The room was quiet for a moment.
“Alice?” she whispered at last.
“Yeah?”
I heard her swallow, like the words were all choked up in her throat. I slipped out of bed and went over to sit on the rug beside the cot. “What’s the matter, Pamela?”
“Oh, Alice!” She put out one arm and draped it over my shoulder, and I reached up and put one hand around the back of her neck. Her skin felt hot, as though she’d been crying a long time. “Th-this is the worst thing that’s ever happened to me.”
“I know,” I said, and stroked her neck.
“I don’t even know whether I love or hate my mom.”
“You probably feel both ways,” I said.
She sat up finally and fished for a tissue on top of my dresser.
“Subtimbs,” she said, sniffing, “I really wonder if I can stand this. I mean it.”
“Pamela,” I said. “Do you remember back in sixth grade when we were in that play together, and I was jealous of you because you got the lead part, and I pulled your hair onstage?”
“Yes,” she said, and blew her nose.
“I was horrible to you, and you were embarrassed, but you got over it and you were the star of the show. Remember when Mark grabbed your Ahh Bra and waved it around the playground? And Brian put gum in your hair and you had to cut it off, and you said it was the worst thing that had ever happened to you?”
“But it wasn’t!” Pamela wept. “This is.”
“I know, but you survived it. Remember when you lost your bikini top in the ocean? Maybe those were just rehearsals, Pamela, for real life, to prove that you can take it.”
She kept on crying.
“You’ve still got a mom and dad,” I said helplessly. “They just don’t live together anymore.”
“But I want them to,” she wailed, and I couldn’t think of any answer to that. A lot of good I was doing.
“Alice,” she said finally, “I guess when I think about how things are with you, I should feel lucky.”
“Yeah?”
“I mean, gee, you haven’t had a mother since kindergarten, and your dad’s going to let Miss Summers get away, and you’ll be motherless all through high school and college. You won’t even have a mom around when you get married!” She reached forward and hugged me. “Thanks, Alice. You’ve made me feel so much better.”
“You’re welcome,” I said.
“Sleep tight,” said Pamela.
I crawled back in bed beside Elizabeth and didn’t get to sleep for a couple of hours.
Dad usually makes waffles for us when I have a sleepover, but he was outside cleaning leaves out of our rain gutters, and Lester was gone for the weekend. He and Marilyn were visiting friends in Virginia and wouldn’t be home till that night.
Elizabeth had to leave for Mass, and Pamela had promised to spend the day with her mother, helping fix up her mom’s apartment, so they both left about nine thirty. We’d had French toast, and I’d made extra for Dad and set it on a plate in the microwave so he could heat it up when he came in.
I did my homework, listening to his footsteps now and then on the roof, or the clunk of the ladder against the side of the house. And then I heard a scraping sound from the backyard, a yelp from Dad, a thud, and a horrible clatter.
I leaped up and ran outside. Dad was lying motionless on the ground, the ladder on top of him.
“Dad!” I screamed, and rushed down the steps. I pulled the ladder off and crouched down beside him, my mouth dry and my heart thumping so hard, it hurt.
Then I started crying. “Dad!” I said again.
His eyelids fluttered.
“Dad, please sit up,” I said, and then I realized he might have broken his neck. “No, don’t sit up!” I begged.
He sat up anyway. He kept blinking and shaking his head, and then he reached up with one hand and rubbed the back of his neck.
“Dad, are you okay? Is anything broken?” I asked.
He just kept looking at me and blinking, and finally he said, “It’s not broken.” He was staring at the ladder.
I’d never seen him this way and didn’t know how to reach Lester. Finally I went inside and called Aunt Sally. No answer. It was Sunday, and she and Uncle Milt usually go to church and then out to eat. I wondered whether I should call Mrs. Price, but when I looked out the window, their car was gone. Janice Sherman? No. I didn’t want her over here scurrying around and giving orders as though she lived here. I picked up the phone book, looked up a number, and dialed Miss Summers.
The phone rang about five times, and I figured she was at church too. Then she answered. She sounded breathless, and maybe a little irritated. “Hello?”
Oh, my gosh! I thought. What if Mr. Sorringer was there and they’d been making love?
“Hello?” she said again.
“Miss Summers? It’s Alice.”
“Why, Alice! What a surprise! I was outside raking and thought I heard the phone.”
I was relieved. “I’m really sorry to bother you, but Lester’s out of town and I don’t know where to find him and I couldn’t reach my aunt in Chicago.…”
“What’s wrong?”
“Dad fell off a ladder.”
“Where is he?”
“Here at home. He’s sitting out in the yard, and I don’t know whether to call an ambulance or not.”
“Did he break anything?” she asked, and her voice was shaky.
“I’m not really sure.”
* * *
When she came, she was wearing old jeans and a sort of ratty-looking sweater. It was about the worst I’d ever seen her look, and she still looked beautiful. She had a leaf stuck in her hair.
She hurried around the house with me and knelt down on the grass beside Dad, taking both his hands in hers.
“Ben? Ben?” she said, and shook his hands a little.
Dad started to stand up, then sat down again. “Sylvia?” he said in surprise, and I saw his fingers close around her hand. At least he knew who she was.
Miss Summers turned to me. “Who’s your doctor?”
I was so frightened that for a moment I couldn’t remember. “Dr. Beverly,” I said finally.
Miss Summers went inside and looked up his number.
Luckily, Dr. Beverly was on call. He asked Miss Summers some questions, then said that if Dad was moving around, we should get him in the car, and he’d meet us in the emergency room at Suburban Hospital.
We both went back out to Dad. He was standing up and still staring at the ladder. He looked as if he was just waking up.
“Ben, you’ve had a fall, and Dr. Beverly wants to see you,” Miss Summers said. “Come on out to my car.”
“But it’s not broken!” Dad protested, trying to pick the ladder up.
“We don’t care about the ladder, Dad, we care about you,” I said. “Come on, now.”
We got him in the backseat, and I climbed in front. Miss Summers took off like a race car driver.
It wasn’t until we got to the hospital that it hit me. I stayed in the car with Dad while Miss Summers went inside, and it was the sight of the nurses and orderlies hurrying toward us, rolling a stretcher, that made me start to cry.
I thought of being in Holy Cross Hospital after Mrs. Plotkin had her heart attack, and thought about how Mom had died in a hospital back in Chicago. When Miss Summers poked her head in the window to tell me I could come inside, I was sobbing.
“Alice,” she said. She opened the door and sat on the edge of the seat. She put her arm around me, and I rested my head against her sweater, which smelled delicious, and I cried like a kindergarten kid. I didn’t care, I was so scared.
“Wh-what if he dies?” I gulped. “I couldn’t stand it if I lost Dad, too!”
“Honey, I think he’s got a little concussion, but I don’t think he’s in danger of dying,” Miss Summers said. She stroked my hair, and even though my crying had stopped, I wished it hadn’t, because I wanted her hands in my hair f
orever. She had actually called me “honey.”
“Come on. They’ll need us in there,” she said, so I wiped my face and followed her inside.
I hate hospitals. I hate the smells and the sight of people who look as though they’re dead already being wheeled rapidly along the corridors, and I hate the look of strange machines and the sound of weird noises. The only thing that made this bearable was that Miss Summers was with me.
We both talked to Dr Beverly.
“I’ve checked him over, and his blood pressure and pulse are stable,” he said. “But he’s complaining of neck pain, so we’ve sent him for X-rays. I’ll talk to you again in a little while.”
“We’ll wait right here,” Miss Summers said, and we sat down on the row of plastic chairs along one wall. Miss Summers put her arm around me again. Why couldn’t I ask her now if she loved him? Why couldn’t I ask if she’d be sad if he died? This would be the perfect time for her to throw her arms around Dad and say, “Ben, please don’t die! I need you!” Isn’t that what he needed, the will to live?
“Do you remember your mother, Alice?” Miss Summers asked me.
“Not very well. I confuse her with Aunt Sally, who took care of us for a while. It drives Dad crazy.”
Miss Summers smiled.
“Mostly, I guess, I remember her through the things she left behind. Some letters to Dad … her recipe file … her sewing box … some books … her pictures …”
“Those are all important,” Miss Summers said, and patted my shoulder again.
I wondered if I’d made it sound as though I didn’t need a mother, as though the things Mom left behind were enough, and I was doing just fine.
“I miss having a mother, though,” I said in a whisper.
This time Miss Summers didn’t say anything, just kept patting my shoulder and absently curling a lock of my hair around her finger. I wondered if I’d remembered to wash my hair that morning. After Elizabeth and Pamela left, did I wash my hair? Or was it all greasy and stringy?
It was almost forty-five minutes later that Dr. Beverly came back to the waiting room. He sat down in the chair next to Miss Summers.
“Well,” he said, “the X-rays are negative, but he’s still a little woozy. I don’t think there’s anything to worry about, but I’d like to keep him here for observation for a couple of hours. If we don’t see anything abnormal, he could go home this afternoon. Someone will have to check him every two hours for the first twenty-four, however.”
“We will,” Miss Summers said.
I was so relieved, I started crying again. I thought when I got to eighth grade all this would stop. I was a leaky faucet. Dr. Beverly just smiled at me and handed me a tissue from the table. After he left, Miss Summers grabbed my hand. “Well! That’s good news! Why don’t we go get some lunch!”
We walked out to her car, and I suddenly felt very selfconscious. “I look awful,” I said. “I don’t think I washed my hair this morning, and my eyes are all red.”
“You just look like a girl who’s worried about her dad, Alice, but if it bothers you, why don’t we have lunch at my place? I’ve got some chicken salad, and I might even make us some hot fudge sundaes.”
That perked me up in a hurry.
As we drove along, Miss Summers told me about the gigantic oak tree in her yard, and how much raking she has to do each fall, but she doesn’t mind because she loves autumn. Suddenly I was very hungry. Starving, in fact. And then we were inside her house with her baskets of colored yarn and her slippers just inside her bedroom, and, through the door, her unmade bed. Almost the same as I remembered it.
“I love your house,” I said, taking off my jacket.
“So do I. It’s just the coziest place!” she said.
Miss Summers slipped off her ratty sweater. She had a T-shirt on underneath, and she either wasn’t wearing a bra or it was a loose one, because her breasts sagged a little, but they were still pretty and soft-looking. I couldn’t help wondering if Dad had ever touched her breasts.
“I don’t know what I’d do if I ever lost my dad,” I said.
“You would cope, Alice, you would cope,” she said firmly. “Every single one of us has losses in this life, but I don’t think you’re in any danger of losing your dad anytime soon. Now. Do you want your chicken salad on lettuce or in a sandwich?”
We sat at her little breakfast table overlooking her backyard and the oak tree. I knew there was no way in the world I could ask the question I really wanted to know—whether she and Dad would marry—but I got as close to it as I could.
“I see you have Dad’s picture!” I said delightedly when I noticed his photo in the next room on her end table. It was a photo I hadn’t seen before, so she must have taken it. He wore a soft sweater and was leaning against a tree, arms folded, feet crossed at the ankles. He was smiling. It was a wonderful smile.
“Yes. Isn’t that a good picture of Ben?” she said, glancing over her shoulder at the photo. “One of the best I have of him, I think.”
That meant she had even more!
She changed the subject then to school, and we talked about the eighth-grade dance next spring and how, before I knew it, I’d be in high school.
But will you be my mother? I wanted to ask. It reminded me of a picture book somebody read to me when I was small about a baby bird that hatches while its mother’s away. It falls out of the nest and asks each animal it meets, “Are you my mother?”
“I love being here,” I said finally. Desperately. I wondered if I was carrying it too far.
Miss Summers looked at me quietly for a moment with her gentle blue eyes and then said, “And I love having you here, Alice. But if your dad is going to be discharged this afternoon, he’s going to want you there with him. What do you say we call the hospital and see what Dr. Beverly can tell us?”
I finished my sandwich while Miss Summers went in the other room and dialed the hospital. Then I took my dishes to the sink to rinse them, and as I passed the refrigerator I saw a batch of photos stuck there with magnets, and one of them was of Mr. Sorringer, our vice principal, standing with his arm around Miss Summers on the deck of a sailboat.
I wanted to tear it off the refrigerator. He had a boat? He took her sailing? He put his arm around her and they went sailing off into the sunset?
But then I realized that Dad’s picture in the other room was in a far more prominent place and it was four times as big, so that had to count for something.
It was her bedroom that would tell the most, I figured. Whichever man’s picture was in her bedroom was the one she most wanted to see before she went to sleep at night, the man she most wanted to dream of. I couldn’t leave her house without peeking into her bedroom.
“Well, your dad’s ready to come home, Alice,” Miss Summers said, coming back into the kitchen. “I even talked with him. He says that from now on, Lester can clean the gutters.”
“Great!” I said. “Could I use your bathroom before we go?”
“Certainly,” she said, and I headed for her bedroom. “There’s one right there in the hall, Alice,” she called.
I stood in the doorway of her bedroom, wanting terribly to go in, but she was watching. Reluctantly I turned and went to the bathroom in the hall. We left without my ever knowing whose photo she kept by her bed.
11
REHEARSAL
“WELL, I GUESS I PUT ON QUITE A CIRCUS,” Dad said when we walked in the emergency room later. He was sitting by the door with an attendant.
“I was scared, Dad,” I told him. “Lester wasn’t home, and I didn’t know who else to call.”
“I hope you’re not apologizing for calling me!” Miss Summers said. She bent over and kissed Dad on the forehead. “How are you feeling, Ben?” One hand lightly massaged his arm.
“Giddy, but not quite so out of it as I was.”
“Well, they wouldn’t be sending you home if they didn’t think we could take good care of you.”
“Sylvia, I hate to
be such a bother.”
She leaned closer as though they were having a private conversation, but I heard her say, “Now that’s a word that isn’t even in our vocabulary.”
“Our.” She said “our,” as though they had a secret language or something! I beamed.
The attendant insisted on helping Dad out to the car and strapping him in the front seat beside Miss Summers. I crawled in back, happy to see them sitting together.
As we drove home, Miss Summers said that she was going back to her house to make some soup after she let us off, and that if I would check on Dad while she was gone, she’d take over after dinner and stay until Lester got there.
Dad seemed normal enough as he went up the steps between us, and after we got him seated on the couch with the Sunday paper, Miss Summers went on home. Dad leaned back and closed his eyes, and I flew around straightening up the house so if Miss Summers decided to stay awhile, she wouldn’t think we lived like pigs. Every so often I’d go over to Dad, though, and pull open one of his eyelids with my thumb and finger to see if his pupils were dilated.
“Okay,” he said finally, “I can see I’m not going to get any nap today,” and he picked up the newspaper.
Elizabeth called.
“Alice, what happened? We saw you and Miss Summers helping your dad up the steps a while ago.”
I told her about Dad’s falling off the ladder, and how Miss Summers was coming back with our dinner. She obviously called Pamela, because that’s who phoned next. “Is Miss Summers going to stay all night?” she asked.
“Why would she stay all night?”
“He’s sick! They’re in love! She wants to be close to him! He needs her!” Pamela said. Dad falls off a ladder, and all Pamela can think about is sex.
The next time I checked Dad, he was sound asleep and snoring, the newspaper on the floor, so I decided to let him be. When he woke up about forty minutes later, he said he felt a hundred percent better.
“Good! Miss Summers is coming over after a while with our dinner.”
“Then I’m going to shower,” said Dad.