Monthly Story (March '25): To What Shall We Drink?

fiction

"I'll do a divorce party with you. We can both wear our wedding gowns!"

It's all the sudden spring. Three days ago the mercury finally climbed out of the low forties and it stopped raining. The buds on the crabapple trees, which nearly everyone feared had been killed by late frosts, bloomed up and down the backyards of the old neighborhood as Hollis and Paula marched across the already-baking pavement toward the terrace at Eddy's.

"Everything is just as glorious as ever," Paula gushed, for the moment forgetting wedding dresses.

"I can't believe it's so freaking hot already," said Hollis. She wore a loose denim jumper with a yellow sun and green cacti embroidered on the bib. Her "Old Lady Overalls," she’d have said in other company. She'd been gardening in that and a T-shirt when Paula called.

"It's not that hot," corrected Paula, who had a thing about weather. "It's only 80." Cold, hot, rainy—storms, floods, droughts, tornados, possibly even earthquakes—Paula happily dismissed complaints about any of them. "I love all of it!" she'd remind you.

Remembering that annoying trait, Hollis gave her a look, but then let it go. Paula's phone call had brought them back together. She wanted to congratulate Hollis on her divorce being final. "Let me buy you a drink at Pietro's to celebrate," she said, but Hollis said Eddy’s would have to do. She needed to stay close to home. She didn't say why. She didn’t know why. She just did.

“We have to keep up the tradition,” Paula had said on the phone, as if no time had passed. And, yeah. This sort of thing had been the tradition in the neighborhood when they were all starting out. Hollis and Stuart up by the corner. Maggie and Vince across the street, and Paula and Garth down the block near the Seltzers. Dottie and her family. You took a friend out for a drink to celebrate the big events. A promotion at work, getting your first child off to a first day of school. If any of the old crowd had still been around, they would have been celebrating graduations and grandchildren by now, but Hollis was the last. She wondered, and had her suspicions, about how Paula even knew the final papers had arrived. They hadn't spoken in years.

The greeter smiled at Hollis and led them to a table at the far edge of the terrace, away from the traffic sounds. "Thanks, Meg," said Hollis.

"Wow. The best table," said Paula when they were alone. "You must be a regular."

"She lives around the corner from your old place," said Hollis. "In the Seltzer’s. You remember." When the memory didn't register on Paula's face, she added, "And she took one of my workshops."

Paula's hand stopped in mid-air. "Poetry?"

"Memoir."

"Ah," Paula said, as if something unimportant had been settled. "So what are you going to do with your house?" she said. "I assume you're getting it. I wonder what you could get for it in this neighborhood."

Hollis shrugged. She intended to stay put. Her house. Her neighborhood. "We'll see," she said and pretended to read the beverage menu, then snapped it shut. She always ordered the same thing here, a dry white wine. "I was trying to remember, Paula," she said too loudly, "when the last time I saw you was."

“It’s been,” Paula said, “a long time.” She pretended to think. “A lot has changed. In both our lives.”

Well, yeah, thought Hollis. A mute sepia tone film of Paula and Garth moving away, ancient history now, played through her head. He’d taken his position with Group Health. Then they'd bought the place in Cummings Hills, set back from the boulevard on three wooded acres sloping down to the creek. They invited everybody over from the old neighborhood for a dinner. The Barbeque Crew. The burgers, bratwurst, and beer crew. Colemans rolled out onto someone's tiny back lawn in the neighborhood. While Paula gave the women a tour of the new house, Garth led the men down the slope to a huge stone barbeque only steps away from the creek. They ate in a screened-in gazebo, then trooped up to the house for drinks. The mood made sentimental by the booze, the goodbyes at the door turned slobbery as they all vowed to stay in touch. Paula must have awakened in a more realistic frame of mind the next morning because no one heard from her until Dottie Seltzer organized the dinner group and insisted Paula be part of it. That’s what reconnected them until the falling out. Otherwise, Paula moved in a parallel universe, and Garth—because he had been so busy with his cardiology residency and, after all, because he was Garth—never connected anyway. Paula kept her old friends on the Christmas card list. She held onto her teaching job for a few years, until they weren't so overextended. When her divorce came, she made sure to clean up financially. She'd seen it coming for a long, long time.

"It's been ages," Paula said. "Ages. But I'm serious. We should do a party and both make a grand entrance in our wedding gowns. My house would be perfect. We can flow down that staircase. You’ve seen it."

Hollis wished she'd stop this. If Paula kept it up, she'd have to start taking this party business seriously and tell Paula things about herself that she wouldn’t want to hear. And where in hell did she get the idea that Hollis would want to celebrate, anyway? She felt no sense of elation at the dissolution of her marriage, or the humiliation of how it ended. Why this gleeful assumption that she would be happy about it? Yeah, and in truth, Hollis did remember the last time she'd seen Paula. She only said that to see if Paula remembered. She was coming out of Macy's as Paula and Garth were walking in, mid-argument. Garth, the ass, kept right on going. Offered a perfunctory nod and kept going. Paula, over the top compensating. Falling all over Hollis, so, so interested in all her doings, so, so determined they had to get together soon. Ignoring what had happened. Lunch, a drink, whatever as long as they connected again. Hollis remembered asking what “you two love birds” were arguing about “this time.” Mischievously. With her special brand of the twisted dagger. Evened the score a tad, she figured. That must have been five years after the thing with Jill that got Hollis shunned.

A divorce party at Paula’s? What was she thinking? That place… No matter what Group Health paid Garth, they couldn't have afforded a place like that so soon. The property, people said, fell their way from Garth's grandmother. And Garth. What's the saying? Born on third base and thought he hit a triple? He couldn't wait to escape their pokey little university neighborhood.

But, then, most of them couldn't. Onward and upward. Only Hollis made a home there. She loved it more every year. Not only her tulips and the crab and cherry trees or the spade fence Daniel built her, but the new people, too, mostly immigrants. Hmong and Latinos. A Tibetan family down the block. Momo, the little ones called her, meaning Granny, and the Hmong and Latino kids picked it up. Not Abuela, but Momo, like those Tibetan dumplings. She organized the National Night Out gathering every year and persuaded folks to allow lawn signs for Democratic candidates.

"So what do you think? Nothing like a good party to start over, huh?" Paula leaned across the little table, steepled her fingers.

Hollis tried a polite smile and stated the obvious. "I'm sure I'll never fit into my wedding dress again." She could see—anyone with eyes could see—that Paula, fit and tanned in her athletic shoes and cute little white tennis outfit, could manage hers.

"Oh, we let it out here and we let it out there," Paula laughed. "A few adjustments and you'll be as radiant as ever!"

Hollis shifted half away in her seat. "Radiant has never been my strength, Paula.” She couldn’t make eye contact. “I don't need a celebration."

Paula, already halfway across the table, reached over the remaining distance and took both Hollis's hands in hers. "Oh, poor thing. I'm so sorry. I didn't mean to make you feel worse. I only wanted to bring some fun into your life." Her eyes glittered in a fierce, needy compassion.

Hollis looked away and felt the hot tears coming. This woman, no matter who she was now, could have no reason to make her an object of pity. She patted Paula's hands as she pulled her own away, blinking those damned tears back before they sent another wrong signal. Paula handed her a Kleenex and a long, sad look.

"Ah," Hollis grinned. "Our drinks have arrived." She took her glass up in mock joviality. "What shall we drink to?"

Paula lifted her glass of Sprite with less than her usual resolve. "I'm not sure," she answered. To the departure of Stuart seemed a good choice, but one must stay mum at such moments. How long must he be Hollis's ex before she could safely unload what she'd thought of him from the first? What they had all thought and spoken to one another. "Shouldn't it be 'To what should we drink'?" she said.

"Ha," Hollis answered. "Oddly enough, you are correct. My mistake. Okay. To what shall we drink?"

Paula waited. Their group had not been some Updikean carnival of adultery, but it appeared no one had told Stu. He ambushed Paula the first time as she passed through the kitchen on her way back from the bathroom. She'd brushed him off easily enough, sent him fighting for his balance against the refrigerator, as a matter of fact. With most men she had known, the violence of that shove would have put an end to other attempts. Not Stuart. Fortunately, though alcohol made him more recklessly amorous, it also left him less physically threatening. Probably most men became greater threats, like those two drunk high school teachers at the pool party her rookie year teaching. A shiver wriggled through her body to think about that. Don’t even think the R word again. The shove she gave Stuart was as much for them as for him. Maybe it came too late, but it felt good. Dottie Seltzer—yes, she remembered the Seltzers now—tried to gently alert Hollis to Stuart's philandering, but Hollis didn't want to hear. He could do no wrong. So, what to toast if not Stu's departure? She wanted to say, "Maybe we should drink to the renewal of our friendship” but didn’t dare.

They clinked glasses without speaking, instead.

"The last time I saw you," said Hollis, “was outside Macy's. Garth snubbed me."

"Ouch."

"Oh, it didn't hurt. Not from him."

"I meant ouch for me." Paula leaned back in her chair, as if trying to place Hollis from somewhere.

"Well." Hollis shrugged. "He never gave any of us a second look."

Paula heard herself beginning to defend Garth, who had been of necessity massively busy and preoccupied all the time they'd lived down the street from Hollis and Stuart. Sleep deprived, too. She stopped herself before going too far. "I'm just sorry he mistreated anyone I cared about," she said. "It hurts to hear I brought that into your life."

"I'm pretty tough," said Hollis. She wanted to believe that. “I’m an East Coast city kid, remember?” A half truth. She’d followed Stuart to the Midwest when he took a position at the university’s library system, figuring she'd be able to scare up the odd teaching job here and there even though she'd not written her dissertation yet. ABD, All But Dissertation. Universities were increasingly taking advantage of the glut of Boomers with advanced degrees, leading a generation of professional students into the never-never-land of adjunct instructor positions and temporary appointments. The so-called gypsy scholars. She hated academia anyway. Her dreams all centered around publishing her poems. The daily routine she followed now started in those days. Wake, like today, to start the morning going about her usual routine of feeding the cats and watering and turning the plants as her coffee brewed, and then sitting down at her desk to write. Ever ambitious Stuart—necktied and sportjacketed—charged off to the bus stop early every morning and seldom made it home before mid-evening. He left Hollis on her own.

She met Paula first at the grocery store on the corner a street over. Sami's Lebanese Deli. Hollis, who considered herself sophisticated in those days, had never been introduced to hummus or pita bread. Sami's mother was this little Lebanese woman in a long black dress who came into the deli twice a week to make her family's recipe for hummus, and Hollis timed her visits to get it fresh. She'd finish writing around noon and make a straight line down the alley to buy a bag of fresh pita and a container of hummus. Then she rushed home to heat the pita in olive oil and spread it with the wonderfully garlicky hummus.

"You seem to love this stuff as much as I do," a voice said from over her shoulder one Wednesday.

Hollis turned to see a tall strawberry blond smiling at her through warm green eyes.

"I'm Paula," the woman said and extended her hand.

Hollis briefly took the offered hand and looked the woman up and down. She looked as if she had only then stepped off a Southern California beach. In truth, a few steps back, she had left a Southern Minnesota farm.

"Hollis," Hollis said. She had to look up to make eye contact. "What stuff?"

The question seemed funny to this Paula person. "The hummus Sami's mother makes, of course," she said. "I see you coming in to buy it fresh. Like I do," she added. "Don't you think it's just the best?"

Hollis had never noticed this woman before, which seemed strange. She would have made some sort of private joke about Barbie dolls. And she couldn't say this hummus was the best. She'd never tasted another. "I've had better," she said with one of her shrugs. This pretty face wasn't going to get the better of her.

The pretty face fell, along with its bare shoulders. "Oh, well," she shifted her weight and brightened by an act of will. "Actually, I guess I've never had hummus before discovering Sami's. I just really love it, though."

Paula made a point of befriending Hollis. They’d started off by sharing their love for Sami's hummus. In the fall, Paula was back teaching middle-school math. She couldn't remember if the cookouts started then or later or even how many years their friendship lasted before she and Garth bought the house in Cummings. She knew the time had to stretch out to include Hollis’s first pregnancy because it was she, Paula, who drove Hollis to the hospital. "Don't worry about a thing," Paula reassured her as she negotiated traffic. "I've delivered dozens of calves and puppies and kittens on the farm. There's really not much difference."

Hollis's water had broken and her contractions were coming more frequently. Stuart was out of town giving a paper at a conference. "Just get me there, wouldja?" Hollis groaned. "Enough about your fucking farm."

Paula only laughed. "This is so exciting," she said. "I wish Garth were on his OB rotation."

"Oh, sure," Hollis sneered. "That's all I need. Garth looking up my pussy! Now, that sounds fun."

The whole adventure made for howls of cookout laughter. Paula continued to claim that Garth would have taken much better care of Hollis if only he'd been there, but Hollis could just imagine his bedside manner and never minded saying so.

She'd kept a journal of her pregnancy, planning to eventually turn it into a book. The plan spread out to include Hollis’s first year of motherhood, though somehow no book materialized. A few poems, three of them published in "Little" journals, fell out of the experience. Then a 5,000-word memoir piece made it into the pages of a regional slick magazine, marking the first big success of her writing career. Based solely on that piece, Hollis became a "memoirist" and was invited by the College of Continuing Education to teach an evening class. That and the poems qualified her to teach writing for a community college. Paula began introducing her as "my writer friend."

Hollis squirmed to hear this, but she appreciated that Paula understood how badly she wanted to be known as a writer and that she feared her credentials were too thin. Mornings she worked at her desk, often with Daniel on her lap or on a blanket on her office floor. The cat curled up next to him. The whole cliché. Paula read every single poem she wrote and loved every single word, which is to say she was absolutely no help at all. Stuart could have been. He had a sharp critical eye and had, early in their courtship, read her work. Now, though, he came home tired and distracted. She knew better than to ask, and Paula, ever the friend, resented him for that.

"You need to do a reading," Paula announced one afternoon as they watched Daniel crawling across the living room floor. Each time he reached the magazine rack one of them picked him up, carried him across the floor, and set him down.

"What?" Hollis sprang up, taking Paula's turn.

"A reading. Isn't that what poets do? They get up and read their work." She gave Hollis a blank look, as if to say, Dummy. "That's what you should do. I'll arrange everything. All you have to do is show up and read your poems."

"Really?"

"Just leave it to me."

They held it in Paula's living room and probably a dozen people from the neighborhood crowded into the tiny house. Hollis was terrified. She couldn't think of one person there who had ever expressed an interest in writing or who had mentioned a single book title that was not sci fi or self-help. It went off fine, though.

Paula still felt proud of what she’d done for her friend, but now she could see, looking across the table, that Hollis wasn't in any sort of mood for sweet memories. Poor thing. She thought she was so tough. But Paula knew she had been wrong to forget how long ago now it had ended with Garth. Could she have celebrated so soon? Of course not. What made her want to celebrate now was that it was long over and everything had come out okay. The kids had their own lives and families. She and Garth were decently friendly again. She still had the house and even a career again. To what shall we drink? Indeed. The choice was hard for her because there was so much to celebrate.

And she knew she had been wrong. Sitting there across the table from Hollis, she knew they were both thinking about the dinner group.

The dinner group had done it. The Seltzers moved away and Dottie didn't want to lose contact. They bought a house in one of the western burbs. Curving streets leading to cul-de-sacs. All the lawns mown and green and sprinklered. Ceramic-looking plastic planters from HomDepot at the end of every drive. No sidewalks. Dottie thought she'd gone to Heaven except that she'd miss her friends. And so, the dinner group.

Dottie's the one who pulled it together. Called Maggie DeVito and Alice Libman first. "I can't even think about losing my buds," she squealed. That's how she talked, "my buds." Then she phoned Hollis and Paula. "Once a month," she told them. "I can pick a restaurant—or somebody else if they prefer. You know. It doesn't matter. Once a month and we'll catch up."

Hollis wondered. When had that been? Paula didn't still live down the street. Maggie gave Hollis a ride to the dinners a couple of times. She and Vince and their two kids lived in the rambler across the street. Oh, God. Vince and the kids and the two cocker spaniels. That's right. The cat, too. That old tom with the chewed up ear who she kept chasing away from her bird feeder. Daniel was in and out of their house constantly, staring at the tropical fish in their aquarium. As he got a little older trying to get Vince's old parrot to say "Fucking A, Man!"

No, Paula was the first to move out. Then Alice. And, yes, the dinners put Paula back in touch. Like she had never left, actually. Paula started calling every day, sometimes twice. Endless conversations about Garth. What to do about Garth and this nurse or that nurse. Hollis made out the clinking of ice cubes in a glass during Paula's pauses. She mostly listened. She smelled alcohol on Paula's breath a couple of times when she arrived for a dinner. Needing an early start maybe. And those phone calls. Jeeze. Hollis had to hear every word of every fight Paula and Garth had. Sometimes twice, and with improvements in the same call. It got to be a bit much.

All this going on as they were dealing with Daniel's Asperger’s. She never heard about Paula's kids. It was all Garth. How dysfunctional his family had been. A mother with untreated depression. Impossible expectations from the father. The grandmother laying the law down from atop a mountain of money. Hollis tried to tell her about Daniel, how he'd fainted at school and the teacher didn't know what to do. "Oh, ah huh," Paula said like she hadn't really been listening, then went on trying to fix Garth some more. Every day. Sometimes twice. Then at the once-a-month dinner, too, Hollis got to hear every word of those fights again, much improved by then. The others listening for the first time. Paula could stun the group into silence. They nodded in commiseration around the table, sometimes tried offering helpful insights, even mild, always sympathetic advice. Hollis kept her mouth shut.

It must have been Dottie who invited Jill, the only one not a neighbor. Dottie, the organizer, got to decide who came and who didn't. She didn't ask the others. But Hollis was glad. She and Jill fell right into a friendship because Jill knew a specialist Daniel could see. Then, when Stuart wrapped their car around that tree, it was Jill who stayed up all night with her outside intensive care. Jill who dropped everything to come over and help with Stuart's rehab. They'd be sponging him down when the phone rang. "Go ahead and get it," Jill said, but after a time with a look. "Go ahead. You know."

Paula. Hardly a question about Stuart or Daniel. Hell, hardly a question about Hollis. Not even an "I know you must be busy, but. . ."

"You go ahead," Jill said. "I can finish this."

So Hollis eventually told her straight out. "I can't keep doing this, Paula. My hands are full." She couldn't find the emotional space to feel badly and just maybe, in retrospect, thought she might have been too abrupt. But Paula knew, didn't she, that was just the exasperation coming through the fatigue. "Honestly, Paula," she said, "I gave Stuart the oxycodone an hour ago and now I have to get him out of bed for a walk. I'm all alone here today," she added. Hint hint. Christ, if she had time to sit down at her desk and squeeze out half a poem idea or grade a few papers, she felt lucky. When she did manage that, she usually had Jill to thank.

She owed Jill, so at the next dinner, before everybody else arrived, Jill came in and asked Hollis to take a little walk around the parking lot. Jill had hit a rough spot with a man and needed a listener. Hollis left Paula, who had just come in, standing there by the maître d's podium. Tactless, she realized later. Clumsy, but she'd figured the others would be there shortly. She went out the door with Jill. It took maybe five minutes and when they came back inside all the others were seated—Dottie, Maggie, Alice, and Paula. But it had gotten real cool in that room.

The next month no invitation came for the monthly dinner. Jill told her what had happened later. "Did you do something to Paula?" she asked. Do something? Hollis knew then. She'd put an end to the endless phone conversations. "Then, I guess," Jill said, "we kind of ditched her, didn’t we? My fault, really. Sorry."

Something empty about that "sorry," like it meant Hollis would still have to take the rap. Jill and Dottie grew up together, next door neighbors from age five. She'd be the very last one uninvited. Hollis achieved the distinction of being the first. Even Maggie, the only other of the group still living in the neighborhood, even Maggie cooled off. "You didn't have to be so blunt."

Hollis began to explain, but Maggie stopped her. She didn't want to get in the middle. "Please. You know I dislike this kind of thing." Hollis would have said she hated that sort of thing, but Maggie had outlawed that word in her family. That damned Mid-Western niceness standing in the way of actually saying what you meant.

So Maggie and the others had heard and accepted Paula's version and didn't need to hear more. Daniel still crossed the street to stare at the Jack Dempseys and angelfish, but after a time that fell off. It was subtle, but he knew to restrain his impulse to visit. Maggie and Vince eventually bought a house in a better, meaning whiter, school district.

Hollis remembered standing at the living room window watching the Mayflower truck being loaded and Maggie and Vince waving a cursory goodbye to nobody in particular and driving away. "There," she said as the truck eased up to turn the corner after them. "That's that." She sipped a hot mug of Orange Pekoe tea. The cat stretched her front paws and yawned from the window sill. Daniel and his new friend tramped in the back door and ran the water in the kitchen sink. "Water," Daniel said, teaching Felipe English. "Agua," Felipe told him. "Agua fria."

Hollis turned a page.

Paula wanted to bring up the dinners. "I don’t remember that time outside Macy’s," she said, coming in sideways so Hollis could bring up what they both had been thinking. She'd imagined how this might go as she drove over from Cummings. In her imagination, Hollis growled out a response. The naked truth. Probably a few four-letter words to emphasize the vividness of her resentment. Or maybe she'd forgiven, though, really, how much was there to forgive? Two sides to every coin. You go deal with a personality like Garth’s.

Still. Hollis lost all her friends in one sweep and Paula knew she was the one holding the broom. The woman has a nasty mouth sometimes, though. No tact, really. All the effort and coaching Paula did to encourage her, then "Hey, I can't do this anymore. Can't you see I'm busy?" Words like that anyway. Abrupt. After she'd been babied like that. Taken care of. She needed some good old Midwestern common sense, some Minnesota Nice, not all that fake, tough- kid-from-the-streets baloney. But, then too, Paula's conscience knew. Your conscience always does know. She’d held the broom.

She blamed the drinking. Poor little Paula Lindbloom straight off the farm and into the life of Dr. Garth Tinsman. Added to what he owned.

Paula could only think stupid stupid stupid. Wedding dresses and celebrations of failed relationships? Where had such an idea come from? She wanted to say something. Anything to make a noise to fill the space and make the feelings disappear

And now Hollis telling her of the snub outside Macy's. Well, welcome to my world. The incident, if it ever actually happened, melted into a thousand other such humiliations. “I don’t remember that time at Macy’s,” she said again, “but I’m not saying it didn’t happen.”

Hollis waved it away. “It was nothing really,” she said, trying to identify her own feeling. Sadness, she decided. And gratitude. A kind of freedom. “It’s complex,” she said. “I know you feel badly about what happened between us. So do I.”

“The old neighborhood,” said Paula, pointing her chin in the direction of their houses, “I’d give anything if…”

But Hollis cut her off with a stop-the-bullshit smile. “If you could go back to that time?”

Paula hesitated. “No. I guess not. I just thought… I don’t know what I thought.”

Hollis laughed. “You’ve lost your effervescence?”

“Yes,” Paula said. “And thank goodness.” Then, with a pretty tilt of her head, “But not entirely.”

Hollis relaxed. “Thank goodness,” she said. “Thank goodness.”

…