Wallis felt around under the four-poster bed with her stockinged foot, nudging against the lost shoe.
“There it is,” she said, accidentally pushing it further away. “Damn.”
She knelt down and slid her arm underneath the bed, pulling out the errant shoe with a clump of dust clinging to the heel.
“Not my department,” she said, briskly pulling off the dust and stepping into the shoe. Housecleaning of any kind and cooking were Norman’s jobs. They’d been married twelve years, all of them happy because it was hard to ever complain about a man who never said much and was willing to vacuum.
Mostly, Norman was a blank pool waiting for others to momentarily reflect something onto him. It unnerved people all the time that he never laughed at anyone’s jokes or added a comment to some aside about the outcome of a case.
He had only one ‘tell’ that had taken Wallis years to pick up on and she had never mentioned it to anyone, including Norman. If he was concerned he’d gently pat-a-pat the growing bald spot at the back of his head, before trying to smooth the remaining dark brown waves of hair. That was it, and even that didn’t happen very often.
Norman was a lawyer as well, a corporate lawyer, and was always getting desperate phone calls from more clients than he had time for who needed calm measured advice to get out of a problem they had created, sometimes knowingly. Norman knew all that and would say to Wallis from time to time without a flicker of emotion, “what would I do for a living if there weren’t so many people who thought they knew everything?”
“You’d find something, Norman. You’re too practical to sit still.”
“That’s true,” he’d answer and return to the brief he was writing.
Together, along with a young attorney, William Bremmer, they formed the law firm of Weiskopf, Jones, and Bremmer. Norman was the Weiskopf and his parents were German Jews who had escaped Nazi Germany when there was still time eventually settling in Richmond along the promenade, Monument Avenue.
Once the Weiskopfs were in America, they decided to think of themselves as American and left their past behind them, heartily celebrating every American holiday. Norman came from a long line of practical people.
His best friend was a popular local Episcopal priest, the Reverend Donald Peakes, who was always called Father Donald by most everyone as an affectionate nickname as much as an official title. Norman told Wallis their friendship gave him balance.
The area surrounding the newest statue on Monument Avenue of the native-born tennis ace, Arthur Ashe, was the furthest west and became the Jewish suburbs of Richmond in the 1920’s and ‘30’s. The refugees who would come later, the survivors, would settle further downtown in the older business district, starting over with small businesses on the first floor and a home right above. The two groups rarely mingled even now.
The Weiskopfs settled in, opening a drugstore that eventually became a local chain of four and raised three sons. Norman was the youngest. The oldest, Harry, was a lawyer in Florida helping retirees set up their estates. The middle child, Tom, was an aging hippie in Wisconsin doling out legal advice to indigents from a storefront.
“I didn’t know there were real hippies in Wisconsin,” said Wallis.
“Tom is their official representative,” said Norman, never forming even a small smile.
Wallis was a lapsed Baptist who would boogie if given enough wine as motivation.
“Ned? Ned?” Wallis yelled, trying to wake her nine-year-old son from a floor away. There was no sound of movement but Wallis knew he could be lying still in his bed wide awake listening to her yell and waiting her out.
“You know, for such a smart kid it amazes me how reluctant you are to go to school,” she said, taking each step with determination.
Ned lived on the top floor, which consisted of his room, a bathroom, a small balcony and a crawl space for storage.
Ned was a late-in-life baby who had come along after Wallis had turned thirty-five. Wallis had been in no hurry to get married. Norman changed all of that with his way of accepting whatever came along and his love for Wallis.
She had gotten pregnant easily and was feeling fine till she leaned over to get a glimpse of her file at twenty-eight weeks along and saw the doctor’s notation. A geriatric pregnancy of a well-nourished woman.
“They’re calling me a fat old broad!” she had told Norman when she got home. He smiled for a moment and kept stir-frying the chicken in his wok.
Wallis never touched anything in the kitchen but the refrigerator door. Norman was particular about his things and moving any of them around, particularly in front of him, would usually evoke a small, quick worrisome head pat.