Alice In-Between

  “You could just take tree ornaments and hook them in your ears,” I suggested. Actually, it was a rather good suggestion, I thought. Two plastic reindeer with ribbons around their necks would fill up all the space between the bottom of her earlobes and her shoulders.

  She gave me a look, and we set out for the mall, taking the bus that goes down Georgia Avenue, then cuts over to Viers Mill and Wheaton Plaza.

  The thing about shopping with Pamela is that she wants you to look at the earrings from the front, the side, and behind. She wants to go over mentally every outfit she has in her closet and decide which ones she could wear the earrings with and which she couldn’t. Then she has to recite all the jewelry in her jewelry box to see if she’s buying something she already has. You have to eat a high-protein lunch and wear comfortable shoes when you go shopping with Pamela.

  Elizabeth wanted a top to wear with her new shorts, so we spent another hour and a half on that. A white top, she said, would go with everything, but it would get dirty quicker, and it wouldn’t look as good next to her skin until she got some tan….

  I don’t know what it is about shopping, but I just don’t like it all that much. I guess I like clothes. I mean, I want to look good when I put them on in the morning, but after that I want to forget them and concentrate on the rest of my life.

  “Don’t you need anything, Alice, to wear to Chicago?” Elizabeth kept asking.

  “I’ve got a closet full of stuff I never wear already,” I told them.

  “Then you probably need things you can wear,” Pamela said. “Skirts? Jeans? Jacket?”

  I shook my head and yawned.

  We were buying Elizabeth some new socks when I happened to look into the lingerie department at Macy’s, and there was Miss Summers, buying a black half-slip with a slit up the side.

  I stared. She was holding it up in front of her before a mirror, sticking out one leg to see how long the slip was, then studying her reflection.

  I wanted to rush right in and tell her it was beautiful. I wanted to say that Dad loved women in black, and she should buy it that very minute. But I didn’t. I wondered if she had black panties and bras to go with it. And by the time we had walked to the Sweet Shop to buy an orange freeze, I was thinking about some of my other teachers at school.

  “What kind of underwear do you think Mrs. Bolino wears?” I asked idly as we sipped our drinks.

  “See?” said Elizabeth. “See how you always bring up things like that?”

  Pamela and I ignored her.

  “Purple underwire bra with lace at the top,” said Pamela, grinning.

  “Mrs. Whipple?”

  “Cotton snuggies that come halfway down the thigh.”

  We laughed.

  “Mr. Parks?”

  “Red nylon bikini briefs.”

  We had just left the shop and were going up the escalator at Wards when a voice yelled, “Hey, Alice!”

  I looked up, then down, and finally realized it came from a boy on the down escalator. I stared. Donald Sheavers!

  “Who’s that?” asked Elizabeth as Donald waved at me and I waved back.

  “An old boyfriend from Takoma Park,” I told her.

  “He is one gorgeous hunk!” breathed Pamela.

  He was good-looking, what I could see of him as he grew smaller and smaller. He had always been good-looking. Stupid and good-looking both, and I used to like him a lot.

  “Come over and watch television, Donald,” I used to say, and he’d come over and watch television, any channel I wanted.

  “I guess it’s time for you to go home, Donald,” I’d say, and he’d go home.

  We even played Tarzan once in the backyard, and I wanted him to kiss me, but every time he tried, I got the giggles. As I watched him step off the bottom of the escalator, I wondered if he still remembered. I hoped with all my heart he didn’t.

  “Let’s go talk to him!” Pamela said. “Alice, I’ve got to meet this guy.”

  So as soon as we got off the escalator, we ran over to the down one and got on, but then we saw Donald Sheavers coming up.

  “Stay at the top, Donald, and we’ll meet you in lamps!” I called. When we finally got off at the bottom and rode to the top again, Donald was standing in the lamp department with a shade on his head. Like I said, he’s cute, but stupid.

  He took off the shade and put it back on the lamp. “Hi,” he said.

  “Donald, this is Pamela Jones and Elizabeth Price,” I told him.

  He just grinned.

  “Alice’s old flame, huh?” said Pamela.

  He grinned some more.

  “What are you doing way over here at Wheaton Plaza?” I asked.

  “Just hanging out,” said Donald. “What are you doing?”

  I told him about our coming trip to Chicago and how we were taking the train. Donald spent the next five minutes telling us about an electric train he’d had back in second grade. And all the while he talked, I was looking at his arms. The muscles in his arms. They were big! His shoulders were broad. His neck was thick! His chest was wide. He was, as Pamela said, a hunk.

  “Hey, Alice,” he said finally. “Remember the Hershey bar?”

  I explained to Pamela and Elizabeth: “The summer before sixth grade, Donald fell off his bike and had a brain concussion, and I visited him in the hospital and brought a Hershey bar.”

  What I didn’t tell them was that the day before he fell, I wished he would die. Well, not die, exactly, just disappear. I’d been thinking about that Tarzan thing, and decided I wanted everyone in the whole wide world who had ever seen me do something stupid to just sort of slowly pass away, taking the memory of my stupidity with him. But that was before Donald had the brain concussion, and then I’d prayed desperately for Donald to live.

  He was into weight lifting now, he said. He was into baseball and football. Even Elizabeth was paying attention, I realized, probably because he had a little cross around his neck, and then I remembered he was Catholic too.

  “You stay busy!” said Elizabeth, smiling a beautiful smile.

  Well, fine! I told myself. If either Pamela or Elizabeth wanted Donald Sheavers for a boyfriend, she could have him. I would be happy if he forgot all about me. At least forgot the Tarzan thing.

  “Well, I’ve got to go fill up,” Donald said, rubbing his stomach. “Nice to meet you, Pamela. You too, Elizabeth.” And as he walked away, he called over his shoulder, “I like your hair.” Elizabeth and Pamela each thought he was talking to her.

  And then, just as we started to walk on, Donald stopped and turned around. And right there in the lamp department, he pounded his chest and gave a Tarzan yell.

  When I got home later, I was surprised to find a brand-new sofa sitting on our front porch wrapped in brown paper. I tore a hole in the paper and peeked underneath. It was a beige couch with a thin gold-and-white stripe on it. Very contemporary. Very masculine.

  I called Dad at the Melody Inn.

  “There’s a package on our porch,” I said.

  “So take it inside,” he told me.

  “Are you kidding? It’s a couch.”

  “It came!” said Dad. “Good. Lester can help me carry it in when he gets home.”

  “Why are we getting new furniture?” I asked.

  “It’s time,” he said.

  He couldn’t fool me. I knew the reason we were getting new furniture is that we’ve been living with cast-offs and hand-me-downs ever since we left Chicago. Dad didn’t want a big moving bill when we moved to Maryland, so we left the furniture with relatives and have been living on stuff we picked up at Goodwill. But with Miss Summers coming over now and then, I guess Dad decided he wanted the place to look nice.

  I was sure of it that evening when we were making tacos together and Dad said, “I’m going to be attending a music conference with Sylvia in July, Al, soon after you get back from Chicago. Think you and Lester can get along here okay?”

  I blinked. “An overnight conference?”

/>   “Yes. It’s being held somewhere in Michigan, and we’re staying in a dorm.”

  “A coed dorm?”

  Dad stopped cutting up cheese and looked at me. “I’ll be sleeping on the men’s floor, and she’ll sleep on the women’s. Is that what you wanted to know?”

  What I really wanted to know, I guess, is why Miss Summers was buying a lacy black half-slip with a slit up the side.

  “Why was Miss Summers buying a lacy black half-slip with a slit up the side, then?” I asked.

  “How on earth should I know? You weren’t spying on her, were you?”

  “No. I was waiting for Elizabeth to buy socks and happened to see her in the lingerie department.”

  “Well, I’m sure she looks very nice in black,” he said, and went on cutting the cheese. “But you didn’t answer my question. Can I trust you and Les to take care of things while I’m gone?”

  “What are the rules?”

  “To tell Lester where you’re going when you’re out, no boys in the house while I’m gone, the usual …”

  “For Lester, I mean.”

  “For Lester?”

  “What am I supposed to do if he has friends in while you’re gone?”

  “Same applies to him,” said Dad. “No members of the opposite sex. I’ll tell him it’s the rule.”

  “Good luck,” I said.

  On Sunday, Dad went to an art gallery with Miss Summers and Lester was out somewhere with Crystal, so Pamela and Elizabeth came over to christen the new couch. It made the whole living room look different. Made it look odd, in fact, because there was still an old beanbag chair in one corner, a couple of lawn chairs in another, Dad’s old easy chair, and a huge coffee table that took up half the space. But it was a start.

  We sat on the couch, eating grapes, being careful not to wipe our hands on the furniture, and Pamela said, “I was thinking about Donald Sheavers again this morning, Alice, and wondered what would happen if two of us ever liked the same boy at the same time.”

  I looked from Pamela to Elizabeth. “Is that what’s happening?”

  “Of course not,” said Elizabeth. “She’s got Mark Stedmeister. Why would she want Donald too?”

  “I can like a boy, can’t I?” said Pamela.

  “I see what you mean,” I said.

  “I think we should be totally, completely honest with each other,” said Elizabeth. “I mean, it’s the only way we’ll ever stay friends for life. We should tell each other the absolute truth about everything.

  “What we should do,” she went on, “is write down five things we like most about each other, and five things we don’t like, and read them out loud. If we did that every few months, trouble wouldn’t have a chance to start.”

  “Why not?” said Pamela.

  So I got the paper, and we each wrote down the things we liked and didn’t like about the other two.

  This was almost as bad an idea as playing Tarzan had been with Donald Sheavers.

  “You go first,” Elizabeth said when I’d finished.

  “Okay,” I told her. “I’ll start with yours. The five things I like best about you: One, you stick up for me when kids tease me at school. Two, you always smell nice. Three, you serve good things when we come for an overnight. Four, you don’t swear. Five, you don’t smoke.”

  Elizabeth beamed.

  “The five worst things about you: One, you go berserk when we talk about sex or bodies….”

  “I wouldn’t if you didn’t talk about them all the time!” Elizabeth interrupted.

  “She doesn’t do it all the time!” chimed in Pamela. “You just don’t want to talk about it ever!”

  “Number two,” I said. “You’re sort of a baby about some things….”

  “What things?” Elizabeth demanded. “If you’re going to say something like that, you’ve got to be specific.”

  “Well, about boys and things …”

  “Elizabeth, we’ll never get through these lists if you keep interrupting,” Pamela said.

  “Number three,” I continued. “You’re always washing your hands. Four, you get upset too easily. Five, you’re a little bit spoiled.”

  When I’d finished, Elizabeth’s cheeks were bright red, and I could see she was fighting back tears.

  “Maybe this was a lousy idea,” I said.

  “I think we should read the bad things first and get them over with, then the good things,” said Pamela. “You go next, Elizabeth. Read mine.”

  Elizabeth picked up one of her slips of paper. “The worst things about Pamela,” she read. “Number one: conceited. Number two: bossy. Number three …”

  We never even got to the good things. Pamela stormed out of the house and went home, Elizabeth left soon after that, and we all sat with different people on the bus the next morning. It wasn’t until lunchtime that we were speaking again.

  “There’s no point in going to Chicago together if we’re not going to talk,” I told them finally. “If we’re going to get along, we can’t be so truthful.”

  “Let’s just tell each other the good things,” Pamela agreed. “All the rest, we can pass on a little at a time when we think the other person’s ready to hear it.”

  Which is why I didn’t tell Elizabeth that Donald Sheavers had called me the night before to get Pamela’s phone number, and I didn’t tell Pamela that he had also asked for Elizabeth’s. I was going to have enough problems with Lester while Dad was away, I decided, and didn’t need any more from an old boyfriend from Takoma Park.

  8

  POEM

  THE WEEK BEFORE SCHOOL LET OUT, WE had to recite our poems to the class. I had been practicing every night. I’d sit in our beanbag chair in the living room and Dad would sit across from me on the new couch, holding the book in his lap. But I noticed that when I got stuck, he knew the next line without even looking.

  “So live, that when thy summons comes to join

  The innumerable caravan …”

  “… which moves to that mysterious realm,” Dad prompted.

  “To that mysterious realm where each shall take

  His chamber in the silent halls of death,

  Thou go not, like the quarry-slave at night, … uh …

  Scourged …”

  “… Scourged to his dungeon,” Dad said.

  “Scourged to his dungeon, but, sustained and soothed

  By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave

  Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch

  About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams.”

  One night, when I had finished, I could see the glint of tears in Dad’s eyes. He tipped his head back and was quiet.

  “Mom liked that poem, didn’t she?” I asked finally.

  “One of her favorites,” he said. “One of our favorites. It helped get us through the last few weeks near the end, as much as anything can, I guess.”

  I never knew how much to talk about Mom’s dying. Death is easier to talk about than dying. It’s already over with. But sometimes there are things I feel I just have to know.

  “Was she in a lot of pain, Dad?” I asked softly.

  “No. Mostly she was just weak and nauseated from the drugs. It was the sadness that got to us—that was the painful part.”

  Was there anything else I needed to ask? Now was my chance….

  “Dad …” I hesitated. “Did Mom ever want you to promise that …” I didn’t know how to say it.

  “That what?”

  I swallowed.

  “That I’d take good care of you and Lester?” he asked.

  “No. She knew you would. But did she ever want you to promise that … well, that you wouldn’t get married again?”

  “Why on earth would she want me to promise that?”

  Just the way he said it made me feel better.

  “When you love someone, Al, you want them to be happy. And if she couldn’t be around to love and comfort me herself, she certainly wanted me to find happiness with someone else.
I’d wish the same for her.”

  “I was hoping you’d say that,” I told him.

  Everyone was talking about summer vacation. At the Melody Inn, Loretta Jenkins told me that she had given up on Lester once and for all, and was going camping in North Carolina with some girlfriends.

  “Good idea,” I told her.

  Janice Sherman asked if Dad had found a beach house to rent yet.

  “No, he’s going to Michigan instead,” I answered.

  “Michigan? What’s in Michigan?”

  “He’s going to a music conference.”

  “He is?” And then she added, “Alone?”

  “With Miss Summers. They’re sleeping in a dorm, men on one floor and women on another.”

  “I didn’t ask about their sleeping arrangements,” Janice said curtly, and we let it go at that.

  At school on Monday Patrick told me that he and his parents were going to Canada soon after his birthday.

  His birthday! I had forgotten his birthday. It’s hard to remember that Patrick is a few months younger than I am, because he acts—well, sometimes, at least—a few years older. I guess his father’s a diplomat or something. They’ve traveled all over the world. They’ve even eaten squid, and Patrick can count to one hundred in Japanese. He says that they’ve lived in Silver Spring longer than any other place they’ve ever been.

  “You’re not moving to Canada, are you?” I asked.

  “No. Just visiting the Rockies. I’ll bring you back a rock or something.” (That’s when he sounds far younger.)

  I was still worried about Lester, though. I was going to Chicago and Dad was going to Michigan, but what about Lester? Everyone needs a vacation.

  “Lester,” I said that afternoon when he came home from classes at the U. “Are you going to do anything special this summer, or just work at the appliance store?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. Thought maybe I might hit the beach sometime in August with Marilyn.”

  “Marilyn?” I stared.

  “Marilyn Rawley. You know? The girl I’ve been seeing for the past two years?”

  “One of the girls you’ve been seeing, Lester. I thought you were going with Crystal now.”

  Lester stood in the doorway drinking his 7UP. “Do I look like an engaged man to you? Until I’m engaged, kiddo, I’m playing the field, and I don’t think there is any law in the State of Maryland that says I can’t be friends with more than one woman at a time.”