She had turned up the furnace when she got home and put the application on the vent, but it had wrinkled as it dried, and there was a big smear down the middle where the worm had lain. “No,” she said, “I was going to, but when I was over on the campus, there was this worm lying on the sidewalk. A girl walked by and stepped in a puddle, and that was all it took. The worm was right on the edge, and when she stepped in the puddle, it made a kind of wave that pushed it over the edge. She didn’t even know she’d done it.”
“Is there a point to this story, or have you decided to stand here and talk until you’ve completely ruined my chance at tenure?” He shut off the oven and went into the living room. She followed him.
“All it took was somebody walking past and stepping in a puddle, and the worm’s whole life was changed. Do you think things happen like that? That one little action can change your whole life forever?”
“What I think,” he said, “is that you didn’t want to move here in the first place, and so you are determined to sabotage my chances. You know what this move is costing us, but you won’t go apply for a job. You know how important my getting tenure is, but you won’t do anything to help. You won’t even go to a goddamn Tupperware party!” He turned the thermostat down. “It’s like an oven in here. You’ve got the heat turned up to seventy-five. What’s the matter with you?”
“I was cold,” Elizabeth said.
* * *
She was late to the Tupperware party. They were in the middle of a game where they told their name and something they liked that began with the same letter.
“My name’s Sandy,” an overweight woman in brown polyester pants and a rust print blouse was saying, “and I like sundaes.” She pointed at Elizabeth’s neighbor. “And you’re Meg, and you like marshmallows, and you’re Janice,” she said, glaring at a woman in a pink suit with her hair teased and sprayed the way girls had worn it when Elizabeth was in college. “You’re Janice and you like Jesus,” she said, and moved rapidly on to the next person. “And you’re Barbara and you like bananas.”
She went all the way around the circle until she came to Elizabeth. She looked puzzled for a moment, and then said, “And you’re Elizabeth, and you went to college here, didn’t you?”
“Yes,” she said.
“That doesn’t begin with an E,” the woman in the center said. Everyone laughed. “I’m Terry, and I like Tupperware,” she said, and there was more laughter. “You got here late. Stand up and tell us your name and something you like.”
“I’m Elizabeth,” she said, still trying to place the woman in the brown slacks. Sandy. “And I like…” She couldn’t think of anything that began with an E.
“Eggs,” Sandy whispered loudly.
“And I like eggs,” Elizabeth said, and sat back down.
“Great,” Terry said. “Everybody else got a favor, so you get one, too.” She handed Elizabeth a pink plastic egg separator.
“Somebody gave me one of those,” she said.
“No problem,” Terry said. She held out a shallow plastic box full of plastic toothbrush holders and grapefruit slicers. “You can put it back and take something else if you’ve already got one.”
“No. I’ll keep this.” She knew she should say something good-natured and funny, in the spirit of things, but all she could think of was what she had said to Tupper when he gave it to her. “I’ll treasure this always,” she had told him. A month later she had thrown it away.
“I’ll treasure it always,” Elizabeth said, and everyone laughed.
They played another game, unscrambling words like “autumn” and “schooldays” and “leaf,” and then Terry passed out order forms and pencils and showed them the Tupperware.
It was cold in the house, even though Elizabeth’s neighbor had a fire going in the fireplace, and after she had filled out her order form, Elizabeth went over and sat in front of the fire, looking at the plastic egg separator.
The woman in the brown pants came over, holding a coffee cup and a brownie on a napkin. “Hi, I’m Sandy Konkel. You don’t remember me, do you?” she said. “I was an Alpha Phi. I pledged the year after you did.”
Elizabeth looked earnestly at her, trying to remember her. She did not look like she had ever been an Alpha Phi. Her mustard-colored hair looked as if she had cut it herself. “I’m sorry, I…” Elizabeth said.
“That’s okay,” Sandy said. She sat down next to her. “I’ve changed a lot. I used to be skinny before I went to all these Tupperware parties and ate brownies. And I used to be a lot blonder. Well, actually, I never was any blonder, but I looked blonder, if you know what I mean. You look just the same. You were Elizabeth Wilson, right?”
Elizabeth nodded.
“I’m not really a whiz at remembering names,” she said cheerfully, “but they stuck me with being alum rep this year. Could I come over tomorrow and get some info from you on what you’re doing, who you’re married to? Is your husband an alum, too?”
“No,” Elizabeth said. She stretched her hands out over the fire, trying to warm them. “Do they still have Angel Flight at the college?”
“At the university, you mean,” Sandy said, grinning. “It used to be a college. Gee, I don’t know. They dropped the whole ROTC thing back in sixty-eight. I don’t think they ever reinstated it. I can find out. Were you in Angel Flight?”
“No,” Elizabeth said.
“You know, now that I think about it, I don’t think they did. They always had that big fall dance, and I don’t remember them having it since … what was it called, the Autumn Something?”
“The Harvest Ball,” Elizabeth said.
* * *
Thursday morning Elizabeth walked back over to the campus to get another job application. Paul had been late going to work. “Did you talk to Brubaker’s wife?” he had said on his way out the door. Elizabeth had forgotten all about Mrs. Brubaker. She wondered which one she had been, Barbara who liked bananas or Meg who liked marshmallows.
“Yes,” she said. “I told her how much you liked the university.”
“Good. There’s a faculty concert tomorrow night. Brubaker asked if we were going. I invited them over for coffee afterwards. Did you turn the heat up again?” he said. He looked at the thermostat and turned it down to sixty. “You had it turned up to eighty. I can hardly wait to see what our first gas bill is. The last thing I need is a two hundred dollar gas bill, Elizabeth. Do you realize what this move is costing us?”
“Yes,” Elizabeth said. “I do.”
She had turned the thermostat back up as soon as he left, but it didn’t seem to do any good. She put on a sweater and her raincoat and walked over to the campus.
The rain had stopped sometime during the night, but the central walk was still wet. At the far end, a girl in a yellow slicker stepped up on the curb. She took a few steps on the sidewalk, her head bent, as if she were looking at something on the ground, and then cut across the wet grass toward Gunter.
* * *
Elizabeth went into Carter Hall. The girl who had helped her the day before was leaning over the counter, taking notes from a textbook. She was wearing a pleated skirt and sweater like Elizabeth had worn in college.
“The styles we wore have all come back,” Tib had said when they had lunch together. “Those matching sweater and skirt sets and those horrible flats that we never could keep on our feet. And penny loafers.” She was on her third peach daiquiri and her voice had gotten calmer with each one, so that she almost sounded like her old self. “And cocktail dresses! Do you remember that rust formal you had, with the scoop neck and the long skirt with the raised design? I always loved that dress. Do you remember that time you loaned it to me for the Angel Flight dance?”
“Yes,” Elizabeth said, and picked up the bill.
Tib tried to stir her peach daiquiri with its mint sprig, but it slipped out of her fingers and sank to the bottom of the glass. “He really only took me to be nice.”
“I know,” Elizabeth had said.
“Now how much do I owe? Six-fifty for the crepes and two for the wine cooler. Do they add on the tip here?”
“I need another job application,” Elizabeth said to the girl.
“Sure thing.” When the girl walked over to the files to get it, Elizabeth could see that she was wearing flat-heeled shoes like she had worn in college. Elizabeth thanked her and put the application in her purse.
She walked up past her dorm. The worm was still lying there. The sidewalk around it was almost dry, and the worm was a darker red than it had been. “I should have put it in the grass,” she said out loud. She knew it was dead, but she picked it up and put it in the grass anyway, so no one would step on it. It was cold to the touch.
* * *
Sandy Konkel came over in the afternoon wearing a gray polyester pantsuit. She had a wet high school letter jacket over her head. “John loaned me his jacket,” she said. “I wasn’t going to wear a coat this morning, but John told me I was going to get drenched. Which I was.”
“You might want to put it on,” Elizabeth said. “I’m sorry it’s so cold in here. I think there’s something wrong with the furnace.”
“I’m fine,” Sandy said. “You know, I wrote that article on your husband being the new assistant dean, and I asked him about you, but he didn’t say anything about your having gone to college here.”
She had a thick notebook with her. She opened it at tabbed sections. “We might as well get this alum stuff out of the way first, and then we can talk. This alum rep job is a real pain, but I must admit I get kind of a kick out of finding out what happened to everybody. Let’s see,” she said, thumbing through the sections. “Found, lost, hopelessly lost, deceased. I think you’re one of the hopelessly lost. Right? Okay.” She dug a pencil out of her purse. “You were Elizabeth Wilson.”
“Yes,” Elizabeth said. “I was.” She had taken off her light sweater and put on a heavy wool one when she got home, but she was still cold. She rubbed her hands along her upper arms. “Would you like some coffee?”
“Sure,” she said. She followed Elizabeth to the kitchen and asked her questions about Paul and his job and whether they had any children while Elizabeth made coffee and put out the cream and sugar and a plate of the cookies she had baked for after the concert.
“I’ll read you some names off the hopelessly lost list, and if you know what happened to them, just stop me. Carolyn Waugh, Pam Callison, Linda Bohlender.” She was several names past Cheryl Tibner before Elizabeth realized that was Tib.
“I saw Tib in Denver this summer,” she said. “Her married name’s Scates, but she’s getting a divorce, and I don’t know if she’s going to go back to her maiden name or not.”
“What’s she doing?” Sandy said.
She’s drinking too much, Elizabeth thought, and she let her hair grow out, and she’s too thin. “She’s working for a stockbroker,” she said and went to get the address Tib had given her. Sandy wrote it down, and then flipped to the tabbed section marked “Found” and entered the name and address again.
“Would you like some more coffee, Mrs. Konkel?” Elizabeth said.
“You still don’t remember me, do you?” Sandy said. She stood up and took off her jacket. She was wearing a short-sleeved gray knit shell underneath it. “I was Karen Zamora’s roommate. Sondra Dickeson?”
Sondra Dickeson. She had had pale blonde hair that she wore in a pageboy, and a winter white cashmere sweater and a matching white skirt with a kick pleat. She had worn it with black heels and a string of real pearls.
Sandy laughed. “You should see the expression on your face. You remember me now, don’t you?”
“I’m sorry. I just didn’t … I should have…”
“Listen, it’s okay,” she said. She took a sip of coffee. “At least you didn’t say, ‘How could you let yourself go like that?’ like Janice Brubaker did.” She bit into a cookie. “Well, aren’t you going to ask me whatever became of Sondra Dickeson? It’s a great story.”
“What happened to her?” Elizabeth said. She felt suddenly colder. She poured herself another cup of coffee and sat back down, wrapping her hands around the cup for warmth.
Sandy finished the cookie and took another one. “Well, if you remember, I was kind of a snot in those days. I was going to this Sigma Chi dinner dance with Chuck Pagano. Do you remember him? Well, anyway, we were going to this dance clear out in the country somewhere and he stopped the car and got all clutchy-grabby and I got mad because he was messing up my hair and my makeup so I got out of the car. And he drove off. So there I was, standing out in the middle of nowhere in a formal and high heels. I hadn’t even grabbed my purse or anything, and it’s getting dark, and Sondra Dickeson is such a snot that it never even occurs to her to walk back to town or try to find a phone or something. No, she just stands there like an idiot in her brocade formal and her orchid corsage and her dyed satin pumps and thinks, ‘He can’t do this to me. Who does he think he is?’”
She was talking about herself as if she had been another person, which Elizabeth supposed she had been, an ice-blonde with a pageboy and a formal like the one Elizabeth had loaned Tib for the Harvest Ball, a rust satin bodice and a bell skirt out of sculptured rust brocade. After the dance Elizabeth had given it to the Salvation Army.
“Did Chuck come back?” she said.
“Yes,” Sandy said, frowning, and then grinned. “But not soon enough. Anyway, it’s almost dark and along comes this truck with no lights on, and this guy leans out and says, ‘Hiya, gorgeous. Wanta ride?’” She smiled at her coffee cup as if she could still hear him saying it. “He was awful. His hair was down to his ears and his fingernails were black. He wiped his hand on his shirt and helped me up into the truck. He practically pulled my arm out of its socket, and then he said, ‘I thought there for a minute I was going to have to go around behind and shove. You know, you’re lucky I came along. I’m not usually out after dark on account of my lights being out, but I had a flat tire.’”
She’s happy, Elizabeth thought, putting her hand over the top of her cup to try to warm herself with the steam.
“And he took me home and I thanked him and the next week he showed up at the Phi house and asked me out for a date, and I was so surprised that I went, and I married him, and we have four kids.”
The furnace kicked on, and Elizabeth could feel the air coming out of the vent under the table, but it felt cold. “You went out with him?” she said.
“Hard to believe, isn’t it? I mean, at that age all you can think about is your precious self. You’re so worried about getting laughed at or getting hurt, you can’t even see anybody else. When my sorority sister told me he was downstairs, all I could think of was how he must look, his hair all slicked back with water and cleaning those black fingernails with a penknife, and what everybody would say. I almost told her to tell him I wasn’t there.”
“What if you had done that?”
“I guess I’d still be Sondra Dickeson, the snot, a fate worse than death.”
“A fate worse than death,” Elizabeth said, almost to herself, but Sandy didn’t hear her. She was plunging along, telling the story that she got to tell everytime somebody new moved to town, and no wonder she liked being alum rep.
“My sorority sister said, ‘He’s really got intestinal fortitude coming here like this, thinking you’d go out with him,’ and I thought about him, sitting down there being laughed at, being hurt, and I told my roommate to go to hell and went downstairs and that was that.” She looked at the kitchen clock. “Good lord, is it that late? I’m going to have to go pick up the kids pretty soon.” She ran her finger down the hopelessly lost list. “How about Dallas Tindall, May Matsumoto, Ralph DeArvill?”
“No,” Elizabeth said. “Is Tupper Hofwalt on that list?”
“Hofwalt.” She flipped several pages over. “Was Tupper his real name?”
“No. Phillip. But everybody called him Tupper because he sold Tupperware.”
She looked up. “I remember
him. He had a Tupperware party in our dorm when I was a freshman.” She flipped back to the Found section and started paging through it.
He had talked Elizabeth and Tib into having a Tupperware party in the dorm. “As co-hostess you’ll be eligible to earn points toward a popcorn popper,” he had said. “You don’t have to do anything except come up with some refreshments, and your mothers are always sending you cookies, right? And I’ll owe you guys a favor.”
They had had the party in the dorm lounge. Tupper pinned the names of famous people on their backs and they had to figure out who they were by asking questions about themselves.
Elizabeth was Twiggy. “Am I a girl?” she had asked Tib.
“Yes.”
“Am I pretty?”
“Yes,” Tupper had said before Tib could answer.
After she guessed it she went over and stooped down next to the coffee table where Tupper was setting up his display of plastic bowls. “Do you really think Twiggy’s pretty?” she asked.
“Who said anything about Twiggy?” he said. “Listen, I wanted to tell you…”
“Am I alive?” Sharon Oberhausen demanded.
“I don’t know,” Elizabeth said. “Turn around so I can see who you are.”
The sign on her back said Mick Jagger.
“It’s hard to tell,” Tupper said.
Tib was King Kong. It had taken her forever to figure it out. “Am I tall?” she asked.
“Compared to what?” Elizabeth said.
She stuck her hands on her hips. “I don’t know. The Empire State Building.”
“Yes,” Tupper said.
He had had a hard time getting them to stop talking so he could show them his butter keeper and cake taker and popsicle makers. While they were filling out their order forms, Sharon Oberhausen said to Tib, “Do you have a date yet for the Harvest Ball?”
“Yes,” Tib said.
“I wish I did,” Sharon said. She leaned across Tib. “Elizabeth, do you realize everybody in ROTC has to have a date or they put you on weekend duty? Who are you going with, Tib?”
“Listen, you guys,” Tib said, “the more you buy, the better our chances at that popcorn popper, which we are willing to share.”
The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Fourth Annual Collection Page 58