Patiently Alice

  Dad toyed with his veal chop. “You’ve talked of moving closer to campus, though.”

  “I know, but I’d never get as sweet a deal as this one, Dad. I really want to try it, and now that the wedding’s postponed, I think I ought to move out, give you and Sylvia some privacy.”

  I kept looking from Dad to Lester, Lester to Dad. Just because Dad was marrying Sylvia, did every-thing have to change? I suddenly wanted to retract everything I’d said about wanting something to happen this summer. Was I going to have to move out too to give them privacy? How much privacy did they need? They could always close their door. Then I realized that Lester’s room is right next to theirs. Maybe that would be a little awkward.

  “Well, it certainly seems like a good opportunity,” Dad said at last. “Paul is in school too; it’s a lucky break for you both.”

  Lester beamed and looked at me. How could I say it was okay with me? Lester had lived with us my entire life. I’d be lost without him! I could see me eating breakfast alone on Saturday mornings. Making dinner by myself when it was our night to cook. Standing at the doorway of Lester’s empty room when everyone else had gone to bed and I had a worry that only Lester could understand. I hated the tremor in my voice when I asked, “Will I be able to visit you?”

  “Sure!” Lester said. “It’s only a couple of miles from here. We’ll have you to dinner! You can drop by on weekends.”

  My mind suddenly did a turnaround and started racing in the other direction. I could see me eating lunch on Sundays in my brother’s apartment with two other handsome guys. I could see making spaghetti sauce for them when they had a party. I could see me driving over there after I got my license and sitting on the front porch on summer nights and being introduced to Lester’s friends.

  “Well, I think it’s a wonderful idea too!” I said. “I think it’s time that Lester had a place of his own.”

  Both Dad and Lester looked surprised, like they’d expected a protest.

  “Well, then, I’ll tell Paul I’m in,” said Lester.

  “When will you be moving out?” asked Dad.

  “Mr. Watts is having the place painted, so it won’t be ready till the middle of September, but he says there’s no reason we can’t move some of our stuff in if we keep it in the middle of the floor.”

  I imagined Lester and Paul and George inviting Pamela and Elizabeth and me to dinner. I imagined George and Paul and Lester going to the movies and inviting me and Elizabeth and Pamela to come along. I imagined Paul and Lester and George going shopping at Safeway to stock their refrigerator and Elizabeth and me and Pamela going along to help. I imagined…

  “So what’s going through your mind?” Les said to me. “Planning to take over my room the minute I move out?”

  “No,” I said brightly. “Just thinking about the future, that’s all.”

  It was the first thing I wanted to talk about when our gang met the next Sunday at Mark Stedmeister’s pool. It was hard to find a time we could all get together at once, because most of us had part-time jobs. I was working days at the Melody Inn; Elizabeth was baby-sitting her little brother; and Pamela was working part-time for a dog-walking service.

  The biggest change I’d noticed in our group was that we sat around and talked more. The guys weren’t constantly trying to push each other in the pool, or seeing who could make the biggest cannonball and splash everyone on the deck.

  In junior high our conversations were mostly the boys joking about something and the girls laughing. Joke… laugh… joke… laugh. Now we were actually having real conversations. I was impressed at how adult we sounded.

  “Big news. Lester’s moving out,” I said as we lounged about on the deck, our bodies covered with sunblock.

  Pamela and Elizabeth stared at me. “Oh, Al-ice!” they wailed in unison.

  “Aren’t you sad?” asked Elizabeth.

  I began to wonder if this really was a tragedy and I just didn’t know it yet.

  “Well, he’s only a couple of miles away, and he’s sharing an apartment with two cute guys,” I said, stretching it a bit, since I didn’t know either Paul Sorenson or George Palamas.

  I could see the wheels turning in Pamela’s head. “Could we see his apartment?” she asked.

  “Oh, sure! Lester said we could visit anytime.” Now I was stretching the truth so far, I could almost hear it snap.

  Elizabeth was all enthusiasm. “Oh, Alice, we could help them decorate! We could go over on moving day and cook for them and everything!” she said.

  “We could have a housewarming party for them. In their apartment!” said Pamela. “Oh, man, this is major!”

  “Maybe they’d let us have the apartment some night for our own party,” said Brian. “Now that would be cool.”

  “Sweeeeet!” agreed Mark.

  I began to feel as though Lester’s apartment was getting a lot more publicity than he would have liked.

  “When’s moving day?” Pamela asked.

  I knew I had to back off. “I’m not sure,” I said. “I’ll let you know.” And I was relieved when the conversation turned to other things.

  “Anyone seen Patrick lately?” Justin asked. “I thought his courses would be over by now.” Justin was sitting by Elizabeth. One minute it looked like they might be getting chummy again, the next minute Jill was in his lap.

  “Patrick came by the other night,” I said, waving off a fly.

  Everyone looked at me.

  “He was doing a psych assignment,” I explained, “and needed to interview someone.”

  “Can you imagine Patrick asking anyone for help?” said Karen.

  “I can’t,” said Penny. “Patrick Long is the most self-sufficient person I know.”

  Somehow I resented her answering, even though Karen had asked a question. I guess I’d wanted her to sound surprised—hurt, even—that he’d come by to see me, now that they’d broken up. I ignored her.

  “What’s this I hear about Gwen and Legs splitting up?” Mark asked. “Leo says he drove up to see her at that camp and she was making out with some guy there.”

  Pamela and Elizabeth and I broke into laughter, remembering that movie-star kiss. “Yeah, sure. She was making out, all right,” I said. “And Legs couldn’t be happier that he can go out now with the girl he’s been two-timing Gwen with in the first place.”

  Mark hadn’t known that we knew about Legs’s new girlfriend. The conversation got general then—who was going with whom, what everybody had been doing over the summer.

  Patrick came just as we were taking orders for calzones. Take-out Taxi will deliver.

  “My man!” Brian said when he saw Patrick, and they punched each other on the shoulder. Guys have such stupid greetings!

  “How you doing?” Patrick asked, looking around the whole group. His smile extended to me. I was mainly watching Penny, though. She just turned her head away from him. It was then I noticed that she and Mark were playing footsie. Things sure do change. It hadn’t seemed so long ago that Mark and Pamela were going out, but then Mark dumped potato salad down the back of Pamela’s bikini bottom, and it was good-bye, Mark!

  I was tired of baking in the sun, so I got up and jumped in the pool. Elizabeth and Patrick jumped in too.

  “How did you do on the psych interview?” I asked Patrick.

  “Got an A minus,” said Patrick.

  “Why the minus?”

  “Because I should have asked a few more questions.”

  “What kind of an interview was it?” asked Elizabeth.

  “I had to interview someone about childhood experiences so we could see if there was any connection between what had gone on in childhood and what was going on now.”

  “Sounds interesting,” said Elizabeth.

  Patrick grinned. “She was an interesting girl.”

  “So was there any correlation?” I asked.

  “That’s what we’re working on this week, when we pool our results. It’s not a valid study.”

&nb
sp; “I’m grateful for that,” I said. “I’d hate to have you know something about me that I didn’t know.”

  I wasn’t paying as much attention to Patrick right then, though, as I was to Pamela. She was sitting around with the others, but it looked as though her mind was a thousand miles away. I realized what I’d been missing this summer; the old, outrageous, fast-track Pamela, who always seemed a step or two ahead of the rest of us. Even at camp she’d seemed to take a backseat in whatever we did; and watching her now—her knees pulled up to her chest, her eyes on a tree—I vowed to give her more time and attention before school started.

  “Okay,” she said the next day when I called her, just to talk. “I got the whole story.” I could hear a new CD by the Velvet Pistols playing in the background.

  “Of what?” I asked.

  “Of what happened between Patrick and Penny.”

  “Who did you get it from? Patrick or Penny?”

  “Karen.”

  “Oh, come on, Pamela! You can’t believe half of what Karen tells you. If she doesn’t have any good gossip, she’ll make it up.”

  “She got it straight from Penny.”

  “I’ll bet.”

  “Well, do you want to hear it or not?”

  Of course I did.

  “Penny just felt that she came second in Patrick’s life.”

  “Second to what?”

  “I’m not sure, but that’s what she told Karen. His courses, maybe. Probably you.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous.”

  “She said that a couple of times Patrick even made the mistake of calling her “Alice.”

  I had to smile. “I can imagine how Penny took to that!”

  “Well, it wasn’t just that. She also said that a lot of the time she didn’t think he was all there.”

  “Now what did she mean by that? Patrick’s one of the brightest guys I know!”

  “She meant that he wasn’t all that focused on her. He had his mind on other things.”

  “That’s Patrick,” I said. “But I can’t imagine why she’d suspected I was in the picture again. Except for that e-mail message from Patrick, we hadn’t seen or spoken to each other since school let out.”

  “That’s not what Penny thinks.”

  “So why doesn’t she ask me?”

  “Oh, come on. She wouldn’t humiliate herself like that. Admit it, now. Doesn’t it give you even the slightest satisfaction to know that she’s jealous of you?”

  “Yes,” I said, laughing.

  “And isn’t there just the teeniest, tiniest bit of satisfaction in knowing that after she took him away from you, he was the one who lost interest?”

  “Yep,” I told her.

  “You and Patrick ought to go out sometime right under her nose, just to get even.”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” I said.

  “I don’t understand you, Alice. It’s not a sin to want to rub it in a little.”

  “Maybe I like my new freedom,” I told her.

  In the background, the lead singer for the Velvet Pistols was shouting out the words. I’m not even sure you could call it singing:

  “I wanna make you,

  I wanna break you,

  Baby, you’re mine tonight.”

  And then the band, all the guys together, started moaning a sort of syncopated “Uh-huh, Uh-huh, Uh-huh,” which was supposed to sound like they were having sex, I guess.

  Finally, Pamela said, “I’m really down, Alice. Everyone else has a job with people for the rest of the summer. All I’ve got for company are dogs. Find out exactly when Lester’s moving, will you? I want at least one thing to look forward to.”

  15

  * * *

  The Go-Between

  Dad seemed to need me more around the house once I was back. I’m not sure what it was, but it was as though he’d lost his bearings after Sylvia postponed the wedding. I guess I’d call him distracted, but not quite coming apart at the seams. Maybe everyone has a limited amount of patience, I thought, and he had about used his up.

  I mentioned this at the Melody Inn.

  “His mind is on Sylvia, that’s the problem,” I said to Marilyn Rawley, after we had unpacked some boxes UPS had delivered. Marilyn is one of Lester’s old girlfriends, who works for Dad as his assistant manager.

  “I’ve noticed,” Marilyn said, scooping up her long brown hair in back and planting it firmly on top of her head with a wide comb. “I had to remind him last week that our paychecks were due. The music instructors hadn’t been paid.”

  But I was staring at her hand. I reached up and took hold of her ring finger. There was a small oval diamond set in white gold.

  “Marilyn?” I said, studying her face, and she broke into a wide smile. “That guy you’ve been going out with? Jack?”

  She nodded.

  I didn’t know whether to smile or cry. I had so wanted Lester to marry Marilyn! More than any of the other girls he ever dated—Crystal Harkins, even—I’d wanted it to be Marilyn.

  She understood, because she put a finger to my lips and said, “Don’t say it.”

  I swallowed, then managed to congratulate her. “Have you told Dad?” I asked.

  “No. Jack just proposed last night.”

  “Oh, Marilyn, Jack is so lucky! I hope he knows how lucky he is, and I hope you’ll be deliriously happy every day for the rest of your life!” I burbled.

  She hugged me and laughed. “No body is happy every day of her life, Alice. But when he asked me, I just knew he was the right one.”

  I spent the rest of the afternoon straightening the merchandise in the Gift Shoppe and wrapping purchases and making change and wondering how you knew when you’d met the “right one.” How soon had Dad known that about Sylvia? A lot sooner, I guess, than Sylvia knew that about Dad. Gwen had even thought for a while that Legs was “the one” for her. Just how wrong can you be?

  “Your shirts aren’t back from the laundry yet because you didn’t send them out,” I told Dad one evening. “Your laundry bag is still in your closet. Want me to take them in for you?”

  He looked exasperated. He also kept forgetting to pick up milk and bananas—the things we use up faster than anything else—so I’d begun checking the refrigerator regularly and walking to the 7-Eleven to get them when I saw we were running low. Checking his shirts. He had worked so hard to get the house ready for Sylvia, and who knew when she’d come back?

  After dinner he went out to putter around in the garden, pulling weeds, spreading a little mulch, watering. Then he went up to his room, and I saw him sitting at his desk when I walked by.

  Later, when Les and I were cleaning up the kitchen, Sylvia called.

  “Dad’s up in his room writing a letter to you,” I said. “I’ll get him.”

  “Well, let me talk to you first, Alice. How are you? I don’t think we’ve talked since you went to camp.” Her voice was as lilting as ever.

  “Oh, I’m fine. I had a really good time, but I like being home for the rest of the summer.”

  “I know how you feel. I wish I could be home. How’s Ben holding up? Really.”

  “He’s missing you,” I said.

  “Oh, I know. And I’m missing him terribly.”

  “How’s Nancy?”

  “Better. Her kidneys are starting to function again. She still needs dialysis, but not as often. We’re hopeful.”

  “Will you… will you be back before Christmas?” I asked plaintively.

  “Oh, definitely,” she said. “But I don’t want to get Ben’s hopes up that I’m coming back too much sooner until we know for sure. How are you doing, Alice?”

  “I’m marking time,” I told her.

  “How?”

  “Everything’s on hold.”

  “The wedding, you mean.”

  “Yes.” I swallowed. “I looked at the calendar this morning and…”

  “I know,” she finished for me. “The day we were supposed to be married. I’ve been feeling sad all day
.”

  “Me too. But the one exciting thing that’s happening is that Lester’s moving out,” I told her. “Well, exciting and sad both, I guess.”

  “What?”

  “It’s a really good deal. He gets the apartment rent-free. I’ll let Dad tell you all about it, but Lester said I could visit whenever I wanted.” Somehow it seemed that the more people I talked to about Lester’s moving, the more generous I made Lester sound. “I just wish you were here, though, to take care of Dad, Sylvia. Then I’d have one less person to worry about.”

  “Why? Alice, what’s wrong?”

  “He’s sad. He’s forgetful. He forgets to take his shirts to the laundry, to stop at the store, to pay all the bills. All he does is mope around and work in the garden.”

  “You’d better get him to the phone, Alice. I think your dad needs to hear some sweet talk about now.”

  I grinned. “Okay.”

  I started upstairs to get Dad just as he was on his way down to refill his coffee cup.

  “It’s Sylvia, Dad,” I said.

  His face lit up like Christmas. “Sylvia?” He lunged for the phone, pulled out the telephone stool, and sat down, his back against the wall. His face broke into a hundred little smiling crinkles.

  “Sweetheart,” he said, adjusting the phone to his ear, and in that moment I heard her say, “Hi, you old, forgetful honey bear.…” And I knew it was time for me to clear out.

  I went upstairs to sort through my things for the laundry and saw the glow of Dad’s lamp coming from his room. I walked to the doorway. There were his reading glasses on the desk beside a pen and paper. As much as I knew I shouldn’t, I tiptoed over to his chair. I told Sylvia he was writing to her, I said to myself. All I’m going to do is take a quick peek and make sure I’d told the truth.

  He must have started the letter on the other side of the page, because the first line was a continuation of something else. But then I read:

  Sylvia, darling, do you know this poem?

  It’s all I can think

  about these days. Sixteenth