Freedom

According to his friends, Walter had grown up living in cramped quarters behind the office of a motel called the Whispering Pines, with an alcoholic father, an older brother who regularly beat him up, a younger brother who studiously copied the older brother’s ridicule of him, and a mother whose physical handicaps and low morale so impaired her performance as the motel’s housekeeper and night manager that during high season, in the summer, Walter often cleaned rooms all afternoon and then checked in late arrivals while his father was drinking with his VFW buddies and his mother slept. This was in addition to his regular family job of helping his dad maintain the physical plant, doing everything from sealing the parking lot to snaking drains to repairing the boiler. His dad depended on his help, and Walter provided it in pere

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, Mi

“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 a

“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.”

It genuinely did, and Patty could no longer tell whether it was Richard’s presence that made Walter appealing or whether he might be appealing for his own sake-for his ability to make whatever place he was in seem like a homey place to be.

The dreadful call from Eliza came on Christmas night. Patty answered it on the extension in the basement, where she was watching an NBA game by herself. Before she could even apologize, Eliza herself apologized for her silence and said that she’d been busy seeing doctors. “They say I have leukemia,” she said.

“No.”

“I’m starting treatments after New Year’s. My parents are the only other ones who know, and you can’t tell anyone. You especially can’t tell Richard. Will you swear you won’t tell anyone?”

Patty’s cloud of guilt and worry now condensed into a storm of sentiment. She wept and wept and asked Eliza if she was sure, if the doctors were sure. Eliza explained that she’d been feeling increasingly draggy as the fall went on, but she hadn’t wanted to tell anyone, because she was afraid Richard would dump her if it turned out she had mono, but finally she’d felt so crappy that she went to see a doctor, and the verdict had come back two days earlier: leukemia.