George and Lizzie

by Nancy Pearl

  On that first visit, when all the chain making and stringing was done, George took Lizzie on a short tour of his past. The bowling alley in West Tulsa, he said, which was ultimately the reason they were together, here, now, at this very moment, went out of business long ago, but they drove to the strip mall where it used to be. “Look—I think that’s the same gaming store where Todd used to skip out on bowling to play Dungeons and Dragons,” he said. “Who’d have thought that it’d still be around?” His high school was closed for vacation, so they couldn’t go in, but Lizzie couldn’t help comparing the spaciousness of the large campus—with its lower, middle, and upper schools spread out over several acres of well-manicured lawn—to the cramped, creaky, and much older building where she’d spent her high school years. They went for a walk along the Arkansas River. It didn’t, Lizzie told George somewhat belligerently, even compare with the Huron. George readily agreed.

  “But it’s pretty neat that we both grew up with rivers in our lives, isn’t it?”

  All this “we”-ness with George was making Lizzie uncomfortable. She tried to find a neutral subject.

  “Your mother’s great.”

  “Yes,” George answered immediately, “she is. She thinks you’re pretty wonderful too,” he added.

  The voices in Lizzie’s head jumped in quickly, as though they’d been waiting for just this opportunity: “And here I thought George’s mother was a lot smarter than that. If she really knew this kid she wouldn’t like her at all.”

  “Really?” Lizzie said, obscurely pleased but wondering if the voices didn’t know better than George. “She doesn’t really know me.”

  “C’mon, Lizzie. I know you and I think you’re entirely wonderful. Really.”

  Oh, George, Lizzie said to herself. You don’t know me at all. If you did, you would never use the adjective “wonderful” to describe me.

  That night they went to see Back to the Future and then out for pizza and beer with Blake, who was George’s best friend ever since they were kids, and Alicia, his fiancée. They were both teachers—Alicia in elementary school (kindergarten) and Blake in high school (history and football coach)—and they spent the entire evening talking about Blake and Alicia’s upcoming wedding, save for the two hours and six minutes that the four of them watched the movie. Everyone except Lizzie had already seen it (Blake and Alicia twice before), but they agreed that it was worth watching any number of times. Lizzie thought perhaps once was enough for her. Afterward, they drifted into a bar around the corner.

  While they drank their second pitcher of beer, Blake and Alicia took turns telling Lizzie and George in almost minute-by-minute detail how they had arrived at a wedding date (in Lizzie’s view a particularly pointless account that ended with the decision being made via a flip of a coin) and had chosen a caterer—lots of taste testing, which was great (Blake), and too fattening (Alicia). They shared the pros and cons of getting married in a church and having the reception there rather than at, say, a hotel. Alicia took out Polaroids of her four bridesmaids trying on their dresses. “We found them at Miss Jackson’s and thank goodness everyone’s pretty much a standard size, because I don’t know what we’d have done otherwise. It’s almost impossible to find a dress and a color that looks good on everyone, don’t you think, Lizzie?”

  “Sure. Absolutely,” she automatically responded. Do I care, Lizzie wondered, if Alicia and Blake like me? What are the chances that I’ll never see them again, which would be just fine with me? Does George care if I like them? I hope not but I just bet he does.

  In light of that belief, Lizzie opted not to point out to Alicia that she and her bridesmaids were all blond and about size six, so how hard, honestly, could finding the right color be? Instead she tried, for George’s sake, to look interested.

  “Oh,” Alicia said suddenly to Lizzie, who was now peering intently into her beer, hoping it would reveal a future that included Jack. “Did George tell you that he’s the best man? And, Lizzie, you should totally come too. It’ll be so much fun.”

  “Best party of the year, Lizzie,” Blake promised. “And you’ll get to meet all George’s friends at one go.”

  “I’ll see,” she told them. “I’m not really sure where I’ll be in June. I might be traveling.”

  George looked at her quizzically but didn’t say anything, which was good, because the voices were having a field day attacking her. “Traveling. I might be traveling,” one mimicked her. “Couldn’t she even come up with a better excuse? Please tell me where on earth she could be traveling.”

  “Just tell them the truth,” the other voice advised. “Make it clear how stupid you think they are.” Lizzie tried not to listen, but it was hard.

  “We’ll get your address from George,” Alicia called out as George and Lizzie walked to their car. “For the invitation. But we’re counting on you being there.”

  “Aren’t they a great couple?” George asked cheerfully as he opened the car door. He was looking forward to parking somewhere and fooling around with Lizzie in the backseat of Allan’s big Buick. “You liked them, right?”

  Lizzie’s fallback position was almost always to lie, and she tried out a few different sentences she could use with George. “What the hell,” she said to herself, and spoke. “Truthfully, George, I found them pretty boring. If you must know, I’d rather have stayed home and talked to your mother. Tell me again why we had to go out with them tonight?”

  “Mom’s great, so I get that, but Blake’s my best friend,” George protested. “I always see him when I come home.”

  “Too bad,” Lizzie said, the voices in her head going wild. “Was he always so uninteresting?”

  “Uninteresting? Are you kidding?”

  I’m pretty sure that lying would have been the smarter thing to do, thought Lizzie. But it’s too late now. “No, I’m not kidding. As I’m positive Alicia and her blond friends would put it, I think they’re BORR-innnggg.”

  “That’s not how she’d describe herself and Blake.”

  “Oh, George, you know what I mean. That’s definitely how she’d say the word ‘boring.’ That’s b-o-r-i-n-g, in case you’re wondering how to spell it. BORR-innnggg.”

  “Lizzie—”

  “No, wait, George, listen, what did we talk about all night? Their wedding.”

  “What did you want to talk about that we didn’t?”

  “Anything. Politics, science fiction, the Super Bowl, China. The breakup of the Soviet Union. Poetry. Whether Britain should abolish the monarchy. The future of Africa. Whether pot should be legalized. The price of eggs.”

  “Is that what you and Marla and James talk about? How much eggs cost these days?”

  Against her will, Lizzie laughed. “Well, not about legalizing pot, at least not when James is there, because legalization would ruin his business. But do you see what I mean? I think hearing about someone else’s wedding is the definition of tedium. And she’s so blond.”

  The first of Lizzie and George’s many many Difficult Conversations might have ended there and the evening salvaged, except that Lizzie refused to let it drop.

  “They just went on and on about the color of the bridesmaids’ dresses and cake tastings. Do they even read?”

  “Lizzie, Blake has a master’s degree in history. And he’s not stupid. I mean, he’s not going to win the Nobel Prize for Physics, but, hey, are you? He was captain of our Lincoln-Douglas debate team in high school. And I bet he’s a good enough history teacher. I know he’s a great football coach. The team worships him. I don’t know Alicia very well yet, but I do know lots of the girls that Blake dated before he met her, and they weren’t stupid either. Oh, yeah, and he graduated magna cum laude. That’s more than I did.”

  “Sure, from some third-rate A-and-M college.”

  This was more than even George could take. “Hey,” he said, sadly coming to the conclusion that his deep desire for a make-out session ending with sex with Lizzie was not going to be fulfilled. “I went to that
third-rate school too, you know. And it’s a university. It stopped being Oklahoma A and M years ago. In the 1950s. And my dad went there. And he’s no dummy.”

  “But you eventually left,” Lizzie pointed out.

  “After I graduated. Because it doesn’t have a dental school.”

  “And Todd didn’t go there.”

  “He didn’t go anywhere. He was in Sydney.”

  Lizzie realized the particular thrust of that argument had run its course, and she shifted topics. “So tell me, where’d little Miss Perky go, again? I know you told me, but I forgot.”

  “Oral Roberts University,” George said stolidly. He’d known that was coming.

  Lizzie sniggered evilly. “I read about that college. You know, don’t you, that they have spirit monitors on every floor in the dorms, so that someone can tattle to someone else if you’re breaking a rule or even edging close to it. I bet your precious Alicia was a spirit monitor. Maybe she can give you some spiritual guidance. Besides, neither of them asked anything about me, like what I was studying, or how we met.”

  “Blake knows how we met. I told him and I’m sure he told Alicia.” George paused awhile before going on. When Lizzie started to speak he stopped her.

  “Listen, Lizzie, I don’t know how we got into this . . . well, I do know how we got into this, but I just want to say something, and maybe this is an awful time to say it, and maybe I shouldn’t, but listen, Lizzie, do you even care about what’s going on in my life when we’re not together, or what my life was like before we met? You don’t ever ask. Do you ever tell me anything important about your own life? No. You never share anything. I’m amazed you invited me to Thanksgiving dinner. You’re probably one of the most self-centered people I’ve ever met. And, oh, yeah, I’m pretty sure that I’m in love with you, although I can’t imagine why.”

  He started the car, ignoring the tears that were now rolling down Lizzie’s cheeks. Neither spoke until they arrived back at Allan and Elaine’s. Lizzie, still crying, started to open the car door, but stopped when George put his hand on her arm.

  “You’re a real snob, Lizzie Bultmann, did you know that? It’s their big day, and I’m going to be the best man. Why shouldn’t they talk about it to me and expect me to be interested?”

  “Well, were you?”

  “No, not particularly,” George admitted. “It did get boring, I agree. But if it were our wedding, I’d expect Blake to let us talk about it too.”

  Lizzie groaned. “But cake tastings and bridesmaids?”

  “Even that. It’s what friends do.”

  “But they’re not my friends.”

  “Not yet, no.”

  “Not ever.”

  It was George’s turn to groan, which he did, loudly. “Look, you’ve just met them once. Can’t you cut them some slack? Surprise, surprise, they might grow on you.”

  She sniffed. “I’m not too enthusiastic about slack.”

  “Then you have a difficult road ahead of you.”

  “I guess. But that’s so not-new news to me.”

  Finally he turned to look at her. “I don’t want us to fight; I really want you to have a good time here. We don’t have to agree on everything. I love you, I just wanted you to know that.”

  Lizzie shook her head, but didn’t say anything, whether from sadness, or pity, or frustration, George couldn’t tell.

  December 24

  When Lizzie came downstairs the next morning, Elaine was sitting at the kitchen table with a mug of tea and the newspaper. Lizzie poured herself some tea from the pot and sat down with her.

  “George went to pick up some stuff for his grandparents. He should be home soon, but I’m glad we have this time to ourselves. I wanted to tell you something.”

  Lizzie put down the cup, but not before the tea sloshed on the table. How had she so quickly come to this point of being afraid that Elaine might have realized that she was just pretending to be the nice girl that her son was dating? Oh, right, that her son was in love with. With whom her son was in love.

  Elaine got a sponge and wiped up the spill, not noticing, or deliberately overlooking, Lizzie’s discomfort. “I wanted to tell you, so you’re not surprised when you meet her, that my mother-in-law can be a real terror. She loved—still loves, of course—Allan, to the point of distraction, and Todd and George even more than that. She worships them. It was lovely when the boys were growing up because she’d always be so happy to listen to my stories about them over and over. She’s always been forthright, but now I think she’s deliberately modeled herself on Maggie Smith, the British actress. If there’s a tart remark to be made, Gertie will undoubtedly make it.

  “It took her a long time to warm up to me. She was furious that Allan wanted to marry me and terrified we’d live in Canada near my folks rather than in Oklahoma. Over the years we’ve become closer, but I wanted to warn you about how difficult she can be. On the other hand, Sam is uncomplicated and totally likable. Allan’s just like him, and you know how nice he is. There. That’s done. I haven’t offered you breakfast because you’ll stop at the Pancake House in Sand Springs, which is yet another of the Goldrosen traditions you’ll get to experience.”

  “You’re not coming with us?” asked Lizzie, a bit dismayed.

  “We’ll see them next week, after the Christmas tree comes down.”

  “I wish you were going to be there,” Lizzie allowed herself to say.

  “No, no, you and George will have a nice day by yourselves with Gertie and Sam. And one more piece of advice: Don’t eat a lot at the Pancake House, because Gertie will have cooked up a storm in anticipation of your visit. And unlike me she’s an excellent cook. Plus, and most importantly, her feelings will be hurt if you turn down her offers of second and third helpings.”

  George heard the last sentence as he came in the door. “Just wait, Lizzie. Grandma’s company meals are amazing. You won’t be able to see the table because there’ll be so many dishes on it.”

  They stopped at the Pancake House in Sand Springs and then drove through Mannford, along the edge of Oilton, and from one side of Yale to the other before they finally got to the outskirts of Stillwater. Neither brought up what had happened the evening before. George told Lizzie about his grandparents; she didn’t mention what his mother had said, although Elaine hadn’t indicated that it was a secret.

  “After they realized that neither their son or either of their grandsons would ever want to move back to Stillwater and manage Goldrosen’s Fine Jewelry, Gertie and Sam decided to sell the store to one of their employees,” George began. “The guy who bought it immediately changed the name to Bling It On. There’s no way that Sam and Gertie would get the joke, and they were terribly distressed that he felt he needed to rename a business that had been successful for a long time.

  “Even the decision to sell the store had been very hard, because my great-grandpa began it almost seventy-five years ago. Family history says that his boat docked in Houston and he walked all the way to Tulsa with a peddler’s cart that he picked up somewhere. He didn’t speak much English and didn’t have any relatives here because the older brother who’d sponsored him unceremoniously died before the boat even made it to Houston. Sam told me that his father once described the long slog from the Gulf of Mexico to Stillwater as moving from the wet heat to the not-quite-so-wet heat. Once he got to Stillwater it felt like he was home for good. And that’s how Gertie and Sam feel. They still live in the house that my dad grew up in. And,” George concluded, “Goldrosen tradition mandates that the grandsons, if they happen to be in Oklahoma, celebrate Gertie’s December twenty-fourth birthday in Stillwater. That’s partly why I come home every Christmas.”

  “So why aren’t your folks coming with us? Or why don’t your grandparents come to Tulsa to celebrate?”

  “Well, Grandma absolutely refuses to set foot in our house as long as Mom has all the Christmas stuff up. And Pop, which is what we’ve always called my grandfather, goes along with her. You’ll s
ee, she’s the one in charge.”

  They drove some more. Lizzie looked out the window at mostly different shades of brown, in a mostly unchanging landscape. She couldn’t understand why anyone would want to live here. “How come you decided to go to OSU for college? Didn’t you want to go further away from home?”

  He turned the question back at her. “How come you decided to stay in Ann Arbor and go to college there? Didn’t you want to get further away from home?”

  “That was different.” Even to herself Lizzie sounded defensive.

  George asked the obvious follow-up question. “Different how?”

  If diversion were an Olympic sport, Lizzie would most definitely medal.

  “But obviously Todd left Oklahoma, so people do leave.”

  George, then and nearly always, was willing to indulge Lizzie, and didn’t pursue his own question. “Yeah, Todd went about as far away as he could, but I knew that I’d probably go out of state for graduate school, so it seemed silly to leave before I really had to. Besides, from the time I was a little boy, we had season tickets for all the Cowboys’ basketball and football games. I loved coming to Stillwater to watch the games with my dad and Pop. It wasn’t ever a big deal to Todd, but I hated to think about the two of them going to the games alone, without me. It would have broken their hearts if I left too, just a few years after Todd did. I still feel guilty that I’m in Ann Arbor and not here on football Saturdays.”

  “What did your mom want you to do?”

  “Oh, I think she really wanted me to go east to school. It’s an understatement to say that she’s never loved Tulsa. A few years ago she told me that she still spends her days kicking and screaming against the circumstance of living here. When Dad proposed to her she made him promise that they’d never move back to Oklahoma.”

  “What’d he say to that?” Lizzie asked, fascinated.