Freedom

Perversely—since she wasn’t attracted to Walter—Patty felt competitive and vaguely offended by the presence of other girls on what could have been dates, and she was gratified to notice that it was she, not they, who made his eyes glow and his unstoppable blush come out. She did like to be the star, Patty did. Under pretty much all circumstances. At the last play they saw, in December at the Guthrie, Walter arrived just before curtain time, all snow-covered, with paperback Christmas presents for the other girls and, for Patty, an enormous poinsettia that he’d carried on the bus and through slushy streets and had difficulty checking at the coat counter. It was clear to everyone, even to Patty, that giving the other girls interesting books while giving her a plant was intended as the opposite of disrespectful. The fact that Walter wasn’t investing his enthusiasm in some slimmer version of his nice, adoring friends, but rather in Patty, who applied her intelligence and creativity mainly to thinking up newly nonchalant-seeming ways of mentioning Richard Katz, was mystifying and alarming but also, undeniably, flattering. After the show, Walter carried the poinsettia all the way back to her dorm for her, on the bus and through further slush. The card attached to it, which she opened in her room, said For Patty, with great affection, from her admiring fan.

It was right around then that Richard got around to dumping Eliza. He was apparently quite the brutal dumper. Eliza was beside herself when she called Patty with the news, wailing that “the faggot” had turned Richard against her, that Richard wasn’t giving her a chance, and that Patty had to help her and arrange a meeting with him, he refused to speak to her or open the door of his apartment or—

“I’ve got finals,” Patty said coolly.

“You can go over there and I’ll go with you,” Eliza said. “I just need to see him and explain.”

“Explain what?”

“That he has to give me a chance! That I deserve a hearing!”

“Walter isn’t gay,” Patty said. “That’s just something you made up in your head.”

“Oh my God, he’s turned you against me, too!”

“No,” Patty said. “That’s not how it is.”

“I’m coming over now and we can make a plan.”

“I’ve got my history final in the morning. I need to study.”

Patty now learned that Eliza had stopped going to classes six weeks earlier, because she was so into Richard. He’d done this to her, she’d given up everything for him, and now he’d hung her out to dry and she had to keep her parents from finding out that she was failing everything, she was coming over to Patty’s dorm now and Patty had to stay right there and wait for her, so they could make a plan.

“I’m really tired,” Patty said. “I have to study and then sleep.”

“I can’t believe it! He’s turned you both against me! My two favorite people in the world!”

Patty managed to get off the phone, hurried to the library, and stayed there until it closed. She was certain that Eliza would be waiting outside her dorm, smoking cigarettes and determined to keep her awake half the night. She dreaded paying these wages of friendship but was also resigned to it, and so it was strangely disappointing to return to her dorm and see no trace of Eliza. She almost felt like calling her, but her relief and her tiredness outweighed her guilt.

Three days went by without word from Eliza. The night before Patty left for Christmas vacation, she finally called Eliza’s number to make sure everything was OK, but the phone rang and rang. She flew home to Westchester in a cloud of guilt and worry that grew thicker with each of her failed attempts, from the phone in her parents’ kitchen, to make contact with her friend. On Christmas Eve she went so far as to call the Whispering Pines Motel in Hibbing, Minnesota.

“This is a great Christmas present!” Walter said. “Hearing from you.”

“Oh, well, thank you. I’m actually calling about Eliza. She’s sort of disappeared.”

“Count yourself lucky,” Walter said. “Richard and I finally had to unplug our phone.”

“When was that?”

“Two days ago.”

“Oh, well, that’s a relief.”

Patty stayed talking to Walter, answering his many questions, describing her siblings’ mad Yuletide acquisitiveness, and her family’s annual humiliating reminders of how amusingly old she’d been before she stopped believing in Santa Claus, and her father’s bizarro sexual and scatological repartee with her middle sister, and the middle sister’s “complaints” about how unchallenging her freshman course work at Yale was, and her mother’s second-guessing of her decision, twenty years earlier, to stop celebrating Hanukkah and other Jewish holidays. “And how are things with you?” Patty asked Walter after half an hour.

“Fine,” he said. “My mom and I are baking. Richard’s playing checkers with my dad.”

“That sounds nice. I wish I were there.”

“I wish you were, too. We could go snowshoeing.”

“That sounds really nice.”