Chapter 3 #2
She is the only person on earth who calls me Lenora. Our mother uses it sometimes, on the rare occasions our mother calls. But Pauline uses it always, has used it always, treats Nora as a degradation, treats the contraction of two syllables into one as a kind of slovenliness she will not condone.
I straighten in my chair. I tuck my hair behind my ear.
"Pauline."
"You have not returned Mother's last three voicemails."
"I have been —"
"You have not returned mine."
"I — I have been busy. The library has been —"
"Lenora. Please."
She does not raise her voice. She has never had to raise her voice.
Pauline raises temperature instead — the room around her gets hot, and then very cold, and then you find that you have agreed to whatever it was she came to ask you for and you do not entirely remember when.
She is forty-three. She is married to Graham Forsythe of the Richmond Forsythes.
She runs three charity boards and a vineyard.
She is, by any external measure, the most accomplished person to come out of our family tree in three generations, and our parents will tell you so if you give them ninety seconds.
I am the other daughter.
I say, "What is it, Pauline?"
"It is the reunion."
"I told Mother I could not —"
"You told Mother you would think about it. You have not thought about it. Mother is hurt. Father is concerned. Aunt Caroline is flying in from Charleston and you have not RSVP'd."
"Pauline —"
"It is June fourteenth, Lenora. Three weeks. The whole family is going to be there. You cannot not come."
I close my eyes. I open them. I look out the library window at the dogwoods on Main.
The last of the petals went last week. The trees are leafing in now — the soft green of late spring, the green that comes in just before summer takes hold — and there is a girl on a bicycle going by with a basket of strawberries from the farmer's market in her front basket and her hair coming out of its braid behind her.
She looks like I felt the first time I drove into Clover Ridge two years ago.
I say, "Pauline, I cannot leave the library for a week."
"For a long weekend, Lenora. A long weekend. The library will survive."
"I run the summer reading program. It starts the —"
"Lenora. Stop."
She says it the way she has said it my whole life. With the small downturn at the end. Stop. The way you would say it to a dog who has been jumping on the upholstery.
I stop.
She says, more gently — Pauline can do gently, when she wants to, and it is its own kind of weapon — "Sweetheart. Listen. We are worried about you."
I do not say anything.
"You have been hiding in that little town for two years.
We did not say anything for the first year because we thought it was a phase.
We thought you would come home. But it has been two years, Lenora, and you have not visited, and you do not call, and when I look at your phone records — yes, Mother shares your phone bill with me, I see what you and I both pay attention to — I see you have one friend, one friend, this florist person you talk to, and that is it.
That is your social life. That is your life, Lenora. A library job and a florist."
I cannot get a breath to go all the way down.
She is still going. "Mother and I have talked. It is time to come home. Even for the long weekend, even just to see everyone, to be reminded that there is a whole family here who loves you, who wants you. Graham said —"
I close my eyes at Graham.
"— Graham said he would drive down and pick you up himself.
That way you would not have to drive. You could spend the week in our guest room.
We could have you up in Richmond. There are people you used to know in the city.
Eleanor Vance had her second baby last spring, did you know that? She asked about you at Christmas."
I do not remember Eleanor Vance. I went to school with so many girls named Eleanor that they have blurred in my memory into one composite Eleanor, pearl-earringed and lacrosse-bodied and kind enough to my face. I could not pick the real Eleanor out of a police lineup. I do not say this.
I say, "I will think about it."
"Lenora."
"I will think about it, Pauline. I have to go. There is somebody at the desk."
There is not anybody at the desk. The library is empty except for Mrs. Albright reading in the periodicals corner and two college students in the back at the long table.
I hang up.
I sit very still at the desk.
I look down at my hands. They are shaking.
They are doing the small fine shake they do when Pauline has been on the phone, the shake that lives below the wrist and that I cannot seem to stop by clenching my fists, which I have tried.
I have tried many things. They will shake for about twenty minutes. I have timed it.
I get up. I cannot sit still. I take the returns cart from behind the desk and I push it back into the stacks. I will re-shelve. Re-shelving is something I can do with my hands while my mind goes white around the edges. I will do it slowly. I will do it carefully. I will let my hands do the work.