George and Lizzie

by Nancy Pearl

  “Well, we do have a bit of an ulterior motive.”

  “Uh-huh, an ulterior motive,” George echoed. “I should have known. And what might that ulterior motive be?”

  “So”—Elaine took over—“you know that Daddy and I have always dreamed of going on a walking trip in Cornwall, right? The South West Coast Path is supposed to be really amazing.”

  “You have? Since when? Why haven’t you ever mentioned it before?”

  Elaine brushed off his incredulity. “Oh, years and years. I can’t believe we never told you and Todd—”

  “Kale,” Allan interrupted. “We’ve got to remember to call him Kale now.”

  “Yes, but he was Todd when we didn’t tell him, wasn’t he?”

  George interrupted this potentially interesting but distracting discussion about names and verb tenses. “Look, Mom, Dad, we’re touched by your generosity, but please get to the point. I have to be at the office early tomorrow.”

  “Okay, okay, here’s our idea,” Allan said. “If you two really haven’t any strong feelings about where to go on your honeymoon, how about if you come with us to Cornwall and we’ll go on a walking trip together?”

  George’s chin hit the bottom of the phone, resulting in a loud thunk and perhaps internal injuries to his jaw.

  “You want to come on our honeymoon?”

  “Well, why not?” Allan said reasonably.

  George’s voice rose. “Because it’s our honeymoon. Nobody’s parents—nobody’s sane parents, anyway—want to accompany their child and his wife on their honeymoon.”

  “But, George,” Elaine said, “that’s the point. You’re not a child. We love spending time with you and Lizzie. And we wouldn’t have to be together every minute. We’d just walk together. We have it all planned.”

  Lizzie got up from the chair she’d been sitting in and started clearing the table. She loved the idea of spending more time with Elaine and Allan; their presence would dilute the icky stickiness of the whole honeymoon experience. Besides, did she and George really need to be alone together on a honeymoon? Lizzie thought not. They were already alone together for much of every day. “I think going to Cornwall is a great idea. It would be much more fun if we all went together. I say yes.”

  It appeared to be three against one and George was smart enough to recognize a fait accompli when he met one.

  “I guess we could look at it as an amusing story for our children. ‘Daddy, what did you do for your honeymoon?’ ‘Well, kiddos, we went walking in Cornwall with Grandma Elaine and Grandpa Allan. We all had a blast.’ ‘But, Daddy, isn’t a honeymoon supposed to be just for the bride and groom?’ ‘Normally yes, but in this case Grandma and Grandpa asked us to make an exception. And your mommy wanted them to go with us. Oh, yeah, and Grandma and Grandpa paid for it too.’”

  “Very funny,” Elaine said. “Just don’t think about it as a honeymoon but rather a vacation that we’re all taking together. It doesn’t even have to be connected with your wedding at all.”

  George ignored her and said, “I can see that this will give us lots to talk about at dinner parties for the foreseeable future too.”

  This reminded Lizzie of the time when she and Andrea had said almost exactly the same thing about the Great Game, and look how that worked out. She started rinsing the dishes so she wouldn’t have to hear the rest of the conversation.

  They planned to go the following May, but because of the deaths of Mendel and Lydia earlier that year, there was some discussion about whether they should cancel their trip. Lizzie had never known a family that discussed as much as the Goldrosens did. Depending on the topic and the participants’ feelings about it, they chewed over, considered the pros and cons of, or thrashed out everything that came up.

  Allan thought they should postpone going to Cornwall out of respect for the Bultmanns, while George and Elaine agreed that going ahead with their original plan would take Lizzie’s mind off the deaths of her parents. Lizzie didn’t particularly care. Her parents’ deaths hadn’t seemed to make any difference in her life at all. In the event, they went as planned and everyone had a wonderful time. Lizzie thought that she might never again be as happy as she was on the walk. Although the Post (Great) Game show was still going on in her head, the hours of walking in the sunshine muted the voices. Most of the time she couldn’t make out much of what was said, and what she did understand—“loser,” “inadequate,” “fraud”—didn’t have nearly the power to hurt her, or at least not so badly. Once, though, she distinctly heard someone call her name, and she stopped so suddenly that Elaine ran into her from behind.

  Plus, since they met almost nobody on the path, either going their way or coming toward them, Lizzie thought the odds were excellent that Jack was not in Cornwall, also trudging along the Coast Path, so she could stop thinking about what she’d say to him if he suddenly appeared in front of her.

  They walked for ten days, staying at different B&Bs each night. Starting off about nine each morning, they made their way from St. Ives to Falmouth on a path that was sometimes stony and sometimes just dirt. Sometimes they had an easy time of it, sometimes they had to climb over wet rocks where the path had been diverted because of heavy rain, or clamber up and down the cliffs overlooking the water. Lizzie soon discovered that she didn’t care for edges and ledges, so occasionally she found the going extremely scary. Elaine and George tended to stride on ahead fearlessly, with Lizzie and Allan bringing up the rear.

  When the walk wasn’t too frightening or she wasn’t harassed by the voices in her head, Lizzie found she loved being so close to the water. She marveled at how it was one shade of blue close to the base of the cliffs and then subtly changed hues the farther you looked out. It was when she was struck by the changes in the colors that Lizzie thought most acutely of Jack, how he should be there with her, rather than the troika of Goldrosens. Oh, wait, it was a quartet, wasn’t it? She was now a Goldrosen too. Lizzie shook her head and kept walking. They couldn’t get too far off the path, and certainly not lost, if they kept the ocean on their right, George told them solemnly. They passed coves far below them where surfers braved the waves and the icy water, paddling far out and then triumphantly coming back in for another go. The sun shone hotter as the days went on. Lizzie got a farmer’s tan—her ankles and feet below her socks were stark, winter white. George insisted everyone slather sunscreen on their arms, face, and legs at least twice a day, prompting Elaine to wonder if maybe he shouldn’t have gotten a job hawking Coppertone instead of going to dental school. “Or,” she asked, “did you take some of the money you two got for wedding presents and buy Bayer stock?”

  The day before they were to fly home, they took a train to London and stayed at a small hotel near Hyde Park Corner. They sat around at dinner and reminisced about the trip. They remembered the time in Porthcurno when a bee unaccountably dived into Lizzie’s cider and the man at the table next to them advised her to “drink up, luv, that’s good protein for ye.” And the time Allan was so busy looking at the map that he fell farther and farther behind the other three and soon lost sight of them entirely, at which point he mistakenly took a turn inland. The ocean was no longer on his right. By the time Elaine finally noticed that Allan was missing, he had gone some distance in entirely the wrong direction. George ended up rushing back the way they’d come to try to find him. It turned out that Allan was so busy looking at the map that he hadn’t seen that the path turned one way while he went the other. “Sort of like missing the trees for the forest,” George said, sighing. After that they all decided it was best for Allan not to hold the map while they were walking and to stay in the middle of the group, not the back.

  When dessert came they moved on to reciting the limericks they’d composed together along the way. Limerick writing began after lunch one afternoon in a pub in Mousehole (which, Allan told them, was pronounced Mauzel), when the first line of a limerick presented itself to Lizzie, and they all spent the rest of the day working on it. They fou
nd that writing the limerick took their minds off some especially fiendish climbs and descents. Finally, late in the day, they came up with one that they all agreed should be the finished version. After this success, they vowed to write limericks about all the towns they stayed in.

  Their two favorites were:

  A lusty young sailor from Mousehole

  Hied home for his rights: they were spousal.

  His wife acquiesced,

  The sex was the best.

  And he left in no state of arousal.

  and

  There once was a lass from Porthleven

  Who died and ascended to heaven

  She said, “What a treat!

  There’s plenty to eat.

  But I’d rather have cream tea in Devon.”

  Lizzie cried as the plane flew back over the ocean. George tried to comfort her. “I know it’s over and I know how happy you were there, but please, Lizzie, don’t cry, we’ll do another walk all together again. I promise.” Lizzie couldn’t tell him how much she dreaded going home, where the Great Game announcers were louder and went on and on and on, where she wasn’t sure what to do with her life, where she might run into Maverick, or Andrea, or any of the (still, she presumed) angry cheerleaders whose football-playing boyfriends she’d fucked. These possibilities were bad enough, but what if she really never saw Jack again? When she was home in Ann Arbor, it seemed more and more likely that she wouldn’t. So she wept, inconsolable.

  * Lizzie Meets Kale *

  Todd, now known to one and all as Kale, didn’t make it to either the real or fake wedding or the Bultmanns’ funeral, but came to Tulsa the next year at Christmas. The day after George and Lizzie arrived they were back at the airport, waiting for his plane to land.

  “He’ll be here soon,” George said.

  “Is that a slight lack of enthusiasm I detect in your voice?” Lizzie asked.

  “No, not really. Well, maybe. He’s just so damn handsome. Maybe you’ll think you married the wrong brother.”

  “Impossible,” Lizzie assured him, squeezing his hand. It wasn’t that George was the wrong brother, it was just that Lizzie was still afraid that he was the wrong man. “Besides, looks only go so far.”

  “Plus, when he wants to, he oozes charm. That plus looks takes you even farther, right?” George said gloomily when he came into view.

  “Hey, Todd, uh, Kale,” George said, giving him a hug that more resembled a typical Bultmann clasp than the usual Goldrosen embrace. That done, Kale turned to Lizzie.

  “And this, I presume, is my not-so-brand-new sister-in-law. Well done, Georgie Porgie. I like her already.” Lizzie couldn’t decide if his Aussie accent was put on just for the occasion or if it was acquired naturally during the decade he’d lived in Sydney.

  At the same time that George said, “Don’t call me Georgie,” in a hangdog sort of voice, Lizzie said, “You don’t know me well enough to like me already,” which immediately cheered George up.

  They walked toward baggage claim. “I guess we should go straight home. I’m sure Mom and Dad are on pins and needles waiting to see how much I’ve changed.”

  “When did you last see them?” Lizzie asked.

  “About five years ago. You remember, George, they came to Sydney for a couple of days and then flew to Auckland and took a cruise down the coast of New Zealand and ended up in Melbourne. They stayed with me, and it was a disaster for all concerned. I know you think they’re the best parents in the world, George, and maybe they were for you, but I was always beyond their capabilities.”

  George punched his brother on the arm, not lightly. “You were an awful son, you know.”

  Kale winced and rubbed his arm, although Lizzie could tell he was just faking. “Well, especially compared to you, anyway, that’s true. But do you ever think maybe you were too easy on them? What’s your opinion, sister mine?”

  “My opinion is that we should walk faster, collect your suitcases, and go home,” Lizzie said.

  Kale groaned. “Okay, if it has to be done, let’s get it over with. Oh, there’s one of my suitcases already.”

  With some difficulty, George took it off the conveyer belt. “What’s in here? Gold doubloons?”

  “You’re close.” Kale grinned. “It’s your Christmas and late wedding present. Emma, my former girlfriend, found it. Wait till you see it.”

  “What is it?”

  “Lizzie, Lizzie, Lizzie,” Kale said, putting his arm around her. “The Goldrosens never tell what our gifts are in advance of giving them. Haven’t you learned that yet?”

  Lizzie laughed, but George took his brother seriously. “I would’ve thought you’d have forgotten those little rules by now, since you’ve been gone so long.”

  “I’ve forgotten very little, actually,” Todd said.

  In the evenings, after everyone else went to bed, the three youngsters, as Allan insisted on calling them, headed out to one of the bars on Cherry Street and talked. Mostly Lizzie listened. Maybe it was the beer, although she never had more than a couple of glasses, but she felt as though she belonged right where she was, sitting between George and his brother in this pretty awful dive bar in Tulsa, Oklahoma. It was a rare feeling.

  “I have to thank you guys for getting married,” Kale said one night. “You took a lot of pressure off me.”

  “Your status as unmarried older brother definitely figured into our plans,” George said.

  “Yeah,” Lizzie agreed. “We talked a lot about how it would save you from being hassled by the family so much.”

  “Right, that’s good to hear. Now, can you continue your good works and have a kid soon? I’d like to be rid of that responsibility too.”

  “That’s harder,” George said. “It’ll be a few years at least. You’ll have to be patient.”

  “Never my strong suit,” Kale admitted.

  His wedding present to them was an Art Deco sterling silver coffee and tea set, which included an octagonal silver tray, a pot for coffee and one for tea, a creamer, and a sugar bowl. It was heart-stoppingly beautiful and Lizzie felt that it, like her ring, had really been meant for the next girl over, certainly not the one sitting here tonight in her in-laws’ house. She couldn’t imagine living up its demands of gracious hospitality and wondered how Elaine and Allan had described her to their older son that he would think she (and George) deserved such a stunning gift.

  George spoke first. “Unbelievable. Thanks, bro. Did you ransom your inheritance to pay for it?”

  “Nah, I told you my ex-girlfriend found it. She haunts flea markets and antique stores and as soon as she saw it she called and told me I had to get it for you two. She drives a hard bargain.”

  “I wish you’d brought her, Todd,” Elaine said. “We’d love to meet her.”

  “Did you hear me say she was an ex-girlfriend, Ma? And it’s Kale.” Although his smile took away some of the sting of his words, Lizzie could see how family life must have been before Todd left the red clay dirt of Oklahoma behind and moved to the other end of the world.

  “You know, George,” she said to him one night when they were back in Ann Arbor, “when people look at you, what they immediately see is someone trustworthy. You just have that look somehow. Solid. Todd, Kale, doesn’t. I like him a lot, but I wouldn’t have wanted to go out with him. He has this way of making me feel like I’m not important, like he’s always looking beyond me for the next best thing.”

  “Do you think that’s why none of his girlfriends stick?”

  “Maybe. I can imagine a scenario where he takes some girl to a party, abandons her there, and leaves with someone else. Anyway, what I’m trying to say is that I’m glad you’re you and not Todd.” Lizzie tried not to think about another possible way to end that sentence, tried not to let the words “but it would be even better if you were Jack” even enter her mind.

  * George’s Road to Fame *

  The first question reporters always asked George was what inspired him to put a thriv
ing dental practice on hold and embark on what Lizzie called his happery-quackery crusade. His one-sentence answer was that he had a patient named Cynthia Gordon and she was sad. Then he’d add, trying (and pretty much succeeding) not to sound smug, “I realized that no matter how gratifying it might be to help people have healthy gums, it was so much more important to help someone live a happy and satisfying life.”

  The second question—“What influenced your theories of suffering?”—was impossible to answer in one sentence. As George grew more experienced with the media, and discovered that most reporters only have a very limited attention span, he’d worked out a short handy-dandy guide to his ideas.

  When George was a senior in college, facing hours of chemistry and biology labs and studying madly for the Dental Admission Test, he decided on a whim to sign up for a class on something as different from dentistry as he could get. Perusing the catalog, he came across a course called Buddhist Insight Meditation and the Psychology of Spiritual Development. Whew! The title, which didn’t appear to have anything to do with dentistry, was a mouthful and way too long to fit the space it was allocated in the catalog; it was abbreviated Budd Ins Med/Psych of Sprtual Dev, and was popularly known on campus as Hippie 101. Dr. Robert Kallikow, aging beatnik, taught the course. He wore a beret (even in the heat of the Oklahoma summer) and the only Earth shoes ever seen in Stillwater, Oklahoma (which he wore sockless, even in the occasional chill of the Oklahoma winter). His many odd tics and traits were widely thought to have been the result of his taking part in Tim Leary’s experiments with psilocybin at Harvard.

  George initially regarded the class as a sort of mini-vacation, a chance to relax in the midst of his pressured academic life. To his surprise, though, the main theme of the course—what the Buddha taught on the nature of suffering, the cause of suffering, and the way to end suffering—fascinated him, though not quite enough to abandon his career plans and go to Thailand and become a monk. At the end of the semester, he turned his full attention back to his predentistry studies but remembered the course fondly and entertained a vague hope that one day, when his dental practice was well established, he could do some more reading on the topics covered in the class.