The Pursuit of Alice Thrift

Ray grinned. “These doctors! They can catnap on a dime. I swear—ten minutes of shut-eye, and she’s up for a triple bypass.”

Frederick smiled knowingly.

Ray’s eyes narrowed. “I’m not saying that I’m well versed in this lady’s personal habits—if I read that smirk correctly.”

Unfazed, Frederick blinked and turned to me.

“I’ve never done a triple bypass,” I said. “I’ve never even watched.”

6 Alice Makes Up Her Own Mind

COVERING FOR OUR vacationing pastor was a woman with a crewelwork stole, who ruined the funeral by eulogizing my grandmother as “Barbara.”

At the fourth or fifth misstatement, my mother barked from behind her handkerchief, “Betty!”

The minister looked up; smiled indulgently at the grieving heckler.

“Her name wasn’t Barbara,” clarified a male voice in the back.

Everyone knew it was the homely pin-striped stranger who’d arrived ahead of everyone else and whose signature was first in the guest book: Raymond Russo, Boston, Mass.

“Betty,” repeated the minister. “How careless of me.” She smiled again. “My own mother was Barbara. I think that must say something, don’t you?”

My mother was having none of it: Her stored grief found a new cause, a new enemy, in the rainbow-embroidered figure of the overly serene Reverend Dr. Nancy Jones-Fuchs, who was told in the recessional, in frigid terms, that her services would not be needed graveside.

Ray was the only one who had thought to slip the Book of Common Prayer beneath his overcoat. My aunt Patricia suggested we honor my grandmother Quaker-style, which was to say, in silence. After several minutes, Ray opened the prayer book. We looked over. He offered it to my mother first. “I couldn’t,” she said. Nor could Aunt Patricia, which left my father, who looked to me.

“I could read a psalm,” Ray offered. “Or just say a few words. Whatever you think she’d like.”

“Read,” I said.

“The Twenty-third Psalm is on page eighty-two,” whispered the funeral director.

Ray’s recitation was from memory, eyes closed, and more heartfelt than I expected. When he finished he said, “I didn’t know Betty, but I wish I did.” His voice turned breezy; he tapped the coffin genially with the corner of the prayer book. “Sorry you have to have a virtual stranger here, Betty, reading the last prayer you’ll ever hear, but I guess I know you at least as well as that lame minister did. Boy, was that annoying. And I think you and I would’ve been great pals if we’d crossed paths earlier.” He looked to my mother, who nodded her permission to continue. “I should be an old hand at this, but I didn’t have the composure to say anything at my wife’s grave. She passed away around this time last year. So maybe this is God’s way of giving me another shot at it. Which reminds me—if you run across Mary up there, maybe you can buy her lunch and tell her it’s from Ray.” He raised an imaginary glass. “So here’s to you, Betty: Ninety-four rocks. You had, what? Like, twenty presidents? Four or five wars? I hope you kept a journal or you talked into a tape, ‘cause I’d love to hear the high points.”

“She did,” said my mother.

“Which?” asked Ray.

“Videotaped. On her ninetieth birthday.”

“God bless her,” said Ray.

“Amen,” said the funeral director.

“Amen,” we echoed.

“Now what?” asked my mother.

EACH LUNCHEON ATTENDEE was called upon to share her indignation: What an insult. What a besmirching of Betty’s memory. Imagine living for ninety-four years and getting eulogized under another name. And who the hell was Barbara?

When the crowd thinned and the cousins drove away, Ray and my mother moved on from ministerial misdeeds to fiber art. I had to remind him that we had a long drive ahead, and that I had to be back at work at six A.M.

“You’re not staying over?” my mother cried.

“We’ve discussed this,” I said.

“One day off for the death of a grandparent?” my father said. “What kind of hospital is that?”

“A five-hundred-bed teaching hospital,” I said.

“The show must go on,” said Ray.

“Call her department. Let them page the goddamn head of surgery,” my mother said. “Tell him it’s an outrage. I need my daughter here.”

I darted between my father and the kitchen door. “Dad,” I said. “Please don’t. It’s not like a regular job. We don’t take sick days. No one asks for a day off unless it’s life or death.”

“Which this is,” my mother said.

Ray took her hand. “Mrs. Thrift? What if we stayed for another coupla hours?”

“Alice makes up her own mind,” she said.

Ray guided her to a dining room wall where they stood in front of “Flotsam and Jet Set.” “Of the ones on the first floor, this is my favorite,” said Ray.

In docent fashion, my mother asked if he could explain why.

“The seaweed. The lobster claw. It reminds me of home.”

“Can you tell that the wood is charred? I think it must have been kindling for a clambake.” She pointed to a crumpled piece of paper. “This was a contrivance on my part, but I’m not apologizing for it.”

Ray moved closer, cocked his head, and read, “Nokia Issues a Profit Warning.”

“From The Wall Street Journal, obviously. Which I found in the trash and not, strictly speaking, on the beach.”

“Do all your canvases tell a story?” he asked.

My mother said they did, but not her story. The beholder’s. Each composition was a Rorschach test. If someone saw, for example, capitalism or disorder or impotence—whatever one would call it—that justified her flexing her artistic muscles to add, for example, a piece of newsprint that wasn’t necessarily organic to the site.

“I’m all for flexing artistic muscles,” said Ray.

“The majority of my pieces are pure fiber. This one’s atypical, and for some reason I felt it belonged here, around food.”

Ray said he’d entered this room solely for the artwork, but as long as he was here, he’d have a few shrimps for the road. What a spread. What generosity. What a wonderful family we were.

I FOUND FREDERICK and my father at the stove, drinking scotch and eating Frederick’s signature spiced nuts directly from the sauté pan.

“Way too much food,” said my father in greeting.

“I told Joyce that people don’t eat after a funeral, but she’s always afraid of running short,” said Frederick.

“How’s this: Next time you’ll pretend to follow her orders, but you’ll only make what you think is the right amount,” said my father.

“Just what Frederick needs,” I said.

“What’s that?” asked my father.

“More authority.”

“Your daughter’s employing irony,” said Frederick. “She thinks I wasn’t as obsequious as I should have been with her boyfriend.”

“Ray is not my boyfriend,” I said.

“I just can’t see it,” he explained. “Someone as serious as Alice—not just academically but also in the joie de vivre sense—who takes up with a traveling salesman. Your parents didn’t send you to MIT and Harvard so you could practice medicine from a trailer,” said Frederick.

I told my father I had to speak to him in private. He led the way to the pantry and I followed. “You know what he’s basing all of these insults on? Fudge! Isn’t that ironic? Someone makes a living cooking little pastry triangles and decorating platters with dots of liquefied fruit pulp, and that makes him a judge and jury.”

“Can someone earn a living in fudge?” asked my father.

I said I had no idea. None. In fact, we had never discussed the fudge business before this trip.

“I’m not siding with Frederick,” my father said. “What if people judged me on my wife’s product?”

“Don’t be rude, you two,” called my mother from the doorway. “People are leaving. They want to say good-bye.” And to Frederick, “Alice and her father always had this bond …”

“I think we both know she’s the son he never had,” said Frederick.

How could he say that? He must have known that my younger sister, Julie, was too short-haired and pierced for my mother’s taste, and that I was, by default, increasingly her hope for a wedding and grandchildren.

My father and I ventured back.

“I’m coming up to visit you soon,” my mother said.

“Me?”

“In Boston. Do you realize I haven’t taken one day off since Nana went into the hospital? It took me this long to realize that with a mother’s death, the umbilical cord is finally cut. Not that I resented it. I loved that umbilical cord. I used to brag about it: that ours—mine and Nana’s—was made of some space-age material. Indestructible and indomitable. Now I have to form new alliances and visit some museums.”

I said, “You have Julie, too. She’s a good candidate for a new alliance. I think she’s got an easier schedule than I, so it might be more satisfying for you.”

“Julie,” said my mother, “thinks that I don’t like her friends.”

“You don’t,” said my father.

“All I know,” said my mother, “is that Julie had boyfriends all through high school, that she was even a little boy crazy, and now I’m supposed to forget that and embrace her … so-called lovers.”

“It could be a phase,” said my father.

“It’s biochemical,” said Frederick. “It’s not a choice.”

“Please,” said my mother. “It’s all about sisterhood and politics.”

The kitchen door swung open to reveal the politely inquisitive face of Ray. “Someone must have taken the wrong coat,” he said. “There’s one left on the coatrack and it doesn’t belong to …” He looked toward the foyer, then pronounced, “Mrs. Gordon.”

“Gorman. I’ll handle this,” said Frederick.

We waited. The dispossessed Mrs. Gorman raised her voice and cried, “In January? I’ll catch pneumonia with nothing more than a coat thrown over my shoulders.”

“Why me?” moaned my mother. “What kind of idiot goes home in the wrong coat?”

“Frederick’s taking care of it,” said my father.

“Maybe we’ll leave now,” I said.

“Unless we can help with the coat mix-up,” said Ray.

“You’d be doing us a favor if you took some food back to Boston,” said my father.

“No problem,” said Ray.

Frederick came back through the swinging door and went straight to the phone. He punched some numbers, tapped his foot, fixed his eyes on the ceiling, and whispered to us, “She knew exactly what the problem was: two black Max Maras, same fur trim, different sizes.”

“Polly’s?” asked my mother.

“Polly’s,” Frederick confirmed.

My mother said, “Let them work it out on their own turf.” She opened the door and said, “Marietta? Polly’s not home yet. Can you just swing by her house tomorrow and swap the coats? I’m exhausted.”

“Hers is enormous,” said Marietta.

“Maybe a size ten,” Frederick whispered. “More likely a twelve.”

“Can’t you just roll up the sleeves?” asked my mother. “Or borrow something for the ride home?”

“I can’t believe she could even get into mine,” Marietta whined.

I left the kitchen and said to Marietta—the bridge partner famous for wearing a size zero and having quadruple-A feet—“I know it wasn’t your fault, but you might consider name tags or a laundry marker.”

Marietta burst into tears, prompting my mother to do the same.

“You two aren’t crying over the coats, are you?” I asked.

My father joined us and demanded to know what I’d said to my mother to provoke this outburst.

I said, “She’s crying because Marietta’s crying.”

“Take your mother upstairs,” he said. “I’ll drive Marietta home.”

“You didn’t bring your car?” I asked her.

My father said, enunciating carefully, “Alice? I don’t think you understand that Marietta lost her own mother last fall, and sometimes when someone’s crying about a lost coat, it’s not about a lost coat at all.”

How was I supposed to know that Marietta’s mother had died? All I’d ever heard about Marietta was that her life was an endless, frustrating search for clothes and shoes that didn’t fall off her body. I said, “I’m very sorry for your loss. I hope it wasn’t painful or prolonged.”

Marietta sank a little, so my father propped her up by her bony shoulders.

He shook his head and mouthed a string of indistinct words that turned out to be amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.

“Which was hell for her and hell for me,” Marietta shouted. “So I haven’t had much time to sew name tags in my clothes.”

“Alice didn’t know,” said my father.

Ray joined us by the coatrack. “Hey!” he said. “I could hear you from the back porch! What are you yelling at Alice for?”

I told him that Marietta’s mother had succumbed to a long, drawn-out, and debilitating disease, which no one had told me about until now.

“Then take a page from my book,” he told her. “My wife died recently but I know how to conduct myself at someone else’s funeral.”

My father was trying to console Marietta at the same time that he was signaling Ray to refrain from uttering one further syllable.

Now barefoot and seated on the stairs, my mother murmured, “It never fails.”

“What never fails?” I asked.

“Your social graces,” she said. “Or lack thereof.”

“Maybe Alice is too busy devoting her brain to medical science to bother with some of the niceties that other people have time for,” said Ray.

“I have friends who are doctors who could be anchorpeople,” sniffed Marietta. “Or social directors on cruise ships.”

“Are they surgeons?” I asked.

My mother sighed. My father looked to Ray.

“Maybe I’ll take Alice home now,” he said.

WE STOPPED TWICE for coffee. I didn’t say much—even less than usual—because I was working up to something like an expression of gratitude. Between sips I said, “I don’t go home a lot because I usually manage to say something tactless, and everyone stays mad for a couple of weeks.”

“Until?”

“Until my mother calls and complains about my sister. No one apologizes. It just goes away.”

“I’ve heard of worse things,” said Ray. “In some families, people stay mad. No one calls and pretends everything’s okay because they all hate each other’s guts.”

I told him this trip was different. I always left like this—earlier than planned. But no one ever walked through the door with me. No one ever came to my defense or pointed out that the Mariettas of the world were the ones deficient in social graces.

“And?”

“I guess that was me saying thank you.”

“You’re welcome.”

A few miles later he asked, “Who did this to you?”

I asked what he meant.

“Your parents? Is that who? Did they ever build you up? Tell you you were smart and pretty—their precious daughter, their pride and joy?”

“Pride and joy, sure,” I said. “But because of what I did and not the way I looked.”

I could see that he was studying my profile, searching for a diplomatic counterpoint. “What a pity,” he finally said. “To think that all these years—how many? Twenty-five?”

“I’ll be twenty-seven in two months.”

“To think that in all these years you’ve been carrying around this image of yourself as—how would you define it? Unattractive?”

“Yes,” I said.

“I don’t want to hear that anymore,” he said.

I didn’t flinch when his hand moved to my knee, an act that seemed more brotherly than sexual. Or so I thought. He left it there until he had to downshift, a good fifteen miles later. When it found its way back, higher on my leg and decidedly less fraternal, I let that pass, too. I was only human. No one else was driving me out of state or banishing derogatory adjectives from my vocabulary. No one else’s pupils dilated as I described my two weeks in a remote village in British Honduras with the Reconstructive Surgeons Volunteer Program, aiding the shunned. In a few years I’d be thirty. My sister was a lesbian. I was a heterosexual with the potential to be the favorite child. And here in the adjacent bucket seat, stroking my unloved leg, was a man.

7 Reveille

“WHAT I MEANT by ‘stay,’” said Ray, “is pretty much universally understood to mean not go home. As in sleep over.”

I explained, just inside the front door of my building, that overnight parking was prohibited on Brookline Avenue, and, furthermore, overnight guests were not allowed under Leo’s and my covenant.

Ray said, “I’ve never heard of such a thing! Whatever happened to consenting adults? Is this a halfway house or something, with rules about sex, drugs, and firearms? C’mon. Who are you kidding? You’re making this up, aren’t you? Why not just tell the truth? Why not say, ‘Ray? I’m scared to have a man in my bed.’”

“I’m not,” I said. “I just think this is premature and unwarranted.”

“‘Premature and unwarranted,’” he parroted. He moved closer and took my hand. “But I’m a red-blooded guy who’s pretty good at translating body language and I seem to recall you didn’t mind having my hand on your knee earlier this evening between Sturbridge and Natick on the Mass. Pike.”

I said maybe, but that was depression authorizing what appeared to be intimacy. Physical contact didn’t have to be sexual, did it?

“Pretty much,” said Ray.

I confessed that I wasn’t a red-blooded gal. I didn’t know the signs and didn’t seem to be endowed with the hormonal cues that the rest of the population possessed. “Frankly,” I said, “I’m baffled as to why you want to see or drive or sleep with someone who gives nothing back.”

It was then he declared, “It’s so obvious, Alice: I want to spend time with you and make love to you and wake up next to you because I’m crazy about you. And I have been ever since I walked into that examining room and found that the doctor was a woman, no wedding ring on her finger, and with a pretty uncluttered field once I asked around.”

“Whom did you ask?”

“The secretary! She said you weren’t married.”

I said I doubted that very much. Yolanda would never entertain personal questions about me or any other house staff. Even if she wanted to she couldn’t because we’d never discussed anything remotely extra-departmental.

Ray grinned. “I wheedled it out of her. It wasn’t so hard.”

“Was fudge involved?” I asked.

Ray didn’t answer.

“She has a notorious sweet tooth. Everyone teases her about it and bribes her with Godiva truffles.” Everyone but me, that is. Yolanda was overweight, sedentary, and had a family history of Type 2 diabetes.

“So how about a kiss?” he asked.

I waited, shrugged, switched my pocketbook to the opposite shoulder, announcing finally that a kiss would be acceptable. I closed my eyes.

Nothing happened. I heard him step away, and when I opened my eyes he was three respectful paces back, tightening the knot in his tie. “You know what?” he said. “I’m not going to force you. Your expression is like a kid biting into a fish stick when he was expecting a French fry. I have more pride than that.”

I asked, as any good clinician would, “Was it what I said, or the way I said it?”

“What does it matter? I wanted to kiss you, and now I don’t.”

It was excellent psychology: In an instant he was the hurt party and I was the villain.

“Not sixty seconds ago I said I was falling in love with you,” he continued, “and all I get in return is a blank look and the third degree about which secretary said what.”

“Not blank,” I said. “Surprised, or maybe just exhausted. And you’re the one who brought up Yolanda.”

“Either way, it’s not very flattering,” said Ray, “although I don’t expect much from this life anymore. Me, Ray Russo, average ordinary widower without a bachelor’s degree, let alone an MD or a CPA after my name, thinking he can turn the head of Boston’s most eligible doctor.”

I mumbled something to the effect that anything was possible. I’d seen in my own circles a famously obnoxious second-year resident chafe daily against her equally disagreeable chief resident, yet at the Christmas party they announced their engagement.

“Are you saying there’s hope, or are you saying, ‘Let’s be friends, Ray. You and I are from different worlds, and even though this is America, where everyone is allegedly equal, and even though you dress well and drive a cool car and own your own business, I’m looking for a guy who I could take to a doctors’ dinner party and wouldn’t embarrass me or get drunk or talk back to the host.’”

Of course I had to counter with something democratic and egalitarian. I said, “I took you home, didn’t I? And, by the way, I really appreciated your talking back to my father today, which I think demonstrates your high self-esteem as well as your ability to think on your feet.”

“My street smarts, you mean?”

“That, too. Definitely. And your pluck.”

“Gee, thanks. That’s what I want people to think: That guy has pluck.”

“Are you mad?”

“Nope. Not mad. Discouraged, maybe. And still lonely, but don’t you worry. That’s my cross to bear.” He walked to the door and said, barely mounting a wave, “See ya.”

“See ya,” I said.

He opened the door, but hesitated on the threshold. “Good luck with everything, Doc. I hope you have a great life and you get to fix, like, every harelip along the Amazon.”

“I appreciate that,” I said.

LEO’S BEDROOM DOOR was closed. His voice and that of an unidentified female’s could be heard in what sounded like playful conversation. As a courtesy, I knocked on his door and said, “I’m home,” to save all of us the embarrassment of louder noises or their spilling into the hallway in any state of undress.

I should have been thinking of my deceased grandmother as I fell asleep, or agitating over my most recent evaluation, but instead I was puzzling over how I’d thrown cold water on Ray’s torch. Was there a book I could read on the subject: How to Restore a Man You’ve Rejected to His Previous Station as Platonic Friend? On Your Own Terms, Without Leading Him On?

Did I owe Ray an apology? Should I be thinking, Fruit? A gift certificate? A presidential biography on tape?

Leo would know. I’d ask him in the morning.

HE KNOCKED ON my door at 5:45 A.M. “Aren’t you supposed to be across the street in fifteen minutes?” he yelled.

I groaned. I had hit the snooze button twice and fallen back into a deep REM sleep, stuck in a dream filled with cousins and stained glass. “Coffee’s on,” said Leo. “I think if you take three minutes for a shower, two minutes to get dressed, five minutes to eat your cereal, you’ll have another five minutes to cross the street and get up to the floor. If you get your ass in gear this second.”

None of this—reveille or raisin bran—was typical of our arrangement. Immediately I grasped what was happening: He was playing the solicitous and thoughtful roommate because he had an adoring audience.

“Is your guest still here?” I asked. When he didn’t answer I said, “I thought I heard a woman’s voice coming from your room last night.”

I was sitting on the edge of my mattress now, staring dully at my feet. There were specks of mauve polish left on a few toenails, remnants of a summer spruce-up. I probably had some nail-polish remover somewhere. “I’m up,” I called. Then louder, “Leo? You still there?”

“In the kitchen.”

“Alone?”

“She didn’t stay over, if that’s what you mean.”

I put my robe on, a souvenir in thin yellow cotton from a VA rotation, over surgical scrubs and took a seat at the kitchen table. I said, “I think I’ll have that coffee before my shower.” I shook a cupful of flakes into a bowl. “Was it someone nice?” I asked. “Someone new and exciting?”

He shook his head. “Just someone to watch a movie with.”

“Was it a funny movie?”

“In places,” said Leo.

“Because I heard laughter.”

He was at my elbow, holding our phone and dialing a number. He handed me the receiver and said, “Here. It’s ringing. Tell them you came back by train this morning and you’ll get there as fast as you can. Mention the word funeral so they’ll remember it wasn’t a vacation day.”