George and Lizzie

by Nancy Pearl

  He imagined his mother sitting down at the kitchen table, winding the telephone cord around her wrist, and settling in for a long talk with her younger son. “Because I knew if I told you that you’d respond just like you’re doing. And besides, I can’t really tell how serious it is yet. I sort of wonder if she thinks it’s serious at all. Are you in the kitchen?” he went on, in an attempt to derail the next set of questions he was sure were coming. “Did I interrupt anything? How’s Todd doing? Still surfing away in Oz?”

  “Don’t distract me,” she said, effectively closing off that avenue of verbal escape. “Have you thought about what you’re going to bring? What time do they eat?”

  “Oh, Mom,” George groaned. “She just invited me. We haven’t gone into a time schedule or menu options.”

  “Wine for sure,” Elaine went on, unheeding. “A couple of bottles, one each of red and white. How about if I send you a loaf of my cranberry bread, and maybe a zucchini or pumpkin bread too? It’s too bad I can’t send my wild-rice casserole. Would you make it, if I sent you the recipe?”

  “Don’t send anything. I’m sure they’ll have enough food to feed me without any additions from the Goldrosen family. I’ll bring wine, though. How’s Dad? Is he home? I’d like to say hi to him too.”

  “Oh, I wish you’d bring Lizzie home for Christmas, especially since Todd won’t be here. It’s been so long since we were all together. Do you think you might?”

  “Probably not,” George said. “But I’ll see. Maybe I’ll ask her.”

  “That would be wonderful if you would. I’d love to meet her.”

  “Let me see how Thanksgiving goes, okay?”

  “All right, but just remember that I’d be so happy if you brought her to Tulsa for Christmas. And if she asked you to spend Thanksgiving with her family, that’s surely a sign that she thinks it’s some sort of serious.”

  “It’s hard to tell with Lizzie what’s serious and what isn’t,” George said a bit glumly. “Sort of like with you.”

  Elaine laughed. “I’ll get your father.”

  * The Running Back *

  It was generally believed that Ranger was the best player on the team, but the running back Mickey Coppel had many supporters who thought that he should be considered numero uno. During Lizzie and Maverick’s junior year, Mickey was a wonder. There was no other word for it. He was a solidly built five feet ten inches and had an intuitive sense of what was happening on the rest of the field. Plus he was a devilishly fast runner who always seemed to be moving at top speed and yet could come up with another, faster gear when he needed it. His career rushing total was 11,232 yards, which made him the number seven high school running back ever, according to The National Federation of High Schools Record Book. Although he had an excellent college career playing for Florida State, his Ann Arbor fans always wished he’d stayed at home for college. He was drafted in the second round by the Buffalo Bills to back up Thurman Thomas, which was a mixed blessing. Because Thomas was one of those suck-it-up players when it came to playing hurt, Mickey never saw much playing time. On the other hand, he was on the team during the period they won four consecutive NFC titles and went on to lose four consecutive Super Bowls. After he retired from the Bills, Mickey had a great career as a color analyst on ESPN and was a familiar face to millions of football fans. But during his participation in the Great Game, Lizzie found his front teeth so prominent that it made kissing uncomfortable. Naturally he’d gotten them fixed once he hit the big time, and it was now difficult to imagine how he looked in high school.

  * The First Thanksgiving (with George) *

  Since neither Mendel nor Lydia cared much about food or drink, Lizzie was always surprised at how they chose to celebrate Thanksgiving. For as long as she could remember, every year Lydia and Mendel invited all of their advisees and friends of the advisees who weren’t going home for the holiday, as well as stray faculty members, to come for dinner. This added up to a lot of people, and the year George came was no exception. Many of the faculty members brought along their own folding tables, which were set up all over the first floor of the house. Everyone also brought food of some sort, which could range from baked ham to lasagna, stuffed dates to shredded carrot salad. You never knew what the final meal would look like. Mendel and Lydia always assigned their most favored students to various shopping and cooking tasks. The chefs showed up promptly at nine a.m. on Thanksgiving morning, arms full of groceries, and took over the kitchen. One stuffed the turkey, another made pies, and the third was in charge of everything else, which included a sweet-potato casserole as well as green beans made with cream of mushroom soup with fried onion rings on top. To give the impression that she was interested in what her students were doing, Lydia sat at the kitchen table and chain-smoked while she proofed an article or read a book. Mendel futzed around the cooks, a cigarette in one hand, a bottle in the other, pouring generous glasses of wine for everyone. The wine was accepted, but his offers of help were always refused.

  After the cooking and baking began, Lizzie kept well out of the way. For many years this was when she and Andrea used to meet at Island Park and sit on the swings and compare notes about their horrible parents. Freshman year she’d gone home with Marla for the Thanksgiving holiday, and last year James and Marla had been at the Bultmanns’. This year she was upstairs in her bedroom, trying to write something meaningful about Stephen Crane’s Red Badge of Courage for her American lit class, but failing badly. What she wanted to do was sit on her bed and wring her hands. She already regretted her rash decision to invite George to come for dinner.

  They had been sitting around George’s apartment, competing in a game of Jeopardy! James was Alex Trebek and Lizzie, Marla, and George were each holding a buzzer. Before George’s arrival in Lizzie’s life, the other three had devised a three-person version of it and played regularly. James usually won, Marla came in second, and Lizzie was almost always a distant third. All she knew about was literature, and questions she was sure of didn’t come up nearly often enough. This was the first time George had played with them, and halfway through the game he had a comfortable lead over Marla, while Lizzie, as usual, lagged far behind them.

  “Okay, here’s a difficult question that I somehow doubt any of you will get,” James said. “I sure wouldn’t. ‘A movie title from the 1980s that also describes a kind of carpet.’”

  “I know this!” Lizzie yelled as James finished reading the clue, and smashed her hand onto her buzzer just as George was saying “I got this!” and hitting his buzzer.

  “Lizzie, you were a nanosecond faster,” James said. “What’s the answer?”

  “What is Shag?” Lizzie said proudly. She knew it was the right answer. “I love that movie. Is that what you were going to say, George?”

  “Uh-huh, it’s my mother’s favorite film, and she made my brother and me watch it with her. It’s pretty good.”

  “Wow, nobody else I know has even heard of it. And I’m shocked that you like it, George, since it’s such a girlie sort of movie. You know, it’s so sweet—the whole romance subplot with Annabeth Gish.”

  “Sweet’s the right description of it, but it’s not so sweet that it makes your teeth ache.”

  Lizzie laughed. “Only a dentist would make a comment like that.”

  “Well, I’ve never even heard of it,” James admitted. “Have you, Marla?”

  “Nope,” Marla said. “But I’m not fond of sweet movies and usually Lizzie isn’t either. But you know, George, you’ve found the road into our finicky Lizzie’s heart: not only do you like a movie she likes, but you said ‘made my brother and me watch it.’ If you’d said, ‘my brother and I’ you’d have no chance with her. You’ve now passed two of her secret boyfriend tests. Oh, wait, I forgot one, you both like iced tea in any weather. That’s three tests you’ve aced. It’s a match made in heaven.”

  George smiled and Lizzie frowned. “Shut up, Marla,” she muttered. But it was true. The more time she spent wi
th George the better she liked him. At least he wasn’t boring. And he was doing awfully well at Jeopardy! She turned to him. “Marla and James go home for Thanksgiving, but if you’re around and don’t have anything to do, would you like to come to my parents’ house for dinner?”

  “Is that another test?” George asked Marla. “I’d love to come to Thanksgiving,” he told Lizzie, without waiting for Marla’s answer.

  “It’ll be different, that’s for sure,” James warned him. “We were there last year.”

  George arrived in a scrum of other guests, doddering professors and their doddering wives, widows and widowers of doddering professors, and all of Mendel’s and Lydia’s students who had no other place to go. George was laden with packages. Even though he’d specifically told her not to, Elaine had FedExed several loaves of cranberry and zucchini breads. For some weird reason she’d also sent a challah, along with some jars of homemade jams, a large box of Frango chocolates, and several bags of gourmet popcorn. He wasn’t sure whether the popcorn was intended for the Bultmanns or not, but he brought it with him anyway. All that, along with the wine (he’d bought two bottles of white and one of red), wasn’t easy to carry. He didn’t want to drop anything but was equally worried about bumping into one of the many elderly guests who probably couldn’t keep upright if someone tapped their arm. Everyone was carrying food, but nobody was as weighed down with packages as George.

  He’d been counting on Lizzie answering the door, but instead it was an older man who first greeted the other guests and then looked at George. George assumed it was Mendel.

  “You are?” the man asked, raising an eyebrow.

  George attempted to transfer all his packages to his left arm so he could shake hands, but was unsuccessful. He resorted to nodding politely. “I’m Lizzie’s friend George.”

  The man didn’t look any more enlightened as to George’s identity. George went on, “She, um, Lizzie invited me for Thanksgiving dinner.” He looked around. Why wasn’t Lizzie coming to his rescue, either by assuring her father that George was who he said he was or by unburdening him of Elaine’s gifts and the wine, which together were growing increasingly heavy?

  Ah, there she was, dashing down the stairs. “Mendel, this is George,” she said. “George, Mendel.” Mendel finally nodded, and George nodded back, feeling ridiculous. Lizzie took him into the kitchen and lined up everything he’d brought on a counter.

  “Wow, this is all from you?”

  “Well, my mom sent it for you and your parents.”

  Lizzie shook her head. “Totally unnecessary. But awfully nice of your mom.”

  She poured them each a glass of wine. “Listen,” she began. “About the food . . .” but he didn’t hear what she said next because—at no signal that George detected—everyone around them suddenly rushed into the dining room, took a plate, and lined up at the buffet tables, which were crowded with an array of food. George was swept along with the crowd. He lost sight of Lizzie momentarily.

  It was hard to know what to choose. He wished he knew what Lizzie was going to say. What was it about the food that she wanted to tell him? He wished he’d grabbed hold of Lizzie’s hand and held on tight. She was still nowhere to be seen. George sighed. He took a piece of turkey and ladled some stuffing on top of it, then poured gravy over it all. His plate still looked pretty barren. He added some mashed potatoes and then couldn’t resist taking a square of lasagna as well. The lemon-yellow Jell-O salad filled with miniature marshmallows and canned fruit cocktail precipitated a wave of nostalgia for his childhood. When he visited his grandparents in Stillwater the dinners would always include Jell-O salad of one flavor or another. But whatever the flavor, the Jell-O would be filled with miniature marshmallows and canned fruit cocktail. He hadn’t had it for years. He took a large helping.

  While he was scoping out the dessert table, there, finally, was Lizzie, making her way toward him, carrying a plate that was empty except for a few carrot sticks and pieces of celery.

  “Is that all you’re eating?”

  “Didn’t you hear what I said about the food?”

  “No, I was dragged away by the screaming starving hordes of your parents’ friends.”

  “What I said was that the food’s basically inedible, no matter who made it or what it is.”

  “All of it? Really?” He indicated the Jell-O, which he was dying to sample. “And what about the desserts?”

  “All of it,” she said firmly, “except maybe the desserts.”

  “Okay, can we go check out the desserts? And can I just taste the Jell-O? I’m pretty sure nobody could possibly ruin that.”

  “With this crowd you can never be sure of anything. You should hear some of my Bultmann family Thanksgiving food stories. The trips to the emergency room at St. Joseph’s, the failed Heimlich maneuvers to dislodge an errant turkey bone. The fight to the death over the last chocolate brownie on the tray.”

  “You’re very funny, Lizzie,” George said.

  “I am, it’s true. Not many people know that about me, though.”

  “Despite your warnings, I’m going to try some of the desserts.”

  “I suppose lots of people have remarked on what a good eater you are,” Lizzie surmised.

  “My Montreal grandmother loved it when we visited because between me and Todd she didn’t have leftovers. The human garbage disposals, she called us.” George laughed.

  Rather than share a table with other people, they ended up sitting on the stairs. Lizzie crunched on her carrots moodily, and George carefully tried little bits of everything he’d taken. The Jell-O was disappointingly, cloyingly sweet. And the fruit cocktail didn’t really taste like fruit. It didn’t taste like anything at all. How disillusioning. Was this what becoming an adult meant? That you pulled aside a curtain and saw a sad truth you hadn’t understood before? He was grateful that the brownie was delicious, though. He moved up a stair to sit next to Lizzie and put his arm around her.

  They left right after dinner. George wanted to say good-bye to the Bultmanns but they seemed to have disappeared. “Don’t worry about it, George,” Lizzie said. “Let’s just go. They wouldn’t care either way.”

  George was unconvinced but tried not to worry about it.

  “Awful, wasn’t it,” Lizzie said, not as a question.

  “Yeah, it was a little odd, I guess. Just like James said.”

  “You’re too nice, George, do you know that?”

  “My brother once accused me of the same thing, actually. But I didn’t agree with him. I like being nice. So, no, it wasn’t awful, it was just . . . weird.”

  Lizzie sighed. “They’re just not normal, you know. All they care about is their work. I don’t know why they put on this charade of celebration. Did you notice how all the hot food was actually cold?”

  “Well, I guess that if it’s a buffet and you get your food and then sit down, things are often cold by the time you’re ready to eat it.”

  “Marla’s mother has warming trays.”

  “So does mine, actually,” George reluctantly admitted. “The desserts were good. But the turkey looked really undercooked.”

  “Yeah, it was raw. It always is. I tried to warn you. I always pretend I’m a vegetarian at Thanksgiving. I wonder who brought the macaroni and cheese this year. It looked okay. God, I’m starving now. Are you hungry? I rescued the popcorn, the chocolates, a bottle of wine, and the cranberry bread. We can have a feast tonight.”

  George laughed. “Do you think your father would even recognize me if he saw me again? And I never even met your mother. Damn, I really wanted to make a good impression on them. Aren’t they interested in who you’re dating?”

  “Nope, never have been and never will. Sometimes that’s good and sometimes that’s bad.”

  “My folks are so different,” George said. “If I brought a girl home for Thanksgiving, my mother would be all over her, grilling her, asking her what her parents did, what’s she studying, if she has brothers and siste
rs, her favorite books and movies—”

  Lizzie interrupted him. “Your mother and I would have at least one thing in common: that we both love the movie Shag.”

  “My mother would love you, Lizzie.”

  “Really? Are you sure? Nobody’s mother loves me.”

  George took her hand. “Elaine would be the exception that proves that rule.”

  * An Invitation *

  George was on call on Saturday after Thanksgiving, but he and Lizzie decided to take a chance and go see the Coen brothers’ new film, Barton Fink. As they walked back to George’s apartment, Lizzie congratulated him on not having to leave the theater and attend to someone’s emergency tooth issue.

  “I would have thought that Thanksgiving was a prime time for disaster, especially with food like pecan pie.”

  “You’d think so,” George agreed happily. “But maybe the dental gods knew that we wanted to spend the day together and planned accordingly.”

  They were in general accord about how much they’d enjoyed the film (George perhaps a tad more than Lizzie), how great the casting was, how they couldn’t think of anyone better to play those roles than John Turturro and John Goodman. Lizzie had read in the newspaper that morning about all the literary allusions in the film, but she and George could only name one: Shakespeare.

  “That doesn’t say much,” George said. “It’s probably hard to find anything written after 1600 and probably even earlier that doesn’t have some allusion to his plays.”

  Lizzie agreed. “I remember reading a novel in which one of the characters, a college professor, was writing a book on the influence of Emily Dickinson on Shakespeare and how his colleagues always misheard it and thought it was the other way around. I wish I could remember the title, because talking about it now makes me want to read it again. It’s so interesting to think about. Do you think we read Shakespeare differently because of Dickinson’s poems?”