“Is her sister a pet rabbit?”
“Mom, cut it out.” But he was laughing. “Her name is Snowy River. It’s awful, I know. It’s after this place in Australia where her parents were when she was, ah, conceived. But she’s a really nice person. Luck thinks I should ask her out. She’s my age.”
I knew better than to do anything except nod briefly. I was glad to see him planning something that was purely social, with people who accepted who he was now. It wasn’t until very late Sunday night that he got home, and I heard him whistling as he came into the house. Then he was on the phone, assuming we were sleeping the sleep of the deaf and aged. “So what time do you leave?” he said. “I really don’t mind driving you. Well, that depends. How much luggage would I have to pick up? I shouldn’t even come over, since I should be offended that you want to go to Paris for some reason instead of hanging out with me.”
A few days later, he was asleep on the couch when I came in. Some horrifying punk rock music video from about 1988 was splattered across the screen, blaring. I flipped the TV off. “I was watching that,” Stefan said ritually.
“You were snoring.”
“Fine, I’m an exile,” he said. “I meet a girl I like and she goes off to junior year abroad. Do I have good luck or what?”
“At least you know it’s possible.”
“Maybe for one in five hundred, if I have a pre-introduction and family members to vouch for me.”
School would start soon. Stefan had been accepted to UW–Madison to study in the Department of Landscape Architecture. He’d worried about the process every step of the way. If he did get in, he wouldn’t fit. But he probably wouldn’t even get in, it was so competitive. And finally, he said, “I’m really worried that somebody on the selection committee will know who I am.”
“If they didn’t admit you because you have a criminal record…” I began.
“No one would ever know that was why I didn’t get in, Mom! You know better. You’re part of the secret society of academic snobs.”
“Look, universities fancy themselves to be egalitarian beams of light,” Jep said. “I don’t think that would be a factor, either way. Just don’t try to keep it from anybody who asks, but don’t volunteer either. Anyway, how could they turn down Father Nature? I bet you have more experience than most of the people who already graduated from that program.”
Now that he was in, he had gone right over to worrying about how he would manage it. The program would be a heavy load, because he was unwilling to give up his best clients, plus the work for Rebecca if it happened, though he would have to work only part-time, mostly on weekends, with the help of two high-school kids he trained and trusted. Jep and I had faith that most of the time-management stuff that would be new to the other students was already Stefan’s daily bread.
At least, he said that day, he wouldn’t have time for the steady girl he didn’t have.
Stefan finally roused himself to go back to work, and I waved goodbye as he pulled away, then went in and finally called Becky. As it turned out, she was glad to hear from me. She begged me to come to dinner at the big house that very night…yes, it was kind of a free-for-all, but the women competed to outdo each other in the culinary arts and tonight was Cuban night, not to be missed. So I agreed.
When I got there, Rebecca gave me the tour. Inside, the place looked gorgeous. Each of the four renovated “pods,” two bedrooms separated by a lush shared bath, was decorated in a different, vibrant shade—peach, tangerine, eggplant. The big rooms downstairs were equally pretty and comfortable with wide welcoming sofas and scattered rocking chairs, built-in shelves crammed with books and whimsical ceramics, islands of plants, including a huge lemon tree festooned with fruit, and stereo speakers that piped music all over the first floor. Just the environment itself could hardly fail to lift a person’s spirits. From there it would be easier to motivate the residents to take better care of themselves and their peers. One corner was given over to Alzy’s grand piano, and a painting of her took pride of place on the wall behind it. She was seated on a porch swing, barefoot but dressed formally, I realized with a shock, in the dress she had worn in her coffin.
We sat outside on that same porch swing, as the setting sun dragged away the day’s heat. Then Becky told me her news: She was pregnant, eight months.
“What? You can’t even tell!”
“I know you can’t. People just think I’ve gained some weight. This is the gift of being five feet ten and, as my mom so delicately says, big-boned.”