“About what?”
“I want you, Alice. I want to be with you so bad, but—”
“I know, I know,” Alice said brusquely. “You’ve said this many times, but it’s not that you don’t know what to do. You just won’t do it.”
“You don’t understand. I’ve got so much more to lose than you do.”
“Yes, you’re right. My heart, my pride, and my sanity are frivolous luxuries I can certainly live without.”
“Alice, you know I didn’t mean it that way. Please, let’s not fight over this again.”
Alice took her hand. “I’m sorry, baby. I don’t want to fight. These last few weeks without you were unbearable—I don’t know.” She shook her head and suppressed the rise of familiar angst.
“I should go,” Leslie said softly.
Alice nodded.
“Can I call you this week?”
“If you don’t, I will,” Alice said, managing a smile.
Leslie leaned over and gave her a kiss Alice felt tickle her soul. “I love you, Alice—more than you’ll ever know.”
She got out of the car before Alice could respond. A fast break. Alice hated them, but they were a necessary evil.
On the drive home, Alice blasted the radio in an attempt to extinguish the emotion smoldering in her even as her body still tingled from car sex with Leslie. But the driving beat of Rita Coolidge’s “Your Love Has Lifted Me Higher” couldn’t tune out the cacophony in her heart that her swift departure so soon after another torturously short interlude had caused.
She’d grown accustomed to the bouts of sadness that alternated with the ecstasy of making love with Leslie or simply a moment of stolen kisses, even finding comfort in the familiarity, but now it seemed the sadness was lasting longer and occurring sooner than before. Meeting Leslie at the diner hadn’t been the brightest move, but it was one she wasn’t ready to stop herself from making.
Chapter Twelve
Alice relaxed in a lounge chair with a glass of lemonade keeping her lap cool. She watched her sister watching her son, DJ, and his son and daughter chase each other around the yard with lacrosse sticks in the afternoon sun.
“I’m getting heat stroke just looking at them,” Alice said.
“DJ, you better take a break,” Mary Ellen shouted. “You’re going to have a heart attack in this heat.”
DJ walked over to them, drying his hair with a beach towel. “Nothing to worry about, Ma. I’m a young forty-six. Those two keep me young.” He dropped down in a chair next to them and broke open a bottle of water.
Mary Ellen’s ten-year-old granddaughter, Madison, ran over and landed in her lap. “Grammy, I’m starving.”
“Pop’s getting the grill fired up, baby,” she said, brushing sweaty bangs off the girl’s forehead. “Are you gonna have some barbecued chicken?”
Madison bobbed her head excitedly as she sipped her father’s water.
“Let me go help him,” DJ said and headed over to the patio.
“It’s so great having everyone together,” Mary Ellen said. “It’s been too long since we’ve all done this.”
“I’m having an amazing time.” Alice smiled at her grandniece as Mary Ellen stroked her ponytail.
And suddenly, like a curious butterfly, Madison flew off Mary Ellen’s lap to see what her father and brother were up to at the grill.
Mary Ellen raised an eyebrow at Alice. “If it’s so amazing, why is that phone in your hand?”
“What? Oh.” Alice placed the phone on the small glass table between their chairs, truly unaware she was holding it.
“Why haven’t you gone to see her since Friday?”
“I’ve been busy,” Alice said.
“Bullshit. You were there every day since last weekend, for hours, even when she wasn’t conscious. Now that she is, and it seems like she’s going to recover, you’re suddenly too busy to visit her?”
Alice lifted her sunglasses to address her sister. “I hope we’re not going to have to start checking out homes for you.”
“What?”
“You’ve been complaining that I’m not spending any quality time with you, and now that I am, you’re asking why I’m not with Leslie.”
“If you want to be with her, Ally, go be with her. I didn’t mean to bully you into staying here.”
“Bully me? I’m having the best time here with you and Dave and the kids. I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else.”
Suddenly, Alice’s phone chirped and vibrated as Rebecca’s name and number flashed across the screen. She snatched the phone off the table and ran into the kitchen to answer it.
“Hi, Alice,” Rebecca said. “I hope I’m not calling you at a bad time.”
“No. Is everything okay?”
“Yes, fine. I was just wondering if everything was okay with you.”
“Me? Yeah, why do you ask?”
Rebecca seemed to hesitate. “Well, Mom said you had a really nice time reminiscing over lunch Friday, but you haven’t been by since—I mean not that you have to come at all. I just wanted to make sure everything was okay with you.”
Alice exhaled into the phone. Rebecca seemed genuinely concerned, but how could Alice tell her what was really going on? She’d been having a hard-enough time getting a handle on it herself. She was in love with Leslie all over again, and it had only been a year since her partner had passed.
“Okay,” Rebecca said softly. “I won’t keep you—”
“Rebecca, wait,” Alice said before she ended the call. “Listen, um, I had a wonderful time with Leslie on Friday. I so enjoyed reminiscing with her.”
“Apparently, she did, too. She hasn’t stopped talking about you since.”
Alice’s smile stretched her tight, sun-kissed skin. “As it turns out, I was planning to pay her a visit tonight after my family picnic,” she said, a smile lingering in her voice.
“Oh, that’s, uh…Mom’ll be happy about that. Listen, I’m sorry I panicked and called you in the middle of your picnic.”
“It’s no trouble,” Alice said. “I appreciate your concern.”
She smiled again after they ended the call, her mood entirely transformed. What a trip to contemplate that all these years later, one of the two reasons she and Leslie couldn’t be together would be playing matchmaker for them now.
*
After an uplifting afternoon of grilled chicken, mixed-berry trifle, and water-balloon fights with her nephew’s kids, Alice took a quick shower, stopped at the florist, and was on her way to the rehab facility. At a traffic light she checked her reflection in the rearview mirror, noting the pronounced smile lines around her mouth and eyes. The decision to come back to Connecticut had been a good one. Time spent with family, old friends, and Leslie had been the salve she’d long needed.
Maureen’s illness and death had carved a cavernous wound in her over a five-year span. By the time she’d laid her to rest, she hadn’t recognized herself anymore. Only twice in her life had something affected her so profoundly as to change the essence of her being: leaving Leslie and losing Maureen. Now it seemed she’d been given the chance to reclaim one of those losses. But to what degree?
As she rolled into Sunday traffic, she reminded herself to breathe and flashed back to a time when another of Leslie’s family members had tried his hand at matchmaking.
October 1977
After their steamy night in Alice’s car, social gatherings at Bill and Leslie’s had gone from awkward to downright unbearable. At their Halloween party, Alice sat sipping a Jack and Ginger, flipping through a TV guide, yawning repeatedly—as inviting a party guest as the clap. She’d been actively avoiding the cat in the pirate costume, Vic Howard, a handsome plumber with weathered hands and a dimpled grin rivaling Leslie’s in its beauty. That fucking husband of Leslie’s. Why couldn’t he ever bring around someone ugly, missing teeth or fingers, any hideous defect that would provide an easy excuse for her not to date him? Maybe the solution lay in her own hands. Maybe she should
take a page out of Kathy’s beauty regimen—no more makeup to accentuate her full lips and thick eyelashes, no more outfits that emphasized her shapely figure—only clothing and shoes that readied her for a hike in the mountains at a moment’s notice.
As she knocked back the last drop of her drink, she saw Vic wave at her. Damn it. She whipped around toward the fireplace, smeared her mascara with her finger, and messed up her hair as he made his way over.
“There you are.” He smiled, as charismatic as Omar Sharif in Doctor Zhivago. “Say, who are you supposed to be again?”
She raised the zipper on the front of her royal-blue jumpsuit and pressed down the square tinfoil packets of wires stuck to her forearms. “The Bionic Woman.” She lifted her arms to his face.
“Of course. Well, I hope your bionic hearing didn’t catch me telling everyone how foxy you look in that jumpsuit.” A goofy laugh accentuated his compliment.
“Hmm, wouldn’t I love to be able to pick up conversations across the room.” She scanned the party guests, trying to locate Leslie’s short Little Red Riding Hood dress.
“Looks like I found you just in time.” He indicated her empty glass. “What are you drinking?”
“Jack and Ginger.” She handed him her glass and looked directly at him to ensure he noticed her newly disheveled appearance. As he walked toward the makeshift bar, she was confident he wouldn’t hang around too long after returning to drop off her fresh drink.
“You have an intriguing smile,” he said when he returned.
“How do you know? I haven’t smiled all night.” She snatched the drink from his hand and took a healthy swig.
“Yes, you have—before, when you were talking to Leslie. She must’ve been telling you one hell of a story. Your face lit up like their Jack-o’-lanterns. Except your teeth are much nicer.”
“Thanks.” She damned her parents for being able to afford orthodontics. “Speaking of our hostess, where is she?”
“Probably in the kitchen. So why haven’t you smiled all night? That’s like a plant refusing to give off oxygen.”
She inspected his glassy brown eyes. “You’re the most poetic plumber I’ve ever met.”
“Don’t let the years of toil on these hands fool you,” he said. “I’m a thinking man. How about you let me take you out to dinner some time and prove it?”
“I’m fine taking your word for it,” she said.
“Come on, Alice. It’s a valuable thing to be on a first-name basis with a plumber.”
“I’ve had pretty decent luck with the Yellow Pages.”
Vic smirked. “Do you always work guys over like this before saying yes?”
Alice zeroed in on Leslie across the room as she came out of the kitchen. She carried a platter of hors d’oeuvres over to Bill, who looked like a big dope in his Big Bad Wolf costume. He said something in her ear, producing that lone, killer dimple on Leslie’s cheek. Alice’s blood boiled as her imagination conjured all sorts of horrific possibilities.
“You know what, Vic?” she said as though spiting Leslie. “Let’s go out to dinner some time.”
“Really? Oh man, righteous. Okay. Let me find a pen to take down your number.”
Alice smiled like a silent-film villain as she walked over to Leslie. “You and Bill look like you’re having a smashing good time.”
“There you are,” Leslie said. “Where’ve you been hiding?”
“Well, I was hiding from Vic the poetic plumber, but it turns out he’s a better detective than you.”
“Only because I’ve been busy in the kitchen. I didn’t expect this many people.”
“What was so funny between you and Bill?”
“What do you mean?”
“When you came out of the kitchen, he whispered something to you. What was it, something romantic?”
“No, no,” Leslie said, flustered. “He said we’re lucky that Fat Tommy showed up, or we’d be eating pigs in a blanket and that salmon mold for dinner for the next week.”
Alice gulped the rest of her drink, trying to wash down a pungent pang of jealousy. Leslie had been Bill’s girl for so long, they had so much history, so many inside jokes, a bond Alice could never compete with, and not for lack of will.
“That’s very cute,” Alice said. “Bill’s a funny guy.”
“Alice, are you upset about something?”
“It sucks enough seeing you and Bill together. Can’t you save the cutesy lovebird stuff for when I’m not around?”
“Honestly, it wasn’t like that at all,” Leslie said discreetly. “I’ve told you before, we’ve never had that kind of relationship. He’s not really a lovey-dovey kind of guy.”
“Who picked out your costumes? Talk about a misogynistic rape-fantasy cliché.”
“A what fantasy? Alice, they’re nursery-rhyme characters. We bought them for a costume party three years ago.”
Alice sipped her drink, refusing to look at her.
“I’m sorry. I…” Leslie stammered. “Maybe inviting you was a bad idea.”
Alice’s eyes couldn’t conceal the sting from that one. “Well, I’m sorry my presence here is cramping your style.”
“Baby, that’s not what I meant,” Leslie said. “I mean, you know, now that we’re involved, maybe…I don’t know.”
“You mean now that we’re in love, we have sex…”
Leslie chewed her lip. “Alice, what am I supposed to do?”
“Nothing, Leslie. You don’t have to do anything. I, however, have to use the bathroom.”
Once Alice was securely concealed behind the bathroom door, she plotted ways to escape the party without giving Vic her phone number. As she washed her hands, she was startled by her reflection. Ratty hair, tire-mark mascara circles under her eyes, and contemplating fleeing a party by climbing out a tiny window over the toilet. Not exactly the Bionic Woman’s finest hour.
Once she pulled herself together enough to walk out of the bathroom and execute her escape by an actual doorway, she searched surreptitiously for her purse. Upon identifying the target on the floor next to the recliner, she dove into the shag carpet and crawled like a Marine to apprehend it.
“Hey, Alice, come over here,” Bill’s voice beckoned.
So much for a clean getaway. She walked over to Bill, standing with Vic, Leslie, and somebody’s cousin. “What can I do for you, Bill?”
“Why are you giving my friend, Vic, here a hard time? He just wants to take you to dinner. Afraid the feminists will string you up by your eighteen-hour bra if you go?”
“Bill, please,” Leslie said.
He’d obviously had a few more drinks than usual, and Alice didn’t care for his antagonistic tone or Leslie’s limp attempt to admonish him. “If you must know, Bill, we are permitted to have dinner with men…every third Friday if it falls on an odd date and the moon isn’t full.”
Bill and Vic exchanged perplexed looks.
“I already told him I’d go out with him, but thanks for your help, Yente. By the way, I think there’s a fiddler on your roof.”
She walked away, fishing for her car keys in her purse.
Leslie looped her arm through Alice’s and pulled her into the kitchen. “Please don’t be upset with me.”
“Your husband’s drunk, and I’m going home. If Vic asks you for my number, give it to him.”
“You’re not okay. Please stay a little longer and sober up.”
“Thanks, but this evening’s been sobering enough.” She motioned toward the door, and then turned back to Leslie, planting a long, wet kiss on her, to the point where Leslie had to push her away.
“Not here, Alice.”
“Right. Not here, not ever.”
Alice blew out the kitchen door like a storm before her ability to reason was completely gone. What was it about Leslie that reduced her to a lovesick teenager? The whole situation was absurd, impossible, and when they were alone together, the most powerful drug she’d ever experimented with.
She bargai
ned with herself not to call Leslie anymore, pleaded, in fact. She had to stop. Cold turkey. No gradual tapering off. It simply wouldn’t work that way. Their relationship was wrong for so many reasons, not the least of which was the complete loss of her emotional stability.
November 1977
A week later, as Alice sat at her kitchen table waiting for Vic to pick her up, she found little consolation in honoring her vow not to speak with Leslie. Each day slogged along more slowly than the one before as she missed the sound of Leslie’s voice, the scent of her hair more and more. Now she struggled to summon the enthusiasm for a date with someone she had no interest in having dinner with. Against all reason, Leslie was the only person her heart beat for.
Alice soothed her nerves with a glass of white wine as she listened to the radio. She’d switched to a hard-rock station after being ambushed once again by several sadistic love songs. Aerosmith, Lynyrd Skynyrd, and Kiss had lulled her into a false sense of security with raunchy lyrics and screaming guitar solos. And then it happened: “Love Hurts” by Nazareth. She seized the battery-operated transistor radio and hurled it into the dining room. It took out a plastic ficus tree before skidding to a stop against the baseboard.
As she poured a second glass of wine, she couldn’t remember a time she felt less excited about doing something any woman would sacrifice her left nipple for. The handsome, dimpled plumber was taking her to dinner at an upscale restaurant in downtown New Haven and then to hear a symphony at the Palace Theatre—not too shabby. If her mind and heart hadn’t still been so spellbound by Leslie, she, too, might’ve been willing to offer up her left one for the chance.
The chime of the doorbell broke the silence. She gathered her purse, house keys, and a shawl for the evening, and slapped on a smile as she pulled open the door.
“Leslie.”
“Why haven’t you answered your phone?” Leslie walked past her into the house.
“You can’t stay. Vic is coming to pick me up any minute.”
“Fine. Now that I know you’re not dead, tell me why you haven’t answered my calls, and I’ll go.”
The Second Wave Page 14