‘Eight months at least. Probably more like a year.’
‘And how much money do you think it would mean if Mr Ringling held an auction and people actually came?’
Ringling hadn’t mentioned numbers, but Chad had done his homework. ‘I’d guess the advance could be in the neighborhood of a hundred thousand.’
A fresh start in Vermont, that was the plan. That was what they talked about in bed. A small town, maybe up in the Northeast Kingdom. She could catch on at the local hospital or get another private; he could land a full-time teaching position. Or maybe write another book.
‘Nora, what’s this about?’
‘I’m afraid to tell you,’ she said, ‘but I will. Crazy or not, I will, because the number Winnie mentioned was bigger than a hundred thousand. Only one thing: I’m not quitting my job. He said I could keep it no matter what we decided, and we need that job.’
He reached for the aluminum ashtray he kept tucked under the windowsill and butted his cigarette in it. Then he took her hand. ‘Tell me.’
He listened with amazement, but not disbelief. He sort of wished he could disbelieve it, but he did not.
If asked before that day, Nora would have said she knew little about the Reverend George Winston and he knew next to nothing about her. In light of his proposal, she realized she had actually told him quite a bit. About the financial treadmill they were on, for one thing. The chance Chad’s book offered to get them off it, for another.
And what had she actually known about Winnie? That he was a lifelong bachelor, that three years into his retirement from the Second Presbyterian Church of Park Slope (where he was still listed on the Church Slate as pastor emeritus), he had suffered a stroke that left him partially paralyzed on the right side. That was when she had entered his life.
He could now walk to the bathroom (and, on good days, to his rocker on the front porch) with the help of a plastic brace that kept his bad knee from buckling. And he could talk understandably again, although he still sometimes suffered from what Nora called ‘sleepy tongue.’ Nora had previous experience with stroke victims (it was what had clinched the job), and she had a large appreciation for how far he had come in a short time.
Until the day of his outrageous proposal, it had never occurred to her that he must be wealthy … although the house he lived in should have offered a clue. If she had assumed anything, it was that the house was a gift from the parish, and that her paid presence in his life was more of the same.
Her job had been called ‘practical care’ in the last century. In addition to such nursely duties as giving him his pills and monitoring his blood pressure, she worked as a physical therapist. She was also a speech therapist, a masseuse, and occasionally – when he had letters to write – a secretary. She ran errands and sometimes read to him. Nor was she above light housekeeping on days when Mrs Granger did not come in. On those days she made sandwiches or omelets for lunch, and she supposed it was over those lunches that he had drawn out the details of her own life – and done it so carefully and casually that Nora never realized what was going on.
‘The one thing I remember saying,’ she told Chad, ‘and probably only because he mentioned it today, was that we weren’t living in abject poverty or even in discomfort … that it was the fear of those things that got me down.’
Chad smiled at that. ‘You and me both.’
That morning Winnie had refused both the sponge bath and the massage. Instead he had asked her to put on his brace and help him into his study, which was a relatively long walk for him, certainly farther than the porch rocker. He got there, but by the time he fell into the chair behind his desk, he was red-faced and panting. She had gotten him a glass of orange juice, taking her time so he could get his breath back. When she returned he drained half the glass at a single go.
‘Thank you, Nora. I want to talk to you now. Very seriously.’
He must have seen her apprehension, because he smiled and made a waving-off gesture. ‘It’s not about your job. You’ll have that no matter what. If you want it. If not, I’ll see that you have a reference that can’t be beat.’
Nice of him, but there weren’t many jobs like this around.
‘You’re making me nervous, Winnie,’ she said.
‘Nora, how would you like to make two hundred thousand dollars?’
She gawked at him. On either side, high shelves of smart books frowned down. The noises from the street were muffled. They might have been in another country. A quieter country than Brooklyn.
‘If you think this is about sex, I assure you it is not. At least I don’t think so; if one looks below the surface, and if one has read Freud, I suppose any aberrant act may be said to have a sexual basis. I don’t know, myself. I haven’t studied Freud since seminary, and even there my reading was cursory. Freud offended me. He seemed to feel that any suggestion of depth in human nature was an illusion. He seemed to be saying, What you think of as an artesian well is actually a puddle. I beg to differ. Human nature has no bottom. It is as deep and mysterious as the mind of God.’
Nora stood up. ‘With all respect, I’m not sure I believe in God. And I’m not sure this is a proposal I want to hear.’
‘But if you don’t listen, you won’t know. And you’ll always wonder.’
She stood looking at him, unsure what to do or say. What she thought was, That desk he’s sitting behind must have cost thousands. It was the first time she had really thought of him in connection with money.
‘Two hundred thousand in cash is what I’m offering. Enough to pay off all the outstanding bills, enough to enable your husband to finish his book – enough, perhaps, to start a new life in … was it Vermont?’
‘Yes.’ Thinking, If you knew that, you’ve been listening a lot more carefully than I was.
‘No need to get the IRS involved, either.’ He had long features and white woolly hair. A sheeplike face she had always thought it before today. ‘Cash can be nice that way, and causes no problems if it’s fed slowly into the stream of one’s accounts. Also, once your husband’s book is sold and you’re established in New England, we need never see each other again.’ He paused. ‘Although if you decide not to stay on, I doubt if my next nurse will be half as competent as you have proved to be. Please. Sit down. You’ll give me a stiff neck.’
She did as he asked. It was the thought of two hundred thousand dollars in cash that kept her in the room. She found she could actually see it: bills stuffed into a padded brown envelope. Or perhaps it would take two envelopes to hold that much.
I suppose it would depend on the denomination of the bills, she thought.
‘Let me talk for a bit,’ he said. ‘I haven’t really done much of that, have I? Mostly I’ve been listening. It’s your turn to listen now, Nora. Will you do that?’
‘I suppose.’ She was curious. She supposed anybody would be. ‘Who do you want me to kill?’
It was a joke, but as soon as it was out of her mouth, she was afraid it might be true. Because it didn’t sound like a joke. No more than the eyes in his long sheep’s face looked like sheep’s eyes.
To her relief, Winnie laughed. Then he said, ‘Not murder, my dear. We won’t need to go that far.’
He talked then, as he never had before. To anyone, probably.
‘I grew up in a wealthy home on Long Island – my father was successful in the stock market. It was a religious home, and when I told my parents I felt called to the ministry, there was no puffing and blowing about the family business. On the contrary, they were delighted. Mother, especially. Most mothers are happy, I think, when their sons discover a vocation-with-a-capital-V.