I laugh, agreeing.

“Then you gotta come,” he pleads. “Misery loves company.”

Once again Mandy must accept the inevitable. She’s counting the hours until I leave and she has JR to herself again. She hasn’t given up yet. Someday soon she’s going to prod him beyond soul kisses and titty squeezing. She’s going to get her hands on that thing in his pants and put it inside her. But time’s running out. Only a few months until he disappears. She’s desperate, knowing he’ll never return except for the occasional holiday, which she’ll spend sitting by a phone that never rings.

I take him up on the offer. Why not? The alternative is another night listening to Bobby snore in front of the television, sprawled in his Barcalounger, erection rising in his pants, dreaming of Julia Roberts.

Good old Julia works her movie magic and cracks the crust of Mandy’s heavy makeup. She’s sobbing by the time the credits roll, the prince having swept Julia to his Manhattan penthouse where they live happily ever after. JR feigns studied indifference but his eyes are a little red when the lights go up. I barely remember anything about the movie. I’d expected Mandy to sit between us, but JR stepped aside, letting her in the aisle first, leaving him and me knee to knee the entire two hours.

A whirlwind had raced through my mind as Julia cavorted across the screen. What should I say to him? How would I even broach the subject? I could tell him about myself, not the disgusting, dirty details, just enough to highlight my mistakes, warning him about paths not to take. We could talk about love. I could assure him a sweet and gentle soul awaits him. I could tell him not to throw himself away, not to let himself get bitter and callous and unable to trust love when it finally appears. I would promise him it will happen. If not for me, at least for him.

And that’s why, when the lights go up, my eyes are red too.

Mandy’s pimples need feeding. Over another plate of french fries, she quizzes JR about his reaction to every twist and turn in the plot of the movie, seeking the passionate soul she knows he’s hiding behind his placid demeanor. JR is distracted, lost in his own fantasies of Prince Charming. He insists on picking up the tab tonight. After all, I bought lunch.

Without thinking, I say…

“Thanks, Robert.”

I might have just handed him the crown jewels of Russia. He beams, ecstatic. A look of absolute delight lights up his face. He knows I understand him, at what level he’s not sure, but I know he is Robert now, that JR will be left behind for good when he finally escapes Watauga County.

We never have that soul-to-soul chat. This is Watauga County, after all, not a Julia Roberts movie. I wait in the car while he walks Mandy to her door and gives her a chaste kiss on the cheek. We listen to the car radio as we drive home. He can’t wait to get to Chapel Hill and hear real radio. WXYC is totally cool. The disc jockey plays an oldie we both love. “Kiss Me on the Bus.” I tell him I saw the band years ago; they played at a roller rink in Raleigh and got so drunk they fell off the stage. They’re his all-time favorite group, he says; he wishes he could have seen them.

“Yeah, then you’d be as old as me.” I laugh.

“You’re not that old,” he answers.

Home, we go directly to bed. We undress shyly, careful not to look at each other, and crawl under the covers. Long minutes pass in the dark and I think he has fallen asleep. Then, sounding younger than he has all night, he asks me a question.

“Andy?”

“Yeah?”

“Are you happy?”

Something about his tender solicitousness compels me to lie.

“Happy enough.”

“Good.”

My answer seems to satisfy him and he rolls over on his side. He’s soon swept up in the arms of Morpheus, transported to a big, fluffy bed in a penthouse in the sky and Prince Cary is swearing his eternal love and the credits roll and they live happily ever after.

Calling Dunkin’ Donuts

I know better than to call from the phone at my mother’s house. The King of Unpainted Furniture is certain to have caller ID. He’ll have a stroke if the name Anthony Nocera pops up. (The phone is still listed in my father’s name even though he’s been dead for years.) I’m sure the King is screening her calls. Particularly today, traditionally an occasion for greetings and best wishes. I know how he thinks: Wouldn’t it be just like that little worm, that little piece of shit, to pick a day like today, when she’s even a bit more vulnerable than usual, to come sniveling around, tail between his legs, with promises of how he’s changed, how it was all just a bad dream.

Over his dead body. No, more likely, over my dead body.

He’s sure to have taken precautions. He’s probably thrown every single Catholic in the state of North Carolina at his daughter. He wouldn’t even bother to check out the portfolios of the older ones or the prospects of the young. What the fuck would he care? He’d floated me for years. Nothing he couldn’t do again. The screening wouldn’t be rigorous. Alcoholics, deadbeat dads, suspects under indictment, numerous cases of halitosis and body odor, countless fashion victims in poly-cotton blend khakis: they’d all pass with flying colors. There was only one qualification.

None of them could be me.

A shot of bourbon will bolster my confidence. A small one, just enough to give me a backbone. What if she hangs up on me? What if she tells me she doesn’t want to hear from me and threatens dire consequences if I try to contact her again? Worse yet, what if she laughs at me? That would be the cruelest response of all, more terrifying than a vicious, angry attack. Stop making excuses, I think. That’s not your Alice, she’s incapable of hate. How do I know? I know because she wrote me a letter after the house was sold. The sentences were so perfectly straight I could almost see the invisible ruler guiding the pen across the stationery. Her wastebasket probably overflowed with balls of expensive writing paper, discarded if the pen went an eyelash astray. The perfection of the handwriting and the symmetry of the pages affected me as much as the words themselves.

No prosecutor could have drafted a more damning indictment of my indefensible betrayal and her humiliation.

I finally found the courage to ask my gynecologist for the test. Knowing the questions she would ask didn’t prepare me for the shock of hearing her words. What are your risk factors, Alice? How often did you and your husband have unprotected sex?

No judge or jury would have shown me such undeserved mercy.

I would have preferred to say all this in person, but I knew I couldn’t. For too many years, I was willing to close my eyes to everything, ignoring the obvious, not because I thought things would change, but because I wanted them to stay the same. Living without a husband is easy. But every day I miss my best friend.

I’ve read and reread it more times than I can count. I wanted to, meant to, reply. One epistle, carefully crafted in my head over several days in Denver, came close to being committed to posterity. It was apologetic, empathic. I wanted her to know I wished I were different. I’d change if I could. That even if I ever found someone to love, I’d never love anyone more. I should have scribbled it onto paper while I was euphoric and light-headed in the thin air of the Mile-High City. But my best intentions sank in the oppressive humidity of North Carolina. I never set pen to paper.

Nothing has changed. I’m still rejecting her, sending her to the mailbox day after day, expectantly at first, certain I would respond, despondent when, after a few weeks, she realized I wouldn’t. Why doesn’t she curse me as the bastard I am and hate me with a blazing white passion? No, she still finds some excuse to exonerate my bad behavior, excoriating herself for the unpardonable transgression of making a small, kind effort to reach out to me. Drink me, I say, and she drinks and she keeps on shrinking, Tiny Alice in our little Southern Gothic melodrama.