“Do I detect a little blue eyeshadow?” asked Pamela as we got on the bus.
I looked closely, too. “And a little mascara? Maybe Raspberry Creme lip gloss?”
“It’s just a change,” Elizabeth said. “Who wants the same old look every day?”
Pamela and I exchanged glances.
It’s weird, but this time in health class I really paid attention to what was going on besides the lesson. Elizabeth wasn’t the only girl who was playing up to Mr. Everett.
Jill and Karen and a number of other girls had been hanging around his desk when I came in, and now that class had started, they just sat in their seats smiling at him. No matter what he said, no matter how serious, they had those stupid smiles on their faces. Every time he said something remotely funny, they laughed out loud.
Then I remembered that ever since school had started, they’d teased him about something.
They teased him about his tie.
They teased him about his hair, the way it hung down in his face.
He told them to go sit down, and they even giggled about that.
I don’t know. I’ve never gone nuts over people who don’t really know me from vanilla pudding. It would be hard, for example, even to pretend that Michael Jackson has the least little interest in me, even if he were to give me his autograph. I’ve never gone in much for pining over people I can’t have. Except my mom, of course.
“Okay, who’s having problems?” Mr. Everett was saying. “How are the assignments going? Any questions?”
Jill had her hand in the air. “I want to trade my situation with someone else.”
“What was your assignment?”
“I have to arrange a funeral for my grandmother.”
“Sorry,” said Mr. Everett. “No trading.”
“I hardly even know my grandmother,” Jill protested. “If she died, somebody else would bury her or she wouldn’t get buried at all.”
The class laughed.
“Listen, Jill, someday somebody close to you is going to die, and it may be when you least expect it. Your job is to find out what types of burials are available, what alternatives there might be, expenses—the whole works—and to share your information with the class.”
“It’s boring, Mr. Everett! It’s depressing!” Jill complained.
“So’s life sometimes,” he told her.
“But what does it have to do with health?”
“It has a lot to do with mental health, and that’s just as important as the way we treat our bodies.”
Elizabeth didn’t lean on his desk the way the other girls did. Actually, she didn’t do anything especially flirtatious at all, she just never took her eyes off Mr. Everett. She sat there with her lips half-parted as though our teacher were flexing his muscles in a nylon bikini. She didn’t take notes. She didn’t read his handouts. If I’d walked over and passed my hand back and forth in front of her face, I doubt she would have blinked.
“Is it really over between you and Tom Perona?” I asked her on our way to study hall.
“He’s so childish,” she said. “I’m looking for someone more mature.”
I missed having Miss Summers for English. She teaches both seventh- and eighth-grade English, but I was assigned to Mr. Tawes, so I didn’t get to drink in her wonderful perfume or admire the way she blends colors and fabrics and makes them work. I didn’t get to daydream about what it would be like if she were my stepmother and I got to hug her every day. I’d only seen her a few times since school started, in fact, passing in the hall or moving through the cafeteria at lunchtime.
“Hi, Alice,” she’d say, smiling her beautiful smile, and I’d remember the time she leaned against our piano and sang while Dad played, or the day we baked Dad’s birthday cake at her house to surprise him.
“When is your dad going to marry her?” Pamela asked at lunchtime, just before I was condemned to another of Mr. Tawes’s boring lectures.
“I’ll be the last to know,” I said. “I haven’t seen very much of her lately, so I’m not sure what’s happening. They’re awfully private about everything.”
“What’s ‘everything’?” Pamela said with a grin.
“Pamela!” Elizabeth snapped. At least underneath that lacy top and fancy ponytail, she was the same old Elizabeth.
“She hasn’t even been to our house in the last few months,” I said. “Dad goes over there.”
“Naturally! That proves it, then,” said Pamela. “She lives alone. What could they do with you and Lester around?”
“Everything is sex to you, Pamela. There’s a lot more to relationships than that,” Elizabeth told her.
We looked at Elizabeth.
“How would you know?” asked Pamela. “You and Tom Perona only lasted a week.”
Elizabeth ignored her. “You can have a deep meaningful relationship with someone just by looking into his eyes, just knowing that he understands.”
Uh-oh, I thought again.
“Would we be speaking of anyone in particular?” asked Pamela.
“I’m just making a point,” Elizabeth told us.
She wanted to use the rest room off the west corridor after lunch, however, because we had to pass Mr. Everett’s room to get there. And sitting by her on the bus home that afternoon, I noticed that there were strange drawings—doodles, sort of—all over her notebook cover, and then I realized that it was the word “Everett” written horizontally, vertically, diagonally, the r in the middle being the same r for them all. All over her notebook, there were those little star-shaped diagrams that looked like snowflakes, but when you examined them closely, turned out to be more “Everetts.”
I was afraid that Elizabeth might do something really stupid, like write Mr. Everett a love note that she’d be embarrassed about later. I decided I’d go see Miss Summers at school the next day and ask if any boy had ever had a crush on her and what she did about it. She’d probably have some good suggestions.
Every teacher in our school has a “catch-up” period during the day, forty minutes to do paperwork or plan assignments. It’s also a time that any student needing extra help can schedule a conference. Last semester Miss Summers had her planning period just before lunch, so I got a pass during study period and went up to her room to see if this was still her free time.
It’s weird when the halls are empty. When you have a pass to leave class, you get to see what the building really looks like, because during class changes the corridors are filled with students. The halls are noisy and choked with arms and elbows, and if you round a corner too sharply, especially near the gym, you’re in danger of losing your life.
As I went up the stairs to the second floor, I realized I hadn’t even checked once since school started to see if Miss Summers was wearing a diamond. I figure Dad might not tell me right away if they were engaged, but a ring would. In seventh grade, when she was my teacher, I used to check every day.
Don’t forget to check her finger, I told myself as I reached the landing at the top and went down the hall toward Room 202.
I was within a couple of feet of the doorway when I heard voices coming from inside and I stopped. Darn! I’d been hoping she would be alone.
“… just don’t badger me.” It was Sylvia Summers’s voice. A personal, not a professional, voice.
I stood dead still.
And then a man’s: “I’m not badgering you.”
“Yes, you are, Jim. Just asking me what I’ll be doing when you already know I have plans is a form of badgering.”
I felt as though there were ice water in my veins. Where had I heard that man’s voice? Who was she talking to?
I didn’t dare go to the doorway to find out. It sounded as though they were standing just inside. I knew that I should hightail it out of there, but I couldn’t. I just couldn’t. I backed up against the lockers and strained to hear more.
Now the voices were too indistinct to make out what they were saying. A murmur. Then another. Then: “Sylvia, I hav
e to know.”
“Why? You were able to go very well a whole year without anything being resolved. Why now, when I’ve met someone?”
My heart was pounding. Yes! She must be referring to Dad. Why didn’t she say “someone wonderful” or “someone special”?
“Because I thought we had an understanding. Yes, I realized we could each meet someone new, and I’m willing now to be patient, up to a point, but—”
“Then be patient,” Miss Summers said.
Silence. Even out in the hallway, I could sense the tension. They weren’t kissing. I knew that without looking.
“For how long? A month? Six months? A year?”
“However long it takes. I have to sort things out.”
“Sylvia, answer this: Are you sure you don’t just like the idea of playing mommy?”
“I’m not playing, Jim.”
“No. I was afraid you’d say that… .”
I couldn’t take anymore. As much as I wanted to stay and hear the rest, I was too afraid, I guess, of what it might be. I moved down the hall to the drinking fountain and stopped, resting my hands on both sides of it. And as soon as the man came striding out the doorway, I leaned over the fountain and he walked on by. Mr. Sorringer, the vice-principal!
I couldn’t go to Miss Summers’s room now. I felt as though I could never go there again. There was a lump in my throat as large as a Ping-Pong ball. I kept holding on to the sides of the fountain, and everything came together in my head, little pieces of puzzle falling into place: the fact that Mr. Sorringer had spent last year in California getting his degree; that Miss Summers had gone to California to spend Christmas; that she told me she was “very fond” of my dad, but she never said “love”; that she and Dad still weren’t engaged; that I had seen her and the vice-principal together in a restaurant when Lester took me out to dinner; that she and Dad hadn’t been seeing each other as much as they used to, and that Dad had been so thoughtful lately. Depressed, I think.
Shock gave way to sadness—for Dad, for me, for Lester. And then I felt angry.
She had to make up her mind. I couldn’t stand this any longer. Neither could Dad. What would it take to convince her she had already met the most wonderful man in the world, and if she said no to my father, she would be miserable the rest of her life? How could any woman not like my dad?
I turned all my anger onto Mr. Sorringer. Mr. Sorringer, I hate you! I whispered.
• • •
We made a real pair, Elizabeth and me. For the rest of the week she went out of her way to walk by Mr. Everett’s room, and I went out of my way to avoid Sylvia Summers. After world studies, I’d circle the whole building rather than pass her room to get to my locker. I was afraid that anything I might do or say would convince her to marry the vice-principal instead of Dad. I didn’t want the responsibility. When I saw her coming, I’d turn down a side corridor or duck into the rest room.
At home, Dad seemed even more quiet than usual. When we did the dishes together, I saw him washing the same pan over and over, and had to reach out and take it from him.
Finally I went up to Lester’s room, where he was typing a college paper.
“Lester,” I said, “I need to talk.”
I came in and sat on the edge of his bed. He was typing, but he slowed down enough to hear me.
“I’m afraid she’ll marry that guy, Les,” I said after telling him what I’d overheard. “It will just kill Dad if she does. What can we do?”
“Mind your own business, Al. You can help Dad the most by not asking questions, not interfering, and certainly by not saying anything to Sylvia.”
I knew he was right. No amount of planning on my part would bring Dad and Miss Summers any closer together. I also knew that keeping quiet would be one of the hardest things I had ever done in my life.
6
NEW GIRL AT THE STORE
When I went to the Melody Inn on Saturday, Janice Sherman, in sheet music, asked if I would go with her during lunch hour to buy a wedding gift for Loretta Jenkins, who runs our Gift Shoppe. Loretta Jenkins James, actually.
Loretta, whose wild curly hair is like a sunburst around her head, got married a few weeks ago without telling anyone. Except her new husband, of course, and the justice of the peace. Well, actually, she got pregnant first, and then she got married. She spent her honeymoon throwing up.
So the wedding gift was also to be a shower gift and a going-away present, because Loretta had only been to work nine times in the last three weeks, and finally decided she would rather throw up in her own bathroom than in the rest room here at work. In her mother-in-law’s bathroom, I mean, because she and her husband had to move in with his folks. She said she wanted to stay home with the baby anyway after it was born, so she gave Dad two weeks’ notice. This was her last day.
“Sure, I’ll go with you,” I said to Janice.
Janice reminds me of a banker, because she wears suits and scarves or little string ties. Her glasses dangle from a chain around her neck, and all she really needs is a watch in a vest pocket to complete the picture. She used to date one of our trombone instructors, but since they broke up, she’s had her eye on Dad again. The one person I know for sure I do not want for a stepmother is Janice Sherman.
After I filed some sheet music and put price stickers on a stack of yellow instruction books called Keyboard Sonatas for Four Hands, which sounds as though they were written for freaks, I went across the store and back under the mezzanine where we sell guitar picks, violin strings, banjo tuners, and trumpet mutes, along with a big selection of musical gifts.
My favorite job in the whole store is cleaning the glass on the gift wheel. You press a button and the wheel goes around, and when you see a pair of earrings in the shape of clef signs or tiny gold trumpets and you want to try them on, you can stop the wheel and Loretta will take them out for you. Except that Loretta wasn’t there. From where I stood in the Gift Shoppe, I could hear her vomiting back in the stockroom. Dad said maybe it was a good thing this was her last day.
I waited until she came out, pale-faced and thinner than when I’d seen her last. She gave me a wan smile.
“If this is what pregnancy is like, you wonder how there are so many people in the world, huh?” she said.
I smiled back. “Pretty awful, huh?”
“Mornings are the worst. But sometimes afternoons are bad and there are even a few evenings that are awful. I’ve got girlfriends, though, who say they went the whole nine months and didn’t upchuck once. I should be so lucky.”
“What’s he like? Your husband?”
“Cute. A little crazy. If you’d asked me four months ago if I would ever marry a bartender and live with his parents, I would have said no, but here I am.”
I shouldn’t have asked, but I did. “Loretta, are you sorry?”
“Why should I be sorry? What will be will be. I just take it as it comes, Alice.”
Do you know what I was thinking just then? I was thinking I should take her to Mr. Everett’s class as Exhibit A. How could you end up being married to a man you didn’t expect to marry, living in a place you didn’t really want to be, with a baby coming you didn’t plan for, and not wonder if this was really what you wanted?
After I’d put in my three hours, Janice and I went to lunch together and then shopping. Since neither of us had ever been married or had a baby, it was sort of the blind leading the blind. We ended up buying a wind chime of little baby angels made of white cappa shells and tiny gold harps.
The baby angels were for the baby Loretta was going to have, the harps were a reminder of the Melody Inn, and the wind chime itself was to hang in Loretta’s new home, which happened to be her in-laws’. We had the store gift wrap it, and then we went back to the Melody Inn and gave it to Loretta.
Dad said how much he appreciated her work here at the Gift Shoppe, and gave her an envelope with an extra week’s pay in it. Loretta had barely said thank you when she had to rush back to the toilets agai
n, and Dad said why didn’t she take the rest of the day off, so she took the wind chime and went home.
“Well!” said Dad, after she’d gone. “Janice, what do we do now?”
“I’ve got two applicants lined up already. The word must have been getting around that Loretta was leaving,” Janice told him.
“You’re wonderful,” Dad said.
Later that evening I began to worry. Saturday night, and Dad was puttering around the house when he should have been out with Miss Summers. Not only that, but he seemed distracted. He’d pick up part of the newspaper and start to read it, then lay it down. Five minutes later he’d read the same page all over again.
I was standing in the dining room eating an apple, and finally I walked over and sat beside him on the couch.
“What’s the matter, Dad? Problems?”
He let out his breath. “All life is a problem, Al.”
“Anything in particular?”
Dad looked over at me and gave me a little grin. “Who are you, my analyst?”
“I just wondered. You seem a little down.”
“Oh, honey, I’m just an old man who feels he’s out of his depth, sometimes.”
“Come on, Dad.”
He reached over and slapped my knee. “Okay, Doc McKinley, I’ll snap out of it.”
I gave him a hug, but still didn’t leave.
“Dad,” I said finally. “No matter what happens, please don’t marry Janice Sherman.”
“What brought that on?”
“I just don’t want Janice Sherman for a stepmother.” “It never would have entered my mind,” he told me.
At school, as people began turning in their preliminary reports for the unit on Critical Choices, Mr. Everett spent class time talking about them.
“Okay, Brian, let’s look at yours,” Mr. Everett said. “You total your car and you’re charged with DWI. How much alcohol did you drink?”
“How should I know? I was too drunk to know my own name.”
Everyone laughed.
“He was at a chug-a-lug party,” one of the boys called out, and we laughed some more.