Starting With Alice

  I sucked in my breath and whimpered, only nobody heard it above the TV. I remembered Lester coming in the house screaming and Dad telling me to stay inside. And then somebody carried a little rolled-up rug over to Dad’s car, and Dad put it in the trunk. Lester cried and cried, and we never had another dog after that. He didn’t want one.

  I knew someone who would have liked my kitten, though. I took Oatmeal upstairs and showed her my mother’s picture. “You’d like her too, Oatmeal,” I said. And my mama went right on smiling.

  Donald Sheavers came over on Saturday to see Oatmeal. He liked her too. He showed me how to dangle a string above her head, and Oatmeal would jump up in the air and bat at it with her paw. He said we could teach her the high jump.

  But when he wanted to take her next door and introduce her to Killer, I said no. I didn’t want his dog anywhere near my kitten, even if you called him “Muffin.”

  “They’d go good together,” Donald said. “Muffin and Oatmeal.”

  Sometimes I think Donald Sheavers was dropped on his head as a baby.

  Mrs. Sheavers heard we had a cat and came over to see it too. “Isn’t that just the sweetest little thing?” she said, and rubbed noses with the kitten. She asked me where my dad was, and I told her he was at work at the music store.

  “He’s a musician?” she asked.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “I play the ukulele,” she said.

  Then I didn’t worry about Mrs. Sheavers anymore. I didn’t think my dad would fall in love with a woman who played the ukulele.

  It was Lester who should have gotten a present, though, because his sixteenth birthday was on Sunday.

  “Les, we’ve been so busy getting moved in that your birthday just sneaked up on me,” Dad said. “How would you like to celebrate? What would you like for a present?”

  Lester was stretched out on the couch looking at a Sports Illustrated magazine. It was full of pictures of women in bathing suits. “I’d settle for this little number in the red bikini,” he said.

  Dad gave him a look.

  “You could also get me a sports car. Actually, any Mercedes will do,” said Lester.

  “Something within reason, Les,” Dad said.

  “The best present you could possibly give me is to take me to get my learner’s permit,” said Lester. “You said I could drive when we got to Maryland.”

  “It’s a deal,” said Dad. “I’ll take off early on Monday and we’ll go. How’s that?”

  “Great!” said Lester.

  I realized I’d been so busy with my kitten that I hadn’t thought much about Lester’s birthday either. A sixteenth birthday is a biggie! I looked around the house to see what I could give him for a present. Last year he gave me a cactus for my birthday. I supposed I could tie a bow around it and give it back, but somehow that didn’t seem right.

  Then I got this great idea. When Lester went down in the basement later to play his drums, I found the picture of the girl in the red bikini in his magazine. She was sitting sideways on the edge of a pool with her knees bent and her face up toward the sun. I took my scissors and carefully cut her out.

  Then I went through an envelope of pictures that Aunt Sally had sent us. I found a photo my cousin Carol had taken of Lester at the going-away party they gave for us. Lester was sitting on the couch grinning, with a Coke in one hand and a hot dog in the other. I cut away the top of the photograph, carefully cutting out the hot dog and the Coke so that the only thing left was Lester on the couch.

  I pasted him on a sheet of white cardboard that comes in Dad’s shirts from the laundry. Then I pasted the girl in the red bikini on Lester’s lap in the photo. It looked like one of his hands was under her knees and the other behind her head. Her body was a little bigger than his in the picture, but it didn’t matter. It still looked like Lester with a girl on his lap.

  Next I went back in my room and looked through the boxes of stuff I still hadn’t unpacked. I found a bag of Little Princess cosmetics that Carol had given me once, with a mirror, a comb, and raspberry-flavored lip gloss in it. I smeared the lip gloss all over my lips. Then I pressed my lips to the cardboard beside Lester’s picture and made a lipstick kiss. The magazine said that the model’s name was Angela, so I took a pen and wrote beside the lipstick kiss, To Lester, from Angela, love and kisses.

  On Sunday, Lester got to have whatever he wanted for dinner, so Dad brought home an order of Buffalo wings, a giant-sized sausage-and-onion pizza, and a chocolate mousse cake. We ate it around our big coffee table, the one we got from Goodwill, in the living room. Dad gave Lester a gift certificate from the Melody Inn so he could buy a bunch of CDs.

  Then I handed Lester a large yellow envelope I’d found in the wastebasket. He reached in and pulled out the cardboard with his picture on it. He stared at it, and then he threw back his head and laughed. He showed it to Dad, and Dad laughed too.

  “Good present, Al!” Lester said. “I’ll show it to the guys. And when I get my driver’s license, you get one free trip wherever you want to go.”

  “Niagara Falls?” I said.

  “Well, maybe not that far,” said Lester.

  The phone rang just then and I answered. It was a girl calling Lester to wish him a happy birthday.

  The phone rang again later, and this time it was a different girl.

  I looked at Dad. “Do you think he’s forgotten Amy Miller?” I asked.

  “I think we could say that,” said Dad.

  At school on Monday, I was standing in line at the drinking fountain with the Terrible Triplets. Once I started thinking of them as the Terrible Triplets, it was hard to stop.

  “I got a kitten last Friday,” I said.

  Megan and Dawn and Jody just looked at me. Finally Megan said, “What’s its name?”

  “Oatmeal,” I said.

  “Oatmeal?” they cried together, and laughed.

  “What kind of a name is that?” said Jody.

  “She’s the color of oatmeal and cream,” I told them.

  “I hate oatmeal,” said Dawn.

  “Me too,” said Jody.

  But I was feeling too good about my kitten to let the Triplets upset me. At recess, when Mrs. Burstin was patrolling the playground, she stopped to talk. “How are you liking Takoma Park, Alice?” she said. “It’s certainly different from Chicago, isn’t it?”

  I nodded. “I have a kitten,” I said. “My dad gave it to me last Friday.”

  “How wonderful!” she said. “Male or female?”

  “Female.”

  “What color?”

  “The color of oatmeal. And that’s her name.”

  She laughed. “That’s a nice name for a kitten.” Then she said, “You must have a pretty nice dad. He knows when a girl needs a friend.”

  I sort of wished she hadn’t said that because this meant it showed. That everyone seemed to know everyone else on the playground except me. And that my father, guessing how I felt, had bought me a kitten to take the place of a friend.

  Oh, well, I thought. I’ve got Dad and Lester and Donald and Oatmeal. It’s a start.

  5

  RIDING WITH LESTER

  WHEN I GOT HOME FROM SCHOOL ON Monday, I found that Dad had taken Lester out of school over the lunch hour to get his learner’s permit, and they were getting ready now for their first driving lesson.

  “But here’s the deal,” Dad said. “And, Alice, the same goes for you when you get to be sixteen. Once you actually get your license, you can’t have anyone in the car with you except family for the first six months. After that, if you don’t get a ticket or have an accident during that time—even a fender bender—then you can have a friend or two along. But not until then.”

  “Daaaad!” Lester howled. But Dad was firm.

  “What about you, Alice?” Dad said, looking at me. “Do you want to go over to the Sheaverses’ while we’re out, or do you want to come along for Lester’s driving lesson?”

  I was playing with Oatmeal
and had to think about it a minute. If Lester was going to wreck the car, did I want to die along with my family or be left behind as an orphan?

  “I guess I’ll go,” I said. “But be careful, Lester. I’m just a little girl with my whole life ahead of me.”

  “Hey, I want to live too,” Lester said. “And I already know the basics. It’s not like I can’t steer or anything.”

  Dad just grunted. “Les, get the broom and mop, and Alice, bring up the two metal buckets from the basement.”

  Sometimes Dad doesn’t make any sense at all. Lester was going to drive the car, not wash it. But we put all the stuff in the trunk, and Dad drove to the parking lot of a large restaurant that was closed on Mondays. He got out and came around on the passenger side, and Lester climbed over into the driver’s seat. I sat up on my knees in the backseat so that when Lester crashed into something, I could see it coming.

  “Sit down, Al. Your head’s blocking the rear window,” Lester said.

  I sat down and fastened my seat belt.

  “Okay,” said Dad. “Start the engine, press the clutch pedal down, and practice shifting through all the gears.”

  Lester started the car. I could hear his big sneakers squeaking against each other as they took their places on the pedals.

  “Dad, when are we going to get an automatic?” he grumbled.

  “When we get a new car, which won’t be for a while now, so stop complaining,” Dad said. “Now ease the clutch out in first gear and practice going forward, then reverse.”

  Lester’s shoes clumped and squeaked again, and the Honda shot forward.

  “Wheeee!” I cried.

  “Easy on the gas,” said Dad.

  Lester braked and this time we shot forward.

  “Not so hard on the brake,” said Dad.

  It didn’t take long for Lester to get the hang of just how hard to press the pedals, and he practiced driving around the empty lot, making turns and backing up.

  “Okay. Let’s do some parallel parking,” said Dad. “Stop the car.”

  He got out, opened the trunk, and put the buckets about twenty feet apart, six feet out from the curb in front of the restaurant. Then he set the broom in one, the mop in the other. This time I got out because I wanted to watch Lester try to park between the buckets.

  “Okay, Les,” Dad said, getting back in the car. “Pull up past the first bucket, then back into the space between them.”

  I watched the car jerk forward. Lester forgot to put it in reverse. Then the car stopped and slowly started to move backward. But it swung in too far and the tires bumped the curb. I waved my arms dramatically and pretended I’d been hit.

  Lester rolled down his window. “Cut it out, Alice!” he said. He pulled the car forward again and tried to park between the buckets. This time he knocked over the broom. I cheered.

  “Alice,” said Dad, getting out to set the broom back up again, “be a helper, not a hindrance.”

  I didn’t know what a hindrance was, but I’ll bet it wasn’t good. So I took off my jacket and hung it on the broom handle so Lester could see it better.

  He tried again. This time he carefully maneuvered past the broom, but he hit the mop. I tried to keep a straight face as I set the mop up again.

  “Shut up,” Lester said to me, even though I hadn’t said a word.

  He tried again, and still again, but he never did a very good job of parking. “It’s not like real parking, Dad,” he said. “I need real cars to practice on.”

  “Not yet, you don’t,” said Dad.

  “Well, at least let me drive around the neighborhood,” Lester begged.

  “I suppose you can handle that,” said Dad.

  I helped put the buckets and stuff back in the trunk and climbed in the backseat again. “Don’t hit any little children, Lester.” I laughed. I thought how funny it would be if I had a lipstick and wrote outside the car window, Help! I’m being kidnapped! Maybe a police car would see it and pull Lester over. Or if I had a paper sack and blew it up and popped it, and Lester would think he’d blown a tire.

  Lester drove slowly up and down the streets of our neighborhood and was doing just fine until he came to a stoplight at the top of a hill. It turned red just as we reached it, and Lester put on the brake.

  “Oh, boy,” I heard Dad breathe out. “Now, this might be a little tricky, Les.”

  It was. When the light turned green and Lester took his foot off the brake, the car started rolling backward. I screamed.

  “Alice, will you stop!” Lester yelled, slamming on the brakes, and we all jerked forward.

  “You’ve got to let out the clutch about the same time you’re taking your foot off the brake and giving it gas,” Dad told him. “It takes practice, Les. Just go slow and easy.”

  But when Lester took his foot off the brake a second time, the car rolled backward again. The car behind us honked, and Lester slammed on the brakes a second time. I put my head down on the seat so he couldn’t see I was laughing.

  “Try it again, Lester,” Dad said calmly. “Take your left foot off the clutch and your right foot off the brake and try to do it together. Give it gas before it starts to roll.”

  This time the car shot forward, but the light changed and we had to stop all over again, sticking out into the intersection so that cars had to swerve around us.

  “Dad, why can’t we get a new car?” Lester cried.

  “Because it’s good for you to know how to drive all kinds of cars,” Dad said. “Don’t get rattled, now. Everyone was a beginner once.”

  “Even you?” I asked. “Who taught you to drive, Dad?”

  “Charlie, my favorite brother. He is a lot older than me and made a good teacher.”

  We waited for the light to turn green again. Now there were three other cars backed up behind us, not just one.

  The light turned green, and Lester was so anxious to make it that he moved his feet too fast and killed the engine. The car behind us made a U-turn and went tearing off in the opposite direction. So did the car behind it.

  “Easy does it, Lester,” Dad said.

  I wanted to laugh, but then I remembered how long it had taken me to learn to ride a two-wheeler. I think it was Uncle Milt who bought a bike for me after Mother died, and it was Lester who ran along beside me while I rode to help me keep my balance. It was Lester who taught me to whistle, too, and to blow bubble gum. Who made me my first pair of tin-can stilts.

  I sat up very straight in the backseat so Lester could see that I wasn’t laughing at him. The next time the light turned green, Lester pulled out into the intersection and made it through, a little jerkily, but at least no one honked.

  “Good job, Lester,” I said.

  We stayed out for another half hour, and Lester did everything right. He pulled in the driveway when we got home as smoothly as a train coming into a station.

  “You’re going to be a great driver, Lester, and I’ll go with you anywhere,” I said. “Even Niagara Falls.”

  “Very good, indeed!” said Dad.

  Lester was practically crowing when he got out and went right to the phone to call his friends.

  Dad was in a good mood too, so I thought maybe it was the right time to ask for something for myself.

  “Next week, can we get my ears pierced?” I asked.

  Dad lowered his newspaper and stared at me over the business page. “Don’t even think it,” he said.

  6

  CALL FROM CHICAGO

  LESTER DIDN’T SEEM TO HAVE ANY trouble making friends. Not only did two girls call him on his birthday, but we had only been in Maryland a few weeks before he had a little combo to play in. Every Sunday three other boys came to our house to play music down in the basement.

  Lester played the drums, of course. Two of the boys brought their electric guitars, and the third one played the cornet. Dad called them the Explosive Four. The boys called their combo the Naked Nomads because it was so warm in our basement that they took off their shirt
s when they played. And as soon as the music started, Dad always said the same thing: “Saints preserve us!” The house shook, and Oatmeal hid behind the couch.

  “Why do you call yourselves nomads?” I asked Lester once.

  “Because we’ll go wherever someone wants us to play,” said Lester.

  “Who’s asked you to play?” I said.

  “No one,” said Lester.

  The thing is, they could only practice when Dad was home. We’re not allowed to have friends in when he’s not here. And Lester had to come right home from school to be here for me. “That may be a problem later on,” Dad said, “but right now I’m doing the best I can.”

  One Sunday they were practicing in the basement when we got a call from Aunt Sally. The music was so loud that the only way I could hear her was to drag the phone into the coat closet and close the door after me. I leaned against our boot box and cradled the phone against my ear.

  “What’s all that noise in the background?” asked Aunt Sally.

  “Music,” I told her.

  “Alice, your father never listened to that kind of music before,” she said.

  “He doesn’t have any choice,” I said. “Lester has some friends here.”

  “Oh?” I couldn’t tell if she was pleased or worried. “Lester’s made some friends?”

  “He makes friends in a hurry,” I said. “He has three of them right now, and they’re all down in the basement.”

  “The basement?” I could tell now that it was worry.

  “They’ve got a combo going,” I told her. “And Lester’s playing the drums. It’s sort of loud.”

  “I can hear that. Who are these boys, Alice?”

  “I don’t know. Some guys from school, I think. I don’t know their real names, but Lester calls them ‘Billy’ and ‘Psycho’ and ‘Ape.’ ”

  There was silence at the end of the line, and I wondered if Aunt Sally was still there.

  “Is your father down there with them?” she asked. “I mean, they do have adult supervision, don’t they?”

  “No, Dad’s working on a crossword puzzle,” I said. “He doesn’t go down there unless he has to.”