The memory keeper's daughter - Kim Edwards [63]
“They fought in Vietnam,” he said. “So I guess they had their reasons.”
“Mark lost half his foot in Vietnam.”
Norah found herself glancing down at Mark’s boots, laced high up his ankles.
“The front half,” he said, tapping his right foot. “The toes and then some.”
“I see,” Norah said, deeply embarrassed.
“Look, Mark, can you give us a minute?” Bree asked.
He glanced at the stirring crowd. “Not really. I’m the next speaker.”
“It’s okay. I’ll be right back,” she said, then took Norah’s hand and pulled her a few yards away, ducking beneath a cluster of catalpa trees.
“What are you doing here?” she asked.
“I’m not sure,” Norah said. “I had to stop, that’s all, when I saw the crowd.”
Bree nodded, her silver earrings flashing. “It’s amazing, isn’t it? There must be five thousand people here. We were hoping for a few hundred. It’s because of Kent State. It’s the end.”
The end of what? Norah wondered, leaves fluttering around her. Somewhere, Miss Throckmorton was calling to the students and Pete Warren sat beneath the glossy travel posters, writing tickets. Wasps swam lazily in the sunny air by her garage. Could the world end on such a day?
“Is that your boyfriend?” she asked. “The one you were telling me about?”
Bree nodded, smiling a private smile.
“Oh, look at you! You’re in love.”
“I suppose so,” Bree said softly, glancing at Mark. “I suppose I am.”
“Well, I hope he’s treating you well,” Norah said, appalled to hear her mother’s voice, right down to the intonation. But Bree was too happy to do anything but laugh.
“He treats me fine,” she said. “Hey, can I bring him this weekend? To your party?”
“Sure,” Norah said, though she wasn’t sure at all.
“Great. Oh, Norah, did you get that job you wanted?”
The catalpa leaves moved like supple green hearts in the wind, and beyond them the crowd rippled and swayed.
“I don’t know yet,” Norah replied, thinking of the tasteful, colorful office. Suddenly her aspirations seemed so trivial.
“But how did the interview go?” Bree pressed.
“Well. It went well. I’m just not sure I want the job anymore, that’s all.”
Bree pushed a strand of hair behind her ear and frowned.
“Why not? Norah, just yesterday you were desperate for that job. You were so excited. It’s David, isn’t it? Saying that you can’t.”
Norah, annoyed, shook her head. “David doesn’t even know. Bree, it was just a little box of an office. Boring. Bourgeois. You wouldn’t be caught dead in it.”
“I’m not you,” Bree pointed out, impatient. “You’re not me. You wanted this job, Norah. For the glamour. For heaven’s sake, for the independence.”
It was true, she had wanted the job, but it was also true that she felt anger flaring up again: fine for Bree, who was out here starting revolutions, to consign her to a nine-to-five life.
“I’d be typing, not traveling. It would be years and years before I earned any trips. It’s not exactly what I imagined for my life, Bree.”
“And pushing a vacuum cleaner is?”
Norah thought of the wild rush of wind, of the Ohio, swirling, only eighty miles away. She pressed her lips together and did not answer.
“You make me so crazy, Norah. Why are you afraid of change? Why can’t you just be and let the world unfold?”
“I am,” she said. I am being. You have no idea!”
“You’re sticking your head in the sand. That’s what I see.”
“You don’t see anything but the next available man.”
“All right. We’re done.” Bree took a single step and was immediately swallowed by the crowd: a flash of color, then gone.
Norah stood for a moment beneath the catalpas, trembling with an anger she knew to be unaccountable. What was wrong with her? How could she envy Kay Marshall one moment and Bree the next, for such completely different reasons?
She made her way back through the crowd to her car. After the turbulence and drama of the protest, the city streets seemed flat, bleached of color, ominously ordinary. Too much time had passed; she had only two hours before she needed to fetch Paul. Not time enough for the river now. At home, in her sunny kitchen, Norah made herself a gin and tonic.