The Pursuit of Alice Thrift (17 page)

I didn't argue. See one, do one, teach one.

“
Regardez:
Not only do I use a new needle that's never pierced a living organism, but I sterilize it like so”—she struck a match from a box on the stove and touched its flame to the sharp end—“and now I cool it down with alcohol.”

“Your hands,” I prompted.

“No problem,” she said. The gloves went on. An ice cube and a needle came toward me.

“Do you think I need a swab of Betadine?”

“Overkill. Not to mention ugly,” she said. “Close your eyes. I've never lost an ear.”

“Tell me what you're doing as you do it,” I said.

“I certainly will not,” said Sylvie.

I felt the ice, front and back. Then the puncture—manageable pain—then the journey of the needle. I asked if there was much bleeding. Sylvie said, “One drop . . . nice placement. Your lobes were made for this. Okay. Now the earring . . . sometimes hard to get it through to the other side. Sorry . . . almost . . . okay, got it! Earring back is now secure. We're halfway home. Want to see it, or should we finish the job?”

“Finish.”

“More ice. Numb enough?”

I said it wasn't too bad. I thought about me looking for veins; about me trying to thread a line into a patient's superior vena cava. This was nothing; this wasn't even a junior membership in the academy of sufferers.

When both earrings were in place and I'd received my instructions for nightly turns and disinfecting, she brought out a bottle of wine.

I said I'd return the earrings as soon as I could buy a replacement.

“Or not,” said Sylvie. “I'd like to think of them as your fashion starter kit.”

Fashion starter kit. I asked Sylvie if this was a makeover—first a bolero sweater studded with shiny beads, and now earlobes studded with diamonds.

“No!” she protested, too fast to be believed. She cocked her head slightly; she looked at my naked wrists, at her costume jewelry, at my feet. “What size shoe do you wear?” she asked.

RAY PICKED ME
up, dressed in his funeral suit and tie, looking more than presentable. My outfit was hidden beneath my parka, but I'd heightened the color of my lips with a tinted lip balm purchased at the hospital pharmacy, and had coiled my ponytail into a knot at the back of my neck.

“Doesn't she look great?” he asked the teenage guard at the security desk.

The guard looked up and blinked.

I kept walking, and at the door quietly asked Ray not to put people on the spot. And what would a confirmation from a security guard, hoping for nice tips next Christmas, mean anyway?

“So sue me,” said Ray. “It just flew out of my mouth. And as long as we're being honest, let me suggest that you don't have to knee a guy in the groin when he pays you a compliment.”

“Did I do that?”

“Not literally. But you do like to swat it away, same as if it was an insult. And I don't say this to make you feel bad. I say it because we're going out in public now, and you look nice, and someone else might pay you a compliment tonight.”

I said thank you for that advice. He looked very nice, too.

When we were in the car, driving west on Beacon Street per the directions, Ray asked if I wanted him to play it cool.

“In what sense?”

“Like, if we're standing around having drinks and I get the urge to put my arm around you. Or if we're sitting next to each other at dinner and I put my hand on your thigh. Is that something that's going to get you all goosey?”

I said, “Well, Jackie and Henry know that we've had sexual relations, so I suppose a gesture of affection wouldn't upset anyone.”

He kept his eyes on the road but repeated slowly, each word distinct: “They
know
we've had sexual relations? Is that what you people talk about in the doctors' dining room?”

I said, “There
is
no doctors' dining room.”

“Then wherever it is you make sexual confessions.”

“You sound mad,” I said.

“I'm surprised. I thought you were the last person in the world who'd brag about her love life, especially if the guy you were doing it with was me.”

Had
I bragged about my love life? I didn't think so. “Love life” sounded active and fluid, whereas I'd only experienced what might be termed love episodes . . . love accidents. Confidences offered solely to illustrate my doubts about Ray as a boyfriend. I said, “I think your TV doctors confide such things in each other all the time. Isn't that what keeps the plots moving? Sexual disclosures in the workplace?”

“But that's not real life,” said Ray. “Those people are hinting at juicy things that will make the audience tune in tomorrow.”

I said, “I'm sorry. In the future I'll be more discreet. And to answer your original question: If you put your arm around me over wine and canapés, I won't get goosey.”

“Thank you,” said Ray.

THEIR HOUSE WAS
stucco, crisscrossed with dark timber, chalet-like. A Christmas wreath was still on the door, and their mailbox was painted to look like the head of a cow. Jackie answered the chime as if she'd been waiting breathlessly with her hand on the doorknob. She was younger than Henry—by ten years? fifteen?—petite and energetic, with short blond hair brushed forward to frame her face. Pretty and fit, she reminded me of hospital coworkers who organized their fellow nurses into lunchtime jogging parties. She greeted me with a kiss, and accepted Ray's gift-wrapped fudge with such courtesy that no one would have suspected that we'd discussed his product as a liability.

“Everyone's here,” sang Henry from a few yards behind her.

He took our coats and we followed him past the stairway, down the hallway of wood stained dark against bright white stucco walls. I stopped, causing Ray to bump against me. “More people?” I asked Henry.

“No surgeons,” he said. “In fact, no doctors.” And then we were at the threshold of what appeared to be a library. “Everyone knows everyone else,” he boomed.

It made perfect sense: Someone of Jackie's social talents would have regarded her large dining room table, her blended-family supply of flatware, and thought, Cooking for six is no harder than cooking for four! Who would work as another couple? Henry must have connected the dots, reaching back to our cafeteria conversation, the nuances forgotten but names retained: Midwife Meredith and Nurse Leo, young folks whom Alice knows and will feel comfortable with.

“Did I get this right?” asked Henry. “Schoolmates? Roommates? Some such?”

“Roommates,” said Leo, who was wearing a maroon V-necked sweater over a shirt and tie.

“I'm Ray,” Ray said, extending his hand to Meredith, who seemed as composed as another human being could be in the face of such a social collision. Her dress was loose and hemplike; her shawl was ochre. Her earrings looked like IUDs.

“Drinks?” said Henry. He pointed to a library table swathed in white linen. “I have a pitcher of martinis. I have beer. I have wine. Dr. Thrift?”

“Martini,” I said. “Very dry. A double.”

“Olive or a twist?”

“Both,” I said.

Ray pointed to the brown bottle Leo was holding and said, “One of those would be super.”

“Boys love their beers,” said Meredith, who was sipping what looked like club soda.

Jackie, right behind us, looked from one face to the next. “Henry knew there was some connection. But I guess this was a surprise.”

“Our paths haven't crossed lately,” said Leo.

I said I'd been in the ER. Lots of kids, but no neonates.

“How's the new apartment?” he asked.

“Great. Very convenient. Immaculate.”

“She needs stuff,” said Ray. “The only furniture she has is built in. She didn't even know you had to bring a phone.”

“You've seen it?” Leo asked.

Ray said quietly, “I got a tour.”

Jackie said, “I don't know when she'd have time to buy furniture with the hours she keeps.”

“All of us work around the clock,” said Meredith.

“Not me,” said Ray.

“I meant at the hospital.”

“Are you a nurse, too?” Ray asked her.

“Nurse-midwife. Certified.”

“No kidding? One of those people who delivers babies at home?”

Meredith looked toward Dr. Shaw and said quietly, “On occasion. In an emergency.”

“Don't get me started,” said Henry. “We've agreed to disagree.”

“What do you think?” I asked Leo.

His glance went around the room, from Meredith to Henry and back to me. “We've also agreed to disagree.”

“Am I missing something?” asked Ray. “What are we discussing here?”

“Home births,” said Jackie.

Ray asked Leo, “So what's your beef with it?”

Leo said, “My beef is this: A home birth is about the mother, not the baby. It's about low lights and pot-luck casseroles and herbal tea and wanting to have a beautiful experience.”

Henry said quietly, “Hear hear.”

Meredith said to me, “Notice who's taking this position: the men.”

“Not me,” said Ray. “Anyone I know who's had their baby at home, it wasn't on purpose.”

I said, “I haven't done much OB, except my clerkship in med school, so I don't know the statistics.”

“There isn't a surgeon alive who's a proponent of home births,” Meredith said. “So I doubt whether you'll be the first.”

“Hey,” said Ray. “She just said she hasn't done much OB. You can't lump her in with other surgeons. She
hates
surgeons.”

“In that case,” Leo offered with a friendly smile, “maybe someday Alice will look around and say, ‘What am I doing in a subspecialty that amounts to indentured servitude, answering to people who are aggressive assholes?' ”

“Or maybe I'm doing much better,” I said.

“Really?” asked Jackie. She had her hand on my back, waiting for a polite moment to announce, “There's smoked bluefish pâté and gravlax, if anyone feels like a nibble.”

“How long does your probation last?” Meredith asked me.

“Two months.”

“What an ordeal,” she said. “Two months of people watching you, waiting for you to shoot yourself in the foot.”

“I've heard worse,” said Henry. “When I started out in surgery, I was given two
weeks
to shape up.”

I detected charity and smiled. It couldn't have been true; if the word
probation
had ever appeared on his transcript, he'd have trumpeted it to me over our soup course in the cafeteria.

Ray asked Meredith what kind of paces she had to go through to become a midwife. Did she have to work for three days straight with maybe, if she was lucky, one catnap every twelve hours?

I said, “I don't have to work three days straight, Ray.”

Leo was the only one who'd migrated over to the appetizers. He was leaning against a wall, several yards away from our circle.

Ray said to Meredith, “I'm guessing you have pretty regular hours—I mean, I know you deliver babies in the middle of the night, but I'm guessing you have a shift. You work a set number of hours and then another nurse takes over when it's quitting time? Is that right?”

“What's your point?” she asked.

“I have no point. I guess I heard something in your voice that gave me the idea that you thought Alice was on probation because she wasn't smart enough or good enough.” He smiled. “So I guess it got my back up.”

Meredith smiled, too, an icy smile of pure diplomacy. “I'm sorry you feel that way,” she said. “I think no such thing. I have the utmost respect for doctors.”

From the corner of the room, Leo laughed and lifted his bottle to his mouth.

Henry laughed, too. I did as well, although I wasn't sure where the humor lay. Ray's expression shifted slowly from malignant to benign. They were laughing at Meredith or her lie, or her skills as a debater. But definitely not at Ray Russo or the drip who brought him.

SEATING PLAN: THE
hosts at the head and the foot of the table. Ray and Meredith on one side of the table, Leo and I next to each other opposite our dates. A caterer had furnished two roast ducks, crispy and sauced, and vegetables tied together in little bundles. “I used to cook,” said Jackie, “but I finally got over my belief that my self-worth is tied to the number of hours I put into a dinner party.”

“Me, too,” said Leo. “One of the happiest days of my life was when they invented take-out rotisserie chickens.”

“This is duck,” said Meredith.

“I like duck,” said Leo. “I used to feed the ones at the BC reservoir, if I could wrestle some stale heels of bread away from my mother.”

“Leo's one of a dozen children,” I said.

“Thirteen, actually.”

“All named after popes and saints,” I said.

“How do you know that?” Meredith asked.

“From his mother.”

“Alice came to dinner,” said Leo. “Unfortunately, my mother's self-worth is not tied up in her cooking either, but that doesn't stop her.”

“It was a very nice meal,” I said.

Ray said, “Alice isn't fussy. She eats cafeteria food every day.” He winked at me. “And the occasional submarine sandwich.”

Henry said, “Jackie cooks plenty. She's being modest.”

Jackie said, “Henry's wife took cooking lessons. I mean, serious cooking lessons from that woman in Newton Centre who trains women to cater their husbands' law firms' cocktail parties.”

“Now now,” chided Henry.

“What happened to her?” Ray asked.

“We divorced,” said Henry.

Ray wagged his index finger back and forth, between the head and the foot of the table.

“He's asking if I was the home-wrecker,” said Jackie.