Courtesy of the artist and Durham Press. Not on the hook by the oven, not on the kitchen island, not in the drawer where they keep their kitchen towels. She opens the cabinet above the sink, then the one next to it, the trash nook under the kitchen sink, the dishwasher—the dishwasher.
Nora is standing waist-deep in the cut-paper scroll she has been making for a solo show, hundreds of feet of scalpelled paper that pleats over itself in heavy lacy curlicues. And here she is, in the middle of all this paper froth, her ebbing Nora, arms again outstretched: an actress performing in the middle of a flood-scene stage set.
Delia is out of breath from stomping down the stairs and from being annoyed. Was this a prank or is her woman really losing it? But when Delia brandishes the potholders at Nora, Nora acts pointedly untroubled. She waves at Delia the way one would beckon a small child, with quick-quick fingers.
Her bracelets jangle. The scalpel in her right hand catches a glint of evening light. Delia is just too angry to respond.
She clomps up the stairs and out onto the porch, lights a Newport, and dials Amy. She walks around to the side of the house to drop her cigarette butt in the trash, and almost trips over a garbage bag abandoned halfway between the porch and the trash cans.
