Reluctantly Alice

  “No,” I said. “Did you?”

  Lester turned bright red.

  “Got-cha!” I said.

  “No,” Lester said quickly. “I never did. Don’t be stupid.”

  “Well, then!” said Dad. “You’ve achieved a twelve-year goal today, Al! So how are you liking seventh grade?”

  “Fine,” I told him. “And if I can think of one more good thing about it, it’ll cancel out all the bad ones.”

  I went to school on Friday searching for it—the seventh good thing about seventh. I wanted to like junior high. According to Mrs. Plotkin, wanting to do things is half the battle. In each of my classes I looked for something that was different from sixth grade that made junior high better. The teacher in Life Science was nice. So was Miss Summers in Language Arts. Nice and pretty, too. My math instructor was kind and was good at explaining problems, but as the day went on and I was in and out of classrooms, there wasn’t one particular class that stood out. Finally there was just one period left, Mr. Hensley’s World Studies, and I thought, Wouldn’t it be great if I discovered the Seventh Wonder of Seventh Grade in here?

  This is the only class I have with Patrick, and all week we’d been sitting in the last row, as far as we could get from Mr. Hensley’s bad breath. Patrick hasn’t exactly been ignoring me, but after we’d seen the way eighth and ninth graders make out at lunch time, leaning against the walls outside, all the kids who had been going together as couples in sixth grade sort of developed amnesia. None of us wanted to remember the silly things we’d done over the summer. Like the boys running around the playground with Pamela’s new Up-Lift Spandex Ahh-Bra. No ninth-grade boy would do that, and no ninth-grade girl would get hysterical if he did. So here before class is the one place Patrick and I can talk a little and catch up on things without attracting attention.

  “How’s it going?” Patrick said.

  “Better. I actually think I’m going to like junior high.” I crossed my fingers. “Maybe.” I stole him a look. “You been to P.E. yet?” I wondered if seventh-grade boys had the same kind of revelations when they looked at older boys in the nude as girls did when they saw older girls in the shower.

  “Yeah! It’s neat!” Patrick said. “We’re doing track right now, and you should see the legs on some of those guys on our team!”

  I smiled.

  Then the bell rang and Horse-Breath Hensley was up in front of the room, pacing back and forth the way he does when he talks to the class. This time he was talking about fairness, and the way he was going to conduct the class. He’s already given us an outline of the course and told us when the big reports were due, and he said that he knew he wasn’t one of the most exciting teachers in the school, but he hoped we would remember him as one of the fairest. So far so good, I thought. Maybe this will be the Seventh Thing.

  Then Mr. Hensley said that probably all our lives, we had been treated alphabetically as an example of fairness. The Adamsons were always called on first in class and the Zlotskys were always called on last.

  True, I thought, but I’ll admit I’d always liked that. With a last name right smack in the middle of the alphabet, it had always been comforting to know that I wouldn’t be the first to have to stand up and give a report or the last one, either. If Mr. Hensley reversed it and called on the Z’s first and the A’s last, “McKinley” would still be in the middle. I smiled to myself.

  “And so,” Mr. Hensley said, “just to even things up a bit, in this class we go alphabetically by first names, and we’re seated accordingly. If you will now move to the desks I assign you. . . . Alice McKinley, first seat, first row, please. Barbara Engstrom, next seat, first row . . .” He read off his list, filling up the front row all the way across, then starting on the second.

  I don’t remember the rest. The only thing I knew for certain was that the class was rearranged, Patrick and I were separated, and I realized that for the rest of the semester I would be the first one called on for everything. I was also directly in line of fire of Mr. Hensley’s breath.

  “I think that was a wonderful idea!” said a girl named Yvonne Allison as we left the room.

  I swallowed. The seventh best thing about seventh grade turned out to be the worst of all.

  2

  HELPING LESTER

  IT WAS LESTER, THOUGH, WHO WAS HAVING real trouble at the moment. Lester turned twenty that Friday. He had just transferred from Montgomery College to the University of Maryland for his junior year, but was working part-time at an appliance store, so Dad and I waited till he got home to have his celebration. The problem was that two girls had sent him presents, and Lester had to tell one of them that it was over. I’d never seen him so miserable.

  “Lester,” I said after he’d opened my present, which was two half-pound bars of Hershey’s chocolate, light and dark, with and without almonds. Dad had gone out in the kitchen for the ice cream. “Why do you have to give one girl up? Why can’t you keep one as your true love and the other as best friend or something?”

  “Don’t be stupid,” said Les. Then he remembered I’d just given him the chocolate, so he tried to explain: “I always thought it was the real thing with Marilyn, Al. And then, when she broke it off and I finally met Crystal, I figured maybe it was for the best, because I really like Crystal. Now that Marilyn wants me back, I realize how much I love her, but I can’t seem to make myself give up Crystal. And neither one of them would settle for being only ‘best friend.’ Take my word for it.”

  Boy, I’d never had anything like that happen to me, and I was glad I wasn’t in Lester’s shoes. “Crystal doesn’t even know yet?”

  “She knows I heard from Marilyn. She knows I’m thinking it over. But she thinks she still has a chance.”

  “And she doesn’t?” I studied my brother—the way his mustache sort of drooped at the corners. Lester’s mustache makes him look a lot older than he is.

  Lester shook his head. “It’s Marilyn. I know it’s Marilyn. I’ve never loved anyone in my life as much as Marilyn.”

  “What if you give up Crystal and then Marilyn dumps you again?” I asked.

  “I’ll kill her,” said Lester.

  Dad came in with the ice cream and a Pepperidge Farm chocolate layer cake. “You know what I think?” he said. “I think you’re too young, too fast, and too far, Lester. You really ought to consider cooling it with both girls for six months or so, and see how you feel then.”

  “Get real,” said Lester.

  I wondered which girl I would like most to have for a sister-in-law. Marilyn plays the guitar; Crystal plays the clarinet. Marilyn is slender, with long brown hair. Crystal has short red hair and huge breasts. Both treat me really nice. If I was a bridesmaid for Marilyn, we’d probably be outdoors in a field, barefoot, in white cotton dresses. If I was a bridesmaid for Crystal, the wedding would be in a cathedral with music by Bach. I can’t sing, but I know enough about music to know that if it’s Crystal Harkins, the music will be Bach. I couldn’t decide which girl to choose, either.

  “Why don’t you just let fate decide it?” I said, swishing some fudge ripple ice cream around in my mouth. “Whichever girl’s birthday is nearest your own, marry her.”

  “If you can’t say something intelligent, Al, just shut up,” Lester told me, and I realized that Dad and I weren’t any more help to him right then than he and Dad are to me sometimes. A lot of the time. Most of the time, in fact. What I need most of all in my life is the one thing I haven’t got: a mother.

  If I’d had a mother when I sat on a jelly doughnut the first day of school, she would have known what to say when I told her about it. When I told Pamela and Elizabeth, they each said, “I’d simply die!” When I told Lester, he just laughed. When I told Dad, he got logical and asked what the doughnut was doing on the seat in the first place, and how it should have been on the table. It didn’t matter why the doughnut was on the seat. What mattered was that it was, and I sat on it.

  A mother, I think, would have listened
and agreed that it was embarrassing, but not the end of the world. She would have come up with something snappy to say if that, or anything like it, ever happened again. And most of all, she would have explained how to wash jelly off the seat of my pants without making it look as though I’d wet my jeans.

  If I had to sit on that jelly doughnut again or be Lester right now, I wasn’t sure which I’d choose. In any case, the phone rang, so I went out in the hall to answer. It was Marilyn.

  “Hi, Alice,” she said, and her voice was like wind chimes—tinkly, high, and sweet. I remembered how she’d come to dinner once in a long skirt and I’d wanted to be like her so I went upstairs and put on a nightgown with a blouse over it and she hadn’t even laughed. I really liked Marilyn and wondered if there was anything I could say that would help Lester.

  “It’s been a long time since I talked to you, Marilyn,” I said.

  “I know. Too long. Much too long. Is Lester enjoying his birthday? I know he probably just got home, but I wondered if he’d opened my present yet.”

  “He probably opened it in private,” I told her, then realized how dumb that sounded—as though her gift was probably so personal, he wouldn’t have dared open it in front of the family. “I mean, Lester isn’t real big on presents anymore. What I mean is . . .”

  “It’s okay, Alice,” Marilyn said quietly, but I thought she sounded hurt.

  “No, what I mean is . . .”

  “You don’t have to explain.”

  “He loves you best!” I blurted out.

  There was silence at the other end of the line. “Best of who?” she asked finally. And suddenly I realized that while Crystal knew about Marilyn, Marilyn probably didn’t know about Crystal.

  “A-anybody,” I said. “Me or Dad or anybody!”

  “Oh,” said Marilyn.

  Lester came out of the kitchen. “Is that Marilyn?” he asked.

  “Here’s Lester!” I said quickly, and handed the phone to him.

  I don’t know how one person can get in as much trouble as I do. Things would have been okay, I guess, if Crystal hadn’t called next. By then, Lester had the stereo going so loud, he didn’t even hear the phone ring, so I got it on the upstairs extension just as I was eating graham crackers before bed.

  “Hi, Alice,” Crystal said, and it sounded as though she’d been crying. “Did Lester have a nice birthday?”

  “Yeah, a really great birthday,” I said, wishing that Les, not me, had answered. And when Crystal didn’t say anything else, I added, “He got presents from Dad and me and you and . . . from Dad and me and you.”

  I heard Crystal swallow.

  “Do you want me to get Lester?” I asked.

  “No,” Crystal said, and blew her nose. Now I knew for sure she was crying. “I—I just wondered if he’d opened my gift yet. I guess I thought he’d call.”

  I couldn’t stand the idea of Crystal crying. I was thinking about the time last summer I’d gotten a perm, and my hair was all smelly and the curls were as tight as corkscrews. I was crying, and Crystal had come upstairs and made me beautiful. She’d shown me how to blow-dry my hair to make the curls large and wavy. Except for Mrs. Plotkin, I don’t think I’d ever loved a female person as much in my life as I had loved Crystal then, unless it was Mama, long ago, whom I hardly remember.

  “I should have c-called,” Crystal wept. “It’s just so hard, Alice.”

  “Oh, Crystal!” I said. “Lester really does like you.”

  “‘Like’ isn’t enough,” Crystal said, and cried some more.

  I was desperate. “He said he just can’t give you up.”

  Crystal stopped crying. “He did?”

  I gulped. “I heard him say it. He said, ‘I just can’t give her up.’”

  “Are you sure it was me he was talking about?”

  “Y-yes.”

  “Oh, Alice, you don’t know how happy you’ve made me.”

  “Just a minute! I’ll go get Lester,” I said quickly.

  “No, no! Please don’t get him. Don’t even tell him I called. You told me all I need to know,” Crystal said. “G’night, love.” She made a kissing sound over the phone and hung up.

  I felt terrible. I felt awful. I couldn’t stand it. I marched across the hall and opened Lester’s door.

  “You stink!” I yelled.

  Lester turned down his stereo. “What?”

  And then I remembered it was his birthday. “Happy birthday,” I said.

  “Oh,” said Lester, and turned the volume up again.

  The next day, Saturday, Lester went to work at the appliance store, and I went to the Melody Inn, the music store, where Dad’s the manager. I work there three hours every Saturday, helping out wherever Dad needs. On the way there, I was thinking how—when I left school on Friday—I’d thought I had the worst problems in the family because I was in the first seat in the front row in World Studies class, and how when I went to bed Friday night, I figured that Lester had a lot worse problems than I had. By the time I was through working my three hours at the Melody Inn, though, I knew it was Dad who had the most trouble of all.

  There are two women who work at the Melody Inn—Janice Sherman, the assistant manager, who takes care of the sheet music department, and Loretta Jenkins, who runs the Gift Shoppe at the back of the store. Loretta chews gum and has wild curly hair, while Janice Sherman looks and acts like a lady banker. She dresses in suits and scarves and has a smile that stretches just so far and no farther. She’s also had a crush on my dad ever since we moved to Maryland, I think, and I’m not sure Dad knows it.

  The worst part, though, is that she let us use her beach cottage at Ocean City for a week in August because I think she thought it would help Dad fall in love with her, even though she was back in Silver Spring minding the store. Instead, Dad fell for the lady in the beach house next to hers. And when I walked into the Melody Inn on this particular Saturday in early September, I had the feeling that somehow Janice had found out. I was assigned to help her in sheet music, and I happened to notice that she wasn’t smiling at all. Her lips didn’t even stretch.

  “Check in this order, Alice,” she said, “and make sure that we got all five copies of Chopin’s Mazurkas, eleven copies of Bach’s Preludes, and all the single titles listed on this sheet. If they check out, then copy the prices on these stickers and put one on each piece of music.”

  “Okay,” I told her, and waited for her to say, “How’s school going?” or “How are things at your house?” or any of the other things she usually says to me on Saturdays. She didn’t.

  Here were Dad and Lester each involved in woman troubles. I began to feel really lucky that Patrick and I were back to just being friends again, and I didn’t have to worry about who to love first or best or most. Dad’s problem, though, was that he didn’t even know he had one. As far as Dad was concerned, Janice was just his assistant manager whom he took to concerts once in a while, but as far as Janice was concerned—I could see it in her eyes—she wanted to end up Mrs. Ben McKinley some day, only she never told Dad about it and he never guessed.

  It’s really awkward when you know something’s wrong, but you can’t talk about it. Janice Sherman was nice to me; she was just awfully quiet, as though her thoughts were a million miles away. Well, a hundred and fifty miles, anyway: Ocean City, Maryland. So after I got all the sheet music checked in and price stickers on everything and the music filed away in the drawer, I said, “It was really nice of you to let us use your beach cottage, Janice. We all had a really great time.”

  “Apparently so,” said Janice, sort of sadly, I thought.

  I knew I’d done it again. I considered putting a Band-Aid over my mouth to keep it shut until Monday morning so I couldn’t do any more damage than I already had. But then I discovered that I could get in just as much trouble not saying anything at all. Because just before I went home at noon, Janice said, “Well, I’m glad your family could use my cottage, Alice. It’s a shame to let it sit there emp
ty when someone could be enjoying it. Did you have any visitors?”

  All sorts of alarms went off in my head, and I knew I’d have to be careful. I knew right away that she wondered if the woman next door had come over. The woman had, as a matter of fact, but she and Dad had stayed out on the front porch talking. She never came in.

  “The only people we had overnight were friends of mine,” I told her.

  “Well, sometimes it’s nice just to have people in for dinner,” Janice said.

  “Nope, just my friends,” I said, glad I could be honest. I sort of edged toward the door.

  “Oh, what a shame!” said Janice. “What did your dad do all week? Swim a lot?”

  “No, he doesn’t swim much,” I said. “Mostly he just read and listened to music and stuff.” I knew it was the “and stuff” that bothered her.

  “Just kept to himself with all those people around?” Janice kept quizzing me. “Never even went visiting once?”

  How could I answer that? If I said yes, she’d want to know whom he visited, and she already suspected. If I said no, I’d be lying. So I just didn’t say anything. Not a word. I pretended I had a Band-Aid on my lips.

  “I thought so,” said Janice quietly, and left the room.

  Well, I told myself, she can be upset with me if she wants, but I’m not angry at her. Actually, I knew it wasn’t me she was upset with, anyway, but Dad. Yet she couldn’t tell him because he didn’t suspect how she felt, and even if he did, he was her boss. So I could still say I had gone through my first week of seventh grade friends with everybody, the whole world.

  I really liked the idea—getting through the year without a single enemy, everybody liking Alice McKinley. It would feel good not to have one person against me, like Pamela was for a while back in sixth grade when she had the leading role in the class play, I had to be the bramble bush, and I pulled her hair onstage. Or the way Elizabeth was mad at all of us for a while last summer when her boyfriend broke up with her and she felt left out. From now on I was going to try very, very hard to get along with absolutely everybody.