Nell by Nancy Thayer Page A

this virus. The rats Clary had given the children had been part of this group.
    “I’m so sorry,” Clary had said. “I wouldn’t have exposed the children to such a sad experience for the world. I didn’t know the rats were ill when I brought them up; we only just found out. Believe me, Hannah’s rat wouldn’t have bitten anyone if it hadn’t been sick. Please don’t dislike rats just because of this one experience. Listen, do you want me to bring the children new rats?”
    Nell had hesitated. Then she said, “Clary, to be honest, I don’t want any more rats in the house. I know you like them, and the children loved them, but I just can’t. I can’t help it. They give me the creeps.” She waited for Clary to speak, waited to hear the sound of injury or pique in her voice. She waited to lose Clary.
    “Oh well,” Clary said calmly. “Lots of people feel that way. Too bad. I think if you spent more time around them, you’d get used to them, and they do make good pets.”
    “We have two cats and a dog,” Nell said. “And the kids barely keep up with feeding them. I think we’d better forget the rats for a while.”
    “Okay,” Clary said. And they went on to talk of other things.
    Nell had hung up the phone feeling oddly jubilant. So it was possible to be honest with people she cared for and still not lose them! It was an exciting lesson to learn, and she only wished she’d learned it earlier in life.
    The rat test had happened three years ago. Clary and Nell wrote and called each other often now, growing closer and more easy in their friendship with each passing year.
    Now Nell shivered and hugged herself, remembering all those early years, foolish mistakes, mysterious losses. “Why was I so dumb?” Nell asked, and the sound of her voice breaking the deep silence made gooseflesh break out along her arms.
    Well, she thought, she was still dumb, to be sitting out on the porch in the middle of the chilly night. Or—maybe not. Maybe this was, if nothing else, a sign that she had progressed this far, far enough to be outside in the dark. When she was a child, and even in her twenties, when she was married to Marlow, she had been frightened of being alone in the dark. She had seen monsters in the shadows, heard bogeymen rustling in the bushes. In her twenties, whenever Marlow went off on a trip, she was always so terrifiedat being alone in the house in the dark that she could not sleep. She would sit up all night reading, nervous and alert, listening for the sounds of rapists, robbers, maniacs; only when the sun finally shone in the window would she be able to relax and sleep.
    In a way, that fear was a kind of luxury. She could not afford to be so cowardly once she was the lone adult raising two small children. She had to be able to sleep all night, because she had to be awake and alert in the day to take care of the children and to work to support those children. Of necessity, she had become brave. She had grown up just that much; if she was not naturally a brave woman, she was learning to behave like one. That was worth something.
    But it was more than that—more than pretense, more than whistling in the dark. She really did like being out here alone in the night. The soundless shadows, the dewy air, the inescapable night, reduced her to an elemental Nell. She had lost so many people. But she had gained so many people, and it seemed that she still lived her life through other people, as if always trying for the prettiest pose in front of an endless mirror. Out here in the night it did not matter what she looked like or how old she was or whether she was loved or loving. She just existed, bones and skin and nerves and senses, hard and substantial against the soft elusiveness of night. She was Nell, and by herself she was real.
    And cold. She rose, stretched, and pulled her moist nightgown from the back of her legs and bottom. She knew now that when she sank into the cozy warmth of her bed, she would fall