The Pursuit of Alice Thrift

“I’ll talk to the deejay,” said Ray. He turned to his cousin. “Georgie—put something on that the doc might enjoy dancing to.”

“Will do,” said George.

A little human warmth generated from a clean-shaven jaw can go a long way. I may have exaggerated my ineptitude on the dance floor; any able-bodied person can follow another’s lead when his technique constitutes nothing more than swaying in place. It helped that he didn’t talk or sing, and that his cologne had a citric and astringent quality that I found pleasing.

If Ray said anything at all, it was an occasional entreaty to relax. “You’re not so bad, Doc,” he said when the first song ended. “In fact I think you might like another whirl.”

He hadn’t let go of my hand. I looked around the room to see if we had an audience. Leo was consolidating trays of hors d’oeuvres, but watching. He arched his eyebrows, which I interpreted to mean, Need to be rescued?

I shrugged.

A nurse with closely cropped hair dyed at least two primary colors took Leo’s hand and led him out to the patch of hardwood that was serving as the dance floor. “Having a good time?” Leo asked me.

“You better believe it,” Ray answered, flashing a thumbs-up with my hand in his.

A PHONE CALL woke me. Was I in my own bed or in the on-call cot? It took a few seconds to orient myself in the dark before remembering: I had the weekend off. Good. This would be the hospital calling the wrong resident.

But it wasn’t. It was my mother, her voice choked.

“Is it Daddy?” I whispered.

“It’s Nana,” she managed, discharging the two syllables between sobs.

“What about Nana?”

“Gone! One minute she was alive and the next minute, gone! Pneumonia! As if that wasn’t curable!”

My grandmother was ninety-four and had been in congestive heart failure for three months and on dialysis for nine. I said, “The elderly don’t do well with pneumonia.”

I looked at my bedside clock: 3:52 A.M.

“My heart stopped when the phone rang because I knew without even answering,” my mother continued. “Here it was, the phone call I’ve been dreading my whole life.”

“Is Daddy there?” I asked.

My father came on and said, “I told her not to wake you. What were you going to do at four in the morning except lose a night’s sleep?”

“Ninety-four years old,” I said quietly. “Maybe in the morning she’ll realize that it’s a blessing.”

“I tried that,” he said. “Believe me.”

“Tried what?” my mother asked.

“To point out to you, Joyce, that your mother lived to a ripe old age, was healthy for the first ninety-three of them, and any daughter who has a mother by her side at her sixtieth birthday party is a pretty lucky woman.”

“It’s not the time to count my blessings,” I heard. “I’m crying because she’s gone, okay? Do I have to defend myself?”

“Be nice to her,” I said.

“I am,” he said. Then to my mother, “I know, honey. I know. No one’s mother can live long enough to suit her children. It’s always too early.”

My mother raised her voice so I could hear distinctly, “Some daughters hate their mothers. Some mothers hear from their daughters once a week if they’re lucky. I talked to mine every day. Twice a day. She was my best friend.”

“When’s the funeral?” I asked.

“We haven’t gotten that far yet,” said my father. “She still has to call her sisters.”

“I called you first!” I heard from the far side of their bed.

“Sorry to wake you,” my father said. “I couldn’t stop her. You’re on her auto dial.”

“I have to get up in two hours anyway,” I said.

I BRING UP this relatively untraumatic and foreseen death because Ray counted my grandmother’s funeral as our third date. He was a genius at being there for me when I didn’t want or need him. He called the Monday after the party and got Leo. “Her grandmother died, so I don’t know when she’ll get back to you,” he said.

Ray paged me at the hospital, and without announcing himself said, “I’m driving you wherever you need to go.”

I said that was unnecessary. I had relatives in Boston who were going to the funeral, and my father had worked out the arrangements.

“Absolutely not. What are the chances that they’ll want to leave when you can leave and return when you have to return? Zero.”

I said, “But, Ray: I don’t know you well enough to bring you to a funeral.”

“I’ll wait in the car,” he said.

“It’s not an hour or two. There’s the service, then the burial, then I’m sure there will be a lunch for the out-of-town guests back at my house.”

He said quietly, “I know all too well the number of hours that a funeral can consume.”

I said I couldn’t talk. Someone’s ears needed tubes. To end the conversation, I yielded. I said he could pick me up at six A.M. And just in case he didn’t spend the whole time waiting in the car, he should wear a dark suit.

I also said, “Ray? I don’t want you to construe this as anything but what it is—transportation. I’m being completely forthright here. If you want to drive me all the way to Princeton as a friend, I’d appreciate it, but otherwise I’ll make arrangements with my cousins.”

“I get it,” he said. “I think I was a little too pushy at the party, coming on too strong in the kitchen. But I know that. That’s why I called your apartment—to apologize. Besides, I have my own guilt to deal with.”

“Guilt? Because you went to a party?”

“More like, if I ever told my parents that I had feelings for a woman so soon after Mary died, they’d be furious.”

I asked, “Your parents? Or are you talking about your parents-in-law?”

Ray said, “Let’s not talk about parents, especially with your mother just having passed.”

“Not my mother, my grandmother.”

I heard a low chuckle in my ear. “You did sound kind of blasé for a gal whose mother just died.”

“She was ninety-four and comatose,” I said.