Would she ever love coming home to Dad and Lester and me, I wondered. Coming home to our house? Was it something I could ask? I didn’t. I couldn’t. I decided that much as I wanted to say, “Please be my mom, Miss Summers,” it was part of growing up that I couldn’t.
And so I followed her from room to room as the cake was baking. She showed me the photographs of her sister and her brother’s family on the wall in her bedroom, and the yellow sweater she was making for a niece. She showed me the African violets growing on the window sill in her bathroom, and I saw the kind of toothpaste she uses, and her talcum, and the Lady Remington on the top of the toilet. I could even smell the English lavender soap in the soap dish.
I saw her slippers in the hallway, and her terry cloth robe, and the sheets with big orange and green flowers on them, and the chintz-covered chair in the corner with her pajamas thrown over the back, a chair big enough to hold both of us.
Just like she said, it was a comfortable house, and I felt a lump in my throat. I wanted her to be in our house. Wanted her slippers by Dad’s bed. Wanted in the worst way to throw my arms around her and say, “Please live with us, Miss Summers.”
What I said was, “I wish I knew how to knit sweaters,” and what she said was, “Maybe someday I can teach you,” and the “someday” gave me a feeling she was saying, “Someday off in the future when I become Mrs. Ben McKinley,” so I let myself be happy thinking about that the rest of the afternoon.
We had lunch while the cake cooled—little dabs of chicken salad on lettuce, and some rolls and jam.
And then it was time for her to drive me and the cake and groceries back home, and after she’d set the stuff on our table, she gave me a quick hug and said, “See you tonight!” and I went upstairs and looked in the mirror and smiled just like she did—slow and easy, letting it take over my whole face.
18
BIRTHDAY SURPRISE
I JUST HAD TIME TO GO OVER THE RUG WITH the vacuum cleaner before Patrick came. Lester sings in the shower, Dad sings when he’s making soup, but I sing along with the vacuum cleaner.
I’m not sure why I like to do that, because it’s hard to tell which is me and which is the vacuum. It just sort of masks things, I guess. Nobody knows why I was born into a musical family and can’t carry a tune, but I get along just fine with the vacuum cleaner.
When Patrick arrived at five, he was carrying a dozen balloons and a bicycle pump. Patrick thinks about things like that. While he filled the balloons and hung them just inside the front door, I cleaned all Dad’s stuff off the folding table in the dining room and put it in little piles along the wall. Then I threw a clean bed sheet over the table for a cloth, and put out the plates and silverware.
“I saw your dad with Miss Summers once,” Patrick said. “They were coming out of the theater at Wheaton Plaza.”
“Were they holding hands?” I asked.
“I didn’t notice,” said Patrick.
“Patrick, how could you not notice!” I cried. “It’s the absolutely first thing I would look for.”
Patrick stared at me. “Why?”
“Why? Because it would tell me everything! Whether they really like each other. Love each other, I mean. Whether they’d had a good time. Whether they were going to get married, maybe.”
“All they have to do is hold hands and you’d know they were getting married?” Patrick said.
“Well, what do you look at? What did you notice?”
Patrick thought a minute. “Whether they were eating anything, maybe.”
“Eating anything?”
“And their faces. Whether or not they were eating anything or smiling. Yeah, I’d notice that.”
“So were they eating anything?”
“No.”
“Were they smiling?”
“Sure.”
I felt better.
The phone rang just as we were starting to make the salad.
“May I speak with the woman of the house, please?” said a deep male voice.
Not again!
“This is she,” I said.
“This is John Haskell from R.B. Roofing,” the man told me. “We were doing some work at your neighbor’s today and happened to notice that the corrugated piping around the distulated chambers of your chimney vents have corrosive seals along the fibularium, and we strongly suggest you replace it immediately.”
I blinked. “The what?”
“The distulated fibularium, ma’am.”
“What … what will happen if we don’t replace it?”
“Chimney gas. The entire family could be wiped out in a single night. Not to mention any kind of crawling animal that might be working its way down your chimney.” The voice was very, very deep.
Of all times for this to happen! All I needed at Dad’s party was a little carbon monoxide or a raccoon coming up through the basement.
“How much would it cost to fix it?” I asked.
“Ball park figure, ma’am, I’d say close to twenty thou.”
“What?” And then I shrieked, “Lester! I know it’s you!”
“I can’t sell you a distulated fibularium?” the voice asked, but Lester was laughing now. “Listen, kiddo, I’ll try to be home by six, but I’m running a little late. Don’t hold up the party for me. Just go ahead and I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
“Oh, Lester, you always do this! Hurry!”
“I will.”
I started to hang up. “But drive carefully!” I told him. I didn’t want to have to mourn Lester a second time.
We made the salad the way Miss Summers had suggested. We cut the lettuce into pieces, added the rinsed spinach leaves, then the thin slices of purple onion and mushrooms and put it all in the refrigerator to crisp.
Patrick did the twice-baked potatoes. I’d already had them baking for an hour, and he took them out, scooped out the insides and mashed them up with cream and butter and cheese and chives, then spooned the mixture back into the shells again, to heat up when the company began arriving.
Pamela and Elizabeth came over and put the olives in little saucers on the coffee table, and set out plastic cups for the ginger ale. Elizabeth arranged all the silverware into a fan shape, and Pamela did the same with the napkins.
Then it was Denise at the door. She handed me a box.
“Oh, Denise, I didn’t expect you to bring Dad a present,” I said.
“It’s not for your father, it’s for you,” she told me, stepping inside.
“For me?” There wasn’t any wrapping on the box, so I opened the lid. Inside were two silver dollars, a bracelet from Hawaii, tiny earrings in the shape of a cross, and a school picture of Denise, taken when she was in the sixth grade, it read on the back.
She smiled a little. “You can wear the bracelet and earrings, and put the picture on your bulletin board if you want to.”
I was speechless. “Of course I do. Thanks, Denise! Gee, I feel like it’s my birthday. How come you did all this?”
“I just felt like it,” she said, and went on out to the kitchen with Patrick.
Marilyn came next, bringing a bouquet of flowers and a tin of gourmet blend coffee.
“I parked down the street so your dad wouldn’t notice,” she said.
Marilyn’s hair was long and straight, and she was wearing a thin yellow dress that I could almost see through if she stood in front of a light or something. I introduced her to my friends, and then she asked, “Lester here?”
“Not yet,” I told her.
Janice Sherman and Loretta Jenkins came together.
“We had a hard time getting away,” Janice said. “I let Loretta go first, and she waited out in my car. Then I told Ben I had a dinner date, and was leaving early.” Janice gave a little laugh and straightened her suit jacket. “I didn’t say that my date was with him!”
“Is Lester here?” asked Loretta.
“Not yet,” I told her.
Then it was Crystal, with a bottle of wine and some French b
read. Crystal’s taller than Marilyn, a little heavier, and has short red hair. She was wearing green tights and a long white shirt.
“Is Lester here?” she asked.
I wished I’d made a recording.
“Not yet,” I told her.
She followed me out to the kitchen where I was making more ice. “Who’s the girl with the hair?” she asked.
“Loretta Jenkins. She works at the Melody Inn.”
“Has she ever been out with Lester?” Crystal asked curiously.
“Around the block and back,” I said, which was the honest-to-God truth.
I was about to go into the living room and introduce everyone when I heard the front door open again. We were still waiting for Lester and Miss Summers, so I hurried out into the hallway. There stood Dad, staring at the balloons tied to the banister.
“Dad!” I cried in astonishment.
He turned slowly and looked at me. “I do live here, you know,” he said, starting to take off his jacket. And then he saw all the people in the living room.
“Surprise!” they all said.
“Son of a gun!” said Dad, his mouth hanging open, but at that moment Miss Summers slipped in behind him, a small present sticking out one corner of her bag.
“Oh, darn!” she said. “I’m late, then.”
“No, he’s early,” I told her.
“Happy birthday, Ben,” Miss Summers said, and moved on out into the living room with him.
It saved me from having to make the introductions. I sort of tagged along behind while Dad introduced everyone to my teacher, and Patrick and Pamela and Elizabeth and Denise watched from the kitchen doorway.
But there were still more footsteps on the porch, and we heard the front door open. There was Lester, followed by a skinny girl in a short skirt and very bleached hair.
“Happy birthday, Dad,” said Lester. “Sorry I’m late, Al. Joy, this is everybody. Everybody, this is Joy.”
19
THE PARTY’S OVER
IT WAS THE WORST PARTY WE’VE EVER had. It was undoubtedly the worst party given in Silver Spring all year. It was probably the most awful party that had taken place in the state of Maryland since the Civil War.
Patrick ate all the olives before Dad had even one.
Janice Sherman got a migraine and went home.
Joy, whom Lester had brought because he thought he’d be the only one without a date, turned out to be in the same aerobics class as Loretta Jenkins, and they spent the whole evening sitting in a corner talking about perms and tints.
Lester spent the evening trying to get Marilyn or Crystal to talk to him.
I left the twice-baked potatoes in the oven too long, and when people tried to cut them with a fork, they sounded like glacial ice cracking.
The candles dripped on the pineapple upside-down cake before we could get them all lit.
Loretta’s gift to Dad was a set of coffee mugs with members of the New York Philharmonic Orchestra on them playing the flute, the violin, and the cello. When you poured hot coffee in the mugs, the tuxedos disappeared, and the members of the philharmonic were playing the flute, the violin, and the cello in their birthday suits.
We forgot to serve the salad at all.
“It’s okay, Alice. The steaks were good, anyway,” Patrick said just before he left with Pamela and Elizabeth. Denise got a ride home with Lester and Joy, and Loretta and Crystal and Marilyn left soon after that.
Then it was just Dad, Miss Summers, and me. They were sitting on the couch together, opening the small gift I’d seen tucked in Miss Summers’s bag, so I went on out to the kitchen.
Everything looked odd. There were two sacks of trash by the back door waiting to go out; dishes had been put away in strange places. The food in the refrigerator had been rearranged, and the dishwasher was running on the wrong cycle. The dining room looked weird with an empty folding table in the middle of it and all Dad’s stuff piled along the wall. There were a few glasses here and there with lipstick stains on them, and the house was strangely quiet.
“No,” I said aloud, “I am not going to cry. I am sick of crying. I have spent one-half of seventh grade crying.”
And then, from the other room, I heard music. It sounded like Miss Summers singing, only I could tell it wasn’t live. It was, in fact, Miss Summers singing “Ave Maria,” just as she had sung it for me once, when Dad first brought her home and was telling us how the bottom notes of the song were by Bach and the melody was written by Gounod.
I sat very still on a kitchen chair listening to her low mellow voice. When the song was over, there was a pause, and next I heard her singing something else—an old ballad, I think, called “Black Is the Color of My True Love’s Hair.”
I knew then that her birthday gift to Dad had been a CD recording of her singing some of Dad’s favorite songs. He’d probably asked her to make one for him. It was the only thing that had really gone right—that and the ticket for a balloon ride. It would have been a much better party if I hadn’t invited anyone else.
Everything else was wrong, it seemed. Everything in our house was changing, and I couldn’t do anything about it. How could I be Woman of the House when I couldn’t even give a decent birthday party?
And suddenly Dad was standing in the doorway alone, asking me what was the matter.
“I don’t know,” I told him. “Everything, I guess.”
“Whenever someone says ‘everything,’ it means one thing in particular,” Dad told me.
“No, it’s everything,” I insisted. “The party would have been a lot better if Mom were here to bake your cake, Marilyn and Crystal hadn’t come, Patrick hadn’t eaten all the olives, Lester hadn’t brought a floozy …”
“My word, you’re beginning to sound like Aunt Sal,” Dad teased, but I barreled on:
“I can’t be Woman of the House, Dad! I can’t be responsible for birthdays and dental appointments and duct cleaning and windows and …”
“Whoa … whoa … whoa!” said Dad. “Who said anything about Woman of the House? This is a family, remember?”
“But Aunt Sally said, now that I’m almost thirteen, that …”
“Al, your Aunt Sally’s a fine woman, but she’s full of asparagus. You know that.”
“But she said I’m responsible …”
“We’re all three responsible. We all three have to depend on each other, and take care of each other. You don’t have to do it alone.”
I listened.
“All of us are good at some things and not so good at others, honey. Nobody expects you to have the experience of your aunt Sally or the … ahem … wisdom of your dad. All you have to be is twelve.”
He was standing behind me now, massaging my shoulders, and I reached up and squeezed his hand.
“Do you like me?” I asked, playing our little game.
“Rivers,” Dad said.
“Love me?”
“Oceans.”
I wondered if Miss Summers had gone home, and then, off in the next room, I heard her singing along with her voice on the CD—harmonizing with “Summertime.” It was like hearing two Miss Summerses in one room together, both singing—one in a low voice, one a little higher. And it was beautiful.
* * *
We ate “thrice-baked potatoes” on Sunday, all of the salad, and the rest of the pineapple upside-down cake. Dad and Lester and I slowly put the house back the way it generally was; I pinned up the picture Denise had given me on my bulletin board, and enjoyed being just me for a change. I wasn’t Woman of the House or North Carolina, either one.
On the way to school Monday, I thanked Pamela and Elizabeth for helping out at the party, and gave Patrick the last remaining piece of cake that I’d wrapped for him. I wanted to thank Denise too for the work she did in the kitchen, but she was absent.
It was just before sixth period that the principal’s voice came over the speaker, saying that all faculty and students were to report to the gym for a special assembly.
/> “All riiiiight!” Patrick yelled from down the hall. “No algebra! Yes!” And he thrust one fist in the air.
I waited for Elizabeth and Pamela, and we all went in together. I looked for cheerleaders down front—a pep rally—but there was no one by the microphone except the principal and the school nurse.
“What do you bet it’s a talk about sex?” I heard a guy say behind me as I settled onto the bleachers between Pamela and Elizabeth.
When everyone quieted down, Mr. Orman began: “Students, I’ve called this assembly because I want you to hear this from me, not someone else. I believe in telling you things straight, because you are on the brink of being young men and women; you aren’t children anymore. I know that when you leave the gym today you will feel far older than you did when you came in. It is my painful task to tell you that one of our students, Denise Whitlock, was killed this morning when she apparently stood in the path of an oncoming train.…”
He went on talking, but I didn’t hear. I found myself crawling down through the seats in the bleachers, pushing aside people’s feet to make room. My mouth felt like cotton, my hands were clammy. Elizabeth and Pamela were trying to hold me back, but I wrestled free, leaving my books behind, and finally dropped to the floor below.
And then I was out in the hallway, gasping for breath, walking with one hand on the wall to hold me up, going nowhere, anywhere.
A second door to the gym opened on down the hall and then Miss Summers was coming toward me. I was in her arms, making strange sounds in my throat, so weird you couldn’t even call it crying.
“Alice …” Her arms were tightly around me, protecting me against myself.
Something was wrong with my chest. The air was trapped, couldn’t get out. Came only in little spurts, a few words at a time: “Her bracelet … The picture she gave me … that day in school … she had a b-black eye. Her mother did it with her fist.… I never told … she never … we didn’t report …” I was choking out sounds.
And then my voice turned high like a kitten’s mew, and I was crying and Miss Summers was crying. The scent of jasmine was all around me, and I knew if I asked her then if she’d marry Dad, she’d probably say yes. Yes to anything. I also knew that Mr. Orman was right; I was a lot older now than when I’d entered the gym, and everything that had happened before seemed light-years away from what was happening now. So I just kept on crying. April was the month of tears.