The Last Time I Saw You

by Elizabeth Berg

  “Mary Alice!” both Judy and Linda say when they see her. She suspects she’s a welcome diversion.

  “Hey,” she says, and she considers for a moment backing out of the room and using a bathroom elsewhere, or even waiting until she gets home.

  But, “Sit down!” Judy says with an outsize, drunken generosity, mixed, Mary Alice suspects, with a kind of curiosity. Well, she’s curious about them, too. Who are they now? For that matter, who were they then?

  And so—why not? Mary Alice always did want to hang out in the bathroom with the popular girls, and even if these three weren’t Candy Sullivan popular, they’d held their own. She sits on the floor next to Judy.

  “Cigarette?” Linda says, taking her pack out of her purse, and Mary Alice starts to decline—she’s never smoked—but then she accepts a Marlboro, and Judy lights it for her.

  She coughs immediately, and they all laugh, except for Dorothy, who continues to hold her face in her hands.

  Judy rolls her eyes. “Hey, Dorothy,” she says. “Look who’s here! Mary Alice Mayhew!”

  Nothing.

  “Hi there, Dorothy,” Mary Alice says. “How are you?”

  And then, oh, terrible, she and Linda and Judy start laughing.

  Now they hear Dorothy’s muffled voice saying, “It’s not funny!”

  “Well, it kind of is,” Linda says, in a tentative voice. “It’s a little funny. If you could see that it’s funny, then you wouldn’t feel so bad.” To Mary Alice, she says, “Take a smaller puff. And then hold it in your lungs just for a second. You have to get used to it. It burns a lot, at first.”

  Mary Alice tries again, successfully this time, although, good grief, she has no idea why people would want to go through this kind of thing. Still, “Can you teach me to French-inhale?” she asks, and Judy and Linda say together, “Absolutely!”

  Dorothy takes her hands off her face, revealing scattered pink patches. “Fine. Don’t pay any attention to me.”

  There is a lengthy silence, and then Linda says, “Well, yes, we are paying attention to you, Dorothy. We’re giving you space. We’re being respectful.”

  “Yeah,” Judy says.

  “If you’re ready to talk, we’re ready to listen,” Mary Alice says.

  “Oh, sure, Mary Alice Mayhew,” Dorothy says. “My lifelong confidante.” Then, “Oh, I’m sorry.” She gives Mary Alice a quick once-over. “Huh! You look nice.”

  “Thank you.” Mary Alice notices a false eyelash hanging perpendicular to Dorothy’s eye, but now is probably not the time to tell her.

  Dorothy reaches over and takes a cigarette from Linda’s pack. “I gave these up years ago,” she says. Judy lights the thing, and Dorothy takes in a deep drag and exhales slowly. “I might take it up again, though. Nothing else to do. Because I give up. I do. I just give up. I guess I’ll never spend time with a man again. That’s all over for me. I am D-U-N done.”

  “Hey, remember how we used to meet every day after math class and smoke in the bathroom just like this?” Judy says. “Remember that one time I told you guys I had a dream about a gigantic slide rule that Mr. Schultz was making me walk up and down? And then Miss Falk came in and busted us for smoking but she didn’t turn us in to the principal because she was always trying to be our friend?”

  “Well, of course I remember,” Dorothy says. “I’m not senile. Yet.” She honks her nose into some toilet tissue she has wadded in her hand.

  “Dorothy,” Linda says. “Stop it, now. You’ll have another chance at breakfast. You’ll see him then. And his wife won’t be there. I saw her when everyone was leaving and she said she definitely wasn’t coming tomorrow.”

  “Big deal,” Dorothy says. “It won’t matter. I made a fool of myself tonight. He was going to make love to me, he asked if I would like it if he made love to me and I said yes and then I had to try to do a cheer. A cheer! What was I thinking? Well, I know what I was thinking. I was thinking he’d think I was cute, like the old days, but all I did was pull up my dress too high and I’ll bet he saw I was wearing Spanx and you know I have that one varicosity behind my knee, and then I had to go and fall down. God! It won’t help if Nora’s not at the breakfast. Nothing will help. He doesn’t care about me. He never did! And I know why. It’s because I’m a terrible person. I am! Even if I don’t want to be, I just am!

  “You know what I discovered tonight? Everyone is so much nicer than I thought. And it makes me so mad! Because I never knew that, I was always so poised to defend myself. And now it’s too late. I was so mean and awful all the time, and now it is too late, the cows have come home to roost. I’ll die a bitter old woman, alone. I’ll be found weeks after the fact!”

  “Yeah,” Linda says. “And probably your stinky old corpse will be in a very unflattering position, too. They’ll photograph you like that. They’ll have to, for the police files.”

  “Wait,” Judy says. “The cows have come home to roost?”

  “You know what I mean,” Dorothy says. She sniffs, wipes at her eyes. She’s laughing a little, in spite of herself.

  “Gosh,” Linda says. “When you were fifteen and crying in the bathroom over some guy, did you ever think you’d be sixty years old and crying in the bathroom over some guy?”

  “I’m not sixty yet!” Dorothy says.

  “Oh, just say you are,” Linda says. “I say I’m sixty-five because I love to hear people say how young I look.”

  “I do that, too!” Judy says.

  “I know. I told you to.”

  “Oh yeah.”

  “My daughter hates me,” Dorothy says.

  “Oh, for Christ’s sake,” Judy says. “Will you stop? No woman’s daughter likes her. But factoring that in, I’d say your daughter loves you very much.”

  “I’ll bet my grandchildren will hate me, too. I’m not fun. I’m nervous and too critical. I have a bad way about me. If Hilly has kids, she’ll never let me babysit.”

  Linda says, “I saw this show on TV? A dog that was missing for nine years reappeared! He was real cute. One of those shaggy guys. He just showed up, nine years later!”

  “And?” Dorothy says.

  “It just goes to show you,” Linda says. “It’s never too late. Except for dead people. Oh, wasn’t it sad to see Patsy Sussman on the dead table? To die in a motorcycle accident right after graduation! All that studying for finals, and for what? She must have worked so hard, she always had a hard time keeping her grade point average up.”

  There is a long silence, and then Judy says, “Didn’t she sort of have buck teeth?”

  “What does that have to do with anything?” Dorothy snaps.

  Judy shrugs. Then, quietly, she says, “I don’t know.”

  “It’s too late for the dead people and me,” Dorothy says.

  “Oh, that’s an awful thing to say,” Judy says.

  “Why?” Dorothy says. “It’s true. You know what I have in my life? Nothing.”

  “Dorothy?” Mary Alice says.

  “What.”

  “Why would you insult your friends this way?”

  “What?”

  “I’m wondering why you would say you have nothing in your life, when your friends of so many years are sitting right beside you. I think it’s insulting to them. Not that it’s any of my business, really.”

  “Oh, it’s your business,” Judy says quickly. And to Dorothy, Judy says, “She’s right. In a way, you’re telling us we’re losers.”

  “I am not!”

  “Listen, Dorothy,” Linda says. “We love you. All through high school, and all these years later, we love you.”

  “Though it wouldn’t hurt for you to get some therapy,” Judy says, and Linda says, “Judy!”

  “What?” Judy says. “Let’s just be honest here. You and I have talked about how she could use therapy. In a loving way, Dorothy! We want you to be happy, that’s all.”

  “Oh, who’s happy,” Dorothy says.

  A moment, and then Mary Alice raises her ha
nd.

  Dorothy looks at her. “Really?”

  Mary Alice nods solemnly.

  “Huh,” Dorothy says.

  Another woman comes into the bathroom, no one from the reunion. She wrinkles her nose, waves at the air, and says, “You are not supposed to smoke in here.”

  Mary Alice blows out a stream of smoke toward her and says, “Really?”

  “Disgusting!” the woman says and exits the little room.

  “We’ll get you your black leather jacket and motorcycle boots in the morning,” Linda says, and Mary Alice says, “Thank you. Please make sure there are zippers everywhere.” And then, looking at her watch, “It already is morning.”

  “Let’s go to sleep, now,” Judy says, as though they are at a slumber party.

  The women struggle to get up off the floor, and Mary Alice, who is first to stand, offers a hand to Dorothy.

  “Thanks,” Dorothy says. And then, “Mary Alice? Mary Alice Mayhew. Is it too late to say I’m sorry for the way I treated you in high school?”

  “I never think it’s too late for anything,” Mary Alice says. “I have an appointment to try skydiving next week.”

  Dorothy straightens the shoulders of her dress, brushes off the back. She smiles, and Mary Alice sees in it the pretty, open-faced girl she used to be. “See you tomorrow,” Dorothy says. “Want us to save you a seat at our table?”

  “Sure. Thanks.”

  On the drive home, Mary Alice sings along with the radio. She hopes she’ll be with Lester tomorrow, but if not, she’s got friends who will keep a seat for her, no matter how late she gets there.

  TWENTY

  “WELL, HOW MUCH IS THIS GOING TO COST ME?” ALAN Heck asks Lester. His hands are on his hips and he’s glowering at his dog, a small black collie mix named Lady with a white blaze down her nose. She’d be a good-looking dog if she were well cared for. As it is, her ribs protrude, her coat is dull and full of burrs, and Lester can tell from the smell that her right ear is probably infected.

  “I’m not sure yet,” Lester says. “I’ll have to see how deep the cut is.”

  Alan shakes his head. “Fell right down the basement steps. How stupid is that?”

  Lester doubts the dog did any such thing. One of his clients, Anna Pearson, lives next door to Alan Heck, and she told Lester he constantly abuses the dog.

  “Aw, hell, put the damn thing to sleep,” Alan says. “I suppose you’re going to charge me for that, too.”

  Lester is tempted to punch the guy. He was up all night with Samson, and he is in no mood to deal with Alan Heck. He always dreads seeing Alan, but this time is worse than usual. “I’ll tell you what,” he says. “You want to put her down? Why not just let us find her another home? If you do that, I’ll treat her for free.”

  “Really?” Alan says. And then he makes some phony effort to show concern. “Hate to do it, of course,” he says, furrowing his brow, shoving his hands in his pockets, and hunching his shoulders. “My wife loved the thing. But I just can’t… I just can’t keep it if it’s going to keep costing me like this. There’s always something, shots I’m supposed to get it and whatnot. And my business isn’t what it used to be.”

  “I understand,” Lester says. “A man’s got to do what a man’s got to do.” He gives Alan a form to sign, releasing his rights to the dog.

  Alan signs it without reading it, then hikes his pants up. “Okay! Well, so, that’s that.” He reaches down to pat the dog, and she lowers her head, her eyes rolled up in fear. “You be good,” he tells her, and Lester nearly laughs out loud.

  “See you around town, Doc.”

  “Right.” After Alan leaves, Lester stands gently stroking the top of Lady’s head and listening to Alan trying to joke with Jeanine, who ignores him, then tells him pointedly that she’s busy.

  “Whoa,” Alan says. “That time of the month?”

  Lester is gently lifting the dog off the table to bring her into the back when Jeanine bursts into the examining room. “If you ever let that man bring another animal in here, I’m going to have you put away.”

  “If I ever let that man bring another animal in here, I’ll put myself away.”

  “Why did he even keep her after Rose died?” Jeanine asks, and when she looks at Lady, her eyes fill. “Oh, look at her. You can see every rib.”

  “Let’s get her settled. I’m going to fix her up and then I’m going to find her a home that deserves her.”

  “He gave her up?” Jeanine says.

  “Yeah.”

  “The bastard. I’ll take her.”

  “You have four dogs, already.”

  “You only have one,” she says hopefully, and Lester says, “Jeanine.”

  It is Lester’s policy, his desire, his need, to have only one dog at a time. He likes it that way. Jeanine knows this, but she regularly argues that dogs like it better when there is more than one.

  Together, they clean Lady up, put drops in her ears, temporarily dress an abrasion that runs long across her side, give her a dose of antibiotics, and then put her in a roomy cage with a soft blanket. “She’ll probably need a few stitches,” Lester says. “I can do it under local. You can help me. I doubt she’ll put up much resistance. But let’s feed her—and us—first.” They give the dog food and water, and she immediately empties both dishes. Jeanine refills the water dish, and then she and Lester go into the staff break room for a bagel. Jeanine reaches out to touch Lester’s arm. “You okay?”

  “Yeah.”

  After they eat, Jeanine helps him put in the sutures Lady needs—the vet tech they most recently hired has called in sick. “She calls in sick way too often,” Jeanine says. “You’re going to have to fire her and find someone else.”

  Lester secures the dressing onto the dog’s side. “I know. You do it.”

  “We’ll have to find someone else, first,” Jeanine says, and again Lester says, “I know. You do it.”

  As Lester predicted, the dog resists not at all. Nor does she attempt to go after her dressing, so they don’t have to put a cone around her neck. Instead, they simply put her back in the cage, and she lies down and curls in a little ball in the far back corner. Lester stands watching her. At this point in his career, he’s become pretty good at shielding his heart, but this dog is getting to him. He remembers Alan’s wife bringing her in as a puppy, how full of hope Rose had seemed, probably at the prospect of having something that would love her back.

  “You must be exhausted,” Jeanine tells Lester.

  “You must be, too.”

  “I’m okay,” she says. “I’ll tell you, though—I can’t believe Samson made it. That dog thinks he’s a cat—nine lives.”

  Samson had been recovering well from his infection when he suffered another, unrelated problem: gastric volvulus, a sudden twisting of his stomach, rare and usually fatal. Luckily, Jeanine recognized what it was and called Lester immediately, and the dog went back into surgery. Now he is sleeping soundly, his “parents” beside him in lounge-type lawn chairs. They will not leave him until he comes home. Betty brought a picnic basket and a pile of library books, and Stan brought his transistor radio.

  “All right, I’m going to bed,” Lester tells Jeanine. “Call me if you need anything.”

  “You aren’t going back to the reunion? Don’t you have a breakfast?”

  “Too much going on here,” he says.

  “I just called John Benning,” Jeanine says. “He said he’d cover for you all day today. He’s on the way. And he said he’s glad to do it—you bailed him out lots of times.”

  “True,” Lester says. “And he still owes me fifteen dollars from our last poker game.”

  “So, how was the reunion?” Jeanine says. “Did you have fun?”

  “I did.”

  “Did you… meet anyone?”

  “Sort of.”

  Jeanine is all business now. “Okay, you get back there. You go to that breakfast.”

  “Yeah, I don’t know.” He looks at his
watch. “It’ll be over pretty soon.”

  “Oh, no you don’t,” Jeanine says. “I know you. If you don’t go back, you’ll never see whoever you met again. That always happens whenever you meet anyone you’re interested in. You just talk yourself right out of it. You let the whole thing drop!”

  “Well, I don’t know if there’s a whole thing to drop, really. I met someone I kind of like, but I don’t know if—”

  “And that’s exactly why you’re going back.”

  “Jeanine, I’m too tired to drive. Really.” Pete Decker, she was with.

  “I’ll call you a cab.”

  “I don’t need a cab.”

  “Go and change. And shave.”

  Lester goes into the back room once more to check on Lady. The dressing is fine, and the dog is lying still in her cage. She’ll be here all day, with the exception of the times she’ll be let out to pee. Lester pokes his fingers through the cage and gently scratches behind Lady’s ear, and the dog looks up at him.

  Ah, what the hell. It’s a nice day, not too hot, not too cold. “Want to go for a car ride?” he asks, and one ear moves. Lester opens the cage door and strokes the dog’s back. “Want to come with me?” Her tail wags. He lifts her out of the cage and carries her into the waiting room. Jeanine is at the door, on her way out. “Where are you going?” she says.

  “You told me to shave.”

  Jeanine points to the dog, and Lester says, “She’s coming.”

  “In a cab? Town Taxi is on the way.”

  “Jeanine, not for nothing did I go through training. I can go three days without sleep if I need to. Cancel the cab. I’m going to sleep for half an hour. Then I’m going to drink some more coffee. Then I’m going to the breakfast. Then I’m coming home to sleep for the rest of the day.”

  “All right, good,” Jeanine says, and reaches out to pet Lady. “I could have five dogs,” she says wistfully, and Lester says, “Too late. We’ve bonded.”

  In fact, Lester sleeps for over an hour, and when he wakes up he sees that he has just enough time to get to the breakfast before it ends at noon. He leaves Lady sleeping on his bed while he quickly gets ready, then carries her downstairs to pee. He lays her on Mason’s blanket in the front seat of the truck and lets Mason ride in the back, strapped into the harness he hates but will tolerate for the feel of the open air.