Lydia's Party: A Novel (24 page)

Norris stood up and stretched. It was time for something new, she thought. Or at least something else. She grabbed a down vest from the closet, yanked a hat over her ears, and walked outside. It had been a long time since she’d taken a walk without a purpose.

Norris was on the road by five
A.M.
, driving south into a snowstorm. She was heading for Chicago, or rather to Celia’s blighted suburb, to drop off the painting. After that, who knew where. Maybe she’d keep going south, Norris thought, until she got someplace warm. Kentucky? Tennessee? She had no idea how far you had to go before it stopped being cold.

She’d decided to proceed as if the exchange with Celia, about selling her the big painting, had never happened. Instead, she’d packed the smaller one in bubble wrap and put it in the trunk. It wasn’t gorgeous, like the one Celia had seen, and it wasn’t easy to look at, but it was the better painting, Norris felt sure, and she was pretty sure that Celia would know that, and would have chosen it if she’d had the choice.

Norris planned to drop it off first, before she changed her mind, on her way to wherever else she was going. Then, when the exit came up she almost didn’t take it. She didn’t feel like stopping, or explaining. But then she clicked on her turn signal and now she was heading west, rounding the lake toward Chicago, into the snow.

She hoped to arrive when Celia wasn’t there so she could just give the painting to Peter, or even to the boy, whose name she could never remember. She didn’t feel like talking to Celia again so soon. They’d need to have a real conversation eventually, of course, but Norris needed to think about what to say, not just about the painting but about the job she was thinking of offering Celia.

Norris had been thinking for some time that she needed to hire someone, in addition to Kamal. She needed someone with experience, who knew what they were doing, to archive her work, handle her correspondence, convert old slides to digital files. Her dealer did only so much. Kamal had been a help, but this wasn’t a career for him. He had other plans, or he used to have. Maybe it was time to let him go.

Their relationship—that ugly word again—complicated everything. “So which is it?” he’d said, just last week, over a nice lake trout he’d poached in wine. “Are you my boss or my girlfriend?”
He
was giving
her
an ultimatum! Preposterous.

Celia would know what to do, and Norris knew she needed the money. It wouldn’t hurt her to get out of the house, either. She could come every week, at first, stay a night or two, in the guesthouse, as long as she behaved herself. (Norris would just tell her: No barging into the studio. No weeping. Absolutely no talking in the morning.) She should probably come to New York, too. The rest of it they could handle by e-mail.

Norris wished she could say all this to Peter instead of Celia. He wouldn’t argue, or—God forbid—cry. Men were so much easier, Norris thought.

Most of them, at least. She couldn’t reach Kamal. She’d left him seven messages, saying she’d be away for a few days and asking him to call her, then telling him to, but he hadn’t. When she got back she’d see if he still wanted to go to New York. He might not, she’d hurt his pride, but if he agreed, she’d tell Natalie to change the reservation, book a suite, with separate bedrooms. He’d never been to New York. He could see the sights while she was working—it could be a farewell present.

•   •   •

Norris felt good, though she hadn’t slept much. She’d woken up at four and run her three miles in the dark, then packed fast—laptop, a couple extra long-sleeved T-shirts, fleece vest, underwear, running shoes, heavy socks, sketchbooks, notebooks, camera bag, sleeping bag. If she ended up south maybe she’d buy more gear and camp. Now, that would be something different, she thought. She hadn’t done that in twenty years, not since Andy.

At the last minute she’d taken out the sketchbooks and laptop. And the cameras. Just try it, she thought. Try not working. If she couldn’t stand it she could always have supplies overnighted to some hotel. All she really needed was a credit card.

She thought of her one rich uncle, the only one of her father’s four brothers who’d made any money, who’d visited exactly twice and made her parents so uncomfortable, with his jewelry and his stories and his expensive suits. What was it he’d said?
Travel light and carry plastic.
He’d even winked—at her—when he’d said it and slipped her a twenty before he left. She’d followed his advice. She’d buy what she needed when she got there, wherever there was.

On her way out the door, in the still dark morning, Norris stopped. Went back to her bedroom and dug around in the drawer where she kept a small jewelry box. There she found the sterling silver dragonfly and pinned it to her fleece vest.

•   •   •

Norris was making good time now, despite the snow. She could see the pink sky dawning in her rearview mirror. She could die right now, she thought, on this highway, going eighty miles an hour, and except for getting this painting to Celia she’d have done everything she’d set out to do in life. Maybe after she dropped it off she’d go west instead of south, drive straight through Iowa to Nebraska, Wyoming, Idaho, Oregon. Or head north, to whatever was up there. Alberta? She’d skirt the cities—were there any, even?—and head for someplace empty of art, if there were such a place. She drove into the snow feeling better and better.

Norris was standing on Celia’s collapsing front porch, waiting for someone to answer the bell, entertaining second thoughts. She could still get out of here without a conversation, she thought. She could just leave the thing, in its many layers of plastic bubble wrap, leaning against the door and split. If it weren’t for all the snow on the porch, she would have already.

She took out her phone and hit redial. She’d stopped leaving messages. Now, when Kamal’s recorded voice came on, she hung up. He wasn’t responding to texts, either. Where the hell was he? And how dare he not answer or, as she suspected, just turn the thing off? She’d bought him that damn phone, and it hadn’t been cheap.

Norris stood looking across Celia’s front lawn, trying to figure out what to do. The morning light had tinted the smooth glaze of slightly melted then refrozen snow a buttery pinkish gold. The sight calmed Norris. She imagined how she’d mix the color.

Norris was thinking she’d earned the right to leave. She’d even called Celia—twice—from the road and left messages, to let her know she was coming. Celia must not be home, she thought. Unless she was, and wasn’t answering. Did no one answer their phone anymore? Or was it just that no one answered when she called?

•   •   •

Just then a black dog appeared from behind a hedge and started across the lawn, making a crunching sound as its paws broke through the crust of snow. Norris saw no dangling leash, no collar, even—strange for the suburbs, or anywhere these days, she thought, everyone so up in arms about animal welfare. Didn’t appear to be a stray, though. If anything, it looked overfed.

When the dog got opposite Norris it stopped and turned its head to meet her gaze. They stared at each other for a few long seconds. Norris could see the animal’s orange eyebrow-like markings. Something about the dog looked familiar, but, Norris reminded herself, the eye, the mind, played tricks.

•   •   •

“Ring the bell one more time.” This instruction entered Norris’s consciousness as if someone—Lydia actually, it was her voice—had spoken out loud, inside her head. “If Celia doesn’t come to the door this time, you can leave.”

Norris, not usually so compliant but unaccustomed to hearing voices, pressed the bell again. Again she heard the weak plunk on the other side of the wall. Like everything about the house, the doorbell needed repair. The money Lydia left Celia had all gone to necessities for the boy, Celia had told them—his college fund, braces, camp, tutoring.

How annoying
, Norris thought, out of patience now. She hated people who didn’t repair things. And damn Lydia. If it weren’t for her, she wouldn’t be here in the first place.

One thing was for sure, though. This was the last time Norris would do something for a dead person. Once you started down that road, your life unraveled, backwards. She remembered when her mother died. She’d had to make a choice then—wallow in memory and regret, or forge on. Forge on had been her decision.

This was ridiculous. Celia wasn’t here and neither was Peter and Norris was freezing her ass off and in one more second, Norris decided, she was going to turn around and walk back down those slippery lopsided lawsuit-waiting-to-happen stairs, without falling, and get back in her car—
with
the painting—and forget all this nonsense, this failed experiment in being a better person. She no longer felt like driving south, either. Or west or north or wherever she’d dizzily intended to go in the unrealistic pink dawn. Now, in the harsh true light of day, all she wanted was to get back to her studio. Maybe if she hurried she could salvage the afternoon.

•   •   •

Norris picked up the painting and turned to leave. There, standing at the foot of the porch stairs, blocking her way, big and black against the snow, was the dog with the orange eyebrows. It must have crept up when she wasn’t looking, she thought. It didn’t appear threatening exactly—maybe it was Celia’s dog and it had gotten out—but neither would it budge. And it wouldn’t stop staring at her. Now Norris had no choice but to stay.

•   •   •

Norris averted her eyes from the dog’s intense gaze and tried the bell again. Stamped her feet to warm them up. Finally she heard a sound behind the door. Then the door opened a crack and stopped, caught by a little chain. Out of the crack slipped a cat. Then someone unhooked the chain, the door swung wide, and there stood Celia.

Though it was 8:30 in the morning, almost lunchtime by Norris’s schedule, Celia was barefoot, and wore a robe and pajamas. She looked puffy-faced, like she’d just woken up. Her hair resembled some inventive bird’s nest, with hairpins and little bits of what might be construction paper sticking out of it. A smear of something greasy clung to her face near her mouth.

“Norris? That
was
your voice I heard. Wow. I mean, what a nice surprise.”

“Hi.” Norris tried to make her voice sound friendly. “Is that your dog?”

“What dog?” Celia said. Norris looked behind her but the dog had gone. Celia pulled her robe closed. “You want to come in?”

“I won’t stay long,” Norris said, dreading what was to come.

•   •   •

Norris was sitting in Celia’s living room on her rickety Victorian furniture. Celia had disappeared to get dressed, then reappeared with tea in a pot, on a tray, along with little napkins and a plate of oatmeal cookies left over from the party that Norris had sent home with her the day before. Now Norris accepted a cup of tea, no milk, no sugar. Celia picked up a cookie.

Norris was intensely uncomfortable. It wasn’t just the hard, bumpy, scratchy velvet atrocity of a settee she was sitting on, though that was bad, digging into her back and her butt, or the “eclectic” décor—the doilies and the fringed curtains and the framed handkerchiefs and the art projects and the piles of books and the hockey stick lying on the dining room table, the dust motes and cat hair floating in the sunlight. It wasn’t even this enforced coziness, or the weirdly sweet tea, although those weren’t helping either.

“That was so good of you,” Celia was saying. “The party, I mean. The food and the wine. Those incredible paintings. Everything was so lovely.” Celia reached out and touched the dragonfly pin on Norris’s vest, smiled at it. “We needed that,” she said. “Or I did. I haven’t laughed that hard in I don’t know how long.”

“Can I get to the point?” Norris said, knowing as the words came out of her mouth that her tone was exactly wrong. But she wanted to get this over with, was unable to stand even another minute of this, whatever this was. At the sight of Celia’s face, though, she tried again. “I’ve brought you something,” Norris said, trying to sound kind this time. She held out the bubble-wrapped package, which Celia had been pretending not to notice. “I’d prefer that you open it later, after I leave. If you don’t mind.”