Suzette Elgin - Native Tongue

It had been her good fortune that it had happened to her before she met the man she was to marry, sparing her the soul-destroying experience of “falling in love” — and then out of love again — with her own husband. She serviced Thomas, as she had serviced Ned, and she had no reason to believe she’d lost her touch. Thomas would never be like Ned, never a fool, never swift-melting putty in a woman’s hands, no. But she worked at it very hard, and she was extremely careful; she knew that she was as nearly indispensable to Thomas now as it was possible for any woman to be, with such a man. As indispensable as poor Rachel, at least; probably more so. And he would be wondering where she was — it was past time for her to be seen up and about her duties.

“I’m tired,” she said aloud. “I’m absolutely worn out. I cannot get out of this bed and go upstairs and be a nice lady.” After which, of course, she stood up, stripped the bed of its sheets for the laundryroom, pulled on a robe for her definitely necessary trip to the nearest shower room, and headed out into the corridor to begin her day. At least in the daytime she was too busy to be haunted by her row of little old ghosts, with Ned as their token youngster. She shut the nonsensical plaints of her victims up in her room along with her bone-weariness, and went gracefully about her business.

She was very late; when she reached the diningroom it was nearly empty. All the children had gone long since, and even the section where the adults ate was thinly populated. Mostly by the very senior men, who no longer went out on negotiations, and who reminded her unpleasantly of what she’d only just put out of her mind. She stood in the doorway trying to decide where she should sit and seriously considering skipping breakfast altogether. She could go straight on to Barren House, where they’d give her a cup of good tea and some fresh-baked bread, and where she could count on good company and good conversation. Versus sitting with one of these men and being told what the world was coming to and how it was all the fault of either the President or the women, depending on which had most recently irritated the old gentleman in question.

There was a touch on her arm, and she jumped; she hadn’t heard whoever it was coming up behind her. Clingsoles were wonderful for a house with scores of busy people coming and going; they kept down the racket. But they gave you no warning that someone was near you, which could be inconvenient at times.

It was Nazareth who had touched her, though, and that was a note of hope at last in this otherwise miserable morning.

“Natha,” she said. “You’re late.”

“So are you. Disgustingly late. Come have breakfast with me, and we can be disgustingly late together.”

“Here?”

“Of course not here. Come on, I happen to know that there’s a health crisis at Barren House that demands our immediate attention, Nurse Landry. I’ll vouch for it if necessary. You don’t want to eat with those old creakers, do you?”

“Not particularly,” Michaela admitted. “But I expect I ought to do it anyway. Sort of a public health service.”

“No, you come along with me, I need you worse than they do; I feel this terrible pain coming on,” said Nazareth. And before anything more could be said she had moved Michaela out the door, across the atrium — where the latest A.I.R.’s had not yet come out of their privacy area, which meant nothing at all to be seen there — and through the service rooms onto the street. Nazareth wasted no time in anything she did, and years of experience with her brood of nine had given her a firm way of bustling another person along that was impressive even to a professional nurse who did professional person-bustling. At the slidewalk, Michaela applied the brakes, both to catch her breath and for the principle of the thing.

“Hey!” she protested, laughing. “It’s too early for running! I wasn’t brought up jogging and hoeing before daybreak like you mad linguists — could we walk now? Please?”

“We could. But I had to get outside before someone saw me and invented an emergency for me .”

“They do that, do they? I suppose that’s why I see you here at the big house so rarely.”

“Absolutely right,” said Nazareth. “My father devoutly believes that a linguist not in use is a linguist being wasted, and he allows no linguist to be wasted. I stop by very early to see whichever of my kidlings happens to be around, and then I hightail it back home.”

Home. That would be Barren House.

“You could get caught, going by the diningroom,” Michaela noted.

“Yes… but how else was I to get your attention? I assure you that if I stood in the atrium and shouted at you I would definitely get caught. It was safer to slip in and grab you, you perceive.”

The walk had started to turn into a jog again, and Michaela knew Nazareth couldn’t help it; hurrying was as natural to her as eating and drinking. But she stopped, and reached out to turn the other woman round to face her.

“Let me take a look at you,” she said, holding Nazareth firmly with a hand on each shoulder. “No, Nazareth, don’t go tugging away from me! I’m not at all sure you’re well… perhaps I should suggest to your father that you spend another few days at the hospital, since it’s so pleasant there? Hold still, woman, so that I can see you! They’ll still feed us, if we don’t get to Barren House till noon — hold still .”

Nazareth smiled at her, declaring that she gave up, and Michaela looked her over thoroughly in the morning light; it was more reliable than indoor light. Still much too thin, she thought. Much too thin. Tall as she was, a good four inches taller than Michaela, the gauntness was still obvious. Especially in the plain tunics she wore. Her hipbones stuck out, still.

“I won’t eat more,” announced Nazareth with determination, reading her mind. “Don’t bother instructing me, Nurse. I eat enough already. I have always been a gawk — just ask my erstwhile husband — and I am not going to change to one of those motherly types at my advanced age.”

“Hush,” said Michaela, and laid a gentle finger to Nazareth’s lips, getting a kiss for her trouble; she moved her hands to trace the stark cheekbones, and narrowed her eyes to study the face of this self-proclaimed gawk. Yes, she was too thin; but the look of intolerable strain was gone. There was a touch of color in her cheeks, her eyes glowed with the beginnings of health, and she had let her hair down from that vicious knot she’d always worn it in and put it in a single braid down her back.

“Really, Nazareth,” Thomas had commented the first time he’d seen the change of hairstyle. “At your age.” Michaela was delighted that Nazareth had ignored him.

“You look better, Nazareth,” she said, finally satisfied. “So much better.”

“I am better, that’s why. Nothing like chopping away all the dead wood and decay at one whack to improve the basic structure.”

“When I remember how you looked in the hospital that day…”

“Don’t remember,” advised Nazareth sensibly. “Don’t think of it. You think of the past too much… it’s not good for you.”

And how did she know that? Michaela stared at her, thinking how dear she was, and Nazareth clucked her tongue at her.

“Could we go on now, do you suppose?” she demanded, pretending to be cross. “If you’re through with inspection? I’m willing to eat, if you’d give me half a chance. And I happen to know that Susannah made spice bread this morning, Michaela.”

“It’ll all be gone.”

“If you keep us standing here like this, it certainly will.”