“Hugging her when she forgets her jacket,” said Gwen.
“Lucky Liz,” I said wistfully.
Gwen looked over. “Patrick’s not coming back before the fall semester starts?”
“I don’t think so. He’s going to Wisconsin with his parents over his break, but I miss him.”
Lester called that evening to see how things were going. Did he have mental telepathy? I wondered.
“How’s the bike trip?” I asked cheerily.
“Fantastic! My legs are already sore, but we took a sweat bath last night and that helped.”
“A sweat bath?”
“Like a sauna. Made a fire, heated up some rocks really well, then put a tent around it and we all sat around these hot rocks. Dirt and sweat just rolled off.”
“Lester, that’s about the grossest thing I ever heard. When guys get together, they do the most disgusting things.”
“Eleven guys and three girls. The girls enjoyed it too.”
I couldn’t imagine any girl I knew enjoying a sweat bath, but then, I don’t know all girls.
“Scenery’s gorgeous, weather’s great, food is good—we’ve got a chef traveling with us. Can’t complain. How’s it going there?”
I told him about Mr. Watts coming in our apartment in the middle of the night, looking for pineapple upside-down cake, and he laughed.
“You dangle something sweet in front of that guy, he’ll do most anything. Just keep him away from doughnuts. He’s addicted to doughnuts.”
“Uh … too late,” I said, and realized I can’t keep anything from Les. Before I knew it, I’d told him about the party, just so he wouldn’t hear it from anyone else.
I heard him sigh. “Al, tell me this: Do you think I can go the rest of the bike trip without worrying about what’s happening there?”
“Absolutely,” I said. “If we have any more trouble, I’ll call Dad.” And then, to change the subject, I said, “By the way, a woman’s called here twice.”
“About a job?”
“Uh … no.”
“Who was it? She say what she wanted?”
“She wouldn’t give her name. She just wanted to talk to you. I told her you were in Utah for ten days, but I don’t think she believed I was your sister.”
“And she didn’t say anything else?”
“She said she met you in a bar a couple of nights ago—that you were really nice to her and told her she could call you.”
“What bar? What night? I haven’t been in a bar for a month! I’ve been working on my thesis and getting ready for this trip.”
I was relieved to hear it, but puzzled. “If she calls again, should I try to get her name and phone number, say you’ll call her?”
Lester seemed to be thinking it over. “Get her name and phone number, but don’t promise anything.”
He talked a little more about the bike trip—how George had fallen off his bike and might have a bump on his head at his wedding. Finally he signed off, and I clicked END on my cell phone.
“Les says he has no idea who the woman is who’s calling,” I told the others.
“Anyone who believes that will buy the Brooklyn Bridge,” said Pamela.
“I believe him,” said Liz.
“Then how did she get his name? How’d she get his number? Hey, a guy has to defend himself,” said Pam. “This is Lester’s life, and we’re not supposed to pry, right? What else could he tell us?”
When I went to the Melody Inn on Monday, Dad said he was closing up for two hours at noon so we could have a farewell party for David, even though he’d be working two more weeks while Marilyn took a vacation. We were sort of celebrating something else, too: Marilyn was pregnant! She was so happy about it, she seemed to be giving off sparks.
“Are you going to be a full-time mom after the baby comes?” I asked her.
“I’m hoping to keep my job, if Ben will have me,” Marilyn said, looking across the table at Dad. “He’s giving me three months of maternity leave, and after that, my mom’s going to take care of the baby during the day. Jack will take over a lot of the time, because most of his gigs are in the evening. We’ll just have to play it by ear and see what works.”
Dad’s going-away gift to David was a book of sacred solos for the baritone voice. I could tell that David was pleased. He thumbed through it, exclaiming over a few of the titles, humming some of the others. “I’ll be joining the choir at Georgetown,” he said. “That’s something I really look forward to doing.”
I looked from him to Marilyn. “You two are going off in such different directions. Momhood and priesthood.”
“There wouldn’t be any priests if there weren’t any mothers,” said David, taking a big bite of custard pie.
“You’re going to miss me, David,” I said. “Who else will keep poking her nose into your business?”
“Oh, you’ll find someone else to torment,” he joked. “But where will I ever find another person who asks whether a girl slept in my tent on a camping trip?” We laughed.
“Well, now that you’re giving up girlfriends, I guess nobody would even think to ask,” I said.
I dropped Dad off at home after we’d closed up shop that day, and when I got to Lester’s apartment, I picked up the mail and brought it upstairs. A note from Gwen said that she was stopping at the store and would be back by seven, that Liz had called and would be eating with her family, back by eight. Pamela was in the shower.
I could hear Mr. Watts’s aide bidding him good night out on the back porch, and I sat at the kitchen table sorting the mail between Les and Paul and George—bills, advertisements, sports magazines.
A blue envelope slipped out of a circular when I picked it up. It was addressed to Mr. Lester McKinley, and down in the left-hand corner, underlined, was the word Personal. I looked up in the top corner to see who it was from: Crystal Carey, it read.
That was her married name. It used to be Harkins. And she used to be Lester’s girlfriend.
17
The Unthinkable
A woman who’d said she’d met Les in a bar had called twice, and Les’s old girlfriend—a serious girlfriend who had wanted to marry him, a married girlfriend—was writing him letters and marking them Personal.
Maybe I didn’t know my brother as well as I’d thought. Maybe Pamela was right when she said he was the sort who would “love ’em and leave ’em.” I wouldn’t open the letter, of course, but if Les called again, I was going to ask him about it. I didn’t care if it did ruin his vacation.
I put Paul’s mail on the desk in his bedroom. Same with George’s. I put all Lester’s mail on his desk, but tucked the blue envelope beneath a gray sweater in the bottom drawer of his dresser so Pam wouldn’t see it.
In fact, the only problem we had with Pamela now was that she ate her lunch and snacks in the living room and left her dishes where they were.
“Pamela, is this your cereal bowl?” Gwen would call. “It’s got crud ossifying on it.”
“Just fill it with water,” Pamela would call, her feet on the coffee table, remote control in hand.
“Why don’t you do it yourself? C’mon, girl, you’ve got three days’ worth of dishes all around the place,” Gwen would say.
Gwen, on the other hand, irritated us by leaving her shoes where she kicked them off, and if we went from one room to another in the dark, we’d stumble over them.
My worst fault, according to the others, was taking too long in the bathroom.
“Alice, could you possibly dry your hair in the bedroom?” Liz would call.
And Liz, in turn, was scolded for taking a fresh glass each time she wanted a drink, so that she could use four or five different glasses in the course of a day and the cupboard would soon be empty. Ten days at Lester’s apartment was a preview, I guess, of what we could expect when we had apartments and roommates of our own someday.
I was still wondering about Lester as I set the table that evening. Did I really expect him to tell me what was
going on between him and Crystal? And what about that woman who’d called?
“Something wrong?” Gwen asked me at dinner. Pamela had brought home some Chinese cashew chicken, and we were dutifully eating the broccoli in the fridge.
“Just … life,” I said. “Half the time I don’t even know what’s going on and the other half I don’t understand.”
“Well, I had a good day,” Gwen said. “Guess who showed up and took me to lunch?”
“Would his name start with an ‘A’?” asked Pamela.
Gwen smiled. “Yeah. He’s just a thoroughly nice guy, you know? Just a guy friend. Just buddies. I like that.”
And Pamela, for once, didn’t argue.
Liz came in a little before eight with a dessert her mom had made for us. We were still sitting at the table an hour later, talking, watching the clock to make sure we checked in on Mr. Watts, when there was a knock at the apartment door.
“If it’s Mr. Watts wanting doughnuts, the answer’s no,” I said as Liz got up. “Tell him they’re gone. He shouldn’t be climbing those stairs anyway.”
We couldn’t see the door from where we were sitting, but we heard Liz say, “Hello?”
A woman’s voice asked, “Who are you? Alice or Pamela?”
“I’m Elizabeth,” said Liz.
“What is this?” the woman said. “Lester have a harem or something? The man downstairs said this is Lester’s apartment.”
“Omigod!” I said to Gwen and Pamela. “It’s her!” I scrambled from my chair and called, “I’ll handle it, Liz.” I padded barefoot to the door.
A woman of about twenty-five or so—maybe older—with dyed hair and too much makeup stood there on the outside stairway staring first at Liz, then at me.
“I’m Alice, Lester’s sister,” I said, and felt a little sorry for her, she looked so confused. “Would you like to come in?”
“I’d like to talk with Lester, if possible,” she said.
“He’s in Utah,” I said, “but please come in. My friends and I are house-sitting for Les and his roommates.”
“Are his roommates female too?” she asked, looking around uncertainly as she stepped inside.
“No. Two guys.” I led her to the living room and took some magazines off the couch so she could sit down. Liz went back to the kitchen.
“I can’t figure out if this is a joke or what,” the woman said.
“I’d sort of like to know that myself,” I told her. “When did you meet Lester?”
“Last week.” She sat a little too stiffly, hands on her bag. The cherry red polish on her fingernails was chipped. She was wearing sandals, jeans, and a jersey top. “Tuesday, I think it was. Les was there with a couple other guys.”
Paul and George? I wondered. Had he lied to me?
“They invited me to their table, and we really hit it off. All three of them, actually—the short one and the tall one too—but I liked Lester the most. And he was flirting back. As they were leaving, I asked him if he was planning to come back to Henry’s. Y’know, maybe we could have a drink or something. He said sure, that I could call him anytime. But he didn’t give me his phone number. All I knew was that he lived in Takoma Park, and I found his name in the phone book.”
It had to be Les.
“Where is Henry’s?” I asked.
“Fourteenth and K, somewhere around there.” She glanced at the bookcases along one wall. “This where they live, huh?”
“Yeah. For a couple of years now. He’s a graduate student at the University of Maryland.”
“Yeah, that’s what one of the guys said. That he went to the U. I just had one year of college, but I went to secretarial school. I work at Verizon.”
She was looking over at a photo of Les and Paul and George on one of their ski trips. “Is that Lester?” she asked, and fished in her bag for a pair of glasses.
“Yes.” I went over to the bookshelf and brought the photo back. She held it in both hands.
“Well, I don’t see him,” she said.
I looked at her, then at the photo, and pointed him out. “That’s Lester,” I said. “That one’s George and there’s Paul.”
She stared some more and shook her head. “This isn’t any of them. None of these guys is Lester.” And suddenly she teared up. “It was all a big joke, wasn’t it? I wondered why Lester didn’t give me his number. Just a bunch of shitheads goofing off.”
That was it exactly, and I felt so bad for her. “I’m really sorry,” I said. “When Les called home the other night, I told him about your call, and he said he hadn’t been in a bar for at least a month, certainly not in the last week.”
“Well, I was stupid to fall for it. To have called in the first place, and now I was a fool for coming out here. He seemed so sincere, and it was all a big act.”
“Don’t feel too bad,” I said. “You ought to hear what happened to us the other night.” And I told her about how we heard footsteps and locked ourselves in the bathroom without a cell phone. She didn’t laugh, but at least she smiled at me before she left. And she never did give me her name.
After the door closed, I went out to the kitchen and sat with the others. I knew they’d heard everything we’d said.
“I hope I’m never that gullible,” said Liz.
“I hope I’m never that stupid,” said Pam.
“I hope I’m never that desperate,” said Gwen.
“I hope I never meet up with the guys who played that trick on her,” I told them. “But Les will be glad to know he’s off the hook.”
He called again that night to say that for the next few days they’d be in a no-service area, so this was his final check for a while. Had I managed to get through the day without the police coming by? Yes, I said, but then I told him about the woman who came over, and he was as angry at the guys who did it as he was sorry for her, whoever she was.
“Any idea who would do that, Les?” I asked.
“There are a couple of slimeballs who might pull something like that, but I wouldn’t call them friends,” he said.
For a minute I thought I wouldn’t have a chance to tell him about Crystal’s letter because Liz was in the room with me, but then she went out to the kitchen to help Gwen look for microwave popcorn.
“Les, I was sorting through the mail today and you got a letter from Crystal. Crystal Carey,” I added, just to emphasize the fact that she was married. “It was marked ‘Personal’ on the front. I put it in the bottom drawer of your dresser. I wanted you to know where it was.”
There was complete silence from the other end of the line.
“Did she … did you open it?” he asked.
“Of course not. But I couldn’t help wondering why … Well, she’s married now—”
“Yes, I know. Look, Al. I want you to take a pen and, in bold letters, write ‘Return to Sender’ on the front.”
“What?”
“‘Return to Sender’ over my address. Then mail it.”
“You’re not even going to read it?”
“No. I read the last one and wished I hadn’t.”
“Then it’s … not the first one she’s sent.”
“No, the second, and I should have sent the first one back too. I’m not going into details, but Crystal’s a woman who always wants what she can’t have. And whatever problems she’s having—with her marriage or with herself—she should be talking them over with Peter, not with me.”
“‘Return to Sender.’ Got it. And, Les,” I told him, “we’re having a fabulous time.”
The rest of the week was uneventful, as I’d predicted. Austin called Gwen once or twice, and Keeno came over a few nights to see Liz. Each time she went out and sat with him in his car.
We cleaned the apartment on Saturday for Lester’s return the next day. Liz made a batch of brownies for the guys to find when they came home. We’d scrubbed the bathroom and kitchen and were waiting for the floors to dry. Gwen and Pam and Liz had taken their iced tea out on the side steps ove
rlooking the street, and I was about to follow when the apartment phone rang.
I answered. “Hello?”
A pause. Not again! I thought.
“Hello? Is someone there?” I said.
Another pause. Finally a woman’s voice said, “Alice? Is this Alice? This is Crystal.”
Omigod!
“Crystal!” I said. “How are you?”
“I’m okay,” she answered, but she sounded distant. “What are you doing at Lester’s?”
I knew right away that when I told her we were staying here for the week, she’d know it was me who returned her letter. “Lester’s in Utah on a bike trip, and I’m here apartment-sitting with some friends,” I said.
“Oh! Well, I don’t know if that explains things or not,” she said.
“Explain?” But I knew exactly what she meant.
“The letter, Alice. Did you return my letter?”
“I was following Lester’s instructions, Crystal. When he called home, I told him what mail had come, and he asked me to return your letter.”
“He … didn’t even want to read it first?” she asked.
I shook my head, then realized I had to respond. “No. I asked the same question, but he said he should have returned the first one too.” Oops.
There was a pause, so long I thought maybe she’d quietly put down the phone, but then she asked “Did you read it?”
“Of course not!”
She sighed. “Well, I never thought he’d just send it back. I don’t have anyone else to talk to.”
I knew I shouldn’t get involved, but I took a chance. “You have Peter.”
“Is that what Les said?”
“Actually, yes.”
“What else did he say?”
I could feel my pulse throbbing in my temples. Did I dare? This was so not my business, but I wanted to help Lester out.
“He said … whatever problems you’re having … with your marriage or with yourself … you should be talking them over with Peter, not with him.”
“Look, can I ask you something? Does Les have a girlfriend? Is this why he won’t talk to me? I could always talk more easily with Les than anyone else.”
“I don’t know, Crystal. He doesn’t tell me the details of his private life. But I think I know him well enough that if he sends your letters back, he means it.”