone through with her plan.

The phone started ringing just as Freddy buttoned the last button on his shirt and started tying his red-and-blue-striped
tie. “I know, Momma,” he said into the receiver. “I was on my way over there just now. Fix me some breakfast. Nora Jane too.
She might come along… I know… I am going to tell you. It’s not as bad as you think it is. It’s just something we have to fix.
Danen’s taking care of me. Well, and some other doctors who are friends of his… What? One of them is Jewish. I don’t know
about the rest. One is Indian, I think. From India, not Arizona. Look, make some real coffee, would you? I’ll be there in
twenty minutes.”

“Do you want me to go?” Nora Jane asked.

“Bring Little Freddy with you. As soon as you get him ready. Follow me in your car.”

“Okay.” She moved across the room and took her husband in her arms and held him close, close, close, for a long minute.

“Let’s go,” he said. “Let’s get this show on the road.”

Freddy had a complicated relationship with his mother. He had a complicated relationship with being Jewish because of having
been sent off to school for three years when he was a teenager. He had been thrown into a world where being Jewish was a handicap
and he had acted accordingly. He stopped going to temple, he never talked about being Jewish, and he spent most of his time
with Episcopalians. He dated girls who weren’t Jewish and from that he learned that you didn’t have to let women boss you
around. By the time he came back to San Francisco, he was a changed person. He slipped back into the Jewish world into which
he was born, but he never went back to Jewish women. Also, he was wary of his mother and her guilt-trips and hovering instincts.
He loved her and honored her and secretly adored her, but he didn’t tell her what was going on until she asked and not always
then. Nieman was his confidant and compadre in all things concerning mothers, since Nieman had a mother even more controlling
than Mrs. Harwood would have been if she had been given the chance. “Like a war between magicians,” Nieman was always quoting
Tom Robbins. “It can last a long time and even then the outcome may not be what it appears to be.

“They’re always waiting to pounce,” he added. “You can never let your guard down and for God’s sake never admit that anything
is wrong.”

It had been a mistake not to tell his mother about the cancer sooner. Freddy knew it was a mistake but he had gone on doing
it. He could face the chemotherapy but not the moment when he looked at his mother and watched her get ready to make leukemia
his fault, or worse, if she found out it was a genetic defect, her fault, or his dead father’s family’s fault. It could go
any way. He had to be ready, and pretending to be John Wayne wasn’t going to work on his mother. So, so, so, so, so, he thought.
The hour has come. “There is more stuff than is dreamed of in your philosophy, Horatio. There is Oedipus and Jocasta, and
of course there is Stuart. I’m sure she has called him by now.” Stuart was Freddy’s older brother, a son his parents had adopted
when they thought Mrs. Harwood would never be able to carry a child of their own. Stuart was a tall, powerful Eastern European
orphan the Harwoods had found in New York City when he was two years old,
or so Freddy had been told and had always believed.
Stuart had been a perfect son, graduated from Harvard and Harvard Medical School, and then went off to South Africa to run
a clinic financed by Harvard. He was a surgeon and an AIDS activist. He never came home. He called his mother every Friday
afternoon and talked to her for an hour. He wrote her letters and had his secretaries send her articles about himself and
his work. He never married. He and Freddy had never gotten along very well. He was humorless and driven. He thought Freddy
was a dilettante.

“I guess it was the money that made Stuart angry,” Freddy said out loud as he pulled into his mother’s driveway. “It would
have made me mad, I guess.” Their father’s estate had been divided fairly, although most of it was still in their mother’s
control, but their wealthy paternal grandmother had left all her money to Freddy. Soon after that Stuart had left San Francisco
and gone to Africa for good.

Freddy parked next to his mother’s Lexus and went in the back door past the cook and the chauffeur and the laundry woman who
were gathered around the big kitchen table having breakfast. All three of them were as old as his mother and all of them still
came to work because they liked to be there. They had rooms in the house besides their own homes and came and went in a haphazard
fashion. Freddy paid their salaries and the household bills.

“She’s waiting for you,” the chauffeur, Big Judy, said. “She’s in the dining room. You want me to bring your breakfast in?”

“Yes. Please. How is she?”

“She’s pretty mad.”

“Okay.” He heaved a sigh and went on through the doors to where his mother waited. “I was going to tell you sooner, but I
forgot about it, to tell the truth,” he began. “We’ve been busy getting things settled at the store.”

“What’s the prognosis?”

“I won’t really know for another week. I have to have chemotherapy, Mother. I already had one round—it wasn’t bad. They have
better drugs now. They tailor them to your blood. I’m going into the hospital for a few days soon. They keep testing everything.
It’s really high-tech. They know what they’re doing. Then, when they finish killing the cancer, they may do a bone marrow
transplant like the one they did on Steven Arthurs last year. Look at him, he’s doing great.”

“He’s nineteen years old. You are fifty-four.”

“That’s a nice thing to say.” He took a seat by his mother’s right hand and leaned near and gave her a kiss. She was dressed
in a tweed suit, with her hair back in a bun. She had on makeup and earrings. As always she was perfect, perfectly behaved,
perfectly in charge, perfectly dressed, ready.

“I’m going to the hospital with you,” she said.

“No. Don’t do that. No one’s going to be there. Danen won’t be there. There’s nothing going on. I’m just going in for tests.
Wait until something important happens.”

“I can’t believe you didn’t tell me this.”

“I am telling you. I’m telling you right now.” Bigjudy had put on a white coat. He came into the room carrying a plate of
eggs and bacon. Celeste followed with a coffee cup and a basket of toasted biscuits. Freddy began to eat. “I’m going to be
all right, Mother. This is just a problem to be solved. It isn’t as bad as you think it is.”

Mrs. Harwood took one of the biscuits and put it on her bread plate and broke it in two and used her butter knife to put a
small amount of apricot jelly on the biscuit. She took a small bite and chewed it and swallowed it before she spoke again.

“What can I do to help you, son?”

“Nieman and Stella are sending money to some nuns at a school for orphans in Ohio. They’re buying prayers for me. Why don’t
you send my Christmas money to those people? That would be nice.”

Mrs. Harwood always gave Freddy a thousand-dollar donation to a charity of his choice for his Christmas present. His father
had started the gifts, and since his death Mrs. Harwood continued them.

“All right. If that’s what you want.”

“Don’t look like that. They are Episcopalian nuns who take care of children. It’s making Nieman feel better, so I’m going
along with it. Listen, Momma, he’s got Stella e-mailing the nuns about the chemotherapy. Isn’t that hilarious?”

He was trying to get his mother in a good mood. Usually anything to do with Stella made his mother happy. She approved of
Stella and of Nieman Gluuk’s settling down to have a family. Before Stella, she had always thought Nieman was a bad influence
on Freddy.

“If it’s so hilarious, why do you want me to join in?”

“Because I like the idea. I think it’s helping me. I believe in these nuns. I have decided to believe in them. Nieman and
Stella and I are believing in them.”

“I wish you wouldn’t make a joke out of everything in the world, Freddy. I can’t see the humor in any of this. Leave the address
of the nuns. I’ll have someone take care of it.” She was very quiet, eating a small bite of scrambled eggs without looking
at him. He forgot to be wary, eating the heavily buttered toast and thinking that in a few minutes he’d be able to make an
excuse and leave.

“What about Stuart?” she said. “I wrote him a letter but I haven’t sent it yet. Have you consulted him at all? I think he
will be hurt if you don’t ask for his help.”

“My God. I knew you’d bring that up. Stuart is in South Africa running a clinic for the United Nations and the Centers for
Disease Control. He’s looking for a Nobel Prize, Mother. He doesn’t have time to worry about a simple leukemia problem they
can take care of right here. The University of California at San Francisco is one of the best in the world. They don’t need
any advice from a surgeon.”