A Wedding in December_ A Novel - Anita Shreve [36]
“But isn’t this good for your business?”
“Well. Yes.” She laughed. “I encourage it, actually.”
The crisp, clean look of the inn had been continued in Nora’s quarters. Harrison glanced at the chairs and the cocktail table with its objets—a vase, a stack of books, a small photograph that might have been of Nora’s mother—and at a chaise near a window. One wall was covered in paintings and prints and photographs, arranged not so much artlessly as haphazardly, as if Nora had simply hung them as she’d found them, utilizing whatever space was available. He was drawn immediately to the photographs.
“Is this you?” he asked, pointing to a picture of a man he recognized as Carl Laski and a woman who was clearly a very young Nora.
“Yes,” she said, looking up. “That was our wedding day.”
Harrison studied the photo. Nora, who looked barely twenty, had on a blue-and-orange flower-print dress, her long chestnut hair done up in a bun. Laski’s hair was also long—wild and unkempt. He had on a white shirt and a sport coat and a pair of jeans. His eyes seemed unfocused, as if he might already have been drinking. Looking at the picture, Harrison was aware of a vulnerability in Nora he had missed, that of a young child wanting to be reassured, or of a bereaved wife needing comfort. And he suddenly understood how it was that she might be taken advantage of. Harrison had an urge to enter the photograph and put an arm between Nora and Carl Laski.
“There,” Nora said, finding a sheet of paper in a folder. She turned to face Harrison, a question on her lips. She hesitated a moment and then spoke. “Do you . . . do you ever think about what would have become of Stephen?”
Harrison forced himself not to look away. “Had he lived, you mean?”
“Yes.”
“I imagine he’d have gone to Stanford on a baseball scholarship, as he was supposed to have done, then been drafted by the Blue Jays. He’d have been traded to the Twins and later would have ended up playing shortstop for the Red Sox—pre-Nomar, that is. Stephen would be a four-time Gold Glove winner and have an all-time batting average of .301, and any minute now he’d be on the ballot for the Hall of Fame.”
“Was he that good?” she asked.
“Oh yes,” Harrison said, running his fingers along the edge of a mahogany console table.
“Were you that good?”
“No. I only looked good because of Stephen. The two of us could turn a double play better than anyone in the league. But it was all Stephen—the way he’d snag the ball and whip around midair and rocket it to me. The only other player I’ve ever seen do it as well as Stephen was Nomar, actually.”
Nora sat in the desk chair. “It’s all so . . .”
“Sad?” Harrison asked.
“That, yes, but more than that. Pointless.”
Yes, Harrison thought. Absolutely pointless. “When I think about Stephen,” he said, “I worry about my own two boys.”
“They say it’s worse now even than back then,” Nora said.
“The drinking, you mean.”
“We . . . we had a group of boys here in town last year who went joyriding, skidded on the ice, and hit a telephone pole. One of them was decapitated. All six died.”
The image squeezed at Harrison. “It’s a wonder any of us make it,” he said quietly.
“Enough,” Nora said, standing. “It’s almost three. I have to go.” She moved toward the doorway and stood at its entrance. “Will you be all right until six-thirty?”
“Of course,” Harrison said, getting up from the chair and moving to the door as well. “I brought some work with me. I might look for Agnes.”
He stood so close to Nora that he could smell her shampoo.
“That night,” she said.
Harrison shook his head.
“No. You’re right.” Nora touched Harrison with the flat of her palm in the slight hollow between his shoulder and his collar bone, a touch that Harrison experienced as if on naked skin. As soon as he registered the touch, however,