Elinor Lipman - The Pursuit of Alice Thrift

“Maybe Alice is too busy devoting her brain to medical science to bother with some of the niceties that other people have time for,” said Ray.

“I have friends who are doctors who could be anchorpeople,” sniffed Marietta. “Or social directors on cruise ships.”

“Are they surgeons?” I asked.

My mother sighed. My father looked to Ray.

“Maybe I’ll take Alice home now,” he said.

WE STOPPED TWICE for coffee. I didn’t say much—even less than usual—because I was working up to something like an expression of gratitude. Between sips I said, “I don’t go home a lot because I usually manage to say something tactless, and everyone stays mad for a couple of weeks.”

“Until?”

“Until my mother calls and complains about my sister. No one apologizes. It just goes away.”

“I’ve heard of worse things,” said Ray. “In some families, people stay mad. No one calls and pretends everything’s okay because they all hate each other’s guts.”

I told him this trip was different. I always left like this—earlier than planned. But no one ever walked through the door with me. No one ever came to my defense or pointed out that the Mariettas of the world were the ones deficient in social graces.

“ And? ”

“I guess that was me saying thank you.”

“You’re welcome.”

A few miles later he asked, “Who did this to you?”

I asked what he meant.

“Your parents? Is that who? Did they ever build you up? Tell you you were smart and pretty—their precious daughter, their pride and joy?”

“Pride and joy, sure,” I said. “But because of what I did and not the way I looked.”

I could see that he was studying my profile, searching for a diplomatic counterpoint. “What a pity,” he finally said. “To think that all these years—how many? Twenty-five?”

“I’ll be twenty-seven in two months.”

“To think that in all these years you’ve been carrying around this image of yourself as—how would you define it? Unattractive?”

“Yes,” I said.

“I don’t want to hear that anymore,” he said.

I didn’t flinch when his hand moved to my knee, an act that seemed more brotherly than sexual. Or so I thought. He left it there until he had to downshift, a good fifteen miles later. When it found its way back, higher on my leg and decidedly less fraternal, I let that pass, too. I was only human. No one else was driving me out of state or banishing derogatory adjectives from my vocabulary. No one else’s pupils dilated as I described my two weeks in a remote village in British Honduras with the Reconstructive Surgeons Volunteer Program, aiding the shunned. In a few years I’d be thirty. My sister was a lesbian. I was a heterosexual with the potential to be the favorite child. And here in the adjacent bucket seat, stroking my unloved leg, was a man.

“WHAT I MEANT by ‘stay,’” said Ray, “is pretty much universally understood to mean not go home. As in sleep over. ”

I explained, just inside the front door of my building, that overnight parking was prohibited on Brookline Avenue, and, furthermore, overnight guests were not allowed under Leo’s and my covenant.

Ray said, “I’ve never heard of such a thing! Whatever happened to consenting adults? Is this a halfway house or something, with rules about sex, drugs, and firearms? C’mon. Who are you kidding? You’re making this up, aren’t you? Why not just tell the truth? Why not say, ‘Ray? I’m scared to have a man in my bed.’”

“I’m not,” I said. “I just think this is premature and unwarranted.”

“‘Premature and unwarranted,’” he parroted. He moved closer and took my hand. “But I’m a red-blooded guy who’s pretty good at translating body language and I seem to recall you didn’t mind having my hand on your knee earlier this evening between Sturbridge and Natick on the Mass. Pike.”

I said maybe, but that was depression authorizing what appeared to be intimacy. Physical contact didn’t have to be sexual, did it?

“Pretty much,” said Ray.

I confessed that I wasn’t a red-blooded gal. I didn’t know the signs and didn’t seem to be endowed with the hormonal cues that the rest of the population possessed. “Frankly,” I said, “I’m baffled as to why you want to see or drive or sleep with someone who gives nothing back.”

It was then he declared, “It’s so obvious, Alice: I want to spend time with you and make love to you and wake up next to you because I’m crazy about you. And I have been ever since I walked into that examining room and found that the doctor was a woman, no wedding ring on her finger, and with a pretty uncluttered field once I asked around.”

“Whom did you ask?”

“The secretary! She said you weren’t married.”

I said I doubted that very much. Yolanda would never entertain personal questions about me or any other house staff. Even if she wanted to she couldn’t because we’d never discussed anything remotely extra-departmental.

Ray grinned. “I wheedled it out of her. It wasn’t so hard.”

“Was fudge involved?” I asked.

Ray didn’t answer.

“She has a notorious sweet tooth. Everyone teases her about it and bribes her with Godiva truffles.” Everyone but me, that is. Yolanda was overweight, sedentary, and had a family history of Type 2 diabetes.

“So how about a kiss?” he asked.

I waited, shrugged, switched my pocketbook to the opposite shoulder, announcing finally that a kiss would be acceptable. I closed my eyes.

Nothing happened. I heard him step away, and when I opened my eyes he was three respectful paces back, tightening the knot in his tie. “You know what?” he said. “I’m not going to force you. Your expression is like a kid biting into a fish stick when he was expecting a French fry. I have more pride than that.”

I asked, as any good clinician would, “Was it what I said, or the way I said it?”

“What does it matter? I wanted to kiss you, and now I don’t.”

It was excellent psychology: In an instant he was the hurt party and I was the villain.

“Not sixty seconds ago I said I was falling in love with you,” he continued, “and all I get in return is a blank look and the third degree about which secretary said what.”

“Not blank,” I said. “Surprised, or maybe just exhausted. And you’re the one who brought up Yolanda.”

“Either way, it’s not very flattering,” said Ray, “although I don’t expect much from this life anymore. Me, Ray Russo, average ordinary widower without a bachelor’s degree, let alone an MD or a CPA after my name, thinking he can turn the head of Boston’s most eligible doctor.”

I mumbled something to the effect that anything was possible. I’d seen in my own circles a famously obnoxious second-year resident chafe daily against her equally disagreeable chief resident, yet at the Christmas party they announced their engagement.

“Are you saying there’s hope, or are you saying, ‘Let’s be friends, Ray. You and I are from different worlds, and even though this is America, where everyone is allegedly equal, and even though you dress well and drive a cool car and own your own business, I’m looking for a guy who I could take to a doctors’ dinner party and wouldn’t embarrass me or get drunk or talk back to the host.’”

Of course I had to counter with something democratic and egalitarian. I said, “I took you home, didn’t I? And, by the way, I really appreciated your talking back to my father today, which I think demonstrates your high self-esteem as well as your ability to think on your feet.”

“My street smarts, you mean?”

“That, too. Definitely. And your pluck.”