Chapter 26

Boy, am I glad to be able to post another chapter of the story of Lily and Alex. To those of you who have so kindly been following this story, thank you so much for your patience.

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It's becoming more difficult to know and share the best order of these chapters. This one, for example, focuses on the early days of these two women together. I hope you will forgive me--now or in the weeks ahead--if I fail to tell this story in a chapter sequence you can easily follow and understand. And please let me know if I don't!

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They had known each other sixteen months when they went to Paris. By then Lily and Alex got together every Wednesday night at their weekly Book Club and most Saturday afternoons over lunch during Amy’s dance lessons. And sometimes, with both Amy and Andy in tow, this would extend to an afternoon movie or local art exhibit or, to Lily’s goofy amazement, multiple strings of candlepin bowling. The kids loved to bowl and were happily oblivious to the sad fact that not one of the four of them ever even once broke 100.

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“Lily”, Alex had said, “Your bowling sucks”.

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“Alex”, Lily replied, “Your bowling sucks too. And you just about crack the alley when you throw the ball.”

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"Yes, but Lily, you look like an ostrich when you throw the ball. That’s worse.”

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Lily chuckled. “Not if you own the bowling alley, it’s not.”
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Lily was in charge of their tickets and passports. She kept them in a worn camel colored leather pouch she had picked up in Milan years ago while supervising a student exchange program. Although she was not supersitious, she was careful to use the pouch only for special occasions, which this certainly was. This would be the first time she and Alex would travel together, would spend extended time together. Twice when Mike was out of town Lily had occupied the Fournier guest bedroom for the weekend, but a week in Paris—this was something else again. This was something along the lines of the impossible and improbable, and they both knew it.

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As for Alex, except for a traditional spa weekend with her sister Paula every weary February and her annual ski trip with her investment club buddies, she could not recall a vacation without Mike and the kids. She had struggled for weeks about whether to go or not. By the time she told Lily she was in, Alex knew she might be stepping deeper and further into a forest of emotions that she had thus far, with mixed results, wrestled to control.
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Lily had been eyeing the eight day self guided Paris tour through the Show of the Month Travel Club for several months. One Saturday, over a scallops and risotto lunch at the Daily Catch, she casually asked Alex if she had either the interest or inclination to go.

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Alex listened to the itinerary and cost and simply replied, “Maybe. ”

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When several weeks passed without further mention of the trip, Lily was surprised, as bowling bowls flew, to hear an uncharacteristic, understated nonchalance in Alex’s voice.

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“I checked with Mike” she said. “I can make that Paris trip with you”.

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Lily, who was not prone to hyperbole or drama and had mastered certain social skills, mirrored Alex’s matter-of-fact tone.

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“Great”, Lily said, “I’ll book it for us”.

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That night, with a full moon casting a perfect spotlight on the apple green wall in her midnight black bedroom, Lily recognized a desire that she had not allowed herself to feel except in a few rare instances when loneliness overtook her.

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She and Alex would be together for eight days and seven nights. In the preceding months, though they publicly walked with their arms around or tucked into one another, and their greeting and parting hugs sometimes lingered, though Lily felt a warm rush when Alex called her ‘Honeygirl”, and though Lily never failed to ask for honorable guidance in her nightly prayers, until now-- Lily had managed to tightly control her thinking. But on this night she did not insist on affirming herself as a responsible independent professional single woman—solid and safe in the life she had built for herself.

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Instead, she imagined herself standing beside Alex, their hands joined and their arms swinging playground style. This was the image that comforted Lily for the three minutes just before she fell asleep, soon to dream that she was inside Dar Williams’ folksong wandering the hills of Iowa gruesomely searching for the love of her life.