Alternate Side(72)
At that moment it was clear to Nora that Bob Harris was thinking of making a play for her, and that Nora was thinking of finally giving in. But an expert on body language, like the ones who were always popping up on TV analyzing the president, could have told you by the rise and then the fall of their clavicles that almost simultaneously both of them thought, Nah. It was the beginning of what would be a wonderful professional relationship. In the years to come, they would feel that they might be the only man and woman in New York who had honest conversations.
“You should be with that guy,” Jenny said when Nora described one of their interactions.
“Why ruin a good thing?” Nora had replied.
The city has informed residents that they will discontinue weekly baiting for rodent traps and will move to a monthly schedule. A firm has been retained to check traps and rebait when necessary to supplement the city plan. The cost will be divided among owners who agree to participate. NO TRAPS WILL BE CHECKED OR REBAITED IN THE AREA OF HOMES NOT PARTICIPATING.
George
Broom-clean, it said in the contract. The house was to be delivered broom-clean. Nora had smiled when she saw the words. Obviously the buyer’s attorney was unfamiliar with the body of work of Charity Barrett, who had snaked a vacuum hose into the heating and dryer vents, who had actually scrubbed the grout in Ollie’s bathroom with something just a bit bigger than a toothbrush, who had waxed the parquet so thoroughly that Nora was concerned the new owners would go flying if they walked quickly across the living room. In this operating-theater atmosphere, redolent of lemon, Lysol, and bleach, it was jarring to see a sheet of paper on the foyer floor. Her last George-o-Gram. Nora thought perhaps she should keep it as a memento, show it to the twins. Then she threw it in the last bag of trash waiting to go downstairs.
She was surprised that she was still on George’s list. Perhaps he thought the newcomers were already in residence. The week before, Nora had solved the greatest problem she thought she was leaving the buyers of her house. She’d walked from her new apartment to the block just after dawn—she wasn’t sleeping well, but it would take more than insomnia to make her hit the sidewalk before first light, when rats might still be foraging—and seen a woman putting a plastic bag on her front stoop.
“Wait just a minute,” Nora shouted.
The woman froze for a moment, then pivoted with her hands on her hips. Nora couldn’t help but notice that she was wearing a pair of Small Sayings workout pants, the Thoreau capri, with “I stand in awe of my body” inside the waistband. It was a sentence that smacked so flagrantly of yoga studio and empowerment jargon that Nora had insisted Christine double-check that Thoreau had actually said it.
“No, you wait just a minute. I am going to keep doing this until you stop letting your nasty little dogs go on the sidewalk in front of our building! I’ve stepped in it too many times to count, and I’m sick of it so I’m picking it up and putting it where it belongs, at your front door!”
“My dog’s dead,” Nora said, and to her surprise she found herself in tears, as though saying it aloud had made it suddenly true.
“What?”
“My dog died six months ago.”
“All of them?”
“I only had one.”
“Oh, come on. The doorman next door to my building said there were at least two, sometimes three. He said the man who lived in this house walked them in front of our building and never picked up after them.”
“What kinds of dogs?”
“Some little dogs with bug eyes. I always forget the name, the ones who look like some kind of space alien.” She raised her hands in the air. “I’m a cat person,” she said.
Nora bent and gingerly picked up the bag. “You’ve been leaving these at the wrong house,” she said. “The person you want lives right across the street. The doorman gave you the wrong address.”
“Are you sure?” the woman said. And as though conjured by a magic trick, at that moment George came down the ramshackle steps of his house with three of his rescue pugs pulling on their leashes in front of him. The woman stared, then snatched the bag from Nora’s hand. “Sorry,” she cried as she sprinted across the street. “Sorry sorry sorry.” Nora stepped inside and thought that George might never speak to her again, and hoped against hope that that would be the case, and then realized that it didn’t matter, that she was unlikely to run into George for the rest of both their lives.
In that way that things sometimes happen, Nora was doing the last walk-through before the afternoon closing when she heard the doorbell ring. The house was completely empty. When she sneezed, it echoed. She had closed the door of Rachel’s closet, which still had middle school graffiti: RN AND AB (which boy was that?), I HATE YOU (probably a message for her mother), various hearts and stars. She had refused to let Charity scrub it off. She’d also decided to let the area behind the kitchen door stand, the one in which they had measured the twins every year on their birthday. Pencil marks on paint: Oliver and Rachel, twelve, she taller by several inches; Rachel and Oliver, fourteen, after a growth spurt that had pushed his height up an inch and his voice down an octave. In college Rachel had insisted she was still growing when Ollie topped out at six feet and Rachel was four inches shorter. “Dream on,” her brother had said, patting her on the head. Nora had taken a picture of the wall. Someday she would send it to her children, but not yet.