Free Luck by Joan Barfoot Page B

order of things may not mean much.
    Dinner is salad and omelettes filled with tiny leftover pieces of ham. Sophie has torn, chopped, ripped, cracked and sliced to put this together. “I’ve called everyone I could think of,” she tells Nora. “And they’ll all tell other people. So I hope everybody who should know finds out.”
    “Thanks, Sophie. That must have been hard.”
    “Yes, it was.”
    “At least there’s no family to deal with.” Nora means parents, sisters, brothers, whose weight of grief might overwhelm her small arrangements. No parents, no children—no wonder she and Philip eventually added more voices to their little duet of a household.
    “No. That’s a good thing.” Sophie, too, knows of his older brother who died when Phil was fifteen, speeding with five buddies on his twentieth birthday in his birthday gift, a new car; and about his parents, who died of separate kinds of cancer in their forties—a family custom, it seems, to wear out, or disappear, in that settled decade. “So you see,” Phil said, tracing Sophie’s nipples and smiling as if this were perfectly fine, “I’m alone in the world.”
    Well, not entirely. There was Nora.
    “Did you get hold of Max okay?”
    “Yes. I guess he waited at the restaurant for an hour or so, then went home. That’s where I reached him.”
    “Poor old guy, going out in this heat and then having to wait. I wish I’d remembered in time.”
    “I don’t believe he’s concerned. Anyway, he knew it wasn’t on purpose, he’d figured out something was wrong. He said he’ll be here for the service, of course. Sooner if you’d like him to come.”
    Would Nora like that? Not yet, not really. As long as it’s just the three of them, there’s something slightly normal and ordinary to hang on to; as if everything is still a mistake, or a dream, and capable of being undone. “Good omelette,” she says. Is it hard-hearted to be hungry again? She and Sophie both are, although as usual Beth only picks at her food.
    Sophie and Nora wander to the living room when they’ve finished, while Beth stays behind to make tea. She’ll make something soothing tonight. Tomorrow’s soon enough to try a peppier brew, maybe one promoting desire.
    In the living room, as in the kitchen, as everywhere, Philip’s usual places leap out for their silence and emptiness. Nora huddles in her corner of the sofa, opposite what would be his corner, within easy reach. His
zaftig
Sophie settles into her usual wing chair, her flesh loosened by weariness, not temptation. When Beth enters, she hands around china cups, since proper teas, in her view, require proper china. People used to read tea leaves. Maybe they still do. Looking down into hers, Nora wonders what shapes and arrangements of leaves in a cup signify which future events or, more to the point now, what the meanings of past ones might be. “Do you think,” she asks Sophie, “I ought to call Lynn?”
    “What? Who’s Lynn?”
    “You know—his first wife. She ought to be interested, even if it’s only in an academic sort of way. She is an academic now, as a matter of fact. For all I know, she might care.”
    “Oh, right, you knew her, you were friends.”
    “Hardly friends. I knew her a little in high school, that’s about it. Philip had some odd ideas after the dust settled, though, and before we moved here. He said they wouldn’t have been married if they hadn’t cared for each other, and since she and I had known each other as well, he couldn’t seeany good reason why we couldn’t smooth everything over by hanging out together sometimes. As if switching partners was only a sidestep, like a dance. He had the hardest time getting it through his head that never mind how bitter Lynn was, or that we weren’t proper friends in the first place, it would have been
tasteless
to socialize with someone whose husband I was happily sleeping with. Well, ex-husband by then. Can you imagine?”
    Sophie cannot meet