The last secret_ a novel - Mary McGarry Morris [97]
Fight back, Nora thinks, closing her eyes. How? And with what, when we're barely holding on. Tonight at dinner, Drew and Ken's sullen standoff escalated from Drew's mumbling and not passing the butter when Chloe asked and Ken's demanding that he be more respectful of his sister to Drew's bolting from the table, shouting, “Go to hell. Go to fucking hell, all of you, for all I care!” before slamming the door.
“Let him go!” Ken yelled as she started into the breezeway “I can't take it anymore. I'm sick of it. He wants to brood, he can go do it somewhere else.”
“No, Ken,” she said, her tone and look putting him on notice that the day it came to that, the choice would be easy. He would leave. Not her son.
“But Mom, he's always like that,” Chloe implored from the table. “You should see him in school. I mean, it's so embarrassing. He's always alone. He won't sit with anyone. He doesn't even talk to people. It's, like, weird.”
“Well, then maybe you should sit with him and talk with him. You're his sister. Maybe that's all he needs, a little attention from you. From someone!” she declared, her voice ragged and trembling.
“Mom!” Chloe cried, jumping up from the table. “That's not fair, and you know it!” She threw down her napkin and ran upstairs.
“She's right,” Nora said, more to herself than to Ken who stared into his untouched dinner. “It isn't fair. It really isn't.”
“Nora?” Father Grewley gestures through the opening door. Could she give him a hand with something? Her legs wobble. Drew. Something's happened. When she left he still wasn't home.
“It's Alice,” he says as they hurry along the corridor to his office. “Her neighbor just brought her in. She's in a bad way. He really did a job on her this time.”
Alice sits in shadows, her face in her hands. The neighbor, Roz, is a wrinkled, shrewd-eyed woman with long gray hair. She apologizes in a raspy voice for turning off the overhead light, but it was hurting Alice's eyes. Roz wanted to bring her to the hospital, but Alice refused. She's afraid they'll call the police on Luke and, besides, Roz adds, Alice doesn't have any insurance. Father Grewley asks where the children are. Roz's husband is bringing them to Alice's mother. Is this what she wants? he leans close to ask Alice, who shrugs. Her head bobs, a battered weight on its thin stem.
“Poor thing. She don't know what she wants,” the neighbor whispers to Nora, who tries to hold her breath against the reek of cigarette smoke in the woman's clothes, jeans, and a hooded Patriots sweatshirt. “She thinks she's miscarrying. I don't know, maybe that's why. Like, this is the last thing she needs now.”
The only available space is on the third floor. A dark, chilly room, its angled attic ceilings are still stained from last winter's ice dams. A frayed braided rug lies molded into the rippled contours of the gray floorboards. But there is a pretty stenciled chest of drawers and an old mahogany double bed with a frilly yellow duvet. And this room has its own attached bathroom; only a few do. Nora waits outside on the landing. Maizie Dennehy is in with Alice. Maizie is one of four nurses they can call on day or night whenever an emergency comes in. Father Grewley leaves the room energized. He will return to the meeting with new resolve. Alice's plight confirms their mission. Before he starts downstairs, he whispers to Nora that if Letitia is so at odds with Sojourn House's purpose, then she must resign for the good of the board. And so must she, Nora realizes ashamedly So overwhelmed by her own troubles, she forgot to call Alice back. Her concern has become a charade. All she really cares about is her family.
Maizie comes out and closes the door. “She may be miscarrying, but at least nothing's broken,” she says. A stocky woman, she is a pretty, perky blonde. Even now she manages to smile. Given a choice, the guests always