Curtis Sittenfeld - American Wife

Dr. Wycomb’s gaze had jumped to my face.

“Maybe I ate something bad,” I murmured.

“Thank you, Teddy,” Dr. Wycomb said to the attendant. “I’ll take care of the situation.” She guided me inside, calling, “Emilie, Alice has come back early.”

“Was he that objectionable?” My grandmother’s voice grew louder as she approached us. “Alice, you really ought to give—” Then she saw me and said, “Good Lord, you look ghastly.” She was fully dressed, I noted, wearing her brown suit.

“She’s vomited, and I suspect she also has a fever and is dehydrated,” Dr. Wycomb said. Together, they tucked me into bed and took my temperature—102, apparently—and Dr. Wycomb said, “It’s important for you to have fluids. Emilie, get her some ginger ale from the pantry.”

When my grandmother brought the glass to me, I took a few sips—it was sweet and fizzy—and promptly fell asleep, this time far more deeply than I had in the hallway. When I next awakened, it was close to four in the morning, according to the small round clock on the marble table, and my grandmother was sleeping in the other bed. The third time I awakened, it was light out, I was the only one in the room, and I could smell coffee. I rose to use the toilet, and when I returned from the bathroom, my grandmother was waiting for me, smoking a cigarette. “You certainly know how to bring in the new year in style,” she said.

“I’m sorry if I made you miss going to that hotel last night.”

“If Marvin’s parents are anything like their offspring, you spared us. I must say that for a sick girl, you chose the best place to be in all of Chicago. You have the city’s finest physician at your beck and call.”

I climbed back into bed, and for the rest of the day, I emerged only when I needed to go to the bathroom; I didn’t even bathe. Beneath the covers, I alternately shivered and sweated, my body aching, and they took my temperature at intervals. “This just needs to run its course,” Dr. Wycomb said. “You’ll feel like yourself in another day or two.”

“Oh, I bet she’ll be well by tomorrow,” my grandmother said. “Don’t you suppose, Alice?” We were scheduled to take the train back to Riley late the next morning.

“Let’s not decide now,” Dr. Wycomb said.

Around eight that night, when my grandmother brought me two aspirin and a fresh glass of water, she said, “I’m sure your parents would rather have you home slightly under the weather than late. If we stay another night here, there’ll be calls back and forth. We’ll have to change the tickets, and your father will get out of sorts.”

More like there would be explanations required. There’d be shuttling between Dr. Wycomb’s apartment and the Pelham, the pretense of extending a reservation for a room where we’d never slept. This chain of lies enabling my grandmother to press her lips against the lips of another woman, an old woman, a not even attractive woman—and then I couldn’t stand to think about it anymore, the fragment of a moment, that weird disturbing glimpse.

I said nothing, and my grandmother said, “Get some rest. Our train isn’t until eleven, so we’ll have plenty of time to pack in the morning.”

After I’d closed my eyes, I heard her stand, and I was not sure whether I was dreaming or actually speaking when I mumbled, “I don’t even know why you brought me.”

“Brought you where?” my grandmother said, and then I knew I’d spoken aloud. “To Chicago?”

I rolled over. “What?”

My grandmother’s expression was shrewd and alert. She watched me for a few seconds. “You were talking in your sleep,” she finally said.

MY TEMPERATURE RIGHT before we left for the train station was just over a hundred degrees, but the truth was that by the time we passed Dodsonville, which was the stop before Riley, I felt almost normal. My parents greeted us excitedly. “Did you go to the top of a skyscraper?” my mother asked. “Was it wonderful?”

In the car, my father said to my grandmother, “It was very good of you to take Alice,” and this seemed a type of apology.

“The house was so quiet without you two,” my mother said. “I even started to read one of Granny’s magazines.”

My grandmother smiled over at me, and I almost smiled back, but then I remembered and turned my face to look out the window.

DENA CALLED THE next day. “You need to come over,” she said, and she sounded tearful. “It’s an emergency.”

“What happened?”

“Just come.”

I was standing in the kitchen, and after I hung up the phone, I pulled on my coat and hurried outside. Across the street, I knocked on the Janaszewskis’ front door—their doorbell had been broken since 1958—but I was too cold and concerned to wait, so I turned the knob and let myself in. “Hello?” I called.

In the living room, Dena’s sisters, Marjorie and Peggy, were squabbling over whose turn it was to play a record. Peggy glanced at me, said, “Dena’s upstairs,” and returned to the disagreement.

On the second floor, the door to the room Dena and Marjorie shared was open, but the room appeared vacant. Tentatively, I said, “Dena?”

A hand emerged from beneath one of the twin beds and waved at me. I squatted, then leaned forward so I was on my knees, and lifted the dust ruffle. “What’s wrong?” I said. “Should I come under there?”

“I’ve ruined my life.” Dena’s voice was loose and watery from crying.

I rolled over so I, too, was on my back, then I inched beneath the bed. Immediately, I could feel dust in my throat. There also were a few unidentifiable objects—shoes, maybe, and old toys—that I had to push out of the way before I was next to her. “What happened?” I asked.

She swallowed and then said mournfully, “I shaved my sideburns.”

“But you don’t have sideburns.”

“Yeah, now I don’t.”

I grabbed a fistful of dust ruffle and held it up so daylight would show under the bed. “I can’t see anything,” I said. “You have to come out.” I scooted away, and after a minute, she followed.

When she was sitting upright on the floor, her shoulders against the bed, her face was red and blotchy, her eyes were wet, and her hair, which was lighter brown than mine but styled the same way, was sticking up in the back like a little girl’s. She reached for a mirror that was resting on the carpet shiny side down. I knew this mirror well, having spent a large portion of my life gazing into it, often at the same time as Dena. The reflective part was about the size of an actual face, with a dull pink plastic backing and handle. Holding the mirror up in front of her, Dena turned to the side, her eyes focused grimly on the spot around her ear.

“I still don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said.

“Well, first I cut them, but they looked funny, so then I used a razor.”

I came in closer and rubbed the tip of my index finger over the area in question. “You did a good job. It’s completely smooth. Turn to the other side.” When she did, I touched the skin there, too. “It’s fine,” I said.

“But think about when it grows back. I’ll have stubble. Alice, I’ll have a five o’clock shadow!”

“You can just shave again.”

“Every day for the rest of my life?”

“Nobody will notice,” I said. “I promise.”

“Robert thinks hairy girls are like monkeys. You know how Mary Hafliger—”

“Dena, don’t,” I said. “She can’t help it.” Mary Hafliger, who I was in Spirit Club with, had dark, thick hair on her forearms, and I had heard it discussed among both our male and female classmates.

“She can too help it,” Dena said. “At the least, she could bleach it.”