Chapter 4
Chapter Four
Present Day
Nora hated the interior of the two-bedroom bungalow she bought on Nantucket Island.
She knew very little about the previous owners and could only infer that they’d been colorblind, or slightly kooky, or maybe aliens.
It was really that bad. The wallpaper in the kitchen and the bathroom was heinous, filled with flowers, monkeys, and palm trees that yanked this cozy New England house from here to some tacky jungle universe.
Not one but two of the bathrooms were painted orange.
And the guest bedroom, the bedroom that she hadn’t selected for herself, was painted a very strange hue that was more Pepto-Bismol than soft pink.
The morning after her first night with the Salt Sisters, Nora woke up, made a pot of coffee, and stared for a full five minutes at that awful wallpaper.
She felt suddenly trapped by it, by other people’s long-ago decisions, as well as her own to live here.
It occurred to her that she could rip it off.
Feeling liberated, Nora picked at the edge of the wallpaper and began to peel it away, surprised at how well it was going until it rippled apart.
It came in strings after that, barely enough to make a dent.
Clearly, she needed a better tactic.
Taking wallpaper off the walls was nothing she’d ever done before.
During her marriage, she and Isaac had been firm on their belief in cream-colored walls and simple decorations.
They’d deemed it to be “classic” and therefore always in vogue.
When people came over to see their apartment in Manhattan, they always commented on how sophisticated it was.
Isaac and Nora had thought that was really funny.
“Sophisticated? Us?” Isaac had laughed, eating ice cream straight from the carton while standing with the freezer wide open.
She loved picturing him like that. She loved remembering his smile.
Of course, there had really been a sophistication about Nora and Isaac, or at least about the life they’d built together.
Isaac was an attorney with his own firm and brought in nearly half a million per year.
They’d had an apartment on the Upper East Side and sent their kid to the very best of Manhattan preschools and secondary schools.
Every decision felt in line with a greater purpose.
When Nora had most of the wallpaper around the window peeled away, she heard her phone ring in the next room. Enthusiastic and slightly proud of her efforts, she brushed off her hands and went to answer it. To her surprise, it was her ex-husband, Isaac.
He hadn’t called in months.
“I was just thinking about you,” she said, trying to keep things easy and happy between them, though her heart felt so achy.
“I could tell,” Isaac said, a smile in his voice.
“Are you psychic these days?” Nora hated that her own voice quivered.
“I’m taking a course on being psychic,” Isaac joked. “The idea is that nobody could defeat a psychic attorney.”
“Nobody can defeat you anyway,” Nora said.
Isaac laughed. “Tell me. How is it?”
Nora winced, knowing that he meant her move to Nantucket, her new life without him.
She went back to the kitchen and began to pick at more of the wallpaper, eager for something to do with her hands.
She wanted to sound too busy for him, at least a little bit.
Things had not been so easy during their divorce. That was putting it lightly.
“It’s great,” she said. “I mean, it will be.” She told him that she was in the process of redecorating.
She didn’t tell him that she wouldn’t keep things sophisticated, as they’d always done, that she wanted something new out of a space, that she wanted to figure out who she was without him.
She knew that he still lived in that space they’d shared.
He’d gotten the apartment. She’d wanted out.
“And how are things in the city?” Nora asked, cursing herself even as she said it. She didn’t want to know about any women he was seeing or picture him out with their old friends, laughing together at their old favorite restaurants, and walking through Central Park.
Briefly, Isaac told her about a little drama at work.
His secretary had quit to move to Paris and “follow her dreams,” and he was thinking of getting back into tennis.
As she listened, Nora continued to peel at the wallpaper, surprised at how normal this felt.
It was Isaac, recounting details of his life, while Nora listened and offered her advice. Warmth spread through her chest.
And then, she made a false move.
In reaching for another piece of wallpaper, she stretched too far, and a horrible and sickly pain shot through her back and into her spine. Immediately, she spasmed and fell to the floor, crying out.
“Nora?” Isaac called, terrified. “Nora, what’s going on?”
At that moment, as her ex-husband called her name and begged her for details, lying on the floor of her brand-new kitchen, surrounded by wallpaper detritus, Nora felt like the most pathetic woman on the planet. Still, pain moved through her. She thought she was going to throw up.
“It’s my back,” Nora said gently.
“Oh, Nora,” Isaac said. “The same spot?”
“The same spot as always,” Nora affirmed.
“Have you been doing your exercises?” Isaac asked.
Nora sighed into the phone. She hadn’t been doing her exercises, or not as often as she once did.
She’d had her mind on other things. She’d half-assumed that the old back injury wouldn’t enter her new life in Nantucket.
But she’d had to bring her fifty-seven-year-old body along with her, sadly.
She’d brought her body and its memories.
“Stupid question,” Isaac said. “I’m sorry.”
“No. It’s okay. I should have been doing them,” she said.
“You remember what helps?”
Putting Isaac on speakerphone, Nora spread out her arms and legs like a starfish and continued to stare at the ceiling.
The game was to wait until the spasms stopped, then roll into a child’s pose.
But the spasming and the pain continued.
It was duller than it had been, but still very much present.
She sighed. “I feel old, Isaac,” she said. She was glad he couldn’t see her.
Isaac laughed. “You know how I told you I wanted to get back into tennis?”
“Yeah?”
“I tried it and pulled something in my shoulder,” he confessed.
“You lied!”
“I didn’t lie, exactly. I just left something out of the truth,” Isaac said. “I did it because I wanted you to hear how great I’m doing.”
Nora closed her eyes, finding her heart and her soul falling back in love with Isaac all over again. This was the man she’d married, the only man she’d ever had a child with. It was hard to remember why everything had fallen apart.
“I hate that you’re alone up there,” Isaac said gently.
Nora squeezed her eyes shut and told herself not to cry. “I don’t mind it,” she said after a very long pause. “I really don’t.”
“If you need someone to come pick you up off the floor, I can drive up,” Isaac said.
Nora smiled. “Thanks, but no thanks.” The pain was dissipating now, and she rolled over and put herself in child’s pose. Maybe because she felt a little better, she felt brave enough to ask, “You haven’t heard from him, have you?”
It was Isaac’s turn to be quiet. “No, Nora. I haven’t.” There was ice in his tone.
Nora realized that she’d messed things up between them just now. She breathed heavily. “I haven’t heard from him either.”
“I wouldn’t have thought so,” Isaac said.
Nora frowned.
“I mean, I would think that you would tell me if he reaches out to you,” Isaac explained.
“I would,” Nora said, although she wasn’t sure if that was totally true. If their son wanted to talk to her again, if their son said, “I want to talk to you, and not Dad,” Nora would selfishly keep it a secret from Isaac. She wasn’t married to Isaac any longer, and she ached to hear from her son.
“I would tell you, too,” Isaac said, although Nora didn’t believe him. “Sometimes I still can’t believe any of this happened. Sometimes it feels like a nightmare I’m going to wake up from.”
Nora pressed her forehead against the chilly hardwood. So often, she felt the same.
It was three years ago that their son Paul married Cleo, a professional clarinetist featured with the New York Symphony Orchestra.
His union with Cleo had been the talk of the town, especially in Nora and Isaac’s circles.
They’d been overjoyed and had invited three hundred guests to the wedding: men and women from the upper echelon of Manhattan life.
Paul, a documentarian, had met Cleo while interviewing her for a music documentary, which was not only romantic but also important for the future of art, music, and film.
Nora had loved telling people about it. She’d loved knowing it, as it made her feel as though Paul had learned from his parents to see the beauty in the world.
Nora would never forget their wedding day.
Cleo had looked like a Greek goddess, with long, coiled blond hair, dark makeup, and glowing, olive skin.
Paul had looked like their son: handsome and slightly goofy, if only because he couldn’t believe his good luck.
Isaac gave a speech at the reception, welcoming Cleo into their family and expressing his pride in Paul.
There hadn’t been a dry eye in the room.
Nora had thought to herself, How did I get so lucky?
After everything that happened? How did I find my way here?
During those first two years, Isaac, Nora, Paul, and Cleo met often.
They went out to dinner, went to concerts, and traveled abroad.
Nora and Isaac saw Cleo perform in the orchestra a total of maybe twelve times.
Nora got to the point where she could hear Cleo’s clarinet separate from the others, training her ear to reckon with Cleo’s brilliance.
After a sort of run-of-the-mill doctor appointment, Cleo was diagnosed with stage 3 stomach cancer.
She’d never handled food very well, but she’d always chalked it up to nerves or lactose intolerance or some other allergy.
But this concrete diagnosis was proof that Cleo was unwell.
Nora and Isaac wanted to support Paul and Cleo as much as they could.
They invited the married couple to move into their much larger, more comfortable apartment, swapping their one-bedroom in Brooklyn for theirs.
They offered to have the married couple move in with them, so that Nora and Isaac could take on some of the burden of caring for Cleo.
Cleo’s parents lived in California and couldn’t travel over often, so Nora and Isaac wanted to do everything they could. They wanted to be her parents, too.
But Cleo and Paul wanted to face this mostly on their own.
Paul asked for a little bit of space as they waded through this.
The idea of “space” during this heartbreaking time terrified Nora.
When she learned through the grapevine that Cleo had gotten even sicker—that her leave of absence at the symphony had been extended even longer—Nora called Paul five times in a single night, needing to know if he and Cleo were all right.
Panic set in when he didn’t answer. Isaac held Nora all night as Nora wept and had panic attacks.
She went to therapy, where she connected the dots from her parents’ accident to this momentary loss of her son.
Eventually, Nora and Isaac began fighting not only about the situation but about everything.
It was as though they could feel Cleo getting sicker; they could feel Paul’s helplessness and anger toward the world, and therefore his parents.
They bickered about the house, about their friends, about their careers, about their past. They argued about how they’d only been able to have one child.
They argued about why Paul didn’t trust them.
When Paul finally called to tell them that Cleo had passed away, Nora and Isaac were so downtrodden that they could hardly speak.
They told their son they loved him and asked if they could come see him.
But Paul said that, per Cleo’s wishes, he was going to have her cremated and not have a memorial service.
“You need to grieve, Paul,” Nora whispered. But even as she said it, she remembered her own parents’ memorial service and how little that had helped.
“I need to be alone,” Paul said. “Please, respect that I need this. I’m going out of the country for a while. You won’t be able to contact me.” He told them he loved them, and he hung up.
When they tried to call him immediately after that, they couldn’t get through. This was how Nora learned about the concept of blocking someone. It was the cruelest thing she’d ever known.
After that, Isaac and Nora hardly spoke. Maybe six weeks after Paul’s abrupt departure from their lives, Isaac suggested that they go to therapy. They tried it for a little while. But usually during their sessions, they got into horrible fights that made Nora’s blood run cold.
“I love you,” Nora told him after each session, her heart shaking like a dyer. “But I don’t know how we’re going to get through this.”
It was an awful black time in her life. Isaac’s, too.
But because Isaac was an attorney, he said that he could get them out of their marriage “easy as anything. If we decide we want that.” They concluded they wanted that. It was over, just like that.
Now, as Nora remained in a child’s pose, surrounded by wallpaper and quietly crying, Isaac asked, “Are you still there?”
“I’m here,” Nora said.
Isaac remained quiet for a moment. “He’s going to come back.”
“I know,” Nora lied.
“He’s broken right now,” Isaac said. “I can’t imagine what he’s going through.”
“I want to scream at him,” Nora said.
“I can’t imagine that would help. But that’s my instinct, too.”
Nora’s back pain had completely gone. Slowly, she hauled herself upright and left the kitchen to splay herself out on the bed. Rain clouds had formed outside, making it difficult for her to tell what time of day it was. How long had she and Isaac been on the phone?
“I do miss you, Nora,” Isaac said finally. “I always will.”
“I know. Me too,” Nora said.
“Let’s not hate each other,” Isaac said.
“It would be so boring to be one of those divorced couples who hate each other,” she agreed.
To ease the horror of saying goodbye, they spent a few minutes talking about food they’d eaten, music they’d listened to, and films they’d watched. She told him about Tolstoy, and he said, “You’re crazy for taking on that monstrous book at this stage. I commend you for it.”
Nora smiled. Tears were dried to salty lines on her cheek. “Thanks for calling, Isaac.”
“Any time, Bug,” he said, using the nickname he’d given her so long ago. “Goodbye.”