We Hope for Better Things Read online

  Nora exchanged a stack of cash for the camera, money she had planned on using to purchase a painting at the exhibit. A few minutes later, to Diane’s keen disappointment, the women were back outside pushing through the sea of Saturday shoppers. The sun was shining, but the March wind was still bitter and promised snow. By the time they got back to the Detroit Artists Market, parked, and walked back to the exhibit entrance, Nora’s face matched her pink suit.

  She was patting her hair back into place as they came upon the hall with the handsome and infuriating photographer. She turned to Diane. “Stay here.”

  At the quick clicks of Nora’s heels on the floor, the photographer looked up. “Well, well. That was fast. You change your mind?”

  She thrust the bag at him. He eyed it a moment, took it, and pulled out the box. He chuckled and shook his head.

  Nora felt her heart rate tick up. “What? Is it the wrong one? It’s what you wrote.”

  “No, it’s the right one.”

  She let out a relieved sigh. “Then why are you laughing?”

  “Because you just bought me a new camera.”

  He was so pleased it almost made Nora smile. Then she remembered the photo. “Where’s the picture?”

  He stopped smiling and looked at her thoughtfully. “You want to know what happened? Why he was so mad?”

  Nora wanted to get the photo and get out of there as fast as possible. Yet she had to know. She gave a little nod.

  “It was an accident. I wasn’t watching where I was going ’cause I was looking through the viewfinder up at the GM building. I was backing up and backing up, trying to get more in the frame, and I backed right into him. I stepped hard on his foot and he dropped a bunch of papers. I said I was sorry and I tried to help him pick it all up. Then he called me a stupid nigger.”

  Nora winced.

  “Now, I understand being upset,” he went on, “but there’s no call for that. And I told him so. Well, that made him real mad. He got so mad he started spewing things I wouldn’t repeat in your presence, even if he wasn’t your daddy. I knew I could either get mad or do what my mama always tells me to do when someone’s like that.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Laugh it off. Just laugh and they know they ain’t got you. So I laughed. And the more I laughed the angrier he got, which started to get funny for real. He looked like a cartoon, face all screwed up and red and sweating. You understand, I had to take a picture. And that’s when he came at me and smashed up my camera.”

  Nora wasn’t sure what to say. She knew her father was an impatient man who did not tolerate incompetence in any form, whether from his staff, his tailor, or his family. However, she had not imagined he would use such crude language, let alone physically attack someone. To even consider it seemed ludicrous.

  The man removed the print from the frame, rolled it up, and handed it to her.

  “Thank you,” she almost whispered.

  “No hard feelings?” he said, catching her eye.

  Nora managed a small smile, her first genuine smile of the day. “No.”

  He grinned. “Now don’t you go and burn your fingers when you destroy that, okay?”

  She laughed in spite of herself. She would have turned around and walked off just then, but for some reason she hesitated, caught in his steady gaze.

  “Hey,” he said, “before you go, I better test this thing out, make sure it works. Wouldn’t want to get scammed by a pretty girl. Never hear the end of it.”

  Again Nora failed to suppress her smile. “Go ahead.”

  He opened the box.

  “Oh!” Nora said. “I didn’t get you any film.”

  He reached into his pocket, producing a roll of 35mm film. “Never leave home without it.”

  “Even with no camera?”

  He shrugged. “Habit.”

  In less than thirty seconds, the man had the lens on the camera body and had loaded the film. He closed one eye and looked through the viewfinder, scanning the hall for a subject. He stopped on Nora.

  “No, not me,” she said, holding up a hand toward the lens.

  “What else? We’re in a hallway. There’s nothing here but you.”

  He snapped a photo and advanced the film.

  “Please don’t.”

  “What?” he said with feigned surprise. “I didn’t take your picture.”

  “You did.”

  He snapped another.

  “No, stop!” she protested through laughter.

  The shutter clicked again. She could see him grinning behind the camera.

  “Knock it off,” she said, putting a hand to her face, more to cover her own smile than to ward off further pictures.

  “Aw, that wasn’t of you. Don’t flatter yourself.”

  Click. Twist. Click. Twist. Click.

  “Stop.” She rushed up to him and covered the lens with her hand.

  “Oh, hey, hey, hey now. Don’t do that,” he said with a laugh. “That’s what your daddy did right before he threw it to the ground.”

  Her smile disappeared. She adjusted her purse on her shoulder and stalked off.

  “Wait! I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that. That was stupid. I didn’t mean it.” He caught up with her and put a hand on her arm.

  She pulled away from his touch and turned to face him. “Thank you for keeping your promise,” she said stiffly.

  “Don’t do that. Don’t leave angry. I got some great shots of you. Don’t you want to see them when they come out?”

  She pressed her lips together.

  “Of course you do,” he went on. “So you give me your number and I’ll give you a call when I develop them. Maybe you’ll want one for your boyfriend.”

  “I don’t have a boyfriend.”

  Why had she told him that?

  “Well then, you might want copies for your friend over there.”

  Nora turned and saw Diane’s face disappear behind the corner.

  “Okay, fine,” she said, though she wasn’t sure why. She tucked the rolled-up picture under her arm and pulled out her pen, but no amount of digging in her purse produced any more scraps of paper.

  “Give me the Hudson’s bag to write it on.”

  He held out his hand to her. “Just write it here.”

  Nora’s cheeks flushed as a self-satisfied half smile touched the man’s lips. She reached out, cradled his hand in hers, and wrote her name and phone number across his palm in black ink. Then she dropped the pen in her purse and shoved her hands into her coat pockets.

  “Nora Balsam. That’s a pretty name. All right, Nora. I’ll see you later.”

  When he waved, Nora could see her own precise penmanship on his hand. She gave a little return wave and started to walk down the hall. Then she turned back. “Wait, what’s your name?”

  “Will.”

  “Just Will?”

  “William Rich.”

  “Oh,” she said. “I like William better than Will.”

  “Then you can call me William.”

  five

  Lapeer County, August

  I spoke toward the phone sitting on the console. “Am I out of my mind? I’m in the middle of nowhere here.”

  “No way,” came Desiree’s voice over the speaker. “This will do you good. You’re doing a good thing, for that guy and your aunt. And anyway, in the end you’re going to have a great story.”

  “Maybe.”

  “You will”—her voice crackled—“and then you can sell it to anyone you want. Forget Jack.”

  “I guess. I mean, yeah. This could be good. Get away for a while. Breathe some clean air.”

  “Exac . . . you sh . . . b . . . f . . . otally je . . .”

  “You’re breaking up.”

  “. . .”

  “Desiree? Can you hear me?”

  I stared at the phone. Call dropped. One bar flickered in. Then out. I sighed and looked back out at the road, only to see that I was inches away from the craggy edge of a
drainage ditch. I cranked the wheel. Straightening out life should be so simple. No matter what Mr. Rich believed, God was not in control. My situation was incontrovertible proof of that. The frightening thing was that I wasn’t in control either. I should be in Detroit. Instead, I was driving north on a deserted county road, squinting through the colorful remains of dead bugs on the windshield.

  I’d called the mysterious Barb the moment I got home the day I lost my job. As it turned out, she was my father’s cousin, which, in her rather convoluted explanation, seemed to make her one of Nora Balsam’s nieces. She remembered me as a five-year-old, but she had moved to Arizona and rarely got back to Michigan.

  “You’re an answer to prayer,” she’d said. “I didn’t know there was anyone left in Detroit since your parents and Grace moved. I just assumed you had too. I’ve been worrying about what to do about Nora and here you call me out of the blue.”

  “What needs to be done about her?”

  “Oh, she is such a sweet, independent woman, and she’s done just fine on her own. But I had a letter from her a few months ago, and there were just one or two things she wrote that had me concerned.”

  “How?”

  “I’m not sure how to describe it. It was more a feeling I got. Like she seemed . . . different. Maybe not quite as sharp. A little out of step. Her handwriting was a little shaky.”

  “She’s old. People slow down.”

  “Yes, they do. And that’s why your call comes at such a perfect time. You can run up there and check on her and let me know if you think she needs assistance.”

  “Like live-in help?”

  “That, or perhaps—and I hate to even suggest this—but perhaps she needs to move into an assisted living facility. She’s out in the middle of God’s country. The nearest hospital is thirty minutes away.”

  “Well, I was hoping just to visit her for a day or maybe overnight.” I didn’t intend to tell Barb anything about the camera or the photos or Mr. Rich.

  “Oh, can’t you get away from work longer than that?”

  Work. That’s right. I had all the time in the world. I had no job. And if I couldn’t get a new job—which I was sure Judge Sharpe and Vic could make very difficult for me—I would have no money. No money, no apartment. Or food. Why hadn’t I just signed that stupid paper so I could get the severance?

  I told Barb about losing my job. “You think she’d be up for a houseguest for a bit longer? Maybe I could use it as time to strategize about my next career move.”

  “You’re not worried about losing your apartment?”

  I laughed. “It’s not like I won’t be able to find another place when I get back. Limited housing stock is one problem Detroit doesn’t have.”

  “If you’re sure, I think it would be great if you could spend some extended time there. As I said, she’s very independent. If she thought I’d sent you to check up on her, she might be offended. But if you’re going up there for a little R & R while you figure out what’s next for you, that paints a different picture. I can make all the arrangements with Nora—just give me a week.”

  Barb had come through. Nora offered an open-ended invitation to come stay with her. The rest—determining her ability to take care of herself, finding the right time to talk about her husband’s lost property, developing a show-stopping personal interest story around the emergence of the photos, oh, and looking for gainful employment—was up to me. Within just a few weeks I should be back in Detroit putting together the article that would accompany the rare photos and redeem me in the eyes of the journalistic community. This was temporary. A favor. Nothing more.

  After an hour or so of driving, the GPS announced, “You have reached your destination.” But just where I had arrived seemed almost arbitrary. The only thing that even indicated human habitation at this spot was a rusty mailbox, a narrow gravel two-track, and a broken line of boulders that might have been a wall in another century.

  I crunched along the gray ribbons of stones into a dense grove of towering evergreens planted too close together and too close to the driveway. Needles scraped at the car, trying to push me back out. But I would not be deterred. I could not go back to Detroit. Not yet.

  I emerged from the tunnel and was greeted with what would be my interim home. The white two-story farmhouse was simple and forgettable and half strangled by Virginia creeper. I killed the engine and stepped out into the heavy summer air. The wide porch extended like a friendly handshake, but with my first move toward it I felt ill. This was a mistake. There was no way a normal person would agree to having a stranger come stay at their house with no definite end date. Would she resent my presence there? What if her memory failed and she had no idea who I was or why I was on her doorstep? What if she had a shotgun?

  As I stood at the bottom step wondering just when it was I had lost my nerve, the faded orange front door swung open and a petite, white-haired lady smiled at me from the doorway. But the smile did not reach her clear blue eyes.

  “You must be Elizabeth.”

  “Yes, hi, Nora!” I said in a chirpy voice I had never before used to speak to another human. “It’s so nice to meet you. I can’t believe we’ve lived this close all this time and I never knew it.”

  She raised her eyebrows at that but stopped short of rolling her eyes, and I got the distinct impression that the unintentional estrangement was somehow my fault.

  “Come on in. I’ll show you to the powder room.”

  A few minutes later I found myself seated at a round kitchen table topped with sunny yellow placemats and a sweating pitcher of iced tea. My great-aunt lifted the full pitcher with thin arms. No shaking, no tremors. She appeared healthy, strong, and, so far, in possession of her wits.

  We sat and sipped in awkward silence as I searched for something appropriate to say. I was so rarely at a loss for words, even around total strangers. But how did one begin such an impossible conversation? When was the right time to bring up the camera and the riots, to test the waters so I could report back to Mr. Rich and get him to loosen his grip on the photos that I now needed more than ever? I lost myself in my glass of tea, and the silence thickened around us until that was all there was.

  Finally Nora spoke, perhaps signaled by the hollow clink of ice in my empty glass. “Now that you’ve had a chance to catch your breath, you can bring your things up to your room. I’d help, but I don’t do stairs anymore when I can avoid it. I’ve had William freshen up the back bedroom for you.”

  I sucked the slim remains of an ice cube into my mouth and followed her to the grand staircase in the front hall.

  “You see that door up there? That’s the bathroom. The door you want is just to the left. If you go up those last few steps around the corner, you’ve gone too far.”

  I half dragged two suitcases up the stairs. The higher I climbed, the hotter and heavier the air around me became, and when I reached the landing, beads of sweat sprouted from my forehead. In that one horrifying moment I realized that Nora did not have air-conditioning.

  I swept the wet hair from my face and opened the door, surprised to find not a bedroom as I expected but a cramped hall with two more doors and a second staircase, this one steep and narrow and leading back down to some unknown spot on the first floor. I tried the door to the left and found yet more stairs, these leading up, presumably to the attic. I tried the door across the hall. It swung open with a creak, releasing a torrent of yellow sunlight that flowed into the dark hall and kissed my sandaled feet.

  The room was hot and musty—a far cry from the fresh and immaculate kitchen. I set my suitcases down and pushed back the brittle sheer curtains at the closest window. The sash relented with an angry crack of protest, and oxygen flowed into the room like CPR. I ran my fingers along a dresser, leaving undulating trails in what had to be years of dust. It was clear that, despite Nora’s assertion that someone had freshened up the room, no one had been in here for a very long time.

  But there were some redeeming qualities to t
his stuffy space. The bed was magnificent. Slender curves of light and dark wood wound themselves around one another at the head and foot like tangled roots, framing a quilt done in every rich hue of yellow I could imagine. Each tiny piece of fabric was artfully arranged so that one shade blended into the next. The pieces right next to each other looked almost identical. It was only when looking at the whole you noticed they were different shades.

  Sitting primly between two windows was a small fireplace. The thought of hearing the cozy crackling of a fire while falling asleep made me almost giddy. But no. I wouldn’t be here in the winter. I had a job to do.

  I had met up with Mr. Rich on a heavy, clouded August day that whispered of tornados. Thankfully, his suspicious son was too busy to join us. He relinquished the camera, reminded me once more not to mention his name, and advised me to take things slow. The one thing I still didn’t have from him was the box of photos. Linden had seen to that. I was to contact Mr. Rich once I had determined that Nora would accept them, and we’d go from there.

  “When I knew Nora,” he said, “she was spoiled and stubborn. We parted on very bad terms.”

  “I’ll be careful,” I said, and I braced myself for an unpleasant trip.

  The next week, I brought most of my furniture and my housewares back to the same thrift store I’d purchased them from in my first month of employment at the Free Press. Desiree took in my houseplant—singular—which she had given me three years earlier. Everything else—clothes, some books, and childhood mementos I couldn’t part with—I’d packed into the car with a speed that astonished me. I had never imagined I could be erased from Detroit so efficiently.

  After two more trips up and down the stairs with all my worldly possessions, I found Nora puttering in the kitchen.

  “That bed is amazing,” I said, happy at least to have found something safe to say. “And that quilt is incredible.”

  “I thought you might like it. Yellow is cheerful. That’s why I put you in that room. I’ve always been proud of that quilt.”

  I ignored her intimation that I might need cheering up. “You made that?”