“And did you apply for the job or do you think you can make any money picking up worms?”
She had turned up the furnace when she got home and put the application on the vent, but it had wrinkled as it dried, and there was a big smear down the middle where the worm had lain. “No,” she said. “I was going to, but when I was over on the campus, there was this worm lying on the sidewalk. A girl walked by and stepped in a puddle, and that was all it took. The worm was right on the edge, and when she stepped in the puddle, it made a kind of wave that pushed it over the edge. She didn’t even know she’d done it.”
“Is there a point to this story, or have you decided to stand here and talk until you’ve completely ruined my chance at tenure?” He shut off the oven and went into the living room. She followed him.
“All it took was somebody walking past and stepping in a puddle, and the worm’s whole life was changed. Do you think things happen like that? That one little action can change your whole life forever?”
“What I think,” he said, “is that you didn’t want to move here in the first place, and so you are determined to sabotage my chances. You know what this move is costing us, but you won’t go apply for a job. You know how important my getting tenure is, but you won’t do anything to help. You won’t even go to a goddamn Tupperware party!” He turned the thermostat down. “It’s like an oven in here. You’ve got the heat turned up to seventy-five. What’s the matter with you?”
“I was cold,” Elizabeth said.
She was late to the Tupperware party. They were in the middle of a game where they told their name and something they liked that began with the same letter.
“My name’s Sandy,” an overweight woman in brown polyester pants and a rust print blouse was saying, “and I like sundaes.” She pointed at Elizabeth’s neighbor. “And you’re Meg, and you like marshmallows, and you’re Janice,” she said, glaring at a woman in a pink suit with her hair teased and sprayed the way girls had worn it when Elizabeth was in college. “You’re Janice and you like Jesus,” she said, and moved rapidly on to the next person. “And you’re Barbara and you like bananas.”
She went all the way around the circle until she came to Elizabeth. She looked puzzled for a moment, and then said. “And you’re Elizabeth, and you went to college here, didn’t you?”
“Yes,” she said.
“That doesn’t begin with an E,” the woman in the center said. Everyone laughed. “I’m Terry, and I like Tupperware,” she said, and there was more laughter. “You got here late. Stand up and tell us your name and something you like.”
“I’m Elizabeth,” she said, still trying to place the woman in the brown slacks. Sandy. “And I like …” She couldn’t think of anything with an E.
“Eggs,” Sandy whispered loudly.
“And I like eggs,” Elizabeth said, and sat back down.
“Great,” Terry said. “Everybody else got a favor, so you get one, too.” She handed Elizabeth a pink plastic egg separator.
“Somebody gave me one of those,” she said.
“No problem,” Terry said. She held out a shallow plastic box full of plastic toothbrush holders and grapefruit slicers. “You can put it back and take something else if you’ve already got one.”
“No. I’ll keep this.” She knew she should say something good-natured and funny, in the spirit of things, but all she could think of was what she had said to Tupper when he gave it to her. “I’ll treasure this always,” she had told him. A month later she had thrown it away.
“I’ll treasure it always,” Elizabeth said, and everyone laughed.
They played another game, unscrambling words like “autumn” and “schooldays” and “leaf,” and then Terry passed out order forms and pencils and showed them Tupperware.
It was cold in the house, even though Elizabeth’s neighbor had a fire going in the fireplace, and after she had filled out her order form, Elizabeth went over and sat in front of the fire, looking at the plastic egg separator.
The woman in the brown pants came over, holding a coffee cup and a brownie on a napkin. “Hi, I’m Sandy Konkel. You don’t remember me, do you?” she said. “I was an Alpha Phi. I pledged the year after you did.”
Elizabeth looked earnestly at her, trying to remember her. She did not look like she had ever been an Alpha Phi. Her mustard-colored hair looked as if she had cut it herself. “I’m sorry, I …,” Elizabeth said.
“That’s okay,” Sandy said. She sat down next to her. “I’ve changed a lot. I used to be skinny before I went to all these Tupperware parties and ate brownies. And I used to be a lot blonder. Well, actually, I never was any blonder, but I looked blonder, if you know what I mean. You look just the same. You were Elizabeth Wilson, right?”
Elizabeth nodded.
“I’m not really a whiz at remembering names,” she said cheerfully, “but they stuck me with being alum rep this year. Could I come over tomorrow and get some info from you on what you’re doing, who you’re married to? Is your husband an alum, too?”
“No,” Elizabeth said. She stretched her hands out over the fire, trying to warm them. “Do they still have Angel Flight at the college?”
“At the university, you mean,” Sandy said, grinning. “It used to be a college. Gee, I don’t know. They dropped the whole ROTC thing back in sixty-eight. I don’t know if they ever reinstated it. I can find out. Were you in Angel Flight?”
“No,” Elizabeth said.
“You know, now that I think about it, I don’t think they did. They always had that big fall dance, and I don’t remember them having it since.… What was it called, the Autumn Something?”
“The Harvest Ball,” Elizabeth said.
Thursday morning Elizabeth walked back over to the campus to get another job application. Paul had been late going to work. “Did you talk to Brubaker’s wife?” he had said on his way out the door. Elizabeth had forgotten all about Mrs. Brubaker. She wondered which one she had been, Barbara who liked bananas or Meg who liked marshmallows.
“Yes,” she said. “I told her how much you liked the university.”
“Good. There’s a faculty concert tomorrow night. Brubaker asked if we were going. I invited them over for coffee afterwards. Did you turn the heat up again?” he said. He looked at the thermostat and turned it down to sixty. “You had it turned up to eighty. I can hardly wait to see what our first gas bill is. The last thing I need is a two-hundred-dollar gas bill, Elizabeth. Do you realize what this move is costing us?”
“Yes,” Elizabeth said. “I do.”
She had turned the thermostat back up as soon as he left, but it didn’t seem to do any good. She put on a sweater and her raincoat and walked over to the campus.
The rain had stopped sometime during the night, but the central walk was still wet. At the far end, a girl in a yellow slicker stepped up on the curb. She took a few steps on the sidewalk, her head bent, as if she were looking at something on the ground, and then cut across the wet grass toward Gunter.
• • •
Elizabeth went into Carter Hall. The girl who had helped her the day before was leaning over the counter, taking notes from a textbook. She was wearing a pleated skirt and sweater like Elizabeth had worn in college.
“The styles we wore have all come back,” Tib had said when they had lunch together. “Those matching sweater-and-skirt sets and those horrible flats that we never could keep on our feet. And penny loafers.” She was on her third peach daiquiri and her voice had gotten calmer with each one, so that she almost sounded like her old self. “And cocktail dresses! Do you remember that rust formal you had, with the scoop neck and the long skirt with the raised design? I always loved that dress. Do you remember that time you loaned it to me for the Angel Flight dance?”