It may have been a two-lane road, but it was a busy one, and it curved and disappeared behind a line of trees. I parked and got out, studying the five men drinking water from a cooler on the back of a pickup. I was supposed to check in with someone named Ed, so I went up to a guy holding a clipboard. “Are you Ed?” I asked. “I’m the flag girl today.”
The men stopped talking and looked around. “No,” said the man, peering at me over the rim of his safety goggles. He nodded toward the guy in a faded baseball cap, so I went up to him.
“Ed?”
“No, that would be the man over there in the checked shirt,” he answered.
The men exchanged smiles, and I looked about suspiciously, but I was a good sport, so I turned to the man in the checked shirt, and he said, “If you’re looking for Ed, he’s—”
“No,” I said, “I’m looking for the boss.”
“In that case, it’s me,” said a guy with a tattoo on his bare shoulder.
“Nah, that’s me,” said the guy with the clipboard.
By now, though, they were all laughing, and I laughed with them.
“Sorry, we’re just having a little fun with you,” the clipboard guy said. “I’m Ed Crawley, and these SOBs are your partners for the day.”
“I’m Alice,” I said, and the other men called out their names, grinning broadly.
The men were repairing a sewer line that led to the houses farther out. The left lane of the curving road had already been blocked off.
Ed explained my job, which could hardly be more simple: I was to stand at one end of the long stretch of construction with a sign on a pole that said SLOW on one side and STOP on the other. Shorty, the guy with the tattooed arm, was at the other end of the broken pavement with his own sign. When Shorty turned his sign to SLOW for oncoming traffic on his side of the road, I turned mine to STOP, and vice versa. Shorty called the shots. If my attention wandered and I didn’t respond, he’d give a loud whistle and I’d go into action.
The only thing I could say for the job was that it got me outdoors. There was more physical action for me at a filing cabinet than there was out here on a country road.
As the morning heated up, I edged more and more to the right to keep in the shade, until finally there was no shade at all. The trickles of perspiration running down my legs and back were maddening.
I’d been standing there for five hours when I realized I had to pee.
A Porta-John sat somewhat precariously back near the pickup truck, and I couldn’t help but wonder if it would tilt if I went inside, but I had no choice. I couldn’t just put down my sign and walk off, however. I tried to get the attention of one of the men, but a jackhammer was going, and no one could hear me. I must not have been able to get Shorty’s attention, because he kept waving his line of cars on through. The next and the next and the next . . .
When someone saw me at last and took my place, I ran for the Porta-John. I barely made it. I pulled the door closed behind me and tried not to look down the hole, managing to hold my breath most of the time until I escaped back into fresh air. I even thought about going without water so I wouldn’t have to use the john again, but that wasn’t a good idea.
At twelve we opened the lane back up temporarily and sat down under a single tree beyond the truck. When I unwrapped the sandwich I’d thrown together that morning, though, it was disgusting. The bologna was warm, the cheese had melted, and the whole thing drooped. I was holding it between two fingers when Ed noticed.
“Don’t eat that,” he said. “Here.” He handed me half a beef sandwich, the meat a quarter inch thick between the bread slices, all of it still chilled from the cold pack in his bucket.
“I can’t eat yours,” I protested.
“Yes, you can. I’ve got another to go with it, and a piece of cake.”
“Now what’s she up to? Takin’ our lunch?” called the guy in the bandana, who had been working down in the trench. “Here, skinny gal, have some chips.” And he passed the bag over.
I smiled and took a handful. Nobody had referred to me as skinny since second grade, and I was grateful for the candy bar someone gave me too.
But lunch hour is never a full hour on a construction gang. A half hour, at most, and then we were back on the job. SLOW . . . STOP . . . SLOW . . . STOP . . . My arms were hot to the touch from the sun. Even taking off the cotton shirt barely made a difference.
By three o’clock I had to pee again—I’d downed two cups of water from the big cooler on the back of the pickup and could have drunk more. The Porta-John had been in the sun all afternoon, and just lifting the metal latch burned my fingers.
I considered leaving the door open for a moment, but it faced the men and the road, so I didn’t. Sweat rolled down my face.
The stench from the toilet was overwhelming, and the toilet paper was gone.
Trying not to retch, I got it over with as soon as possible, pulled up my jeans, and wished for the fifteenth time that I’d worn shorts, then fumbled for the door latch.
It wouldn’t turn.
No! I gave it a hard jiggle. Nothing. I was stuck! I was sweltering! I was being cremated alive!
I bore down with all my strength, but I couldn’t even see the latch through all my sweat. The guys must have been playing a trick on me—just waiting till I got inside. This wasn’t funny! I’d die!
In a panic I banged on the walls of the Porta-John, and finally I heard a man’s voice say, “Alice? Turn the handle.”
“I am!”
“The other way,” he instructed, and suddenly the door flew open, and I almost fell out, gasping for air. I’d been in such a hurry to leave that I’d been turning the latch the wrong way.
“You all right?” asked the burly man in the bandana.
I smiled sheepishly. “I am now,” I said, and wiped my arm across my forehead.
“Easy does it,” he said. “Only thirty more minutes to go.”
At three thirty we put the safety cones and the tools in the truck and finished off the water.
“Thanks for helping out,” Ed told me. “I see they’ve got you down for the bulldozer tomorrow. Come a little early and Lou will show you how to drive it.”
My mouth fell open.
“I thought she was going to run the jackhammer,” said Shorty, and then I knew they were joking again. I thanked them for putting up with me and couldn’t wait to get back in Dad’s car and turn on the air-conditioning.
Note to self: On construction jobs bring water, bring ice, bring toilet paper.
4
PLANNING AHEAD
I sat hugging my knees, my forehead pressed against them, feeling vaguely sick to my stomach. The letter was crumpled between my chest and the anthropology book on my lap, and a gust of October wind rustled the crisp leaves that had blown up the steps of McKeldin Library, where I’d been for the last ten minutes.
Was I relieved that Patrick had written me first? Would I have written him? It wasn’t a phone call. Wasn’t an e-mail. It was one and a half pages long, handwritten, one of the few letters I’d received from him in my life.
How long had I known him? Seven, eight years? Ever since sixth grade. We’d broken up once but had gotten back together, and when he went to college, a year ahead of me, it was understood we could go out with other people. But the understanding was a sort of veneer over the feeling that he and I were really special to each other. Now I wondered if I was the only one who had felt that way.
I turned my head sideways and stared up at the bare branches that were dancing in the wind.
I’ve been putting this letter off because I wasn’t sure how I felt, and I’m writing to say that I’m still not sure. . . .
How had I known what the rest of the lines would say before I’d even read them? But the deeper question was one I was afraid to ask myself: Was I possibly feeling the same way?
Patrick found that he was around women he liked very much, and wanted the freedom to get even closer. Maybe it was a mi
stake for us to get serious about each other, he wrote, especially because he’d been accepted into the Peace Corps.
What was the big deal? We’d already agreed we could see other people, so what was he telling me—that he was cutting me out of his life? That I was no longer special? The Peace Corps was no surprise. Once he had mentioned it, I knew he would follow through. That was Patrick. The rest? Trying to fence Patrick in was like trying to harness the sea. And yes, if he wasn’t sure about me, he should be going out with other women.
But damn it, Patrick! I stood up and the anthropology text and notebook in my lap tumbled to the step below. I kicked them the rest of the way down, ignoring the guy in the hoodie who was passing below and gave me a wary glance.
This was the second time Patrick dumped me. And he was being so damned civil about it. Didn’t he have any feelings? What about the way we’d been together on that bench at Botany Pond? What about the way we’d held and touched each other in the limo coming back from the Bay Bridge? The way we’d kissed?
The binder had fallen open and papers were blowing around. I discovered I was crying as I went down the steps to pick them up. Had Patrick cried at all when he wrote the letter? How long had he thought about it? Hesitated, even? Wondered how I’d take it?
My papers collected and the books in my arms again, I began walking down the sidewalk, not caring where I went. The thing was, I found that I kind of liked a number of the guys here at Maryland. As the girls had pointed out, the selection was bigger in college. More diverse. I hadn’t met anyone I liked more than Patrick, but I’d met several whom I felt I could maybe like as much, Dave in particular.
Was I overreacting to hide the possibility that the letter might have been going the other way?
Tears again.
There’s so much ahead for each of us, Patrick wrote. I just didn’t want to keep anything from you and wanted to make sure you weren’t expecting more from me. You’re the last person on earth I’d ever want to hurt, Alice. . . .
But I was hurting! How could he think I wouldn’t? We had a history together. We’d watched each other grow up. How could he ever feel that close to anyone else? How could I? And yet . . .
Dave was incredibly thoughtful, Jag was crazy smart, Travis had a wicked sense of humor, and what about the other guys I hung out with when a bunch of us got together on weekends? Who knew how I’d feel about them when I got to know them better?
But I wasn’t looking around for someone else; why was Patrick?
A couple was coming toward me and I made no room on the sidewalk. I wasn’t even thinking about them until I noticed them parting to make way for me.
Patrick was right, of course, about expecting too much of each other. I knew that. I’d always known that. But how should I answer? Telling him that there were other guys I was attracted to sounded like trying to get even. Telling him I was about to write the same kind of letter wasn’t entirely true and read like revenge. Telling him I was crushed and bleeding was both true and a lie.
I realized I was heading away from my dorm, so I turned and started back. This time I allowed myself—forced myself—to face what I was really feeling. Was it possible that just as I clung more to home than other girls seemed to, I used Patrick as my buffer against the world? My shield against having to explore more on my own, get to know other guys, allow myself to love and lose? Did every girl who lost a mother when she was small carry that around forever? When was I going to approach life minus a security blanket, trusting that whatever happened, I’d be strong enough to handle? I came to a bench, so I sat down and unfolded the letter again:
Would it be easier if we didn’t call or text each other for a while, just to see how it goes? It might be a good time to try it because I’ve been assigned to Madagascar and have been told that my village is two hours by bicycle from the nearest town. No electricity, no cell phone coverage. I’ve started a blog and will be posting notes whenever I’m in the capital, but I don’t know how often that will be. I just want you to have the same chance that I do to explore and meet new people, and I hope you believe me when I say that you still, and will always, mean a great deal to me.
Patrick
Why couldn’t I just live with that? Why not let that last line sustain me and throw myself into new friendships, a new relationship maybe, and see what would happen?
And finally, back in my dorm when I’d sat at my computer motionless for twenty minutes or so, my feelings going back and forth like a pendulum, I put my fingers on the keys:
Dear Patrick, I wrote. Understood. Really. Always, Alice.
Abby was my roommate my sophomore year. After the “outbreak of Amber,” as I called it, Abby was a refreshing change. She respected my space, kept her own reasonably neat, and I certainly never found her underwear in my bed.
Now that the second bed belonged to Abby, the whole gang hung out here sometimes, with as many guys as we could comfortably squeeze in. Besides Dave and Travis and Jag, there was Cole, the basketball player, and James, who was inheriting his family’s farm, and Pete and Andrew and other guys I went out with occasionally for a sandwich or to a club, and that’s how the big shave-off took place in our room.
I’m not sure how “No Shave November” got started. I think it was originally a charity event to raise money for men’s health awareness or something. But guys all over campus had been growing competitive mustaches or beards—whatever—and then, on the first of December, we had a big shave-off. At some schools, I’d heard, women take part and don’t shave their legs for a month, and sometimes, for the big shave-off, they removed hair from . . . uh . . . other parts of the body as well.
We were content to watch the guys try to outdo each other, and in they came with handlebar mustaches, goatees, shoulder-length hair, dreadlocks, and we girls supposedly had the pleasure of shaving them or watching them shave each other.
“I hope somebody’s going to vacuum this up,” Abby said as we watched Cole’s reddish locks fall, hit or miss, into the barber’s apron that we fashioned from a sheet. Colin had the arms of a vinyl raincoat tied around his neck, and soon his hair was sliding down the front and, some of it, anyway, into a trash basket.
“Isn’t there some way to recycle hair?” Val said, waiting with a mustache trimmer. “Fill mesh bags with it to surround an oil spill or something?”
We shrieked as Travis posed for a picture with only half of his handlebar mustache shaved off, and we made him pose for another with Dave, who had run a razor up both arms from wrist to elbow.
But James won first place when he stripped off his shirt and presented his hairy back to the girls.
“Wow!” I said, running my hand over the silky mat of black hair. “I had a cat once that felt like this.”
James pretended to purr. “Live it up. I’m all yours.”
I contemplated that vast expanse of shiny blackness. It was like a virgin forest, and I felt like an axman about to destroy it forever.
“Uh-oh,” said Claire, “she’s got that look in her eye.”
I put down the scissors I’d been holding and borrowed the narrow mustache trimmer instead. Then, bracing my left hand on James’s shoulder to steady myself, I turned the gadget on and carefully shaved out the letters A-L-I-C-E, to much laughter.
When we got a hand mirror and showed James his back, he spun me around and sat me on his lap. Then everyone got their cell phones and took pictures of us. Valerie sent one to my laptop, and hers was the best. There I sat, straddling James, who was looking over his shoulder and grinning, his face pressed up against mine, with A-L-I-C-E etched on his back in crooked but definitely readable letters.
I e-mailed the shot to Liz and Pamela and Gwen and also to Lester. For a brief moment I fantasized about forwarding the photo to Patrick, but then I wisely closed my laptop.
* * *
Abby and I were in Valerie and Claire’s dorm room one rainy night, having just shared a gigantic white pizza, delivered right to us. The driver had looked
so wet and miserable, we asked if he wanted a slice. Instead, he gratefully accepted the extra tip we gave him before he took off. We hung a DO NOT DISTURB sign on the door to discourage anyone else from dropping by and raiding our dinner. You can’t believe the power of pizza. One whiff, and there’s a mob knocking. Claire had gone to a game, so when we were done, we’d put our leftover slices in their little fridge for her.
“Ah,” Valerie said, sprawling out on her bed.
“Ah,” I echoed, lying beside her, head to foot. Abby lay on the other bed, lazily hitting a balloon up in the air and watching it drift down again for another swat. Occasionally the balloon would come over our way, and I’d maybe give it a kick with one foot. There was something about our contentment that reminded me of the way Pamela and Liz and I, and sometimes Gwen, used to hang out in Elizabeth’s bedroom with the twin eyelet bedspreads, the matching curtains, everything that made that bedroom so “Elizabeth.”
For just a moment I felt a sudden rush of homesickness sweep over me, and then it was gone, but in those few brief seconds I realized how much those friends were like sisters to me, and I wondered if Abby and Valerie could ever mean as much to me as they did. Wondered whether you have to have a history with someone to feel the same closeness.
We’d been to each other’s homes once or twice over holidays, and I’d met their families—Claire’s in Baltimore, Valerie’s in Frederick, and Abby’s clear over on the Eastern Shore. But it wasn’t the same as driving over to Gwen’s, or walking to Pamela’s, or looking across the street to see if Liz’s light was on. Still, there was something about living together all these months the way we were that had a sisterly feeling, and I was glad the three of us had stayed in that night instead of going to the movies in the rain. It was another tragic Italian classic and, masterpiece or not, I wasn’t in a Fellini mood.