Sorority Sisters

by Claudia Welch

  “I’d love to see her,” Karen says, looking at Jim, lowering her feet to the floor, her toes searching blindly for her shoes.

  “We just bought a house, remember?” Jim looks at me. “Have you got any sorority sisters who can swing a hammer, work a chop saw? They don’t even have to be nice. We’re not fussy.”

  Karen laughs and shoves her palm against his shoulder, knocking him backward about an eighth of an inch. Jim just grins. I feel my heart melt a little and look at Doug, wanting to share the moment, make our own moment of melting hearts.

  Doug is looking at Karen with a small, fixed smile on his face.

  My heart stops melting.

  “You should really try and go,” Doug says to Karen. “There’s only one bathroom, but being on the beach like that . . .”

  “The view is amazing,” I add, looking at Doug.

  Karen is shaking her head, grinning at her husband, when Doug says, “There’s a great restaurant about a mile from their house. You can walk down the beach to get there. We did. It was fantastic; wasn’t it, Laurie?”

  “It was,” I say, watching Doug. Watching Doug watch Karen.

  “It sounds amazing,” Karen says, “but, aside from the house—and what is a chop saw?—I don’t want to leave my parents.”

  “How are they?” I ask, looking discreetly around the room for them. Mr. and Mrs. Mitchell are sitting at a table near the high table, their backs to the wall, their faces tired and relaxed. Mr. Mitchell looks a little gray and completely exhausted.

  “Dad’s getting old,” Karen says. “He’s looking old, you know? But Mom’s great, full of energy and ideas.”

  “Lots of ideas,” Jim says.

  “Oh, shut up,” Karen says with a grin. “Your mom has ideas.”

  “My mom lives in La Jolla,” Jim says. “Her ideas have farther to travel.”

  It all sounds truly wonderful. I don’t have any of it. My family is scattered across the world; my sisters are all married with children and husbands and in-laws of their own. I have a niece who was just sent away to boarding school, falling in line with family tradition.

  “Well, back to mingling,” Karen says, standing up, reaching a hand out to Jim and mock-pulling him to his feet. He towers over her, his height looking protective and sheltering. “Don’t skip out, okay? I want to talk to you some more before we leave,” she says, staring at me, her eyes seeing things in me I don’t want her to see.

  Living with Karen for that year, the two of us in that apartment, changed things. They changed things in me and in her; I’m not sure why or how, but they did.

  “No skipping,” I say. “I promise.”

  But I’m not sure if I mean that or not. Just be happy, Karen. Be happy today! My eyes tell her that even if my mouth doesn’t, and I know she can see that in me, because she smiles her biggest smile, her eyes beaming down into mine, and links her arm through Jim’s and says, “Come on and show me a good time, cowpoke,” and off they go, Jim laughing under his breath.

  Doug and I are alone at the table, deserted in some sense, and I feel alone and deserted. I don’t understand why. The feeling hangs over me until all I can think of is how to escape it.

  “I’m going to say hello to Mr. and Mrs. Mitchell. I’d like to introduce you,” I say to Doug. I don’t know why I’m being so formal. Why can’t I sling my arm through his and say, “Follow me for a good time, sailor,” or some such silliness? Why can’t we play together?

  “You go ahead,” Doug says. “I’m going to get something from the bar. Would you like anything?”

  So formal. Have we always been like this? I can’t remember anymore.

  “No. I’m fine. I’ll find you at the bar; this won’t take a minute.”

  I make my way to the front of the room and Mr. Mitchell smiles to see me approach. He was a middle-aged, slim man with a fringe of grayish hair when I met him that summer in Connecticut; now he’s a skinny old man with a rim of silver hair. He’s aged two decades in four years. He looks frail and brittle, as if he’d crack into shards if he fell to the floor. But his smile is still wide and welcoming, just as it was then. He welcomes me as if I’m precious, because he believes I am precious to his daughter. Perhaps I am. I hope so.

  Mrs. Mitchell looks just the same. She gazes at me warmly, her smile brilliant, but I still approach her somewhat hesitantly, and I feel guilty about my hesitation, but that doesn’t change anything. Mrs. Mitchell intimidates me, just a little bit.

  “Congratulations!” I say, leaning in to give them both a hug. They’ve risen to their feet to hug me in return. “It’s a beautiful wedding and a beautiful day, and doesn’t Karen look amazing?”

  “Oh, do you like her hair?” Mrs. Mitchell asks, sitting back down and offering me a seat with a wave of her hand. “I prefer it shorter,” she says, without waiting for a reply from me, “but I suppose you girls like long hair for a wedding.”

  “It’s traditional, I suppose,” I say.

  Mr. Mitchell just smiles at the two of us; I’m not certain he understands the undercurrents of the conversation. I’m not sure I understand them either.

  “Well, hair is hair. It can always be changed,” she says. “Now, what are you up to, Laurie? Karen tells me congratulations are in order. Congratulations on finishing law school and being hired right off the bat! Your parents must be so pleased.”

  “Thank you. Yes. They are,” I say. I think it might even be true.

  “Are you excited?” Mr. Mitchell asks, smiling at me. He’s the most genial, pleasant man.

  “I am. A little scared, but mostly excited,” I say. “But how about you? Are you two enjoying retirement?”

  They laugh together, at the same time, and fully in harmony, looking at each other askance. It’s just the way Karen and Jim are: the same harmony, the same bone-deep humor.

  “We’re staying out of trouble,” Mr. Mitchell says, a gleam in his pale gray eyes.

  “At the racetrack?” Mrs. Mitchell responds, laughing at him and at themselves.

  Mr. Mitchell shrugs and laughs in mock innocence, his hands raised.

  “Now, Laurie, when is it going to be your turn?” Mrs. Mitchell says, turning the conversation back upon me like a ricocheting bullet. “Any marriage plans?”

  Marriage plans? I have nothing but marriage plans. The problem is that I don’t have a marriage proposal. But I don’t say this out loud, even though the words crowd against the roof of my mouth, pounding against my teeth.

  No, I don’t say anything, but Mrs. Mitchell must see something of it in my face because she loses her smile and leans toward me and says, “Laurie, it’s none of my business and your own mother should be saying this to you, if she hasn’t already, but if he hasn’t proposed by now, after all this time and at your age, he’s not going to. I wouldn’t say anything, but I hate to see you hurt, and I hate to see you waste any more time on a man who isn’t going to marry you. You’re a sweet girl. I just want you to know what you’re getting into.”

  Or not getting into.

  The words hang in the air, between us, before slicing into my hopes.

  I smile woodenly and get to my feet. “Thank you. I’ll keep that in mind. It was so good to see you again. Congratulations!”

  I walk away before the words have reached their ears, but I’ve said them; I’ve said all the right things in just the right order. I haven’t said anything that I’ll regret later. I haven’t said anything of importance either, but that’s the price of civility and decorum and the appropriate level of personal privacy. It’s a perfectly reasonable price and I’m more than happy to pay it.

  Ellen waves me over to where she’s sitting, giving me a destination. The band has started and Karen and Jim are dancing their first dance, grinning at each other as newlyweds do, so aware of each other, so aware of every
one witnessing this moment in their lives, this joining. It’s a moment both so private and so public, I can’t think of any other moment like it. I sit in the empty chair next to Ellen. Mike is nowhere to be seen, and for this I am thankful; I tolerate Mike—even more, I work to not actively dislike him. I wish I had the precise word to describe what it is about him that I don’t care for, but I blame him for that. He’s a very difficult man to describe. He can be charming, in a dangerous way, and that eternal bad-boy type appeals to a lot of women, but not to me. It’s that he knows he’s a bad boy, which makes it all so false, so premeditated. Does a true bad boy know he’s bad? Isn’t he just being himself? I think that’s the heart of it; Mike is too self-aware, and that seems very calculated, and that I don’t like. I also don’t like that he can’t seem to find his way out of the schoolhouse. There’s something very calculated about that, too.

  “They’re beautiful together, aren’t they?” I say to Ellen, looking at Karen and Jim. The band is playing “It Only Takes a Moment” from Hello, Dolly. It’s an unapologetically romantic song, and it seems exactly like Karen to choose it.

  “She looks amazing,” Ellen says, swirling the melting ice in her water glass, her legs crossed, one leg swinging under the table. “I like her hair like that; don’t you? I like it short, too, but this is nice.”

  “I do,” I say, thinking again of Mrs. Mitchell, and then refusing to think about Mrs. Mitchell. “Are you going to stay much longer?”

  Ellen looks at me sideways. “I’m staying until they run out of booze. What’s the matter with you, McCormick? Do you have the flu or something?”

  I laugh and shake my head, looking around the room. Doug is standing in a nearly empty corner of the room, talking to one of the Broadway girls, the one with the blond Farrah Fawcett hair, like twin sausages rolled next to her cheeks. It’s not that I hate the hairdo; it’s that, if you’re going to do it, do it right. Mike Dunn is standing with a couple of guys I don’t recognize at a table three over from us. He’s drinking a beer out of the bottle.

  It’s tacky. This is a wedding, after all, with tablecloths and centerpieces, not a backyard barbecue or a fire pit at the beach.

  “I’m just tired,” I say.

  “All that book learning will do that to you,” Ellen says sharply, setting down her glass and crossing her arms. I know this isn’t about me. The last few times I’ve been with Ellen, she’s been like this; as cutting as a knife, honed down to razor sharpness. She’s like this with everyone lately, and I know that because we’ve all been comparing notes, sharing our impressions of Ellen and discussing possible causes and corrections. We’ve all come to the same conclusion: Mike.

  “How’s it going with Mike?”

  “Same old, same old,” she says, picking at her cuticles, her modest wedding ring winking dully.

  I reach over and put my hand over hers, stilling her fingers. “Are you okay?” I say softly.

  “He’s still in school, Laurie,” she says on a rasp of congealed fury. “He can’t seem to find a way to get a job. I never planned to work for the rest of my life; that was his job. He works. I stop work to have a baby. Then I stay home and play mommy. How the hell did I wind up the breadwinner?”

  I shake my head, afraid to speak, afraid my dislike of Mike will show no matter how carefully I choose my words. A woman can rant and rail about her husband all day long, but let another woman join the chorus and that friendship is over. Mrs. Mitchell told me that, via Karen. I have a few issues with Mrs. Mitchell, but on the whole, I think her motherly advice is sound.

  “Are you trying to have a baby?” I ask.

  Ellen snorts. “On my salary? Sorry,” she says, the result of my unintentional cringe.

  “No, go ahead. What?” I say.

  Ellen shakes her head and licks her lips, hesitating. “I want a baby. I want to get pregnant, but I can’t. Not when it’s like this. What if he never gets a job? What if nothing ever changes?”

  “He will get a job eventually. You just have to hang on,” I say, wanting it to be true.

  “Oh, believe me, I’m hanging on,” she says, looking across the room to where Mike is standing. He seems to feel her gaze because he looks at her then, his gaze both smoldering and arrogant, as if he’s daring her to do something—what, I can’t imagine. Then he drinks another swig from his beer, staring at Ellen the whole time. “But, hey, don’t worry about it. I’m just tired and in need of some fun. Which is why I’m not leaving this party until they lock the doors. Are you leaving soon?”

  She doesn’t ask about Doug. No one asks about Doug, nothing beyond the barest polite question, quickly dismissed once I answer. Is this the same tactic as the one I use when talking to Ellen about Mike?

  The dancing continues, Karen dancing with her father, Jim’s father, Jim again. Other couples find their way to the small dance floor next to the long wall of French doors. Doug finds his way back to me and Mike finds his way to Ellen’s side, and there we sit, Ellen and I listening to Doug and Mike talk about the traffic and the price of gas and the state of ULA football. Listening to the sounds of male bonding when no bond actually exists. Ellen and I, we have a bond. Our bond is so firm that we don’t need to talk our way to it, finding it, reaffirming it through words. I feel her lingering depression, the aura of hopelessness that she is fighting off with both hands, and I sit beside her so that she will know that I am there with her, willing to fight if she will only tell me how.

  What she feels in me, I don’t want to know.

  In a sudden burst of energy, Ellen pushes back from the table, saying, “Enough of this!” She slides around the side of the dance floor as I watch her; the men stopped their conversation for only a few seconds at her outburst and are now back to whatever they were saying before, which was the cost of fuel for an F-14. I don’t care about that. I don’t need to know about that.

  Ellen says something to the bandleader, he grins and nods, and then she’s coming back toward me, flashing the ULA victory sign, two fingers in a V. Yes, the same two fingers held in the same position make the peace sign, a staple of our childhoods, but the ULA victory sign is aggressive; the arm is extended, the fingers pointing toward the “enemy,” the wrist making a well-timed nodding motion. Victory. Victory for us, it mutely shouts. We will be victorious. There will be no peace. There will be only victory.

  When the song finishes, the opening chords of “Brick House” waft over the room and Ellen starts laughing, pulling me by the hand up out of my seat, toward the dance floor.

  “Not ‘Brick House’! Not at my wedding!” Karen wails, a smile splitting her face.

  “Stop whining, Mitchell!” Ellen yells, moving her hips to the beat, dragging me with her. “Come on, Laurie. Let’s go,” she says, dancing in front of me.

  I look around the room. Jim has taken a seat, his arms crossed behind his head. He is grinning from ear to ear. Mr. Mitchell is laughing. Mrs. Mitchell is shaking her head and smiling. Pi and Cindy and the other Beta Pis get up, laughing, running to the dance floor, their hair a wild tumble, their arms raised as the singer wails, “She’s mighty mighty at letting it all hang out.” Karen’s wedding dress is lifted into a ball in her hands, holding the white silk in front of her like a wadded-up towel, dancing wildly to our song at her wedding to Jim Nelson.

  Some of the other Beta Pi husbands sit around Jim at his table, watching us, laughing, urging us on. Doug sits where I left him. As I dance, he gets up and leaves the room.

  * * *

  It is on the drive home when things that I didn’t even know were connected, connect. Maybe it was the wedding or the fact that I have a shiny new law degree. I don’t know, but suddenly, certain things, unwelcome things, drop into place.

  We’re on the 405 going south toward my place in Marina del Rey, when Doug says, “You know I asked Karen out, right? I told you that.”

 
; “Uh-huh,” I say, staring out the front window at the traffic in front of us.

  “Why wouldn’t she go out with me?” Doug asks. I can see him out of the corner of my eye, glancing at me as he brakes.

  “I don’t know.”

  Right after Doug and I started dating, Karen told me that Doug had asked her out. I suppose it was an effort at full disclosure on her part, but there was also the thread of warning in what she said so long ago. She told me that Doug had asked her out, and that he’d kept asking. She told me that she’d never gone out with him and that she’d never even been tempted to go out with him. I heard that as a clear sign that he was mine for the taking, not that she could have had him and didn’t want him.

  How many times do I hear what I want to hear? See what I want to see?

  I didn’t hear that he wasn’t worth taking.

  Right now, at this moment, stuck in traffic, I’m starting to realize that Doug doesn’t want to believe that someone rejected him. Worse, he doesn’t seem to understand how someone could reject him.

  Does he love Karen? Does he suffer from unrequited love for Karen?

  My mind swirls back to all the images I have of Doug and Karen, all the strange, focused looks he gave her, and her reactions to him. The time I came home early to our apartment in North Hollywood and Doug was there with Karen, and Karen looked harried. I thought she’d had a hard day at work, and I said as much, and she didn’t deny it. But what had they been doing? Back then, I couldn’t have suspected Doug of anything remotely suspicious. In the years since, my imagination has given birth to various, typical suspicions that I have ruthlessly killed in embryo.

  “She never talked to you about it?” Doug asks. His voice is urgent. This is not a casual question. Why isn’t it a casual question?

  “No, not really,” I say, staring at the lights, willing my brain to stop. My brain disobeys me flagrantly; I will my thoughts elsewhere. The traffic is moving fairly well, not in fits and starts, but at a steady forty or forty-five miles per hour. It’s not very fast for a freeway, but you take what you can get on the 405.