Simply Alice

“It takes him forever and a day to say anything,” said Elizabeth. “The teacher hardly ever calls on him because it’s so painful to listen to him. He’s worse in class.”

  “A lot more painful for him, I imagine,” I said.

  “So did he talk? Did he say anything?” asked Pamela.

  “Of course. He walked me to my next class.”

  “Are you going out with him?” Pamela asked.

  “We’re just friends,” I said. “So what’s happening with you guys? Tell me everything.”

  “Have you got all night?” asked Elizabeth.

  “Well, actually, yes. Yes, I do.”

  “Why don’t you stay over, then? Pamela is.”

  “I haven’t got any stuff with me.”

  “Use ours,” said Pamela. “Don’t go home, and we’ll see what we can dig up for you.”

  I laughed. “Okay,” I said. “Let me call Dad.”

  They rounded up toothpaste and deodorant and a comb and pj’s for me, and we hunkered down on Elizabeth’s twin beds. Pamela told me how her voice lessons were going and how her dad’s dating a nurse. Elizabeth said she was feeling mad at her therapist lately, but her therapist says it’s normal, and at least she’s getting along better with her folks now.

  Then Nathan toddled into the room in his jammies to kiss Elizabeth good night, and we made him kiss us all. We got down on the floor and growled at him and chased him around the beds on our knees, watching his short little legs churn across the floor and listening to his excited squeals, till Mrs. Price came in to rescue him.

  “You’ll have him so worked up, he’ll never go to sleep,” she said, laughing. “Are you staying all night, Alice? I could bring up the cot.”

  “Tonight we’re going to push the two beds together and all sleep in one big bed,” Elizabeth said.

  “We’ve got a lot to talk about,” said Pamela.

  Another person who had a lot to talk about was Aunt Sally. I should have known what would happen if Dad sent her a copy of The Edge with that article on hazing in it. I was quietly eating some chocolate grahams one day after school when Aunt Sally called from Chicago.

  “Alice, I am shocked! Simply shocked!” she said. “I want you taken out of that school and enrolled in a private academy, and your Uncle Milt and I have the money to pay for it if necessary.”

  “Uh … Aunt Sally—” I began.

  “If Marie knew that her little Alice was going to a school where girls have to get down on their knees in the parking lot and unzip boys’ pants with their teeth …! The humiliation, not to mention what it does to teeth! I could hardly sleep last night from worrying about you.”

  “I’m sure that—”

  “And that poor girl who had her pants pulled down in front of a gang of leering boys. She’ll be traumatized for life. She’ll probably never marry because of it and, if she does, she’ll be one of those women who undresses in the closet.”

  “What?” I said. Once in a while I actually learn something from Aunt Sally. And then, playing innocent, I asked, “Is that what it means to ‘come out of the closet’?”

  “No, no, no,” Aunt Sally said hastily. “I’m speaking about the misguided souls who are too shy to undress in front of their husbands even after fifty years.”

  “Well, I happen to know the girl who had her jeans pulled down, Aunt Sally, and she was pretty upset for a while, but she’s getting over it,” I said. “It was largely on account of her that we published the article.”

  “You never know about these things, though,” said Aunt Sally. “A girl could experience something like that and the effects might not show up for five or ten years.” I thought of Elizabeth and how that was probably true. “The best thing you can do for your friend, Alice, is encourage her to get her feelings out, even if they’re irrational and against all men in general. She shouldn’t just sit around and let them fester.”

  “I’ll remember to tell her that, Aunt Sally,” I said. “But meanwhile, the principal has gotten real strict about enforcing the rules, and anyone who does any unauthorized hazing could get expelled.”

  “I should hope so!” she said. “But anytime you feel you want to change schools, dear, Uncle Milt and I could help out.”

  “I really appreciate it,” I said.

  “And keep an eye on that girlfriend,” she added.

  Lester came home just then, and lumbered out to the kitchen for a beer. As he leaned over to get one out of the fridge, I reached out with my foot and gave him a little kick in the behind.

  He reared up. “What was that for?”

  “For mankind in general,” I said.

  “Why?”

  “So I don’t sit around and fester,” I told him.

  6

  Spring Surprises

  Probably because I hadn’t scrubbed the bathroom or kitchen for three weeks, Dad suddenly noticed how grimy our house had become. No one had hassled me because they knew I had to stay at school late most afternoons, if not for the stage crew, then for the newspaper. Consequently I was excused from all cleaning and cooking until Fiddler on the Roof was over. But because the bathroom and kitchen were so dirty, Dad and Les had sort of let the vacuuming and dusting go, too, and the fact was, our house was filthy.

  “I can’t let Sylvia move into this place looking the way it does,” Dad said the week before spring break. “We’ve got to do something.”

  “We could start with a wrecking crew,” said Les, stuffing the last third of a doughnut into his mouth as he finished his coffee.

  “A constructive suggestion, please,” said Dad.

  “A fumigation company? Dust-Busters?”

  Dad ignored him. “The drapes have to be taken down and cleaned, the bathroom and kitchen repainted—I should really have my bedroom redecorated. It looks like a hermit’s been living in there.”

  “A hermit has,” I said fondly.

  “Hey, Dad, leave a little something for Sylvia to do. She’ll probably want to change things around, anyway,” said Les.

  “Well, the place has to be clean, at least,” Dad said.

  “I can help out over spring vacation,” I promised.

  “What about closets?” asked Dad. “Are we supposed to clean closets, too? I can’t remember that Marie ever said.”

  “Let’s don’t go overboard now,” Les told him.

  “And the inside of the oven. Now I know you’re supposed to clean that.”

  “Why?” said Les. “Just turn it on to five hundred degrees, and the heat will kill all the germs.”

  “What else do you clean?” asked Dad, looking at me. “Are you supposed to clean the inside of the dryer? The dishwasher? How is a man supposed to know all this stuff?”

  “You could always call Aunt Sally,” I chirped helpfully.

  “No!” Dad and Lester bellowed together. We all knew that one phone call to Chicago and Aunt Sally would be on the next plane, broom and bucket in hand. And she’d probably start by making us clean the broom and the bucket.

  I’d begun sitting by Eric in biology. We can sit wherever we like, but once we start a project with someone, we have to stay at that particular table till it’s finished.

  “You want t-to d-do something Friday nnnn-night—celebrate a week of vacation?” he asked.

  “Sure,” I said. “What would you like to do?”

  “Sail around the world, for one,” he said.

  “Sounds good to me,” I told him, and he laughed. I noticed that sometimes he stuttered and sometimes he didn’t. Or he would repeat the first letter of a word one time and drag it out another. It was always worse, it seemed, when he first began a conversation. After he got into it, he often didn’t. He also seemed to stutter on particular letters, like P and B. But after awhile I wasn’t listening to his stutter. I was listening to what he had to say. To a person who stutters, though, I suppose he thinks we only focus on the stutter.

  “Would you like to see a movie at Wheaten P-Plaza? The new T-Tom Hanks movie?” he asked.
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  “That sounds fun,” I said. I knew, from the first note he’d sent me, that he lived out by Dale Drive, and we lived in exactly the opposite direction. “Want me to meet you there?”

  “Okay. But I’ll t-take you home,” he said. “If you d-don’t mind the bbbbb-bus.”

  “Sure. What time?”

  “I’ll E-mail you,” he said.

  One thing I had discovered about Eric: He never called me on the phone.

  Meanwhile, Elizabeth, Pamela, and I were trying to think of something we could do over spring break to “express ourselves,” as Liz had put it. “Some-thing that is really, truly us.”

  The question, of course, was what we really, truly were. Not only were the three of us different from each other, but we changed from day to day, and so did our moods. One of us might be up and the other two down, or vice versa.

  “Maybe we could get jobs as go-go girls for the week,” said Pamela. “Dance on customers’ tables.” She grinned at me, noticing Elizabeth’s change of expression. “Or we could even get hired as lap dancers.”

  “As what?” said Elizabeth.

  “You dance in customer’s laps,” I told her.

  “What? You actually stand up on a man’s legs and—”

  “You sit,” said Pamela, grinning. “You sit facing him on his lap with your legs on either side of him.”

  Elizabeth looked from Pamela to me.

  “And wiggle around,” I explained.

  A look of horror crossed Elizabeth’s face. “That’s obscene!”

  “That’s the point,” said Pamela.

  We decided not to apply as go-go dancers. We thought of taking a moonlight cruise—just the three of us—on a dinner boat on the Potomac, but that cost more than any of us wanted to spend.

  It was Elizabeth, finally, who came up with something wacky, if not entirely wild. She saw a notice on the community bulletin board at the library that high school students were invited to dress up as their favorite storybook characters and read to groups of children at the Martin Luther King Library between nine and five during spring vacation.

  “Let’s do it!” said Pamela. “I want to dress up like Scarlet O’Hara.”

  “And read Gone with the Wind to preschoolers?” I said.

  We finally decided on Huck Finn for me, a monster from Where the Wild Things Are for Elizabeth, and Amelia Bedelia for Pamela. So in addition to having to find props for Fiddler on the Roof, finishing my last “behind-the-scenes” article for The Edge, doing school assignments, working on Saturday at the Melody Inn, helping Dad clean the house, and going out with Eric, I had to put together a costume. I thought my head would pop off.

  I think we were all glad for a week’s break before the production. We’d have three weeks after we got back to do the final rehearsals and get things shipshape, but for now we needed a rest.

  I told Dad I was meeting Eric at the cinema at Wheaton Plaza.

  “Just make sure he sees you home,” he said. “I don’t want you coming home after dark by yourself.”

  I took the bus to Wheaton Plaza, and Eric was waiting for me at the box office. He had our tickets.

  “I was afraid you m-might stand me up to p-pay me back for that first t-time,” he said, grinning at me as we went inside.

  And there, standing right in front of the refreshment stand, were Patrick and Penny, buying an extra-large tub of popcorn.

  “Hey, Eric! How’s it going?” Patrick said. And then he saw me. “Alice!”

  “Hi, Patrick. Hi, Penny,” I said. “Everybody’s out celebrating our week of freedom, huh?”

  “Looks that way,” said Penny.

  They went on inside, and Eric bought popcorn and drinks for us. I was glad he didn’t suggest sitting with Patrick and Penny. We sat halfway down on one side, Eric put the popcorn between us, and when the tub was gone and our eyes were on the screen, he casually put his arm around the back of my seat and I noticed that when something really funny happened, he’d squeeze my shoulder when he laughed.

  I felt comfortable with Eric, just as I had with Patrick, and discovered that was one thing I looked for in a guy: I wanted to feel comfortable with him, know that I could be myself. That I didn’t have to worry about what he might do or say next.

  When it was over, he suggested we go to the Pizza Hut, so we did. I told him we’d split the check, and we got a table along one side where it wasn’t too noisy, and just talked over Coke and a couple slices of pizza, triple cheese.

  “We’re moving in June,” he said.

  “You are?”

  “Yeah. Dad’s with IBM, and they’re mmm-moving us to Dallas.”

  “Darn!” I said. “Just when I start liking a guy, he up and moves away.” I surprised even myself. I guess I felt I could say it because he’d be leaving anyway.

  I could tell it pleased him, though. He reached across and put his hand over mine. “I g-guess that n-note I sent you was pretty c-c-c-c-”

  It seemed as though the word just wouldn’t come out. If I knew what he was trying to say, I might have said it for him. But his face was beginning to color, his eyes began blinking faster, and he jerked his head slightly as though trying to shake the word from his mouth.

  Finally I smiled at him and said, “Need help?”

  “N-N-No,” he said. “C-Crazy. That’s the word. I g-guess you thought that n-note was pretty crazy.”

  “Well, it had me wondering,” I said. “I’ll admit it was different, and it certainly got my attention.”

  He still had hold of my hand. “Thanks,” he said.

  “For what?”

  “For not finishing the sentence for me b-back there. P-People always do that. They think they’re helping, but it just mmm-makes me feel like I’m five years old.”

  “You’re welcome,” I said, and smiled back.

  “So n-now that we broke the ice, c-can we get together again b-before I move?”

  “Of course,” I said.

  We took the bus back to my house. Les was out for the evening, but Dad was home, and he invited Eric in and talked a little bit about the kind of work his dad did. He offered to drive Eric home, but Eric said he’d rather take the bus.

  I walked him back out on the porch, and he kissed me. A light, friendly, platonic kind of kiss, and then, because I smiled at him, maybe, he kissed me again, not quite so platonic that time.

  “This was a good way to begin vacation,” I told him. “I had a great time.”

  He squeezed my arm. “So did I,” he said.

  Elizabeth called the Martin Luther King Library in the District, and they gave us the ten-to-two time slot. Elizabeth would read Where the Wild Things Are to groups of preschoolers, Pamela would read one of the Amelia Bedelia books to the first through third graders, and I would read something from Tom Sawyer or Huckleberry Finn to fourth and fifth graders. And we each had to perform four times.

  The fun part was that Mrs. Price drove us to the Metro each morning, and we rode the subway downtown in costume. What was really wild was that Washington, D.C., is full of tourists around Easter, and when we’d get on the subway in Silver Spring, there would be loads of kids and their parents going down to the Smithsonian museums, and suddenly kids would start shouting, “Mom! Look! A monster!” Or, “There’s Amelia Bedelia!” Or, “Hi, Huck. How ya doin’?”

  We were having a blast. Pamela had on a plain blue dress and a white apron; a hat, with her hair fashioned into bangs peeking out beneath the brim; and black shoes. A. BEDELIA was embroidered on her apron, just so kids would know.

  Elizabeth looked great in a fleece costume her mom had made for her, with long claws in the pads of the hands and feet, large eyes resting above her own eyes, and fangs. What it was was a teen-sized sleeper with a zipper front, and because she couldn’t do anything with her hands, we had to get a fare card for her, hold a tissue so she could blow her nose, and help her get the costume off when she had to go to the bathroom. Once, when Huck Finn was blowing the monster’s n
ose, people started snapping our picture. As we were heading for the library after we’d left the Metro, a photographer for the Post happened to be driving by, and he stopped his car and took our picture. It was on the first page of the Metro section the next day.

  Going back home that first day, we realized we were more effective if we acted the parts. We’d get on the Metro and while Huck Finn slouched down in his seat with his straw hat at a tipsy angle, and corn-cob pipe in his mouth, Amelia Bedelia sat prim and proper with her hands in her lap, while the monster had a ball going up and down the aisle, showing her claws and roaring her terrible roar, while kids laughed and shrieked and hid behind their mothers. I think some of the tourists thought we were hired by the Metro to provide entertainment during spring vacation.

  “It was great!” I told Dad and Lester that night. “I never saw Elizabeth cut loose like that. I guess it was because she could hide behind that monster suit.”

  “And how were the audiences?” Dad asked. I was trying to read Dad’s mood, to see if he was even listening to me, because Sylvia was supposed to have called him the night before and she didn’t. She’d be traveling around England during Easter vacation, she’d told us, and he wanted to know how she had liked Bath, the place she was to visit first.

  “The audiences were terrific!” I told him. “It’s nice to be having fun and doing something useful at the same time.”

  It was a good thing Les brought home Thai food that night, because I was too tired to help cook, and Dad had just taken down all our drapes and curtains and sent them to the cleaners. I put on a pair of leggings and an old shirt and would have eaten whatever was on the table, I was so tired, and Dad was in his sweats. But we were all feeling mellow—Dad, because he’d made a dent in spring cleaning; Les, because he was going to a concert with his philosophy instructor later in the week; and me, because it had been a really fun day, and Liz and Pam and I were friends again.

  Dad had just stood up to get the ice cream from the fridge when the doorbell rang. Eric? I thought, and hoped it wasn’t him, because I was too tired to see anyone except my family.

  “I’ll get it,” Dad said.

  “There were some boys from a football team out selling raffle tickets, Dad,” Les called. “Why don’t you just not answer?”