The Pursuit of Alice Thrift (3 page)

“All the time. It's a pyramid system. They start with seven, and prune every year.”

He sighed. Even Leo couldn't put a positive spin on my prospects.

I walked over to the counter and came back with the coffeepot. “Let's just say my answer to that question had been ‘personal' instead of ‘professional.' Would you have some insights? Have you noticed me doing anything egregious during social exchanges?”

Leo upended the sugar dispenser and let several teaspoonfuls pour into his cup.

“Be honest,” I said.

He squirmed in his chair, closed one eye. “If you put a gun to my head, I'd probably say that at times you remind me of my sister-in-law Sheila.”

Leo had twelve siblings, so there was always a family member he could cite as a role model or bad apple. “I hasten to add that Sheila is probably the smartest of any of my brothers' wives.”

“But?”

“But she's not the person I'd marry if I had my eye on the governor's mansion.”

I said, “Massachusetts doesn't have a governor's mansion.”

Leo closed his eyes, exhaled as if exasperated.

“Is your brother running for something?” I asked.

Leo shook his head.

I said, “I ran for office once, in high school, but I lost. I would have been perfect for the position of class secretary because I'd taken shorthand one summer and would have been able to take the best notes of anyone else, but apparently that mattered very little.”

“Everything in high school is a popularity contest—which can't be a startling revelation to you.”

I tried to remember back to the three straight years I ran, and the three straight years I was trounced by girls who weren't even members of the National Honor Society.

“Don't take this wrong,” said Leo, “and don't answer if you don't want to, but did you date in high school?”

He didn't let me answer. He patted my hand and said, “No matter. What a stupid and shallow question, right? As if you'd even remember.
My
high school social life is certainly a blur.”

He poured himself a second bowl of cereal and filled it to the rim with milk. “The guy who calls here? Is he a friend?”

“I had dinner with him once.”

“And?”

“And he'd like to do it again.”

“Have you called him back?”

I said no.

“No, permanently, or no, not yet?” he asked.

“He's not my type,” I said.

Leo offered no rebuttal, but I knew what he was thinking: How could Alice Thrift, workaholic wallflower, have collected any data or constructed a model on something as theoretical as her type?

4.
We Entertain

THIS IS WHAT WE IMAGINED: NURSES AND SURGICAL RESIDENTS
conversing in civilian garb. RNs impressing MDs with their previously underappreciated level of science and scholarship. Exhausted doctors sipping beer while sympathetic nurses circulated with pinwheel sandwiches. Doctors asking nurses if they could compare schedules and find free Saturday nights in common.

When every nurse accepted our invitation and every resident declined, Leo and I had to scramble to provide something close to even numbers. I volunteered to call my medical school classmates who were interning in Boston—there were two at Children's, some half dozen at MGH, a couple more at Tufts, at BU . . .

“Friends?” he asked.

“Classmates,” I repeated.

I know what was on his mind: my unpopularity. That the words
party
and
Alice Thrift
were oxymoronic, and now Leo was experiencing it firsthand. I said, “Let's face it: I have no marquee value. My name on the invitation doesn't get one single warm body here, especially of the Y-chromosome variety.”

“We're going to work on that,” said Leo.

“On the other hand, since I'm not known as a party thrower, my invitees will expect a very low level of merriment.”

Leo said, “Cut that out. It's not your fault. We're aiming too high. Interns are exhausted. If they have a night off, they want to sleep.”

I said, “That's not true of the average man, from what I've read.”

“And what is that?” Leo asked.

“I've heard that men will go forth into groups of women, even strangers, if they think there's a potential for sexual payoff.”

“What planet are you living on?” Leo asked. “Why do you sound like an anthropologist when we're just bullshitting about how to balance our guest list?”

We were having this conversation in the cafeteria, Leo seated, me standing, since I usually grabbed a sandwich to go. He didn't think I ate properly, so after he'd rattled a chair a few times, I sat down on it.

“If I called my single brothers, not counting Peter,” he said, “and they each brought two friends, that would be six more guys.”

“Is Peter the priest?”

“No, Joseph's the priest. Peter doesn't like women.”

“Okay. Six is a start.”

I unwrapped my cheese sandwich, and squeezed open the spout on my milk carton. “I know someone,” I finally said.

“Eligible?”

I nodded.
So
eligible, I thought, that he was pursuing Alice Thrift. “Not young, though. Forty-five. And widowed.”

“Call him. Forty-five's not bad. Maybe he could bring some friends.”

I said, “Actually, he's the one leaving those messages.”

“He's been crooning Sinatra on the latest ones,” said Leo. “What's that about?”

“Trying to get my attention.” I took a bite of my sandwich.

Leo said, “No lettuce, no ham, no tomato?”

I pointed out that I never knew how long lunch would languish in my pocket before consumption, so this was the safest thing to take away.

Leo paused to consult our list of women. Finally he said, “I see a few of my colleagues who would be very happy with a forty-five -year-old guy. And even more who would pounce on the widower part. How long ago did he lose his wife?”

“A year and a day.” I looked at my watch's date. “As of now, a year and two weeks.”

“Call him. Tell him you and your roommate are putting together a soiree of hardworking primary-care nurses, who—studies have shown—sometimes go out on the town looking for a sexual payoff just like the males of the species.”

I said, “I wasn't born yesterday. I know people have sexual relations on a casual basis.”

Leo studied me for a few seconds, as if there was a social/ epidemiological question he wanted to ask.

I said, “I've had relations, if that's what your retreat into deep thought is about.”

“I see,” said Leo.

“In college. Actually, the summer between my junior and senior years. I was a camp counselor and the boys' camp was across the lake.”

“And was he a counselor, too?”

“An astronomy major at MIT, or so I believed. He knew all the constellations.”

“Sounds romantic,” said Leo.

I said, “Actually not. I had wondered what all the fuss was about, so I decided to experience it for myself.”

“And?”

I swallowed a sip of milk and blotted my mouth. “Not worth the discomfort or the embarrassment or the trip into town for the prophylactics. And to make it worse, he expected follow-up.”

“Meaning?”

“That we'd do it again.”

“What a cad,” said Leo.

“I found out later he wasn't an astronomy major at all, but studying aerospace engineering. And in a fraternity.”

“Did you ever see him again?”

I said no, never.

“So that would be . . . like five years ago?”

I shrugged. After a pause, I wrapped the remains of my sandwich in plastic and put it in my jacket pocket.

“Not that it's any of my business,” said Leo.

I said I had to run. Would catch him later—I had the night off so I'd do some vacuuming.

“Alice?” he called when I was a few paces from him. I returned to the table.

“I want to say, just for the record, as a fellow clinician, that the fuss you've heard about? With respect to relations? The stuff that, according to movies and books, supposedly makes the earth move and the world go round? Well—and I say this as your friend—it does.”

I didn't have an answer; wasn't sure whether his statement was confessional or prescriptive.

“What I'm getting at,” he continued, “is that you might want to give it another shot someday.”

RAY BROUGHT HIS
cousins George and Jerome, two men in leather jackets over sweaters knit in multicolored zigzags. “Missoni,” said Ray when he saw me studying them. He repeated in his introductions to everyone, “Cousins? Absolutely. But like brothers. No, better than brothers—best friends.” Or—whichever suited the race or ethnicity of the nurse he was addressing:
“Paisans.” “Confrères.”
“Homies.”

Not to say he was ignoring me. Quite the opposite. He helped in the manner of a boyfriend of the hostess. He stomped on trash, refilled glasses, wiped up spills, chatted with the friendless, who would have been me but for the refuge offered by a kitchen and hors d'oeuvres–related tasks. Ray may have watched too many situation comedies in which suburban husbands steal time from their guests to peck the cheek of their aproned hostess/wife. I had to say repeatedly, “Why are you doing that?” disengaging him in the exact manner that my mother swatted away my father. It hardly discouraged him; if anything he was inspired to discuss what he perceived as my discomfort with/suspicion of intimacy.

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.”