Nora squeezes her earlobes for some reason then drops her hands to her chest. “Christ,” she says and doesn’t say anything more, and neither does anyone else until finally, what feels like an hour later, she says to, I guess, all of us, “Why?”
Mab shrugs, and Monday shrugs, and I make a motion with my hand that means what a shrug means. We do not know.
“They canceled tutoring” is all Mab can offer.
But Nora nods. “Like when someone dies.”
Mab and I exchange glances. It’s not that we don’t have the same question Nora does—Why?—it’s that that question is overwhelmed by the ones it presages. Nora is worried about what possible reason the Templetons have for being here. We are worried about our mother.
She sits, pale and not closing her mouth all the way. Her eyes are scary, somewhere else, like her mind is whirling away from us. She keeps shaking her head no, seeming about to speak, changing her mind. She leaves for work without another word.
But over scrambled eggs and summer squash for dinner, Nora is new, smile tight and bright, hopeful, which is not a thing we ever see her be, so it would be strange regardless. As it is, it’s alarming. Creepy. When she speaks, what she says, finally, beaming and to all three of us at once, is “You can find out.”
“What can we find out?” Monday asks, but I can see Mab feeling the same sinking feeling I am.
“The kid knows something,” Nora says. “Everything maybe. But maybe he doesn’t know he knows, or maybe he knows but he doesn’t know we don’t know, or he doesn’t know he isn’t supposed to know or isn’t supposed to tell.”
“I do not know,” Monday says. What our mother’s talking about, she means.
But Nora doesn’t get it. She’s grinning like the villain in act two of a superhero movie. “No, but you can find out. You can find everything.”
* * *
The next morning, I get up and go to church, seeking not salvation but alone time, which is nearly as elusive and just as holy. Mab and Monday rose not long after the sun and left before Nora even got me out of bed. Sometimes this eats at me. Sometimes them together without me seems as cruel as if my own legs went walking off and I had to wait for them here. But it’s hard to be forever one of three or half of two, a third of triplets, a dependent daughter. These solo Saturday mornings are my only time alone, so they’re painful but they’re also precious, and I’m grateful as a nun to be on my way somewhere as well.
Before bed last night, we made a reluctant plan. Nora’s probably wrong that we’ll be able to find out anything never mind everything, but she’s even less likely to be able to let this go. Mab and Monday will go to the library this morning to see what they can learn there. I’ll go to yoga and do the same.
Everyone at Pastor Jeff’s Saturday-morning yoga class is there for enlightenment, but not the spiritual kind. Whatever gossip there is in Bourne, it gets discussed at Yoga for Seniors. Mostly his students lie in savasana and whisper loudly mat to mat while Pastor Jeff demonstrates a variety of dogs from the dais. If anyone in town knows anything new about the Templetons, church will be the place to find out.
I get Nora’s rancor toward Omar for his epic dropping of the mayoral ball once upon a time, but he deserves props too. On my way this morning, I find curb cuts at every intersection, wide, smooth pavement over every inch of sidewalk, extra-long reds at the stoplights. Nora’s point is let’s not lionize people for cleaning up messes they made themselves—especially if they’re not so much cleaning them up as straightening a little and shoving what can’t be mended into a closet or under the sofa and hoping no one notices—but in fact, at least as long as I’ve known him, Omar has quietly been doing a hard job well.
It’s early still, drizzling, but fresh air and agency are an intoxicating combination. Tom fashioned rain gear for my chair long ago—an elaborate tangle of poncho, glove, and plastic bag—and being outside and unchaperoned is so lovely, I don’t mind getting a little wet. The smell is mossy and cool at the back of my nose. The world looks spit shined: green washed and water slick. The raindrops feel good on my skin. Nora got me dressed but let me go without socks and shoes—I’m not walking, after all—and the wind in my toes rivals the wind in my hair as far as the feel of freedom goes. Some of the kids in my class who can’t move their legs also can’t feel them, so though I sometimes have pain, I am grateful to have feeling at all. I wave good morning to the few early risers I pass, and they wave peaceably back.