Alice on the Outside

  “Crystal, I’m supposed to be studying for a huge exam. Where’s Peter?”

  “H-Home.”

  “Does he know you came over here?”

  “No. We had an argument and I went out for a walk and just walked and walked and ended up here. Please talk to me, Les.”

  “You can sit down for a few minutes, Crystal, but I’m not about to come between you and Peter.”

  “Why are you so cold to me?” she asked.

  I knew I shouldn’t be listening, but if I’m supposed to be helping Lester avoid her, I had to know what was going on, didn’t I?

  There was some murmuring I couldn’t quite make out, then footsteps going into the living room. I peeked cautiously around the corner and saw that Crystal was sitting on the couch, but Lester was leaning against the living room doorway, arms folded across his chest.

  “So how am I involved in this?” Lester asked.

  “I think I married Peter on the rebound, Lester. I’m not sure I’m over you yet. I’m not even sure I love Peter.”

  The room was so quiet I could hear the clock ticking on the mantel.

  “Peter loves you,” Les said finally.

  “I know! That’s what makes it so awful. I can’t stand the thought of hurting him. But, Les, I … I dream about you. Those kinds of dreams. I open the door, and there you are. I keep comparing Peter to you… .”

  “It’s a waste, Crystal. We had a good time together and you’re a lovely woman, but I don’t love you like Peter does, and it’s over.”

  Now Crystal was really crying. “How can you be so cruel, Lester? I can’t make myself forget, can I?”

  “Maybe not, but you don’t have to encourage yourself to remember, either. I think you make things seem better between us than they were. Uh … Crystal, excuse me a minute, will you?”

  When I heard Lester’s footsteps on the stairs, I knew he was headed for the bathroom. All that Sprite and no relief… .

  I came out of the kitchen and saw Crystal getting a tissue from her pocket.

  “H-Hello, Alice,” she wept.

  “I was in the kitchen. I couldn’t help hearing,” I said.

  “I love him, Alice! It’s horrible to say, but I just can’t help myself,” she cried.

  “No, you don’t,” I said, and sat down beside her. I knew what I was going to say next and realized I shouldn’t, but there was a marriage at stake here. “I think he’s given up on women, Crystal.”

  “Not Lester,” she said, and her nose sounded clogged.

  “He practically told us so. We’re trying to adjust to the new Lester. In fact, well … tonight Lester and I watched a video together—his choice—and … and it was about men kissing.”

  Crystal stopped blowing her nose and stared at me. “Lester?”

  I just shrugged. Nothing I’d said was untrue, exactly.

  Lester came downstairs just then.

  “What’s your phone number?” he asked Crystal.

  She looked at him, then at me. And finally, in a small voice, she gave it to him. Lester picked up the phone in the hallway and dialed, while Crystal sat unmoving on the couch.

  “Peter? This is Les McKinley… . Fine. How are you? … Listen, Crystal went for a walk tonight and ended up here… . Yeah, I know it’s across town. I don’t think she’s feeling very well, and I wondered if you could come pick her up… . Sure… . Yeah, I’ll tell her.” Lester hung up and turned to Crystal. “He said he’ll be right over, and he wants you to know he’s been really worried about you.”

  She smiled a little. “He always worries about me.” She kept staring at Lester, though. “Maybe it helped coming over here tonight,” she said.

  “I hope so. Because you two have a great life ahead of you, and it doesn’t involve me,” Lester said.

  “All right. I believe you,” she told him.

  They talked a little about Crystal’s job and how Lester’s studies were going, and I stayed right there on the couch like a chaperone to see that Crystal didn’t get mushy again.

  Finally we heard Peter’s car pull up, and Crystal went out on the porch. Lester closed the door after her and leaned against it, his eyes closed, breathing a sigh of relief.

  “I can’t believe I got out of that so easily,” he said.

  “With a little help from me,” I said smugly.

  Lester’s eyes widened. “What did you say?”

  I shrugged again. “Not much. Just that you were off women.”

  He scowled. “That’s all?”

  “I said we’d just watched a movie together …”

  “And?”

  “… about men kissing.”

  “Al!”

  “And that’s when she decided to go back to Peter,” I said. “I promised I’d get her off your back, didn’t I?”

  Lester looked at me in exasperation, and then he started to laugh. “I’ll take all the help I can get,” he said.

  9

  COMPARING NOTES

  “WHAT DO YOU WANT FOR YOUR BIRTH day?” Patrick asked me the following evening when he got back from the band competition and we’d walked over to Georgia Avenue for some ice cream. And he added, “Now that you’re an older woman… .”

  Patrick likes to kid me because I’m a couple of months older than he is.

  “A racehorse,” I said.

  “Sure.”

  “A driver’s license.”

  “Keep going.”

  “Surprise me,” I told him.

  April had turned to May, and the air was sweet-smelling and soft. I realized I was probably as comfortable with Patrick as I’d ever been, but I still couldn’t imagine, even in my boldest dreams, instructing him how to make love to me if we were married.

  “Okay, then, what color flowers do you want for the semi-formal?” he asked.

  “My dress is green. White or yellow would be nice.”

  “Wrist corsage or dress?”

  “Wrist,” I told him. I hate flowers on my dress. For one thing, I imagined Patrick and me dancing really close, me with my eyes closed, maybe, and I didn’t want a bunch of flowers squashed between us.

  I could tell by the way we were walking—the way he held me around the waist—that he was acting a little different that night. Clutching me a little tighter.

  I was glad that the porch light was off when we got home. I’d told Dad that’s one of the most embarrassing things that can happen to a girl—to come home from a date and find the porch light on. If you walk up on the porch, then, it’s a signal you don’t want to be kissed or, if you do want to kiss, your boyfriend has to do it with all the neighbors watching. But if you stop out on the sidewalk so he can kiss you in the shadows, it’s as though you’re expecting something, and what if he didn’t intend to kiss you? It would be so awkward.

  We sat down on the swing, and Patrick pulled me next to him and kissed me, real slow, sort of moving his mouth from side to side as though he wanted to touch every centimeter of my lips.

  Then he stopped and whispered in my ear, “Tell me how you like to be kissed.”

  Oh, no! I thought. It was happening! I was only in eighth grade, and already a boy wanted to know how to make love to me!

  “What?” I gasped.

  “I just want to know how you like to be kissed. Gentle or hard or … there are all kinds of ways. What do you like best?”

  “S-Surprise me,” I said again. It’s all I could think of. I didn’t want to give directions. I didn’t want to be the guide. I wasn’t ready for this. I wanted it to be like it is in the movies, where the man knows what to do and whatever he does is just right, and the woman looks glamorous, not awkward, and …

  Patrick turned his body toward me, braced one hand behind my back, and with his other hand pushed against my shoulder so that I was half lying on the swing and he was bending over me, kissing me hard on the mouth.

  Bonga, bonga, bonga, went my heart, as a ping went through me, and at that exact moment the porch light came on.

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nbsp; We both tried to sit up at the same time, jerking the swing, and Patrick slid off almost onto his knees. I was grasping the back of the swing, struggling to sit up and trying to get one foot on the floor to keep the swing from coming forward again and hitting Patrick. Dad was standing there inside the screen, watching the whole fiasco.

  “Oh,” he said. “I thought I heard noises out here.” But he didn’t turn off the light. “Hello, Patrick. Would you like to come in?”

  “Uh … no, thanks,” Patrick said, scrambling back on the seat beside me where I was trying to straighten my shirt. “I guess I’d better get going. I’ve been gone all weekend, and I still have homework to do.”

  “Oh, how did the competition go?” Dad asked.

  “We came in second in performance, third in sight-reading.”

  “Very good,” said Dad. “Beautiful night, isn’t it?” He went back inside, but left the front door open so that if there were any more squeaks coming from the porch swing, he’d hear them. As if we’d continue to sit out there with the light on, like we were onstage or something.

  Patrick got up.

  “Well, I’ll see you tomorrow,” he said.

  “I’m sorry, Patrick,” I whispered. “Good night.”

  As soon as I got inside, I faced Dad. “Why did you do that? It was so humiliating!”

  “If you want to invite boyfriends to the house, Alice, have them come inside,” he said. “I don’t like you sitting outdoors in the shadows.”

  “In the shadows? We were on the porch. On the swing!”

  “On your back, if I saw correctly.”

  “You were spying on us! You were watching out the window!” I shouted.

  “I just happened to glance out, that’s all.”

  “We were just … just trying a different kind of kiss, and you had to turn on the light!” I yelled.

  “Oh, Al,” Dad said. “It starts out as a kiss, and then one thing leads to another.”

  “So what did you think we were going to do? Spawn or something? You sound just like Aunt Sally!” I went on.

  I was starting to cry, and that really made me mad. “Weren’t you ever young?” I shrieked. “Don’t you remember what it was like to be on a porch with a girl?”

  “I remember all too well, and that’s why I turned on the light.”

  I knew that Dad was feeling as miserable as I was, but I didn’t care. Lester walked in right then—he’d taken Eva out to dinner and come back early to study—and I realized that if Dad hadn’t caught us kissing like that, Lester would have. I didn’t know which would be worse. I could imagine Lester standing there watching us and saying finally, Al, you going to come up for air? or something.

  I went right on yelling at Dad. “Is this what I have to look forward to? All through high school, whenever I go out with a guy, you’re going to leave the porch light on? And if you don’t leave it on, you’ll turn it on at the most inappropriate moment?”

  “Oops. I’ll sit this one out,” Lester said, and started up the stairs.

  “If the most ‘inappropriate moment’ is my daughter on the swing and Patrick on top of her, then yes, that’s what you can expect,” Dad said.

  “Whoa,” said Lester, and turned back around.

  “He wasn’t on me. He was bending over me.”

  “That’s how it all begins, kiddo,” said Lester.

  “Are you in on this too? Do you want me to stand here and tell Dad everything I’ve seen you and Marilyn do?” I cried.

  “Al,” said Dad, a little more gently, “it’s not easy raising you all by myself, and I’m doing the best I can. A father can’t help worrying about his little girl, you know.”

  “I’m not a little girl, Dad! I’m almost fourteen!”

  “That’s what I mean. That’s why I worry.”

  “When I was fourteen,” said Lester, “everything I saw reminded me of sex—tomatoes, knotholes, pillows, peaches, you name it.”

  “I don’t care what you were like at fourteen, either of you! I’m me and Patrick’s Patrick and you can’t tell us how we can kiss! We’ll kiss any way we want!” I yelled, and stormed up to my room, banging my door so hard that I heard plaster falling inside the wall. Then I started crying and couldn’t stop. It wasn’t fair that I had to be the only girl in the family. What did they know about my feelings? Just because Patrick was kissing me in a new way didn’t mean we were going to have sexual intercourse. If Dad only knew how embarrassing even kissing was for me … !

  What was even more embarrassing was that I’d forgotten to tell him I needed a ride to school the next morning because I had to be there early. Camera Club was having a special meeting before school, and after my big door-slamming scene, I had to go back and ask a favor.

  I opened my door softly and started down. I was only halfway there when I heard Lester saying, “Well, I suppose you could lock her in the basement with bread and water, but I doubt it would help. Once she’s sexually active …”

  Sexually active? Sexually active? Patrick and I hadn’t even learned the fine points of kissing yet!

  I marched on down. “For your information,” I said from the doorway, as both Dad and Lester jerked to attention, “I am about as sexually active as a bag of spinach, and if you want to keep me on the porch and not out in the park somewhere behind the bushes, you’ll keep the stupid light off when I come home with a boy.”

  “All right, Al. I apologize,” Dad said, relief spreading over his face. “The light stays off.”

  “And I need a ride tomorrow, because I have to be at school a half hour early,” I said.

  “I’ll run her over,” said Lester. “I’ve got an early class.”

  We sat side by side in Lester’s car the next day. The Camera Club was getting a page in the eighth-grade Memory Book, and we were supposed to go over the best pictures our members had taken during the year and decide which five should go in the book.

  Lester gave a little cough, the way he does when he’s about to say something serious.

  “Uh-oh,” I said.

  “What?”

  “Here comes a lecture.”

  “Not really. I just wanted to say that if you knew how much Dad worries about you—about whether he’s doing things right, I mean—you’d go a little easier on him.”

  “Well, it’s not exactly easy on me either, Lester. At least you had Mom when you were growing up.”

  Lester was very quiet, and then he said, “I was a couple years younger than you are now when she died.”

  “Oh,” I said, and felt awful.

  “In some ways,” he said, “it couldn’t have come at a worse time. I was pudgy—”

  “Pudgy? You?”

  “Yep. I was clumsy. It was the age when you feel that the only woman who could ever possibly love you is your mom, and then she died.”

  “Well, at least you didn’t have to embarrass yourself in front of her,” I said, and immediately knew that was wrong too. Every time I opened my mouth, I seemed to say the wrong thing.

  “Not in front of her, maybe, but in front of Aunt Sally. We all lived with her and Uncle Milt and Carol for a couple of years after Mom died, you know. And if you think last night was embarrassing …”

  “Tell me,” I said, and settled happily back in the seat. If there’s anything that makes you feel better about an embarrassing episode, it’s hearing about someone else’s that was far worse.

  “Well, one day Aunt Sally caught me in the basement trying to wash my sheets.”

  I tried to understand. “Why was that embarrassing?”

  Lester glanced over at me, then straight ahead.

  “You know about nocturnal emissions, don’t you?”

  Good grief, what else was there to learn? I wondered. It sounded like something having to do with a car. “No,” I said.

  “When a guy reaches puberty and has a sexy dream he ejaculates in his sleep, and wakes up to find the sheets wet. I didn’t want Sal to find out. Then she saw me.”

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nbsp; I couldn’t help smiling. “What did she say?”

  Lester gave a little laugh. “‘Oh.’ That’s what she said. I still remember. I think she was probably as embarrassed as I was. It just caught her by surprise. She said something to Dad, though, because the next day he had a little talk with me about wet dreams, just explaining it to me. That was even worse—to think they were talking about it, for Pete’s sake.”

  For some reason it was pretty easy discussing stuff like this with Lester. I think it was because we were both in the car facing forward. It’s sort of like talking in the dark. You don’t have to look at each other.

  “I have a question,” I said.

  “Shoot.”

  “When a guy ejaculates, how much semen comes out? A cup?”

  “A cup? Ye gods, no. A tablespoon or two, maybe.” He grinned at me. “I never measured.” We laughed.

  “Why do you suppose talking about sex is so embarrassing?” I asked.

  “Because it’s so personal, probably.”

  I folded my arms and looked right at him. “So are you sexually active, Lester?”

  “There! Now see, that’s the kind of question everybody dreads. That’s why nobody wants to talk about sex, because they’re always afraid somebody’s going to get too personal. And that’s pretty personal. Let’s just say I get around.”

  “So do alley cats,” I said.

  “What I mean is … Well, define ‘sexual.’ Intercourse is sexual, but so is kissing and hugging and caressing and sweet-talking. So are back rubs and licking and touching and about a dozen other things I could name. You don’t have to have intercourse to be sexual.”

  “Okay, okay,” I said. “No more questions.” And then I added, “For now.”

  “Get out of here,” Lester said, pulling up to the school, and I grinned as I got out and shut the door.

  Patrick looked a little embarrassed when I saw him after the Camera Club meeting, and I didn’t think that any thing could embarrass Patrick. I felt embarrassed all morning. Even at the meeting, I’d been thinking about Patrick, about his wanting to know how I liked my kisses, and then Sam came up behind me and said, “Which pose do you like best?”

  I wheeled around and said, “What?” And then I saw he was holding two photos of seventh-grade girls outside the cafeteria. In one, the girls were seated, and in the other they were standing.