Nora Read Free Page B

things.
    Patsy kicked savagely at the leg of the chair, forgetting she was barefooted.
    â€œOw!” she yelled. “That hurt!” She grabbed hold of her foot and hopped around, swearing.
    Dee and I doubled over, laughing. We laughed until our stomachs ached, forgetting everything except how funny Patsy looked.
    Patsy glared at us ferociously, then she began to laugh, too.
    We were making so much noise I wasn’t sure I’d heard it. Then there was a lull and it came again. It was Mother, laughing. I swear I heard her laughing. She was there. She was.
    â€œShhh,” I said, putting my finger against my lips. “Listen.” I closed my eyes. I can hear better with my eyes closed.
    â€œWhat’s your prob?” Patsy said.
    â€œShe’s laughing,” I whispered. “I heard her just this minute. She was laughing with us.”
    â€œWho?” Dee said.
    â€œMother. I heard her.” I said.
    Our mother had a very joyful laugh that made complete strangers smile when they heard it.
    â€œBizarro,” Patsy said, rolling her eyes. “You imagined it, Nora.”
    â€œNo,” I said. “She was here. I did not imagine it. Don’t tell me that.”
    Dee and Patsy listened very hard.
    â€œI can’t hear anything,” Patsy said crossly.
    â€œIt’s possible her spirit was here with us for a moment,” Dee said. “How wonderful.”
    We sat still as stone, listening, but Mother didn’t laugh again. She had gone. She didn’t make a sound.
    Patsy was nine and I was ten when our mother died. Baba came to stay with us until Daddy found a housekeeper we liked. Mrs. Murty was first. She watched TV and knitted while Patsy and I racketed around the house freely. We checked our closets and drawers, looking for clues to what had happened to us. Someone, Baba perhaps, had cleared out all our mother’s things. Everything was gone. I couldn’t even find the red shawl, though I ransacked every bureau drawer, every hiding place in the whole house.
    Our mother’s closet, though, still smelled of Shalimar, her favorite perfume. So while Mrs. Murty was clucking over the goings-on in Leftover Life to Live, Patsy and I shut ourselves in our mother’s closet and cried as we took turns stuffing our feet into a pair of her black satin high-heeled shoes we found tucked away, forgotten, in a corner.
    Mrs. Moseley was next. She spent most of her time on the telephone, talking to her daughter who had just had her first baby.
    â€œCheck the stool,” we heard Mrs. Moseley say over and over. “Just don’t forget to check the stool.”
    â€œI thought a stool was something you put your feet on,” I said.
    Mrs. Moseley looked at me over the top of her glasses and said sternly, “The stool’s a BM, missy.”
    â€œWhat’s a BM?” I asked, though I knew the answer. I liked to give Mrs. Moseley a hard time.
    She threw up her hands and said, “Tell your sister what a BM is, missy,” to Patsy. I think she called us both “missy” because she didn’t remember our names.
    From then on, every time Patsy and I went to the bathroom, one of us said to the other, “Check the stool. Just check the stool.” I guess you could say it was kind of our mantra.
    That kind of thing kept us from freaking out.
    One fine Saturday morning when Mother had been dead about a year, Patsy said, “We could ask Dee.”
    â€œAsk her what?” I said.
    â€œIf she knows anyone for Daddy to marry,” Patsy said. “She has lots of friends. She might know of someone. Then we wouldn’t have to have all those lousy housekeepers. I hate housekeepers.”
    â€œWho doesn’t?” I said.
    We always went to Dee’s studio for tea on Sunday afternoon. We didn’t have to cross any streets, just run through the fields in back of our house. Dee gave us tea and sandwiches with the crusts cut off and