Elinor Lipman - The Pursuit of Alice Thrift

“Gee, thanks. That’s what I want people to think: That guy has pluck.”

“Are you mad?”

“Nope. Not mad. Discouraged, maybe. And still lonely, but don’t you worry. That’s my cross to bear.” He walked to the door and said, barely mounting a wave, “See ya.”

“See ya,” I said.

He opened the door, but hesitated on the threshold. “Good luck with everything, Doc. I hope you have a great life and you get to fix, like, every harelip along the Amazon.”

“I appreciate that,” I said.

LEO’S BEDROOM DOOR was closed. His voice and that of an unidentified female’s could be heard in what sounded like playful conversation. As a courtesy, I knocked on his door and said, “I’m home,” to save all of us the embarrassment of louder noises or their spilling into the hallway in any state of undress.

I should have been thinking of my deceased grandmother as I fell asleep, or agitating over my most recent evaluation, but instead I was puzzling over how I’d thrown cold water on Ray’s torch. Was there a book I could read on the subject: How to Restore a Man You’ve Rejected to His Previous Station as Platonic Friend? On Your Own Terms, Without Leading Him On?

Did I owe Ray an apology? Should I be thinking, Fruit? A gift certificate? A presidential biography on tape?

Leo would know. I’d ask him in the morning.

HE KNOCKED ON my door at 5:45 A.M. “Aren’t you supposed to be across the street in fifteen minutes?” he yelled.

I groaned. I had hit the snooze button twice and fallen back into a deep REM sleep, stuck in a dream filled with cousins and stained glass. “Coffee’s on,” said Leo. “I think if you take three minutes for a shower, two minutes to get dressed, five minutes to eat your cereal, you’ll have another five minutes to cross the street and get up to the floor. If you get your ass in gear this second.”

None of this—reveille or raisin bran—was typical of our arrangement. Immediately I grasped what was happening: He was playing the solicitous and thoughtful roommate because he had an adoring audience.

“Is your guest still here?” I asked. When he didn’t answer I said, “I thought I heard a woman’s voice coming from your room last night.”

I was sitting on the edge of my mattress now, staring dully at my feet. There were specks of mauve polish left on a few toenails, remnants of a summer spruce-up. I probably had some nail-polish remover somewhere. “I’m up,” I called. Then louder, “Leo? You still there?”

“In the kitchen.”

“Alone?”

“She didn’t stay over, if that’s what you mean.”

I put my robe on, a souvenir in thin yellow cotton from a VA rotation, over surgical scrubs and took a seat at the kitchen table. I said, “I think I’ll have that coffee before my shower.” I shook a cupful of flakes into a bowl. “Was it someone nice?” I asked. “Someone new and exciting?”

He shook his head. “Just someone to watch a movie with.”

“Was it a funny movie?”

“In places,” said Leo.

“Because I heard laughter.”

He was at my elbow, holding our phone and dialing a number. He handed me the receiver and said, “Here. It’s ringing. Tell them you came back by train this morning and you’ll get there as fast as you can. Mention the word funeral so they’ll remember it wasn’t a vacation day.”

Yolanda answered. I told her I was doing my best to get there for rounds but would undoubtedly be late.

“Funeral,” Leo whispered.

I nodded. “I think you probably remember that I was at my grandmother’s funeral all day yesterday.”

Yolanda said without any indulgence in her voice, “So when should I tell them you’ll get here?”

“Maybe fifteen minutes, if I run.”

Leo held up his hands and flicked both sets of fingers three times.

“More likely thirty. I just got in. And my roommate is in the shower so I have to wait my turn.”

Leo flashed a thumbs-up.

“The most I can do is pass on your message,” said Yolanda.

I looked up and mouthed, Not happy. Leo reclaimed the receiver and said, “Yolanda? It’s Leo Frawley, soaking wet. Look, she’s in no shape to make rounds. Can you finesse this? I mean, like a half hour? It’s not like she was out partying last night and couldn’t get out of bed this morning—you know what I’m saying?”

She must have said something like, “Dr. Thrift? Partying? That’s a good one,” because Leo answered, “Yeah, well, there’s a lot to be said for keeping your nose to the grindstone when you’re expected to work eighteen-hour days.”

I stood up, tapped my watch, and pointed across the hall to the bathroom.

He hung up quickly and asked, “How was yesterday? Awful?”

“Very sad. And the minister was a complete stranger, so that didn’t help.”

“I guess I meant, how did Ray work out as an escort?”

“Good and bad.”

He pointed to the chair I’d just vacated and I sat back down. “Good as transportation. Good at taking my side in a family fracas. Bad at being grammatical and appropriate.”

“I could have predicted that,” said Leo. “There’s something slimy about him. And he tries too hard. He’s clearly waging a campaign to win your hand.”

“My hand?” I repeated. “You mean, as in marriage?”

“Of course. He’s not a kid. He’s a widower. Don’t you read magazines? Men who were once married get hooked up again as soon as they can because they know single men die younger than married men. Ask any actuary.”

I said, “Don’t be ridiculous.”

“Then you’re blind. He’s looking for his next wife and he thinks her name is Alice.”

I took a long gulp of coffee. “Okay. Maybe he is. But it’s only human nature to look for someone who can return his feelings, and when he realized I couldn’t, he finally gave up.”

Leo said, “I don’t want to make you any later than you already are, but I think I have more to say on the subject of Ray—namely that he kept coming back without any encouragement, so why would he bow out now?”

I said, “Maybe you and I can grab a sandwich in the cafeteria.”

“If my five minutes overlaps with yours, you mean.”

“Or tonight.”

“Can’t tonight,” said Leo.

“Same woman?”

“Dinner with my mother,” he said. Mutha was how he said the word: Dinna with my mutha.

I waited, thinking he might sweep me up into the party, in that way of large families with boardinghouse tables and bottomless stews.

“You didn’t want to come home and have dinner at my house, did you?” asked Leo. “Is that what I’m reading in your face? ‘Leo, invite me to your house because I haven’t had a really stringy piece of meat in months, and I’m dying to be interrogated about my life, my sleeping arrangements, and my grandmother’s last days on earth.’”

I said, “Actually, I’d welcome the opportunity to observe you in a family context.”

Leo said, “Is that Thrift-speak for ‘Excellent! I’ve been dying to meet your mother, Leo’?”

I didn’t see the difference, but I said yes, it was.

WE TOOK THE Riverside Line to Kenmore Square, then switched to a Boston College car, outbound. When stymied by a turnstile, I had to confess that I hardly ever took public transportation.

“Why not?” Leo asked.

“Too busy working to go anywhere.”

“You know what?” said Leo. “I’m sick of hearing that. I work hard, and I know a lot of residents who do, too, but they get out. They wear beepers. Yet you seem proud of the fact that you have no life.”

Was he right? Was I going to be like Dr. Perzigian, chief of thoracic surgery, famous for making rounds at five A.M.; for getting married in scrubs in the hospital chapel; for missing the birth of his son while repairing a knife wound close to the aorta of a philandering city councilman?