My mind whirred. Would Marilyn go to all the trouble to cook a big dinner just for Lester? Wouldn’t it be natural to invite some of his friends?
“I’m pretty sure,” I said. Then I remembered how she’d be cooking surf and turf in her bikini and possibly not much else. “Well, maybe not,” I said.
“Alice, you can level with me. I really need you to be truthful, because I have some big decisions to make. Is Les out with Marilyn Rawley or not?”
I could honestly say no, because they weren’t out. They were at Marilyn’s.
“No, they’re not out,” I said.
Silence again.
“Are they in?”
“In here, you mean?”
“No, in, as in over-at-Marilyn’s?”
I sighed. “Yeah, that’s where he is, Crystal.”
“Thank you, Alice. That’s all I wanted to know.”
“Crystal, wait!” I said.
“No, Lester can wait! He can wait until a hot day in January, as far as I’m concerned.”
“What did he do?” I had to know.
“I told Lester a month ago I’d like to do something special for his birthday. A gourmet dinner or something.”
Another home-cooked meal? If Lester had played his cards right, he could have eaten out almost every day that week.
“Maybe he forgot,” I offered.
“That’s the point, the whole point. He was supposed to let me know whether he wanted it on Friday or Saturday night. He didn’t even have the decency to call.”
“What were you going to wear?” I asked. I was wondering if he liked Marilyn’s costume better.
“What difference does that make?” asked Crystal.
“I mean, were you going to cook in a special costume, or just wear jeans, or what?”
“Why would I wear a special costume?” said Crystal. “Who does he think he is? The king of Siam?” She and Elizabeth could be soul sisters. “Anyway, Alice, it’s not your fault. I like you a lot and I always will.”
“I like you, too, Crystal,” I told her.
“And you know what? Lester’s being at Marilyn’s tonight may be the best thing that ever happened to me. Just tell him that I called to wish him a happy birthday, and there’s a present on the way. All right?”
“Sure. I’ll tell him,” I said. “That’s really nice of you, Crystal.”
“Not necessarily,” she said, and hung up.
Maybe Lester should have taken a course from Mr. Everett, I thought. Half his problems came about because he didn’t plan ahead. How did he expect to stay friends with Crystal if he only took her out now and then? And how could he ever hope that Marilyn would marry him if he was still seeing Crystal at all?
Perhaps the problems of the world, in fact, were due to poor planning. People having more babies than they could feed. Farmers buying land on the flood plains. People smoking and getting cancer. It hit me all of a sudden that what I was going to get in Mr. Everett’s class, maybe, was the secret of life.
Patrick came over on Sunday.
“Got your suitcase packed?” he said, grinning.
Dad was reading the Sunday Post on the couch.
“Hello, Mr. McKinley, it’s your future son-in-law again,” Patrick said.
Dad lowered the paper.
I laughed. Maybe it was just my imagination, but Patrick’s voice sounded deeper, more grown up.
“I hope you’ll be very happy,” said Dad, giving him a sardonic smile.
We needed a table, and Patrick likes to be near food, so we chose the kitchen. I gave him a bag of pretzels, and he pulled a chair over to my side.
This time we stuck with it. It wasn’t the ideal wedding Patrick wanted, and it wasn’t mine, but we somehow worked up a simple ceremony, a small buffet reception, gown, ring, flowers, photographer, and music for a little under three thousand dollars. And we ended up going to Niagara Falls on a “honeymoon special,” three days for nine hundred dollars, airfare included.
Now we had to find an apartment, then the furniture.
“After we pay the first month’s rent, then what do we do?” I asked.
“We’ll both have to work. What kind of job do you want?” said Patrick.
To tell the truth, that’s not something I worry about a whole lot. I shrugged. “When I was little I wanted to be Smokey the Bear,” I told him.
Patrick laughed and put his arm around me.
“Then I wanted to be a veterinarian. Once I thought about being a teacher. Also a chef. What do you want to be?”
“A marine biologist or a drummer,” said Patrick. Just like that. “I probably wouldn’t be able to earn a living as a drummer, though. I mean, I wouldn’t be satisfied unless it was a really great band. So I’ll probably be a marine biologist who plays the drums on the side.”
Talk about planning!
“Patrick,” I said. “How long have you known you wanted to be a marine biologist? Did you just wake up one morning and it hit you, or what?”
“When I was real small we went to Sea World, and I guess that’s where it started. Then we were snorkeling over in Japan, and I saw all the fish and eels and things, and, well, I decided it would be really interesting. If I’m going to spend my life working, I want it to be something I like.”
I was really envious of Patrick right then, but according to our assignment, we were both high school graduates without any special training, so on paper, at least, we were equal.
“Where would you want to work if you couldn’t go on to college right away?” I asked. We had to write down something.
“Probably an aquarium store.”
“And if I wanted to be a chef, I’d probably start out as a waitress,” I told him.
We went back to the living room for the want ads, and read them in the kitchen over some apple cider Dad had brought back from the orchard.
We couldn’t find any help wanted ads for aquarium stores at all. The closest we could come was clerk in a pet store for $4.25 an hour. We found some ads for waitress at $2.50 an hour plus tips.
I did some fast arithmetic. “If I got tips, Patrick, I’ll bet I could make ten dollars an hour, which would mean that together we’d be making sixteen-fifty an hour or …” I scribbled some more. “Five hundred and seventy dollars a week! Wow!”
“You have to deduct taxes and insurance and stuff. It would probably only come to five hundred,” he said. “Four hundred, even.”
“That’s still sixteen hundred dollars a month,” I told him, figuring it out on Dad’s calculator. “That’s pretty good. What kind of an apartment should we get?”
We each wrote down what we wanted most in an apartment, so we wouldn’t quarrel about it. I said a big kitchen where we could sit around the table the way Dad and Lester and I do at home. And I wanted two bathrooms and a guest bedroom so Dad or Lester could come to visit.
Patrick said it would have to have a balcony overlooking a park, a Jacuzzi, and a study.
We went through the ads again looking for apartments in Silver Spring. The only one we found that had everything we wanted rented for $1,700 a month.
“A month!” I choked. “That would take both our paychecks!”
We studied the assignment sheet again. When we made out a budget we had to consider rent, food, taxes, car, medical and dental expenses, clothes, utilities, repairs, phone, entertainment, and incidentals.
We gave up the Jacuzzi and got the rent down to $1,200. We gave up the study and the large kitchen, and got it down to $1,100. Patrick said we could move out to the country away from the capital area and our rent would go down, but our car expenses would go up. By giving up the spare bedroom and the balcony overlooking a park, any park, we got the rent down to $600.
We sat there staring glumly at the newspaper.
“I don’t think we can afford to get married,” Patrick said. “This leaves only five hundred bucks for furniture.”
“We’d have to scrimp and save every single penny,” I added.
“O
r live on love,” said Patrick. And then, because he already had his arm around me, he kissed me.
Do you know what I like most about kissing in eighth grade? The kisses aren’t always the same. Up until now, a kiss was a quick embarrassment. Patrick would sort of put his hands on my shoulders—to hold me still, I guess—and then, plop! A wet kiss somewhere around my mouth, and he was gone.
Now he kissed me walking down the street at night, or sitting there in the kitchen, a sideways kiss. It seemed more natural. But just when I was beginning to feel really comfortable, he said, “Do you like me?”
“Of course!”
“Why don’t you ever kiss me?” he said.
I stared at him and felt the color creeping up into my cheeks. “But I do! What do you think we just did?”
“I mean, you never start it.”
I was really confused. “I didn’t know … I mean, that you wanted me … that I was supposed …”
“It’d be nice,” he said.
I blushed to the roots of my hair. “Maybe sometime I’ll surprise you,” I said.
“I like surprises,” said Patrick.
I don’t know how a day that started out so right could suddenly go so wrong. It was like a big cloud hanging over me—the idea that Patrick was waiting for me to kiss him.
I mean, how would I know when to do it? He’s taller than I am, and I’d have to reach up, and … there was a sinking feeling in my chest.
What if we were sitting out on the swing together and he didn’t know I was trying to kiss him and suddenly turned his head away? What if I ended up kissing his neck?
What if we were walking out on the sidewalk at night and I tried to kiss him and he kept on walking? What if I tried to kiss him sometime and he said, “Not now, Alice!”
Suddenly I had just a hint of what it was like to be a boy, of all the things they go through. I don’t know how they stand it.
When Dad and Lester came out in the kitchen finally to start dinner, I realized it was time for us to wind up the assignment.
“Well, we got a lot done,” I told Patrick. “All we have left now is to work out the rest of the budget and buy furniture.”
“Man, this is the longest assignment I ever had!” Patrick said.
“I do love that teacher, though!” said Dad from the refrigerator where he was getting out the lettuce.
“So does Elizabeth,” I said, and as soon as it escaped my lips, I knew I shouldn’t have told. “I mean, she thinks he’s a good teacher,” I said quickly.
“I had a crush on a teacher once,” Lester told us. He was rinsing off chicken pieces under the faucet. “My French teacher. I spent all of seventh grade imagining what kind of underwear she wore.”
“That’s sick,” I said.
“Oh, I think that’s pretty normal for a twelve-year-old.” Dad smiled.
“I put a Mars bar in her desk once with a note that said, ‘For You,’ only I didn’t sign it,” Lester went on. “I guess I figured she’d recognize my handwriting. I don’t know if she did or not, but I went back to her room several times that day to check the wastebasket and see if the wrapper was there. It wasn’t. I always wondered what she did with that candy.”
We laughed, Patrick, too.
Dad invited Patrick to stay for dinner, but he said he had to go, so I walked to the front door with him. Then I remembered what he’d said about me kissing him. I felt sick all over again.
Lester and Dad could see us if they looked down the hall, so I didn’t try to kiss Patrick at the door. I went out on the porch with him, but he was already starting down the steps. Was I supposed to reach out and grab him or what?
I made up my mind that no matter what, I was going to do it and get it over with. I couldn’t have it hanging over me like that. I had to plan it. Planning was everything!
I went down the steps with him. When we got to the bottom I’d kiss him, I thought. My heart was beating double time. This was ridiculous! Every time I thought of doing it, I lost my nerve.
It was just like it had been back in third grade with Donald Sheavers, when we were playing Tarzan out in the yard and he was supposed to kiss me. We were on this big sheet of cardboard we pretended was a raft, but every time he reached over to kiss me, I got the giggles and rolled off.
“Well, what are you doing, walking me home?” Patrick said.
I swallowed and kept going.
“If you walk me home, I’ll have to walk you home again,” he said. “This could go on all night.”
“Oh, just as far as the corner.” I gulped. “It’s … it’s really nice out.”
“Yeah,” said Patrick.
A car was coming. After it passed, I could hear another one. Then another. I couldn’t kiss him while cars were coming!
I set my eye on the mailbox. When we got as far as the mailbox, I’d kiss him. No, it had to be before the mailbox, or we’d be standing right under the streetlight.
Ten more steps and I’ll do it, I told myself.
We walked ten steps.
Twenty more steps and I’ll do it, I said.
We walked twenty.
Patrick looked down at me once, and suddenly I just grabbed his arm, reached up, and kissed him—it was sort of on the side of his nose—and then, like a complete idiot, I turned and ran all the way back home. It must have been one of the stupidest things I ever did.
I ran up on the porch, and as I opened the door, I stumbled over something there on the doormat and fell into the hallway.
“Al?” said Dad from the kitchen.
I sat up, rubbing my shin.
“What happened?” he asked, coming down the hall.
I pointed to a box that was sitting askew in the doorway, and pulled it in after me.
There was a piece of paper taped to the top. All it said was, Lester—Crystal.
5
DISCOVERY
“Lester,” Dad called. “For you.”
Lester ambled in from the other room and I pulled myself up off the floor, still rubbing my leg.
Lester looked down at the box.
“It must have just come,” I said. “It wasn’t there when I went down to the corner with Patrick.”
Lester picked it up and took it into the living room, setting it on the coffee table. The note didn’t say anything else—just, Lester—Crystal.
“Uh-oh,” Lester said when he opened the box. Dad sat across the room, but I had my nose right over the box. And somehow I knew that Crystal was returning everything Lester had ever given her.
To begin with, on top was a photograph of Crystal and Lester together, and it had been torn right down the middle, so Crystal was on one half, Les on the other.
“Oh, Lester!” I said, and sat down beside him on the couch.
But Lester was sorting through the box of mementos, exclaiming over one, then another.
“Haven’t seen this for a long time!” he said, holding up one of his shirts that Crystal had borrowed.
There was a half-bottle of perfume, a book of poems, a radio, a toy yacht, a glass zebra, leather gloves, earrings—lots of earrings—a Swatch watch, a camera, and a dried rose.
“What the heck?” said Lester, holding up the rose. “Why would she save this?”
“Lester,” Dad said, “that woman has invested quite a bit of time in you.”
“And we both enjoyed it,” Lester told him. “What do you want me to do, Dad? Marry her, just because she’s invested some time in me?”
“No, but when you get that close to a woman, and then drop her …”
“I didn’t drop her, she dropped me. She’s a wonderful person, and if it weren’t for Marilyn, I might say, ‘Crystal’s the one.’ But I just can’t see myself giving up Marilyn. I’ve tried to be honest with both of them, but did you ever try telling that to a woman—that you’re crazy about two women at the same time?”
Dad sighed. “No, I can’t say that I ever did. And I can’t think of any woman who would be pleased to hear it.?
??
“Well, there you have it, then,” said Lester.
Dad went back in the kitchen, but Lester whistled as he continued emptying the box. He certainly didn’t seem very upset. Maybe planning is harder for some people than it is for others. Maybe with Crystal out of the picture, Lester didn’t have any decisions left to make, and the whole thing was just one big relief.
He went on sorting through the stuff in the box. “She sent back the radio! Why would she do that? It’s a perfectly good radio.” He lifted out the sweater he’d given her once, then the watch. “Hey, Al, want a Swatch watch? You can have the perfume, too.”
“Really?” I said. It was like Christmas.
Maybe it was because Patrick and I had just spent the whole afternoon together on budgets and money matters, but it suddenly occurred to me that if Lester broke up with a woman every two years and she returned all his presents, I would probably have enough sweaters, perfume, watches, cameras, radios, shirts, and jewelry to last me through high school and college.
“Someday, Les,” I told him, “you should give a woman a really neat jacket—you know, the kind that looks like silk and has designs and colors all over it?”
“Why?”
“Because I would look great in it,” I said. I nudged him. “How was the surf and turf last night?”
“Pretty good. Marilyn’s a great cook.”
“How was the costume?”
“Terrific.”
I tried to think how I could get more information from him. “What I can’t understand is how she could cook a whole dinner just wearing boots and a bikini. I mean, she could have burned her—”
“Oh, she only wore the boots for about ten minutes, then gave them up and went barefoot,” said Lester.
I wasn’t the only one wearing something new to school the next day. I had on the Swatch watch, the sweater, and a pair of Crystal’s earrings, but Elizabeth was wearing a short black skirt over black tights, and a blue lacy knit top that you were supposed to wear without anything underneath, but Elizabeth had on a bra (a sports bra, if you want the truth). Not only that, but her hair was different. She’d braided it up into a fancy ponytail. She told me once she wanted to be a nun. I doubted it.