Lydia's Party: A Novel (25 page)

“OK.” Celia sounded uncertain but she took the package, set it next to her chair.

“I want to make you an offer,” Norris said, then had the sudden sense that someone, and not Celia, had given her a dirty look. “I mean, I’ve come to ask you a favor.”

•   •   •

Celia smoothed her hair behind her ears when Norris got finished telling her about the job. “Of course. I could do that,” she said, matter-of-factly, brushing crumbs off her face. She’d start by digitizing everything, she said. Then they needed to hire someone to design a proper website. “No offense,” she’d said. She’d talk to Peter about the travel part, being away during Griffin’s hockey season. But she didn’t think it would be a problem. Norris said OK and left soon after that.

Norris was standing next to her car in a parking lot a few blocks away. She’d forgotten to eat breakfast and had stopped to pick up some yogurt, on her way out of town, at a little market three blocks from Celia’s house. Norris held her cell phone to her ear and kicked a big clod of dirty snow off her left front tire.

She was checking her landline messages again, and here, at last, was Kamal. There were three messages, actually. Two from Kamal had come in in the last hour. First he apologized for being “a little out of touch,” then announced he was in the process of moving out. He was going back to Chicago, he said. School. Scholarship. Blah blah.

He was quitting, dumping her, was the point. Good luck with that, Norris thought, briefly furious, forgetting for a minute that it was exactly what she’d planned to do to him. Let’s see how he likes moving back to his grandmother’s apartment, she thought. It was remarkable, though. Once you went off script, anything could happen.

Kamal’s second message, twenty minutes later, said he was leaving her phone on the kitchen counter along with her keys and that he’d boiled eggs and put them in the crisper as usual. Taken out the garbage. Well, good-bye, he said. He sounded a little choked up. He said he sincerely appreciated everything she’d done for him.

This last part made Norris feel small. He hadn’t even gotten a trip to New York out of it. She wished he’d kept the phone at least—he’d need it—but she knew why he hadn’t. Now there was no way she could reach him.

Norris kicked some more snow off her tires. By then the third message had started to play but she was so distracted, thinking about Kamal standing at the stove, boiling the eggs, that she missed the beginning. So it took her a few seconds to realize that the husky voice she was listening to now was Celia’s and that she was in tears, thanking her for the painting.

Norris was rounding the lake again, going east this time, back to Michigan. She’d been trying to listen to her
Speak Like a Native (Chinese)
CD but she couldn’t concentrate and now she was thinking that no matter how much you tried to stay away from other people, stay out of their lives—for their own good!—and tried to keep them out of yours, that you couldn’t, and that when the bulwark finally burst it was all a big teary mess, now and forever after, and that maybe, though it wasn’t what she’d ever wanted, she just had to get used to it. This is what Lydia had said to Norris about her own life, that it was a mess.

“I wish I’d been more like you,” she’d said to Norris, toward the end. “No, you don’t,” Norris had said. Now Norris was becoming like her.

Norris glanced in the rearview mirror and met the eyes of the dog. It—he? she? (Don’t go there, she told herself)—had been sitting quietly in the backseat, looking out the window during the Chinese lesson, but now it seemed to be watching her.

•   •   •

Norris had been rearranging gear in the parking lot when the dog she’d seen in Celia’s yard had reappeared, trotting over and sitting amiably alongside her car in the snow while Norris dug around in her bag, moved things from the trunk to the backseat. Once Norris saw that the dog was harmless, she didn’t pay it any more attention. She was distracted enough, what with Kamal’s and Celia’s voices ringing in her head, thanking her. She’d slammed the back door and peeled away. Norris was already on the entrance ramp to the expressway when she’d caught a glimpse of the dog in her rearview mirror, rearranging itself into a sitting position from where it had been lying low, in the backseat.

The thing had stowed away! Norris almost pulled over and shoved it out of the car right then and there. Easy enough—and Norris was wearing pointy boots, if it needed encouragement. On any other day she would have.

•   •   •

She glanced in the mirror again. The dog stared back.

Norris supposed she’d take it to one of those places—just drop it off as soon as she got back—where they’d scan it for a chip and send it home if it had one, although somehow Norris knew it wouldn’t. Or it would and they’d call and the people would lie and say,
Oh, it wandered away
. Then they’d promise to come and get it but they’d never show up and the place would put it down. Norris knew—it’s what she’d done with Sam’s dog, twelve years before.

Where would she even keep a dog? And it would ruin her floors. She stepped on the gas.

•   •   •

Norris was doing seventy, seventy-five. The snow had started again. Probably, Norris thought, she should slow down. But she wanted to get past her own exit before she changed her mind.

•   •   •

The dog, sensing opportunity, had moved into the front seat. Now it sat next to Norris, on top of the shocking pink envelope. Just sticking out, from under the dog’s haunch, Norris could see a pink triangle and a glimpse of Sam’s handwriting, on the back of the little Xeroxed map that showed where the VFW hall was. There, Sam had scrawled elaborate, carefully worded directions to the free municipal parking lot—“for overflow, in case you’re late and there’s a crowd!”—as if he could sway her with that, as if the prospect of inconvenient parking were the reason she hadn’t wanted to go. She pressed a little harder on the accelerator. Hold on, Sam, she thought. If she kept steady and didn’t stop, in two more hours she’d be in Traverse City.

•   •   •

The snow came harder and harder now. Cars were parked on the side of the highway, lights on, waiting out the storm. Trucks barreled past, hurling piles of snow and salt on Norris’s windshield, rendering her blind for seconds at a time. Someone skidded off the road right in front of her and rolled into a ditch. Finally, even Norris had to slow down. She could hardly see the road ahead of her. Her mirrors had iced over by then, and in the time it took for her windshield wipers to make a full pass across her window, more snow lodged there to obscure the view. Her side windows steamed up and the car filled with the dank, musty scent of the dog. On any other day she would have pulled off the road, given up. But she couldn’t stop now.

•   •   •

At least her timing was perfect, Norris thought. At this rate, she’d arrive well after lunch, just in time to catch the band. With any luck, there’d be leftover meat loaf, for It. Maybe she’d even dance.

This book would not exist without the help of three amazing women. Jo-Ann Mapson, gifted writer and generous spirit, happened upon my first novel at the La Farge branch of the Santa Fe Public Library, and, although she’d never heard of me, recommended it to her agent. Deborah Schneider, now my agent, too, believed in this book, buoyed it (and me) up with unflagging zeal, and found it a home at Viking. Carolyn Carlson, my inspired, tireless editor there, understood the book instantly, then offered suggestions and insights that made it better. I cannot thank you three enough.

Thanks to everyone at Viking Penguin who helped: Clare Ferarro, who said yes; Beena Kamlani, for her smart and subtle editing; Ramona Demme, for everything; also John McGhee, Winnie DeMoya, Paul Lamb, Roseanne Serra, Nancy Resnick, Nancy Sheppard, Laura E. Abbott, and Carolyn Coleburn.

Thank you, also, to the artist residency selection committee at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and Shanna Linn, who made it possible for me to work in pristine quiet at the Roger Brown House in New Buffalo, Michigan. Thanks to Tom Hawkins and Sylvia Carter for their continued moral support and to Steve Knoebber for digital magic.

Thanks to my friends, whose encouragement, intelligence, and high spirits sustain and inspire me every day, and in memory of one, Suzanne Quigley (1949–2012), who left the party too soon.

Finally, these acknowledgments would mean nothing if they didn’t conclude with love and gratitude for Fritz Lentz, who put up with me during this long process and helped in countless ways. Writing a book can be hard but I doubt it’s as difficult as living with someone who is. You made it easier (and so much more delicious). Thanks, F, for a thousand salads and a million laughs, and for your ideas and imagination, which make the world more interesting.