“You’d think so,” George agreed happily. “But maybe the dental gods knew that we wanted to spend the day together and planned accordingly.”
They were in general accord about how much they’d enjoyed the film (George perhaps a tad more than Lizzie), how great the casting was, how they couldn’t think of anyone better to play those roles than John Turturro and John Goodman. Lizzie had read in the newspaper that morning about all the literary allusions in the film, but she and George could only name one: Shakespeare.
“That doesn’t say much,” George said. “It’s probably hard to find anything written after 1600 and probably even earlier that doesn’t have some allusion to his plays.”
Lizzie agreed. “I remember reading a novel in which one of the characters, a college professor, was writing a book on the influence of Emily Dickinson on Shakespeare and how his colleagues always misheard it and thought it was the other way around. I wish I could remember the title, because talking about it now makes me want to read it again. It’s so interesting to think about. Do you think we read Shakespeare differently because of Dickinson’s poems?”
“I don’t know,” George said. “You’ll have to read me some of her poems. I haven’t read anything by Dickinson since high school, and that was the poem about death, the one that’s always included in anthologies. Maybe I’d understand it better now. Anyway, how would you even demonstrate that it was true, though?”
“I guess you’d study a lot of Shakespeare criticism written before and after Dickinson and compare them.”
“I don’t see how that would work,” George argued. “There’s no real way to know in any case. It’s all down to interpretation, anyway.”
“All I was saying is that I think it’s such a cool idea. Pascal’s influence on Sappho; Saint Aquinas’s influence on Homer. Gosh, the possibilities are endless.” Lizzie untucked her arm from George’s and moved away a few inches so they were no longer touching. “You’re no fun, George. I really hate it when you have to have all the facts before you can even wonder about something.”
George was deep in thought and gave no indication that he’d heard Lizzie. He didn’t seem to notice they were now walking separately.
Finally Lizzie couldn’t stand it any longer. “Are you still thinking about what facts you’d need to in order to prove influence works backward in time?”
He took her arm and firmly tucked it back in his. “No, actually. I was wondering if you’d like to come home with me for Christmas.”
Lizzie was flabbergasted. “Go with you to Tulsa for Christmas? Really? Tulsa, with you? Why?”
He stood so that they were facing one another. “Because we’ve been going out for almost a year, which is longer than I’ve ever dated anyone, and because I’d very much like to have my parents meet you. And you to meet them. Will you think about it? We probably have a few days before we need to get our airline tickets.”
When they got back to the apartment, they turned on the television to watch the Eagles beat the Giants in a meaningless game. George didn’t care who won—he suspected that nobody but the coaches and probably some of the players on both teams did either—but he always got a kick out of telling Lizzie about what OSU players were on which team and how high they were drafted and whether he’d seen them play. Lizzie wasn’t really listening. She was worrying up a storm. What did this potential visit mean? Did she even want to meet his parents? Was this going to be like the thin edge of the wedge, après lequel, le commitment? And, gosh, she had begun it, really, hadn’t she? She’d initiated every forward movement in their relationship. They wouldn’t be together if she hadn’t called him way back in December or agreed to go out with him all year. And, true, she had brought him to her family’s disastrous Thanksgiving (which in retrospect had somehow brought them closer together), but that wasn’t because she wanted her parents to meet him or vice versa. She’d invited him because she couldn’t stand being home and hoped his being there would help her get through the day. Maybe the role George played in her life was to distract her from the voices in her head and all her despair about Jack.
Ugh, Lizzie, she said to herself, that is a terrible thing to think. Unfortunately, it sounded very true. Maybe she needed someone in her life besides Marla and James, another person who didn’t despise her or think she was an awful human being. Maybe that someone was George. It was quite possible that George had unaccountably fallen for her, and fallen hard. He didn’t know about Jack or that biggest, stupidest, most awful mistake, the Great Game. He had no idea of all her many sorrows and her multitude of flaws. She remembered a line from a poem by Stephen Dunn, one of Jack’s favorite poets, about wanting to be loved beyond deserving. That’s what she wanted. And Jack couldn’t. Or wouldn’t. But maybe George could, and would.
Still, the decision to go to Tulsa had big stakes and lots of possible repercussions.
“It’s such a family holiday, maybe your folks wouldn’t want you to bring me.”
“Are you kidding? My mother loves company. Really. She begged me to invite you. Please come.”
Lizzie hesitated. “I don’t know. Let me think about it, okay? “
That evening, in a panic, she asked Marla whether, if she went to Tulsa, she needed to bring presents for George’s parents and, if so, what she should bring. Marla loved buying presents and did it brilliantly. She had an instinctive sense of what someone would enjoy receiving and didn’t mind shopping until she found exactly what it was she was looking for. Lizzie knew from firsthand experience that Marla could figure out what you really wanted even before you knew it was what you wanted. Marla’s talent was how Lizzie now had a supply of bath accoutrements, salts and oils and nice-smelling soaps, none of which Lizzie had ever thought she wanted and would certainly never purchase for herself. Lizzie, on the other hand, had no facility for either part of the process. She tended to be so overwhelmed by the quantity of choices available that she left the store empty-handed, feeling both guilt and relief. Plus there was no way she could ever fathom what someone else would want.
Marla’s firm opinion was that, yes, Lizzie needed to bring George’s parents a gift. At the very least, a hostess gift, to thank them for their hospitality. She ruled out candy and liquor. Too much of a stereotype: the new girlfriend arriving with candy and liquor in hand. Marla favored the dramatic and inventive. She instructed Lizzie to ask George some questions about his parents.
The next day she reported the answers back to Marla. Yes, they both liked to read. Yes, they liked to travel, or at least George’s mother did. His father was a hug-the-hearth. “George didn’t put it in those words, but it’s what he meant. You know, I’ve always wanted to say ‘hug-the-hearth’ and never thought I could find a way to use it in a sentence. It’s from a poem by the oh-God-the-pain girl.”