“It’s wonderful,” Leslie said.
“Although I will have to get out of here at a decent hour, or they may think I’m a patient and force me to do those sadistic exercises that make the veins in your neck bulge out.”
They shared an easy laugh, and Alice reveled in the simple pleasure of just being with Leslie—without the complications of sex, secrecy, and the insanity of first love.
“My God, that was awful.” Leslie said. “Every time I wanted to cling to you forever, I’d look at the clock and have to go.”
“I wanted to smash that damn clock with a hammer,” Alice said. “But that’s because I never wanted you to leave my side—especially to go home to someone else.”
“I knew it was hard for you,” Leslie said, “and that you were hurting.”
“I realized you were, too, even though sometimes I didn’t act like it.” Alice grew sullen, losing her sense of balance as Memory Lane began icing over.
“Alice?”
She exhaled deeply. “I was so hurtful to you that night.”
January 1978
After they’d made love on Alice’s sofa and then quickly dressed, Alice let a recurring curiosity lead them into a conversation neither was prepared to have.
“Do you think of me when you’re with Bill?” she asked, stroking Leslie’s forearm with her nails.
“I think of you all the time—when I’m with Bill, the kids, at the grocery store, listening to the radio.”
“No, I mean when you’re in bed with Bill.”
She sighed. “Alice.”
“Why does that question make you uncomfortable?”
“The whole idea of talking about Bill when I’m with you makes me uncomfortable.”
“I just want to know if you think of me while you’re making love with someone else.”
“It’s not the same as it is with you, Alice.”
“I know that. I remember what it was like with Tony. Your chest isn’t nearly as hairy as his.”
“You know that’s not what I meant. I’ve never felt the emotional connection to him that I feel for you. I didn’t know it then because I had nothing to compare it to. Alice, nothing compares to you.”
“So you don’t enjoy it as much as you do with me?”
“No, I swear.”
“But you still do it with him.”
Leslie’s hands quavered under Alice’s scrutiny. “I have to. I can’t just stop. Then he’ll really know something’s the matter.”
Alice gritted her teeth with jealousy. How could she be intimate with someone else when she’d professed her undying love for her? She struggled to work it out in her head. Alice had felt no desire to be with anyone but her since the moment it began. It left a bad taste in her mouth to even think of it. Then the second part of Leslie’s response registered.
“What do you mean, ‘then he’ll really know’?”
“It’s nothing.” Leslie hesitated. “Lately he’s been asking what’s wrong with me.” She burrowed her head into Alice’s armpit.
“What is wrong with you?”
She sprang up and glared at Alice. “You mean apart from being devoured by guilt? Alice, I’m living a double life. I’m so preoccupied thinking of you, wanting you, missing you that I miss half the conversations that go on in my house. The other day I almost made the kids tuna sandwiches with Roscoe’s canned cat food.” She paused and then said in a soft, shaky voice, “You’d be surprised how often I cry myself to sleep.”
“Why do you cry?” Alice tried to keep an analytical tone, but the thought of it slashed her apart inside.
“Why do you think, Alice?”
“I don’t know,” she said calmly as tension began billowing up between them. “That’s why I’m asking you.”
“I’m betraying him. I love him, but I don’t want to have sex with him anymore.”
“Then stop.”
“How can I stop?”
Alice’s lip twitched with jealousy. “Just stop.”
“I can’t do that. I’m already being so unfair to him.”
“If you deny him, maybe he’ll go out and have his own affair. Then we’ll have more time together.”
“I can’t do that. It’ll ruin my marriage.”
“That would ruin your marriage?” Alice wrestled with Leslie’s logic. “You don’t think being here with me right now is ruining your marriage? Or is it that as long as you go home and spread your legs like a good little wife, everything’s fine?”
Leslie’s eyes watered. “Alice, why are you being so cruel?”
“I don’t know. I’m sorry.” She got up and paced beside the sofa. “I don’t know what I’m doing anymore, Leslie. I haven’t had a decent night’s sleep in weeks. All I do is think of you. The only thing that interests me is being with you. I don’t understand why I’m so lost in you.”
“That’s the thing you’re not getting, Alice. I feel the exact same way about you.”
“Then move in with me, you and the kids.” The suggestion escaped before Alice realized the folly in it.
“You know that’s not a possibility.”
Leslie’s tone offended her.
“Why can’t it be? Times are changing. Miss Estabrook and Miss Lyons have been living together for years just a few houses down from here.”
Alice stated this as if it were as common an occurrence as ants at a picnic. Of course, she neglected to include how all the neighborhood kids made sport of tormenting them, stealing their newspapers, digging up their lawn with their bicycle tires, and bombarding their house with eggs and rotten tomatoes every Halloween like they were launching aerial raids against the Viet Cong.
“Were those neighbors married when they met? Did they have children?”
“I don’t know. I don’t think so.”
“We’ve been over this before. I can’t leave Bill.”
Hearing that yet again lit the fuse on Alice’s anger and frustration. “I know why you can’t,” she spat. “You don’t want to because you’re still attracted to him. I’m just some lonely housewife’s afternoon delight now that your kids aren’t babies anymore.”
“Alice, why do you keep saying that? Please tell me you don’t really believe it.”
“Give me one reason why I shouldn’t.”
“I’m in love with you.” Leslie’s voice sounded strained as she pleaded. “Deeply, truly in love with you. Can’t you feel it when we make love?”
“It’s the seventies. That’s no longer a prerequisite for screwing around.”
“It is for me, Alice. What I feel for you isn’t only about sex. We have so much more than that, something so much deeper.”
“Don’t kid yourself, Leslie. We have sex. You have something much deeper with your husband.”
“I wish I could make you understand,” she said in quiet resignation. She collapsed on the couch and cried into her hands. “I’d have to break up my family to be with you. My kids would be devastated. My family would never forgive me, especially if I left Bill for a woman. They’d never get over the embarrassment.”
Alice picked up her wineglass and pitched it across the room with a guttural cry, sending it crashing into the wall and Leslie recoiling back. She dropped onto the loveseat and sat quietly, her diaphragm hiccupping from crying as she tried to catch her breath.
“Alice,” Leslie whispered.
She ignored her, boiling in the pot of insignificance Leslie had poured her into. No matter how badly she desired it, she would never mean to Leslie what she’d wanted to. She’d never be as important as she was to her. She wanted to scream at her, more hurtful things than she’d said before, if that was possible. How dare Leslie get to have her cake and eat it, too, while Alice lurked in the shadows starving for whatever crumbs Leslie threw her?
“Say something.” Leslie kneeled in front of her, weeping as she rested her forehead on Alice’s arm. “Please say something, Alice.”
After gulping down a stomach full of tears and humiliat
ion, Alice sat up, trying to make herself big again. “I understand. I really do.”
“You do?”
Alice closed her eyes against the rising disgrace. Leslie threw her arms around her and squeezed her almost to the point of suffocation.
“Oh, Alice,” she said, continuing to sob. “I love you so much, I can’t stand it. My heart is breaking.”
Alice pulled her up to the loveseat and held her, shushing her whimpering as she stroked her hair. What was she thinking, lashing out at her like that? What gave her the right? She felt like some deviant prowling outside their home, intruding on their privacy, threatening their happiness as a family.
“I’m sorry I said those things, Les,” she finally said. “I was way out of line.”
Leslie looked up and wiped her face with her sleeve. “I don’t blame you for wanting that. I want it, too, but I just can’t hurt my kids like that. Their happiness means everything to me.”
“Obviously.” Alice didn’t want to sound sarcastic, but she’d absorbed all she could about why the love of her life refused to be with her.
“If you had children, you’d know what I mean.”
She glared at her. “I know what you mean. Even though I’ve never fulfilled my womanly destiny of giving birth, I’m not some insensitive bitch.”
“I know you’re not, and I didn’t mean for it to sound that way.” She stroked Alice’s chin. “I should go home. I can’t fight with you anymore. It’s killing me.”
“I don’t want to fight either. But please don’t go home yet. It’s still early.” The desperation in her voice startled her.
Leslie embraced her again, clinging to her, sniffling softly in her ear.
Alice kissed the back of her hand and blinked away what little pride she had left. As their love built on secrets and lies started to crumble, she wanted to savor every moment with Leslie she had left before it collapsed entirely.
*
Alice and Leslie sat quietly for a moment, digesting the difficult memory. Alice fondled a thread on her Bermuda shorts while Leslie caressed her coffee cup. Finally, they looked at each other and smiled reassurances and hope for a new beginning—or a long-awaited closure.
Chapter Fourteen
Alice coasted into the gravel driveway around nine o’clock, hoping her sister would be asleep on the couch so she could sail in and up the stairs without having to debrief anyone on her visit with Leslie. She turned off the ignition and remained in the car for a moment. Her head throbbed slightly now that the adrenaline surge from being with Leslie had subsided. Leslie was under her skin again, but how deeply? The question had begun to constrict Alice like polyester slacks in the summer heat. Maybe her feelings were merely fond nostalgia for an old friendship. Or not. Was it possible that Leslie was thinking as much about their past as Alice had been?
She walked into the house and toward a flickering light coming from the patio. Dave and Mary Ellen were sitting around a small fire pit, a bottle of white wine chilling in an ice bucket. Suddenly, she was grateful they hadn’t fallen asleep in front of the TV.
“Hey, sissy,” Mary Ellen said, tapping the arm of the vacant chair beside her. “Care for a cold one?”
Dave leaned forward and poured her a glass of sauvignon blanc. “So how’s your lady friend?”
Alice glared at her sister as she reached for the glass. “What did you tell him?”
“That you’ve reconnected with an old flame,” Dave said. “Good for you. I hope it works out.”
“Hope what works out?” Alice said.
“That you get to pick up with her where you left off,” Mary Ellen said.
Alice scoffed. “Nobody truly gets to pick up where they left off, especially when it’s been nearly forty years.”
“I disagree,” Mary Ellen said. “I believe wholeheartedly in second chances.”
“What a lovely thought, but I’ll never get one with Maureen.” Alice sipped her wine and stared into the fire as Dave pushed the graying logs with an iron.
“Not in this lifetime,” Mary Ellen said, “but maybe it’ll come in a different realm.”
Alice looked over at her brother-in-law. “She’s cut off after that glass.”
Dave chuckled and winked at his wife. “Maybe the point is that you have another chance now, in this life.”
“Maybe I don’t want another chance with Leslie,” Alice said. “Maybe it was exactly what it was meant to be back then, and that’s it. Maybe loving her the first time around tore my heart out, and now there’s nothing left.”
Mary Ellen regarded her for a moment, then said gently, “How did you love Maureen as much as you did if your heart was torn out?”
“Okay, it was half torn out from Leslie. Maureen took the half that was left with her when she died.”
They all sat quietly for a moment, staring into the crackling flames. Alice wondered if what she’d just said was true. If it was, then why was she so invested in Leslie now?
Dave downed the last of his wine. “Well, this is becoming one of those sister moments that make me very uncomfortable. Call me when you want the fire out.”
“Chicken,” Alice said, smiling.
He patted her on the head and gave his wife a peck on her cheek. Once he was inside and had closed the sliders, Mary Ellen emptied the bottle into their glasses.
“What did you and Leslie discuss that put you in this mood?”
“We finally stopped dancing around the topic of our affair and actually had a conversation about something specific. It was a painful time.” Alice shook her head as if that would expel the memory.
“What did you talk about?”
Alice poked at the logs as the flames ebbed. “How heart-wrenching it was always having to say good-bye. She didn’t want to leave, I didn’t want her to, but that was always the inevitable conclusion.”
“How long did you two go on like that?”
“About a year, on and off. I can’t tell you how many times we broke up. We just couldn’t let go.”
“Boy, that explains so much,” Mary Ellen said. “I remember that weekend in February after the blizzard. Everyone was out celebrating Valentine’s Day, and you were miserable. You passed it off saying you missed Tony. I knew you were full of crap, but I couldn’t imagine what the real story was.”
“That was not a good day.” Alice gulped her wine and stared into the flames.
“What happened?”
Late February 1978
After a three-week hiatus thanks to the blizzard, the next crochet klatch was at Dolores’s house, where they sat around the living room snacking, sipping, smoking, and crocheting every so often when their hands were free to pick up their needles. Alice sat on the sofa with the makings of a beret she’d wanted ever since she saw Mary Tyler Moore toss one into the air during the opening of her favorite TV show. She was unusually quiet, smoking more than normal to dull the ache of Leslie’s absence. Aside from the initial surprised inquiries about her absence when she’d arrived, the ladies hadn’t dwelled on it—until they’d run out of inequities to be indignant about.
“Where’s Leslie?” Kathy asked. “She hasn’t been to a meeting since when, January?”
Yeah, that’s right. Thanks for the reminder, Kathy.
“Maybe she and her husband went out for a romantic dinner,” Cynthia said. “A belated Valentine’s Day.”
Thanks for the reminder, Cynthia. Alice pulled at the collar of her turtleneck sweater.
“No, they’re doing that tomorrow night,” Dolores said. “That new Italian place on the hill.”
Cynthia and Kathy oohed and ahhhed.
“How do you know?” Alice asked tartly.
“She called me this afternoon.”
“How do you not know?” Kathy asked. “You two know when you’re getting your periods.”
Cynthia turned to Alice. “Is she not coming anymore?”
“I’m sure she’ll be back,” Alice said. She could only hope Leslie would, but it se
emed she’d laced into her about leaving Bill hard enough to keep her away for the time being.
“Say, is her husband behind this?” Kathy asked. “Did he get wind of our feminist agenda and forbid her to come?”
“Bill’s not like that.” Why was she sticking up for him when she’d frequently fantasized that he would tumble into a cement mixer at a construction site? Especially with this news of a romantic dinner tomorrow night. Either she was high off her ass or she’d already lost her mind.
“Cut her some slack, Kathy,” Dolores said. “Her kids are young. Running off and setting the world on fire whenever the mood grabs her isn’t an option right now.”
“Must I always get a lecture on the noble sacrifices of motherhood at the first whiff of feminist oppression? I was just wondering if she was skipping meetings against her will.”
“Of course she is,” Cynthia chimed in. “That’s part of the noble sacrifice. Do you know how many times I’ve had to skip doing things I wanted to do because the kids were sick or had some homework project I had to help with?”
Kathy rolled her eyes. “Alice, you want to help me out here. I fear our movement is rapidly losing ground.”
“Look, I wish she could be here, too, but she can’t,” Alice said. “We need more wine.”
She hoisted herself off the sofa and went into the kitchen, fleeing from the ghost of Leslie that seemed to pursue her no matter where she went. Her eyes clouded with tears as she worked the corkscrew into a bottle of merlot. She inhaled and whispered, “Keep it together, Alice,” as she exhaled.
Kathy stuck her head around the swinging door in Dolores’s kitchen. “Hey, Betty, are you okay?”
“I’m fine. This bitch of a cork doesn’t want to come out.”
Kathy took the corkscrew from her and worked around the damage she’d done. “Listen, I know something’s been bothering you, and I have a feeling it involves Leslie.”
“Well, aren’t you a regular Kreskin? Am I a little bummed out that my friend hasn’t been around? Yes, I am. Anything else I can help you with?”
Kathy smirked as she wiped out the last fragments of cork from the mouth of the bottle. “Matter of fact, there is. If this is just about you missing a friend, why the hell are you getting so defensive with me?”
The Second Wave Page 16