The Pursuit of Alice Thrift (26 page)

“Meanwhile,” Ray continued, “I hear suspicion in his voice. He's being ultracareful. Suddenly it dawns on me: He thinks I'm calling to borrow money!”

“No,” I said. “No one would jump to that conclusion.”

“Are you kidding? When you live in a house like that, people constantly ask you for money. So, without even trying, I've got him on the ropes: He thinks I'm going to hit him up for a loan, but instead I say, ‘I love your daughter very much, sir. I'm calling to ask your permission to propose marriage.' ”

I leaned over and put my head between my knees.

“What's the matter?” Ray asked.

I said, my voice muffled, “Just exhaustion. I didn't sleep last night. It's not a vasovagal.”

“Bear with me,” Ray said. “I'm getting to the best part. Bertieboy repeats my words, dumbfounded: ‘You're calling to ask for Alice's hand in marriage?' I said, ‘Hey! I'm an old-fashioned guy. I didn't want to buy a ring or pop the question until I got your permission.' ”

Ray stopped to soap the washcloth and attack his armpits.

“And? What did my father say?”

“He yelled, ‘Joyce! Pick up the phone!' Your father finally says something like, ‘Mr. Russo, I appreciate your calling, but I wouldn't dare encourage you without knowing Alice's mind. This is a free country. Don't take it personally if Alice says no, because she's always put school and medicine before her social life.'

“And you know what I said? I said, ‘Not this time. In fact, would you like to make a little wager on whether Alice accepts my proposal?'

“ ‘No, I would not,' he says. But I think he knew I was pulling his leg.”

I raised my head. “Why wouldn't they have called me? I checked the machine but there wasn't anything.”

“They did call, but I picked up. I told them they were going to ruin my surprise. That the scene was set—the candles, the ring, the caviar, the deviled eggs. I asked if they'd limit the conversation to matters outside a potential engagement.”

“All of that just rolled off your tongue while your bath was running and while your secret wife was on her way home, wondering when her next date with her husband would be?”

“Secret wife?” he said sharply. “What's that supposed to mean?”

“Me. The lawfully wedded one who now has to live this lie.”

Ray smiled. “I picked up a rotisserie chicken at Star Market. You hungry?”

I said no . . . yes . . . what would I say to my parents when I returned their call?

“You say, ‘Ray proposed last night and I accepted. I've never been so happy. We're thinking of a June wedding.' ”

I stood up, left the bathroom, headed for the kitchen, came back. “Or maybe I'll tell them the truth. Maybe I'll say, ‘We eloped on the Ides of March. Everything Ray has uttered in previous conversations is a sham, but it's only because he regrets not having staged a large church wedding with its accompanying rights, privileges, and lavish presents.' ”

Ray stood up in the tub, slowly—as medically advised—and wrapped a towel around his waist. “No, you will not,” he said.

27.
The Opposing Argument

“I COULD'VE CALLED THIS,” HE SAID, REACHING FOR HIS
overcoat. “You're a little pissed off at me, so I'm going to give you some space to think it over.”

I asked if he could define “it,” because several antecedents were suggesting themselves to me.

“My taking the reins; my setting the scene, i.e., wedding on the horizon versus wedding under our belt.” He kissed me fraternally on the cheek and patted the closer buttock. “You'll change your mind because you'll realize it doesn't take great acting ability to get into it: us two marching down the aisle, cutting the cake, dancing the first dance. Which reminds me: our song.”

I said, “Song? We have no song.”

“We're going to get ourselves one, and the bandleader is going to announce to the wedding guests, ‘Ladies and gentlemen. Put your hands together for Mr. and Mrs. Raymond J. Russo as they take the dance floor for the first time as husband and wife!' ”

I said, “I haven't said yes to any wedding, and I don't like to call attention to myself on a dance floor.”

He had walked to the door as if accepting the expulsion, but now he came back to where I was standing, at the open refrigerator, one hand on the plastic take-out tomb of the chicken. “You know what, Doc? You are one giant wet blanket. The wettest. I make all these plans. I set the ball in motion. I take the reins. And you can't just go along with the smallest white lie because you're so perfect, so in love with the truth. Well, good. You tell your parents anything you want—married, engaged, said yes to Ray, said no—and then you let me know where things stand. Just remember that we're married, and married people are supposed to compromise. Do you think if I went to a dating service I'd pick ‘works round the clock' under potential spousal occupation? No. But I know the meaning of the word
compromise.
I am willing to be on call, at your service. Alice is awake on Saturday night between seven and eight
P.M.
? No problem. I'll be there with my takeout and my ever-ready instrument of pleasure. Did I ever let you down? Did I ever say no once you discovered the bedroom? No, I did
not.
But I guess that's something that polite people don't talk about. Why do you think you agreed to marry me? It wasn't anything you could put a scientific name to. Nothing that'll sound classy in a wedding toast. Because it's plain old animal magnetism.”

I closed the refrigerator door and turned toward him. “I don't see what one thing has to do with another. I'm troubled about your lying, and you're saying, ‘I provided half of the animal magnetism, so do me this favor and go along with a sham wedding'? Explain to me how one relates to the other.”

Ray said, “Don't get me wrong. I enjoyed all of the conjugal stuff.
Especially
after my widowhood and that long layover. No complaints there. Where it gets relevant is that I never said boo to you about our social life. Did we go out to dinner or to parties or go dancing? Did we ever see a movie that wasn't on network television? Or did we just hit the hay because Alice had to be at work at six?”

“Not always,” I said. “Still, I don't see your point. And it hurts my feelings to be called a wet blanket by the one person who never seemed to mind that.”

“You want a point? It's this: You owe me some fun. Some dressing up and going out. A couple of turns on a dance floor and an open bar.”

I said, “Some widowers might consider a big wedding to be in bad taste.”

Ray thought this over. “First, don't get me started on Mary. Because I could hold my second wedding on her
grave
and it wouldn't bother me. Second, I think you're talking about guys who are divorced. They're the ones who have to look over their shoulder before planning a big blowout, because nine times out of ten the ex is going to say, ‘You've got enough cash for a live band and a week in Aruba, but not enough to make your alimony payments?' ”

I had no arguments left in this debate, especially now that he was citing persons who were both imaginary and insolvent. I asked, “Would you like to take half of the chicken with you?”

He looked at his watch. “What if I gave you an hour, hour and a half, and came back at nine? Or whenever. I could be here in five minutes if I just go over to the Shamrock.”

“I'll be asleep. Besides, don't you have Pete to consider?”

“Pete,” he said. “I thought that whole thing over, and I gave him away. What do I need that responsibility for? With my asshole neighbors leaving threatening notes in my mailbox?”

I was going to inquire as to what kind of a home Pete had gone to, but I didn't. It would have provoked a more elaborate and unconvincing story than I had the stomach for.

I ATE A
wing, a thigh, and a drumstick, one eye on the telephone. If I didn't call, Joyce and Bert would have to assume one of two things: that Ray didn't get around to proposing, or that I had turned him down and didn't want to discuss it. Eventually they'd get back to me; as ever, I'd use work as my excuse: too busy, too tired, too professionally downtrodden to take time out for social niceties. If pressed, I would say yes, I accepted his proposal. The love between two people is idiosyncratic, didn't they agree? Ray was good for me. I could see the differences already: I was sleeping less, eating more, purchasing electronics that most people had acquired at an earlier stage in their development. Also, I seemed to be gaining ground in the area of bedside manner, indirectly attributable to Ray's various physical conditions.

I pulled my bed down from the wall. It had been dressed in crisp sheets I'd never seen before, a surprise contribution to my trousseau—white-on-white zigzags that looked like a gala EKG. I lay down, closed my eyes, didn't sleep.

Maybe Ray was not being deceitful in wanting to restage our wedding. Hadn't Princess Grace and Prince Rainier been married in a civil ceremony before the costumed event in a cathedral? Ray had added to his argument that when he made his First-Prize Fudge rounds, a wedding band was an asset. And if sympathetic guy customers upped their orders because they thought Ray Russo had extra mouths to feed, why go out of his way to correct that impression?

I went to the bathroom for a glass of water. “Remind me why I did this,” I said aloud in the mirror. I turned off the light, answering in the dark so I didn't have to see my miserable face. Maybe you
are
autistic. You aborted the very friendship that might have improved the baseline Alice. And Leo? What kind of pitiful self-esteem and rash behavior made you donate your bedroom to a cause he wasn't campaigning for?

Good work, Mrs. Russo, and congratulations. You got what you deserved: a husband.

SHE MIGHT HAVE
greeted me with a sarcastic “Well. Look who's here.” But she didn't. I asked if it was too late or too inconvenient a time to talk.

She opened her door wider to reveal a kitchen table covered with newspapers and something wrinkled and embryonic suspended over a glass with toothpicks. “Have you ever planted an avocado pit?” Sylvie asked.

I said no. I had no horticultural abilities.

“I don't know why I do it,” she said. “It's not that I want an avocado tree or even an avocado plant, but when I make guacamole and I see that the seed's sprouted, I feel compelled to buy potting soil.”

I asked, “How have you been?”

“Furious,” she said.

“At me?”

“That's right, sweetie-pie. One hundred percent at you.”

I backed up a step. “Should I leave?”

“No,” she said. “I've practiced one side of this conversation in my head a dozen times, so now I'd like to hear the opposing argument.”

“Your place or mine?” I asked.

“C'mon in,” she said.

She poured two glasses of red wine and asked me to please not spill any on the couch.

We sat down. I was wearing my old bathrobe over an older nightgown, and had walked across the hall barefoot.

“So,” said Sylvie, her voice still occupying the new range of iciness, “how have you been?”

“Busy. Trying to improve.”

“We're all busy. We all work our asses off, yet some of us manage to find the time to walk across the hall and maintain our friendships.”

I said, “I just walked across the hall, didn't I? Was it all up to me?”

“Look,” she said. “I know you think that I flirted outrageously with Leo and left you flapping in the breeze. That you felt like a third wheel. That you were so mad at me that you couldn't knock on my door and ask, ‘What the fuck were you doing tonight?' ”

I asked her if she really thought I was capable of blunt cross-examination, not to mention confrontation.

She closed her eyes for a few seconds, then opened them. “Not really.”

I asked meekly, “Is it too late to ask what the fuck you were doing that night?”

Sylvie, while frowning into her own lap, looked across to mine. She reached over and touched the gold band. “Is this what I think it is?”

I said, “It seems so.”

She put her wineglass down on her hardly level steamer-trunk coffee table. “No. You couldn't have gotten married. No one gets married while estranged from the very influence who would have counseled her against it.”

I said, “I did. On Friday.”

“I'm afraid to ask . . .”

“Ray,” I said.

Sylvie turned sideways on the couch and tucked both legs under her. “Okay. I'm not hysterical. I'm a rational and scientific person. This requires a detailed account of every word leading up to this shocking news flash.”

“We eloped at Boston City Hall.”

Sylvie shook her head. “I want to know if you were coerced. Were you a participant or an accessory? Or was it like a surprise outing, where he said, ‘Follow me. I can't tell you where we're headed, but dress up and bring your birth certificate'?”

I said, “No, I was a full participant. You have to be. I got a blood test and I signed the papers, and when the city clerk asked me if I was reluctant, I said no.”

“But Alice . . . marriage! That's, like, a giant leap. You're supposed to do that when you've exhausted the field and when you can see yourself having sex with only one person for the rest of your natural life. And—no small matter—that you love that person desperately.”

“Desperately?” I asked. “In what sense?”

“Desperate-good,” she said. “Not desperate-pathetic.”

I said, “Well, I did feel a kind of desperation. I mean . . . it's complicated. It had something to do with his filling the void after we stopped speaking—”

“
We?
You and I? Because I flirted with Leo? Jesus!” She closed her eyes again. “That's not the point anymore, is it? The issue on the table is you marrying Ray for reasons I'm trying to fathom. So, please continue. I won't interrupt unless provoked.”

“I know you don't like Ray that much, but if you—”

“He's an operator! I sensed that the first time I laid eyes on him.”

I said, “Once you get to know him, he's very sweet. And very devoted.”

“Really? How come he always cleared out around midnight and never stayed over?”

I said, “That has nothing to do with devotion. He has a dog—
had
a dog—who couldn't be left alone. Besides, I have to get up at five-thirty, so it isn't fair to him to have to live by my timetable.”

“ ‘
Isn't
fair'? Present tense? Is he still slinking out after he performs his marital duties?”

I said, “That's a harsh thing to say about a person's husband.” I gestured around her studio. “Could you live here with another person?”

Sylvie said quietly, “I honestly think I could. If it was the right person, I'd want to.”

“We need two bedrooms,” I said. “He has a home office. And his apartment is rent-controlled.”

“What about love? Is that a factor here?”

I said, “I do love him.”

“I've loved a lot of guys, but I haven't married one yet.”

“You're different than I am. I'd be a failure at having affairs. I can't even talk to an attending, let alone follow him into a fluoro suite for an assignation. That's a big difference: Five minutes after you met Leo you were able to carry on a successful flirtation. Which I don't mean as criticism.”

“Which we'll get to, believe me. But first you.” She leaned in, nearly eyeball to eyeball. “To recap: Being of sound mind and body, you went through with this marriage. What aren't you telling me?”

“Nothing. It just happened.”

Sylvie said, “But I haven't heard the
why
yet. Something else had to be driving this plunge. Maybe I should look into this; maybe he took out several million dollars in insurance policies on his new bride, naming himself the beneficiary.”

“Wouldn't that require a physical?” I asked.

Sylvie said, “Do you even know yourself what the inducement was? Not to mention the rush?”

I said, “Ray thinks that the main stimulus was animal magnetism.”

“But it's not as if you were saving yourself until marriage, correct? That was several decades ago, when people used to run off and elope because they were dying to do it, and marriage was the only ticket.”

I said, “Correct. I wasn't saving myself.”

“Am I overlooking something obvious here? Like, you're pregnant?”

I said no, I wasn't pregnant. How could someone in a surgical residency, with seven years—

“Shush,” said Sylvie. “I know. You're preaching to the choir here.”

I said, “I wanted to get better. I was searching for a cure.”

She touched my forearm. “Cure?” she whispered. “Is something wrong that you haven't told me? And does Ray know?”

“Ray
does
know. Ray picked up on it the first time we met.”