The Pursuit of Alice Thrift

I said, “I know men have very strong drives, and I know you’ve been lonely, but I think you’re being overly familiar.”

Happily, guests were interrupting us. Leo poked his head in every so often to remind me that there was a party going on in the other rooms and that I should leave the dishes for the morning.

“Let’s go see how our guests are faring,” Ray said cheerfully.

Leo had indeed dipped into his supply of brothers for the occasion, which was of great genetic interest to all observers. One had black hair and the fairest, pinkest skin you’d ever see on a male old enough to have facial hair; another had Leo’s build and Leo’s ruddy complexion, but an angular face and brown eyes that seemed to come from another gene pool. The Frawleys were mixing warily with the Ray Russo contingent. One red-haired brother asked a cousin, “So, how do you know Leo?”

“My cousin’s going out with his roommate,” he answered. I corrected the misapprehension. Ray and I were acquaintances, I said.

The cousin grinned. “If you say so.”

I explained to the brother that Ray had lost his wife a year ago and only now was getting out socially.

Cousin George said, “He was really faithful to her memory. He didn’t do a thing until she was legally pronounced dead.”

I told him what Ray had told me: the accident, the head trauma, the coma, the life support, the horrible decision. I asked if any of her organs were donated and George said, “Um. You’d have to ask Ray.”

I asked if she’d been wearing a seat belt.

George said, “I doubt it.”

Leo was now doing what he had threatened to do during our planning phase if things didn’t coalesce on their own—dance. He was taking turns with a flock of nursing students, all undergraduates from the same baccalaureate nursing program, and all friends. They looked alike, too: Their hairdos were the ballerina knots, streaked with blond, that were popular with pretty teenagers. I didn’t think we should invite anyone under twenty-one because we were serving beer and wine, but Leo had prevailed. Now they were taking turns being twirled, and each one’s raised hand revealed a few inches of bare midriff and a pierced navel.

“Wanna dance, Doc?” Ray asked.

I shook my head resolutely.

“Would it make a difference if it was a slow dance? You must have learned a few steps of ballroom dancing for those teas at that fancy college.”

I didn’t remember telling him where I’d gone to college, but I must have mentioned it over dinner. I said, “Okay, a slow dance.”

“I’ll talk to the deejay,” said Ray. He turned to his cousin. “Georgie—put something on that the doc might enjoy dancing to.”

“Will do,” said George.

A little human warmth generated from a clean-shaven jaw can go a long way. I may have exaggerated my ineptitude on the dance floor; any able-bodied person can follow another’s lead when his technique constitutes nothing more than swaying in place. It helped that he didn’t talk or sing, and that his cologne had a citric and astringent quality that I found pleasing.

If Ray said anything at all, it was an occasional entreaty to relax. “You’re not so bad, Doc,” he said when the first song ended. “In fact I think you might like another whirl.”

He hadn’t let go of my hand. I looked around the room to see if we had an audience. Leo was consolidating trays of hors d’oeuvres, but watching. He arched his eyebrows, which I interpreted to mean, Need to be rescued?

I shrugged.

A nurse with closely cropped hair dyed at least two primary colors took Leo’s hand and led him out to the patch of hardwood that was serving as the dance floor. “Having a good time?” Leo asked me.

“You better believe it,” Ray answered, flashing a thumbs-up with my hand in his.

A PHONE CALL woke me. Was I in my own bed or in the on-call cot? It took a few seconds to orient myself in the dark before remembering: I had the weekend off. Good. This would be the hospital calling the wrong resident.

But it wasn’t. It was my mother, her voice choked.

“Is it Daddy?” I whispered.

“It’s Nana,” she managed, discharging the two syllables between sobs.

“What about Nana?”

“Gone! One minute she was alive and the next minute, gone! Pneumonia! As if that wasn’t curable!”

My grandmother was ninety-four and had been in congestive heart failure for three months and on dialysis for nine. I said, “The elderly don’t do well with pneumonia.”

I looked at my bedside clock: 3:52 A.M.

“My heart stopped when the phone rang because I knew without even answering,” my mother continued. “Here it was, the phone call I’ve been dreading my whole life.”

“Is Daddy there?” I asked.

My father came on and said, “I told her not to wake you. What were you going to do at four in the morning except lose a night’s sleep?”

“Ninety-four years old,” I said quietly. “Maybe in the morning she’ll realize that it’s a blessing.”

“I tried that,” he said. “Believe me.”

“Tried what?” my mother asked.

“To point out to you, Joyce, that your mother lived to a ripe old age, was healthy for the first ninety-three of them, and any daughter who has a mother by her side at her sixtieth birthday party is a pretty lucky woman.”

“It’s not the time to count my blessings,” I heard. “I’m crying because she’s gone, okay? Do I have to defend myself?”

“Be nice to her,” I said.

“I am,” he said. Then to my mother, “I know, honey. I know. No one’s mother can live long enough to suit her children. It’s always too early.”

My mother raised her voice so I could hear distinctly, “Some daughters hate their mothers. Some mothers hear from their daughters once a week if they’re lucky. I talked to mine every day. Twice a day. She was my best friend.”

“When’s the funeral?” I asked.

“We haven’t gotten that far yet,” said my father. “She still has to call her sisters.”

“I called you first!” I heard from the far side of their bed.

“Sorry to wake you,” my father said. “I couldn’t stop her. You’re on her auto dial.”

“I have to get up in two hours anyway,” I said.

I BRING UP this relatively untraumatic and foreseen death because Ray counted my grandmother’s funeral as our third date. He was a genius at being there for me when I didn’t want or need him. He called the Monday after the party and got Leo. “Her grandmother died, so I don’t know when she’ll get back to you,” he said.

Ray paged me at the hospital, and without announcing himself said, “I’m driving you wherever you need to go.”

I said that was unnecessary. I had relatives in Boston who were going to the funeral, and my father had worked out the arrangements.

“Absolutely not. What are the chances that they’ll want to leave when you can leave and return when you have to return? Zero.”

I said, “But, Ray: I don’t know you well enough to bring you to a funeral.”

“I’ll wait in the car,” he said.

“It’s not an hour or two. There’s the service, then the burial, then I’m sure there will be a lunch for the out-of-town guests back at my house.”

He said quietly, “I know all too well the number of hours that a funeral can consume.”

I said I couldn’t talk. Someone’s ears needed tubes. To end the conversation, I yielded. I said he could pick me up at six A.M. And just in case he didn’t spend the whole time waiting in the car, he should wear a dark suit.

I also said, “Ray? I don’t want you to construe this as anything but what it is—transportation. I’m being completely forthright here. If you want to drive me all the way to Princeton as a friend, I’d appreciate it, but otherwise I’ll make arrangements with my cousins.”

“I get it,” he said. “I think I was a little too pushy at the party, coming on too strong in the kitchen. But I know that. That’s why I called your apartment—to apologize. Besides, I have my own guilt to deal with.”

“Guilt? Because you went to a party?”

“More like, if I ever told my parents that I had feelings for a woman so soon after Mary died, they’d be furious.”

I asked, “Your parents? Or are you talking about your parents-in-law?”

Ray said, “Let’s not talk about parents, especially with your mother just having passed.”

“Not my mother, my grandmother.”

I heard a low chuckle in my ear. “You did sound kind of blasé for a gal whose mother just died.”

“She was ninety-four and comatose,” I said.

“God bless her.”

I was at the nurses’ station on Fletcher-4. I caught one nurse rolling her eyes at another. They’d been listening.

I hung up the phone and stated for the record, “My grandmother died last night, unexpectedly.”

“We heard,” said one, not even looking up from her fashion magazine. “Unexpectedly, despite being ninety-four.”

“No one’s sympathetic when they hear ninety-something,” I said. “They think that makes it easy, as if it’s overdue and you should have been prepared.”

They exchanged looks again. I wanted to say, What am I doing wrong? Did I sound brusque or unfeeling? Have we met before? Instead I said, “I’m Dr. Thrift. This is my first night in ENT. You probably know my housemate, Leo, from pediatrics. Leo Frawley?”

The younger one sat up straighter and hooked stray blond tendrils behind her ears. “I know Leo,” she said.

“And you are?”

“Roxanne.”

“I’m Mary Beth,” volunteered her deskmate. “I used to work in peds.”

“We’re sorry for your loss,” said Roxanne. “I’d be, like, devastated if my grandmother died—no matter how old she was.”

I took a tissue from their box, touched it to each eye, and said with uncharacteristic aplomb, “I’ll be sure to tell Leo how kind you were.”

5 A.k.a. the Transportation

HAD I REALLY thought that Joyce Thrift’s social reflexes and nuptial dreams would fail her on that January day, just because she was laying her mother to rest?

Ray whistled appreciatively when we pulled up to my parents’ house, a sprawling Dutch Colonial, previously white, now yellow with pine-green shutters—a new color scheme they’d forgotten to tell me about.

“How many square feet in this baby?” Ray asked, squinting through his tinted windshield.

I said I had no idea. One doesn’t think of one’s childhood home in mathematical terms.

“How many bedrooms?”

“Five.”

“Five! For how many kids?”

“Two. But one is a guest room, and another’s my mother’s studio.”

“For what?”

“Fiber art,” I confessed.

Ray looked engaged, which was his psychological specialty: filing away facts that would later make him seem uniquely attentive. “You mean like weaving?” he asked.

“Weaving’s part of it. She incorporates different elements—wool, feathers, newsprint, photographs, bones.”

“Human or animal?”

I said he could ask her himself. She’d be thrilled to discuss it since her relatives and friends had grown tired of her shaggy wall hangings, both as a topic of conversation and as an art form.

“Maybe on a future visit, but I certainly wouldn’t bring it up today,” said the master of funereal etiquette. He pointed to the silver van in the driveway and read approvingly, “Fêtes by Frederick.”

“The caterer. People will be coming back after the cemetery.”

“Buffet, you think?”

“Something low-key. When my grandfather died, we had finger sandwiches and petits fours.”

“So what’s the plan? I meet you back here?”

I looked at my watch and calculated aloud, “Funeral at eleven, then to the cemetery, then back here for an hour. How does one-thirty sound? I’ll come out to the car.”

“Doc,” said Ray. “That’s terrible. You’re not going to run in and run out like you’ve been beeped. This is your grandmother who died, not some second cousin twice removed.”

“Two-thirty, then?”

“I wouldn’t mind going to the church,” said Ray. “I find that even if I don’t know the deceased, I get a lot out of it.”

What could I do but include him after the gas and mileage he’d invested in the trip and his curiosity about fiber art? I said, “I think I’ll be riding with the next of kin in the limousine. But if you want to go to the church, I’m sure that’s fine.” I reached for the door handle. “I should probably have this time alone with my mother, though.”

“Absolutely,” said Ray. “I don’t want to be underfoot while she’s getting dressed.”

I wasn’t worried about my mother, who could be gracious in any tragedy. But I needed to take her aside and explain that the rough-hewn man in the red car was a mere acquaintance and—not that she’d ever entertain such thoughts on a day like today—wholly unsuited to any other role. And the Swarthmore sticker on the back windshield? Not applicable; a relic from the previous owner.

“Mind if I run in and use the toilet?” Ray asked.

I said okay. There was a powder room just inside the front door.

“Thirty seconds, and that includes the hand-washing,” he promised.

He took his gray pin-striped jacket from its hanger, put it on, tugged at his cuffs, smoothed his silver tie against his sternum. “Not bad, huh?” he asked.

Already on my way up the stone walk, I didn’t look back. I opened the front door and called, “Anyone home?”

Ray was right behind me. “Wow. Nice place.”

There was a party-sized coatrack in the foyer, bearing so many wooden hangers that I stopped to ponder the scope of the after-funeral fête. I pointed to the half-bath and Ray darted toward it.

My father appeared at the top of the stairs in a black velour bathrobe and hospital-blue terry-cloth slippers. When he reached the bottom step I gave him a hug that was slightly longer than our semiannual perfunctory squeeze.

“You okay?” he asked.

I said I was, of course, sad, but still, when one saw as much untimely and sudden death as I did, then it’s hard to view ninety-four as—

“We were able to get Frederick on practically no notice at all,” announced my father. “I mean, we only wanted tea sandwiches and a few salads, but he was Johnny-on-the-spot.”

Ray emerged from the bathroom in the promised thirty seconds, his right hand outstretched. “Ray Russo,” he said, “a.k.a. the transportation.”

“We left at six,” I said.

“Luckily I make my own hours,” said Ray.

My father smiled uncertainly.

“First-Prize Fudge,” said Ray.

“Fudge?” I said.

“Mostly to seasonal concessionaires. I have a box for Mrs. Thrift in my car, if you think that’s not a frivolous gift at a time like this.”

My father turned toward the stairway and yelled, “Joyce! Alice is here! And a young man.”

Within seconds my six-foot mother was descending, buttoning a black dress with chiffon kimono sleeves. She forgot, in her role switch from grieving daughter to hostess, to kiss me. We weren’t much for public or private displays of affection anyway, but I patted her back and checked her fastenings. “You missed a few buttons,” I whispered.

I could tell from the way her vertebrae were aligned that she was greeting Ray bravely, ambitiously. “I’m Joyce Thrift,” she said. “And you are …?”

“Ray Russo,” Ray and I pronounced in unison.

“Are you a colleague of Alice’s?” Her glance dropped to his feet and to shoes that were too pointy for a man in medicine.

“He drove me,” I said.

Ray bowed his head and took two obsequious steps backward. “I think it’s best if I wait in the car so as to give you your privacy,” he said.

“Absolutely not! Alice? Take Mr. Russo into the kitchen and see what goodies Frederick is willing to part with.”

I said, “Mom—Mr. Russo actually drove me as a favor. He wouldn’t even let me pay for the gas.”

When she looked to each of us for clarification, my father added, “She means this gentleman is not a car service. Mr.…”

“Russo,” I supplied.

“Mr. Russo is in sales,” said my father.

“Which reminds me,” said Ray. He made it to the door in three long strides and was back in twenty seconds—time that passed in silence among the Thrifts—holding a gift-wrapped box that could have housed a VCR.

“Milk chocolate marshmallow, Black Forest, and penuche,” said Ray. “No nuts, just in case anyone’s allergic.”

“Fudge,” said my mother. “I’ll be taking great comfort in this over the next few weeks.”

“Or maybe,” Ray said with a nudge to her elbow, “once you taste it, over the next few days.”

My mother handed me the box. “Tell Frederick … I don’t know: the blue Wedgwood platter?”

“This size comes with its own serving tray,” said Ray.

My mother looked down and blinked at her stockinged feet. “I should finish dressing,” she murmured.

My father turned her toward the steps. “She’s barely slept since we got the news,” he said.

“Maybe Alice could write me a prescription for something.”

I understood that this was my mother putting an MD at the end of my name. “You know I can’t write prescriptions yet,” I said. “Let alone in New Jersey.”

“She doesn’t need any sedatives,” said my father. “She’s exhausted. She just needs this day to be over.”

“Warm milk works for me,” said Ray. He winked. “Especially with a shot of brandy in it.”

“Let me give this to Frederick,” I said. “It weighs a ton.”

“There’s five pounds in there,” said Ray. “Which means more than a quarter pound of Grade A sweet creamery butter and at least a quart of evaporated milk. We list the ingredients on our Web site.”

“Perhaps I will lie down,” my mother said.

“You have a beautiful home,” said Ray, crossing the foyer to inspect a bronze death mask, reputed to be of Pocahontas.

“Of course you’ll come to the funeral, Ray,” my mother said.

He said, his back to us in connoisseurship, that he didn’t want to intrude.

It was then that I saw a glance pass between my parents, and I realized that the invitation was not hospitality but fear that a purveyor of carnival fudge might, if left alone, pillage the mourners’ residence. “We insist,” she said.

“Whatever feels right to you,” said Ray, now studying one of my mother’s canvases. “I can stay here or I can slip into a pew that’s a good distance from the immediate family. That way, no one is going to ask, ‘Who’s the guy?’”

My mother said, “I think anyone who drives seven hours—”

“It took us under six,” I said.

“Anyone who drives five-plus hours to a stranger’s funeral should absolutely attend the service,” she continued. “And if anyone jumps to conclusions … that’s the last thing I’m concerning myself with today.”

“I’d be honored,” said Ray. As he turned back toward us, his voice and face slumped. “You’d think I’d have an aversion to funerals after my personal misfortune, but it’s quite the opposite.”

“Misfortune?” echoed my mother.

“Ray was recently widowed,” I explained.

“No!”

“Automobile accident,” he said.

“When?” asked my father.

“A year ago Inauguration Day—ice, snow, sleet, you name it,” said Ray. “The car had four-wheel drive and traction control. I thought it was foolproof.”

“Air bags?” my mother asked.

Ray said, “I can’t even discuss that aspect of it because it makes me shake all over with rage. Suffice it to say, they didn’t deploy.”

“You poor man,” said my mother, flexing the fingers of one hand in the direction of the powder room to mean, Someone get me a tissue.

“I insist you lie down,” said my father. “There’s a long day ahead, and lots of people wanting to discuss their own mothers’ deaths, and it’s going to take a lot out of you, sweetie.”

“That’s exactly why I didn’t bring up my own tragedy,” said Ray. “And if someone starts talking about theirs? You give me a sign and I’ll come over and I’ll be your ears so you don’t have to listen to their story, okay? Would you let me do that much?”

“Yes, I will,” said my mother. “I only wish you’d been here to answer some of the phone calls.”

“We had to let the machine pick up,” said my father.

Ray shook his head. “People. Why is it so hard for them to use their brains?”

“Exactly,” said my mother. “This has been like taking a graduate course in psychology. People you barely know send you fruit the minute they see the obituary, while some of your best friends don’t even call.”

“They don’t want to bother you,” I said. “Or maybe they hung up when they got the machine.”

My mother began her climb to her bedroom, both hands on the banister.

FREDERICK WAS ALONE in the kitchen, wearing chef’s full regalia plus striped pantaloons and red plastic clogs. When I announced the fudge delivery, his lip curled; he pointed to a remote pantry counter.

“My mother wants it put out,” I said.

“I have truffles,” he snapped.

Perhaps it was then that I felt a twinge of something for Ray—call it sympathy, loyalty, charity—born of a caterer’s condescension. “A guest brought it,” I said. “A guest who got up at five A.M. this morning so I wouldn’t have to take a bus.”

With the edge of a linen towel, Frederick wiped a drip of red goop from a platter. “And you are?”

“Alice.”

Frederick said, “The problem is, Alice, that this isn’t a pot-luck dinner. Everything is planned, down to the color of the sugar cubes. Serving fudge with truffles is like serving steak with roast beef.”

“It’s the guest’s livelihood,” I said. “And no one but you will notice if there’s a surfeit of chocolate.”

Just outside the kitchen door my father was giving Ray loud directions. “Cool,” Ray repeated after each prescribed left or right turn.

There was a pause on our side. Finally Frederick asked, “You’re the older daughter?”

I said that was correct. We’d met at my mother’s sixtieth—

“The doctor?”

I said yes.

He smiled benignly, then asked, “And where does a doctor cross paths with a fudge salesman?”

I couldn’t muster an answer; couldn’t even choreograph my own exit as I pondered what it was about me that invited caterers to condescend.

“Must be serious, judging by the color of your cheeks,” Frederick continued.

I said, “Any color on my face is utter astonishment and, and, dismay, and frankly—”

The door swung open and Ray was at my side. At first I thought the object of his survey was the grandness of the built-in appliances and the curve of the granite countertops, but he was looking for his gift.

“In the pantry,” said Frederick.

Ray popped a pastry triangle in his mouth. “Spinach,” he said.

“Spanokopita,” said Frederick. “Though not fully defrosted.”

“Not bad,” said Ray. “Not what I expected. I thought it was going to be sweet—a miniature turnover, like with fig inside.” Ray chewed, swallowed, popped another triangle in his mouth. “You Greek?” he mumbled through the phyllo.

Frederick shook his head in the smallest possible arc, and turned back to the sink.

Ray looked at me: You see that? You gonna let the kitchen help diss your guests?

I said, “Frederick? My mother wanted you to make up a nice plate for Mr. Russo.”

Frederick crossed to the refrigerator, returned with a plastic bag of some curly purple vegetal matter. “She didn’t mention this to me,” he said.

“We’ve been on the road since six A.M.,” I said.

Ray helped himself to a deviled egg, then another. “Don’t bother. I’m gonna head out so I can get a good seat.”

“I don’t think you have to worry about a crowd,” said Frederick. “She outlived every one of her friends.”

“I lost my wife at a young age,” said Ray, slipping an arm around my waist. “So good genes mean everything to me.”

I moved a discreet step away and said, “My other grandmother died at sixty-two of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.”

“I did the brunch,” said Frederick.

I said I might lie down for a short rest myself before the limo arrived, if they’d excuse me.