Part 4 (1/2)
Struggling to sleep in the guest bedroom after helping clean up the damage from a late party, I can hear Bill and Alice talking on the back porch, talking soft and close.
”How is it that Lora hasn't been s.n.a.t.c.hed up, anyhow?”
”What?”
”You know. I'm just surprised she isn't married. I mean, you could say the same about me, until I met you. It's just that she seems the type to be married.”
”She is the type to be married. She'll get married.”
”I'm sure. I just wondered why she hasn't yet, darling. Just curious. She's so sweet and such a warm girl, and-”
”She was almost married once. About three years ago.” I am listening as if it isn't me somehow they are speaking about, as if it were someone else entirely. I hold my breath and pretend to sink into the very walls.
”Oh? Did you scare him off, big brother?”
”It wasn't like that. He was a good friend of mine. A guy who used to be on the force when I first started.”
”Did you play matchmaker?”
'Sort of. It just kind of happened naturally. We'd all spend time together, go to movies. He was a good guy, and it made sense.” His tone is s.h.i.+fting, from cautious to grave, and she begins to respond accordingly.
”So what happened?”
”They began getting serious just as he had to leave the force. TB. It was rough, but she stood by him. You know, that's how she is.”
”Oh, dear. Did he-”
”No, no. He eventually had to go to a sanatorium, way up by Sacramento or something. He didn't want her to wait for him. He was a sh.e.l.l of the guy he'd once been. Down to a hundred and twenty pounds. He couldn't bring himself to continue with her. He did the right thing. He said, 'Bill, I can't let her tie herself to me like a sash weight,' he said. So he broke it off.”
”He isn't still up there-”
”No. They wrote to each other for a while, but it wasn't the same. Last I heard, he married one of the nurses there and they settled. He works for an insurance company or something.”
It really wasn't like this, was it? Was that how simple it was, so explicable in a few sentences, a few turns of phrase? Wasn't it months of high drama, so wrenching, so unbearably romantic that I'd conveniently forgotten that I never really cared that deeply for the amiable, square-jawed Hugh Fowler to begin with?
It had absorbed all the emotional energies of Bill and myself for a fall and winter and an early spring, and then, suddenly, it was as though he'd never been a part of our lives at all. His second month at River Run Rest Lodge and we couldn't remember when we'd next be able to make the long drive up the coast.
And then other things emerged, other things that left no room, no time, no s.p.a.ce for that sweet-faced young man who, so ill, would shudder against me despite his height, his gun holster, his still-broad (but not for long) shoulders. Was that it?
”How very tragic,” says Alice. ”Like out of a movie. It could be a movie. Poor Lora.”
”She'll find someone and it'll be right,” Bill says firmly.
I feel my eye twitch against the pillow. I press my hand to it, hard.
”Well, I'm going to help.”
”Oh, Alice, I wouldn't-”
”I know lots of wonderful men. Men from the studios.”
”I don't think Lora would want to date anyone in the movie business. That's not Lora.”
”Oh, brothers don't know,” Alice says. ”And I can't bear to see her with these sad sacks from school. These men with the saggy collars and shoes like potatoes. I'm going to get her with a real sharpshooter. If you had your way ...”
”Alice, you don't know Lora. She won't-”
”Just watch me.”
I can hear her smile even if I don't see it. It doesn't seem real, that this is me they are talking about. I look out the window, at the heavy jacaranda branches trembling gently against the pane. I think, for a moment, about the men Alice seems to know and it's hard to believe they really exist. That they could enter my life, my small world. What would it mean if they came cras.h.i.+ng in the same way Alice has?
As my cheek leans against the gla.s.s, I realize suddenly how hot my face is. I press my hand to it, surprised.
It is a long time before I fall asleep.
With this forewarning, I am prepared when, after one of what Alice refers to as my ”sad sack” dates, she phones me and announces she is ready to play matchmaker.
”His name is Mike Standish. Can you believe it? I call him Stand Mannish.”
”What does he do? He's not an actor.”
”No, no, of course not. He's with the publicity department. He's delicious, Lora. He's a huge, strapping man. He's like a tree, a redwood. He's a lumberjack.”
I am always surprised by what Alice thinks might make a man sound attractive to me.
”I don't know.”
”Lora, he's very smart and accomplished. For G.o.d's sake, he went to Col-um-bia University.”
”He doesn't want to date a schoolteacher in Pasadena.”
”He wants to date you. I set it all up. He's taking you to Perino's and then to the Cocoanut Grove. The only question is what you should wear.”
”When is all this supposed to happen?”
Why not, for G.o.d's sake. Why not.
”One thing, Lora, one thing,” she says, and it's almost a whisper, a voice burrowing straight into my head. ”This is what he does: first thing, he warns you that he's going to charm you, and that warning becomes part of his charm.”
”Hey, Shanghai Lil, come over here,” my brother says, waving his arm toward Alice.
”I think that you no love me still.” She pouts, imitation geisha, as she pads over in her brand-new Anna May Wong-style silk pajamas.
”See how nice it can be staying home on a Sat.u.r.day night.” He smiles peacefully, tucking her into his arms.
”Until you get the call.” She sighs.
”Not tonight. Promise.”