The Ladies' Man

Elinor Lipman is the author of
The Pursuit of Alice Thrift, The Dearly Departed, The Inn at Lake Devine, Isabel's Bed, The Way Men Act, Then She Found Me
, and
Into Love and Out Again
. Her work has appeared in
The New York Times, The Boston Globe
, the
Chicago Tribune, Gourmet, Salon, Self, More
, and
Yankee
magazine. She has taught writing at Simmons, Hampshire, and Smith colleges, and won the 2001 New England Book Award for Fiction. She lives in Massachusetts.

Also by Elinor Lipman

The Pursuit of Alice Thrift
The Dearly Departed
The Inn at Lake Devine
Isabel's Bed
The Way Men Act
Then She Found Me
Into Love and Out Again

I
n the months before Albert DeSalvo confessed to being the Boston Strangler, the three Dobbin sisters established their custom of arranging empty glass bottles like bowling pins inside their apartment door. They adopted the idea from
Life
, from a spread illustrating how women living alone near the crime scenes were petrified and taking precautions. The practice continues decades after the Boston Strangler confessed and died in prison, because the Dobbin sisters are cautious and intelligent women who expect the worst. The last sister to turn in checks the locks, latches the chain, and sets the booby trap of ten near-antique bottles that once held ginger ale, sarsaparilla, and root beer brewed by a defunct soft-drink company.

And what's the harm? It allows three women to sleep peacefully without sedatives, without surprises, and without expensive motion detectors. If Richard Dobbin, their brother, occasionally trips a false alarm, it is viewed as his own fault, his own stubborn resistance to calling ahead. He claims to forget between drop-in visits that they still arrange the bottles nightly. He has a key; he thinks he will slip in, sleep on the couch, leave a note on the kitchen table for the earliest riser, and be welcomed enthusiastically. The chain stops him, but, as designed, the door opens enough to trigger the pandemonium his sisters count on.

“It's me,” he yells. “What's going on? It's me.”

“Richard,” says one, then each of the other sisters, hurrying into their bathrobes. “Let him in. Undo the chain. It's Richard.”

“There've been some copycat murders on the north shore,” explains Adele, the oldest, turning knobs and unhooking chains. “We've started setting our burglar alarm again.”

“Jesus,” says Richard, knocking over the last row of standing bottles. “I guess it works.”

Adele asks him not to swear in the hallway.

“Can you stay?” asks Lois, the middle sister.

“Think I was popping in for a visit at ten forty-five?” Richard answers.

“Where's Leslie?” asks Kathleen.

“Home,” he says, in a way that suggests home was not peaceful when he left.

“Is everything okay?” Kathleen asks.

“Fine.”

Always good hostesses, they choose masculine striped sheets and brown towels from the linen closet; one sister disappears down the long central hall in search of a guest pillow and blanket. Kathleen offers to take the daybed and give their taller, bigger brother privacy and a real bed.

They range in age from Adele, fifty-three, to Richard, who is forty-four. No one is currently married or spoken for. Social lives vary from moribund (Adele's) to overactive (Richard's); in his sisters' opinion, he flirts too easily and cohabitates prematurely. Without evaluating their brother's capacity for monogamy, they assume he'd be happier if he settled down.

As for the sisters, it could have been different: There were many beaus in any given year, and a distribution of graces that made no one redheaded sister the most in demand. Adele had brains and the most classically pretty face. Lois had height and good bones, while Kathleen had—still has—wavy hair and the greenest eyes. Outside the immediate family, the unstudied explanation for their shared spinsterhood is what happened to Adele decades ago at age twenty-three: an engagement broken, unceremoniously and unilaterally, by an unsuitable boy.

Today they consider themselves career women, with nice clothes
and with jobs that provide either satisfaction or high seniority: Adele raises money for public television, Lois works for the Commonwealth, and Kathleen sells lingerie in her own shop downtown. Richard is the family underachiever, which is not acknowledged or even thought, because he is tall and charming, quite good-looking, adds new friends without dropping his old ones from high school or college, owns his own tuxedo, and has been an usher at no fewer than ten buddies' weddings. He delivers subpoenas for a living, and cultivates the understanding that it is a career that straddles law and law enforcement.

So picture the household: three adult sisters and a displaced brother on an unseasonably cold April night with a dusting of snow deposited by a passing squall. Richard will have settled into the den on the daybed, where the sisters usually watch their programs. He's made himself a cheese sandwich with relish on dill-cheese bread, which he doesn't like but eats cheerfully after fixing the TV's tint, which the women never adjust, even if the actors' faces are orange.

The downstairs buzzer rings after the sisters have returned to their rooms. They wait, assuming it is Richard-related, or the buzz of a careless visitor who has hit the wrong bell. In any event, they don't panic or even get out of bed, because Richard, an expert on getting into places where he's not welcome, is there in case of danger. The buzzer rings again, more insistently.