“You were part of that too.”
“As I said, I’m just observing. And I also observe that someone’s toenails need trimming. Stay put. I’ll get the clippers.”
* * *
Patricia was accepted at William & Mary—a college that had turned me down—and we joked a lot about that. She and I were closer now—no doubt because of the cancer scare, but I’d take whatever I could get! It had made us both more aware of our mortality—mine, anyway—and we didn’t want to waste time quarreling with each other.
Once she left for college, she frequently called home, and I loved being there for her—mostly listening, sympathizing, once in a while telling her about an especially hard time for me, like my experience with my first roommate, Amber, and her boyfriend. She thought that story was hilarious and told all her friends.
When she came home to visit, I tried to respect her privacy. I let her sleep in and I didn’t nag her about picking up her things, but I would still invite her to help me out sometimes—make a special supper or bake a cake—something that helped us both feel she was still a responsible member of our family. Every so often, she’d ask about my health, and lucky for me, the answer was always positive. I was doing well.
Just when I was confident that every member of my family was feeling settled and secure, we discovered that Tyler was in love.
26
MOVING ON
I’d never known how much a boy could suffer. Tyler had always gone out with a group of friends before, never paired off with anyone in particular, and suddenly, in his sophomore year of high school, he had a girlfriend.
It first caught my attention when I noticed him sniffing his armpits one morning before he went to school. Funny, I thought, how Elizabeth and Pamela and I used to do that back in junior high. About the worst thing you could say to a girl, even worse than What happened to your hair? was to insinuate she smelled.
The generic deodorant stick in the bathroom was replaced by one with a designer label. Shirts that had been worn only once were tumbling into the clothes hamper at an alarming rate.
“Mom, I have to know,” Tyler said hesitantly one morning before he caught the bus. I braced myself, then had to choke back a laugh when he asked, “Tell me honestly if my breath stinks.”
I looked at the boy with the dark blond hair and brown eyes, who was now several inches taller than I was. It was hard to imagine that I had given birth to those extra-long arms and legs. He approached me—embarrassed but sincere—and blew his breath in my face.
“Crest, with a little bacon on the side,” I told him.
He put his book bag down in disgust and headed for the stairs once more. “I’ll brush again,” he said.
“Tyler! You’re perfectly fine!” I called after him. “She won’t mind a bit.”
But he retorted, “It’ll be like she’s kissing a pig!”
So he’s at the kissing stage now, I thought, smiling to myself. The year before Patricia had left for college, she’d become very solicitous of her younger brother, giving him advice and buying him shirts she thought he should wear. But she wasn’t here now, and the current heart-stopping event for Tyler was a party being given in the home of a junior, to which Tyler and his girlfriend had been invited, because both girls were friends. Tyler’s girlfriend’s brother had offered to drive them over.
For a week Tyler had battled a nervous stomach.
“I just know I’ll do something stupid,” he murmured the night before the party. “I’ll probably get something stuck in my windpipe and have to have someone do the Heimrick maneuver on me.”
“I believe that’s Heimlich,” I said. “Hey! I thought this date was supposed to be fun! You’re not going to your execution, you know.” And then I added, “I’m more worried about the brother’s driving.”
“He’s okay,” Tyler said, and we could usually trust his judgment. “Jon’s on the basketball team, and they can’t smoke or drink or anything.”
“Yeah, but how’s his driving?” asked Patrick.
“Got his license ten months ago, and if he even dents their dad’s car, he has to take it to a body shop himself for estimates and pay for repairs,” Tyler told us.
Chalk one up for those parents, I thought.
“How far away is the party? We’ll need a phone number,” I said.
“Somewhere off Norbeck Road. I’ll give you the name and everything,” Tyler said, and he did.
Patrick and I decided not to set a curfew. We knew how embarrassing it would be if Tyler were the only one of the four, and probably the youngest, who had to be home at a certain time. Frankly, he was more trustworthy than Patricia had been at that age. He was generally open about what he intended to do, and if we ruled against him, he’d argue it out, not sneak around behind our backs. And yes, the parents would be home. The mom was going to make tostados for the crowd, and they’d be playing blackjack and stuff, he told us.
“If you see that you’re going to be really late, though, could you call us?” I said.
“Of course,” Tyler said, but we failed to pin down “really late.”
The day of the party it didn’t just rain, it heaved rain. Water cascaded down the roof and gushed in torrents out of the rain spouts. There were flood warnings for Maryland, Virginia, and the District. I could have sworn Tyler almost looked relieved when he came home from school, speculating on whether or not they would still hold the party.
But the rain finally stopped around five. The trees and bushes dripped, the back of the yard was flooded, but the sun peeped out from behind rolling gray clouds, and a phone call from Tyler’s girlfriend assured him that the party was still on. The creek across from her friend’s house had flooded, she said, but the water hadn’t reached the road, so all the streets in that neighborhood were passable.
Tyler couldn’t eat anything, even though I suggested a sandwich to keep his stomach from growling. Five minutes before he was to be picked up, he decided he had perspired so much that he should change his shirt, and when the brother pulled up and honked, I was relieved to have Tyler out of the house.
“Enjoy!” I said as he went out the door, but he didn’t answer, only swallowed.
Patrick and I watched discreetly from a window.
“This reminds me of the night you invited me to dinner at your parents’ country club,” I told him. “It was one of the most exciting, terrifying evenings of my life.”
Patrick looked at me in surprise. “It was?”
“I was only twelve, Patrick.”
“Well, so was I! I thought you had a good time.”
“I did, but I was so nervous! Besides . . . there’s something I never told you.”
Patrick grinned. “What? You wet your pants?”
“No, but when I got home and opened my purse, I discovered I’d stuffed the linen napkin inside!”
Patrick burst out laughing, and so did I.
“I was embarrassed out of my mind! You were so smart and sophisticated and—”
“At twelve?”
“Well, you seemed that way to me,” I said, sinking down on the couch.
“And now?”
“Now you’re smart and sophisticated and sexy,” I told him.
He came over, sat on the hassock, and began stroking my leg. “Let’s go to bed,” he said.
“Now?”
“Sure. Tyler’s out for the evening.”
I started to smile. “Well then . . . !”
* * *
We woke about eleven feeling as though we’d had a night’s sleep.
“Is it raining again?” I said. “I wonder how long that’s been going on. I didn’t think the sky could hold any more.” I rolled over and put my arms around Patrick.
“Hmmm,” he said. “I like rainy nights. Let’s see. We could get up and make waffles, or we could stay in bed and do this all over again.”
“I’m hungry,” I told him.
Patrick laughed. “So am I.”
We got out of
bed, put on our robes, and were eating Belgian waffles at a quarter of midnight.
“Do you suppose he’s having a good time?” I said, running the last bite of waffle around the edge of my plate to soak up the raspberry syrup.
“Must be. Probably having a blast. He should be calling pretty soon, though. Have you checked your cell phone?”
“Several times, actually. But we didn’t set a curfew, remember?”
“Then he’s probably on his way. I don’t think he’d stay out past midnight without calling.”
But midnight came, twelve fifteen, twelve twenty . . . and the excitement I’d felt for Tyler earlier turned to cold, hard fear.
“I’m texting him,” I said, and thumbed in, Tyler, where are you?
Twelve twenty-five, no answer. Twelve thirty-five . . .
“Hand me your cell,” Patrick said. “I’m simply going to call him.”
My insides ached as I sat watching Patrick’s expression. He shook his head finally. “Voice mail,” he said. And then, into the phone, “Tyler, call home. Now!”
We called the house where the party was being held and got no answer.
“What about this Jon fellow? The girlfriend’s brother? Do we have his family’s number? They’ve got to be worried too.” Patrick got up and went into the bathroom while I searched for the notepad. I thought I might throw up.
But just as I was about to pick up my cell phone again, it rang. I grabbed it.
“Tyler?”
Instead, a man’s voice said, “Mrs. Long? This is Officer Harding and—”
“No! No!” I cried, my strength giving way.
“Hey, hey, hey!” the voice said. “I’m just calling to tell you that your son and his friends were trying to push a neighbor’s car out of a creek. They weren’t successful, but everyone’s fine. I’m calling from my patrol car while we wait for a tow. But you should have some towels and newspapers handy when he comes in, because these kids are mud from their shoulders to their shoes.”
There is no fear as intense as the fear you feel when a police officer calls you about your child at one in the morning, and no relief quite as profound as when he says your boy is safe.
“Evidently, a neighbor was in such a hurry to get inside that she parked uphill in her driveway with the car in neutral, and it rolled backward, crossed the road, and went into a creek,” the officer continued.
“I’m . . . so relieved!” I said, my voice trembling.
I heard him chuckle. “I’m a dad myself, which is why I’m doing the calling. The boys left their wallets and cell phones in the house so they wouldn’t get wet, and got themselves filthy. Two of them asked if I’d call their parents and explain. One of the girls’ parents is driving them home.”
“Thank you,” I kept saying. “Thank you, thank you . . .”
When Tyler came in, we had the newspapers and towels ready.
“You should have seen it, Dad! Both of her back tires were in this creek, and we were in mud up to our ankles, and we all pushed, but the car still kept rolling backward. Mr. Eddy came out with a flashlight, and the girls were standing up on the porch, and everybody was yelling and giving directions and cheering. And then another neighbor called the police because he thought we were drunk, and—man!—what a great night!”
Patrick was not amused. “Tyler, that was dangerous! Cars have been washed away in flash floods!” he lectured. “You guys should never have been in a creek after all this rain.”
Tyler was standing on the newspapers I’d strewn in the hallway and had begun stripping off his clothes. He looked chagrined. “Well, that’s about what Mr. Eddy said, but the water had gone down, and the neighbor was crying, and she wanted us to get the car out before her husband woke up and saw what happened.”
“Have you any idea how worried we were?” I put in. “I texted you, your Dad called . . .”
“I didn’t have my cell phone on me, Mom! It would have been ruined.”
“We tried the number you gave us—the girl who was giving the party . . .”
“Everyone was out on the porch watching.”
How can you love your kid and want to throttle him, both at the same time? I was speechless.
Tyler took off one shoe and water poured out. He took off the other, then looked up at us, beaming. “That was one of the best nights of my entire life,” he said.
* * *
Patricia enjoyed the story enormously when I called her the next day. Somehow the brother whose very existence she ignored back in middle school she now seemed to cherish, if not adore. She sent him sweatshirts with WILLIAM & MARY on it, introduced him to the best bands and comedy teams.
“What’s with her?” I asked Liz once as we were gift shopping at a Greek bazaar during the holidays. “She’s even taking him to a concert over winter break. Patricia! Tyler!”
“I think he’s become her mascot,” Liz guessed. “She focuses all her homesickness on him. Easier than saying she misses Mom and Dad.” But Patricia admitted to that, too. Once she was away from home, she didn’t seem to have the same need to oppose us. I tried to keep our phone conversations nag-free, and it paid off. She called frequently and let us in on her life. She had started out in journalism but switched her major to biology.
And no sooner had she settled on her major for good than she also fell in love, and she called home about that, too. Life was so good, so varied, so exciting that she just had to share it, and I felt incredibly lucky that she wanted to share it with me.
* * *
Patrick and I celebrated our twenty-fifth wedding anniversary snorkeling in the Caribbean. It was something I’d always wanted to do, so we flew to St. John’s, where we rented a condo overlooking the sea, and took an expedition out the very next morning. We swam together, grabbing each other by the arm when we saw another spectacular fish or a bank of coral we didn’t want the other to miss.
I had more fun than I could remember, just losing myself in the sea, the sound of my breathing replacing the voices of the other snorkelers; I swam with the swarms of exotic-looking fish that noiselessly glided by, free as the fish, happy in my aloneness.
But back at the hotel, we lay happily together on a chaise lounge for two, my bare legs entwined around Patrick’s, remembering the way we had lain together at Ocean City the weekend he proposed. Now he was stroking my hair at the temples and I was on the verge of sleep when he said, “So, Alice, would you do it all over again?”
I opened my eyes, then let them close. “Marry you?”
“Yes.”
“In a heartbeat,” I told him.
He smiled. “Good. We still have that second trip to Ireland to take, remember. It’s nice to reach your twenty-fifth anniversary and want to do it all over again, isn’t it?”
I smiled. “Mm-hmm. Did you ever think we wouldn’t make it?” I rolled over on my side and put an arm around his waist.
“Not really. And you know how I decided that?”
“What? My brains? My beauty? My sexual allure?” I teased.
“Nope. Your dad.”
I pushed away from him. “My dad?”
Patrick pulled me back down beside him. “No. Just watching him—I mean, him and Sylvia together. And I thought, ‘That’s what I want. That’s the way I want Alice and me to be when we’re in our sixties’—warm and affectionate and honest with each other. I didn’t want us to end up like my folks.”
“What do you mean? They always seemed to get along to me.”
“Oh, they did. But there was a sort of . . . sadness in the marriage, I think. I didn’t realize it till I was in my late teens and asked Mom about it once. I’m not sure how we got on the subject. But I guess Dad had a couple of affairs when he was traveling—always in a different country, you know. Mom said she forgave him, but she could never respect him as much as she once did.” Patrick touched my forehead with his lips. “I didn’t want something like that to come between us. And that was the best decision I ever made, next to marrying
you.”
* * *
A brochure arrived in the mail one day showing a cozy bed-and-breakfast with a wide porch and rustic-looking rocking chairs. There were tall trees in the background and, beyond them, snow-covered mountains beneath a spectacularly blue sky. Haynes Hideaway, in glorious Hailey, Idaho, it read.
What was this? I wondered. Someone who loved alliteration, obviously. I glanced again at the envelope. My address was handwritten. I opened the tri-fold brochure.
Co-owners Lori and Leslie Haynes invite you to enjoy their newly remodeled bed-and-breakfast and the splendor of the Wood River Valley. Only minutes away from skiing in Sun Valley, gay-friendly Haynes Hideaway offers guided hiking and biking tours in the Sawtooth National Forest as well as all the comforts of home. . . .
Lori! Leslie! They were still together! They owned a business! A bed-and-breakfast.
I grabbed my cell and called their number, trying to picture them both—Lori, tall and a bit stoop-shouldered, a shy brunette with bangs, and Leslie, short and blond—the blondest girl I’d ever seen.
“Hello? This is Lori at Haynes Hideaway,” came a cheerful voice.
“Oh, Lori! It’s wonderful! Your bed-and-breakfast!” I cried.
There was a pause. Then, “Is this . . . Alice?”
“Yes!”
“I found you!” Lori said excitedly. “Leslie and I have been tracking down all the people we ever knew, and I wanted to hear from you most of all. I found out that you and Patrick were married. So are Leslie and I.”
“Congratulations, Lori! That’s terrific!” I said.
She laughed. “You know the old joke: ‘What do lesbians take on their second date? Answer: a moving van.’ We were both a little scared that maybe it was true—that maybe Leslie and I were so glad we’d found someone like ourselves that we wanted to move right in. So we decided to separate for six months and date other women, and we did. Actually, it lasted only five months. We missed each other so much that we not only got back together, we went right to the courthouse there in Seattle and applied for a marriage license. And Leslie decided to take my name. . . .” I’d never known Lori to be so talkative, and it made me smile just listening to her.
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