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her.
    She said, “Did Alice have a daughter?”
    Elaine stopped smiling and shook her head. “No. Three sons. Although one is dead and we don’t ever talk about him. Sam, I think his name was. Her husband’s been dead a long time, too, and we don’t ever talk about him either.”
    “Okay, well, thanks. I feel a lot better knowing that you’ve never seen or heard anything weird.”
    “If there’s nothing else,” Elaine said, gathering her crochet and stuffing it into her sewing bag. “I guess I’ll clock out.” She picked up the phone and called in and Stella went over and wrote her name in the book and read through Elaine’s notes from the night before.
Alice seemed restless,
she had written.
She didn’t sleep well. Once she got up without waiting for me and went into the bathroom and turned on the light. Very sarcastic this morning.
    “Oh, one other thing,” Elaine said behind her, and Stella turned. “When she takes off that green dress tonight, take it and put it immediately in the clothes hamper. The thing is crawling with germs. I won’t have her wearing it again until it’s been washed.”
    Despite Elaine’s comments in the notebook, Alice seemed rather chipper and happy to see her.
    “You came back,” she said when Stella poked her head in the room.
    “Of course I came back. Are you used to people not coming back?”
    “Some don’t.”
    “Well, I’m not like that.”
    “I can see that you’re not.” She waved her hand at the newspaper lying on the other twin bed. “You’re welcome to read it, if you like.”
    “Thank you,” Stella said, picking up the paper. “Is there anything good to report?”
    “Just the usual death and destruction,” Alice said cheerfully.
    “Oh, good. I like reading about death and destruction.”
    She took the paper out to the sunroom and sat drinking a cup of coffee and staring at the sunny valley below. She shouldn’t be reading the paper at all; she should be working on a term paper due in her
Psychology of Gender
class. The class met on Tuesdays and Thursdays and now that Stella was sitting with Alice on Wednesdays and Thursdays, she would have to miss the Thursday morning session. At least temporarily, until she found some other kind of work. She stirred guiltily, remembering Alice’s comment this morning about her not coming back. Still, some things couldn’t be helped. She had told Charlotte specifically that she couldn’t work Thursday mornings because of her class and yet Charlotte had scheduled her anyway. Her professor was cool and Stella felt certain that once she had explained the situation, she’d be allowed to pick up notes from some other student. But who to ask? Stella kept to herself, she didn’t socialize with the other girls in her class, many of whom had started out together as freshmen, reinforcing their friendships through rush parties and trips to Destin. Stella had never had the time, or the money, for any of that. It was everything she could do just to keep up with her class work, given the number of hours she had to work.
    The reality was she couldn’t have done it without the help of Professor Dillard who was also her advisor. Professor Dillard had taken Stella under her wing and seen to it that she was allowed to take
Psychology of Gender
even though she hadn’t taken the prerequisite Women as Victims class. And she would make allowances, Stella felt certain, for her current situation, too.
    She had been lucky with teachers. Even during grade school back in Alabama, there’d always been at least one teacher each year who took an interest in her. She was smart and quietly attentive, and she made good grades all the way up until her junior year of high school when everything she knew, or thought she knew, came crashing down around her. Even then it had been Charlie Chesmore, her Honors English teacher, who had taken her aside and demanded to know if she was having trouble at home.
    Professor Dillard would make allowances