Still, she never asked why, exactly, this woman was felt to be necessary.
Two weeks into the job, Mrs. Girt forcibly removed a skillet from Abby’s hands and insisted on making her an omelet, during which time the iron she had abandoned set fire to a dish towel in the sunroom. No serious harm was done except to the dish towel, which was plain terry cloth from Target and hadn’t needed ironing in the first place, but that was the end of Mrs. Girt. Amanda said the next person they hired would have to be under forty. She suggested too that they might consider hiring a man, although she didn’t say why.
But Abby said, “No.”
“No?” Amanda said. “Oh. Okay. So, a woman.”
“No man, no woman. Nothing.”
“But, Mom—”
“I can’t!” Abby said. “I can’t stand it!” She started crying. “I can’t have some stranger sharing my house! I know you think I’m old, I know you think I’m feeble-minded, but this is making me miserable! I’d rather just go ahead and die!”
Jeannie said, “Mom, stop. Mom, please don’t cry. Oh, Mom, honey, we would never want you to be miserable.” She was crying too, and Red was trying to move both girls out of the way so he could get to Abby and hug her, and Stem was walking around in circles rummaging through his hair, which was what he always did when he was upset.
So: no man, no woman, nothing. Red and Abby were on their own again.
Till the tail end of June, when Abby was discovered wandering Bouton Road in her nightgown and Red hadn’t even noticed she was missing.
That was when Stem announced that he and Nora were moving in with them.
Well, certainly Amanda couldn’t have done it. She and Hugh and their teenage daughter led such busy lives that their corgi had to go to doggie day care every morning. And Jeannie’s family lived in the house Jeannie’s Hugh had grown up in, with Jeannie’s Hugh’s mother relocated to the guest room. They’d have needed to uproot Mrs. Angell and bring her along—a ludicrous notion. While Denny, needless to say, was out of the question.
Really, Stem should have been out of the question, too. Not only did he and Nora have three very active and demanding boys, but they were devoted to their little Craftsman house over on Harford Road, which they spent every spare moment lovingly restoring. It would have been cruel to ask them to leave it.
But Nora, at least, was home all day. And Stem was that kind of person, that mild, accepting kind of person who just seemed to take it for granted that life wasn’t always going to go exactly as he’d planned it. In fact, he kept thinking up new advantages to his proposal. The boys would see more of their grandparents! They could join the neighborhood swimming pool!
His sisters barely argued, once they’d absorbed the idea. “Are you sure?” they asked weakly. His parents put up more resistance. Red said, “Son, we can’t expect you to do that,” and Abby grew teary again. But you could see the wistfulness in their faces. Wouldn’t it be the perfect solution! And Stem said, firmly, “We’re coming. That’s that.” So it was settled.
They moved on a Saturday afternoon in early August. Stem and Jeannie’s Hugh, along with Miguel and Luis from work, loaded Stem’s pickup with suitcases and toy chests and a tangle of bikes and trikes and pedal cars and scooters. (Stem and Nora’s furniture was left behind for the renters, a family of Iraqi refugees sponsored by Nora’s church.) Meanwhile, Nora drove the three boys and their dog over to Red and Abby’s.
Nora was a beautiful woman who didn’t know she was beautiful. She had shoulder-length brown hair and a wide, placid, dreamy face, completely free of makeup. Generally she wore inexpensive cotton dresses that buttoned down the front, and when she walked her hem fluttered around her calves in a liquid, slow-motion way that made every man in sight stop dead in his tracks and stare. But Nora never noticed that.