The Age of Miracles by Ellen Gilchrist

Author:Ellen Gilchrist
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: The Age of Miracles
ISBN: 9781940941189
Publisher: Diversion Books
Published: 1995-03-14T16:00:00+00:00

II

Of course, now everything had to change. After the funeral, after the grievers and the mourners were gone, after the sisters left and her mother was still sober, had been sober for four days, had sworn to Sister Katherine to stop drinking if she wanted Nora Jane to stay. Had settled for a bottle of pills instead, had agreed to put away the bottle if she could have the pills and was in her bedroom now, like a zombie against her pillows with the radio on low, playing jazz. After all of that Nora Jane looked around the house to see what she could do. I could clean it up, she decided. I could call that damn Francine and make her get over here. Nora Jane searched in her mother’s address book, found the number and got Francine on the phone.

“I’m sorry about your grandmother,” Francine began. “The Lord gives and the Lord taketh away.”

“Forget that, Francine. I need you to come and help me clean this place up. I can’t live in this mess. Bring your husband’s truck. We’re going to throw some things away.”

“Right now?”

“Right now. I will pay you three dollars an hour if you bring the truck. Can you come? I’ll get somebody else if you won’t.” Nora Jane sniffed, waited, began to get mad. If there was anybody who made her madder than her mother, it was Francine. “I don’t care if you do or not. Say if you will.”

“I’ll be there. Soon as I can get on a uniform.”

“Bring the truck.”

“If I can get hold of Norris.”

By the time Francine got there Nora Jane had emptied the kitchen cabinets of rotten potatoes and empty bottles and half damp grocery sacks. She had filled the grocery sacks with broken cups and half-used boxes of cereal. She had reamed out the kitchen of her mother’s house. And called the Orkin man. “I have money to pay you with,” she told him. “If you come right now and spray us with everything you’ve got.”

By the time her mother woke up the dining room rug was on the truck and a broken chair and stacks of magazines. The living room rug was rolled up on the porch to go to the cleaners and Francine was mopping the wooden floors with Spic and Span. “What’s going on?” her mother asked, coming out into the living room, still wearing the dress she had worn to the funeral. “What’s going on? My God, Francine, what are you doing?”

“We’re cleaning up this house,” Nora Jane said. “Go back to sleep. I won’t live in a pigpen. The Orkin people are coming in a minute.”

“Where’s the rug?”

“We’re throwing the dining-room rug away. I won’t live in a house with a rug like that. And this one’s going to the cleaners. Francine’s going to take it on the truck.”

Nora Jane’s mother sat down in a chair. Her little navy blue and white print dress hung in waves around her legs, her collar was awry. The Valium was in charge.

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