Nora and Liz by Nancy Garden Read Free Book Online

she’d had her appendix out, lying there reading, watching television, watching the sunlight on the lake and longing to be outside.
    But it had been good then, too, she remembered, with Jeff running in every few hours to tell her what he’d been doing and what he’d discovered in the woods, bringing her rocks, flowers, worms, once a blinking toad they’d named Hortense and decided was a witch—a good witch—in disguise. Mom and Dad had read to her, played games with her; Mom tried to teach her to knit. Liz almost laughed, remembering her crooked edges and Mom’s kind laughter when she said, “Well, Lizzie, maybe you haven’t found your true calling.” That was when Dad had given her an X- acto knife and a hunk of balsa wood; then, when she felt stronger, a gouge and a flat piece of pine. Mom had laughed again, sweeping up shavings and crumbs of wood, and saying, “Well, Lizzie, I guess maybe now you have found your calling!”
    And then she’d gotten much better and had been allowed to go outside; no swimming or rowing yet, but she could walk in the woods and sit outside when the mosquitoes weren’t too bad, and later she was allowed to fish from the dock as long as Jeff agreed to land anything she caught.
    Liz walked through the cabin room by room, memories crowding her; she saved her room for last. Once there, she rolled the mouse droppings up in the newspaper and lay down on her bare mattress, remembering lying there with Megan when they’d first been lovers. They’d come to Piney Haven alone early one spring and it had rained as it was raining now. Liz closed her eyes, hearing the drops’ insistent pounding on the cabin roof, remembering Megan’s softness, Megan’s hands on her body, hers on Megan’s. And yet there’d always been a barrier; she’d felt something closing up in her when Megan touched her, though it was pleasurable and comforting, and though it aroused her to touch Megan. “You have to give yourself in love,” Jeff had said once, “you have to be there, Lizzie"—and she, who had always been considered generous and compassionate, knew he was right about her; he was the only person who could see through her, who seemed to know her secret better than she did. He’d recognized it before she had, anyway.
    “It scared me, Meggie ,” Liz whispered. “It scares me still.”
    She sat up, rubbing her eyes; she hadn’t realized she’d nearly wept.
    The rain had slowed to a steady patter, and the room was cold. She should build a fire, make coffee, eat something, start cleaning.
    She glanced at her watch; it was nearly ten. No wonder my stomach’s grumbling, she thought, and made herself pancakes from a mix, and coffee. She’d forgotten syrup, but there was a half-full box of cinnamon, and she’d bought sugar, so, thinking again of Jeff, she slathered the pancakes with butter and when it had melted, sprinkled on cinnamon-sugar. Biting into the crunchiness, she thought, I could call Jeff. In a couple of hours, I could call Jeff.
    Energetic now, Liz finished her coffee, rinsed her dishes, and scrubbed and polished the kitchen till noon, when, suddenly finding the heavy kettle in which her mother had made jam from the blueberries she and Jeff and their father had picked, her eyes filled with tears and she stood, paralyzed, sobbing, by the sink.
    Jeff, she thought again, when the paroxysm had passed. It would be nine o’clock in California; she’d have to call him at work and go through his secretary. But that was all right; he’d never minded that.
    He answered himself.
    “Secretary goofing off?” Liz said, closing her eyes in unexpected relief at hearing his voice. She could almost pretend he was with her, that their parents were in the next room or outside, or shopping and due home any minute.
    “Hey, Lizzie,” Jeff said jovially. “Yeah, she’s not in yet. There’s a lot of traffic, some tie-up on the freeway, as usual. What’s up? Have you been to the cabin?”
    “I’m