Reluctantly Alice

  I happily wiggled my toes.

  The soloists arrived, and the rehearsal began. After we’d gotten the basic instructions and practiced a few numbers, the ushers opened the doors, and the audience filed in.

  The Messiah is really long, and you have to sit through lots of solos, but some of them are good. I liked to sit there listening to the story of Jesus in song and sort of pretending I was Mary, just finding out from the angel that I’m pregnant, only I get it mixed up with “The Cherry Tree Carol.” I kept waiting for the song about Mary asking Joseph to gather her some cherries, and then remembered Handel didn’t write it.

  Near the end, when everybody stood up to sing the Hallelujah Chorus, I sang, “Hal-le-lu-jah! Hal-le-lu-jah!” right along with them, and if Crystal or Miss Summers realized I was off-key, they didn’t let on.

  When it was all over, we stood there talking while the musicians packed up their instruments. Dad explained to Lester and Crystal that Miss Summers was my Language Arts teacher, and Lester looked back and forth from Miss Summers to me. I just smiled sweetly again and glanced away, and then my breath almost stopped because there, among the sopranos next to the wall, was Marilyn. She was with a girlfriend, but her eyes were on Lester and Crystal, who hadn’t seen her.

  I didn’t tell Lester that he probably wouldn’t be spending Christmas Eve with Marilyn after all. I figured he was a big boy and could take care of himself.

  Lester and Crystal went somewhere in Lester’s car, but I was so afraid Dad would take Miss Summers right home that I invited her to our house.

  “I can make grilled cheese sandwiches, and there’s butter pecan in the freezer,” I told Dad. And when he still looked horrified, I added, “The bathroom’s clean, remember.”

  Miss Summers started laughing again, and so did Dad, but that’s what we did. Came to our house. I rushed upstairs and put a fresh towel in the bathroom for Miss Summers, because I saw Aunt Sally do that once when we came to visit unexpectedly. Then I set to work on the sandwiches while Dad played the piano for Sylvia.

  He liked her, I could tell. She asked for a certain piece by Brahms that’s one of Dad’s favorites, and he smiled as he began to play it. She hummed. I pretended not to watch, but every time I passed the door of the kitchen, I looked. Dad was still smiling, and Miss Summers was still humming.

  We ate at the coffee table in the living room, and Miss Summers took off her shoes so she could sit more easily on the floor. Her toenails were polished.

  “You have pretty toes,” I said.

  “Thank you,” she told me, and ate a carrot stick. I served carrot sticks, cheese sandwiches, applesauce, and butter pecan ice cream (which I hate, but I took all the nuts out of mine first).

  “This has really been a lovely afternoon,” Miss Summers said at last, “but I’ve got to get home. I tell you what. Why don’t we drive through the grounds of the Mormon temple on the way back and see all their lights. Did you know that at Christmas they put thousands and thousands of tiny white lights on the trees on their property?”

  Dad and I didn’t know that, so we drove to Kensington and I let Miss Summers sit up front with Dad. There was already a long line of cars at the gate, and we oohed and aahed at the thousands of little sparkles there in the darkness as Dad drove us around.

  I could tell that he was having a good time because he didn’t seem to be in any hurry to take Miss Summers home—drove right by the exit to go around again. When we finally got to Miss Summers’s house, though, I wished I wasn’t along. I wished that she’d invite Dad in, and they’d talk and talk and someday I’d have a new mother.

  She said good night to me, and told me again what a nice time she’d had. Then Dad walked her up to the door. They didn’t kiss or hold hands or anything. Just talked some more. Finally she went inside and Dad came back and got in the car. I was still in the backseat.

  “Get up front, Al,” he said.

  Uh-oh, I thought. I got out the back and climbed in the front. “Don’t the Mormons have nice lights?” I said.

  “Al . . .”

  “I really liked the concert, Dad.”

  “Al!”

  I shut up.

  Dad started the engine, and when the car was moving down the block, he said, “Don’t you ever do that again.”

  My heart sank. “I—I thought we all had a good time.”

  “You thought I would fall in love and marry your teacher and you’d have a mother, that’s what you thought. Well, things don’t work that way, Al.”

  “But you had a nice time!”

  “I did.”

  “And so did she! I know it!”

  “She seemed to.”

  “Well, then, what’s the—?”

  “You don’t know the first thing about love, Al. And she’s too young for me.”

  “How young is she?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You liked her!” I insisted.

  “Yes, I did, but I have no idea how she feels about me. Not really. For all I know, she’s dating other men and may even be serious about one of them.”

  “Then why did she come out with us?”

  “Because you asked her.”

  “Because she thought you asked her too!” I corrected.

  “Listen, Al. I asked what she was doing Christmas Eve, if she’d like to go out to dinner with me, and she said she was spending the holidays with a friend.”

  There was still hope. “Maybe it’s a girlfriend.”

  “I think she would have mentioned that if it was. And I don’t want you doing anything—anything—to get us together again. If we see each other some more, that’s up to us, not you. Is that strictly understood?”

  “Yes,” I said in a voice I could hardly hear.

  “No hints, no suggestions, no nothing. I mean it! This woman or any other.”

  “Okay,” I said softly.

  We drove almost all the way home in silence, but a few blocks from our house, I realized that Dad was whistling softly under his breath: Hallelujah! Hallelujah!

  “Hal-le-e-e-lu-jah!” I bellowed out loud. Off-key, of course.

  That made Dad laugh, and we sang it the rest of the way home. The Halleujah Chorus. The only thing missing was the orchestra, and of course we couldn’t stand up to sing.

  On Monday, the last day before Christmas vacation, Denise and I both turned in our biographies. We let each other read them first, which was one of the rules, so we could change anything we didn’t like or thought was too personal. But neither of us did.

  Mine was longer and neater than hers, but hers was better than I’d thought it would be. One of the things we were supposed to do in the write-up was analyze what obstacles we thought the other person had to overcome to be a success, and what she had going for her.

  I wrote that Denise had to overcome her habit of bullying other people if she wanted to make new friends, and that what she had going for her was that she was a leader; she could persuade other people to do what she wanted. I think she was surprised I’d called her a leader.

  Denise, in turn, wrote that I was too sensitive about not being able to carry a tune, and she said what I had going for me was guts. That’s just the way she put it. That I took chances. I sort of liked that, too.

  Just as I was going out the door to get the bus, Denise passed me in the hall.

  “Merry Christmas, Denise,” I yelled.

  “You too,” she said.

  When I sat down with Pamela and Elizabeth, Pamela said, “I can’t believe it. I just can’t. I never thought you and Denise would be friends as long as you lived.”

  “Neither did I,” I told her. “Life’s weird, isn’t it?”

  “After all she did to you!” said Elizabeth. “I’m not sure I could ever make up with her until she apologized.”

  “Maybe she did,” I said, “in her own way.”

  Two things happened the day before Christmas. I found a note in our mailbox from Miss Summers, thanking me for inviting her to the
concert. “Please tell your father that it was a wonderful afternoon,” she wrote, “and I hope we can do something like that again soon.” I yelped with delight when I read it, and showed it to Dad. He didn’t say anything, probably because his smile was so wide.

  The other thing that happened, though, was that Marilyn called and told Les that she had other plans for Christmas Eve.

  “Lester,” I said, “I don’t understand. If Marilyn doesn’t want to get engaged, why is she mad that you’re going out with Crystal?”

  “Marilyn doesn’t want a ring yet,” Lester explained, “but she wants to be ‘engaged to be engaged.’ Crystal would marry me tomorrow, but I don’t think I want a girl who’s all that eager.”

  I didn’t understand any more than I did before. Lester, though, wasn’t as upset as I thought he’d be.

  “I don’t know,” he told Dad. “Maybe I’ll just hang loose and not go out with either one of them for a while. It’ll be good to hang out with the guys for a change. Women are too complicated.”

  “Sometimes,” said Dad.

  About six o’clock, our relatives in Tennessee called to see how all us folks in “Silver Sprangs” were doing. Then we called Aunt Sally to wish her and Uncle Milt and Carol a merry Christmas, and then we realized we didn’t have anything good to eat in the house.

  “Want to go out for dinner?” Dad asked us. “Your choice.”

  “Let’s eat Mexican,” Les said.

  The restaurant’s only a few blocks away, so we decided to walk it. We put on our coats and found snow flurries in the air again when we got outside. Not snow, just flurries. That’s mostly the way it is in Maryland.

  It was cold enough to see our breath, though, and I grabbed hold of Dad’s arm on one side and Lester’s on the other, and sort of hopped to get in step with them, and then we headed over to Georgia Avenue.

  None of us knew what was going to happen next—whether Miss Summers would ever fall in love with Dad, whether both Marilyn and Crystal would give up on Lester, or whether I would really go the rest of seventh grade without making an enemy. But we were a family, and for right now, that was enough.

  “The Three Musketeers, that’s us,” I said, beaming. Somebody was whistling again, I noticed, and it was Dad.

  Find out what happens

  next for Alice in

  KEEPSAKES

  WHAT I’VE DECIDED ABOUT LIFE IS THIS: If you don’t have a mother, you need a sister. And if you don’t have a sister, you need a bulletin board.

  Elizabeth Price, across the street, has a room with twin beds, with white eyelet bedspreads on each, a little dressing table and stool, a lamp with a white eyelet ruffle for a shade, and a bulletin board covered with photos of Elizabeth in her ballet costume, her tap shoes and pants, her gymnastic leotards, and her Camp Fire Girl uniform, which isn’t too surprising, since there’s a huge photograph over the couch in their living room of Elizabeth in her First Communion dress.

  Pamela Jones, down the next block, has pictures of movie stars and singers on hers. She also has a dried rose, which Mark Stedmeister gave her once; an autograph by Madonna; a pom-pom, which her cousin in New Jersey sent her; and a photograph of her and Mark, taken from behind, with their arms around each other and their hands in each other’s hip pockets.

  I’d seen those bulletin boards dozens of times when I stayed overnight at Pamela’s or Elizabeth’s, but suddenly, in the winter of seventh grade, I wanted one of my own more than anything else I could think of.

  What I wanted was to know I was growing up normally—that I was in step with every female person in Montgomery County, that I was a part of the great sisterhood of women. I wanted to see the highlights of my life pinned up on the wall. I wanted to make sure I had a life.

  “I’d like a bulletin board for my room,” I told Dad one night when he was cleaning the broiler. “Pamela and Elizabeth both have one, and I want a place where I can pin up things.”

  “I’ve got an extra one at the store. I’ll try to remember to bring it home,” he said.

  I get a lot of weird things that way. Dad is manager of the Melody Inn, one of a chain of music stores, so he can bring home whatever he wants. Usually it’s stuff that’s defective or doesn’t sell; so far I’ve got two posters of Prince; one of Mozart; a couple of slightly warped drumsticks, which I gave to Patrick, who used to be my boyfriend; a Beethoven bikini from the Melody Inn Gift Shoppe, which says, HAPPY BIRTHDAY, BEETHOVEN on the seat of the pants, only the print is crooked; and some notepads, with CHOPIN LISZT printed at the top.

  The following afternoon, there was a huge bulletin board, a little dusty, with one corner chipped, hanging on the wall above my bureau.

  “It’s great!” I told Dad. “Aunt Sally used to have a bulletin board in her kitchen, didn’t she? I remember she used to pin up pictures I drew in kindergarten.”

  “That was your mother, Al.” (My name is Alice McKinley—Alice Kathleen McKinley, to be exact—but Dad and Lester call me Al.) “And those were pictures you’d made in nursery school. Don’t you remember how your mother kept photos of you and Lester on it too?”

  I always manage to do that. Mom died when I was five, and I always seem to mix her up with Aunt Sally, who took care of us for a while afterward.

  “Yeah, I think I do,” I told Dad, but I wasn’t really sure.

  I set aside the whole evening to work on my bulletin board, and took a box of keepsakes from my closet to see what was worth pinning up—something as wonderful as an autograph by Madonna or a photo of me in a ballet costume. Carefully I scooped things out of the box and spread them around on my bed.

  There was an envelope, yellow around the edges. I looked inside: grass. A handful of dry grass. And then I remembered Donald Sheavers back in fourth grade, when we lived in Takoma Park. We were playing Tarzan out in the backyard, and we had a big piece of cardboard for a raft. At some point he was supposed to kiss me, but every time he tried, I got the giggles and rolled off. For a whole afternoon Donald tried to kiss me, and though I wanted him to, it was just too embarrassing. So after he went home, I pulled up a handful of grass from under the cardboard to remember him by.

  Stuffing the grass back into the envelope, I picked up a tag off my first pair of Levi’s. I’d been wearing Sears jeans through most of elementary, and when I got to sixth grade, Lester had taken me to buy some real Levi’s. I studied the label now in my hand and tried to imagine Pamela and Elizabeth looking at it in admiration and awe. I put the label on top of the grass.

  I couldn’t figure out what the next thing was. When I unrolled it, I saw that it was a piece of brown wrapping paper with leaves drawn on it. And then I remembered the sixth-grade play, where Pamela had the lead role—the part I’d wanted—and I had to be a bramble bush instead. I put the brown wrapping paper over by the Levi’s label and the grass. It was very discouraging.

  Then I felt that sort of thump in the chest you get when you come across something important, and I picked up an envelope with ALICE M. on the front, decorated with drawings of hearts, and airplanes with red stripes on the wings.

  Inside was one of those misty-looking photographs of a man and woman walking through the woods holding hands, and you can’t see their faces. At the top, in curly letters, were the words A SPECIAL FEELING WHEN I THINK OF YOU. There weren’t any printed words when you opened it up, but someone had written in blue ink, “I like you a lot.” A valentine from Patrick from sixth grade! I decided I’d put the card up on my bulletin board but not the envelope. I could never explain the airplanes to Pamela and Elizabeth, because I couldn’t understand them myself.

  What was left in the box was the wrapper of a 3 Musketeers bar that Patrick had given me; the stub of a train ticket when I’d gone to Chicago to visit Aunt Sally; a ring from my favorite teacher, Mrs. Plotkin; a book of matches from Patrick’s country club; and a program from the Messiah Sing-Along that I had gone to last Christmas, with Dad and my Language Arts teacher.

  This was it! T
his was my life! I turned the box upside down again and shook it hard to see if an autograph from Johnny Depp or something might fall out, but all I got was a dead moth.

  I took thumbtacks and put up the valentine from Patrick, the train ticket stub, Mrs. Plotkin’s ring tied to a ribbon, the matchbook, and the program from the Messiah. They hardly filled up one corner.

  I clomped downstairs for the Ritz crackers, but Lester had them. He was sitting at the kitchen table over a copy of Rolling Stone.

  Dad was drinking some ginger ale. “How’s the bulletin board coming?” he asked.

  “I think it’s too big,” I mumbled, flopping down on a chair. “I haven’t had enough great moments in my life, I guess.”

  “Well, think about the ones you have had, and see if you can’t come up with something,” he told me.

  “My first bra, my first pair of Levi’s,” I said. “I suppose I could put the labels up, but there’s still three-fourths of the board yet to go.”

  Lester put a squirt of Cheez Whiz on a cracker and popped it in his mouth. “You could hang your whole bra and jeans on the bulletin board and then you wouldn’t have any space left at all,” he said.

  I gave him a look. Lester’s only twenty, but he’s got a mustache, and girls go crazy over him. Don’t ask me why, but they do. Right at that very moment he had a blob of Cheez Whiz in his mustache.

  “Keep thinking,” I told him.

  “Remember when Patrick took you to the country club?” Lester said. “When you got home, you discovered you’d stuffed one of their cloth napkins in your purse. That’d be good for a twelve-inch square of space.”

  I was desperate. “I can’t have Pamela and Elizabeth over just to see a label off my jeans and a train ticket! I’ve hardly got anything at all.” I threw back my head and wailed: “My life is a blank bulletin board!”

  Lester put down his magazine. “Al,” he said, “what you do is you take off all your clothes, drag your bulletin board out in the street, and take an ax to it. By tomorrow morning, you’ll have a policeman’s jacket, a hospital ID bracelet, and a newspaper story to add to your collection. Maybe even a photograph of you in the policeman’s jacket, climbing into the back of a paddy wagon. I guarantee it.”