You Are Not a Stranger Here - Adam Haslett [73]
“Yeah,” he replies with the quick, breathless voice she’s come to recognize as his unconscious signal of interest. “Yeah, she’s in the play. I get to narrate what she does and stuff.”
“I’m sorry, Ted, that we didn’t get her a gift.”
“Oh no, that’s cool. I actually gave her the lipstick anyway. She was kinda into it.” He pauses. “I’ve been sort of wondering, like when you were married . . .”
“Yes?”
“Or like before that, when you guys were dating . . . I mean at some point, you guys, like, got together so you must have let him know when it was cool to do that, right?”
“That’s right,” Elizabeth says. “He would call the dorm. I would tell him if I were free on the evening he suggested. He was very reliable in that regard. He always called when he said he would. You should remember that, Ted. Politeness is a tremendous asset.”
“Yeah, right,” he says. “But like after that, I mean after you decided to hang out, did you let him know when other stuff should happen, or did he kinda . . . let you know?”
“Oh. I see. You mean about sex.”
She can almost feel his wince at the other end of the line; she restrains a giggle.
“Yes,” he whispers.
“I’m afraid I’m not much of one to ask about these things. But you’re a good person. You’re kind. Be kind to her.”
“Okay.”
The next time he calls he tells her it’s coming up for winter break at the high school, and with performances and things he and the other volunteer won’t be back until January. Elizabeth hadn’t been told about a break over the vacation, and she takes it hard. But Ted calls each week, once on Christmas, and with this she thinks she will get by until the day he returns.
Judith, the nurse, has grown suspicious of her behavior over the last few weeks, hearing her talk sometimes, and Elizabeth has begun flushing her Primidone down the toilet rather than risk discovery. She’s been on the drugs so long she’s forgotten many ordinary satisfactions. What cold water feels like in a parched mouth. The pleasure concentration on a single thought can yield. The days bring with them the pulse, the hum, joyous sometimes, terrifying others, but alive, full and alive. And they bring Hester, never now a day without her.
In the midst of it all, there is so much she wants to ask Ted that she’s started making a list so she won’t forget.
NEW YEAR’S EVE begins with a clear, bright sky, flooding Elizabeth’s room in light. The annual party is scheduled for after dinner. Families will drop by in the early evening and everyone will be in bed by ten. It is Mrs. Johnson’s last day as director and she makes the rounds of the rooms saying good-bye. Some of these men and women she’s known twenty-five years. It’s just after lunch, as the sky clouds over and snow begins to fall, that she comes to Elizabeth. They start as they always do by Mrs. Johnson reporting what she’s been reading—a book written by a foreigner about traveling in America, she says, full of suggestions for places to visit. She and her husband plan a trip across the country in the spring. She’s never been to the South and wants to go.
To snap pictures of plantations and muse at the faded grandeur of it all, I suppose. What a blissful forgetting it must be.
In the mornings, it is easier to reply without speaking aloud (at night it has become impossible), so Elizabeth tells Hester to be quiet, which for the moment she is.
There is a sad expression on Mrs. Johnson’s face and Elizabeth wonders if she actually wants to retire, or if perhaps she has been made to by others.
“You haven’t been in touch with your husband, have you?” she says. It is odd that Mrs. Johnson should ask this question. Elizabeth hasn’t spoken to Will in more than twenty years. He lives in California with a wife and three children. Mrs. Johnson knows this well enough.
“No,” Elizabeth says.
“And Ginny, she’s never mentioned anything about other arrangements?”
“Is something the matter? Do I have to leave?”
Mrs. Johnson shakes her head. “It’s just that the new director and I have been reviewing things. I’m sure he’s right, there are issues