My Nora (12 page)

“Thanks for noticing,” Matt said, sitting up a bit straighter, but tapping the toe of his rubber boot against the floor compulsively.

“You seem like a smart guy, Matt, and I’m sorry I didn’t notice it before. There’s a special place for you here in the offices, and if you want the job it’s yours.”

Matt blinked several times, not understanding. “I’m sorry, what?”

“A management job, boy. I’m offering you Ted’s old position. Place ain’t been run right since he left.”

Matt swallowed hard, trying to make sense of the offer. He’d have different hours and different tasks. He’d be working indoors for the most part, but would still go home smelling like fish in the evenings. The job also required him to spend a good chunk of the day on his ass, which bothered Matt a great deal. In addition to managing the staff that sold and cleaned the day’s catch for the public, he’d take on some of the accounting duties, which perturbed him even more. Trivia he liked — numbers? Not so much.

“Can I have some time to think about it?” Matt asked finally, standing and adjusting the suspenders of his pants.

“Of course, of course. Take a couple days, talk to your girlfriend about it. See if it’s something you want to do. I think the pay bump will make you real happy.”

“My girlfriend?” Matt raised one brow and paused in the open office door.

“Don’t play coy with me. You know who I mean. That real fine-lookin’ woman you was with in the paper with this morning.”

Matt didn’t know what Albert meant, but just nodded slowly and said “Yeah, I’ll do that. I’ll, uh, talk to my girlfriend about it.”

“You let me know and I’ll order a real special extra-large desk chair for you.”

As soon as Albert dismissed him, Matt chucked his protective overclothes and drove the short distance to the nearest service station to buy a newspaper. He ignored the cashier pinching her nose at his smell. He just tossed two quarters across the counter at her, picked up a paper to glance at the front page, and then gave her another five bucks to take what was left of the pile.

Matt drove straight home, breaking numerous traffic laws in the process, showered quickly and literally ran to Nora’s with his stack of newspapers under his arm. He didn’t see her car in the yard, but that wasn’t unusual since she’d started parking in the barn. What was
unusual was that she hadn’t been outside to fetch her mail that day. Normally the rural route mail carrier rang the bell with parcels as he didn’t like leaving boxes outdoors, even if the labels said to do so. The fact that there was one tall, wide, flat box leaning against her storm door meant that she must have been seriously out of the loop. He decided to cross the street to fetch her mail from the box for her while he was out there.

The rusty metal box was half-filled with the usual circulars and bills, but also numerous brightly colored greeting card envelopes with yellow forwarding labels from her old Maryland address affixed.

As he walked down the long driveway, shuffling the mail into a neat stack, he noticed some irregularities that slowed his pace. About half the mail was addressed to “Nora Fredrickson.” Some had labels for “Nora Gutierrez.” Yet other items were sent to “Nora Fredrickson-Gutierrez” or some permutation thereof. As realization dawned on Matt, he froze in his tracks. Nora being married would explain her aloofness toward his advances. What it didn’t explain was why she was living in that house alone, and why when she did allow her considerable self-restraint to slip her expression went soft and filled with some untouchable need.

“Now what?” he wondered as he stood in the gravel drive. Take it all back and pretend he saw nothing? Finish the walk to the door and leave it all there to let her guess who’d brought it down? Knock? He looked down at the newspapers clasped under his arm and thought if nothing else she owed him an outright rejection. His feet were moving before he could program them to do so and before he realized it, he was back on her porch, prying up the package from “Elvin Gutierrez” from against the door and propping it against his leg as he knocked. No answer, and no footsteps from within. He tried again once and then twice more. Then he picked up the package, jammed it under his other arm and walked around to the back of the house to the sunroom. Nora usually kept it unlocked when she was at home.

As he rounded the corner, her slim form was evident in the room, but she was still and unmoving. He stalked to the door and pulled it open quietly, stepping into the room and depositing the parcel, newspapers and mail items onto the wicker sofa. Nora’s ears were covered with high-end headphones and she was staring at a canvas that had a base color of holly berry red laid down in the center. She held her brush poised over the canvas, but wasn’t painting at the moment.

Matt sighed at the sight of her slumped over on her stool with her bare feet gripping the rungs and her hair hidden by a scarf printed with quirky sketches of Vixen the reindeer. An untouched cup of tea sat on the table nearby and it appeared Nora hadn’t touched her ham sandwich lunch as it sat on its plate, sliced, and going a bit crusty around the edges. He cleared himself a space on the sofa and put his feet up on the table to wait for her attention.

It actually took a while for Nora to snap out of her reverie and start moving her brush. Matt watched with keen interest for a while as she translated brain waves into pictures, but then decided to occupy himself with the art history book she’d left open on the coffee table. He was curious about who her influences were. Her work reminded him somewhat of Norman Rockwell with a dark twist. An hour into Nora’s frenzied dappling she muttered “shit,” causing Matt to look up to find her pulling her phone out of the pocket of her smock. She unplugged the headphones from it, draped them into the easel tray, and turned sideways on the stool to hop down.

Nora seemed simultaneously surprised and not surprised to find Matt there. She did startle at seeing him, but didn’t seem to be upset by the intrusion. She just walked over to the coffee table and plugged her phone into the charger jack whose cord was draped across the top, then eyed the stack of mail next to the man on her chair.

“I take it you want to talk,” she said flatly and produced a utility knife from her pocket to slice the tape on the box open.

Matt closed the book carefully and set it back where he found it. “Yes, I’d hope you’d want to talk to me as well.”

Nora’s jaw tightened, but she said nothing. She reached into the box, which was tall enough to reach her navel and pulled out what appeared to be a painting. It was wrapped in brown paper that she made no effort to remove. She set it on its bottom on the floor and turned her gaze back to Matt.

“Let’s start with the basics, shall we?” he took control of the conversation.

Nora gave a tiny, unenthusiastic nod.

Matt picked up one of the newspapers and then realized Nora already had one of her own. It was draped over the top of the cart she used to store paint tubes. All the same, he brandished the front page at her. “Does this bother you? This picture?”

She held her tongue for a moment and stared at the page “Probably not in the way you’d expect,” she said after turning her gaze away from him.

“You know, my motives weren’t so pure when I put you on that bike,” Matt said, folding the paper carefully and tossing it onto the pile of others. “I knew most people would assume we were together and I liked it. I figured it’d make folks leave you alone and give me some time to court you right.”

Nora squinted at him. “Am I supposed to be flattered?”

“I don’t care if you are, to be honest. I feel like I’m being somewhat led on, and I’ve been nothing but forthright about my intentions. Well, once we got that hunting shit out of the way.”

Nora looked up at the ceiling and said nothing.

“Nora, who’s Elvin?” He stood and walked around the coffee table to get in her way, so she had no choice but to see him. She sighed and looked down at the covered painting propped against the front of her body for a moment before sliding the knife into the paper and ripping it off. The tearing revealed a tarnished gilt frame that had to be quite valuable.

“Elvin is my ex-husband as of a few weeks ago.” She turned the painting around to show him a stylized wedding portrait embedded in the frame that had been slashed down the middle by the person who’d sent it. Matt could tell that Nora was pained over the situation, but he couldn’t help his own feeling of absolute relief.

“We’ve been apart for three years,” she said. “It was an absolute failure of a marriage.”

Matt pried the canvas and frame out of her vise-like grip and set it aside.

“What happened?” He didn’t care if he sounded nosey. He wanted to know whether infidelity had been involved. He’d always thought cheating was one of those character flaws people never recovered from. That is to say, if they did it once, they’d do it again. If Nora were the one who cheated, he’d never be able to commit, no matter how much she seemed to be that missing puzzle piece in his life. He was in it for keeps. He was looking for his one, great love. If she were the one who was cheated on, well, he’d have to tread carefully. He’d been there. He knew what it did to a person’s spirit.

Nora skirted around Matt and approached the sofa, sorting through the mail methodically and tossing items into two separate piles: keep and trash. Matt noticed that the greeting card envelopes all went into the same pile as the hardware store flyer and credit card solicitations.

“Tell me,” he demanded, walking up behind her and laying one hand on her shoulder and making her shiver.

“I’m just not enjoyable to be around, Matt. It’s as simple as that.”

“I don’t believe it.”

“It’s true.” She whipped around and looked up at him with her brows angrily knit together and lips pursed into a pout.

“Why are you so intent on having me believe you’re not a decent person? So you got divorced. Big fucking deal. At least you tried. I’m nearly thirty-five, Nora, and before now I haven’t met a single person I’ve wanted to make that sort of commitment with. What’s that make me? A louse? A sleazebag?”

“That’s different. You made a choice not to get married. I got married and failed.”

“Bullshit,” he spat. “Why do you insist on it being only your fault? What kind of guy must he be that he’d shove a knife into your wedding portrait?”

“A vain one,” she mumbled almost inaudibly.

“What’d you say?”

She took a deep breath, then the words tumbled out. “Matt, I don’t want to be in a relationship right now.”

He narrowed his eyes at her and gripped her arms to pull her closer to him. “With me or with anyone?”

“Anyone.”

Matt unhanded her and took a step back. “I guess that’s better than having no shot at all.”

Nora shook her head and crossed her arms over her chest, rubbing her arms as if she were suddenly cold. She couldn’t be cold. It had to be at least seventy degrees in the sunroom thanks to all that glass around them. “Matt, I think you should just move on. I’d like for you to leave, please.”

His jaw tightened and his loose fingers clenched into fists and then relaxed as he calmed himself. “Fine,” he said, stepping forward and getting into Nora’s personal space. She tried to take a step back, but his solid arm got in the way so she was wedged between it and his body. She didn’t struggle against him — he hoped she knew that he’d never hurt her. “I’ll leave you here to hide and stew.” He bent down to bridge the foot or more of distance between their faces and kissed her thoroughly. When Nora closed her eyes and laced her fingers through his hair subconsciously Matt pulled back. It was obvious then. Nora may have said “no” but she really meant “I’m scared.” He wanted to know what to do to make her
not
be scared, but it wasn’t something he could simply ask.

“I’ll leave you alone with your paint,” he repeated, picking up his pile of newspapers and clamping them under his left arm. “When you get so lonely you can’t stand it — ”

“You’ll be back?” she asked flatly.

“No. I’ll be back after you pass that stage.” Then he was gone.

“Why did I agree to do this again?” Nora asked Bennie as she watched the plump woman draw careful navy blue lines around her eyes with liquid eyeliner. Nora was curled up on her half of the cruise ship stateroom on her twin-sized bed in her stocking feet.

“Oh, you remember,” Bennie said, using the tip of her pinky finger to clean up a liner smudge. “Last year you said you didn’t want to be working on Christmas again, and the only way I could get you away from your easel was to book a vacation. Besides, it was free because of the poster signing event you committed to, remember?”

“Oh,” Nora said flatly, closing her eyes and falling back onto the inadequate pillow. “That seems vaguely familiar.” She would have rather been working, to be honest. The painting she’d started a couple of weeks before of the parade motorcycle mob scene was basically done, but needed a few tweaks. She had been working on it up till the moment Bennie called to ask if she were on her way to the airport. At that moment Nora hadn’t even packed.

In between trying to artistically render Gus and Courtney as Santa and Mrs. Claus in a Harley-Davidson sleigh with the other members of the bike club as leather-clad elves, her phone hadn’t stopped ringing. Matt’s home number kept showing up in her caller I.D. a lot, and Nora always answered, even if she didn’t know what to say. But it was always Karen calling to complain that she was pretty sure she was dying. She couldn’t stop throwing up. Although Nora had never been pregnant herself, she was pretty sure that Karen’s overly nauseous state was a good sign. Karen had taken to showing up at Nora’s after work unannounced and plopping down on her sofa to sleep it off while Nora painted. “If I die in my sleep, at least you’ll be here to see me,” Karen had said, in between dry heaves. Nora thought that statement had been odd since Matt was normally home in early afternoons, but she didn’t interrogate the poor girl about it. Karen slept, Nora painted, no complaints.

Thinking about Karen, Nora had a sudden thought. “Hey, Bennie.”