You Think It, I'll Say It(55)
“Let go of her, Frances,” Karen said, and she was tugging on my shoulders. “Let go right now or I’m calling the police.”
It actually wasn’t the threat so much as the interruption—an outside voice, a third party—that made me drop my grip. I can’t say that I ever cared what Alaina thought of me, though I did regret later that Karen had witnessed it. In her eyes, I was probably a person she once knew who turned out to be crazy.
Outside the shelter, Alaina coughed and panted in a way that struck me even then as theatrical. Before I hurried away, I said to her, “You disgust me.”
* * *
—
I never went back to the shelter, and I never spoke to any of them again. I received four messages at work from Linda, the shelter’s director, all of which I deleted without listening to them.
Around Christmas, I received a donation request from New Day. That I was still on their mailing list was probably, given the circumstances under which I’d stopped volunteering, an oversight. New Day was affiliated with two other shelters on Capitol Hill, and the request came with a calendar that said, on the front, VOLUNTEERS ARE SHINING STARS! For each month, the picture was of kids and adults playing at the various shelters, and Alaina was featured for the month of March. Had she been posing with Derek, the calendar would have felt karmically punitive; in fact, she was doing a puzzle with a boy I’d never seen.
I wondered if any of the children noticed my absence or asked where I’d gone, or if I was just another in a long line of adults who slipped without explanation from their lives. For a while, I contemplated what I’d do if I saw one of them on the street. Because of the shelter rules, it would have to be a subtle gesture, less than a wave, something a mother wouldn’t detect—a raise of the eyebrows, a flare of the nostrils, a wiggling pinkie finger. But I moved away from Washington without running into any of them.
It was a Sunday morning about three months after I’d last been to the shelter when I saw Karen. A couple emerged from the bagel place near my apartment holding hands, the guy carrying a brown bag, and I watched them for a moment before I realized the woman was tall, cheerful Karen, the self-declared spinster. Was this a new development? They were talking, and then he turned and kissed her; he was slightly shorter than she was. Before she could notice me, I crossed the street.
Do-Over
Clay never seriously considered the possibility that Donald Trump would win the election, and around nine P.M. central time, when it seems likely he will, Clay texts his daughter, Abby, who is fourteen and at her mother’s house. He writes, I hope you are not too disappointed. Progress sometimes happens in fits and starts. I love you, Abs. Abby texts back, He’s gross, followed by the poop emoji.
That night, Clay dreams of Sylvia McLellan. He dreams with some regularity of boarding school—the classic dream that he’s unprepared for an exam, plus a more idiosyncratic one that involves a girl named Jenny Pacanowski waiting in her dorm room to have sex with him, while, agitatingly, he’s delayed by the task of putting away equipment for the entire lacrosse team—but he’s never before dreamed about Sylvia. And the dream Clay has of Sylvia isn’t sexual; in fact, within a minute or two of waking, he can’t remember what it was about except that it leaves him uneasy. Yet he’s not surprised when, four months later, he receives an email from her. They haven’t had contact since their graduation in 1991.
Hope you’ve been well, she writes. Super-random after all this time, but I’m coming to Chicago for work in April and I was thinking it would be fun to have dinner if you’re around.
After a few volleys, they have settled on a day, a time, and a restaurant near the downtown hotel where she’ll stay. She lives in Denver, she tells him, she’s an architect, her husband is also an architect but not at her firm, and they’re the parents of twin boys who are nine and a girl who’s five.
You didn’t go into politics, either? Clay types, then he adds the phrase the dirty business of between into and politics to convey that he’s kidding, then he deletes the entire question. Her trip to Chicago is three weeks away.
* * *
—
In the spring of 1990, when they were juniors, Clay, Sylvia, and three of their classmates all ran for senior prefect, which was the fancy term used at Bishop Academy for student body president. Their school was in western Massachusetts, and there were a total of seventy-six people in their grade. After Clay and Sylvia tied for first place, a runoff occurred. The exact results were never disclosed, but apparently they were close, so close that the dean of students met with Clay and Sylvia and proposed the following: Because Clay had been their grade prefect for the past three years, and because no girl had ever served as senior prefect—a fact mostly explained by Bishop having switched from all-boys to coed only a decade earlier—Clay would assume the role of senior prefect, but unprecedentedly, another role would be created for Sylvia, that of assistant prefect. Clay would show her the ropes with regard to running Monday and Friday assemblies and serving on the honor council, and in turn, Sylvia would help raise money for senior class activities, especially since, for the first time in Bishop’s history, there was a movement afoot to hold a prom.
Clay can still remember sitting in Dean Boede’s office, the warm New England afternoon outside the big window, his impending lacrosse practice; he can remember how qualmlessly he accepted this offer and how Sylvia did, too. That night, before everyone was released from Sit-Down Dinner, the headmaster announced the arrangement to the student body, and there was much applause.