Unending Nora

Chapter 26

Julie Shigekuni 227 Chapter 26 The thought of handling meat made Caroline sick to her stomach , but she chose a small pot roast for Wade. Wanting their first New Year’s Eve as a married couple to be remembered as special, she slow cooked the roast with a medley of potatoes and carrots for color, and she sent Wade to the bakery for dessert and to the deli so that they’d have sparkling cider for a toast. Despite her increasingly dismal outlook, Caroline knew how things were supposed to look, and she worked hard to set the mood—two white candlesticks rising like spires on either end of the table set with the dishes and flatware they’d received as wedding gifts. Wade plunged a knife into his slab of meat. Then, setting his utensils down as if remembering he wasn’t alone, he held up a crystal for Caroline to admire its shape and luminescence in the candlelight. “To my wife, and all the good things to come in our life.” Recognizing the stemware as a gift from Melissa and Mark, Caroline said a silent thank you and touched her crystal to Wade’s, surprised by the tears that rose in the back of her throat. Setting the crystal back down she steadied herself, fingering a ridge in the tablecloth. “That’s a nice thing to say,” she smiled at Wade. “Thank you.” “Looks good,” Wade said, knife back in one hand, fork in the other. “It just doesn’t seem fair.” Unending Nora 228 Wade put his utensils down again. This time slightly annoyed that his meal was being delayed, he stared contemplatively down at the steam rising from his rice. “It’s not for us to judge what’s fair and what’s not,” he said, sounding smart even though Caroline knew he didn’t have the slightest idea what she was referring to. Lately she’d been remembering events from her childhood with Nora, like how she’d once helped Nora baby-sit her brothers. After spending the afternoon settling petty arguments, making them lunches, even doing their laundry, she’d arrived home with three dollars in her pocket, exhausted and shocked, too, at how much work Nora did at a time in her own life when the only thing she was expected to do was entertain herself. It was Nora, not her mother, who taught her how to separate clothes by colors, and then how to hang and fold them. Sometimes Yukari treated her daughter like a slave, but Nora just kept being her mother’s good girl, meaning that she went out of her way to make things look good. Nora made a game out of folding tee-shirts and underwear into neat stacks, then licked the mayonnaise off the top slice of bread before cutting Eugene’s sandwich into two perfect triangles, just the way he liked it. All day Caroline had listened to the pot roast spitting its juices in her oven, disgusted and amazed at how much trouble it had been to cook a simple dinner. By her preparations as a child and by her temperament, Nora had been the one among them most ready to be a wife and mother. “I hope it’s good,” she said about the pot roast. “It looks delicious.” Wade picked up his utensils again, a grin spreading across his face this time. Caroline watched him chew, unable to tell whether she’d succeeded with the pot roast or not. “I suppose Nora would be happy for me, and that she’d want me to be happy.” “Yes.” He swallowed and took a gulp of cider making her think it was dry. “She would.” “And who knows, maybe she’ll even return in time to see this little person born,” she said. Hating herself for how falsely Julie Shigekuni 229 optimistic she had sounded, she stared down at the mound her flat stomach had become, not really believing that anything good would come out of it, and knowing that Nora wouldn’t be coming back. As if agreeing with her sentiments rather than her thoughts, Wade eyed her with a slow nod that made her wish she could read his thoughts. “What do you think?” “I can’t say what will happen, but we’d better get some food down there. Another toast.” He raised his glass a second time. “To the...