Tuesday Night Miracles

by Kris Radish

  Inside, Kit buys everyone a round of beers and then Grace buys a round and then Kit really does drop her ball, but not on Grace’s other foot. She drops it on the wooden alley and it bounces into the next alley, and the man trying to bowl falls and Kit is mortified.

  “I’m sorry!” she yells, running to help him.

  “You women are crazy.”

  “We know,” she admits, while Leah, Jane, and Grace huddle behind her. “But we’re having fun. Does that count?”

  He looks at them as if he might be a candidate for the next anger class, dismisses them with his large waving hands, and then the bowling continues.

  Moments later, all four of them turn when they hear commotion out in the lounge area behind the alleys. There’s a horde of people bending down, and everyone seems to be focused on something that’s on the floor.

  Olivia sees the four women the moment they see her.

  “Hello, girls!” She waves, absolutely thrilled that they’re all still alive and no one appears to be bleeding.

  “Dr. Bayer!” they all shout at once, as they move toward her.

  Then they see the star of the floor show. It’s Phyllis, moving in circles as one after another man, woman, and child pets her. Phyllis can’t believe where they are. It smells like old food and feet and grease, and she’s dying to go sniff every corner.

  “Is that your dog?” Grace asks, as Dr. Bayer momentarily passes the leash to a little blond girl.

  “This is Phyllis. Phyllis, meet Grace, Leah, Jane, and Kit.”

  True to form, Phyllis walks over to Grace and wags her tail as if she’s been waiting for her all day. In two seconds, all four women are all but drooling over her. Phyllis smiles at Olivia as Olivia takes back the leash and shakes her head, smiling with pride at her little dog star.

  Olivia orders them back to their game and follows them. Phyllis gets distracted by the rows of bright-colored shoes lined up against the wall, and Olivia gives her a moment to sniff and then joins the women on their alley.

  “Is this one of your regular Saturday stops, Dr. Bayer?” Jane jokes, as the women continue to bowl.

  “I can’t say that it is, dear,” Olivia responds, while Phyllis forces herself to lie still. She chuckles. “After the arrow incident, I thought I’d better see what happens with bowling balls.”

  During the next hour, the five women talk about everything from bowling to the weather. Olivia finds it interesting and somewhat frustrating that none of them is being personal or opening up beyond the surface.

  Finally, with one more game yet to go, Jane picks up her ball when it’s her turn but then stops in front of everyone.

  “Okay, I’ve had it with this bowling shit and I propose we skip the last game. I’ll treat us to some pizza and more beer, and then we can sit around and boast about our bowling scores. Are you in?”

  “Is this okay?” Leah asks, looking directly at Dr. Bayer.

  “Of course, dear,” Olivia responds, standing up as if she’s going to leave.

  “No!” Jane shouts. “Stay! Do you have to be someplace?”

  Dr. Bayer turns totally white. How absolutely pathetic is it that she’s at this bowling alley and that she really doesn’t have anywhere else to go on a Saturday afternoon.

  Before she can say anything, Phyllis totally loses control. She’s been watching those huge balls go back and forth on all of the bowling alleys and she can’t take it anymore. She jerks out of Olivia’s hand and heads for the lane adjacent to the one the women have been using. Phyllis is after a bright green ball and she’s barking as she skitters on the slick wooden floor and begins sliding down the alley on her rear end.

  “Phyllis!” Olivia shouts, laughing at the sight of her out-of-control dog. “Come back here!”

  The entire bowling alley erupts in applause as Phyllis skids to a stop, then bows her head and slowly walks back to Olivia to face the consequences.

  “Oh!” Kit stammers. “Please don’t yell at her.”

  Dr. Bayer turns slowly to look at Kit and the other three women, who are standing in a row and staring at her.

  “But she made a mistake,” Olivia tells them, in a serious way that means so much more than just that. “I will simply raise my voice a bit to make it clear I expect better behavior. She knows better.”

  After Phyllis has apologized by putting her right paw into Olivia’s left hand, the women gladly deposit their bowling balls, shed their smelly shoes, and walk to the back tables, where Jane orders pizza and Phyllis sits obediently under Olivia’s chair.

  Olivia declines a beer but is glad the women seem to be enjoying themselves. “I didn’t mean to intrude,” she says, sipping a glass of water, and refusing pizza.

  “Intrude?” Grace says, wiping her mouth with a napkin. “I’m glad you came. And don’t take this wrong, but seeing you with Phyllis makes you seem, well, more human.”

  “Am I that bad?”

  “No!” Grace exclaims. “That’s not what I mean. It’s easy to think that people who do what you do don’t understand what mess-ups like us are going through.”

  Grace’s voice trails off, and Olivia clutches her slacks to keep from talking. Let them do this, she has to remind herself, hoping they begin to open up a bit.

  “Grace?” Kit asks, leaning over to make certain Grace is okay.

  “I’m fine, sort of,” she lies. “It’s just that this class, even being here, it’s made me think of so many other things. I think I’ve developed high blood pressure, I feel totally out of shape, I’m worried about being a bad mother.”

  Phyllis shifts and then lifts her head. Someone has dropped a piece of pizza crust. Holy cow! Phyllis decides to play it cool. Maybe she can snag it on the way out.

  Kit puts her hand on Grace’s arm, and Olivia feels as if she might faint. Affection! Sharing! She is so excited that she drops the leash and places her hands on top of the table. Then Olivia holds her breath.

  “Grace, I think we all feel like failures some of the time,” Kit shares. She drops her eyes and takes a chance.

  Kit tells them about the newspaper article she read describing the woman who killed her mother and how it made her think about her mistakes, too, and of all of them. “We have an opportunity now,” she tells them. “We made mistakes and we’ll make more of them, but sitting in my kitchen, alone again, I thought of all of you and how we have so much in common and how we can get through this.”

  Leah is staring at Kit. She thinks they have a lot in common? Am I the crazy one here?

  Phyllis is moving so slowly toward the pizza crust her movement could never be picked up on a hidden camera. She’s sniffing the ground and she’s certain there’s a hint of pepperoni left on the crust.

  “Do you really think we have things in common?” Leah boldly asks Kit. “I feel as if I’ll never catch up to the three of you. I don’t even have a house. I really don’t have much of anything.”

  Olivia is looking back and forth at the women. She’s afraid to move, afraid to say a word, afraid to pick up the leash. Surprisingly, it’s Jane who responds to Leah.

  “You shouldn’t feel that way, Leah,” Jane tells her, wishing she could take it one step further and touch Leah on the arm. “Here we all are in the same class, and what you think we have might not be what you want at all. Looks can be deceiving.”

  Now everyone turns to look at Jane. “What do you mean?” Leah so hopes Jane will answer this question.

  “I have a house and a husband, but sometimes I think those are just things, you know? Husbands can lie and houses can just be buildings, and how pathetic is it that I’m so hard up for fun I was actually looking forward to coming to this grungy bowling alley.”

  Leah is astounded. Jane lonely? She has no idea what to say, so she picks at her pizza. Would these women think less of her if she told them how she sometimes thinks about being alone and without her children? How she sits some nights and thinks about being all by herself?

  Jane is suddenly embarrasse
d, and Olivia senses it right away and is now praying someone else will notice it and say something, too. All the women are staring at their food. If only she could tell them how lonely she is, how coming to the bowling alley was also at the top of her short list, how every single feeling they have is part of the process.

  Grace looks up first, and directly at Jane. “I’m not one to give advice about husbands and marriage,” she admits. “But, Jane, it’s been my experience that making it work is like a full-time job. It’s easy to get distracted. For the love of God, I’m even terrified to go on a date again.”

  Olivia lets out the breath she has been holding as all five of them laugh. By now, Phyllis has edged herself to the exact center of the table on the floor. She’s got about ten inches to go and her haunches are quivering with excitement. Just as Olivia is about to bend down and pick up the leash, Jane asks her if she’s married.

  “Married?” Olivia responds as if she didn’t hear the question.

  “Yes,” Jane says, “married.”

  Olivia knows this was a possibility, these feisty women wanting to know about her personal life. She’s half tempted to blurt out her own life story and let them all faint into what is left of their beer and pizza. Ha! Beer and pizza as part of an anger-management class therapy session! Her supervisor would have a heart attack right on the spot if he saw all of them like this. Olivia, what is wrong with you?

  “I was married once, a very long time ago,” she admits. “That’s a story that might keep you up tonight with nightmares, so I think we’ll leave it at that. You girls have enough on your plates, which, by the way, are starting to get empty.”

  Now all four of them are staring at Olivia and imagining everything from a lost love to a very bad marriage.

  “That’s it?” Kit says, acting as if she’s angry. “You feed us that crumb and we have to guess?”

  “That’s how it goes, Kit. I love being in charge.”

  There’s another round of laughter as the women dive back into their drinks. Kit then raises her hands as if to surrender. “Hey, I shouldn’t argue with the boss,” she says. “We got to go bowling!”

  Grace looks up and smiles. “Who would have thought it would be bowling that helps us get better?”

  “No kidding!” This from Leah, who is now absolutely relaxed. “I see this whole adventure as an opportunity—on most days, anyway. That probably sounds weird because of what got me here, but I would never have met women like you. In spite of what you said, Jane, our lives are all so different.”

  “I continue to disagree,” Kit says, motioning with her empty glass.

  Jane can barely remember a time when she did anything like this. Something that didn’t involve dressing up, spending a ton of money, living large. Her friends are really nothing more than acquaintances or professional associates. And would she ever really call Leah, Grace, or Kit to go bowling or out for pizza? And why not?

  Jane has so much to think about that her head is spinning, or maybe it’s the beer. Grace is dying to have another beer, and Kit wouldn’t mind spending another three hours at the bowling alley. What amazes her more than anything is how you can forget about bad things if you stay busy. Pretty soon the bad things all but disappear in the rearview mirror.

  Olivia decides it’s time to leave. She can’t believe she has spent all this time at the bowling alley, and she’s determined to get out of there before someone asks her another question. She reaches for the leash and stands up just as Phyllis gets the piece of crust into her mouth.

  “Ladies, please continue,” she says, pushing back her chair. “I’m going to go give Phyllis a bath as her punishment for being so naughty.”

  Bath? Phyllis hears the word bath and almost drops her crust. She hates baths, and she doesn’t even know why.

  No one knows what to say.

  Finally Jane says thank you and asks Olivia if they should stay or if the assignment is over.

  “That’s up to you now. See you soon,” she says with a wink. Olivia turns, waves once, and heads toward the door. She doesn’t see Phyllis walking behind her with pizza hanging out of her mouth.

  All four of them put their hands over their mouths to keep from laughing out loud and sit back down, and they miss it when Olivia stops to chat with the boy behind the counter.

  “That dog is absolutely adorable!” Leah manages to say. “That’s on my list, too. Someday I’m going to get the kids a dog.”

  They all smile, and apparently no one knows what to say or do next.

  “Do you want to talk about the other assignments?” Kit finally dares to ask.

  Her question is met by silence.

  “Is that too much?” she asks when no one says anything.

  “It’s a little personal but at this point we know the worst, or at least one of the worst, things about each other,” Grace says, even though she’s not sure she wants to tell anyone but Dr. B. what she did or what happened or, especially, how it’s changed her.

  “I kind of agree,” Leah says. “I mean, this is good and everything but maybe we should keep some things personal. I’m actually a little embarrassed about my assignment.”

  This makes everyone wonder what in the world her assignment had been. And then, of course, they remember that they had two personal assignments and she only had done. And then, just like that, the party is pretty much over.

  They decide not to share any more and Kit offers to give Leah a ride home, but Leah declines, saying that the van driver is expecting her. But Grace takes a risk anyway.

  “This has been about five thousand times more fun than I even imagined when I got the letter and fell down laughing. I sort of feel like we’ve come over some huge mountain or something. It’s freeing to be away from the old building where we sometimes meet. I’m not sure how to explain it, but I’m praying for another personal assignment.”

  But can one afternoon of bowling really change the world? Can four women, with four sets of issues, manage to walk down one mountain and back up the next one?

  Dr. B. has no guarantees but she’s betting the house on it, and pretty much everything inside it as well. And she’s hiding down the street to see how long it takes for the women to file out of the building. “Please keep talking!” she whispers to Phyllis, who now has pizza grease all over her whiskers.

  When everyone gets up to leave, the boy who helped them figure out how to keep score runs to catch them before they go out the door.

  “Wait! Wait!”

  The women turn in unison. Now what?

  “I’m supposed to give this to one of you to read before you leave.”

  Jane grabs it before anyone else has a chance to get near it. It’s a single piece of paper, and she unfolds it slowly, as if she’s a presenter at the Oscars.

  “Hurry or I’ll get angry,” Kit jokes. “Maybe we’re all going on a cruise.”

  I hope you enjoyed your afternoon. I surely did. Let’s meet on Tuesday and you can bring me your bowling scores and, oh yes, those happy thoughts you have been writing down as well. Sincerely, Dr. B.

  Leah, Ms. Optimistic, tells them they should all think of it as a life cruise. She can’t wait for the next meeting and, truth be told, neither can her not-so-angry companions.

  Down the street, Olivia quickly darts into an alley when she sees the women walking from the bowling alley—one at a time.

  “Well, old girl,” Olivia tells Phyllis, who can’t stop thinking about the pizza. “We had quite a time on that adventure, and I’d say it was a partial success.”

  Phyllis looks up and hopes that Olivia has forgotten about the bath. She has no clue there’s a tiny piece of cheese stuck to her left ear, and that there’s no chance in hell she’s going bowling again anytime soon.

  31

  Limping Toward the Exit

  Dr. Bayer can hear someone she assumes is Grace limping down the hall while she’s arranging chairs and feverishly trying to figure out how she’s going to start class this week. A part o
f her feels as if she has hopped on a runaway train and there is an endless set of tracks zigzagging up one hill, down the next, and then across a heat-seared open plain.

  And there is no water in sight. Did the bowling help them bond? She crosses her fingers and hopes this will be a record-breaking evening. Stop doubting yourself, Olivia. Progress!

  Walk. Slide. Walk. Slide.

  Maybe Grace’s foot hurts more than she let on during Saturday’s assignment. Olivia stops for a moment to compose herself and hopes that Grace hadn’t needed serious medical attention. She totally forgot to ask her during the bowling event.

  In spite of the accident at Bob’s—and it really was an accident—Olivia thought it was an empowering evening. Grace didn’t get angry when she was shot. Leah jumped right in and then, without asking, Kit let her know that she would get Leah home safely. And the women were more than cordial to one another at the bowling alley.

  Olivia is so hopeful this was a turning point that she didn’t even plan anything beyond her normal spontaneous, let’s-see-what-transpires, shoot-from-the-hip class structure, which is actually more like a well-rehearsed therapy session than it sounds. Sometimes when there is a group occurrence, as Olivia has taken to calling things like an arrow in the foot and a fun time bowling, it’s as if a miracle has occurred.

  Once a construction foreman who had a habit of throwing his tools at employees who screwed up fell on the job and showed up the following week at anger-management class in a wheelchair. It was as if Jesus had walked through and healed the sick. Everyone was nice to him and, just like that, people started saying things they probably should have said in group therapy weeks before the wheelchair rolled in. Dr. Bayer wouldn’t be surprised if the entire group was now living together in the same apartment building. Talk about a lovefest. All things are possible. She believes this more than anything.

  Grace limps into the room while Dr. Bayer is thinking how wonderful it would be if she just slipped out and bought a wheelchair to use as a prop.