George and Lizzie by Nancy Pearl
To my husband Joe, who makes my life possible and without whom this novel wouldn’t exist. Fifty-one years and counting!
If you are involved in a fantasy relationship with someone in which the sex is so good it’s like a fantasy and things happen between you that are
incredibly private and unmentionable that
you could never do with anyone else ever again so much so that you moan with pleasure in bed and can’t believe it’s really happening and don’t even bother fantasizing about anyone else or any situation other than the one you’re in, then you are in very very serious trouble and good luck to you. It won’t last and when it ends, you’ll walk the floor and wear out your shoes.
If, on the other hand, you are involved with someone with whom you have regular, decent sex
that feels good and normal, but that you
would never think about for a moment
when masturbating—which is by no means to put it down—then the chances of this relationship lasting a very long time, of the two of you growing old together, are very good. But often this is simply not enough.
Or it is enough when what is wanted, unfortunately or not, is more than enough.
—Terence Winch, “The Bells Are Ringing for Me and Chagall”
How They Met
The night Lizzie and George met—it was at the Bowlarama way out on Washtenaw—she was flying high on some awfully good weed because her heart was broken. For the past several weeks she’d been subsisting on mugs of Stoli and popcorn. It was Leon Daly who’d told her that drinking vodka that’d been kept in the freezer was what got you through the bad times. Lizzie had known (with the small part of her brain that still seemed to work during the difficult months since Jack McConaghey disappeared from her life) that Leon meant bad times due to football injuries (he was then the right defensive tackle on their high school team), but Lizzie figured, what the hell, anything to mellow the sadness was worth a try. So vodka, taken directly from the freezer and poured seemingly nonstop down Lizzie’s throat by Lizzie herself, had infected her arms and legs and brain with welcome numbness. She could see how it might even improve her football game. The popcorn was her own idea.
But Marla, tired of the emotional and physical sloppiness of her roommate and best friend’s drunkenness, and engaged, as she was, to the campus supplier of superior dope (as well as being a major pothead himself), suggested Lizzie switch. Good plan! After only a few days it was clear to Lizzie that, for what she wanted, weed was the drug of choice.
Lizzie had never been in the Bowlarama, or any bowling alley, for that matter. During the years when she might have gone as a kid, her parents had insisted that Sheila, her babysitter, take her to ballets, museums, libraries, operas, theaters, and planetariums. Marla had dragged her to the bowling alley because she loved Lizzie and she was exhausted by sharing an apartment with someone whose broken heart still showed no signs of mending, though months had passed.
Marla thought that bowling, an activity far removed from their normal lives, might bring Lizzie to her senses. And was she ever right. Lizzie was immediately entranced. The noise! The swoosh of the balls hurtling down the alley! (Although she didn’t yet know it was called an alley.) The satisfying thunks when the ball reached its targets! The excited yips and heys of the bowlers! Those cunning shoes with the numbers on the back! The smell of the place—a combination of stale beer and sweat and a hint of talcum powder. Weird! Those tiny pencils? Fabulous! And those balls—some black, some zigzagged with color!
On the other hand, George was high as a kite on happiness and pride because he was not only out on a date with the current woman of his dreams, but he was also about to bowl the best game of his life since 1982, when he was twelve years old.
In October of his first year in dental school, George developed a serious crush on Julia Draznin. Julia was beautiful and had an intelligence that was said to be stratospheric. It was rumored (although never confirmed) that she had gone straight into dental school after her junior year at Bryn Mawr. She was the subject of both the waking and sleeping dreams of her fellow students, some of whom had already dated her. You could see Julia and her current boyfriend at the movies, Rollerblading on spring evenings in Ann Arbor, or sitting around in coffee shops, talking animatedly. The word on tooth street was that she’d go out with you for a few times and then let you down gently while explaining that she didn’t intend to get serious about anyone until after she’d established her practice, several years in the future. This left many of her suitors emotionally bereft.
George intended to change all this. Before he finally asked Julia out, he considered several options for what they should actually do on the date. Whatever they did had to be unique and sophisticated, or ironically quotidian, that was the main thing. George immediately rejected fishing in the Huron River (much better for a second or third date, he felt), a concert (not original enough), and that old standby, dinner and a movie (ditto). So what was left? Bowling was left. George would give you odds that not one of their fellow dentists-to-be had taken her bowling. It would be great, right? Even though he himself had not been bowling in, let’s see, almost a decade. But the good times he’d had in bowling alleys were among the many pleasant memories from George’s childhood.
George saw himself as a suave bowler, definitely not a dork, someone Julia would surely recognize as worthy of her attention. He was trying to decide whether he should admit to Julia that bowling was something he was good at, or used to be pretty good at. Would that charm her? Or would she think it was ridiculous to be pleased that you’re good at throwing a ball down a lane? Would she go home and tell her roommate that George was handsome, smart, and frequently able to convert the 7-10 split?
That’s the setup, George sometime later explained to Lizzie, with just the two corner pins left, one on either side of the alley. It’s possible to convert the spare by hitting the inside of one of the pins, causing it to rebound off the wall and slide briskly back across the alley to take down the other pin, but it’s not easy. Lizzie tried, it must be said not very hard, to show some enthusiasm for this tidbit of information.