Seventh Heaven Read Online Free PDF Page A

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    Unlike most people’s mothers, Billy’s mother believed that spiders were good luck. She always had to close her eyes before she could force herself to take a broom, cover it with a dishcloth, and bring down a spider’s web. Having had very little of it, she knew a great deal about luck. She knew that you could wrap a cut with a spider’s web and stop the bleeding. Spirits would disperse when you set out a saucer of salt. Three rainy days in a row meant an arrival. And—this one Nora could testify to—a husband who talked in his sleep meant betrayal.
    So it was easy for Nora to ignore the mess around her and keep on with her baking, stopping only to pry open some windows and air out the house, and then again to write a check for the moving men, who leaned against the kitchen counters watching her, made mute by the scent of vanilla and the way Nora’s tongue darted out from her mouth while she signed her name. When the moving men had gone, and the first batch of cookies was out of the oven, Nora dusted the flour off her hands and lifted James out of his playpen.
    â€œDa da,” James said.
    â€œPlease,” Nora said. “Don’t mention his name.”
    The awful thing was that Nora knew she would have continued to put up with Roger if he hadn’t left her. Roger would have known how to fix a roof when it leaked, he would have known there was such a thing as an oil burner. And, of course, if she was still married to him, Nora could have told herself she wasn’t alone.
    The baby reached for her breasts, so Nora sat at the kitchen table to nurse him. She knew she had to get him onto a bottle soon; he wanted to nurse in inconvenient places, in the grocery store or the post office, or whenever he was startled, just for comfort. Nora leaned her back against the old kitchen table and wriggled her feet out of her high heels. As the baby nursed he grew warmer, the way he always did when he began to drowse. It was a good sign when a baby fell right to sleep in a new house; that was a fact.
    Nora gently eased off James’s knitted yellow booties, and the baby sucked harder and curled his toes. He was ten months old, and each time he cut a new tooth Nora rubbed scotch on his gums and wept because he was less of a baby. He fell asleep with his arms outstretched and his mouth open. Nora put him down in the playpen and covered him with a warm dish towel. She put in a second batch of cookies and carefully closed the oven door.
    Somewhere, Mr. Popper was mewing. Nora found him in the living room, perched on the air conditioner. The cat leapt to her shoulder and stayed there as Nora surveyed the house, stepping over the boxes, the pots and pans, the snow boots, the Elvis collection, the record player, which was in need of a new needle. The baby’s room would have to be painted, the toilet gurgled, and Nora’s bed seemed to have been damaged by the moving men. Nora reached up to stroke Mr. Popper. Then she went to stand in the doorway of the third bedroom, where she watched Billy sleep. His face was hidden in his arms and his hair stood away from his head, electrified by all the dust in the house. You could hear the hum of the Southern State here in Billy’s bedroom, like a cricket caught in the wall.
    The children were so exhausted from the move that Nora let them go on sleeping. She mopped the bathroom floor and hung her dresses and her woolen car coat in the closet. When it was nearly suppertime, Nora went out to the back patio, and she was there smoking a cigarette when the crows returned. Right away they set up a horrible racket. They cawed and shed their feathers and began to pick up stones, which they tossed down, one by one, so that stones skittered along the boards of the picnic table like hail. Nora shaded her eyes and finished her cigarette. You had to be careful about birds; they could be good luck just as easily as bad. So Nora waited, and when she was sure, she