Looking for Laura (21 page)

Sally was glad she hadn't arrived earlier. They might have all been blubbering then, and she would have had to mop the floor.

Although they were all uniformly weepy, Tina's friends came in a variety of sizes, shapes and colors. None of them had the streaked blond hair that had been so popular on campus just a few years ago. Their apparel ranged from gym shorts and sweatshirt to silk blouse and tailored flannel trousers.

They might have finished their communal bawling, but they were still sniffling. Like a Greek chorus, they echoed Tina's forlorn whimpers. Thank God they didn't all drape themselves over Sally the way Tina did. She could barely stand under Tina's floppy weight.

“The world hasn't ended,” Sally said sharply—not because she wasn't sympathetic but because she wouldn't otherwise have been heard above the mournful chorus. “Get a grip.”

“That's why I called you,” Tina wailed, taking Sally's advice literally and gripping her shoulders.

“That's why she called you,” a couple of the other girls confirmed in a resonant murmur.

“He's just a guy,” Sally pointed out. “No guy is worth this much grief.”

Tina peeled herself off Sally and sucked in a tremulous breath. “Everyone, this is Sally Driver, the coolest lady I know.” Tina introduced her friends, a bevy of Caitlins and Amandas and Tanyas. Sally nodded and smiled at each of them, then promptly forgot their names.

“She'll tell you,” the plump redhead predicted. “She'll tell you Howard is a piece of shit for doing this to you.”

“She'll help you figure out how to hang on to Howard,” the dark-skinned girl with the Rastafarian dreadlocks insisted.

“Listen, everyone, I've gotta talk to Sally alone.” Tina gave her friends a brave smile and blinked furiously, no doubt fending off a fresh spate of tears. “We'll meet in Amanda's room later and drink Southern Comfort, okay?”

“Okay.”

“Sure.”

“Later.”

The girls gathered around Tina, each offering a ritual hug before filing through the door.

The stillness in the room once they were gone was slightly disorienting. Sally gazed around, noticing for the first time the Brad Pitt poster on the wall above the bed—did Howard look like Brad Pitt? If he did, he might be worth all this drama—the textbooks piled on the desk next to a laptop; the bag of chocolate chip cookies; the
empty beer bottles stacked along the top shelf of the bookcase; the stuffed teddy bear lounging on Tina's pillow, clad in a tiny version of her Winfield College shirt; and the four mismatched shoes mixing it up with the dust bunnies under the bed.

“Do you want a cookie?” Tina asked, shuffling across the room to the bag on her desk. She was barefoot, and the hems of her pants dragged with each step. “I know these aren't as good as what we sell in the New Day, but sometimes I, like, just want something kind of low quality, you know? Like, with preservatives and hydrogenated oil and stuff?” She unrolled the bag and popped a cookie into her mouth, then extended the bag to Sally.

“You make it sound so appetizing.” Sally declined with a shake of her head. “Tina, can we talk about this? I left Rosie with a neighbor—” having a grand time killing squids, but Sally didn't say that “—so I'd like to find out what's going on with you.”

“Nothing's going on with me,” Tina said, then crumpled onto her bed and chewed. A few tears leaked from her eyes as she swept her tongue along her molars, causing one cheek and then the other to bulge as she scraped cookie mush from their surfaces. “It's going on with Howard. He told me he's definitely transferring to Dartmouth. He got accepted and he's transferring.” Her voice dissolved in a sob. She reached for another cookie.

“I'm sure you're sad,” Sally murmured, stating the obvious. She lowered herself to sit on the bed next to the teddy bear, leaving as much space as possible between Tina and herself. “But if it's true love, his being at Dartmouth won't have to come between you.”

“There are
girls
at Dartmouth.”

“There are girls here at Winfield.”

“But
I'm
at Winfield. He doesn't need other girls if I'm around. I won't be around at Dartmouth.”

“I thought you and he love each other.”

“But he's a guy. You know how guys are. They think with their dicks. Ever hear the expression dickhead?”

Sally tried not to smile. “Not in reference to male thought processes. Tina, consider this. Dartmouth is, what? An hour away? Two hours? It's not such a big deal.”

“It is if he goes up there and forgets about me. I
love
him, Sally. You know how much I love him.”

Sally did indeed: so much she'd injected ink into her skin.

“We've got two more years of school. Two whole years when he's going to be up there and I'm going to be down here. It's like—like I don't think I can bear it.”

“Of course you can bear it. You're smart and strong. You've got a good job, and you're a good student—”

Tina rolled her eyes at that.

“And you've got all those wonderful friends. They'll support you through this difficult time.”

“They all think Howard deserves to be shot. Or castrated. Or disemboweled. That was Caitlin's idea.”

“Well…so, you've got some violent friends.”

“I don't want to disembowel him. I want to be with him.” Tina licked the crumbs off her fingers and leaned toward Sally. “I thought, maybe you could give me some advice.”

“I'm giving you advice.”

“Not that advice. Different advice.” A tiny smear of chocolate clung to Tina's lower lip. “Here was what I was thinking. Like, maybe, I could get pregnant, and then Howard would have to marry me.”

Sally leaned away from Tina and scowled. The teddy bear's nose dug into her back.

“I mean,
you
did it, and it worked for you, right? I'm not saying—I mean, I know your husband died, and that really sucks and all. But for a while, you got to be together. He married you.”

Sally swallowed. God, she felt old. She couldn't remember ever being as young as Tina. Even when she'd been Tina's age, she'd never been that young. “Tina, this is not a good plan.”

“But
you
did it.”

“Not on purpose.”

“But you loved your husband, right? And then he married you. I mean, it worked.”

Sally opened her mouth and then shut it, opened and shut it again. If she had a cookie, she'd be able to put her jaw motions to good use by chewing it. She knew she had to say something, but the only thought that hung tight in her mind was:
I didn't love my husband
.

Surely she'd loved him at the beginning. She'd loved him before she'd found the Laura letters. She'd loved him when he'd agreed to marry her, because his doing so was so honorable, so responsible. Given her own father's absence, she'd loved Paul for doing the right thing.

Hadn't she?

Hadn't she loved his body? And the way he'd kept his things so tidy, like some anal-retentive fanatic? And the way he'd manfully consumed the vegetarian meals she prepared, with only a few snide criticisms about how her tofu stew definitely had more flavor than foam rubber, and if he added a little salt it actually tasted like salt? And the way he used to dazzle her with his explanations of how the probate process worked?

His body. Yes, she'd loved his body—although he'd been kind of small. He'd stood only five feet nine and a half—he'd always made a point of mentioning that half—and he'd weighed less than she did during the last few months of her pregnancy. Not that she had anything against short men. Five feet nine and a half wasn't that short, and she was five-six herself, so it wasn't as if she'd towered over Paul, although even if she had, why would that have made a difference? She could be very politically correct when it came to size. The only reason she was even thinking about it was that it had been such a different experience to kiss Todd, who stood at least six feet in height. Probably more than six feet. Six one and a half, maybe.

And kissing him had been entirely different from kissing Paul because it had been impulsive, and she'd been tired and not thinking clearly, and he'd carried Rosie up the stairs so gently, and his nose had been pink. She certainly didn't love him.

“Sally?” Tina called to her as if from another county. Sally shook her head clear and returned her attention to Tina. “What I was thinking,” Tina said, “was, I could just, like, not wear my diaphragm. Was that how you got pregnant?”

“I didn't have a diaphragm,” Sally told her. In college, she'd figured that if she found herself in a long-term, solid relationship she would get one, but when she and Paul started seeing each other, it wasn't a long-term solid relationship. It went from a few dates to “I do” in a remarkably short interval. She hadn't gotten a diaphragm until after Rosie was born.

“So you just, like, did it without anything?”

“We had a condom failure,” Sally said, feeling even older.

“Wow. That must have been hard to do—to make the condom fail so you could get pregnant.”

“I didn't
make
the condom fail. I didn't want to get pregnant. Listen to me, Tina. Getting knocked up is not a good way to keep Howard. He might just run away if you tell him you're pregnant. Some men do that.”

“He wouldn't. He loves me.”

“If he loves you, you've got nothing to worry about with his going to Dartmouth, right?”

Tina eyed Sally dubiously. She'd obviously expected Sally to counsel her on the most effective way of trapping a guy.

“Trust me,” Sally said. “You don't want to get pregnant.”

“Why? Everything worked out so cool for you—except for that he died, but I mean, you love Rosie, don't you? You're glad you had your daughter, right?”

“Of course I love my daughter.”

“So if you had it to do over again, you really wouldn't change anything, would you? I mean, except for his dying.”

“I—” Once again Sally felt like a fish, her jaw pumping as she tried to wrap her mouth around the right words. “I don't regret for an instant having Rosie. But I wish I had finished college. And my husband was already done with his schooling. He could afford to support us. If you got pregnant, what would you expect Howard to do? Drop out of college and get a job to support you?”

“I could work, too. I could work more hours at the café.”

“That's not a career.”

“It is for you.”

“Because I'm the manager. Because I worked there
for years, and I could afford to work there for years because my husband earned a good living from his legal practice. Listen to me, Tina—this scheme of yours is not the same thing at all.”

“So, you don't think I should get preggers?” Tina looked crestfallen.

“I really don't.” Sally slid along the bed until she was next to Tina, the rumpled blanket shaping a narrow blob between them. She wrapped an arm around Tina and gave her a squeeze. “You have much better alternatives. While I was waiting to be allowed upstairs, I was studying the bulletin board by the front door, and you know what I saw? Someone offering a ride to Dartmouth.”

“Really?”

“You'll be able to get rides up there. You'll probably have to chip in toward gas, but it won't be expensive.”

“Really? There was someone looking for riders in Cabot House?”

“Sure. And I bet there are other people offering rides to Dartmouth in other dorms, too. Every dorm has a bulletin board like that, right? You'll be able to find rides.”

“Because I love him,” Tina reiterated, as if she wanted to convince herself.

“I know you do.”

“And he really loves me. He says he does.”

“Then I'd suggest you skip the disembowelment.”

“Yeah.” She hugged Sally back. “Thanks for helping me work this out. I didn't want my friends to know I was thinking about getting pregnant because if I did it, I'd have to make it seem like an accident, you know? If I'd talked about it with them, they'd know it wasn't an
accident, and it could have gotten back to Howard and then he'd never trust me.”

“So, you're okay?”

“Yeah. My friends and I are going to drink some Southern Comfort tonight. I think that'll be good.”

Sally tried not to wince. “I've got to go,” she said, shoving against the thin mattress and heaving herself to her feet. “I'll see you tomorrow at the café, all right?”

“I don't work tomorrow,” Tina reminded her. “It's Tuesday.” Tina slept late Tuesdays.

“Right. I'll see you Wednesday, then. And please, if you need to talk some more, give me a call. I don't want you doing anything stupid.” That wasn't to say that Sally's life had been stupid, just that deliberately choosing that path would have been stupid.