Now I'll Tell You Everything (Alice) (45 page)

I had not thrown up. I had evidently thrown myself onto the floor, or started to, until a wench caught me when I passed out and, once revived, I begged to be allowed to remain there until the feast was over. The lord of the manor and his children, I instructed, were not to be disturbed.

Later, back in our hotel room, as the kids were enthusiastically recounting the evening, Tyler summed it up in one sentence: “Feast-of-Boar’s-Head-and-Mussels-and-Eating-with-Hands-While-Mom-on-Couch-Turns-Green.”

I recovered soon after, and for our final night in London, we splurged and stayed in a hotel in the heart of the city. Up until now we had been sleeping in two bedrooms, females in one, males in the other, so there wouldn’t be a pileup in the bathroom. But to save money in this expensive hotel, we got a room with two double beds; I slept with Patricia in one, Patrick with Tyler in the other.

After we’d turned out the lights, we were talking about all the trips we’d taken as a family—what we remembered most.

“I remember our trip out west, when we got out of the car at the Grand Canyon and you held on to our shirts because you were afraid we’d fall in,” Patricia said, and they guffawed.

“And you and Dad never told us that our last stop was going to be Disneyland! And every time you talked about it, you called it Frisbee Water. What was that all about?” Tyler demanded.

I laughed. “Because if you guys knew that the last stop on our trip was Disneyland, you would have wanted to rush through everything else, and we didn’t want to spoil the trip listening to, ‘How long before we get there?’  ”

“Oh,” said Patricia. And a minute later, “Remember when we stopped at the Dinosaur National Monument just before dark? And we were about the only ones there? And Dad locked
the keys in the car, and we were afraid we’d have to be there all night, and we didn’t have any water, and—”

“I know, I know, and we didn’t have food, and we were all going to starve to death before they found our bodies in the morning,” Patrick finished.

“And that ranch outside Yellowstone, remember?” Patricia went on, and we started laughing even before she told the story. “You were afraid Tyler might be too little, Mom, so you asked for their most gentle horse, and every time we turned around, Tyler’s horse was just standing there!”

“Dead stop,” said Patrick, and we roared.

I lay there beside Patricia, smiling up into the dark.
Maybe
this
will be the favorite part of this trip for me,
I thought.
Lying here with my family, laughing and sharing memories, knowing that someday this night might be one of the ones they remember and laugh about too.

*  *  *

The next morning Patrick and Tyler packed all the collected beer cans in boxes the concierge had found for us and took them to customs to mail home. Patricia and I used the opportunity for one last stroll around the neighborhood, and as we were admiring a jacket in a shop window, we were assailed by a confused English tourist from some small town wanting directions to Victoria Station. She had her coach tickets and knew her son would be frantic, and somebody had told her to go down to the bridge and turn left, but she was all confused. We finally found a local to explain the directions to her, but the station was still a
long way off. She started out, and we followed her for a bit and saw that she was doing exactly the opposite of everything she’d been told to do. So we chased her down, called a taxi for her, and paid the driver to take her to the station. By then she was in tears of frustration, and I kept thinking that little old woman could well be me in twenty years, every bit as overwhelmed and baffled by London as she was.

“That was a nice thing to do, Mom,” Patricia said.

“Just paying it forward,” I said, and told her about the man who had changed a tire for us when Pamela and Liz and I were on that trip to California years ago.

When Patrick and Tyler came back, Patrick said, “Alice, you should have seen the face of that man at customs. We got out of the cab, carrying all these boxes that weighed hardly anything at all, and he asked what we wanted to declare. When we told him they were empty beer cans, he actually stepped back a little, like we were lunatics.”

We were still laughing as we loaded our bags into a cab for our final journey to the airport. Every day since we’d left, my thoughts had been centered on what we were going to do the next morning in the next city and the next and the next. And then, seated beside Tyler on the plane, clouds appearing and disappearing outside our window, all I could think of was home. There’s a comforting familiarity in the usual buzz of activity and urgency of tasks—the old routines. Two weeks after we returned from London, Patrick was deep in a new project at work; I was sitting in on a support group for
eighth graders, anxious about attending high school in the fall; Patricia was shopping for pants to go with a pair of shoes she’d bought in Soho, and within minutes of Tyler’s boxes arriving from London, his cell phone was ringing like the New York Stock Exchange, and he was trading cans right and left with friends willing to sell not only their souls but their baby brothers for a British beer can.

This is my life, and I like it,
I thought one evening as I checked a lasagna in the oven. The bustle, the humor, the spontaneity, the teasing . . . I smiled as I thought of the name we would give our home, were we to have a sign above our door frame as they had in Wales: “House of Four People in Town of Chevy Chase with Big Hearts and Usual Frailties Living Joyfully the Best They Know How.”

*  *  *

About three months later, Mr. Long died. It wasn’t unexpected, as he’d grown increasingly frail. He died in his sleep, and Patrick took some time off work to arrange the memorial service, the burial. . . .

Patricia and Tyler went about the house soberly and helped out where they could. The obituary in the
Post
gave an extended account of Mr. Long’s years in the State Department—the many overseas assignments and the countries where he had served. The mail brought numerous notes from people who had known Mr. Long in government, but few came to his memorial service, because most of his friends and coworkers had scattered to other parts of the country.

As he had at his mother’s memorial service, Patrick stood up and gave a moving tribute to his dad. He choked up once or twice and had to stop momentarily, but I was glad that Patricia and Tyler could see this depth of feeling in their father, who obviously seemed so strong and capable to them over the years.

Later, when the service was over and friends had come and gone, Patrick and I sat out on the glider on our back porch holding hands. We were watching two sparrows building a nest under the eaves of our toolshed—one flying in and out with a piece of string or straw, then the other taking its place. Soon, just as the sparrows had done last year, there would be nests on both sides of the toolshed, parents teaching their young to fly, until one day they’d be gone and the nest empty.

“I guess it’s just beginning to hit me that I’m an orphan,” Patrick said.

I caressed his hand with my thumb.

“Never really thought of it that way before, but now the realization has struck that if I ever need advice—help, consolation—my parents are gone. Not that I ever really asked their advice once I was grown, but it’s the knowledge that I couldn’t now if I wanted. That if there were ever any questions I wanted to ask them—about their lives, about myself as a child or places we had lived before I was old enough to remember—I’ve lost the chance. Strange . . .”

“I imagine so,” I said.

“I’m glad we had two children,” he said after a bit. “They can lean on each other after we’re gone. Share memories.”

“True.”

“And someday we’ll be the old wise ones,” he said. “Our children will be coming to us for advice.”

“Or not,” I said, and finally saw him smile.

*  *  *

IBM was starting another charitable grant program, this time in some African east coast countries, and once again, Patrick was offered the job as coordinator. But this time he turned it down. With Patricia applying to colleges and Tyler now a freshman in high school, he didn’t want to uproot the family; and, as he admitted to me, all that travel didn’t appeal to him as much as it used to.

Tyler had joined the track team, and he and his dad were still enjoying those five- and ten-mile runs on Sundays. Patricia had enrolled in a number of advanced courses and was showing a remarkable aptitude for science, surprising us both.

So Patrick took a different job within the company and also signed on to head a committee to reelect one of the best congressmen we’d had in our district.

I smiled as I rubbed his feet for him after a long Saturday campaigning door-to-door.

“What’s so funny?” he asked, raising his head off the pillow and looking at me. “My feet stink? I just washed them.”

“No, I’m just thinking that trying to harness your energy is like trying to harness the sea. Just when I think I’ve got you home for a spell, you’re out campaigning.”

“I’m home!” he protested.

“Yes, but your mind is always on the next job or project and the next and the next. I’m not complaining, really. Just observing.”

He wiggled his toes in my hands. “I like to make a difference.”

“I know. That’s what attracted me to you. Last year you headed the food drive at the church and the—”

“You were part of that too.”

“As I said, I’m just observing. And I also observe that someone’s toenails need trimming. Stay put. I’ll get the clippers.”

*  *  *

Patricia was accepted at William & Mary—a college that had turned me down—and we joked a lot about that. She and I were closer now—no doubt because of the cancer scare, but I’d take whatever I could get! It had made us both more aware of our mortality—mine, anyway—and we didn’t want to waste time quarreling with each other.

Once she left for college, she frequently called home, and I loved being there for her—mostly listening, sympathizing, once in a while telling her about an especially hard time for me, like my experience with my first roommate, Amber, and her boyfriend. She thought that story was hilarious and told all her friends.

When she came home to visit, I tried to respect her privacy. I let her sleep in and I didn’t nag her about picking up her things, but I would still invite her to help me out sometimes—make a special supper or bake a cake—something that helped us both
feel she was still a responsible member of our family. Every so often, she’d ask about my health, and lucky for me, the answer was always positive. I was doing well.

Just when I was confident that every member of my family was feeling settled and secure, we discovered that Tyler was in love.

I’d never known how much a boy could suffer. Tyler had always gone out with a group of friends before, never paired off with anyone in particular, and suddenly, in his sophomore year of high school, he had a girlfriend.

It first caught my attention when I noticed him sniffing his armpits one morning before he went to school. Funny, I thought, how Elizabeth and Pamela and I used to do that back in junior high. About the worst thing you could say to a girl, even worse than
What happened to your hair?
was to insinuate she smelled.

The generic deodorant stick in the bathroom was replaced by one with a designer label. Shirts that had been worn only once were tumbling into the clothes hamper at an alarming rate.

“Mom, I have to know,” Tyler said hesitantly one morning before he caught the bus. I braced myself, then had to choke back a laugh when he asked, “Tell me honestly if my breath stinks.”

I looked at the boy with the dark blond hair and brown eyes, who was now several inches taller than I was. It was hard to imagine that I had given birth to those extra-long arms and legs. He approached me—embarrassed but sincere—and blew his breath in my face.

“Crest, with a little bacon on the side,” I told him.

He put his book bag down in disgust and headed for the stairs once more. “I’ll brush again,” he said.

“Tyler! You’re perfectly fine!” I called after him. “She won’t mind a bit.”

But he retorted, “It’ll be like she’s kissing a pig!”

So he’s at the kissing stage now,
I thought, smiling to myself. The year before Patricia had left for college, she’d become very solicitous of her younger brother, giving him advice and buying him shirts she thought he should wear. But she wasn’t here now, and the current heart-stopping event for Tyler was a party being given in the home of a
junior,
to which Tyler and his girlfriend had been invited, because both girls were friends. Tyler’s girlfriend’s brother had offered to drive them over.

For a week Tyler had battled a nervous stomach.

“I just know I’ll do something stupid,” he murmured the night before the party. “I’ll probably get something stuck in my windpipe and have to have someone do the Heimrick maneuver on me.”

“I believe that’s Heimlich,” I said. “Hey! I thought this date was supposed to be
fun
! You’re not going to your execution, you know.” And then I added, “I’m more worried about the brother’s driving.”

“He’s okay,” Tyler said, and we could usually trust his judgment. “Jon’s on the basketball team, and they can’t smoke or drink or anything.”

“Yeah, but how’s his driving?” asked Patrick.

“Got his license ten months ago, and if he even dents their dad’s car, he has to take it to a body shop himself for estimates and pay for repairs,” Tyler told us.

Chalk one up for those parents,
I thought.

“How far away is the party? We’ll need a phone number,” I said.

“Somewhere off Norbeck Road. I’ll give you the name and everything,” Tyler said, and he did.

Patrick and I decided not to set a curfew. We knew how embarrassing it would be if Tyler were the only one of the four, and probably the youngest, who had to be home at a certain time. Frankly, he was more trustworthy than Patricia had been at that age. He was generally open about what he intended to do, and if we ruled against him, he’d argue it out, not sneak around behind our backs. And yes, the parents would be home. The mom was going to make tostados for the crowd, and they’d be playing blackjack and stuff, he told us.