Sorority Sisters

by Claudia Welch

  “Like you?” At my stunned expression, he says, “I talked to Karen and met Jim before I came over to say hello to you. I do my homework. I’ve learned it’s the key to everything.”

  There are so many undercurrents in those remarks that I pursue the one that’s the safest. “You’ve met Jim. Isn’t he a great guy?”

  “He seems very nice,” he says. “I’d like to get to know him better. Maybe a double date?”

  “What? I’m sorry. Excuse me?”

  “Double. Date,” he says. “Though I can fly solo, but I thought you’d feel more comfortable with backup.”

  “I’m sorry. . . . What?”

  “Laurie,” he says, looking deeply into my eyes. What on earth is he going to see in my eyes? “I want to take you out. I’ve wanted to take you out since 1975.”

  “This is Ellen’s funeral!”

  “I remember Ellen well. I don’t think she’d mind,” he says.

  “Wait. . . . You’ve wanted to take me out since 1975?”

  “Is there any other reason for my letting you girls get away with calling me Lavender Barrette?”

  “What?”

  I’ve been shocked before in my life, but never quite like this. Everything is being turned on its head, and I’ve had more than enough of that lately.

  “I’m sorry,” I say before he can get a word out, “but this is a difficult time for me. In fact, your timing couldn’t be worse.” Which is putting it mildly.

  “I know, and I’m sorry for that, but I’ve learned that my timing with you is always going to be bad, so I just have to ignore that.” He leans toward me, his shoulder brushing the wall. I find myself backing up a step and stiffening my neck. “I know that Megan is going to be taking all of your time for the next few months.”

  “Until she’s eighteen, and that makes it the next six years,” I say.

  Matt swallows and tilts his head at me. He’s a very nice-looking man; I’ve always thought so, but I never thought anything more than that. I can’t imagine why not.

  “Six years is a long time, and I think you’re overstating it, but even during that six years you’re going to have a free lunch hour or a free Friday night, and when you do, I’ll be there.”

  “Now, wait a minute—this is feeling very uncomfortable to me. I don’t like the idea of you . . . Well, it sounds almost like I’m being stalked.”

  “If I’m a stalker, I’m the laziest stalker in the world. Since 1975, Laurie. That’s twenty years of waiting.”

  “You were married in there somewhere,” I say.

  “I was killing time,” he says, and then he winks.

  “You know,” I say, starting to smile, “that sounds suspiciously criminal.”

  “Anything’s better than Lavender Barrette. Call me Stalker. See if it helps.”

  “I don’t think that will help,” I say, really smiling.

  “I don’t either,” he says, and then he leans forward and kisses me on the cheek. “I’m very sorry about Ellen. You’ll be hearing from me.” He walks out of the room before I can collect a single thought.

  “Who was that?” Megan says at my elbow.

  I jerk at the sound of her voice and put my arm around her shoulder. She leans into me slightly and I take a full, deep breath. “Just an old friend from college. He knew your mom and really liked her.”

  “He really liked you, too,” Karen says at my back. “Didn’t Matt Carlson grow up beautifully?”

  He certainly did.

  Summer 1995 –

  “I don’t think having a Fourth of July party is in the best of taste,” I say. “It’s too soon after Ellen. I think it will upset Megan.”

  “Flossing her teeth will upset Megan,” Karen says. “She’s going to be upset about everything and nothing for a good long time. You have to give her life structure and make things as normal as they can be. We always do a Fourth of July party. That’s normal. Don’t take that away from her.”

  “But why do I have to host it?”

  “You have the biggest yard and the biggest pool,” she says. “And the best parking. Plus, it’s your turn.”

  I sigh into the phone. “Fine. But I’m going to keep it small, no inviting everyone.”

  * * *

  Everyone came, including people I hadn’t invited but Karen clearly had. Matt Carlson, to be precise. I hadn’t seen him since Ellen’s funeral, though he’d called and asked me to dinner. We hadn’t been able to set a date yet though. Yes, I’ve been stalling. It’s too soon since Ellen for me to entertain ideas of dating. I need to establish a pattern of normalcy between Megan and me first.

  “I brought enough potato salad to feed fifty people. Do you have enough room in your fridge for it?” Karen says, her arms cradling a huge Tupperware bowl.

  “You also brought Lavender Barrette,” I say, opening the refrigerator door and moving a gallon of milk, a pack of Diet Coke, and a jar of dill pickles. Karen slides in the potato salad. “What were you thinking?”

  Karen leans against the kitchen counter, her arms crossed, staring at me. “I actually don’t have an ulterior movie, Laurie. It’s the Fourth of July, a time when Americans have parties. He’s divorced and alone. I think he’s a nice guy; I’ve always thought he was a nice guy. Why not invite him? Including kids, there are going to be about fifty people here today. What’s one more? You’ll barely notice him.”

  “You know that’s not true.”

  “Really?” Karen stands up straight and grabs me by the arms, smiling into my face. “You’re going to notice him? What are you going to notice about him? His great sense of humor? That killer smile? Those fabulous blue eyes? All of the above?”

  “You’re right. I won’t notice him,” I say, walking past her and out of the kitchen.

  But, of course, I do notice him.

  My backyard is quickly filling up with people. Some are coming through the front door and depositing food in my kitchen, but most are entering straight through the side gate into my backyard. I have a table with an umbrella set up by the pool, and a small outdoor sofa and loveseat with two matching chairs on the covered patio running along the back of the house, and Jim and Diane’s dad are opening up old-fashioned webbed lawn chairs on the pool deck. Karen’s mom is spreading a vinyl red-checked tablecloth on the long picnic table near the barbeque, and Ellen’s parents are coming through the gate, Lavender Barrette holding Ellen’s mom’s elbow as she negotiates the switch from the paved walkway to the lawn.

  Megan sees her grandparents and runs over to them, her blond hair swinging from a messy ponytail, her arms wrapping around Ellen’s mom in desperate vitality.

  “Does she see them often?” Karen murmurs.

  “Once a week,” I say. “Sometimes twice a week. Sometimes I wish it could be more, and sometimes I wish the exact opposite.”

  Karen slides a glance at me, our eyes meet, and we do not say the things we think about Ed, about what he did to Ellen when he endlessly criticized her weight and her fair, freckled skin. I walk over to greet them, smiling.

  “Hello! Happy Fourth of July!” I say. “Did you bring chairs? I have enough, I think, and I do think you’ll find the chairs on the patio the most comfortable. May I get you a drink?”

  I keep talking, faster and faster, throwing hospitality over them with so much force that they won’t have a chance to say a word. Mrs. Olson smiles and enfolds me in a hug. Mr. Olson, who has never invited me to call him Ed and who I nevertheless think of as Ed, stands behind his wife and smiles stiffly at me. They were surprised, to put it mildly, at Ellen’s decision to give me custody of Megan. In the normal course of things, Megan would have gone to Ellen’s sister, but Megan has seen her aunt exactly eight times since she was born for a total of fifteen days out of her life. It wasn’t enough. It wasn’t even close to bei
ng enough. Megan understands that better than anyone.

  “That sounds lovely, Laurie,” Mrs. Olson says, her arm around Megan’s shoulders, clutching her to her side. “Thank you. What a lovely day for a party.”

  I don’t look at Matt, standing to one side of Mrs. Olson. I don’t look at Megan, her slender body pressed tenaciously to her grandmother. I don’t look at Ed, who is looking at me and looking at Megan and seeing too many things I don’t want him to see, seeing that we aren’t a family, not yet.

  “Come on, Megan,” Karen says, tugging on her ponytail, “let’s round up the boys and make sure you guys all get sunscreen before you jump in the pool.”

  “Sunscreen,” Ed snorts, sticking his hands in the pockets of his khaki shorts. “In my day no one wore sunscreen. Having a tan makes you look good, healthy. Megan could use some color.”

  “Sunscreen,” I say to Ed, “is not optional.”

  There is a moment of awkward silence. These moments with Ed are fairly routine, I understand that now, but I never find them any less awkward.

  “Ben!” Karen calls out, breaking the moment. “Where’d your dad put the beach bag?”

  “I think it’s in the car!” Ben yells back, hanging upside down from a branch of an orange tree.

  “That’s where I need it,” Karen says. “In the car. Jim? The beach bag?” she calls out.

  Jim, standing and staring at the barbeque with three other men, two of them Exclusive husbands, looks up. “Last I saw it, it was on the kitchen table.”

  “I’m going to kill someone. Probably myself,” Karen says.

  “I’ve got sunscreen,” Matt says. “I keep some in my glove box. I’ve watched too many movies where some innocent city slicker is stranded in the desert because he runs out of gas or has a flat tire and his face is one giant blister by the time the evil trucker finally gets around to killing him.”

  “Where in this scenario does sunscreen save the day?” I ask.

  “Well,” Matt says, grinning, “it can’t hurt.”

  Mrs. Olson laughs. I laugh. Karen laughs. Even Ed chuckles. That’s what I remember about Lavender Barrette; he always made me laugh.

  “I’ll go get it,” he says.

  “That’s okay; I have some in the house. We can all share,” I say. “Megan, will you please go get the sunscreen? It’s with the first aid supplies, on the third shelf in the pantry.”

  “It’s not even that hot out,” Ed says, but Matt is already leading Ed toward the barbeque, the group of men surrounding it already having grown to six.

  Two hours later and half of the group, and all of the children, are in the pool and the other half, all men, are still staring at the barbeque.

  “Do we need more hamburgers?” I ask Jim. “I have another pound thawed and in the fridge.”

  “I think we’re fine for now,” Jim says, turning a hot dog. “I talked to Matt.”

  “About?”

  The other men drift away, eyes averted, until only Jim remains, and Jim is staring at the barbeque.

  “About you. About him. About . . . his intentions,” Jim says.

  “Oh, my God,” I say, plopping down on a lawn chair. Jim hands me a Diet Coke from the cooler at his feet.

  “It wasn’t that bad,” Jim says.

  “What did you say to him? Why did you say anything to him?”

  Jim shrugs and looks at me, his brown eyes glowing with compassion and with just the slightest glimmer of territorial male. “Just making sure, that’s all.”

  “Making sure of what?”

  “That you don’t get hurt.”

  I look across the yard to where Matt is standing on the edge of the pool, his hair dripping wet, his bathing suit molded to his body. He’s grinning and talking to someone in the pool; someone splashes him and then he does a cannonball into the pool, shouting a challenge as he leaps. I smile just watching him.

  “I’m so embarrassed,” I say. “He must have been so embarrassed, not to mention bewildered.”

  “I don’t think so,” Jim says, spearing one hot dog after another and putting them on an empty plate. “He said he was glad to know that, after all this time, someone had your back.”

  “Really?” I say, looking first at Jim and then at Matt climbing out of the pool, the water sheeting off of him. He must feel my gaze because he looks at me then and I can’t make myself pretend that I wasn’t watching him. Matt smiles at me. And I smile in return.

  “Really,” Jim says smoothly. “Have a hot dog. I’m overstocked in hot dogs.”

  * * *

  Matt stands next to me as I wave good-bye to the last guests. His car stands alone on the street, looking forlorn. I can feel Megan at my back, standing in the doorway, watching us. Matt should go. I don’t have the words, or the will, to make him go.

  “That was fun,” Matt says. “You do this every year?”

  “Yes, but we take turns hosting,” I say.

  His car sits, waiting for him. Megan silently waits for me.

  “Even Diane?” he asks.

  “Absolutely. One year we did the Fourth in Memphis. Of course, not many of us could make it, but we did it. It was her turn to host,” I say, grinning. I haven’t smiled this much in months. “Thank you for coming. I guess you’ve got a long drive?”

  Matt nods. “Palos Verdes. It’s not that bad. I could come out here once a week and not complain. Even twice a week. I’m tough.”

  We are facing each other on my driveway, our bodies angled toward and away, toward and away, our eyes meeting and then darting out to the street. Or mine are. His eyes are fixed on me; I can feel that. I smile, feeling that, and I’m almost ashamed of myself for how giddy I feel.

  “Laurie?” Megan says from the doorway. “Are you coming in now?”

  If I go in this will end, and I’m not ready for that yet.

  “Yes,” I say to her, turning back to the house. “I’m coming. Would you like to come in? I’d offer you coffee, but—”

  “But you don’t drink coffee,” he says. “I’ll take whatever you’re offering.”

  My pulse races and my grin widens, and I lead the way into my house past my twelve-year-old daughter.

  “Aren’t we going to bed?” Megan asks.

  “Pretty soon,” I say. “Why don’t you get ready for bed? I’ll come tuck you in in a few minutes.”

  “Okay,” Megan says, staring at Matt. “Good night.”

  “Good night, Megan. Thanks for the best Fourth of July I’ve had in years,” Matt says.

  “Night,” she says, her gaze flicking between the two of us. I feel as guilty as if I were in a police line-up.

  “This probably isn’t one of my better ideas,” I say when Megan is out of sight.

  “Don’t grade yourself until the exam is over,” he says. “You two are just starting. Give it time.”

  “I didn’t mean Megan,” I say. “I meant . . . this. Us.”

  “There’s an us? Already? Damn, I’m good,” he says, smiling down at me, his arm slipping around my waist as casually as if he’d been doing it for twenty years.

  I step away from his touch and walk through the kitchen toward the refrigerator, opening it up, peering inside, pretending that none of this affects me. “I can offer you Diet Coke, Diet Sprite, Diet Dr. Pepper, orange juice, V-8, or milk.”

  “Milk. Straight up,” he says.

  I get out the gallon jug, still surprised by the heft of it; until Megan came to me, I existed on a quart of milk every two weeks, just enough for a dribble on my oatmeal. Megan goes through a gallon of milk every three days.

  “A glass?” Matt says as I pour the milk into a cut glass tumbler. “I’m used to drinking milk from Mom’s fridge out of an old jelly jar. Remember those Flintstones jars?”

 
“Sorry,” I say. “I’m sadly short of Flintstones memories. I was terribly abused as a child.”

  “You must have been, no Flintstones,” he says, taking a healthy swallow of his milk. “Quick, what’s George Jetson’s wife’s name?”

  “Sorry, no Jetsons either.”

  “Okay, now you’re scaring me,” Matt says, but he says it in such a silly way that I laugh. Matt drains his glass and puts the empty glass on the kitchen counter. “Now that I’ve got milk breath, kissing you is going to be a challenge. But I’m up for it.”

  “What?” I say, jerking upright and backing up a step. “Why would you kiss me?”

  “The very fact that you asked me that just proves how much you need to be kissed.”

  Matt hasn’t moved, but I take another step backward, crossing my arms over my chest.

  “Let me rephrase that,” he says, walking toward me, a gentle smile on his face. “I need to kiss you. I’ve got to kiss you. I’m not going to let another five minutes go by without kissing you.” Taking my face in his hands, he says, “I’m going to kiss you right now. Ready or not.”

  Tipping my face up, leaning down to me, he kisses me lightly on the corner of my mouth, nibbling my lower lip, breathing softly on my jaw, taking my mouth in his and teasing a kiss out of me.

  His is a kiss of tenderness and happiness and hope. Euphoria swells, and with it, joy so bright that I am blind with it.

  I didn’t know. I didn’t know kisses could be anything but passionate and desperate. I didn’t know kisses could be a gift, something bestowed.

  My arms wind around his back and I sigh into his kiss, pressing into him, and then straining away from him, embarrassed, exposed, afraid.

  “I don’t know how to do this,” I say, my forehead resting on his chest, my hands on his torso, holding open a space between us.

  “I know you don’t,” he says, wrapping his arms around me and pulling me firmly against him. “That’s why I’m going to do everything. Try to relax and enjoy it.”

  I chuckle and nuzzle my face against his neck.

  “I wish I’d done this twenty years ago,” he says, his mouth brushing my hair. “I was young and stupid.”