Read Nancy Culpepper for Free Online Page A

Nancy’s hand. Her flowers were askew.
    Nancy said, “I’m sure my mother will flip out when it hits her that she’s free at last. They’ve been tied down on the farm for
years,
taking care of my grandmother. They’ve never even left Kentucky to visit me.”
    “Did you say your grandmother was your dad’s mother?”
    “Yes.”
    Laurie said, “If Ed’s dad were to die and his mother had to move in with us, I’d divorce him in a minute. I wouldn’t take care of my mother-in-law like that. I’m not even sure I could do it for my own mother.” Laurie was looking around cautiously as she spoke. Her mother-in-law was eating cake on the far side of the room, and her mother was out of sight.
    “Do you know what my mother said on the phone?” Nancy said. “She said last night was the first night in forty years that she and my father had spent alone together.”
    Laurie’s look of astonishment pleased Nancy. It was the best gesture of sympathy: to be amazed.
    “Are you O.K., Nancy?” It was Jack, standing close, touching her. “You look off-balance.”
    “It’s the champagne. I was O.K. until Mom started talking about how pretty Granny looked and telling about the dress. Now all I can think is this doll shut in a box in the ground with flowers in her face.”
    “You’re not supposed to think about things like that.”
    “They really expected me to come home.”
    “I’m sorry I urged you not to go,” Jack said.
    Nancy drank some more champagne. “I couldn’t go anyway in the fog,” she said.
    “You can go to Kentucky next week,” Jack said.
    “Yes. Oh, look! The musicians are packing up. I wish they wouldn’t go. I loved that Gypsy violin.”
    On Sunday the ocean was calm and the sky was a transparent blue, reflecting in the water. Nancy and Jack were on a sightseeing boat, heading out from shore. About five times Jack said he wished Robert was along. When he saw whales on TV, Robert would yell out with breathless excitement. Nancy kept thinking of the time her mother mentioned in a letter a traveling exhibition that had come to the shopping center—a whale in a tank in a trailer truck. The whale couldn’t even turn around.
    “What do you feel?” Jack asked her as the shore disappeared.
    “Confused,” said Nancy, looking forward to the horizon. A barge lay in line with it.
    “You’ve got to get your mom and dad up to visit us.”
    “Somehow I can’t picture it. It would freak them out. They never went anywhere. I was the one who left, but they always expected me to keep running back.”
    The boat was passing close to a buoy, bobbing casually on the water. A seabird landed on it, like a spacecraft docking.
    “They sent me out as an explorer,” Nancy said. “Like Columbus.”
    “I read that Columbus brought syphilis back to Europe.”
    “That’s what happens when you go out adventuring,” Nancy said. “It’s the nature of the game.”
    Jack tied the drawstring of her hood under her chin. She said, “I didn’t wear my watch because I didn’t want to get it wet. Do you have your pocket calculator?”
    Jack patted his breast pocket and nodded.
    “I want you to tell me when it’s three o’clock,” she said. “The funeral’s at two. That’s three, Eastern time. I want to know when it is, so I can think about it happening. At least I can be there in my imagination.”
    Jack punched tiny buttons on his calculator so that a beeper would sound at three. “I’m sorry I urged you not to go to Kentucky,” he said. “It was selfish.”
    “No, I keep telling you, it’s O.K.”
    “If I die, I don’t want you to make a fuss. You can just throw me in the ocean.”
    Nancy could almost see Granny’s face. The last time Nancy saw her, she had taken a kitten in to show her. On TV reports about pet therapy, children took puppies and kittens into nursing homes for old people to pet. Nancy had a vivid memory of an old woman’s chalky face lighting up when she held a puppy in her lap.