“I saw him again,” she said. “I saw him before they buried him. I paid a funeral attendant to let me in, and I kissed him and gave him a rose. I wanted to lie down there in the casket with him, but the attendant took me away.” She stared at a spot beyond my head, and I wondered what she was seeing. Then she said, “It wasn’t his baby, was it?”
I held fast to the chair to steady myself and worked to calm my breathing. “No, Nora,” I managed to answer. “No, it wasn’t.”
“My mother thought it was his, you know. My mother thought it was Ashley’s. But he never loved me that way. Never. Not even when I wanted him to.”
I drew myself up straight and spoke softly, as if trying to keep a frightened animal from scurrying away. “Excuse me, Nora, but there are some matters I’d like to discuss with you about that time. Or rather, some things I hope you’ll choose not to discuss. There’s a young man from Perennial named Josh Dreyfus, who happens to be Benjamin Dreyfus’ grandson, and he may come here asking questions about me.”
She looked at me as if just noticing my presence. “Benjamin Dreyfus’ grandson?”
“Yes, do you remember Benjamin Dreyfus, from the studio? His grandson may want to know a few things about me, and perhaps about you as well. About some of the things that we experienced together.”
“Benjamin Dreyfus’ grandson,” she said. “Yes, he was already here.”
I had just leaned over to pick up my tea, and at this, my hand stopped in midair. “Josh Dreyfus was already here?”
“He came last week. He wanted to know about you. I didn’t like him and asked Amanda to send him away.”
I sat back, my mind racing in several different directions. “So you didn’t tell him anything about the past?”
“He tricked me! He said he was Benjamin. But I saw his hair and his sunglasses and I didn’t want him in my house.”
I wasn’t sure whether or not to believe her. In her condition, she might remember an encounter with Ben Dreyfus as if it had occurred last week. “If he comes back, are you going to talk to him?”
“He wasn’t a nice man! I don’t want him in my house!”
Her voice was loud and she sounded upset, and I knew her state of mind would not be improved by the question I had to ask next. “Nora,” I said gently, “what happened to the baby?”
“Gone, baby,” she said in a sing-song voice. “Gone, baby. Baby gone.”
“What do you mean by gone, Nora? Did you go to the doctor?”
“My mother took it,” she said. “I didn’t want her to. My mother took everything I loved. Just ask Ashley.”
At this, she began to cry, a soft sound that gradually built into a wail. She rocked back and forth and hugged herself, and the sound of her crying brought Amanda rushing back into the room. “I think you should go now,” she said.
“I’m sorry, Miss Amanda. I don’t know what happened.” And I was sorry—not only for that day, but for all of the days, forty-two years ago and all the time between.
“There, there,” she said, putting an arm around Nora, who calmed down almost immediately. Her cries quieted to whimpers, and she looked at the floor; she no longer seemed aware that I was present. In another moment, Amanda stood and led me to the foyer. I glanced back toward the living room one last time, more sad than I could find the words to say.
“She has good days and bad days,” Amanda said by the door. “These last few days have been difficult.”
“She mentioned that Josh Dreyfus was here. Is that true?”
“Yes. He came two days ago. He didn’t stay long.”
“Nora said he came last week.”
“She’s just confused. He came and immediately began to pressure her. A most distasteful young man.”
“I’m sorry I upset her.”
She peered at me suspiciously again. “As I said, she’s not used to visitors. But thank you for the flowers. I’m sure she’ll enjoy them.”
With that, I left the house and drove shakily down to the pier at Santa Monica. I needed to be outside and to breathe some fresh air, so I walked along the boardwalk for several hours until the sun began to set over the ocean. Then, exhausted, I drove back home.
As I sit here this evening in the Oak Grove Pub, I’m both troubled and relieved by the day’s events. On the one hand—and I know this is entirely selfish—I’m glad that Nora wasn’t willing to answer Dreyfus’ questions. But on the other, given her state of mind, there is no telling what she remembers or thinks of the past, and it is always possible she might speak to him later. Besides that, I was truly disturbed by her condition. It distressed me greatly to see her so alone in her mind, and to think that I might have had something to do with her condition. I suffered as well because of what happened to Ashley Tyler—admittedly not as much as either she or Elizabeth, but my own troubles were not insignificant. And yet I have my health and comfort and certainly my mind, all things that have eluded poor Nora.
To be sure, seeing her again—and having even our limited conversation about the past—has also stirred up certain difficult recollections. For truth be told, in the atmosphere of hysteria that followed the Tyler murder, I was not as sensitive to Nora’s circumstances as I would have liked. In my urgency to protect my own name and career, I did not offer her solace or comfort. I did not, as any decent man would have done, try to speak to her about matters that concerned us both. And if I now have questions about things that transpired; if I now feel excluded from decisions in which I might have had
