The Everlasting Story of Nory

8. About Debbie

Nory was proudly born in Boston, Massachusetts, in America. A lot of houses looked like Peckover House in Boston. Boston was old in a beautiful way and it was especially important to Nory because it was frankly the only city she had ever lived in, except Venice for three weeks when she was three years old, where she was baptized with a surprising splash of water in a huge cold church, holding her own candle, that later got broken and had to be thrown out even though it was wrapped in tissue paper. In Venice she also ate pitch-black spaghetti. The black was squid ink and it was quite good. Long ago, they used to use squid ink to make real ink, for using in Medium Nib fountain pens, but probably it would make a kind of ink that no ink eradicator would eradicate. Ink eradicators were made from pigskin and pig-waste, according to a girl at Threll Junior School, who said her sister once visited an eradicator factory.

Threll was just a town, not a city, and Palo Alto, California, was just a town, too, although it had quite a seedy neighborhood in the way that real cities do. You might imagine a French person going around Palo Alto, California, with an American person. The American would say, ‘As you will notice, there are some seedy areas.’ The French person would say, in his very strong French accent, ‘Oh, is this — city area?’ Pronouncing it of course the way the French teacher at the Junior School pronounced it. And the American would misunderstand and say sadly, ‘Yes, I’m afraid it is seedy. There’s just no getting around it.’ Maybe that’s how the idea that cities were seedy came about, if it happened quite a number of times. Also when people don’t cut their grass, it grows so long that it shoots out a tassel of seeds, which was a sign that the people in that house didn’t care about their yard. Maybe they were caring for a sick person who was cooped up in the house, or maybe they were busy giving themselves shots of drugs and alcohol and didn’t have the energy to walk out their front door and cut the grass. That’s another way the idea that cities were seedy could have come about.

Nory’s favorite street in Palo Alto had a number of stores on it, including the toy store. Nory spent half an hour there one Saturday in the summer while Littleguy played with the breakdown train at the Thomas the Tank Engine table. She looked through every one of the Barbie outfits, because her new best friend, Debbie, said she liked Barbies with black hair and blue dresses. Debbie had given Nory a friendship locket to celebrate that they were new best friends, and Nory was extremely happy about that and wanted to give Debbie a Barbie from money she earned selling hand-lettered signs to her parents. She looked and looked, and finally tucked away behind a whole lot of other outfits she found a dark blue Barbie dress with lighter blue sparkles on the front, and she hung it back on the hook as the very first one and went to get her mother. When she came back, though, another girl was there with her mother, and the girl was holding the blue dress outfit in her hand. Nory stood there and tried her best to hint by the sad hopeless way she was flopping her arms and looking at the blue dress in the girl’s hand that she had just spent a whole half an hour going through every outfit to find it, but the girl and her mother ignored her, or didn’t know what she was flopping about, and she didn’t want to say anything, because of course the girl had found it all by herself, it’s just that the girl wouldn’t have had hardly a chance of finding it if Nory hadn’t found it and put it on top where it got the special feeling of being the first outfit on display.

They went to another toy store a week later, but there were no blue dresses that were right. Blue was not in fashion at that moment. So Nory got Debbie a tiny glass panda bear posed on a branch, all made of droops of light blue glass, because Debbie was devoted to pandas and had about thirty of them in her room. Nory wrote Debbie a letter soon after they came to England that said:

Dear Debbie,

How ary you? How is your school? I went to the Fitz Willyham museum, where there was a fan room, and there is a fan launguage for things you’re not allowed to say in public if you place the fan behind your head it means ‘Don’t forget me’! There was a fan that I preticularly liked, It is made from coal and mother of peal. I went to Pecover House, but I think it should be famous for its garden more than the house. It has a wunderful statue of a girl and a dog made from stone, and a green house with a fern that will crumple-up when you touch it. I miss you and your dog Sharpy, how is that shoe consuming feind? I hope to be seing you again soon. Love Eleanor PS Please write back.

She drew a picture of a girl holding a fan behind her head at the bottom of the letter.

The best dream Nory had ever had was about Debbie. Nory had died, although she didn’t come to that conclusion until a different part of the dream. She whispered in Debbie’s ear, ‘Debbie, Debbie, it’s me.’ Debbie recognized Nory’s voice and looked up. Debbie had a very wide face, and she could get a look that was kind of still, kind of unnerved. Her mouth looked bigger because her lips were over the wiring of her braces. She made that unnerved look at Nory. She said, ‘Nory! Nory! Is that you?’ She recognized Nory’s voice, even though she couldn’t see her.

‘Don’t worry, Debbie,’ said Nory, in a calm gentle voice. ‘Don’t be scared. I would be too if I were you.’ Debbie seemed calmer. Nory showed her the newspaper, which said on the front page ELEANOR DIES IN A FIRE. Not her family, not anyone else. Later on in the dream Nory said Boo to Garrick, a kid in her class, sort of fakily: ‘Garrick? Boooooo!’

Garrick said, ‘No way, she can’t be a ghost, she’s dead already.’

‘Oh, yes I can!’ said Nory and fumed out in her full ghostiness. Garrick started running out of fear and tripped. That was funny because Garrick was a ten-year-old and usually extremely confident and pleased with himself and made fun of Nory’s spelling, which wasn’t very good. In fact it was a ‘bosaster,’ as Littleguy would say. But the wonderful part of the dream was when Debbie looked up, hearing the voice, and knew it was Nory nearby her.