“You’re always putting yourself down when it comes to Patrick,” she said. “It’s always, ‘He’s brilliant. He’s motivated. He’s persistent. He’s original,’ and what are you? A doorknob? There are all kinds of smarts, you know. Why do you suppose he likes you?”
“Opposites attract?”
“He likes you because you’re real. Maybe you help keep him grounded. Ever think of that?”
“No, because we’re never around each other long enough for me to have that effect,” I said. “But I am excited about seeing him. I can’t believe Dad’s letting me go. I can’t believe I pulled this off.”
“You haven’t yet. You still have to talk to Patrick,” she said.
It’s exciting thinking about visiting your boyfriend at college. Well, kind of my boyfriend. I’m more serious about Patrick than I’ve ever been about anyone else, but I’m here, he’s there, and most long-distance things don’t work out. Still …
A lot of things raced through my mind, the first being privacy. A dorm. A room. A night. Two nights? I mean, I was inviting myself. It’s not as though he had asked me to come and said he had the whole weekend planned.
Carol was getting married on a Saturday, and Dad said we could stay over till Monday. We couldn’t stay longer than that.
I began to feel as nervous as I’d been last spring when I’d called Scott Lynch to invite him to the Sadie Hawkins Day dance. What if Patrick said, Hey, great, Al! Where’re you staying? And then I’d have to rent a hotel room or go back and forth from one side of Chicago to the other.
Maybe I shouldn’t even tell him I was coming, I thought, so as not to make a big deal out of it. Maybe I should just stuff some things in a tote bag, take a bus or the El to the South Side, look up his address, and walk in.
I liked imagining that. Liked thinking about the look on his face. His smile. Patrick jumping up and hugging me in front of his roomie. I also imagined his not being there and my carrying the tote bag all the way back to Aunt Sally’s.
I drank a glass of water and went back in my room, closed the door, and called Patrick’s cell phone number.
It rang six times, and I expected to get a message that he was out, but then I heard his voice, faint-sounding, with lots of background noise.
“Hey!” he said. “Alice?”
“Hi, Patrick. Is this a bad time?”
“I can barely hear you,” he said. “I’m at a White Sox game.”
“Oh, wow! Listen, I’ll call tomorrow,” I said.
“No, it’s okay. What’s up?”
I raised my voice. “I just wanted to tell you that Dad says I can visit you … for a couple days, maybe … after Carol’s wedding on July eleventh.”
“When? Sorry, the crowd’s noisy. Bases are loaded.”
“July eleventh?” I said loudly.
“Seventh?”
“No. The eleventh!” I was practically shouting. “I could come see you on the twelfth.”
“Sounds good! I’ll have to check!” he shouted back. “I’ll figure out something. Call you later this week, okay?”
“All right,” I said. “Later, then.”
I ended the call and sat on the edge of my bed, clutching my cell phone. My heart was pounding. What exactly had I agreed to? Only visit him, right? And Patrick had said, “I’ll figure out something,” so the next step was up to him.
But I had to be honest. I wanted to stay with him. All night.
2
Company
Dad and Sylvia were able to get tickets to an off-Broadway show the following Friday, so they decided to go to New York sooner than they’d planned.
I didn’t say a word about having the house to myself for that weekend. Each time I sat down to dinner, I expected Sylvia to tell me that one of her friends was going to stay with me to “keep an eye on the house” or Dad to say that he’d talked to Elizabeth’s mom, and she’d invited me to stay over there. Nothing. Dad busied himself checking hotel rates on the Internet, and Sylvia scoured their closets, deciding what they should wear.
I began to worry that the doorbell would ring and Aunt Sally would come in, all the way from Chicago. And when Friday came and there were still no instructions from Dad or Sylvia, I wondered if they knew what they were doing. They’d never left me alone overnight in the house before.
What if I threw a big party? What if a bunch of kids crashed it? What if I forgot to lock the door and someone broke in? Or I left something on the stove and burned the place down? What if I was kidnapped? Didn’t they care?
Evidently not, because they were packing when I left for the Melody Inn that morning, and all they said was that there was food in the fridge and good-bye.
Maybe I was more mature than I’d thought. I mean, maybe they thought I was more mature than I am! Whatever, I started a mental list of girls I wanted to invite over. A sleepover, of course. But then I thought, Hey! What about guys? Forget the sleepover and throw a spaghetti party, maybe. Tell everyone to bring either salad or drinks. Play music. Dance. Talk. Invite some of the guys from stage crew.
We were really busy at the store that day. The clarinet instructor was sick, and Marilyn, the assistant manager, was trying to find a substitute. David, our clerk, had to leave early for a dental appointment, and of course I had the Gift Shoppe to handle alone.
I’d never been so glad for closing time, and as I drove home, I set my mind on the party I was going to have the following night. This was even better than I’d thought. Not only did I have the house to myself, I had Dad’s car. I could go anywhere I wanted—to Bethesda! Baltimore, even! So this was what it felt like to be single and on my own. I looked at the gas gauge. Well, if I had the money, that is.
When I pulled in our driveway, I was mentally counting the number of guys who might come, and as I crossed the porch, I counted the number of girls.
I opened the front door, then stopped. There was a noise from upstairs. Then two soft footsteps. I turned quickly to see if Sylvia’s car was out front, if she hadn’t driven it to the Metro as they’d planned and they’d canceled their trip to New York. The curb was vacant. Only a couple of neighbors’ cars lined the street.
I took another step inside and stopped again, listening for the slightest sound. No sign of a forced entry. Then a floorboard squeaked somewhere over my head. Somebody was definitely up there.
“Aunt Sally?” I called hesitantly.
Suddenly there were rapid footsteps, and then two feet appeared at the top of the stairs. I turned to run, my hand on the screen, when I heard Les say, “Hey! What’s up?”
“Lester!” I screamed. “Where’s your car?”
He stopped halfway down. “You only love me for my car?”
“I didn’t know you were here! You scared me half to death!”
“It’s getting a brake job. George drove me over,” Les explained.
I let my shoulders drop and began to breathe normally again. “No one told me you were coming. I thought the place was being robbed.”
“Sorry. Just dropping my stuff in my old bedroom,” he said.
“Are you here for the whole weekend?” I asked, unable to disguise the disappointment in my voice.
“Till Sunday afternoon. Didn’t they tell you? I did used to live here, you know.”
“Did Dad ask you to babysit me?”
“No, he asked me to make sure you didn’t invite a hundred kids over, get stoned, and have wild sex in the bedrooms,” Les said.
“What?”
He laughed. “Relax! We’ll make Kraft dinner! We’ll watch Sesame Street! We’ll play old maid!”
I sprawled onto a chair. “Why didn’t they tell me you’d be here?”
“I don’t know.” Les sat down on the couch and thumbed through a magazine. “What difference would it make? Who’d you invite that you have to cancel?”
I hoped he couldn’t read my expression. “Nobody.” And then I added, “Yet.”
He shrugged and turned a page. “No one said
you couldn’t invite a few friends over.”
I sighed. “What if I don’t want to invite anyone over? What if I want to go someplace myself?”
“Depends.”
“You mean I have to run my life by you?”
“Hey, you can go anywhere you want as long as I approve.”
“Forget it,” I said.
“Lighten up,” Lester said. “C’mon, Al. Let’s make dinner.”
It was sort of nice to set the table for two, grate the cheese, and listen to Lester’s take on things.
“What are you going to do after George gets married and moves out?” I asked when he crowed some more about the mountain bike trip he’d be taking.
“We’ll have to get someone else,” he said. “We’ve still got utility bills to pay, car payments, gas… . We’ll get the word out when it’s time, but we’re picky.”
“How picky?”
“Has to be a nonsmoking grad student who picks up after himself.”
I almost fell over. “I can’t believe I’m hearing this from you.”
“Hey, once you’ve lived through piles of dirty laundry and rotting food in the sink, your standards go up a notch or two.”
“But how do you ever know for sure how someone will turn out?” I asked.
“You don’t. You just look for clues, listen for vibes, take a chance.”
We sat down. Les opened a beer and I poured myself a glass of iced tea. We hadn’t fixed anything but tacos—a big platter of them in the middle of the table.
“My kind of meal,” Les said.
“I guess you never know anything for certain, except math,” I said.
“Not even that,” said Les.
“But don’t guys have an easier time making decisions than girls?”
“About what?”
“About anything. Like …” My mind was racing on ahead of me. “Well, when they go out with someone, do they decide in advance how far they’ll go, or do they just let it happen?”
Les grinned. “I don’t know any guy who puts the details in his daily planner.”
I’d made an opening in a conversation I didn’t know we were going to have, and I wondered if I’d ever have the chance again. Just Les and me at the table together. I didn’t even have to look at him. I made a pretense of picking up all the little bits of meat and cheese and stuffing them back in the taco shell as I continued: “I mean, I think most girls would admit that even though they’re curious, even though they want it, they’re scared half out of their minds when they have sex for the first time. Are guys?”
“Is this a general question?”
“Of course.”
“More nervous than scared, I’d say. The guy’s the one who has to perform.” Les paused, and I could tell he was looking at me even though my eyes were still on my plate. “Any particular reason you’re asking? Nothing to do with a particular city and visiting a particular friend in July?”
“Just curious, that’s all,” I told him.
“Right,” said Lester.
None of my friends had any great ideas about what to do that evening, so we just said we’d get together on Saturday. Now that Les and I had finished dinner, I sort of liked the idea of staying home with him, even though I was sure he’d rather be with somebody else. I figured this was payback time for all the meals he’d mooched off Sylvia, all the times he’d borrowed Dad’s car.
Since he’d made the tacos, I did the dishes while he watched the news, and then we took some ice cream out on the back porch and sat together on the glider.
“Just like old married people, huh?” I joked. He grunted. “Do you think you’ll ever get married, Les?”
“Oh, maybe when I’m thirty-five,” he said.
“That’s years off!”
“I know. Lucky me.”
I pushed my feet against the floor, and the glider moved back and forth. “When you think about it, though, it’s sort of scary, isn’t it? I mean, spending your whole life with one person?”
“Yep. No guarantees.”
“How do you suppose people do it? The ones who stay together?”
“Well, back when I was dating Tracy—when I thought she was the one—I knew that when I took my vows, I’d have to be as committed to the marriage as I was to Tracy.”
“Meaning what, exactly?”
“That I’d need to protect the marriage from anything that might harm it, just as I’d protect her.”
“You know who you sound like? David Reilly. At work. The guy who gave up his girlfriend to become a priest. Can you imagine doing that?”
“No, but I’m not David.”
“He’s giving up romance and sex and everything for God. And he’s happy! But his girlfriend’s not.”
“I wouldn’t think so.”
We rocked back and forth, the squeak of the glider competing with crickets.
“Do you think a lot about God, Les? I mean, is religion something that ever crosses your mind?”
“You can’t major in philosophy without thinking about religion, Al.”
“I thought philosophy was a bunch of old men sitting around discussing how many angels could dance on the head of a pin. Give me an interesting philosophical question, then. And I’m not interested in angels.”
“A religious philosophical question? Let’s see. Here’s one: If you consider all the suffering in the world, is God all-powerful but evil? Or compassionate but not all-powerful?”
“And the answer is … ?”
“Oh, that’s up to you. Philosophy provides the questions, not necessarily the answers. It just gives you different ways to think about them.”
“Well, that sucks,” I said.
Les laughed. “Some people would say that’s great—you get to discover the answers for yourself. Others say it’s awful, because they want somebody else to make the decisions.”
“Which are you, Lester?”
“I like to question. Which are you?”
I stared out over the backyard. A firefly flickered somewhere above the tiger lilies. Then another. “I don’t know. Sometimes I just want answers. I hate having to think, ‘Should I do this?’ ‘Am I ready?’ ‘It is time?’ ‘Is it—?’”
I stopped suddenly and wondered if my cheeks were blushing—if Les could see. What was I saying?
“Want some more ice cream?” I asked quickly.
“No, but you look like you need to cool off a bit,” he said.
The question of how to spend Saturday night was solved when I got a call from Keeno. He goes to St. John’s, but we know him through Brian. He started hanging around with us last summer, and now he comes over to Mark’s sometimes even when Brian’s not along.
“Mark and I are going to a movie tonight. Any of you girls want to come along?” he asked.
“What movie?”
“That spy thing—Midnight Black. Mark said he’d drive, but if there’re more than five, I’ll take my car too.”
I called Gwen.
“I saw it with Yolanda last week,” she said.
Liz and Pamela said they’d go, however, and I was relieved to have the decision made for me. Still, this was my one big weekend with my parents away, and all I was doing was going to the movies?
Keeno’s cute, though. Very blond. Next to Brian, he’s probably got the best physique of any of our guy friends, and he has a dolphin tattoo on his butt that he showed us once. He’s also crazy and fun to be around.
The five of us got to the mall a half hour early, but the nine o’clock show had already sold out, and there were only three seats left for the eleven o’clock.
“Crap,” said Keeno. “Let’s see something else.”
We scanned the movie lineup on the board behind the cashier. A movie titled Heathen Born had started five minutes earlier, and two others were still an hour away. We made a quick decision and headed for Heathen.
In the darkened theater the previews were still running. Keeno went back out and returned with two giant-size b
uckets of popcorn just as the feature movie came on the screen.
We could tell from the music and the scenes that flashed in strobelike fashion behind the credits that this was a screamer. Faces of women gasping … of feet stalking … fingers clutching.
“Oh, man, Keeno, if this is another chain-saw-massacre movie … ,” said Pamela.
“Probably machetes,” said Mark.
“I’m going to be sick,” said Liz.
“No, you’re not. We’re going to study it from a sociological angle,” said Keeno. “What kind of people would go to a movie like this?”
“Brain-dead people who can’t think of anything else to do on a Saturday night,” said Pamela.
We were sitting in the last row, and the guys rested their feet on the backs of the empty seats in front of us. The theater was only half full, another bad sign.
The story opened with a young couple, obviously in love, walking along a neighborhood sidewalk at night. They stopped to kiss under a streetlight, then walked on, now and then waving away the mosquitoes. Or what they thought were mosquitoes. Actually, the flying insects laid eggs under their skin, and an hour or so later, when the couple was about to make love in the park, they realized they had huge boils on their arms and faces, and then the boils popped, and from each one a greenish blob leaped out and, with slimy fingers, strangled the man, then the woman.
“Way to go!” said Mark, laughing, as he dug his hand in the popcorn again.
Soon boils were breaking out on everyone in town, and people were getting strangled, and the populace was walking around wearing insect gear and inspecting their kids before bedtime… .
“I paid nine dollars for this?” I said to Mark.
“We’ll get some pizza after,” he told me.
Keeno, with Mark and me on one side of him, Liz and Pam on the other, said, “Approach it scientifically. What needs does this movie fulfill? What is its socially redeeming feature? What—?”
“Will you guys shut up back there?” a man five rows down yelled at us, half rising out of his seat.