Alice in the Know

  I found myself chucking magazine after magazine. Maybe I was just growing up faster than I’d thought. Maybe that’s why this stuff sounded so juvenile. But I’ll admit that the photos of models in swimsuits made me wonder how I’d look at the beach, so I spent the afternoon trying on shorts to see which ones I should take with me to Rehoboth. I’d gained a pound and a half last year, but it looked good on me. My arms were slimmer, but my butt had filled out a little, and that was okay with me.

  Too bad there isn’t a way to lift a pound and a half off one part of your body and put it somewhere else—any place you choose—like the way you can doctor a photo on the computer. I’d take a pound off my stomach and put it on my calves to give my legs a little more shape.

  Now, turning around in front of the mirror, my butt did look a little more “pat-able,” as Pamela would say. I smiled to myself.

  The phone rang and I answered. It was Mrs. Price, Elizabeth’s mom.

  “Alice, are you working today?” she asked, sounding stressed.

  “No, I’m off. Anything wrong?”

  “Elizabeth won’t be home until four, and I’m supposed to pick Fred up at the airport in an hour. But Nathan’s getting over an ear infection, and he’s been so miserable and fussy. He fell asleep on his rug about twenty minutes ago, and I’d hate like anything to wake him and put him in the car. I was wondering if you could possibly come over and keep an eye on things till I get back. Name your price.”

  “I’ll do it for nothing,” I said. “I’ve got three books yet to read on my summer reading list, and I’ll bring one along.”

  “Oh, would you? Nathan might sleep the whole time. I hope so, anyway,” she said.

  I slipped my sandals on, ran a brush through my hair, and headed across the street to the Prices’ house with To Kill a Mockingbird under my arm. Dad was at work, and Sylvia had gone to play tennis. Her car was still out front, though, so I figured she must have gotten a ride with someone.

  Mrs. Price was standing at the door holding her car keys. “If he wakes up, he’s already had his medicine, so you don’t need to give him anything but juice and crackers. Here’s my cell phone number.”

  “We’ll be fine,” I said.

  Elizabeth’s house is a lot different from ours. More formal. Mauve drapes are caught up in big gathers and folds above the picture window in the living room, and there’s an Oriental rug on the floor. There used to be figurines on the Queen Anne coffee table, but now, I noticed, there was nothing that an almost three-year-old couldn’t touch. A plastic truck with rubber wheels lay on its side by the fireplace beside a stuffed dog stuck in an orange juice container.

  I settled down in a big wing chair with my book and concentrated on Atticus Finch and his daughter, Scout. I’d read two chapters before I heard the stairs creak and looked up to see Nathan coming down one step at a time, both hands holding on to the railing. He stopped when he saw me.

  “Hi, Nathan!” I said, putting down my book. “I came over to play with you!”

  He wasn’t impressed. “Where’s my mommy?” he asked.

  “She’s gone to get your daddy at the airport. They’ll be back soon.” I held out my arms. “Come sit on my lap and we’ll read a story.”

  Nathan shook his head, and his lips turned down.

  I got up and walked toward the hall. But then I ducked behind the wall to the foyer and called softly, “Na-than!” I peeped out and saw him staring. He smiled when he saw me, then clouded up again.

  I moved back through the dining room into the kitchen and peeped out from the wall back there. “Na-than!” I called again, our favorite game whenever I came over. This time I heard him giggle. He padded quickly down the stairs and ran down the hall toward the kitchen, hitting at me when he found me. I swooped him up in my arms and flubbered him on the neck.

  “Should we play with your trucks?” I asked.

  “No,” said Nathan.

  “How about if we build a tower with your blocks?”

  He shook his head.

  I sat down on the couch again with Nathan on my lap, his head heavy against my chest. I picked up a book that was lying nearby, Angus and the Cat. It was a well-worn book, probably Elizabeth’s when she was small and possibly her mother’s before that. It looked old-fashioned and vaguely familiar, as though I could remember myself sitting on somebody’s lap, my head against somebody’s chest.

  Yes, there was the picture of the Scottie dog jumping into a pond after a frog … Angus puzzling over a balloon … and then … the awful day when Angus finds a cat in his house.

  Nathan sat as though hypnotized, listening to the story, arms and legs motionless. All the while I tried to connect this story, this book, with someone in my mind. Was it Mother? Aunt Sally? When we got to the end—Angus was GLAD the cat came back!—I realized that it had been Uncle Milt who had read that book to me so long ago. And I felt that regret again that we were clear out here in Maryland, away from relatives.

  We read the book twice, then another book, then we made a tunnel for Nathan’s trucks out of a set of encyclopedias. When Mr. and Mrs. Price came in at last, Nathan had on a fresh diaper, crumbs on his chin, and was helping me blow soap bubbles in the kitchen.

  “Hey, buddy!” his dad called, and Nathan slid off the chair and ran pell-mell down the hallway to greet him.

  “Alice, thank you so much!” Mrs. Price said. “Please let me pay you.”

  “Not a chance. Nathan and I had some serious playtime coming,” I said.

  As I went outside, I was remembering when Nathan was born, how I waited with Liz in the hospital waiting room while her dad was in with her mom. I smiled as I remembered how we tried to figure out how a baby could come out of a woman—reassure ourselves that our bodies would stretch.

  I’d just reached the bottom step of Elizabeth’s porch when I saw a car pull up outside our house. My jaw dropped when I saw Jim Sorringer in the driver’s seat. Sylvia’s old boyfriend! Our vice principal back in junior high school. Still the vice principal where Sylvia was teaching.

  I slowly put my right foot back on the step and froze as the passenger-side door opened and Sylvia got out with her tennis racket. She leaned down and said something to Jim through the window, and then he drove away.

  I felt I couldn’t go inside our house just then, and I sat down on the Prices’ steps. I had to make sense of what I’d seen. If I walked in now and asked Sylvia about it, it might look as though I’d been spying on her. I stayed for five minutes, then slowly crossed the street.

  When I opened our front door, I could hear the shower going upstairs, and after a while Sylvia came down in her cotton robe, a towel around her hair.

  “Oh, hi, Alice,” she said. “I just got in from tennis. Got a ride both ways.” And she went to the back door, opened it, then took the towel off her head. “I think I’ll just let my hair dry naturally and to heck with the blow-dryer. It’s too hot to put all that heat on my head,” she told me.

  Was she just going to pretend she hadn’t been out with Jim Sorringer? Those weekly sessions she’d been having on Monday afternoons may not have been tennis at all. My mind was racing so far ahead with possibilities that it took my breath away. I didn’t even respond. I took To Kill a Mockingbird up to my room and closed the door.

  Sometimes it seems like half the grown-ups you know are divorced, but I guess that’s the national average. Pamela’s folks are divorced now. My cousin Carol is divorced. Karen’s mom is divorced. Sylvia’s sister is divorced. Sam’s folks are separated.

  I felt like getting online and asking all my friends to keep an eye on Sylvia. In fact, I wanted to ask someone to follow her next Monday and see where she went. I wouldn’t let her get away with carrying on an affair right under Dad’s nose. Stop it! I told myself, but my mind wouldn’t listen.

  Dad worked till six thirty, and Sylvia asked if I wanted to eat without him or wait, and I said I’d wait. I was going to look for signs. Listen for innuendos. They say that divorce a
lways comes as a shock to kids, even when their folks have been fighting a lot. Dad and Sylvia had been married only ten months and I hardly ever heard them argue. But I remembered that kiss Jim Sorringer had given her at the wedding … the way he had held back till the end of the receiving line… .

  Dad came in, and Sylvia put dinner on the table.

  “Yum. Salmon,” he said, and we sat down. As Sylvia passed the salad, she said, “Guess who’s engaged.”

  “Engaged? Your friend Lois?” Dad guessed.

  “No.”

  “Your sister?”

  Sylvia laughed. “If only. No, Jim Sorringer.”

  I dropped my fork and quickly picked it up again.

  “To whom?” Dad asked.

  “The P.E. teacher at school. The new one we got last year.”

  “How did you find out?” Dad asked.

  “Connie and I were supposed to play doubles with Julie and Ed, but Ed was sick, so they asked Jim to fill in. They beat us, of course, but at least I got some exercise. Connie drove me over, and Jim drove me home. He seems almost giddy with happiness.”

  “Good match, do you think?”

  “I think so. I’ve seen them around school together, and they look absolutely devoted to each other,” Sylvia said.

  Did I only imagine it, I wondered, or was that relief on Dad’s face? There was certainly relief on mine.

  “Don’t worry, we won’t have to go to the wedding,” Sylvia teased. “They’re getting married in Iowa, where her parents live.”

  “Darn,” said Dad, holding back a smile.

  I told Sylvia I’d do the dishes and clean up the kitchen. After all my unkind thoughts about her, I should have scrubbed the floor as well. That gave them time to look over the sketches Sylvia had made of the new addition.

  When you add something new, you give away something old, somebody once told me. I don’t know if that’s true, but I decided I needed to give up my suspicions about Sylvia and Jim Sorringer. I needed to accept that she loves Dad as much as he loves her.

  When I crossed the living room later to go up and get ready for Mark’s, I looked at Dad in his armchair and said, “Do you remember reading to me when I was little?”

  “Sure,” he said. “We read a lot.”

  “Do you remember a book called Angus and the Cat?”

  “Hmmm. Seems familiar.”

  “Did Uncle Milt read to me?”

  “Yes. Sally, too. Carol read to you, and even Lester read some. And Grandpa McKinley used to sit you on his knee and read. He liked reading Huckleberry Finn, but you were too young for that and slid off every time.”

  There had been family around me once, I thought, when we lived in Illinois. Grandpa McKinley and my uncles in Tennessee used to come up to visit. There had been a time we had uncles and aunts and grandparents around us. It was just that I wanted them now, and that wasn’t about to happen.

  Sometimes I had the feeling that our family reunion was still waiting to happen. If not at Les and Tracy’s wedding, then some relative could call and organize something else, maybe. My cousin Carol could announce her engagement to somebody. Aunt Marge—the one who married my Uncle Charlie two days before he died on their honeymoon—could marry again. Maybe Sylvia’s sister down in Albuquerque could buy a house and invite everyone to a housewarming. Or Sylvia’s brother in Seattle could give a college graduation party for his daughter. With relatives, anything could happen.

  11

  Sad

  One thing I learned from working in a department store: I didn’t want a job where the highlight of the day was going home and time off was the only thing that mattered. The hours at Hecht’s seemed to drag along, and the only bright spots were days like this Monday, when I wasn’t working. Whatever contribution I was making to the state of the world was only a drop in the bucket.

  Patrick doesn’t seem to worry about being a drop in the bucket, though. He’s too busy to worry. Too busy to come by every week and join the gang. But on this particular Monday he was there at Mark’s when I arrived, and I joined him and Gwen at the umbrella table by the pool. Gwen was telling him how Molly was sort of an epiphany for her.

  “How so?” he asked.

  “My grandmother would say it was God working through Molly, but I say it’s just Molly, plain and simple, that did it for me.”

  “Did what?” I asked, sitting down with my Coke.

  “Helped me make up my mind to go into medicine for real. That and my internship at NIH,” she said.

  “It’s a long haul, Gwen—medical school,” Patrick cautioned.

  “You know it! But working in hematology this summer … realizing all the diagnostic stuff you can do with blood … I don’t know. I see kids come into the clinic for chemo—kids a lot sicker than Molly—and I think, ‘Yes! This is where I belong.’ I’m making friends with some of the doctors. They’ll help me figure out how to go about getting into medical school.”

  She looked at Patrick, who was turning his glass around and around on the tabletop. “How about you?”

  “I’m going to major in international relations. Maybe work overseas.”

  “A diplomat like your dad?” I asked.

  “Not that. More a hands-on job. I’ll see how it goes.”

  I always feel so … immature, in a way, when either Patrick or Gwen talk about the future. Patrick’s starting college a year sooner than the rest of us; Gwen’s got an internship with a national agency… . What was I doing to prepare myself for a job in psychology? Fastening buttons at Hecht’s.

  I raised my head and sniffed the air. There was that burning-rope smell I’d noticed the last time we were here at Mark’s. I glanced around and figured it was coming from the direction of Brian and Keeno at the far end of the pool. They were sitting on the edge, their legs in the water, smoking … something. Mark went over and kidded around a little with Keeno. Took something from him and inhaled, then handed it back.

  “They’re at it again,” I said. Brian had that sleepy, faraway look on his face. Keeno looked a little more nervous, keyed up. I could hardly stand to look at Brian anymore, but not because of this. Because of that sex quiz, I imagined he could see right through me, and his smile always seemed a leer. Yet I had to act friendly and breezy or else he’d know it had really gotten to me. But the fact that he’d tricked Amy and those other girls—the fire in my gut flared again.

  “What do you suppose it’s like?” I asked.

  “Pot?” said Patrick.

  “Altered state of consciousness,” said Gwen. “Supposed to make you euphoric, relaxed, et cetera.”

  “Depends how much you smoke,” said Patrick.

  “You’ve tried it?” I asked.

  “Once,” he answered.

  I’d asked the question, but I didn’t expect the answer. I turned and looked at Patrick. Patrick! I was sitting here with maybe two of the smartest kids in the whole school, and one had had sex and one had smoked pot.

  “Why?” I asked.

  “Because I wanted to see for myself what it was all about.”

  “So have you tried crack just to see what it’s about?”

  “I said I was curious, not crazy.”

  “So what’s it like?”

  “An everything’s-right-with-the-world kind of feeling, I guess. Mellow …”

  “Then why aren’t you sitting down there with Brian?”

  “Because I don’t trust an artificial high,” said Patrick. “Know what I mean?”

  “Well, obviously, Brian doesn’t go by that philosophy,” said Gwen. “We’ve got a study going about marijuana and its effects on oxygen in the blood, and—”

  She stopped talking when the patio door opened and Mrs. Stedmeister came out. We hardly ever saw Mark’s parents. It was as though they turned the backyard and pool and family room completely over to Mark’s friends when we came—happy to have us there. If we saw them at all, it was usually just to dart in or out like chipmunks, taking empty glasses back into the ho
use or setting out a fresh bowl of chips.

  But this time Mrs. Stedmeister stood erect there on the patio, a tall, thin woman with an angular face. She was wearing a pink polo shirt, a beige skirt, and sneakers, her short salt-and-pepper hair like a cap on her head.

  “Could I have your attention for a moment?” she said. She was standing beside the table where Patrick and Gwen and I were sitting. When the chatter didn’t subside, Patrick picked up a spoon and tapped it on the side of his glass. People turned around and stared.

  Now that all eyes were on Mrs. Stedmeister, she appeared self-conscious and cleared her throat twice before she spoke: “Just so you know, there is to be no marijuana smoking at this address, inside or out,” she said. It sounded as though she was reciting a speech she had practiced a number of times. “There is also to be no alcohol. If you bring any of these things with you, we’ll have to ask you to leave. Thank you.”

  Mark’s face went the color of a peach. He gave an embarrassed smile to Brian, who was discreetly stamping out his joint on the concrete deck. Keeno’s fingers closed around the can next to his thigh and slid it behind him. Without further explanation, Mrs. Stedmeister turned and went back inside the house.

  We looked around uncomfortably at each other.

  “The Pool Nazi has spoken,” Mark murmured, but Liz rose to his mom’s defense.

  “Hey, Mark, she’s let us hang out here all these years. Give her a break,” she said.

  “Damn,” murmured Brian. “Let’s go to the park. C’mon. Who wants to go to Wheaton?”

  “It closes at dusk, Brian,” Patrick told him.

  “Trust me. I know where to get in,” Brian said.

  “And they patrol it,” Liz reminded him.