Alice in the Know

  “Do we know you, sweetheart?” asked one of the women.

  “No, but some guys are following us out there, and we don’t want them to know where we’re staying,” said Pamela. “I’d call my dad to come get us, but it’s a rental house and I don’t know the number.”

  “Well, for goodness’ sake!” said the woman on the couch. “You just help yourselves to some cake over there and that punch on the table, too. It’s our fiftieth wedding anniversary, Bob’s and mine.”

  “Congratulations!” Liz said.

  The man with the crumbs walked over and shook our hands. “Bob Seifert,” he said. “Pleased to meet you.”

  We each introduced ourselves.

  The second man got up and peered out the door, then closed it. “Those the ones you’re talking about?” he asked.

  “Yes. If they think we live here, maybe they’ll go away,” Pamela said.

  So we sat around drinking punch and eating cake and telling them all we’d done at the beach. Our little intrusion seemed exciting to them, and one of the women kept peeping out through the curtains, although we wished she wouldn’t.

  But a half hour later Liz reported that the guys were gone. So the two men escorted us back to our rental house and walked us right up to the door. We thanked them profusely.

  “You girls be careful now,” one of them said. “Can’t ever be too careful at the beach.”

  By the time we got back to Silver Spring, I’d been gone four days—Friday through Monday—and I called the misses’ sportswear department at Hecht’s to see what time Juanita wanted me to come in on Tuesday, but she was on her dinner break. I left a message for her to call back.

  Sylvia had bought some crabmeat, and I showed her how Meredith had made crab cakes. She loved my straw hat, and when Dad got home, I told them both about the trip. About volleyball on the sand and learning to duck under the waves. About Jerry and the cotton candy place and the guys in the bumper cars and how I’d got lost on my Jet Ski. Sylvia really laughed about that one.

  “Oh, Alice, that could only happen to you!” she said. “I can just see you out there waving your shirt.”

  Dad laughed too. “Well, that little getaway made a nice end to summer, didn’t it? I’m glad you got to go,” he told me.

  “I’ve still got two weeks left,” I said. And then I remembered Lester. “Have you heard from Les?”

  “Not a word,” said Dad.

  I frowned. “Shouldn’t we check? Have you called his apartment?”

  “I called once to invite him to dinner, but they said he was sleeping,” Sylvia told me. “It’s going to take time for him to get over Tracy. He just might not want to be sociable for a while.”

  I couldn’t accept that. I couldn’t believe there wasn’t something I could do to cheer him up, but I was really too tired that evening to think of anything. Juanita still hadn’t called by ten, so I decided to go in early the next day to play it safe.

  At eight, I staggered out of bed, showered, and did my hair, then took a bus to Wheaton Plaza. I got to the store five minutes after it opened but figured I’d get points for coming in at ten, even though I didn’t know what time they wanted me.

  I took the escalator up to sportswear.

  “Is Juanita here?” I asked the girl who was tagging a rack of fall pants.

  “She went to the office for change. She’ll be back in a minute,” she said. I stuck my bag under the counter and folded some pants that were piled there.

  “I’m Alice,” I said to the girl.

  “Hi. I’m Lonnie,” she told me.

  I could see Juanita’s blue-black hair bobbing above the racks as she came back to sportswear. She was surprised to see me.

  “I’m back!” I said. “We had a fabulous time!” When she didn’t answer, I said, “I left a message yesterday for you to call me, and when you didn’t, I figured I’d better come in at ten just in case.”

  Juanita looked at Lonnie, then at me. She came over and gently took me aside. “Alice, I’m afraid you don’t work here anymore,” she said.

  I could only stare. “What?”

  “You see, you didn’t have permission to take four days off.”

  It still wasn’t registering. “That was my only vacation, and it wasn’t even a whole week!” I explained. “I told you when I was going and when I’d be back.”

  She tipped her head and gave me a slightly admonishing look. “Honey, you told me, you didn’t ask. And I’m not the one who grants leave. I thought that surely you’d arranged it with the personnel office before you left, and that they’d send me someone to fill in. When you didn’t punch your time card, Jennifer Martin came up to see if you were working. I told her you were on vacation, and she said it was the first she’d heard about it.”

  “But … but you’re my supervisor!”

  “I’m the supervisor of misses’ sportswear, but I don’t hire and fire. Jennifer was the one who hired you and the one you should have talked to about getting time off. And you know”—she touched my arm again—“nobody really has any vacation time coming until they’ve worked here a year.”

  I couldn’t believe it. “No vacation?” I said weakly

  “Not when you’re part-time, though they do give time off if we’re not too busy.”

  Lonnie, of course, was listening to the whole conversation, putting a new shipment of shirts on hangers in slow motion.

  Juanita went on: “You can go to the office and see if there’s any chance of being rehired, but Jennifer was pretty upset. We were having that gigantic clearance sale, you remember, and this place was a zoo!”

  I felt as small and low as a pin there on the floor.

  “And, of course, now,” Juanita went on, “we’ve hired Lonnie in your place. I’m sorry, Alice.”

  I took my bag out from under the counter. “I’m sorry too that I let you down,” I said, my face warm with embarrassment. What a sheltered life I’d lived, really—working for my dad, taking time off for granted. Now I knew why he wanted me to get a taste of the outside world. How could I have thought I could just announce I was going to the ocean with friends and get an automatic okay?

  “Bye, Juanita,” I said.

  She gave me a quick hug. “Live and learn, huh? Good luck, honey.”

  “Have a great time in Puerto Rico,” I said.

  I didn’t go to the office. I didn’t even go down to Burger King to see if Pamela still had a job. I went back to the bus stop and took the first one leaving the mall.

  I’d been fired!

  I couldn’t wrap my mind around it. The first real outside job I’d ever had—an outside paying job—and I’d been sacked. I could feel the blood throbbing in my head and kept swallowing and swallowing as saliva gathered at the back of my throat.

  I’d thought I was doing so well. I had reported those shoplifters and got them arrested! How could they even think of letting me go without giving me another chance?

  I didn’t know if Sylvia would be home or not, but I couldn’t bear to tell her how stupid I had been, so I didn’t get off at my usual stop but stayed on till we got to the corner near the Melody Inn.

  “Alice!” Marilyn said when she saw me. Lester’s old girlfriend, now married, always greets me like a sister. “Well, for heaven’s sake! Nice to see you!”

  I managed a weak smile. “Is Dad around?” I asked.

  “He’s back in the office, I think,” she said, and gave me a quizzical look.

  I headed for the back of the store and almost collided with David, who was carrying a box of sheet music.

  “Hey!” he said. “How’s it going?”

  “Hi,” I said without answering, and went straight back to the office, closing the door behind me.

  Dad was sorting through some papers on his desk and didn’t even look up for a second. When he did, he blinked and looked again. “Al!” he said.

  My chin wobbled, but I steeled myself. I promised myself I wouldn’t cry. “I’m wondering … if we c
ould go to lunch,” I said.

  “Lunch? It’s only eleven o’clock. Didn’t you eat any breakfast this morning?” he asked. And then, “I thought you’d be at work.”

  “So did I,” I said, and waited a second longer to get up my courage. “Dad … I’ve been fired.”

  He sat back in his chair. “Fired?” he asked softly.

  “Juanita told me when I went in. She said I ought to have cleared my time off with the office.”

  Dad looked at me with disbelief on his face. “You mean you didn’t? You just went without telling them?”

  “No, I told Juanita. I thought that was all I had to do. I thought everyone got time off for a vacation.”

  Dad gave me a sorrowful smile. “The outside world doesn’t work that way, does it?”

  I hung my head. “I feel so stupid. So embarrassed. They were having a big clearance sale while I was gone, and I can just imagine what it was like with clothes piling up in the fitting rooms.”

  A tear escaped in spite of me. I imagined having to go the rest of my life telling all future employers that I’d left my employment at Hecht’s because I’d been fired. “Now they’ve hired someone else,” I sniffled. “Do you think I’ll ever get another job?”

  Dad smiled. “Oh, I think so. Everyone’s entitled to a few youthful mistakes. Be honest. Tell your next employer what happened and how you’d never make that same mistake again.” His smile grew even broader. “You’ll make others, of course.”

  “That isn’t exactly comforting,” I said. “I’d thought I might want to work part-time at Hecht’s all through the school year, and now I can’t. I’m not even sure that I should. I don’t know whether to try for a job somewhere else or not.”

  “I’m not sure it’s a good idea, either, to try to hold down a part-time job during the school year, Al. Why don’t you go out there and help David check in that order of sheet music? Make yourself useful, and we’ll go get a sandwich later,” Dad said. Then he grinned. “And if you need a good recommendation to a future employer, I’ll give you one.”

  I smiled a little too. “Thanks, Dad,” I said.

  15

  Songs with Aunt Sally

  I always feel better after lunch with my dad. A Philly cheesesteak sandwich with onions would make almost anyone feel better. It didn’t make my unauthorized vacation any less stupid; it just gave me some perspective. My life wasn’t exactly ruined because of it.

  I walked all the way back home instead of taking the bus—penance, I guess. When I reached our street, I noticed that the leaves on some of the trees were already turning yellow and beginning to curl. Fall was breathing down my neck. I called Pamela’s house to see if she was working. She wasn’t, and when she invited me over, I jumped at the chance to get away. I put on shorts and walked to her house.

  “Well, don’t feel too bad about it.” she said when I told her about my job. “I’m giving my notice tomorrow because I don’t think I should be working during the school year. I’ve got to bring my grades up.”

  I don’t think I’d been in her house five minutes before she got a call from her mom. We looked at the cell phone lying on Pamela’s rug while she debated whether or not to answer.

  “Sooner or later, Pamela … ,” I told her.

  She sighed and picked it up. “Want to listen?” she asked before she pressed SEND.

  “Not particularly,” I said, but she held it away from her ear anyway.

  “Hi, honey. How you doing?” came her mother’s chirpy voice.

  “Doing okay, Mom. How about you?” said Pamela.

  Her mother cut right to the chase. “Well, how did things go at the ocean?”

  “It was fun,” Pamela told her. “We had a great time. Did the beach, the rides, the Jet Ski… .” She looked at me and grinned. “Alice got lost on her Jet Ski, but we managed to get her back to shore.”

  I heard her mother laugh. “And Bill?” she asked. “What is this Meredith person like?”

  “She’s nice. Easy to get along with,” said Pamela.

  “Are they serious, do you think?”

  Pamela took a deep breath and gave me a Here goes look. “I’d say so, Mom, seeing as how they’re engaged.”

  “Oh … oh …” There was silence. A long silence. Pamela checked the phone to be sure there was still a connection. And finally we heard Mrs. Jones say, “I was afraid of this. Well … there’s a chapter of my life that’s closed, I guess. I wish I’d have lived it differently, but I didn’t. And at some point”—her voice wavered, but she went on—“ you have to pay the piper. But …”

  Silences are really painful when you can only guess what’s coming next. Pamela and I looked at each other uncertainly.

  “But … the next chapter’s unwritten, right? A blank slate?” she said.

  “Whatever you want to make it, Mom,” Pamela said.

  After she hung up, Pamela and I studied each other without saying anything for a moment. “Sometimes … what you think is going to be the hardest isn’t that bad at all,” she said finally.

  Pamela had been dreading that conversation with her mom, but maybe not as much as I was dreading telling Sylvia that I’d been fired. I’d stayed at Pamela’s as long as I could, but it was time to get home and help Sylvia make dinner. We didn’t have school this week, but teachers had to be there.

  When I walked inside, Sylvia was reading a magazine, her feet propped on the arm of the sofa. “Oh, good! I didn’t know if you’d be home for dinner or not,” she said when she saw me. “Ben will be late, so it’s just us girls. What do—?”

  “Sylvia,” I said quickly, “I got fired.”

  Her eyebrows questioned me. “What?”

  “I didn’t get permission from the right person to take that long weekend at the beach, and they let me go.”

  “Really?” She swung her legs around and sat upright.

  I flopped down beside her. “How could I have been so stupid?”

  “Inexperienced, maybe, but not stupid,” she said gently.

  “No, I’ve been incredibly spoiled, working for Dad all this time.”

  “Well, maybe so.” She smiled and gave me a hug. “Let’s just say that Ben was right and you needed a little more contact with the real world. Any chance they’ll reconsider?”

  “Juanita didn’t think so. They were having this colossal sale, and I wasn’t there for it. I don’t know if I would have wanted to work during the school year or not, but I can’t bear the thought of this on my record. I was thinking of writing a letter of apology to the woman who hired me. Do you think that’s a good idea?”

  “I think it’s a very good idea. And be sure to tell her all you learned while you were working there. Employers like to hear that.”

  We sat quietly for a moment or two. “This is the way life is, right? Great times followed by something lousy. Sad, even.” I thought of Molly.

  “Sort of,” she said, and smiled a little. “It’s a roller coaster, not a merry-go-round. But sometimes there are lots of good things one right after another and a sad thing only once in a while.”

  “And some people have lots of sad things and a good thing only once in a while.”

  “That’s true,” she said. “Life isn’t fair.”

  “Does it ever bother you? I mean, do you find yourself worrying what the next bad thing will be?”

  “I look at it this way,” she said. “If we’re going to ruin what good times we have by worrying they won’t last, then we might as well not have good times at all, because what difference does it make if we’re going to be miserable anyway?”

  I hadn’t thought about it that way.

  “Enjoy what you can, Alice,” she said. “And when life hits you in the stomach, deal with it then. Don’t try to figure everything out in advance.”

  I got up. “Okay. I’m going to write that letter,” I said. I started upstairs, then stopped. “Any word yet from Lester?”

  “Only that he can’t come to dinner tomorrow. H
e’s finishing a paper for his course.”

  I sat down at my desk and began the letter to Jennifer Martin. I read it over twice to make sure I’d said everything I wanted to say. Then I sealed and stamped it. But the fact was, I was getting distracted by thoughts of Lester. I hadn’t known him to refuse a dinner invitation very often. Was that even true that he was working on a paper? Weren’t summer school courses over before the end of August, even in graduate school? He was holed up in his apartment, sad, lonely, dejected, depressed, and if nobody else was going to do something about it, I would. Lester’s twenty-fourth birthday was coming up, and I was determined he wouldn’t spend it alone.

  Aunt Sally called that evening “just to talk,” and I sure wasn’t going to tell her about getting fired. I didn’t want still another person disappointed in me.

  “School’s about to start up soon,” she said. “How has your summer been, dear?”

  “It’s gone by pretty quick,” I told her. “I’m getting eager to go back, actually. I miss being on the newspaper staff.”

  “Oh, I can imagine! Sixteen is an exciting year,” she said. “My grandma used to say it was our most dangerous year—Marie’s and mine.”

  Anytime she mentioned my mother, I was interested. “Dangerous? Why?”

  “She said that’s the year we’d be introduced to the most temptations.”

  “Who introduced you?” I asked. All I could think was that my sixteenth year must be passing me by, because I hadn’t been introduced to any temptations that were particularly appealing.

  “Grandma meant that we would be offered alcohol and cigarettes and other such things. In fact, when she took care of us sometimes when we were smaller, she used to sing songs out of her old school songbook to prepare us. She even made Marie and me memorize some of them.”

  “Songs?”

  “To sing if we were tempted.”

  Les always said that Mom loved to sing, but I thought she loved songs from Showboat. “What kind of songs?” I asked.

  “Oh, she had one for every occasion, let me tell you. I remember the day she tried to teach us to make piecrusts. Marie was ten—I was fourteen—and the last thing on our minds was pie crust. Ours came out all sticky and doughy, and Marie and I just gave up. Grandma marched us straight to the piano and made us learn ‘Never Say Fail.’” And Aunt Sally began to sing it over the telephone: