Alicia luxuriated in the touch and smell of the freshly laundered sheets enveloping her body. She was warm and happy. She loved her alone mornings. After her jobs were done. And, after George, her husband of 20 years, had left to follow another job lead that, like the others, would undoubtedly only lead back home. As much as she cared for George, he really had become a house eunuch - faithful; eager to please; underfoot. So Alicia cherished the times when the house was empty and she had no one to organize or do for; when she could snuggle back under her covers and let her mind doze-dream. And this morning there was also the anticipation of the call she knew would come.
Her life was so full, and yet so different than what she'd assumed it would be. She'd married George because he was a good catch. That's what her mother had told her. And Alicia was always the dutiful daughter. She'd been in love at the time - not with George, but with a schoolteacher, a man of no prospects. He wanted to be an architect, but he was mired in a dead-end teaching job, and she’d laughed when he told her of his dream. Still, she was in love with him, and with the romance of being in love, and with being in California and the sunshine and beaches and starry nights.
Her family was solid, conservative, Nebraskan. They didn't believe in starry nights and romance. They believed in prospects. And George had plenty of those. As the heir apparent to the town's leading merchants, George was the perfect match, and he was utterly devoted to Alicia. So she made the rational decision and followed her roots, and her mother's advice. It was a good choice - a solid choice. She’d cried for four days before the wedding.
Alicia and George were launched in 1980 in one of those idyllic wedding ceremonies that you always see in Vogue, or at least The Ladies Home Journal, but which you've never really seen yourself. It was staged at the home of George's uncle, the merchant king, whose sweeping expanse of manicured lawn made the perfect setting for the floral archway under which they were married, and for the tent where the dance band played. The elite all came and strolled and nodded, and sipped champagne. The contract was made. Alicia would be a good wife, and mother. George would work hard, be successful and rich, and together they would enjoy all the best that the American century had to offer.
But it’s never that simple, is it? The children followed, and with them the tennis and ballet lessons, the den mothering, and PTA-ing. George and Alicia traveled, cheered at soccer games, and swooshed the floor at country club dances. Their lives seemed perfect. The town swirled around them, but Alicia and George didn't talk. The center of their marriage was an untuned radio playing nothing but white noise. Their lives seemed so solid from the outside, but they were struggling.
When George was fired, Alicia was not surprised. The signs had been there for some time. George's jovial incompetence had caught up with him. His two cocktail lunches were leaving him vacant in the afternoon, and the family business, which had seemed such a sure thing, was shunting him aside for brighter and more aggressive men.
In the days that followed his firing, George became totally dysfunctional. At night, he’d have a scotch, doze in front of the evening news, and go to bed early - not to their bed. They slept apart. And unless she pushed him out to another hopeless job interview, he slept late. She worked hard to stretch their savings, but as the year-end holidays hit, the family's prospects and hers looked as barren as the snowy landscape that surrounded her. Alicia didn’t want to be resentful, but George’s endless winter of discontent left her with little joy.
The Christmas card on its face did not seem to be an epiphany, a catalyst that would send her world spinning into new orbits, but life's important events often begin quietly unnoticed. It was from Evan, her old California lover and friend. Alicia had not heard from him in more than 20 years, not since she'd dropped him and laughed at his ambition. It was a nice card. Nothing special. Just "How ya doin'?" Still she couldn't believe it, - after all this time.
Alicia was swallowed up by Christmas, and forgot about Evan's note. It reappeared as she was cleaning up in January and tossing out the last of the Christmas detritus. The cards were always the last to go. Evan's she kept. He'd left a phone number in Portland, Oregon, and she started to call him a couple of times, but always chickened out. Why was she so nervous? It was just a phone call for God's sake. He was 2,000 miles away and had his own life. But the door to possibility, like Pandora's box, was open.
Alicia walked through that door a few days later when she made the call. "Hello?" The voice was pleasant, and familiar.
“This is Alicia." They had a lot of catching up to do. Evan was now a successful architect, and headed a large firm. He'd spent time in New York, but would always be a Westerner at heart. He had two kids. He and his ex-wife had a "good" divorce. They were friends. He had traveled around the world and lived in one of those panoramic houses that look like movie sets. How ironic that the school teacher her mother had rejected for her had gone on to success and a life far more interesting than her own hand-picked one. She was jealous and mad at herself for not following her own instincts. But that decision was made long ago.
