The Pursuit of Alice Thrift (30 page)

“Not nervous,” Leo clarified. “Angry.”

“They're his cousins,” I said. “It could have been some unrelated family feud.”

“Did you see the cousins' dates?” Sylvie asked me. “Shiny turquoise dress on one? Barbed-wire tattoo on the other?” Her fingers circled one of her own biceps.

“Just in passing,” I said. “On my way back up the aisle.”

She touched my shoulder from the step above. “Let's go outside,” she said.

We walked down the slate path to the backyard, under the empty tent, to what would have been the head table. “You must know more than you're telling me,” I said.

Leo shrugged. He fished out his olive spear and drained his glass.

“I heard the name Mary,” said Sylvie.

I said again, “These were his cousins. Of course the name Mary would come up at Ray's second wedding. I'm sure they were ushers at the first.”

“I couldn't help myself,” said Sylvie. “I strolled over, pretending to be gregarious, dragging Leo. I stuck out my hand to the one they'd been calling Mary, and said, ‘We don't know a soul here. I'm Sylvie and this is Leo.' She shook my hand, limply, stupidly. No name offered. ‘And you are?' I asked. One of the cousins said, ‘This is Donna. She's with me.' Which of course made it incumbent on
me
to remark on the not-insubstantial diamond on the fourth finger of her left hand. I said, ‘Beautiful ring, Donna. Are you two engaged?' Immediately, her left hand disappeared behind her. Ray mumbled something about a former dead fiancé.”

“Do you see where we're going with this?” Leo asked.

“Not entirely.”

“Premature widowhood running rampant?” said Sylvie. “A woman named Mary who inspires a string of lies from your low-residency if not entirely absent groom?”

“And then when we checked her out again, inside the church,” said Leo, “the ring was gone. She must have slipped it inside her purse.”

I said, “I don't understand what this adds up to. Do you think this is Mary, the dead wife?”

“Or undead,” said Leo.

“Or wife-to-be,” said Sylvie.

I shook my head. “There must be more you're not telling me. You wouldn't throw this grenade into the middle of my wedding if you had only circumstantial evidence.”

Leo shrugged.

“What else?” I said.

They both winced. After a moment Sylvie said in a small, flat voice, “I carded her.”

“You what?”

“Carded her. Very unobtrusively. A truly conscientious bartender isn't supposed to serve minors, even if it's a private party.”

I said, “You're not a bartender, and she's not a minor.”

“I've tended bar! I viewed it as a citizen's carding. She ordered a green apple martini—same as Ray, I noticed—and suddenly I found myself saying to the bartender, ‘I'm sorry, but I'm doing a fellowship in hepatology, and I get very upset when I see an underage drinker being served.' ” She paused.

“Did he ask to see her ID?”

“He had no choice.”

“And she complied?”

“It was either that or make a scene. Besides, she had no clue that her name would mean anything to anyone at a wedding in Princeton, New Jersey.
Plus
she got to enjoy a little victory and mutter ‘Fuck you' when she turned out to be thirty.”

“Did you see the license yourself?”

“Of course! The bartender showed me.”

“Professional courtesy,” said Leo.

“And the name of this thirty-year-old?”

Sylvie checked with Leo first.

“Not Donna,” he said.

After a long pause I said, “I guess he told the truth about a couple of things.”

“Still,” said Leo. “There could be a plausible explanation.”

“Name one,” said Sylvie.

“A person of science wouldn't be allowed to say that the ghost of Mary Ciccarelli had come back to see her husband remarry, would he?” Leo asked.

Sylvie shook her head.

“I don't know what this means,” I said.

Leo said, “It means
you'll
be the widow when I get through with him.”

I said, “Even if she crashed the wedding, I can't believe she'd come back to my parents' house.”

Sylvie stood up and started to pace. “Big fucking hilarious joke. As if Alice would never catch on; as if Alice would never realize that she was getting married under the nose of his girlfriend or fiancée or whatever the hell she is.”

“Alice
didn't
catch on,” I said.

“Alice doesn't expect people to lie,” said Leo.

“Please go get him,” I said.

“He'll never tell the truth,” said Sylvie.

“Go get him,” I said.

THE DEFEATED TWO-MAN
search party, Leo and my father, were gone a long time.

“Honey—” my father was saying, all the way from the back door, along the slate path, to where I was sitting. “Honey, it's okay—”

“No sign of him,” said Leo.

“What about his cousins?”

“Gone.”

“Did anyone see them go?”

“We didn't ask,” said my father. “We didn't want to raise any suspicions—”

“In case they went out for cigarettes and might breeze back any minute,” Leo tried.

“And I didn't want your mother getting hysterical,” said my father.

“What would be the point of his taking off?” asked Sylvie. “If he's come this far; if this is some trick, some swindle, to marry Alice, wouldn't he have made his move after the ceremony?”

“The checks,” said my father. “Those don't materialize until the reception.”

Sylvie said, “No one goes to all this trouble for a couple of wedding checks.”

Everyone looked at me. “He wasn't planning to run away. He thought I was going to be a rich doctor—”

“Who wasn't going to be around enough to cramp his style,” Sylvie added.

I pulled the limp flower from behind my ear and tossed it over my shoulder. “He's gone,” I said. “I told him I had no job and no prospects . . . and I might have implied that we were homeless.”

Sylvie bit her lip. When that didn't work, when her twitch of a grin couldn't be suppressed, she clapped her hand over her mouth.

“I wouldn't jump to conclusions,” said Leo. “Maybe he got a little heat stroke and had to lie down.”

“Could someone give me a phone?” I asked.

Sylvie fished hers out of her purse and handed it to me. I dialed, and Ray, being Ray, answered.

“It's your wife,” I said.

“Hey! Where are you?”

“At my wedding.”

“I looked all over for you.”

“And when you couldn't find me, you thought you'd head home?”

“My cousins wanted to see the sights. They'd heard of Princeton, the college. They all saw
A Beautiful Mind.
”

“Are your friends enjoying a good laugh? And have you found an ATM yet?”

“We can stop payment on those checks!” my father yelled.

“We're just getting some fresh air,” said Ray. “Jerome's allergic to shellfish. He didn't have any, but he ate a canapé that must've been next to a shrimp. I didn't want to bother you or your doctor friend.”

“Put Mary on,” I said.

“Mary? There's no Mary here.”

“Put Mary Ciccarelli on the phone,” I yelled.

“Put Ciccarelli on the goddamn phone,” my father said, even louder.

I heard whispers, then a businesslike “This is Mary.”

My voice shook. I had no script, no oxygen. I finally blurted out, “Are you aware of the fact that everyone thinks you're dead?”

“Not
everyone,
” said Mary.

“Just me? Is that what you're saying? The bride? Who would now like to ascertain your relationship to the groom?”

She repeated the question, her hand muffling the receiver.

Ray was back. “Alice, I told you. She's George's friend.” He chuckled, the least convincing sound that ever bounced off a satellite. “I can't even say
girlfriend
because Georgie would get pissed at me. This is, like, their second date.”

“Are you a pathological liar?” I asked.

“Why do you always ask me that?”

“Are we married?”

“Totally.”

“Legally?”

“Of course, legally. You were there for both of them!”

Sylvie said, “Ask him if he was married before.”

“Ask him if he's a bigamist,” said my father.

“Maybe he was going to have her murdered,” said Sylvie. “That's not unheard of.”

“Alice?” Ray was saying. “You still there, hon? Would it help if I talked to your father?”

I said, “What did you want?”

“To get this straightened out. As soon as we drop the girls off at the bus station, we're coming straight back to the reception.”

“No. I meant, what did you want from me? From the beginning?”

“Our connection's breaking up,” said Ray. “Can this wait until we're face-to-face?”

“Don't come back here,” I said.

“I'll get a restraining order,” my father yelled.

“Leo's threatening mayhem,” I added. “He went to a tough high school in Brighton where the kids beat each other up.”

“What parish?” Ray asked affably.

“Dinner!” my mother sang, first from a window, then, her face worried, from the back porch.

“Alice? Doc—” I heard from the phone as I passed it back to Sylvie.

“Good-bye, asshole,” she growled.

“Bert?” my mother called. “What's wrong?”

“You go in, Dad,” I said. “The food will get cold.”

“It's supposed to be cold.”

“Tell Mom what's going on. Tell everyone. You'll make a lot of people happy.”

“It's a sauna out here,” said Sylvie. “You come in, too. We'll find a table in some remote corner.”

“We'll dance,” said Leo.

I watched my mother's face change as hostess mortification set in; as the buffet line took shape behind her.

The musicians came outside on break, carrying plates heaped with food. Thunder rumbled, but the rain held off. Someone produced a cigarette, and I smoked it.

31.
Alice Thrift, A.D.

THE NEW YORK TIMES WASN'T GOING TO STOP THE PRESSES FOR
something as trivial as a runaway groom. As a result, I received presents and congratulations for months, returning every one that Ray hadn't cashed. My thank-you note was something of a form letter:
As much as I would have gotten great use out of your lovely
(soup tureen/wine carafe/pressure cooker/croquet set), I am returning it because my marriage to Ray didn't work out. It's hard to
explain, but my parents would be happy to elaborate. Thank you for
your thoughtfulness. I hope you saved the receipt. Sincerely, Alice.

Ray, it turned out, had broken no laws of the commonwealth. Lying was punishable by nothing, especially when its victim was an allegedly adult woman who married freely and volunteered her bank card with express instructions to make a withdrawal. I consulted a lawyer, who listened to my tale of woe and advised, gently, that I take my bad judgment and romantic blind spots to the other kind of counselor.

There was some early hope that Ray had been previously married and never divorced, rendering the ceremony at City Hall illegitimate. My father hired a private detective without my consent, which led only to the discovery that in all of Ray's forty-five years, he'd been nothing worse than a serial fiancé. The truths we learned were these: We were legally married. He lived with Mary Ciccarelli the entire time he was wooing and wedding me. The diamond ring on Mary's finger was his, bought on layaway, eventually pawned. There was no dog. He did sell fudge, but in the manner of a Girl Scout selling cookies—once a year and door to door.

We didn't see each other until the hearing. On the witness stand, he insisted that it was a real marriage based on love. That he loved me and I loved him. That our marital relations were frequent and awesome. That he'd been lied to, and promised a nose job. That he was devastated. Which was why he, the injured party—currently on disability due to documented mental anguish—was compelled to ask Dr. Thrift for alimony.

The judge ruled, swiftly and edgily, for the plaintiff—me.

I WENT BACK
to work immediately, on July 1, a rung above the new batch of petrified interns. Two out of seven were women. The first opportunity I had to pull them aside I said, “If anything goes wrong, which it will, come talk to me. When Dr. Kennick says, by way of a compliment, ‘I've seen worse,' know that he's referring to me, and that I lived to tell about it. Here's my phone number. Call anytime.”

Dr. Kennick, in his vagueness, decided that he liked me. It's not that I improved so dramatically, but more that he credited me with being the intern who asked for a week's vacation, then changed her mind, sacrificing her honeymoon for the good of her team.

I no longer want to be a plastic surgeon. That particular pursuit belonged to the world on the other side of the embarrassing fissure, the Ray Russo Pass, that I have only recently vaulted. And as various advisers have noted, repairing the lives of the shunned in places far removed from the hospital might have had more to do with altering myself than with saving the world. Dr. Shaw suggested I think about ob-gyn, and I was tempted. We discussed it over several lunches, but in the end I decided to stay where I was rather than start over in something requiring a Shaw-like level of compassion around the clock. I was better suited, it turned out, to do what surgeons do—cut to the problem, excise it, and get out.

On this side of the crevasse is what Sylvie calls “Alice Thrift, A.D.”—after divorce. The new me enjoys residential peace and elbow room on the upper floor of a two-family house in Brookline Village. There are three bedrooms; we let Leo have the large one, with the alcove for a crib, for that distant day when John Paul, born in September, is weaned. Aunties Sylvie and Alice can't wait for him to spend the night.

Paternity is demanding, and Meredith is never very far away. Her daily phone calls recount the baby's milestones, his sleep, his various intakes and outputs—much more than anyone but a NICU nurse-dad would want to know. On alternate nights, for the sake of uninterrupted meals, we let the answering machine pick up.

Sylvie is chief resident in medicine this year—an honor she kept to herself the whole time my career was on the rocks. The three of us joke about going into private practice one day—
joke
because an internist, a general surgeon, and a NICU nurse would not make any sound professional sense. Leo dubbed this silliness the Convenient Clinic—one flight down, open nine to five, naps as needed because we'd live above the store, a rotating chairmanship, no male attendings, and never a cross word.

OVER THE PAST
few months, we three have jointly purchased a dining room table and a hooked rug, fully recognizing that the day might come when one of us will have to buy back his or her share. When I say this aloud, Sylvie barely looks up from her bowl of cereal or her potting soil. “It ain't going to be you, cutie,” she always says.

“Who's this Leo?” my therapist asks weekly. “Tell me more.”

I throw out a few neutral biographical facts, the kind that one could learn from his CV—age, job title, last school attended. But nothing more. Confidentiality notwithstanding, certain things are sacred.

Sylvie pushes, too, and has abandoned all subtlety. She'll order two curries or two burritos, buy a bottle of wine, set two glasses and two plates, beep herself out the door, and insist that she couldn't possibly return before midnight. At my divorce party she made a toast, a very convincing mother-of-the-bride impression. “To Alice,” she began, patting an imaginary French twist, “the social misfit and bookworm I love with all my heart.”

“Hear hear,” said Leo.

I know Sylvie; I know she had more to say, more laughs to induce with stored-up Ray jokes and Joyce Thrift bloopers.

But her face grew solemn. She raised her glass higher. “What a good place to stop,” she said.