The Long Road Home. Mary Monroe Alice
thought if this were a nest, she’d be wildly searching for twigs, twine, and mud to patch together a safe haven against the incoming storm. But she was a woman, with neither the practical skills nor the money needed to finish the endless projects she’d discovered today.
She had forgotten how much remained to be done. Miles and years had fogged her memory in a romantic vision of country life, leaving unremembered unpleasant details such as unfinished floors and ceilings. Memory was selective, she realized.
Esther, however, had reminded her all too clearly in her forthright manner earlier that afternoon.
They’d been walking up the short flight of stairs to the great room. On this first day, Nora had made overtures to a possible new ally. A friend, a woman friend, would be welcome. So she sought out Esther’s opinions on what she’d do in the house, even though she already had her own plan firmly set in her organized mind.
Esther was not easy to approach. She was definite about her opinions and did not couch them with “I think” or with questions. She could be intimidating.
“I don’t know what you’re going to do all by yourself in this big house,” Esther said bluntly.
“There’ll be no shortage of projects to keep me busy. Besides, I’m used to living alone.”
Esther raised her brows. “Well, it’s going to be pretty lonely up here when you get snowed in. All those windows will make it cold too.”
“I suppose,” Nora replied, scanning the high ceilings and huge plates of glass that surrounded the great room. She’d look into sewing some insulated shades right away.
“All these cement floors,” Esther said in the lower levels, “get icy, and there’s nothing you can do to warm them up till summer—and that don’t come till July.”
Nora’s gaze swept the pitted gray cement floors of the lower floor. This part of the house was low on her priority list of improvements.
“I’ll have to get wood floors put in, someday.” In the meantime, she thought to herself, a row of carpet samples might do.
“You’ll probably want the upstairs john done too, I suspect.”
“Not this year.”
“That means you’ll have to run down three flights of stairs just to pee? Long trip in the middle of the night.” Esther laughed, but at the sight of Nora’s face, she cut it short.
It went on like that as they toured the house, and Nora’s to-do list grew. Esther also pointed out all the fine features of the house, like the redwood beam and deck, the slate roof, the rosy brick, and more copper piping than anyone else in town could dream of putting in.
“Not another house like it in the county,” Esther reported.
Nora would have traded grandeur for economy. All she saw was miles of unfinished floor and ceilings, rafters covered with thick sheets of clear plastic, and trapped under them, the carcasses of hordes of flies, ants, and wasps. There were no doors to the bedrooms, or closets for that matter, and all the walls, from the basement to the top-floor bedroom, were only roughed in. Electrical outlets hung from walls or frames where walls were supposed to be.
Nora’s critical eye took in and calculated what it would cost to complete the five-level six-bedroom house. It was enough to weaken her at the knees.
“I’m just hoping to get done what I need to survive during the winter. And at least a door on the bathroom,” she said, thinking of C.W.’s showers. “I can hold off for a while on the aesthetics.” She didn’t mention that once the house was finished, her taxes would also rise.
Esther stood in the center of the great room and craned her neck to view the vaulted ceilings. “Why don’t you just finish it all up?” she asked. “This house has been sitting up here untended for years. In fact, every year, right about February when we’re feeling pretty tight in our place, we can’t help but wonder what you started this big house for, just for you and Mike and no kids.”
Nora saw from Esther’s expression that she envied the room.
“Why be finicky now?” Esther asked, casting a testy glance Nora’s way. “Mike would finish the job in a hurry. First-class all the way.”
Nora’s back stiffened. “Frankly, I wish he had finished this house. But he didn’t.” Nora’s face was pink with indignation. “Mike left quite a few projects unfinished, and now it’s up to me to tidy up. I will get it done when I can, as I can.” She tightened her arms across her chest and her voice was more sharp than she had intended.
Esther’s eyes narrowed, studying Nora. “You really plan to live here?”
“I do.”
“Why?” She shifted her weight. “Why did you move here anyway?”
Nora expelled a long hiss of air. How often was she going to have to defend this decision? She thought a moment, trying to explain the unexplainable.
“I moved here from New York to find something beautiful again. In me and out there.” She saw Esther’s doubtful expression and coupled her hands in frustration. “I can’t put it into words.”
“When are you gonna move back?”
Esther scored a direct hit that left Nora speechless. Looking at her, Nora saw the peachy skin and sweet features of a country girl—and the brittle cool of a seasoned New York socialite. Nora’s face colored, then flushed as she watched a small smile of victory ease across Esther’s face.
“People like you come and go from New York all the time,” Esther charged. “Dreaming of the good life. Then you learn that life is life, and up here that life is pretty tough. Next thing you pack up and go. Leavin’ us behind.” She sniffed and looked away, squinting. When she turned back, her eyes were hard.
“We don’t take much to people who come and go.”
Nora stared back with eyes wide, affronted by the hostility she did nothing to inspire.
“Speaking of which,” Esther swung on her heel and grabbed her bag off the floor, “I gotta go.”
Nora counted Esther’s steps across the plywood. “It’s not like that,” Nora called to her back.
Esther turned. “We’ll see,” she said, then left.
Nora walked out onto the deck to watch Esther as she backed away in her Impala, turned, then drove out of sight.
She had remained standing on the deck; she stood there still, recalling Esther’s words as the clouds grew heavy in the heavens. Nora gripped the deck rail tightly and fought off the dark, dull cloak of depression.
“Yes, Esther,” she spoke aloud in the autumn hush. “We will see.”
6
MAY JOHNSTON STIRRED UP a potion of baking soda and warm water and set it before Seth, giving it a final spin at the table.
“Drink every drop. You need to burp.”
She stood, one hand on the back of Seth’s chair, the other on her ample hip, hovering like a hen as her brother grunted and slowly reached out for the brew.
“You know I won’t budge till it’s gone.”
Seth looked up at the formidable figure of his sister. Only her stubbornness was bigger than she was.
“Don’t I know it,” he muttered. With a sigh of resignation, he took the cup and swallowed it down in three noisy gulps. Wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, he grimaced. Soon after, a loud raucous burp exploded from his girth.
“Good!” exclaimed May. “See, I was right. Nothin’ but indigestion.”
Seth rubbed his sore chest and smiled weakly. “Yeh-up, that’ll be it.” Another smaller burp offered him more relief.