She meant Mr. Miller’s map of the household. “It’s to keep things in the living room the way Mrs. Miller left them,” Delia said. “He’s charted all the doodads, exactly where she used to set them out.”
Belle leaned forward for a closer look. On the rectangle representing the mantel, tiny block letters spelled blue vase, pine-cone candle, sandbox photo, clock.
“Well, that’s just pathetic,” Belle said. “And why would he need it? What makes him think these things would go and lose themselves, for Lord’s sake?”
“You wouldn’t ask if you could see him around the house,” Delia said. “For someone so set on order, he’s awfully… discombobulated. He’s just plain incompetent! Oh, everything’s fine on the surface, but when you look in the back of a cupboard you find pans with scorched bottoms that will never come clean, dish towels with big charred holes in them…”
Belle was peering at the diagram of the coffee table. “Large paperweight, small paperweight, magazines,” she read.
“He keeps these magazines that still come to the house in her name, all about clothing styles and cellulite and such.”
“Ellie Miller never had a speck of cellulite in her life,” Belle said.
“A new magazine comes, he fits it in the spot where the old one was and throws the old one away.”
“That’s what you get for worshiping a person,” Belle said. “Poor man, he thought she walked on water! In fact, she was kind of silly, but you know how the smartest men will sometimes go so gaga over silly women. I asked him to a picnic after she left, and he said, ‘Oh, I’m afraid I wouldn’t know anyone; thank you just the same.’ This is a high-school principal we’re talking about! He ought to know the whole town! But he always depended on Ellie for that. Ellie was real outgoing and social, threw these parties with themes to them like Hawaiian Luau, Wild West Barbecue… and a Grade Mothers’ Tea in the fall, but Joel hasn’t kept that up. He just let the grade mothers flounder this year, when needless to say, every gal in town was dying to help him.”
“I wish…,” Delia began.
She wished Sam Grinstead had felt like that about her, she’d been going to say. But she stopped herself.
“Oh, I’m sure he’ll let you help,” Belle said, misunderstanding. “You just have to do it inch by inch, you know? Pretty soon, you’ll be indispensable.”
“Well, yes, of course,” Delia agreed.
That much she simply assumed. Already, only ten days into her stay, Mr. Miller had requested another of “her” meat loaves; he had wordlessly laid out a shirt in need of a button; he no longer left his compulsive lists of instructions on the breakfast table.
But wasn’t it odd that she had assumed it? She seemed to have changed into someone else-a woman people looked to automatically for sustenance.
The cat wove around her ankles, purring. “See?” Delia told Belle. “He doesn’t have an eating disorder. All he ate was a couple of kibbles, just to be polite.”
“You’re amazing, Dee,” Belle said.
Belle had also brought Delia’s mail-a package from Eleanor and a letter from Eliza. Eleanor’s package contained a knitted jacket for reading in bed. Eliza’s letter said she’d invited the Allinghams for Christmas dinner. I won’t press you but you know you’re welcome too, she wrote, and then she hurried on to news of Linda. She says the twins are getting to the age where they want to spend the holidays at home, so I guess it will be just the Allinghams and us and then Eleanor too of course… The stationery gave off that faint scent of cloves (for positive thoughts) that always hung in the air of Eliza’s bedroom.
Noah was very excited about the cat. He came straight home from school that day, and he flung his books any old where and raced through the house, calling, “George? George?” George, of course, hid. Delia had to explain to Noah how cats operated-that you shouldn’t pursue them, shouldn’t face them head-on; should do everything at a diagonal, so to speak, with a cat. “Sit at his level,” she said when George finally showed himself. “Look a little sideways to him. Talk in a crooning tone of voice.”
“Talk? What should I say?”
“Tell him he’s beautiful. Cats love the word ‘beautiful.’ I guess it must be something in your tone, because they’re not the least bit good at language, but if you draw out that u sound long and thin and twangy…”
“Bee-yoo-tee-ful,” Noah said, and sure enough, George slitted his eyes in a sleek, self-satisfied smile.
On Christmas Eve, Delia picked Noah up at school and drove him to his mother’s. The Millers’ car was a Volkswagen Beetle. She didn’t yet feel completely at home with the stick shift, so it was a rocky ride. Noah was nice enough not to comment. He sat forward and watched for the turnoff to Kellerton. “Most times Mom comes to get me,” he said, “but her car’s in the shop right now. She’s had five wrecks in the last nine months.”
“Five!” Delia said.
“None of them were her fault, though.”
“I see.”
“She’s just, like, unlucky. This last time, a guy backed into her while she was looking for a parking spot. Here’s where you turn.”
Delia signaled and took a right onto a patchy highway that ran between fields of frozen stubble. This countryside was so flat, at least she didn’t need to shift gears all that often. They were heading east, in the direction of the beaches. Mr. Miller had told her it was a half-hour drive.
“Tonight at six you want to watch WKMD,” Noah said. “It’s not like I’ll be on it or anything, but at least you’ll know I’m sitting there in the station.”
It must feel eerie to see your absent mother deliver the weather report every night. Although Noah never did, to the best of Delia’s knowledge. Six o’clock was The MacNeil / Lehrer NewsHour, which Mr. Miller watched instead.
The fields gave way to hamburger joints and used-car lots and liquor stores, implying the approach of a town, but soon Delia realized this was the town-this scattering of buildings flung across the farmland. Noah pointed out the television station beneath its Erector-set tower. He showed her where his mother did her grocery shopping and where she got her hair done, and then he directed her two blocks south to a low, beige-brick apartment building. “Should I come in with you?” Delia asked, parking at the curb.
“Naw. I’ve got a key if she’s not there.”
Delia was disappointed, but she didn’t argue.
“When you wake up tomorrow,” Noah told her as she unlocked the trunk, “look on my closet shelf and you’ll find your present.”
“And when you wake up, look in the inside end pocket of your duffel bag.”
He grinned and took the bag from her. “So, okay,” he said. “See you, I guess.”
“Have a good Christmas.”
Instead of hugging him, she tousled his hair. She’d been longing to do that anyhow.
By the time she got back to the house, Mr. Miller was waiting at the front window. They barely crossed paths in the doorway-Mr. Miller holding out a palm for the car keys, wishing her a Merry Christmas, saying he’d be back with Noah tomorrow evening-and then he was gone. The cat mewed anxiously and trailed Delia to her room.
On her bureau, she found a Christmas card with a check for a hundred dollars. Season’s Greetings, the card read, followed by Mr. Miller’s block print: Just a token thank you for setting our lives back in order. Gratefully, Joel and Noah.
That was nice of him, she thought. Also, he had shown tact in clearing out of the house when he did. It would have been a strain without Noah to serve as buffer.
She spent the afternoon on the couch, reading an extra-thick library book: Doctor Zhivago. The wind dashed bits of leaves against the picture windows. George slept curled at her feet. Twilight fell, and her lamp formed a nest of honey-colored light.
A few minutes before six, she took the remote control from the end table and clicked the TV on. WKMD had a one-eyed pirate advertising choice waterfront lots. Then a housewife spraying a room with aerosol. Then a deskful of newscasters-a bearded black man, a pink-faced white man, and a glamorous blonde in a business suit. Delia thought at first the blonde was Ellie Miller, till the black man called her Doris. Doris told about a bank heist in Ocean City. The robber had been dressed as Santa Claus, she said. She spoke in such a way that her lipstick never came in contact with her teeth.