Alice had written six stories for ten people, all of whom had found love. Still, she was not convinced that her stories were responsible for the relationships that developed in their wake. She had a talent for making people see themselves a little more clearly—that much she believed. This was not supernatural, though, no more than a psychologist’s ability to help her clients or a friend’s talent for sage advice. All she did was encourage people to get out of their own way.
It wasn’t until the eleventh person came along that Alice started to suspect that what she did really was magic. For the eleventh person was someone who had already had her one great love. Someone who did not want to find love again.
The eleventh person was her mother.
3
The Woman with a Man’s Name
If it hadn’t been for Alice’s grandmother and a particular streak of not giving a damn, Alice’s parents never would have met. Grandma Millie hadn’t given a damn what her in-laws thought of their outspoken daughter-in-law, who had an opinion on everything from the Supreme Court’s new obscenity test to puff sleeves. She didn’t give a damn what her pupils thought when she doled out detention like seconds at dinner, didn’t give a damn when their weak-willed parents pleaded that she was holding sixteen-year-old girls to impossible standards. She didn’t give a damn what anyone thought of her, so she certainly didn’t give a damn what the nurse on the maternity ward thought about the name she’d selected for her daughter.
“Bobby,” Millie had declared to the nurse, holding her sticky newborn in the crook of her arm. “We’re going to call her Bobby.”
The nurse scribbled on the document fastened to her clipboard. “Roberta. What a lovely name.”
“Not Roberta. Bobby. With ay,” Millie said.
The nurse stared at her liked she’d proposed naming Alice’s mother after a vegetable, Romaine or Zucchini, something that actors would call their children today. “Bobby is a nickname. Most often for Robert.”
“Now you’re catching on.” Millie cooed to Bobby as the newborn began to awaken to the harshness of her new reality.
“What’s going to happen to this beautiful little girl when people hear her name and expect a boy? She’ll spend her entire life correcting them.”
“Precisely.” Millie sat up a little straighter in her hospital bed. “Why must a girl’s name decide her fate? Make her ineligible for a job, a mortgage, a bank account?”
Millie was prepared to continue, but the nurse shook her head. “Bobby it is,” she said and walked out.
While Millie had given her daughter a man’s name to help her see herself as equal to a man, she had not expected her daughter to be confused for a man when she enrolled in college.
At eighteen, Bobby walked into her dorm room, expecting to find a pair of penny loafers beside the door. Instead, she tripped over a pair of men’s tennis shoes. A fresh-faced boy with a smattering of freckles across his cheeks was napping on one of the two twin beds. He sat up at the sound of her body hitting the wood floor.
“Are you okay?” He rushed over to help her up.
Embarrassed and flustered, she pushed his extended arm away. “What are you doing?”
“Helping you,” he said, awkwardly disappearing his hand into his pocket. “I’m Paul, Paul Meadows.”
“No, what are you doing in my room?” She looked around to see an unpacked suitcase open on the floor, a Beach Boys poster already pinned to the wall.
“You must be lost. This is a men’s dorm.” Paul located a letter on the desk beside the dresser. “Says here this is my room along with a Bobby Klein.”
“You’re looking at Bobby Klein. In the flesh. As far as I know, I’ve never been a man.”
The boy’s cheeks turned a deep red, and Bobby laughed. “Don’t worry. I’ve been dealing with this my entire life.”
When she sat down on the bare twin mattress that was supposed to belong to the male Bobby Klein, the boy began pacing.
“We have to fix this immediately,” he said.
“Are you afraid I might sneak a peek when you’re in your boxers? You have my word.” She raised her right hand. “I solemnly swear to avert my eyes the moment you disrobe.”
He stopped pacing. Looked right at her, although he did not seem to see her, Bobby, the wide-faced woman he would love for the rest of his life. “You find this funny?”
“A little.”
“There’s nothing funny about it,” he insisted. In time, he would find everything about their first meeting funny—the mishap, its fate, the ebullient woman who taught him to love life. In that moment, though, he could only focus on this young girl’s honor, which he foolishly assumed needed protecting. “A man’s dorm is no place for a woman.”
“My delicate constitution just can’t handle it.”
