Learning to Swim (16 page)

Keith took my silence as an affirmation. “Look, Mora and I were friends for a long time. Neither one of us was seeing anyone last summer and, well, things just happened.”

And just like that, I became enraged. Not upset or sad, but enraged. It was completely irrational and I knew I was wrong to feel that way, but I couldn't help it. Which is why I took my anger out on him.

“So what you're telling me is just because you were bored and needed a partner for Parcheesi, you decided to go over and de-virginize Mora?”

His cheek muscles tightened. I had definitely crossed a line with him. “De-virginize?”

“That's what Doris said,” I added with a shrug. I figured if I was going down, I might as well drag one of my friends with me.

“This isn't about Mora, is it?”

“What else would this be about?” My voice was filled with contempt, and I could tell by Keith's stiff posture that he wasn't pleased with me at all.

“I have no idea, Stef. You're not really being forthcoming right now,” he replied tersely.

“Well, how's this for forthcoming? I don't like being poor.”

This was turning into a nightmare. I wanted to press Stop and Rewind, but the remote for my brain was obviously on the fritz.

“What are you talking about?” He was looking at me like I had suddenly started speaking Swahili.

“You said that I was like Alice. That I didn't care about money. Well, that's not true. Money makes the world go round, Keith. You should know. You've got so much of it, you can do whatever you want.”

Keith stared at me. “Okay.”

Okay? That was it? If this was Barbie, I totally would have baited her into a fight by now. But Keith wasn't going to sink to my extremely pathetic level. That didn't stop me from carrying on, though.

“And I don't like bugs either!” There. Take that.

“What are you doing, Stef?” He looked so sad, like I had hurt his feelings
and
attacked his dog with a weed whacker.

“I just…,” I began. Then I sighed. “I don't know.”

Keith stood up. “I don't know either. But whatever it is, I don't like it.”

I couldn't have agreed with him more.

He made his way toward the door. “I thought that once I cleared up this whole Mora thing we'd be fine.”

I couldn't speak. I was still in shock from the fact that we had gone from getting together to breaking up in one day. And it was all my fault.

“Looks like I was wrong,” he said sternly. Then he left without saying goodbye.

Steffie Rogers's advice on how not to get over the loss of a love:

1. Immediately after breaking up, go out for some “fresh air” and end up at the convenience store, where you purchase a six-pack of Jolt cola, a Snickers bar, and a quart of strawberry ice cream.
   

2. Go home and eat the ice cream right out of the container and then realize too late that you've just consumed the entire quart by yourself.
   

3. Wash the ice cream down with that six-pack of Jolt cola.
   

4. Pound your pillow.
   

5. Watch a gross TV show about plastic surgery that is sure to give you nightmares (if only you could sleep), and then eat the Snickers bar.
   

6. Repeatedly check your machine for messages
   even though you've been sitting beside it the whole time (except for the ten minutes it took you to go to the convenience store).
   

7. Pick up the phone to call your ex. Dial his/her number. Hang up before anybody answers. Repeat.
   

8. Go to bed, where you toss and turn and wonder if anyone has ever died from consuming too much caffeine and sugar.
   

9. Go over every single line of dialogue you and your never-had-a-chance-to-be-boyfriend/girlfriend had, just so you can remember exactly how dumb you sounded.
   

10. Remember all the fun times you and he/she had (as well as the fun times you might have had, if you had only possessed enough common sense to keep your mouth shut).
    

The next morning I showed up at Tippecanoe not only miserable but also tired, bloated, and a little bit shaky. But I didn't care. I was anxious to be with Alice. I knew I'd feel better as soon as I told her what had happened.

I had just punched in my time card when the staff room door flew open. My heart lifted a little when I thought it might be Alice, but it sank once I realized it was Doris. And the second I looked at her puffy tear-stained face, I knew she was about to tell me the worst news I'd ever heard in my life.

“Steffie!” Doris cried. “Alice is in the hospital.”

I had just read in the morning edition of the Jones Island paper about how when tragedy struck, people always said, “The day began like any other day…” But today hadn't begun just like any other day—at least, not for me. Therefore, according to the laws of the universe, nothing really horrible should have happened to me.

But it had. I dashed to Warthog's office and told him the news, and surprisingly the jerk let me take a personal day. Doris and I hopped into her car and she began updating me on the situation. I was so upset that I heard only every other sentence. Thelma had taken Alice to the hospital when she complained of being short of breath… Alice was scheduled for heart surgery tomorrow… She hadn't been feeling well for a long time.

Doris veered her car from one side of the road to the other. (Like Alice, Doris was a notoriously bad driver.) “I told her she needed to go to a doctor, but dammit, she was too stubborn. Even after the other night when we were all out to dinner and she got so sick, she refused to go. What did she do instead? She went to Thelma's house! What did she think Thelma would do if her heart stopped beating?”

Everything seemed so surreal, like I was having a really bad dream. Like I would wake up and find that I was sitting in Alice's backyard, with my feet in the baby pool. Alice and I would laugh, and she would pick up her notebook and we would entertain ourselves by
making a list about what our wills would look like if we were worth millions of dollars.

“Why didn't she tell me?” I asked, trying to hold back my tears.

Doris sighed. “She didn't want to worry you, honey. She thought you had enough on your plate.”

And suddenly I felt guilty. Maybe if I hadn't been so caught up in my own ridiculous life I would've noticed that Alice was really sick. Maybe I would've had enough sense to cancel my date with Keith and stay with Alice. Maybe I could've prevented this whole thing.

Doris and I parked the car in the St. Agnes Hospital parking lot and bolted inside. We received our visitor passes, got into the elevator, and went up to the fifth floor. When the doors opened, I took a few steps forward and stopped dead in my tracks. Keith was standing in front of me. I was too out of sorts to really freak out about running into him after our Chernobyl of a date. There were much more important things to be worried about. Still, my fingers went numb at the sight of him and the memory of how amazing his lips had felt against mine.

“Hey,” I mumbled.

“Hi,” he replied.

I noticed his eyes were bloodshot, like he had been crying.

“What are you doing here?” I asked.

“Visiting Alice,” he said as he slipped his sun-glasses on.

“Is she okay?”

Keith gulped a few times, as if he was trying to restrain himself from breaking down. The only thing he did was shrug, and then he stepped inside the elevator, waving meekly as the doors slid shut.

I was on my way to becoming a basket case.

But before I could completely lose it, Doris grabbed my arm and I followed her down the hall, trying really hard to ignore the nauseating frog-in-formaldehyde stench that seemed to permeate all hospitals. I walked into Alice's room and stopped in my tracks. This was not the cheerful, light-filled space depicted on
General Hospital.
Medical equipment was everywhere, and the room, with its gray tiled floor and dingy white walls, looked as dismal as a scene from one of Alice's old black-and-white movies.

“Steffie,” Alice said with a smile, pushing herself up in bed. Thelma, who was sitting in a chair beside Alice's bed, reading an old edition of
Glamour
, gave me a little wave before focusing back on her magazine.

Until then I had done a good job of holding it together. There had been no crying jags or dramatic proclamations like “What if she doesn't make it?” or “I'll never have a better friend!” But when I saw tough little Alice wearing that hideous blue hospital gown, and lying in that bed with an IV running into her arm,
and hooked up to a bleeping heart monitor, I could feel myself start to break down at the thought of losing her forever or even for just a day.

“Don't cry, honey.” Alice was the picture of calm. She held out her hand. “I'm going to be okay, really.”

I took her hand in mine. “So, what happened? Did you have a heart attack?”

“No, no,” Alice said dismissively. “Nothing like that. It's just that my heart valve isn't working properly…”

“Mitral valve prolapse,” Doris said authoritatively.

Alice rolled her eyes and smiled at me. “They're going to fix my mitral valve.”

“How do they do that?” I asked.

“Well, they stop your heart, take it right out of you, and fix it,” said Doris, making an X over her heart.

The image of an Inca warrior holding a still-beating heart above his head popped into my mind and I wanted to throw up. “How do you breathe if they take it out?” I was no science whiz, but didn't the heart have to pump oxygen through the blood or something?

“They've got machines for everything, Stef,” Alice said. There was no nervous lilt to her voice or anything. “They're going to pump blood mechanically for a while.”

Thelma looked up from her magazine. “What if there's a power outage?”

“For Pete's sake, Thelma. What kind of question is that?” Doris snapped.

Alice sighed and raised her hand, as if signaling
for silence. “They have a nurse riding a stationary bike in the basement that's attached to a generator. Happy now?”

This was one of the funniest things I'd ever heard. I'd always looked up to Alice, but right then, my admiration for her was at world-record-setting levels. She found the humor in everything, and at the same time, she managed to handle every crisis with such dignity and grace. I was so thankful to know her and grateful to have her as my best friend.

“So you're having surgery tomorrow?” I croaked.

Alice looked over at her IV and began fiddling with it. “Actually, they decided to do it this afternoon.”

“This afternoon!” Doris and Thelma exclaimed in unison, equally horrified.

“Can I talk to Steffie alone for a minute?” Alice asked them.

They both wiped their eyes and left the room quietly.

“They took that well,” she said. “Don't you think?”

I smiled as I sat down next to her. “I wish you'd told me you were sick. I could've helped you.”

“Oh, Stef, that's all you needed—someone else to take care of. Besides, there's nothing you could've done.” She grinned and squeezed my hand. “Anyway, I wanted to talk with you about Keith. He was just here,” she said.

“I know,” I said softly. “I saw him.”

“He's such a sweet young man,” Alice added.

“Yeah,” I said, and then I paused. “Did he come here just to see you?”

I didn't mean it to come out sounding like it did, which was,
Why in the world would Keith come here to see you, of all people?

But Alice just laughed. “Thelma brought me to the hospital last night, and she phoned Keith and asked him to bring over some of my medications because she didn't want to leave me. He came right over and then he dropped in again this morning.”

Her explanation wasn't really that helpful. I was more curious as to
why
he'd taken the trouble to come to the hospital to see my best friend. Naturally, I didn't have to explain any of that to Alice because, as usual, she could read my mind.

“Keith will always be special to me too,” she said. “I loved his mother—bless her heart—and I used to babysit for him when he was a little boy. After she died, well, I spent a lot of time with him. Then when his father started dating again, Keith went through a really hard time. He needed someone to talk to.”

“And you were that person?” I asked.

She nodded.

I had to admit that the news that she and Keith were old friends was a total shocker. What other surprises
was she going to spring on me? That Keith and I were siblings, separated at birth? Then it dawned on me.

“Wait a minute. Did you ask Keith to give me swimming lessons?”

She started fake coughing and pressing her call button. “Wow, I think I need to see the nurse.”

I let go of her hand and crossed my arms in front of my chest. “Knock it off, Alice. Tell me the truth.”

She sighed deeply. “Yes, I did. But I was worried about you. And that near-drowning incident really scared the crap out of me.”

Everything suddenly fell into place. After all, I had wondered how someone like me (a pear girl who toted a plunger around) had caught his eye.

“No, Steffie,” Alice said firmly. “Stop right there.”

I wandered over to the window and peered outside. Jones Island seemed so tiny from up here.

“I know what you're thinking. I might have suggested the swimming lessons, but I most definitely did not suggest anything else. I can't say I was surprised to find out that he had become so fond of you. I knew that once he got close to you, well, he'd love you as much as I do.”

Love?
Had she just said
love
?

“He did mention one terrible mistake he made,” Alice said coyly.

My mind flashed back to last night when I'd gone all
looney on him for having an ex-girlfriend. I knew exactly what he was referring to. “Let me guess. Going on a date with me?”

Alice chuckled. “You really are dense sometimes.”

“What?” This was really not a great time for Alice to be laughing at me.

“He said Mora was the mistake. If it wasn't for her, he would have found you sooner.”

Unfortunately, this information made me feel even worse. On top of not noticing that Alice had been sick, I had also overreacted the previous night. I was just so certain that my relationship with Keith would turn out the same way my mother's always did: with me being left alone and devastated when he returned to his girlfriend.