Chance

by Connie Willis

On Wednesday Elizabeth’s next-door neighbor came over. It was raining hard, but she had run across the yard without a raincoat or an umbrella, her hands jammed in her cardigan sweater pockets.

“Hi,” she said breathlessly. “I live next door to you, and I just thought I’d pop in and say hi and see if you were getting settled in.” She reached in one of the sweater pockets and pulled out a folded piece of paper. “I wrote down the name of our trash pickup. Your husband asked about it the other day.”

She handed it to her. “Thank you,” Elizabeth said. The young woman reminded her of Tib. Her hair was short and blond and brushed back in wings. Tib had worn hers like that when they were freshmen.

“Isn’t this weather awful?” the young woman said. “It usually doesn’t rain like this in the fall.”

It had rained all fall when Elizabeth was a freshman. “Where’s your raincoat?” Tib had asked her when she unpacked her clothes and hung them up in the dorm room.

Tib was little and pretty, the kind of girl who probably had dozens of dates, the kind of girl who brought all the right clothes to college. Elizabeth hadn’t known what kind of clothes to bring. The brochure the college had sent the freshmen had said to bring sweaters and skirts for class, a suit for rush, a formal. It hadn’t said anything about a raincoat.

“Do I need one?” Elizabeth had said.

“Well, it’s raining right now if that’s any indication,” Tib had said.

“I thought it was starting to let up,” the neighbor said, “but it’s not. And it’s so cold.”

She shivered. Elizabeth saw that her cardigan was damp.

“I can turn the heat up,” Elizabeth said.

“No, I can’t stay. I know you’re trying to get unpacked. I’m sorry you had to move in in all this rain. We usually have beautiful weather here in the fall.” She smiled at Elizabeth. “Why am I telling you that? Your husband told me you went to school here. At the university.”

“It wasn’t a university back then. It was a state college.”

“Oh, right. Has the campus changed a lot?”

Elizabeth went over and looked at the thermostat. It showed the temperature as sixty-eight, but it felt colder. She turned it up to seventy-five. “No,” she said. “It’s just the same.”

“Listen, I can’t stay,” the young woman said. “And you’ve probably got a million things to do. I just came over to say hello and see if you’d like to come over tonight. I’m having a Tupperware party.”

A Tupperware party, Elizabeth thought sadly. No wonder she reminds me of Tib.

“You don’t have to come. And if you come you don’t have to buy anything. It’s not going to be a big party. Just a few friends of mine. I think it would be a good way for you to meet some of the neighbors. I’m really only having the party because I have this friend who’s trying to get started selling Tupperware and …” She stopped and looked anxiously at Elizabeth, holding her arms against her chest for warmth.

“I used to have a friend who sold Tupperware,” Elizabeth said.

“Oh, then you probably have tons of it.”

The furnace came on with a deafening whoosh. “No,” Elizabeth said. “I don’t have any.”

“Please come,” the young woman had continued to say even on the front porch. “Not to buy anything. Just to meet everybody.”

The rain was coming down hard again. She ran back across the lawn to her house, her arms wrapped tightly around her and her head down.

Elizabeth went back in the house and called Paul at his office.

“Is this really important, Elizabeth?” he said. “I’m supposed to meet with Dr. Brubaker in Admissions for lunch at noon, and I have a ton of paperwork.”

“The girl next door invited me to a Tupperware party,” Elizabeth said. “I didn’t want to say yes if you had anything planned for tonight.”

“A Tupperware party?!” he said. “I can’t believe you called me about something like that. You know how busy I am. Did you put your application in at Carter?”

“I’m going over there right now,” she said. “I was going to go this morning, but the …”

“Dr. Brubaker’s here,” he said, and hung up the phone.

Elizabeth stood by the phone a minute, thinking about Tib, and then put on her raincoat and walked over to the old campus.

“It’s exactly the same as it was when we were freshmen,” Tib had said when Elizabeth told her about Paul’s new job. “I was up there last summer to get some transcripts, and I couldn’t believe it. It was raining, and I swear the sidewalks were covered with exactly the same worms as they always were. Do you remember that yellow slicker you bought when you were a freshman?”

Tib had called Elizabeth from Denver when they came out to look for a house. “I read in the alumni news that Paul was the new assistant dean,” she said as if nothing had ever happened. “The article didn’t say anything about you, but I thought I’d call on the off-chance that you two were still married. I’m not.” Tib had insisted on taking her to lunch in Larimer Square. She had let her hair grow out, and she was too thin. She ordered a peach daiquiri and told Elizabeth all about her divorce. “I found out Jim was screwing some little slut at the office,” she had said, twirling the sprig of mint that had come with her drink, “and I couldn’t take it. He couldn’t see what I was upset about. ‘So I fooled around, so what?’ he told me. ‘Everybody does it. When are you going to grow up?’ I never should have married the creep, but you don’t know you’re ruining your life when you do it, do you?”

“No,” Elizabeth said.

“I mean, look at you and Paul,” she said. She talked faster than Elizabeth remembered, and when she called the waiter over to order another daiquiri, her voice shook a little. “Now that’s a marriage I wouldn’t have taken bets on, and you’ve been married, what? Fifteen years?”

“Seventeen,” Elizabeth said.

“You know, I always thought you’d patch things up with Tupper,” she said. “I wonder whatever became of him.” The waiter brought the daiquiri and took the empty one away. She took the mint sprig out and laid it carefully on the tablecloth.

“Whatever became of Elizabeth and Tib, for that matter,” she said.

The campus wasn’t really just the same. They had added a wing onto Frasier and cut down most of the elms. It wasn’t even really the campus anymore. The real campus was west and north of here, where there had been room for the new concrete classroom buildings and high-rise dorms. The music department was still in Frasier, and the PE department used the old gym in Gunter for women’s sports, but most of the old classroom buildings and the small dorms at the south end of the campus were offices now. The library was now the administration building and Kepner belonged to the campus housing authority, but in the rain the campus looked the same.

The leaves were starting to fall, and the main walk was wet and covered with worms. Elizabeth picked her way among them, watching her feet and trying not to step on them. When she was a freshman, she had refused to walk on the sidewalks at all. She had ruined two pairs of flats that fall by cutting through the grass to get to her classes.

“You’re a nut, you know that?” Tib had shouted, sprinting to catch up to her. “There are worms in the grass, too.”

“I know, but I can’t see them.”

When there was no grass, she had insisted on walking in the middle of the street. That was how they had met Tupper. He almost ran them down with his bike.

It had been a Friday night. Elizabeth remembered that, because Tib was in her ROTC Angel Flight uniform, and after Tupper had swerved wildly to miss them, sending up great sprays of water and knocking his bike over, the first thing he said was, “Cripes! She’s a cop!”

They had helped him pick up the plastic bags strewn all over the street. “What are these?” Tib had said, stooping because she couldn’t bend over in her straight blue skirt and high heels.

“Tupperware,” he said. “The latest thing. You girls wouldn’t need a lettuce crisper, would you? They’re great for keeping worms in.”

Carter Hall looked just the same from the outside, ugly beige stone and glass brick. It had been the student union, but now it housed Financial Aid and Personnel. Inside it had been completely remodeled. Elizabeth couldn’t even tell where the cafeteria had been.

“You can fill it out here if you want,” the girl who gave her the application said, and gave her a pen. Elizabeth hung her coat over the back of a chair and sat down at a desk by a window. It felt chilly, though the window was steamy.

They had all gone to the student union for pizza. Elizabeth had hung her yellow slicker over the back of the booth. Tupper had pretended to wring out his jean jacket and draped it over the radiator. The window by the booth was so steamed up, they couldn’t see out. Tib had written “I hate rain” on the window with her finger, and Tupper had told them how he was putting himself through college selling Tupperware.

“They’re great for keeping cookies in,” he said, hauling up a big pink box he called a cereal keeper. He put a piece of pizza inside and showed them how to put the lid on and burp it. “There. It’ll keep for weeks. Years. Come on. You need one. I’ll bet your mothers send you cookies all the time.”

He was a junior. He was tall and skinny, and when he put his damp jean jacket back on, the sleeves were too short, and his wrists stuck out. He had sat next to Tib on one side of the booth and Elizabeth had sat on the other. He had talked to Tib most of the evening, and when he was paying the check, he had bent toward Tib and whispered something to her. Elizabeth was sure he was asking her out on a date, but on the way home Tib had said, “You know what he wanted, don’t you? Your telephone number.”

Elizabeth stood up and put her coat back on. She gave the girl in the sweater and skirt back her pen. “I think I’ll fill this out at home and bring it back.”

“Sure,” the girl said.

When Elizabeth went back outside, the rain had stopped. The trees were still dripping, big drops that splattered onto the wet walk. She walked up the wide center walk toward her old dorm, looking at her feet so she wouldn’t step on any worms. The dorm had been converted into the university’s infirmary. She stopped and stood a minute under the center window, looking up at the room that had been hers and Tib’s.

Tupper had stood under the window and thrown pebbles up at it. Tib had opened the window and yelled, “You’d better stop throwing rocks, you …” Something hit her in the chest. “Oh, hi, Tupper,” she said, and picked it up off the floor and handed it to Elizabeth. “It’s for you,” she said. It wasn’t a pebble. It was a pink plastic gadget, one of the favors he passed out at his Tupperware parties.

“What’s this supposed to be?” Elizabeth had said, leaning out of the window and waving it at him. It was raining. Tupper had the collar of his jean jacket turned up and he looked cold. The sidewalk around him was covered with pink plastic favors.

“A present,” he said. “It’s an egg separator.”

“I don’t have any eggs.”

“Wear it around your neck then. We’ll be officially scrambled.”

“Or separated.”

He grabbed at his chest with his free hand. “Never!” he said. “Want to come out in the worms with me? I’ve got some deliveries to make.” He held up a clutch of plastic bags full of bowls and cereal keepers.

“I’ll be right down,” she had said, but she had stopped and found a ribbon to string the egg separator on before she went downstairs.

Elizabeth looked down at the sidewalk, but there were no plastic favors on the wet cement. There was a big puddle out by the curb, and a worm lay at the edge of it. It moved a little as she watched, in that horrid boneless way that she had always hated, and then lay still.

A girl brushed past her, walking fast. She stepped in the puddle, and Elizabeth took a half step back to avoid being splashed. The water in the puddle rippled and moved out in a wave. The worm went over the edge of the sidewalk and into the gutter.

Elizabeth looked up. The girl was already halfway down the center walk, late for class or angry or both. She was wearing an Angel Flight uniform and high heels, and her short blond hair was brushed back in wings along the sides of her garrison cap.

Elizabeth stepped off the curb into the street. The gutter was clogged with dead leaves and full of water. The worm lay at the bottom. She sat down on her heels, holding the application form in her right hand. The worm would drown, wouldn’t it? That was what Tupper had told her. The reason they came out on the sidewalks when it rained was that their tunnels filled up with water, and they would drown if they didn’t.

She stood up and looked down the central walk again, but the girl was gone, and there was nobody else on the campus. She stooped again and transferred the application to her other hand, and then reached in the icy water, and scooped up the worm in her cupped hand, thinking that as long as it didn’t move she would be able to stand it, but as soon as her fingers touched the soft pink flesh, she dropped it and clenched her fist.

“I can’t,” Elizabeth said, rubbing her wet hand along the side of her raincoat, as if she could wipe off the memory of the worm’s touch.

She took the application in both hands and dipped it into the water like a scoop. The paper went a little limp in the water, but she pushed it into the dirty, wet leaves and scooped the worm up and put it back on the sidewalk. It didn’t move.

“And thank God they do come out on the sidewalks!” Tupper had said, walking her home in the middle of the street from his Tupperware deliveries. “You think they’re disgusting lying there! What if they didn’t come out on the sidewalks? What if they all stayed in their holes and drowned? Have you ever had to do mouth-to-mouth resuscitation on a worm?”

Elizabeth straightened up. The job application was wet and dirty. There was a brown smear where the worm had lain, and a dirty line across the top. She should throw it away and go back to Carter to get another one. She unfolded it and carefully separated the wet pages so they wouldn’t stick together as they dried.

“I had first aid last semester, and we had to do mouth-to-mouth resuscitation in there,” Tupper had said, standing in the middle of the street in front of her dorm. “What a great class! I sold twenty-two square rounds for snake-bite kits. Do you know how to do mouth-to-mouth resuscitation?”

“No.”

“It’s easy,” Tupper had said, and put his hand on the back of her neck under her hair and kissed her, in the middle of the street in the rain.

The worm still hadn’t moved. Elizabeth stood and watched it a little longer, feeling cold, and then went out in the middle of the street and walked home.

Paul didn’t come home until after seven. Elizabeth had kept a casserole warm in the oven.

“I ate,” he said. “I thought you’d be at your Tupperware party.”

“I don’t want to go,” she said, reaching into the hot oven to get the casserole out. It was the first time she had felt warm all day.

“Brubaker’s wife is going. I told him you’d be there, too. I want you to get to know her. Brubaker’s got a lot of influence around here about who gets tenure.”

She put the casserole on top of the stove and then stood there with the oven door half-open. “I went over to apply for a job today,” she said, “and I saw this worm. It had fallen in the gutter and it was drowning and I picked it up and put it back on the sidewalk.”

“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?”

“Yes,” Elizabeth said, and picked up the bill.

Tib tried to stir her peach daiquiri with its mint sprig, but it slipped out of her fingers and sank to the bottom of the glass. “He really only took me to be nice.”

“I know,” Elizabeth had said. “Now how much do I owe? Six-fifty for the crepes and two for the wine cooler. Do they add on the tip here?”

“I need another job application,” Elizabeth said to the girl.

“Sure thing.” When the girl walked over to the files to get it, Elizabeth could see that she was wearing flat-heeled shoes like she had worn in college. Elizabeth thanked her and put the application in her purse.

She walked up past her dorm. The worm was still lying there. The sidewalk around it was almost dry, and the worm was a darker red than it should have been. “I should have put it in the grass,” she said out loud. She knew it was dead, but she picked it up and put it in the grass anyway, so no one would step on it. It was cold to the touch.

Sandy Konkel came over in the afternoon wearing a gray polyester pantsuit. She had a wet high-school letter jacket over her head. “John loaned me his jacket,” she said. “I wasn’t going to wear a coat this morning, but John told me I was going to get drenched. Which I was.”

“You might want to put it on,” Elizabeth said. “I’m sorry it’s so cold in here. I think there’s something wrong with the furnace.”

“I’m fine,” Sandy said. “You know, I wrote that article on your husband being the new assistant dean, and I asked him about you, but he didn’t say anything about your having gone to college here.”

She had a thick notebook with her. She opened it at tabbed sections. “We might as well get this alum stuff out of the way first, and then we can talk. This alum-rep job is a real pain, but I must admit I get kind of a kick out of finding out what happened to everybody. Let’s see,” she said, thumbing through the sections. “Found, lost, hopelessly lost, deceased. I think you’re one of the hopelessly lost. Right? Okay.” She dug a pencil out of her purse. “You were Elizabeth Wilson.”

“Yes,” Elizabeth said. “I was.” She had taken off her light sweater and put on a heavy wool one when she got home, but she was still cold. She rubbed her hands along her upper arms. “Would you like some coffee?”

“Sure,” she said. She followed Elizabeth to the kitchen and asked her questions about Paul and his job and whether they had any children while Elizabeth made coffee and put out the cream and sugar and a plate of the cookies she had baked for after the concert.

“I’ll read you some names off the hopelessly lost list, and if you know what happened to them, just stop me. Carolyn Waugh, Pam Callison, Linda Bohlender.” She was several names past Cheryl Tibner before Elizabeth realized that was Tib.

“I saw Tib in Denver this summer,” she said. “Her married name’s Scates, but she’s getting a divorce, and I don’t know if she’s going to go back to her maiden name or not.”

“What’s she doing?” Sandy said.

She’s drinking too much, Elizabeth thought, and she let her hair grow out, and she’s too thin. “She’s working for a stockbroker,” she said, and went to get the address Tib had given her. Sandy wrote it down and then flipped to the tabbed section marked “Found” and entered the name and address again.

“Would you like some more coffee, Mrs. Konkel?” Elizabeth said.

“You still don’t remember me, do you?” Sandy said. She stood up and took off her jacket. She was wearing a short-sleeved gray knit shell underneath it. “I was Karen Zamora’s roommate. Sondra Dickeson?”

Sondra Dickeson. She had had pale-blond hair that she wore in a pageboy, and a winter-white cashmere sweater and a matching white skirt with a kick pleat. She had worn it with black heels and a string of real pearls.

Sandy laughed. “You should see the expression on your face. You remember me now, don’t you?”

“I’m sorry. I just didn’t … I should have …”

“Listen, it’s okay,” she said. She took a sip of coffee. “At least you didn’t say, ‘How could you let yourself go like that?’ like Janice Brubaker did.” She bit into a cookie. “Well, aren’t you going to ask me whatever became of Sondra Dickeson? It’s a great story.”

“What happened to her?” Elizabeth said. She felt suddenly colder. She poured herself another cup of coffee and sat back down, wrapping her hands around the cup for warmth.

Sandy finished the cookie and took another one. “Well, if you remember, I was kind of a snot in those days. I was going to this Sigma Chi dinner dance with Chuck Pagano. Do you remember him? Well, anyway, we were going to this dance clear out in the country somewhere, and he stopped the car and got all clutchy-grabby, and I got mad because he was messing up my hair and my makeup so I got out of the car. And he drove off. So there I was, standing in the middle of nowhere in a formal and high heels. I hadn’t even grabbed my purse or anything, and it’s getting dark, and Sondra Dickeson is such a snot that it never even occurs to her to walk back to town or try to find a phone or something. No, she just stands there like an idiot in her brocade formal and her orchid corsage and her dyed satin pumps and thinks, ‘He can’t do this to me. Who does he think he is?’ ”

She was talking about herself as if she had been another person, which Elizabeth supposed she had been, an ice-blond with a pageboy and a formal like the one Elizabeth had loaned Tib for the Harvest Ball, a rust satin bodice and a bell skirt out of sculptured rust brocade. After the dance Elizabeth had given it to the Salvation Army.

“Did Chuck come back?” she said.

“Yes,” Sandy said, frowning, and then grinned. “But not soon enough. Anyway, it’s almost dark and along comes this truck with no lights on, and this guy leans out and says, ‘Hiya, gorgeous. Wanta ride?’ ” She smiled at her coffee cup as if she could still hear him saying it. “He was awful. His hair was down to his ears and his fingernails were black. He wiped his hand on his shirt and helped me up into the truck. He practically pulled my arm out of its socket, and then he said, ‘I thought there for a minute I was going to have to go around behind and shove. You know, you’re lucky I came along. I’m not usually out after dark on account of my lights being out, but I had a flat tire.’ ”

She’s happy, Elizabeth thought, putting her hand over the top of her cup to try to warm herself with the steam.

“And he took me home and I thanked him and the next week he showed up at the Phi house and asked me out for a date, and I was so surprised that I went, and I married him, and we have four kids.”

The furnace kicked on, and Elizabeth could feel the air coming out of the vent under the table, but it felt cold. “You went out with him?” she said.

“Hard to believe, isn’t it? I mean, at that age all you can think about is your precious self. You’re so worried about getting laughed at or getting hurt, you can’t even see anybody else. When my sorority sister told me he was downstairs, all I could think of was how he must look, his hair all slicked back with water and cleaning those black fingernails with a penknife, and what everybody would say. I almost told her to tell him I wasn’t there.”

“What if you had done that?”

“I guess I’d still be Sondra Dickeson, the snot, a fate worse than death.”

“A fate worse than death,” Elizabeth said, almost to herself, but Sandy didn’t hear her. She was plunging along, telling the story that she got to tell everytime somebody new moved to town, and no wonder she liked being alum rep.

“My sorority sister said, ‘He’s really got intestinal fortitude coming here like this, thinking you’d go out with him,’ and I thought about him, sitting down there being laughed at, being hurt, and I told my roommate to go to hell and went downstairs and that was that.” She looked at the kitchen clock. “Good lord, is it that late? I’m going to have to go pick up the kids pretty soon.” She ran her finger down the hopelessly lost list. “How about Dallas Tindall, May Matsumoto, Ralph DeArvill?”

“No,” Elizabeth said. “Is Tupper Hofwalt on that list?”

“Hofwalt.” She flipped several pages over. “Was Tupper his real name?”

“No. Phillip. But everybody called him Tupper because he sold Tupperware.”

She looked up. “I remember him. He had a Tupperware party in our dorm when I was a freshman.” She flipped back to the Found section and started paging through it.

He had talked Elizabeth and Tib into having a Tupperware party in the dorm. “As co-hostesses you’ll be eligible to earn points toward a popcorn popper,” he had said. “You don’t have to do anything except come up with some refreshments, and your mothers are always sending you cookies, right? And I’ll owe you guys a favor.”

They had had the party in the dorm lounge. Tupper pinned the names of famous people on their backs, and they had to figure out who they were by asking questions about themselves.

Elizabeth was Twiggy. “Am I a girl?” she asked Tib.

“Yes.”

“Am I pretty?”

“Yes,” Tupper had said before Tib could answer.

After she guessed it, she went over and stooped down next to the coffee table where Tupper was setting up his display of plastic bowls. “Do you really think Twiggy’s pretty?” she asked.

“Who said anything about Twiggy?” he said. “Listen, I wanted to tell you …”

“Am I alive?” Sharon Oberhausen demanded.

“I don’t know,” Elizabeth said. “Turn around so I can see who you are.”

The sign on her back said Mick Jagger.

“It’s hard to tell,” Tupper said.

Tib was King Kong. It had taken her forever to figure it out. “Am I tall?” she asked.

“Compared to what?” Elizabeth had said.

She stuck her hands on her hips. “I don’t know. The Empire State Building.”

“Yes,” Tupper said.

He had had a hard time getting them to stop talking so he could show them his butter keeper and cake taker and popsicle makers. While they were filling out their order forms, Sharon Oberhausen said to Tib, “Do you have a date yet for the Harvest Ball?”

“Yes,” Tib said.

“I wish I did,” Sharon said. She leaned across Tib. “Elizabeth, do you realize everybody in ROTC has to have a date or they put you on weekend duty? Who are you going with, Tib?”

“Listen, you guys,” Tib said, “the more you buy, the better our chances at that popcorn popper, which we are willing to share.”

They had bought a cake and chocolate-chip ice cream. Elizabeth cut the cake in the dorm’s tiny kitchen while Tib dished it up.

“You didn’t tell me you had a date to the Harvest Ball,” Elizabeth said. “Who is it? That guy in your ed-psych class?”

“No.” She dug into the ice cream with a plastic spoon.

“Who?”

Tupper came into the kitchen with a catalog. “You’re only twenty points away from a popcorn popper,” he said. “You know what you girls need?” He folded back a page and pointed to a white plastic box. “An ice-cream keeper. Holds a half gallon of ice cream, and when you want some, all you do is slide this tab out”—he pointed to a flat rectangle of plastic—“and cut off a slice. No more digging around in it and getting your hands all messy.”

Tib licked ice cream off her knuckles. “That’s the best part.”

“Get out of here, Tupper,” Elizabeth said. “Tib’s trying to tell me who’s taking her to the Harvest Ball.”

Tupper closed the catalog. “I am.”

“Oh,” Elizabeth said. Sharon stuck her head around the corner. “Tupper, when do we have to pay for this stuff?” she said. “And when do we get something to eat?”

Tupper said, “You pay before you eat,” and went back out to the lounge.

Elizabeth drew the plastic knife across the top of the cake, making perfectly straight lines in the frosting. When she had the cake divided into squares, she cut the corner piece and put it on the paper plate next to the melting ice cream. “Do you have anything to wear?” she said. “You can borrow my rust formal.”

Sandy was looking at her, the thick notebook opened almost to the last page. “How well did you know Tupper?” she said.

Elizabeth’s coffee was ice cold, but she put her hand over it, as if to try to catch the steam. “Not very well. He used to date Tib.”

“He’s on my deceased list, Elizabeth. He killed himself five years ago.”

Paul didn’t get home till after ten. Elizabeth was sitting on the couch wrapped in a blanket.

He went straight to the thermostat and turned it down. “How high do you have this thing turned up?” He squinted at it. “Eighty-five. Well, at least I don’t have to worry about you freezing to death. Have you been sitting there like that all day?”

“The worm died,” she said. “I didn’t save it after all. I should have put it over on the grass.”

“Ron Brubaker says there’s an opening for a secretary in the dean’s office. I told him you’d put in an application. You have, haven’t you?”

“Yes,” Elizabeth said. After Sandy left, she had taken the application out of her purse and sat down at the kitchen table to fill it out. She had had it nearly filled out before she realized it was a retirement fund withholding form.

“Sandy Konkel was here today,” she said. “She met her husband on a dirt road. They were both there by chance. By chance. It wasn’t even his route. Like the worm. Tib just walked by, she didn’t even know she did it, but the worm was too near the edge, and it went over into the water and drowned.” She started to cry. The tears felt cold running down her cheeks. “It drowned.”

“What did you and Sandy Konkel do? Get out the cooking sherry and reminisce about old times?”

“Yes,” she said. “Old times.”

In the morning Elizabeth took back the retirement fund withholding form. It had rained off and on all night, and it had turned colder. There were patches of ice on the central walk.

“I had it almost all filled out before I realized what it was,” she told the girl. A boy in a button-down shirt and khaki pants had been leaning on the counter when Elizabeth came in. The girl was turned away from the counter, filing papers.

“I don’t know what you’re so mad about,” the boy had said, and then stopped and looked at Elizabeth. “You’ve got a customer,” he said, and stepped away from the counter.

“All these dumb forms look alike,” the girl said, handing the application to Elizabeth. She picked up a stack of books. “I’ve got a class. Did you need anything else?”

Elizabeth shook her head and stepped back so the boy could finish talking to her, but the girl didn’t even look at him. She shoved the books into a backpack, slung it over her shoulder, and went out the door.

“Hey, wait a minute,” the boy said, and started after her. By the time Elizabeth got outside, they were halfway up the walk. Elizabeth heard the boy say, “So I took her out once or twice. Is that a crime?”

The girl jerked the backpack out of his grip and started off down the walk toward Elizabeth’s old dorm. In front of the dorm a girl in a yellow slicker was talking to another girl with short upswept blond hair. The girl in the slicker turned suddenly and started down the walk.

A boy went past Elizabeth on a bike, hitting her elbow and knocking the application out of her hand. She grabbed for it and got it before it landed on the walk.

“Sorry,” he said without glancing back. He was wearing a jean jacket. Its sleeves were too short, and his bony wrists stuck out. He was steering the bike with one hand and holding a big plastic sack full of pink and green bowls in the other. That was what he had hit her with.

“Tupper,” she said, and started to run after him.

She was down on the ice before she even knew she was going to fall, her hands splayed out against the sidewalk and one foot twisted under her. “Are you all right, ma’am?” the boy in the button-down shirt said. He knelt down in front of her so she couldn’t see up the walk.

Tupper would call me “ma’am,” too, she thought. He wouldn’t even recognize me.

“You shouldn’t try to run on this sidewalk. It’s slicker than shit.”

“I thought I saw somebody I knew.”

He turned, balancing himself on the flat of one hand, and looked down the long walk. There was nobody there now. “What did they look like? Maybe I can still catch them.”

“No,” Elizabeth said. “He’s long gone.”

The girl came over. “Should I go call 911 or something?” she said.

“I don’t know,” he said to her, and then turned back to Elizabeth. “Can you stand up?” he said, and put his hand under her arm to help her. She tried to bring her foot out from its twisted position, but it wouldn’t come. He tried again, from behind, both hands under her arms and hoisting her up, then holding her there by brute force till he could come around to her bad side. She leaned shamelessly against him, shivering.

“If you can get my books and this lady’s purse, I think I can get her up to the infirmary,” he said. “Do you think you can walk that far?”

“Yes,” Elizabeth said, and put her arm around his neck. The girl picked up Elizabeth’s purse and her job fund application.

“I used to go to school here. The central walk was heated back then.” She couldn’t put any weight on her foot at all. “Everything looks the same. Even the college kids. The girls wear skirts and sweaters just like we wore and those little flat shoes that never will stay on your feet, and the boys wear button-down shirts and jean jackets, and they look just like the boys I knew when I went here to school, and it isn’t fair. I keep thinking I see people I used to know.”

“I’ll bet,” the boy said politely. He shifted his weight, hefting her up so her arm was more firmly on his shoulder.

“I could maybe go get a wheelchair. I bet they’d loan me one,” the girl said, sounding concerned.

“You know it can’t be them, but it looks just like them, only you’ll never see them again, never. You’ll never even know what happened to them.” She had thought she was getting hysterical, but instead her voice was getting softer and softer until her words seemed to fade away to nothing. She wondered if she had even said them aloud.

The boy got her up the stairs and into the infirmary.

“You shouldn’t let them get away,” she said.

“No,” the boy said, and eased her onto the couch. “I guess you shouldn’t.”

“She slipped on the ice on the central walk,” the girl told the receptionist. “I think maybe her ankle’s broken. She’s in a lot of pain.” She came over to Elizabeth.

“I can stay with her,” the boy said. “I know you’ve got a class.”

She looked at her watch. “Yeah. Ed-psych. Are you sure you’ll be all right?” she said to Elizabeth.

“I’m fine. Thank you for all your help, both of you.”

“Do you have a way to get home?” the boy said.

“I’ll call my husband to come and get me. There’s really no reason for either of you to stay. I’m fine. Really.”

“Okay,” the boy said. He stood up. “Come on,” he said to the girl. “I’ll walk you to class and explain to old Harrigan that you were being an angel of mercy.” He took the girl’s arm, and she smiled up at him.

They left, and the receptionist brought Elizabeth a clipboard with some forms on it. “They were having a fight,” Elizabeth said.

“Well, I’d say whatever it was about, it’s over now.”

“Yes,” Elizabeth said. Because of me. Because I fell down on the ice.

“I used to live in this dorm,” Elizabeth said. “This was the lounge.”

“Oh,” the receptionist said. “I bet it’s changed a lot since then.”

“No,” Elizabeth said. “It’s just the same.”

Where the reception desk was, there had been a table with a phone on it where they had checked in and out of the dorm, and along the far wall the couch that she and Tib had sat on at the Tupperware party. Tupper had been sitting on it in his tuxedo when she came down to go to the library.

The receptionist was looking at her. “I bet it hurts,” she said.

“Yes,” Elizabeth said.

She had planned to be at the library when Tupper came, but he was half an hour early. He stood up when he saw her on the stairs and said, “I tried to call you this afternoon. I wondered if you wanted to go study at the library tomorrow.” He had brought Tib a corsage in a white box. He came over and stood at the foot of the stairs, holding the box in both hands.

“I’m studying at the library tonight,” Elizabeth said, and walked down the stairs past him, afraid he would put his hand out to stop her, but they were full of the corsage box. “I don’t think Tib’s ready yet.”

“I know. I came early because I wanted to talk to you.”

“You’d better call her so she’ll know you’re here,” she said, and walked out the door. She hadn’t even checked out, which could have gotten her in trouble with the dorm mother. She found out later that Tib had done it for her.

The receptionist stood up. “I’m going to see if Dr. Larenson can’t see you right now,” she said. “You are obviously in a lot of pain.”

Her ankle was sprained. The doctor wrapped it in an Ace bandage. Halfway through, the phone rang, and he left her sitting on the examining table with her foot propped up while he took the call.

The day after the dance Tupper had called her. “Tell him I’m not here,” Elizabeth had told Tib.

“You tell him,” Tib had said, and stuck the phone at her, and she had taken the receiver and said, “I don’t want to talk to you, but Tib’s here. I’m sure she does,” and handed the phone back to Tib and walked out of the room. She was halfway across campus before Tib caught up with her.

It had turned colder in the night, and there was a sharp wind that blew the dead leaves across the grass. Tib had brought Elizabeth her coat.

“Thank you,” Elizabeth said, and put it on.

“At least you’re not totally stupid,” Tib said. “Almost, though.”

Elizabeth jammed her hands deep in the pockets. “What did Tupper have to say? Did he ask you out again? To one of his Tupperware parties?”

“He didn’t ask me out. I asked him to the Harvest Ball because I needed a date. They put you on weekend duty if you didn’t have a date, so I asked him. And then after I did it, I was afraid you wouldn’t understand.”

“Understand what?” Elizabeth said. “You can date whoever you want.”

“I don’t want to date Tupper, and you know it. If you don’t stop acting this way, I’m going to get another roommate.”

And she had said, without any idea how important little things like that could be, how hanging up a phone or having a flat tire or saying something could splash out in all directions and sweep you over the edge, she had said, “Maybe you’d better do just that.”

They had lived in silence for two weeks. Sharon Oberhausen’s roommate didn’t come back after Thanksgiving, and Tib moved in with her until the end of the quarter. Then Elizabeth pledged Alpha Phi and moved into the sorority house.

The doctor came back and finished wrapping her ankle. “Do you have a ride home? I’m going to give you a pair of crutches. I don’t want you walking on this any more than absolutely necessary.”

“No, I’ll call my husband.” The doctor helped her off the table and onto the crutches. He walked back out to the waiting room and punched buttons on the phone so she could make an outside call.

She dialed her own number and told the ringing to come pick her up. “He’ll be over in a minute,” she told the receptionist. “I’ll wait outside for him.”

The receptionist helped her through the door and down the steps. She went back inside, and Elizabeth went out and stood on the curb, looking up at the middle window.

After Tupper took Tib to the Angel Flight dance, he had come and thrown things at her window. She would see them in the mornings when she went to class, plastic jar openers and grapefruit slicers and kitchen scrubber holders, scattered on the lawn and the sidewalk. She had never opened the window, and after a while he had stopped coming.

Elizabeth looked down at the grass. At first she couldn’t find the worm. She parted the grass with the tip of her crutch, standing on her good foot. It was there, where she had put it, shrivelled now and darker red, almost black. It was covered with ice crystals.

Elizabeth looked in the front window at the receptionist. When she got up to go file Elizabeth’s chart, Elizabeth crossed the street and walked home.

The walk home had made Elizabeth’s ankle swell so badly, she could hardly move by the time Paul came home.

“What’s the matter with you?” he said angrily. “Why didn’t you call me?” He looked at his watch. “Now it’s too late to call Brubaker. He and his wife were going to dinner. I suppose you don’t feel like going to the concert.”

“No,” Elizabeth said. “I’ll go.”

He turned down the thermostat without looking at it. “What in the hell were you doing anyway?”

“I thought I saw a boy I used to know. I was trying to catch up to him.”

“A boy you used to know?” Paul said disbelievingly. “In college? What’s he doing here? Still waiting to graduate?”

“I don’t know,” Elizabeth said. She wondered if Sandy ever saw herself on the campus, dressed in the winter-white sweater and pearls, standing in front of her sorority house talking to Chuck Pagano. She’s not there, Elizabeth thought. Sandy had not said, “Tell him I’m not here.” She had not said, “Maybe you’d better just do that,” and because of that and a flat tire, Sondra Dickeson isn’t trapped on the campus, waiting to be rescued. Like they are.

“You don’t even realize what this little move of yours has cost, do you?” Paul said. “Brubaker told me this afternoon he’d gotten you the job in the dean’s office.”

He took off the Ace bandage and looked at her ankle. She had gotten the bandage wet walking home. He went to look for another one. He came back carrying the wrinkled job application. “I found this in the bureau drawer. You told me you turned your application in.”

“It fell in the gutter,” she said.

“Why didn’t you throw it away?”

“I thought it might be important,” she said, and hobbled over on her crutches and took it away from him.

They were late to the concert because of her ankle, so they didn’t get to sit with the Brubakers, but afterward they came over. Dr. Brubaker introduced his wife.

“I’m so sorry about this,” Janice Brubaker said. “Ron’s been telling them for years they should get that central walk fixed. It used to be heated.” She was the woman Sandy had pointed at at the Tupperware party and said was Janice who loved Jesus. She was wearing a dark-red suit and had her hair teased into a bouffant, the way girls had worn their hair when Elizabeth was in college. “It was so nice of you to ask us over, but of course now with your ankle we understand.”

“No,” Elizabeth said. “We want you to come. I’m doing great, really. It’s just a little sprain.”

The Brubakers had to go to talk to someone backstage. Paul told the Brubakers how to get to their house and took Elizabeth outside. Because they were late, there hadn’t been anyplace to park Paul had had to park up by the infirmary. Elizabeth said she thought she could walk as far as the car, but it took them fifteen minutes to make it three fourths of the way up the walk.

“This is ridiculous,” Paul said angrily, and strode off up the walk to get the car.

She hobbled slowly on up to the end of the walk and sat down on one of the cement benches that had been vents for the heating system. Elizabeth had worn a wool dress and her warmest coat, but she was still cold. She laid her crutches against the bench and looked across at her old dorm.

Someone was standing in front of the dorm, looking up at the middle window. He looked cold. He had his hands jammed in his jean-jacket pockets, and after a few minutes he pulled something out of one of the pockets and threw it at the window.

It’s no good, Elizabeth thought, she won’t come.

He had made one last attempt to talk to her. It was spring quarter. It had been raining again. The walk was covered with worms. Tib was wearing her Angel Flight uniform, and she looked cold.

Tib had stopped Elizabeth after she came out of the dorm and said, “I saw Tupper the other day. He asked about you, and I told him you were living in the Alpha Phi house.”

“Oh,” Elizabeth had said, and tried to walk past her, but Tib had kept her there, talking as if nothing had happened, as if they were still roommates. “I’m dating this guy in ROTC. Jim Scates. He’s gorgeous!” she had said, as if they were still friends.

“I’m going to be late for class,” she said. Tib glanced nervously down the walk, and Elizabeth looked, too, and saw Tupper bearing down on them on his bike. “Thanks a lot,” she said angrily.

“He just wants to talk to you.”

“About what? How he’s taking you to the Alpha Sig dinner dance?” she had said, and turned and walked back into the dorm before he could catch up to her. He had called her on the dorm phone for nearly half an hour, but she hadn’t answered, and after a while he had given up.

But he hadn’t given up. He was still there, under her windows, throwing grapefruit slicers and egg separators at her, and she still, after all these years, wouldn’t come to the window. He would stand there forever, and she would never, never come.

She stood up. The rubber tip of one of her crutches skidded on the ice under the bench, and she almost fell. She steadied herself against the hard cement bench.

Paul honked and pulled over beside the curb, his turn lights flashing. He got out of the car. “The Brubakers are already going to be there, for God’s sake,” he said. He took the crutches away from her and hurried her to the car, his hand jammed under her armpit. When they pulled away, the boy was still there, looking up at the window, waiting.

The Brubakers were there, waiting in the driveway. Paul left her in the car while he unlocked the door. Dr. Brubaker opened the car door for her and tried to help her with her crutches. Janice kept saying, “Oh, really, we would have understood.” They both stood back, looking helpless, while Elizabeth hobbled into the house.

Janice offered to make the coffee, and Elizabeth let her, sitting at the kitchen table, her coat still on. Paul had set out the cups and saucers and the plate of cookies before they left.

“You were at the Tupperware party, weren’t you?” Janice said, opening the cupboards to look for the coffee filters. “I never really got a chance to meet you. I saw Sandy Konkel had her hooks in you.”

“At the party you said you like Jesus,” Elizabeth said. “Are you a Christian?”

Janice had been peeling off a paper filter. She stopped and looked hard at Elizabeth. “Yes,” she said. “I am. You know, Sandy Konkel told me a Tupperware party was no place for religion, and I told her that any place was the place for a Christian witness. And I was right, because that witness spoke to you, didn’t it, Elizabeth?”

“What if you did something, a long time ago, and you found out it had ruined everything?”

“ ‘For behold your sin will find you out,’ ” Janice said, holding the coffeepot under the faucet.

“I’m not talking about sin,” Elizabeth said. “I’m talking about little things that you wouldn’t think would matter so much, like stepping in a puddle or having a fight with somebody. What if you drove off and left somebody standing in the road because you were mad, and it changed their whole life, it made them into a different person? Or what if you turned and walked away from somebody because your feelings were hurt or you wouldn’t open your window, and because of that one little thing their whole lives were changed and now she drinks too much, and he killed himself, and you didn’t even know you did it.”

Janice had opened her purse and started to get out a Bible. She stopped with the Bible only half out of the purse and stared at Elizabeth. “You made somebody kill himself?”

“No,” Elizabeth said. “I didn’t make him kill himself and I didn’t make her get a divorce, but if I hadn’t turned and walked away from them that day, everything would have been different.”

“Divorce?” Janice said.

“Sandy was right. When you’re young all you think about is yourself. All I could think about was how much prettier she was and how she was the kind of girl who had dozens of dates, and when he asked her out, I thought that he’d liked her all along, and I was so hurt. I threw away the egg separator, I was so hurt, and that’s why I wouldn’t talk to him that day, but I didn’t know it was so important! I didn’t know there was a puddle there and it was going to sweep me over into the gutter.”

Janice laid the Bible on the table. “I don’t know what you’ve done, Elizabeth, but whatever it is, Our Lord can forgive you. I want to read you something.” She opened the Bible at a cross-shaped bookmark. “ ‘For God so loved the world that He gave his only begotten Son that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.’ Jesus, God’s own son, died on a cross and rose again so we could be forgiven for our sins.”

“What if he didn’t?” Elizabeth said impatiently. “What if he just lay there in the tomb getting colder and colder, until ice crystals formed on him and he never knew if he’d saved them or not?”

“Is the coffee ready yet?” Paul said, coming into the kitchen with Dr. Brubaker. “Or did you womenfolk get to talking and forget all about it?”

“What if they were waiting here for Jesus to save them, they’d been waiting for him all those years and he didn’t know it? He’d have to try to save them, wouldn’t he? He couldn’t just leave them there, standing in the cold looking up at her window? And maybe he couldn’t. Maybe they’d get a divorce or kill themselves anyway.” Her teeth had started to chatter. “Even if he did save them, he wouldn’t be able to save himself. Because it was too late. He was already dead.”

Paul moved around the table to her. Janice was paging through the Bible, looking frantically for the right scripture. Paul took hold of Elizabeth’s arm, but she shook it off impatiently. “In Matthew we see that he was raised from the dead and is alive today. Right now,” Janice said, sounding frightened. “And no matter what sin you have in your heart, he will forgive you if you accept him as your personal Savior.”

Elizabeth brought her fist down hard on the table so that the plate of cookies shook. “I’m not talking about sin. I’m talking about opening a window. She stepped in the puddle and the worm went over the edge and drowned. I shouldn’t have left it on the sidewalk.” She hit the table with her fist again. Dr. Brubaker picked up the stack of coffee cups and put them on the counter, as if he were afraid she might start throwing them at the wall. “I should have put it in the grass.”

Paul left for work without even having breakfast. Elizabeth’s ankle had swollen up so badly she could hardly get her slippers on, but she got up and made the coffee. The filters were still lying on the counter where Janice Brubaker had left them.

“Weren’t you satisfied that you’d ruined your chances for a job, you had to ruin mine, too?”

“I’m sorry about last night,” she said. “I’m going to fill out my job application today and take it over to the campus. When my ankle heals …”

“It’s supposed to warm up today,” Paul said. “I turned the furnace off.”

After he was gone, she filled out the application. She tried to erase the dark smear that the worm had left, but it wouldn’t come out, and there was one question that she couldn’t read. Her fingers were stiff with cold, and she had to stop and blow on them several times but she filled in as many questions as she could and folded it up and took it over to the campus.

The girl in the yellow slicker was standing at the end of the walk, talking to a girl in an Angel Flight uniform. She hobbled toward them with her head down, trying to hurry, listening for the sound of Tupper’s bike.

“He asked about you,” Tib said, and Elizabeth looked up.

She didn’t look at all the way Elizabeth remembered her. She was a little overweight and not very pretty, the kind of girl who wouldn’t have been able to get a date for the dance. Her short hair made her round face look even plumper. She looked hopeful and a little worried.

Don’t worry, Elizabeth thought. I’m here. She didn’t look at herself. She concentrated on getting up even with them at the right time.

“I told him you were living in the Alpha Phi house,” Tib said.

“Oh,” she heard her own voice, and under it the hum of a bicycle.

“I’m dating this guy in ROTC. He’s absolutely gorgeous!”

There was a pause, and then Elizabeth’s voice said, “Thanks a lot,” and Elizabeth pushed the rubber end of her crutch against a patch of ice and went down.

For a minute she couldn’t see anything for the pain. “I’ve broken it,” she thought, and clenched her fists to keep from screaming.

“Are you all right?” Tib said, kneeling in front of her so she couldn’t see anything. No, not you! Not you! For a minute she was afraid that it hadn’t worked, that the girl had turned and walked away. But after all, this was not a stranger but only herself, who was too kind to let a worm drown. She had only gone around to Elizabeth’s other side, where she couldn’t see her. “Did she break it?” she said. “Should I go call an ambulance or something?”

No. “No,” Elizabeth said. “I’m fine. If you could just help me up.”

The girl who had been Elizabeth Wilson put her books down on the cement bench and came and knelt down by Elizabeth. “I hope we don’t collapse in a heap,” she said, and smiled at Elizabeth. She was a pretty girl. I didn’t know that either, Elizabeth thought, even when Tupper told me. She took hold of Elizabeth’s arm and Tib took hold of the other.

“Tripping innocent passersby again, I see. How many times have I told you not to do that?” And here, finally, was Tupper. He had laid his bike flat in the grass and put his bag of Tupperware beside it.

Tib and the girl that had been herself let go and stepped back and he knelt beside her. “They’re not bad girls, really. They just like to play practical jokes. But banana peels is going too far, girls,” he said, so close she could feel his warm breath on her cheek. She turned to look at him, suddenly afraid that he would be different, too, but it was only Tupper, who she had loved all these years. He put his arm around her. “Now just put your arm around my neck, sweetheart. That’s right. Elizabeth, come over here and atone for your sins by helping this pretty lady up.”

She had already picked her books up and was holding them against her chest, looking angry and eager to get away. She looked at Tib, but Tib was picking up the crutches, stooping down in her high heels because she couldn’t bend over in her Angel Flight skirt.

She put her books down again and came around to Elizabeth’s other side to take hold of her arm, and Elizabeth grabbed for her hand instead and held it tightly so she couldn’t get away. “I took her to the dance because she helped with the Tupperware party. I told her I owed her a favor,” he said, and Elizabeth turned and looked at him.

He was not looking at her really. He was looking past her at the other Elizabeth, who would not answer the phone, who would not come to the window, but he seemed to be looking at her, and on his young remembered face there was a look of such naked, vulnerable love that it was like a blow.

“I told you so,” Tib said. She laid the crutches against the bench.

“I’m sure this lady doesn’t want to hear this,” Elizabeth said.

“I was going to tell you at the party, but that idiot Sharon Oberhausen …”

Tib brought over the crutches. “After I asked him, I thought, ‘What if she thinks I’m trying to steal her boyfriend?’ and I got so worried I was afraid to tell you. I really only asked him to get out of weekend duty. I mean, I don’t like him or anything.”

Tupper grinned at Elizabeth. “I try to pay my debts, and this is the thanks I get. You wouldn’t get mad at me if I took your roommate to a dance, would you?”

“I might,” Elizabeth said. It was cold sitting on the cement. She was starting to shiver. “But I’d forgive you.”

“You see that?” he said.

“I see,” Elizabeth said disgustedly, but she was smiling at him now. “Don’t you think we’d better get this innocent passerby up off the sidewalk before she freezes to death?”

“Upsy-daisy, sweetheart,” Tupper said, and in one easy motion she was up and sitting on the stone bench.

“Thank you,” she said. Her teeth were chattering with the cold.

Tupper knelt in front of her and examined her ankle. “It looks pretty swollen,” he said. “Do you want us to call somebody?”

“No, my husband will be along any minute. I’ll just sit here till he comes.”

Tib fished Elizabeth’s application out of the puddle. “I’m afraid it’s ruined,” she said.

“It doesn’t matter.”

Tupper picked up his bag of bowls. “Say,” he said, “you wouldn’t be interested in having a Tupperware party? As hostess, you could earn valuable points toward …”

“Tupper!” Tib said.

“Will you leave this poor lady alone?” Elizabeth said.

He held up the sack. “Only if you’ll go with me to deliver my lettuce crispers to the Sigma Chi house.”

“I’ll go,” Tib said. “There’s this darling Sigma Chi I’ve been wanting to meet.”

“And I’ll go,” Elizabeth said, putting her arm around Tib. “I don’t trust the kind of boyfriend you find on your own. Jim Scates is a real creep. Didn’t Sharon tell you what he did to Marilyn Reed?”

Tupper handed Elizabeth the sack of bowls while he stood his bike up. Elizabeth handed them to Tib.

“Are you sure you’re all right?” Tupper said. “It’s cold out here. You could wait for your husband in the student union.”

She wished she could put her hand on his cheek just once. “I’ll be fine,” she said.

The three of them went down the walk toward Frasier, Tupper pushing the bike. When they got even with Carter Hall, they cut across the grass toward Frasier. She watched them until she couldn’t see them anymore, and then sat there a while longer on the cold bench. She had hoped that something might happen, some sign that she had rescued them, but nothing happened. Her ankle didn’t hurt anymore. It had stopped the minute Tupper touched it.

She continued to sit there. It seemed to her to be getting colder, though she had stopped shivering, and after a while she got up and walked home, leaving the crutches where they were.

It was cold in the house. Elizabeth turned the thermostat up and sat down at the kitchen table, still in her coat, waiting for the heat to come on. When it didn’t, she remembered that Paul had turned the furnace off, and she went and got a blanket and wrapped up in it on the couch. Her ankle did not hurt at all, though it felt cold. When the phone rang, she could hardly move it. It took her several rings to make it to the phone.

“I thought you weren’t going to answer,” Paul said. “I made an appointment with a Dr. Jamieson for you this afternoon at three. He’s a psychiatrist.”

“Paul,” she said. She was so cold it was hard to talk. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s a little late for that, isn’t it?” he said. “I told Dr. Brubaker you were on muscle relaxants for your ankle. I don’t know whether he bought it or not.” He hung up.

“Too late,” Elizabeth said. She hung up the phone. The back of her hand was covered with ice crystals. “Paul,” she tried to say, but her lips were stiff with cold, and no sound came out.

Content

Chance
by Connie Willis