Dorothy gasps. “Is that…?”
“Oh, my God,” Judy says.
“Mary Alice Mayhew,” Linda says. “I can’t believe it. Why would she ever want to come back and see any of us?”
They watch as Mary Alice chats with Pam, then fills out two name tags.
“She’s bringing someone,” Judy says.
“Where is he?” Dorothy asks.
“I’ll bet it’s not a he. I’ll bet she’s a lesbian,” Linda says. “I’ll bet her partner is unloading the car and that they brought sex toys. A feather and a dildo!”
“Stop that!” Dorothy says, and then they start laughing.
“Damn, I wish she hadn’t come,” Linda says. “I was going to put her name on a tag and pretend to be her!”
Dorothy stops walking. “You still can! In fact, why don’t you change tags with her?”
“Nah,” Linda says. “She wouldn’t do it.”
“She might,” Judy says. “People change.”
“Here’s one thing I’d stake my life on,” Linda says. “Mary Alice Mayhew has not changed. Not one bit. People like that? They don’t change. Even if they change. Put Mary Alice Mayhew in red stilettos and she’s still Mary Alice Mayhew. To us, anyway, because we knew her when.”
They reach the door to the spa, a frosted door with elegant silver script on it, and all the women quiet down. They want to get in the mood.
Dorothy opens the door and gestures to her friends to go ahead of her. “Après vous,” she says, in an accent she’s sure their high school French teacher, Mademoiselle Florin, would have appreciated.
“Hello, ladies,” the receptionist says, and Dorothy wants to smack her. Ladies, that condescending catchall greeting used for women of a certain age. She wants to say to the receptionist, “You think you’ll never get old, but you will.” Instead, she joins her friends in a weak chorus of “Hiiiii.” It is almost like a question, the way they say it. It is almost as though they’re asking for permission for something. As they kind of are, Dorothy thinks. Really, they kind of are.
TWELVE
LESTER SITS ON THE SIDE OF HIS HOTEL BED, THINKING, HIS unpacked suitcase beside him. He checks for messages again, even though his cellphone has not rung. No messages. Samson had developed a massive infection after his abdominal surgery; but his wound has been debrided, he’s been resutured, he’s been given an antibiotic bolus intravenously and now is getting oral doses every four hours. He’s staying in the clinic a couple of days for close observation. He should be fine.
Dumb dog. Rolling in fertilizer when his belly had just begun to heal. Lester imagines him in the cage in the back room, his chin on his favorite stuffed animal, his brown eyes shifting left and right, watching what little activity occurs there. He should be fine. Still, Lester calls his clinic, and when Jeanine answers, he says, “I’m coming back.”
“No!” There are three loud banging sounds and then Jeanine says, “Did you hear that? That was the sound of my head hitting my desk.”
“That was not your head.”
“It might as well have been.”
“Listen, Jeanine. It’s not important that I be here. It’s important that Samson be monitored very carefully, and I’m—”
“How long have I been working for you?” She sounds angry now; she’s speaking in the cool, clipped tone she uses on the phone with her husband when they’re fighting.
“I’m not saying a thing against you and your complete and utter competence,” Lester says. “It’s just that I’ll be thinking of him the whole time, anyway, so I might as well—”
“Dr. Hessenpfeffer. Lester. You’re an hour away!”
“Ninety minutes,” Lester says. “Without traffic.”
“Samson is just fine. He’s afebrile. His heart rate and blood pressure are perfect. His dressing is dry. He’s alert. I had to give him a squeaky toy because he’s bored.”
Lester sits still on the bed, stops his knee from bouncing.
“And: Miranda said she’d sleep with him tonight.”
Well, yes. That’s what Lester wants, is for someone to sleep with Samson. But he can’t have Miranda in the cage with the dog. Insurance and whatnot. But before he can voice his objections, Jeanine says, “I’ll make up a cot for her right outside his cage. And I’ll make up one for me, too. We’ll both be there. He’ll be fine. And I promise you, if the least little thing happens— a whimper!—I’ll call you right away. You need to learn to take some time for yourself.”
“I take time! Every year!”
Jeanine sighs. “You know what I mean. Now, will you promise me that you’ll stay there?”
“All right. Fine. I promise. But put him on the phone.”
“Who, Samson?”
“Right.”
“Hold on.”
She puts Lester on hold and then he hears her voice sounding a bit far off, saying, “Okay, you’re on speakerphone, go ahead.”
“Hey, Samson!” Lester says.
“He’s wagging his tail and cocking his head,” Jeanine says. “Aw.”
“You hang in there, buddy, and I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“Now he’s trying to get up!” Jeanine says. “Lie down, Samson, Doctor’s not here. Lie down, buddy. Good boy! Stay, okay? Stay there. Good boy.” To Lester, she says, “Don’t you say anything else, you’re getting him all excited and he needs to keep still. He’s all right. I just irrigated his incision and it’s clean as can be. You go and enjoy yourself.”
Lester stands to look out the window. There’s a striking blonde crossing the parking lot, pulling her luggage behind her. Candy Sullivan? He squints to see better. Yes, it’s Candy all right. And she’s still… Candy Sullivan.
“Call me if there’s anything,” he tells Jeanine.
“I will.”
“Any other news?”
“Nothing. Routine shots today. Oh, and Pia is pregnant again.”
Lester sighs. “They need to spay that dog.”
“Duh. But you know, she throws the cutest puppies. I might even take one this time.”
“Then you’re just encouraging them.”
“I know, but remember the last litter? The runt that looked like he came off the set of The Little Rascals? I want one like that. I want to name it Spanky.”
“Go down to the shelter and you’ll find a bunch of Spankys.” He looks outside to see what door Candy is headed toward. “All right, I’ll call you later.”
“Dr. Hessenpfeffer?”
“Yes?”
“I’ll call you if I need you. If you call me, I’ll quit. I swear to God, I will flat-out quit.”
“You’ll never quit.”
“I know, but don’t call me.”
Candy disappears into the hotel door closest to the registration table. She’ll be there in just a few seconds. No one is with her. He grabs his box lunch and heads for the elevator. He’ll see if she’d like to have lunch and catch up. He supposes he’ll have to tell her who he is. Which is fine.
But by the time he gets to the ground floor and then to the registration table, there is no sign of Candy Sullivan. There’s only Pam Pottsman, sitting at the table and looking at her watch, and some other woman sitting on a chair in a conversational grouping of furniture a little ways down the hall. She must be a classmate; she’s eating her box lunch.
He approaches Pam and asks quietly, “Did Candy Sullivan register?”
Pam laughs, then bellows, “Good grief! She’s still the most popular girl! Yes, she just went up to her room.”
“Did she take her lunch?” Lester asks, then immediately regrets asking.
“No, she said she wasn’t hungry. Do you want it?”
Actually, he would like it. He’s hungry, and the lunch doesn’t appear to be all that big. “Sure,” he says. “I’ll take it. Thanks.”
Pam reaches into a large bag and pulls out a lunch. There is only one more box left in the bag. Almost everyone has come, then. She hands him the box, then points to the wom
an eating alone. “You remember Mary Alice Mayhew?”
He remembers the name. And then, looking over at the woman, well, of course he remembers Mary Alice. One of the uncool nerds, like him. Kids used to be pretty mean to her. He remembers a time a group of jocks made catcalls after her as she walked down the hall. He’d wanted to defend her—what was the point in that kind of cruelty?—but hesitated out of fear of being attacked himself. But then he saw that she didn’t seem in need of being defended: she’d held her head high and walked steadily on, seemingly impervious to their taunting. And there that knot of thick-necked boys stood: utterly ignored, suddenly looking sort of foolish.
Mary Alice still has the same hairdo: mid-neck length, but salt and pepper now. It’s styled more attractively now, not sort of lumpy like it always used to be. She’s gotten to be rather nice looking; she seems to have grown into herself. Her glasses are certainly better. As are his.
He walks over and smiles at her, holds out his hand. “Hey, Mary Alice. I’m Lester Hessenpfeffer. Do you remember me?”
Her mouth is full and she smiles apologetically, holds her index finger up, swallows. Then, “Hi, Lester,” she says. “Of course I remember you. The last time I saw you, you were giving the valedictorian speech. To creating our destinies!”
Lester nods. “My Sally Field Oscar moment,” he says. “Ah well. All I meant to say—”
“Oh, no,” Mary Alice says. “I loved what you said. The idea that you could create your destiny, that you weren’t imprisoned by some preordained set of circumstances. It was a wonderful speech, Lester.”
They regard each other, each of them doing their own then and now, Lester supposes. Then Mary Alice says, “I see you have your lunch. Want to join me?”
“Well. Lunches,” Lester says.
“If one’s good, two is better,” Mary Alice says. “And it actually is good.”
He sits in the chair next to her and opens one of the little boxes. There on top, a folded paper napkin, red-and-white-checked. “I love these things,” he says. Then, looking over at Mary Alice. “Box lunches.”
“Me, too,” Mary Alice says. “I always think I know who made them.”
“A grandmotherly type with a drooping apron top who takes her time folding the napkin?” Lester asks and Mary Alice laughs and says, “Exactly!”
Her laugh is clear and genuine, a nice sound.
“The only thing we’re missing is a train ride,” she says.
“Okay, let’s be on a train. Where are we going?”
Mary Alice tilts her head. “Where are we going.… Hmmm. I don’t know! Where do you want to go?”
“Along the Mississippi, I should think.”
“The West Coast being too obvious?”
“Exactly.” Lester bites into his sandwich. One slice of bread is white; one is whole wheat. Something for everyone. And there’s a crosshatched peanut butter cookie and fruit. If the sandwich were wrapped in wax paper instead of plastic wrap, his happiness would be complete. He looks over at Mary Alice and smiles. She has the kind of brown eyes that seem lit by little golden lamps. She has dimples at the corners of her mouth, he’d never noticed that.
“Are you here with someone?” he asks.
“Not really. I’ll be bringing a friend with me tonight. An older gentleman I work with sometimes. He’s taking a nap, and then I’m going to go and pick him up for the dinner and as much of the dance as he can stay awake for.”
“He lives here in Clear Springs?”
“Yes. I do, too.”
Lester talks around a bite of sandwich. “You stayed, then.”
“No, I left. But I came back. I like it here. I like small towns.” She points to the corner of her own mouth, and Lester wipes off a crumb of bread from his.
“I’m not far away,” Lester says. “I live over in Hopkins. I have a veterinary practice there.”
“That figures. You were the one who was so utterly respectful whenever we had to do dissections in science class. Remember how the other guys would fool around with things, how a couple of them took that fetal pig and switched around all the organs? But it always seemed kind of sacred to you.”
Lester looks at her. “Yes.”
“You were right.”
Two people walk up to the table and Lester hears Pam say, “Just in time! I was just going to give up on anyone else coming. Now, who are you guys?”
The man points to himself and says, “I’m just a friend.” He puts his arm around the woman. “This is Nora Decker.”
“Nora Hagman Decker,” Nora says.
Pam squeals and leaps up. “Nora! Oh my God, I can’t believe I didn’t recognize you!” She shakes her finger at Fred. “It was you who threw me off.” She comes around the table and hugs Nora, then tells Fred, “Co-captain of the cheerleading squad, did you know that?”
“I did not know that,” Fred says, in a terrible, terrible Johnny Carson imitation, and Nora looks down. “Fred,” she says.
“Well, welcome!” Pam says and hands them a box lunch. “Gosh, you just missed Pete.”
Nora and Fred exchange glances and Pam frowns. “No?” she says. “Uh-oh.”
Lester looks over at Mary Alice, who shrugs.
“Hmmm,” Lester says quietly. And then, looking out the window at the beautiful warm day, “You feel like a walk, Mary Alice Mayhew? Is it still Mary Alice Mayhew?”
Mary Alice smiles. “It is. And I know a great place to walk, red-winged blackbirds so thick you think you might have to beat them off with a stick. But we’d have to go a ways to get there.”
Lester finishes his cookie, stands. “I’m all yours.”
Mary Alice’s face grows serious. Almost shyly, she says, “I’ll have to walk barefoot. These are not good walking shoes.”
“Barefoot girl and a box lunch. You can’t get much better than that.”
Mary Alice smiles. “I’ll just have to get back in time to get ready for dinner.”
“Me, too,” Lester says. Candy Sullivan is in the building. Doing what, he wonders. Maybe napping. He thinks of her lying on her side, her yellow hair spread out against the pillow. He thinks of how beautiful women look when they lie like that, and some sleeping thing inside him opens one eye.
THIRTEEN
CANDY SULLIVAN LETS ESTHER OUT OF HER LITTLE CARRYON, and the dog runs excitedly around the room, sniffing deeply at this place and that. Candy and Cooper once watched a documentary on hotel cleanliness—or lack thereof—and Coop said, “You see why I don’t like to travel?” But it wasn’t true that he didn’t like to travel—he relished his getaways with his male friends. It was traveling with her that gave him pause. She had figured that out, finally, and only last year went to Paris alone, which at first scared the hell out of her, but then she actually enjoyed it quite a bit. To linger before a painting in the Musée d’Orsay or over a platter of cheese at an outdoor café, to watch the waters of the Fontaine d’Agam or sit in the stained-glass-colored light of a cathedral, without worrying about someone else’s level of tolerance for such things! To take in a sunset while sitting beside the Seine and allow it to be the religious experience that it was, to come to tears over the astonishing beauty in a totally uninhibited way! She ate three croissants with raspberry jam for breakfast one day, and had no breakfast at all the next. She deliberated over a little painting for sale at a gallery on Rue des Beaux-Arts, worrying and worrying about the cost of just under two thousand dollars, but then got it anyway, and after she brought it back to her hotel room and propped it up so that she could see it from the bed, she decided it was worth three times what she’d paid for it. It was of a rolling field of lavender in late afternoon, the sun a deep gold wash, and she wanted to be buried with it, she told Coop on the phone the next day, when she called to check in. That was when the idea of being buried was still an abstraction.
He’d said at that time that he missed her, that he was eager for her to come home, but then when she came home, he didn’t seem so glad after all. Th
e first thing he said to her after she cleared customs was, “Christ, what took you so long?” When they got home and she showed him the painting, he said, “Huh. How much was that?” Later, he just seemed sad—sighing over his dinner, seeming to avoid her by planting himself in front of the television and then his computer, and when finally she called him on it, he said, “Oh, for fuck’s sake, here we go again. Don’t blame your moodiness on me!”
She considered not responding, but then she said, “I’m only asking you to tell me what’s going on. You seem upset. Or sad, or something. If I’m wrong, you can tell me. You don’t have to get mad.”
“You’re the one who’s mad!” he said.
She stared at him, her stomach aching, then said, “And yet you’re the one who’s yelling.”
He shook his head wearily, his eyelids at half-mast. Then he lowered his voice to a chilling level and said, “I’m not yelling, Candy.” He stood back from her, put his hands on his hips, and shouted at the top of his lungs, “THIS IS YELLING! See the difference?”
She walked away, and—how to say it?—feared for her back as she did so. She walked away and straightened some things in her desk drawer. She sat at the edge of the bed and contemplated her knees. She took a bath. She went to bed.
There is a knock at the door. For one second, she thinks it might be Coop, and she looks around the hotel room with his eyes, thinking about how he’ll disapprove of the tacky artwork, the floral bedspread. She straightens her suit jacket and skirt and goes to the peephole to look out. It’s someone from the hotel, an awkward-looking young man in a uniform that’s way too big for him, and he’s holding a massive bouquet of flowers. Candy sighs, presses her forehead against the door, and then opens it. “My goodness!” she says. “Aren’t they lovely!”
The man—boy, really—holding the flowers seems barely aware of them. After Candy exclaims over them, he gives them a quick look, then smiles at her. “Yeah, these are for you,” he says. “You’re Candy Armstrong, right?”
“Right.” She takes the flowers from him and breathes in the scent of one of the lilies. “Wait right there,” she says, and puts the flowers on the dresser, then goes to her purse for a ten-dollar bill.