The Pursuit of Alice Thrift

“God bless her.”

I was at the nurses’ station on Fletcher-4. I caught one nurse rolling her eyes at another. They’d been listening.

I hung up the phone and stated for the record, “My grandmother died last night, unexpectedly.”

“We heard,” said one, not even looking up from her fashion magazine. “Unexpectedly, despite being ninety-four.”

“No one’s sympathetic when they hear ninety-something,” I said. “They think that makes it easy, as if it’s overdue and you should have been prepared.”

They exchanged looks again. I wanted to say, What am I doing wrong? Did I sound brusque or unfeeling? Have we met before? Instead I said, “I’m Dr. Thrift. This is my first night in ENT. You probably know my housemate, Leo, from pediatrics. Leo Frawley?”

The younger one sat up straighter and hooked stray blond tendrils behind her ears. “I know Leo,” she said.

“And you are?”

“Roxanne.”

“I’m Mary Beth,” volunteered her deskmate. “I used to work in peds.”

“We’re sorry for your loss,” said Roxanne. “I’d be, like, devastated if my grandmother died—no matter how old she was.”

I took a tissue from their box, touched it to each eye, and said with uncharacteristic aplomb, “I’ll be sure to tell Leo how kind you were.”

5 A.k.a. the Transportation (#ulink_3c63d3f8-f06e-526b-8cc2-afce5dfc732a)

HAD I REALLY thought that Joyce Thrift’s social reflexes and nuptial dreams would fail her on that January day, just because she was laying her mother to rest?

Ray whistled appreciatively when we pulled up to my parents’ house, a sprawling Dutch Colonial, previously white, now yellow with pine-green shutters—a new color scheme they’d forgotten to tell me about.

“How many square feet in this baby?” Ray asked, squinting through his tinted windshield.

I said I had no idea. One doesn’t think of one’s childhood home in mathematical terms.

“How many bedrooms?”

“Five.”

“Five! For how many kids?”

“Two. But one is a guest room, and another’s my mother’s studio.”

“For what?”

“Fiber art,” I confessed.

Ray looked engaged, which was his psychological specialty: filing away facts that would later make him seem uniquely attentive. “You mean like weaving?” he asked.

“Weaving’s part of it. She incorporates different elements—wool, feathers, newsprint, photographs, bones.”

“Human or animal?”

I said he could ask her himself. She’d be thrilled to discuss it since her relatives and friends had grown tired of her shaggy wall hangings, both as a topic of conversation and as an art form.

“Maybe on a future visit, but I certainly wouldn’t bring it up today,” said the master of funereal etiquette. He pointed to the silver van in the driveway and read approvingly, “Fêtes by Frederick.”

“The caterer. People will be coming back after the cemetery.”

“Buffet, you think?”

“Something low-key. When my grandfather died, we had finger sandwiches and petits fours.”

“So what’s the plan? I meet you back here?”

I looked at my watch and calculated aloud, “Funeral at eleven, then to the cemetery, then back here for an hour. How does one-thirty sound? I’ll come out to the car.”

“Doc,” said Ray. “That’s terrible. You’re not going to run in and run out like you’ve been beeped. This is your grandmother who died, not some second cousin twice removed.”

“Two-thirty, then?”

“I wouldn’t mind going to the church,” said Ray. “I find that even if I don’t know the deceased, I get a lot out of it.”

What could I do but include him after the gas and mileage he’d invested in the trip and his curiosity about fiber art? I said, “I think I’ll be riding with the next of kin in the limousine. But if you want to go to the church, I’m sure that’s fine.” I reached for the door handle. “I should probably have this time alone with my mother, though.”

“Absolutely,” said Ray. “I don’t want to be underfoot while she’s getting dressed.”

I wasn’t worried about my mother, who could be gracious in any tragedy. But I needed to take her aside and explain that the rough-hewn man in the red car was a mere acquaintance and—not that she’d ever entertain such thoughts on a day like today—wholly unsuited to any other role. And the Swarthmore sticker on the back windshield? Not applicable; a relic from the previous owner.

“Mind if I run in and use the toilet?” Ray asked.

I said okay. There was a powder room just inside the front door.

“Thirty seconds, and that includes the hand-washing,” he promised.

He took his gray pin-striped jacket from its hanger, put it on, tugged at his cuffs, smoothed his silver tie against his sternum. “Not bad, huh?” he asked.

Already on my way up the stone walk, I didn’t look back. I opened the front door and called, “Anyone home?”

Ray was right behind me. “Wow. Nice place.”

There was a party-sized coatrack in the foyer, bearing so many wooden hangers that I stopped to ponder the scope of the after-funeral fête. I pointed to the half-bath and Ray darted toward it.

My father appeared at the top of the stairs in a black velour bathrobe and hospital-blue terry-cloth slippers. When he reached the bottom step I gave him a hug that was slightly longer than our semiannual perfunctory squeeze.

“You okay?” he asked.

I said I was, of course, sad, but still, when one saw as much untimely and sudden death as I did, then it’s hard to view ninety-four as—

“We were able to get Frederick on practically no notice at all,” announced my father. “I mean, we only wanted tea sandwiches and a few salads, but he was Johnny-on-the-spot.”