Chapter 20: Lunch with Lou

Monday morning was a school day; it seemed relatively uneventful to have only Susan to send out the door. I did a few chores around the house, and then got ready to meet Louise Carter for lunch to talk about the cheerleading summer camp.

I was beginning to think it must be a strange place in Scottsdale that you couldn't reach in half an hour or less. I went to the office and they called her.

Louise Carter was about Nancy's age, maybe a year or two older. She had dark hair, not black, but about as dark brown as I'd ever seen. Like most PE coaches and former cheerleaders, she wore her hair done up in a ponytail. She wasn't very tall, perhaps five six, and had a compact and muscular build.

We walked out to the parking lot, talking. "Everyone calls me Lou," she told me, as we got in her car. "It's been that way since kindergarten. But our Principal here doesn't believe teachers should have nicknames, so inside those walls it's Louise." We drove a mile or so to an Applebee's and ordered.

Both of us had spent the time appraising each other; I didn't mind the scrutiny.

"I talked to Nancy last night," Lou said, eventually. "We talked a bit about Denise." My eyes couldn't help widening.

She smiled. "The three of us were inseparable in cheer. If we weren't trying to best the other in routines, it was trying to beat each other's time with Coach Farmer. The saving grace about that, though, was that two of us could comfort each other in our sorrow."

I nodded in understanding.

She went on, "I talked to Denise Friday, I thought she was doing much better, and I told Nancy about it. I'm really sorry about what happened at your party."

I shrugged. "She has problems, obviously."

"Denise was the only one of the three of us who wanted anything but cheerleading. She had such dreams! She aspired so high! Then she met Terry and got so pregnant! Her first baby miscarried; it really tore Denise up. So she tried again and got Carolyn. Carolyn is Carolyn... a little strange, but nice enough. But motherhood has rather consumed Denise's life."

"I told Marybeth I thought Denise should see a professional," I confessed. "What I really wish she would do is listen to her daughter, pay attention to her and respect her. I don't think going oh-for-three is a very high mark for my problem resolution skills."

"Some problems are more intractable than others," Lou told me. Not to mention fiating changes in people is well-nigh hopeless!"

I smiled. I liked Lou. "Tell me about your camp," I asked.

"Well, I have about thirty girls a session, staying in four cabins. I have a dozen adults, most of whom are paid damn little beyond room and board. George Cook cooks and does light maintenance around the place. He's the only man there during the first two sessions. I have a friend who comes to help with the guys during the third session. There aren't many, sometimes just one or two. A few years ago we had four young men.

"I draw from the entire city. A large fraction of the Scottsdale girls go the second session and I can usually put them by themselves in a single cabin." Her eyes met mine and I knew she was trying to clearly state that she understand the special nature of the program at Scottsdale -- without actually saying it.

"Adults stay two to a room, with the exception of George, who has his own wing of the admin building. The rest of us sleep on the other side." She met my eyes. "Usually Nancy and I share a room."

I nodded, again taking the message being given me.

"You said you were interested in being the go-to person for discipline and disputes."

"Yes, I would be. I was thinking that I would volunteer my services."

"Surely you'd like a little money?" she asked.

"It's not necessary. I'd pay Susan's way, of course."

She smiled thinly. "I should find a dozen like you, and maybe I finally could turn a profit at this! A few of the women have brought along their daughters; no one's paid before." She paused, and then went on. "I think it would be a good idea not to discuss financial arrangements with the others. I'm not sure everyone would be happy with them."

"Not a problem," I told her.

"The camp is pretty, it's a state park these days, though. When I was a girl and started going there, it was privately owned."

"It's a natural bridge?" I asked.

She grinned. "In the same sense the Brandenburg Gate is a gate. It's a place where water has dissolved the travertine rock, leaving a sort of cave that runs under a big chunk of rock. There are caves, in fact, all through the area, but none are very large. There is a pool suitable for swimming underneath the bridge, but you have to bring your thermal underwear to do it. The water temperature is in the forties. There's a pool for the main lodge guests, but we don't use it. Too many legal issues."

"Reminds me of Long Island, back in New York," I quipped. "On a warm day you were still cold half the time." That, and sometimes I wondered just why people didn't rise up and give a primal scream about the "legal issues" that were messing things up for everyone.

She drove us back to her school. Before she went back inside she handed me two information packages, one for me, another for Susan. There would be, she told me, a meeting for the staff in mid-May, another after Memorial Day. We would get to know each other and get some idea of who and how many girls would be attending.

It was just a little before one in the afternoon. I decided that I'd made a short Costco run on Saturday, but I had the time now to do a proper one this afternoon. Having so many people to dinner for so many days had put a serious dent in my meat stocks.

Roger had laughed at Costco. There was one in Nesconset, not far from our house. He looked around, shook his head, and told me he didn't see any need to ever go there again. I explained that the prices were significantly less than in the supermarket, but that wasn't enough to convince him.

When you buy thirty pounds of chicken, thirty pounds of pork and thirty pounds of beef at once, at a savings of 20-30 cents a pound, what wasn't to like? Maybe it wasn't the most wifely thing I'd ever done, not telling him you had to pay a membership fee to shop there, but I knew my husband.

I filled my shopping basket and went through the check out line. Say what you want, there were long lines, but they weren't as long as I remembered when I was a girl, helping my mother shop at a supermarket. Sharon Pope, whose husband had died not far from mine on 9/11, and a friend until that day, once joked that she would know that it was getting chilly in hell if she could ever get away from Costco without spending a hundred dollars. Sharon had moved away from New York even faster than I had.

I was pushing my cart towards the door when I heard my name called. I stopped and looked around. Elena from the "toy shop" was sitting at one of the tables by the food service area.

I pushed my basket over to her table. "Sit down," she said, waving across from her.

I did with alacrity. Why hadn't I come back in an hour and shopped then? When Susan could have given me a hand moving the stuff out of the car?

Elena waved at a plate in front of her. "I have this secret addiction to their polish sausages. If my sisters ever found out, they'd drum me out of the cheerleaders!"

I'd tried them several times. Elena wasn't the first person who exclaimed about how good they were. They were good -- for polish sausage. Like asparagus and rutabaga, not high on my list of foods.

"I heard you were going to talk to Lou this afternoon."

"I did," I told her. "I'm going to help out this summer at her camp."

Elena brightened up. "I'm going to be there, too! And Nancy! Some others! It's a lot of fun!"

I smiled. It really was like a sorority or sisterhood, I thought. I had to stop mentally kicking myself for messing up my chance to be a cheerleader when I'd had my chance, I told myself. I doubted if I'd ever be able to forget it completely.

"Last year," Elena went on, "I went to visit my sister who lives in Houston. My car broke down a hundred miles the other side of Albuquerque. I called up a girl I knew in cheer, and she and her boyfriend went to a car parts store, got the part and brought it to me. I was stopped less than three hours."

Would I do something like that for a friend? I'd like to think so. I smiled, but I was back to thinking about friendship, trust and all the related topics.

After a second, Elena chuckled. "It can be a little much, sometimes."

I looked at her, nodding. I decided I wasn't going to give her my sob story about missing my chance. I settled for saying, "I wish I'd done cheer when I was in school."

"I had to sweat the books," Elena told me. "There were a couple of times only my sisters kept me from flunking some classes. Then, one day I was a senior and it all clicked. It all made sense. I went from barely 2.0, to A's in every single class."

I really wished at that moment that I was alone. I wanted to have a nice little cry. Poor Laura Alban, growing up the way she had. No friends. She didn't need help studying because that was about all she ever did, particularly in the last two years of high school and all of undergraduate college after I dropped dance and hadn't discovered boys. Or sex.

"I'm sorry," Elena said, her voice soft. She nodded in understanding.

I looked up and met her eyes. "Right now, I'm so full of self-pity that it's making me a little upset with myself. I've had years to think about the mistakes I made in school. You'd think I'd have had plenty of time to get over them."

The problem was, at the time, I'd thought there'd only been the one mistake. Now, the older I got, the more I realized how much I'd missed. I stopped myself from going where I'd been a moment before. That was then, this was now.

"I think you need a good friend," Elena told me.

I looked at her, suddenly back to wallowing in self-pity. Who did I have, really? Susan was my daughter, and I was sure we were friends. Linda? An acquaintance that I had some serious doubts about. Nancy? A woman who had more irons in the fire than most people. Marybeth? I was tolerably sure she had a lot of irons in the fire as well. Sherrie was a friend, I thought, but she'd spent some of Sunday afternoon on the phone. I seriously doubted that she was talking to Ann or her parents. Sherrie had her own life.

I shrugged. "It would be nice, I'm working on it."

Elena laughed. "That's the spirit! The sisters are great support for that part of a person's psyche, but friends are what keeps it all together!"

Well, I knew what part of psyche support she was talking about! She was right.

"What are you up to now?" Elena asked, suddenly.

I gestured at the basket, heaped with meat. "Shopping trip," I told her.

"Tell you what, you show me the way to your house, we'll put all of that in your fridge, even if we have to use a shoehorn!"

"I have a big fridge. In the next day or so, it'll get cut and packed and loaded into the freezer."

"Cool!" she said with a laugh. "The freezer, anyway! Then, once we get that done, you and I, Laura, will go for a walk!"

I'd already noticed that cheerleaders never did things by halves and had as much or more bounce and enthusiasm away from cheer as they had during a practice.

We went out to my car and loaded the stuff in the trunk, and then I gave Elena my address and directions. I waited for her at the entrance and led the way.

It's a mathematical fact: you get the most bang for your buck when two people do a job. Add a third people and you get done even faster, but the incremental change in the time it takes isn't as great. Besides, any job is just plain easier when you share it.

Then Elena patiently waited in my living room while I changed from slacks and blouse to shorts, tennis shirt and tennies.

Then we were in her little red pickup. I'd always thought I was a fast, but careful driver. Elena drove very fast, but not only that, it was like she could read the minds of every other driver on the road. Her head never stopped moving, looking every which way, constantly. The most bizarre thing was that she hardly ever changed lanes. Most people who drive much faster than the traffic around them swerve in and out of traffic with abandon. I wasn't sure how she did it, but it was impressive!

We turned off Loop 101 onto Arizona 51, which was another freeway. A few minutes later, we were off the freeway, driving through what looked to be residential areas. Nice houses, too.

We parked in a City Park and she got out. I climbed out after her, and Elena waved at a trail that led away from the parking lot. "Now, tell me true. What kind of shape are you in? Excellent, good, medium, or not so hot?"

"I'd say excellent, but I have a feeling I'm about to find out," I told her.

"Like I said, we could walk."

"Walk where?" I asked.

Poor me, I was used to parks in New York. She pointed at a mountaintop. "There." She grinned at me. "My best time, going up, is twenty-five minutes. It's a mile and a third from here to the top."

"Well, let's try and we'll see where I fall. Literally."

She laughed at my joke and we started up.

It was a little after two in the afternoon, the temperature was in the high nineties, there were hardly any clouds in the sky. I was surprised; it didn't feel bad at all. I'd never been much of a runner and I kept expecting to fold at any moment. Instead, I followed Elena up, up and up. The trail was wide and well kept; it wasn't hard at all.

I kept waiting to fold, and waited and waited. I did start to puff during the last couple of hundred yards, which was a lot steeper than any other part of the trail. Then we were at the top. I stopped next to Elena, who looked at me. "Darn right, excellent!" she exclaimed.

I started to sweat almost the second I stopped running. It ran off in rivers. In a few seconds, I was having trouble keeping it out of my eyes.

"Walk around," Elena suggested, "it's a little much to take if you're not used to it. It's like working outside and coming inside to air-conditioning. It seems like you start to sweat buckets; instead you were sweating all along, just it isn't drying as fast. A little movement will fix that!"

It didn't take much, I found, and I did seem to feel better.

I took a look around. I'd known Phoenix was large. But from on top of that mountain you could get a real idea of just how huge it was. In every direction the built-up city stretched out as far as the eye could see. Either mountains blocked your view or the city faded into the distance. It was truly impressive.

"Welcome to my town," Elena said.

"Your city! It's hard for me to imagine New York City as a piker, but this is huge!"

"Well, the population density there is much higher and you can make a case that there's really one town from Boston to Washington DC. But yeah, this is impressive." She reached out and put her wrist to my forehead. "How are you feeling? Any dizziness? Nausea?"

"Nothing, the sweating seems to have stopped, too."

She smiled. "So long as you're outside on a warm day like this, it's pouring off you. Your body has a thermostat and it controls how much pours off. When you get home, drink something like orange juice, not ice tea. Eat a banana, too. Or drink Gatorade, if that's your thing."

"Not!" I said with feeling.

"Me either. I usually have orange juice and a banana after I run. Fluids, carbs and electrolytes. Phosphorous and potassium. A salty dog or margarita is nice, too."

"I'm not much of a drinker," I told her. "Wine now and then."

"Booze is something cheerleaders stay away from. But now and then..." She smiled at me.

"Now," Elena said, waving back down hill. "How are your knees?"

"My knees?" I was mystified. "Fine, why?"

"Ever run a four minute mile?" she asked, her eyes dancing.

"That's world record time, no, I don't think I've ever managed to run a mile, much less in world record time."

"Follow me, Laura!" She held up her watch, pushed a button and started down the mountain.

It was easy to get started, and then it got exciting. I could see where she'd learned to drive: running down this mountain. You might have been able to slow to a walk in some places, but there weren't many. Most of the time you spent worrying about making the turns.

Then we were at the parking lot and she pushed the button on her watch, but continued to jog towards the opposite end of the lot, but much slower. I pulled up next to her. "That was fun."

"That, Laura, was seven minutes, fourteen seconds. For a mile and a third. Aren't you glad I kept my pace down?"

I shook my head as we crossed the parking lot, slowed even more, returning to her pickup. "That, Elena, wasn't running. That was a controlled fall."

She laughed at that. We got to her truck, and she pulled out a plastic bottle of water and handed it to me. "Take a few, small sips."

The water was warm, almost hot. But it still tasted good.

Elena took some, and then handed it back to me. In the next ten minutes, we drank half of the quart. "Slow, that's the secret," Elena told me. "You ever get parched, don't drink cold water and don't drink a lot at a time. Small amounts of room temperature fluids. Cramps are simply no fun at all."

I nodded, filing it all away. She looked around. The parking lot was nearly empty; we'd seen no one on the trail.

She's going to kiss me, I thought. Instead, Elena grinned at me. "Do you think we've started being friends?"

"I think so. You led me through fire and water, you shared my burdens and I've shared your water bottle. Sounds like friendship to me."

She waved at the mountain. "I never thought you'd get up and down as well as you did. You are in good shape."

"I swim," I told her. "I have a pool."

"You are my friend!" she exclaimed. "Swimming is a much lower impact form of exercise! We might be able to run down the mountain quicker than bunnies, but let's face it: our brains are pretty jumbled by the time we bottom out."

"There's that," I agreed.

"I imagine you'd like to get back and take a shower."

I looked at my watch. "My daughter will be getting home from school here soon. If I'm not there to watch her, she'll probably find someone to start smooching."

Elena's arched an eye, so I added, "Girlfriends."

"Ah, I thought so!"

We drove back to my house, talking about a lot of personal things, but minutia of life, not the important things.

Standing inside my front door, she looked me up and down. "I was thinking the other day, I needed to make some new friends. Cheer is all well and good, but I've known most of them since junior high. The people I meet in the store... you'd be surprised how many men come in to buy things for their wives and girlfriends, and then try to ask me out on a date while they're at it."