It was a whirlwind trip. Each morning, Dad would drive Aunt Sally and Carol to the Metro. Aunt Sally went to the museums and Carol went to her conference. Each night, Les would pick them up, and then we’d go out to dinner or a movie or something. I figured I could live like this a long time.
We were at a Mexican restaurant the second night, though, when I embarrassed Lester by asking the waiter whether the dish I’d ordered had any “jallopeeno” peppers in it.
“That’s pronounced hal-a-pain-yo,” Lester told me after the waiter was gone.
“Then why does it start with a j?” I asked.
“Because it’s Spanish, Al,” said Dad. “Aren’t you taking any foreign languages?”
“Not till high school,” I told him.
“What you’ve got to remember is that a j in Spanish sounds like an h, just like a w in German sounds like a v,” Lester told me. “And a v in German sounds like an f.”
I thought about that awhile. “Then why isn’t Volkswagen pronounced ‘Folks-vagen’?” I said. Nobody seemed to know. Ha! I stumped them on that.
Aunt Sally cleared her throat. “Ben, it’s hard for me to believe you didn’t even know Alice wasn’t taking a foreign language. Don’t you help her choose her courses?”
“Not unless she asks,” Dad said. “She has counselors at school, and they tell her what’s required. If she has any questions, she can always come to me. Right, Al?”
“Right,” I said.
Aunt Sally sat back as the waiter put some tortilla chips and salsa on the table, then leaned forward again. “What are you taking in seventh grade, Alice? Your mother certainly would have been interested in knowing.”
“Our Changing Bodies,” I told her. “We’re just finishing fallopian tubes and we’re getting ready for testicles.”
I don’t know if Aunt Sally ate her soup or not. I spent the rest of dinner talking to Carol.
The really nice part of their visit was that Carol slept in my bed and I slept on an old army cot beside her. Dad gave Aunt Sally his bed and he took the sofa. Les didn’t have to give up his room because that would have meant cleaning it first, and we hadn’t had a two-week notice.
Once the light was out, Carol didn’t mind talking for a while in the dark, and I liked that. It’s a lot easier to talk in the dark. The words sort of slide out and you’re not entirely responsible.
The last night Carol was there, I asked, “Was my mom at all like yours?”
I heard the springs squeak and knew that Carol was turning over on her side, facing me. “She was a lot younger than my mother, not quite so set in her ways. I didn’t know her all that well, Alice, but what I knew of Aunt Marie, I liked.”
“Such as what?”
“Her sense of humor, for one thing. She was funny. Mother always takes things too seriously. I remember once”—Carol giggled a little—“I think we had just moved, and your mom came over to help us unpack. You must have been about one year old, so you stayed home with your dad. But Aunt Marie had climbed up on a step stool, leaned too far, and the whole thing went over. She broke her leg. I remember how Mom wouldn’t let her move or anything—called an ambulance—and I can still see your mother lying on the floor, wincing. It was summer—a really hot summer—and she had on a light skirt. Well, when the ambulance arrived, the paramedics had to examine her briefly before they moved her. I remember that one of the men said, ‘Ma’am, excuse me, but I’m going to have to raise your skirt.’ And despite the pain, your mom looked up at him with that mischievous spark in her eye and said, ‘Will you still respect me in the morning?’”
Both Carol and I burst out laughing. I lay there smiling up at the ceiling, trying to imagine the whole thing—my mom saying something like that.
“But you know what?” Carol went on. “Mother never got the joke. She said she didn’t see what there was to laugh about when someone was being rushed off to the emergency room. Anyway, that was one of the differences between your mom and mine.”
Mom, I said silently in the dark, I would have liked you a lot. I mean, I do like you a lot. Everything I’ve found out about you. I thought of how Mother would have laughed about me going around school wearing my fallopian tubes on my chest.
“Poor Mum,” Carol was saying. “Sometimes I think she would have been happier living in another century. She and Queen Victoria would have gotten along fine.”
The next day, on the way to the airport, Aunt Sally said, “This has been a wonderful visit, Ben. Thanks for everything. Now tell me: Are you really, truly happy?”
Dad smiled. I could see his face in the rearview mirror. “Well, Lester and Alice will have to speak for themselves, but happiness is relative, you know. From day to day, I’m in and out of happiness, but most of the time I’m content, if that’s any comfort to you, Sal.”
“I miss Marie, Ben.”
“So do I, Sal.”
While Dad was playing the piano that evening, and Lester and I were scrounging the kitchen for potato chips, I said, “I really like Carol. She’s easy to talk to.”
“Yeah, she’s cool,” Lester said.
“How old is she, do you figure?”
“Oh, probably twenty-three. She’s been out of college for a couple years now.”
“Do you think she’s ever had sexual intercourse?”
Lester stared at me. “She was married awhile, Al. Didn’t you know that?”
“Oh.” I’d forgotten.
“Some guy in the navy. It only lasted a year,” Lester said.
I sat in the kitchen after Lester left, thinking about that. I had actually been in a room all by myself with a woman who had experienced sexual intercourse, and I’d missed my chance to ask her what it was like. I’ll bet she would have told me too. Especially in the dark.
I don’t think I needed information nearly as much as Elizabeth needed it, though. She called me about nine that night.
“Alice,” she whispered into the phone. “I’ve got to come over. I want to tell you something.”
I met her at the door. She wouldn’t even come up to my room. She said she couldn’t talk inside the house at all, so we went down to the corner and leaned against the mailbox.
“What is it?” I asked.
“I can’t believe this,” said Elizabeth. “I never expected it to happen.”
“What?”
“A baby,” she said.
I gaped, my mouth opened. “You’re … having … a baby?”
“No!” Elizabeth glared at me. “Of course not! My mother is, and I just can’t believe … can’t imagine … well, you know … that they did that!”
I was still staring. “Then how did you think you got here, Elizabeth? Federal Express?”
“But that was a long time ago, right after they were married. I didn’t think they still …” She swallowed.
Sometimes I feel very grown up compared to Elizabeth. Sometimes I feel toward Elizabeth what Carol must feel toward me. Like a sister. I put my arm around her and walked her back to her house.
“What am I going to tell everyone?” she gulped.
“Believe me, you don’t have to explain anything. Sooner or later folks will just know, that’s all,” I said.
“But … I thought … I thought you did it when you wanted children, and when you were … you know … through having children, you stopped.”
“Elizabeth,” I said, “if you ever need a vacation—I mean, if you ever want to get away from all this—you could go to Chicago and stay with Aunt Sally. She’d love to have you. You two would get along great. You really would.”
6
FRIENDS
I DECIDED THAT SISTERHOOD WAS ONE of the easiest things in the world. All I had to do was look out for other girls, and they’d look out for me.
Miss Summers was a member; Denise Whitlock, the large girl who sat in front of me in Language Arts, was a member; Loretta Jenkins; Janice Sherman; Aunt Sally, even! You were a member of the Universal Sisterhood whether you knew it
or not. Like a big sorority, we were all in it together—old and young, fat and thin, pretty and plain—all you had to be was female and you were in. Being the only female member of my family, it was a great feeling to know I belonged to a group that understood what it’s like to be a girl.
Of course, it was nicer to be a pretty Sister than a plain one, and I never knew how much difference earrings could make until I looked in the mirror. One of the pairs Pamela had traded me had little green stones. I decided to wear them with a light green shirt Carol had given me, so the day after she left, I put them on. I’m not sure whether the earrings or the shirt highlighted the green in my eyes, but I thought, Not bad! Not bad at all!
Dad had left early for work, but Lester was still at the table. “Les,” I said, “how do I look?” I sat down across from him and leaned forward so he’d notice.
“Where?” he asked, looking at me hard. “You have a pimple or something?”
“No! I’m beautiful this morning, and you might have noticed.”
“I noticed that your shirt is about three sizes too big.”
“It’s the fashion, Lester. Carol gave it to me.”
“On Carol, anything looks great,” he said.
The one person at school who noticed—other than Elizabeth and Pamela—was Miss Summers. I liked to think she gave me extra attention because she went to the Christmas concert with Dad and me last year, but I probably imagined it. When I walked in her room fourth period, she said, “Why, Alice, you’re a symphony in green! You look lovely.”
“Thanks,” I told her, smiling. I never felt so elegant before.
Miss Summers, though, is a symphony in whatever she wears. She can make ordinary gray look special. Blue is her best color, though, because of her eyes, so she wears that a lot. On this day she had on a blue lacy sweater over a blue skirt, with a white scarf thrown over one shoulder.
She was talking about how a biographer doesn’t just list facts about his subjects but chooses events in that person’s life which best reveal the type of person he or she is. Too often, in our own writing, she said, we clutter up the pages with things that aren’t important. Then she gave us an assignment. To help us get to the heart of a personality, she wanted us to list all the members of our family, and then, beside each one, the title of a song or musical or book that best described that person. But we couldn’t mix categories. We had to choose one and stick with it, for all the members of our family.
We smiled as we closed our books, and so did Miss Summers.
“This is a fun assignment, class,” she said when the bell rang. “Enjoy.”
Lester and I were the only ones at supper. He’d been lifting weights again in the basement and came to the table barefoot, in sweatpants. I hate it when he does that, because it makes the spaghetti taste like armpits.
“Where’s Dad?” I asked, as I opened another can of tomato puree.
“I don’t know,” Lester said. “Working overtime, I guess. He called and said he’d be home around nine.”
I told Lester about the English assignment. “I’m going to use the titles of musicals,” I said. “I’ve got the perfect one for Dad: The Music Man.”
“Yeah?” Lester leaned over the pot and tasted the spaghetti sauce, then added some Tabasco. “What are you going to put beside your own name? Surely not My Fair Lady?”
“I can do without any help from you,” I told him.
We were wolfing down the spaghetti and garlic bread (no salad; we never eat salad unless Dad is here to make it) when the doorbell rang. I thought maybe it was Dad with his arms full of groceries or something, and ran to open it.
There stood Lester’s old girlfriend, Marilyn—his first true love—small, brown-haired, looking very pretty in tight knit pants and a furry jacket.
“Marilyn!” I said, delighted to see her. “Come on in. Lester and I were just finishing supper.”
She smiled at me. “Wow, Alice! You look great. Pierced ears, and”—she made wavy motions with her hands—“you’re getting a figure and everything.” We both giggled.
I thought she’d sit down in the living room while I went to get Lester, but instead, she followed me through the dining room. Lester must not have heard us because he was stuffing a forkful of spaghetti in his mouth. When he saw Marilyn in the doorway, he swallowed it in one gulp.
“M-Marilyn!” he said, and wiped his mouth on the back of his hand. “For gosh sake!”
“Go right on with your dinner, Les, I’ve already eaten,” Marilyn said, and her voice sounded like little bells. She pulled out a chair at the end of the table and sat down. “I was just driving by and thought, Why don’t I stop? so I stopped.”
“How you doin’?” Lester asked, and took another bite.
I think that’s the difference between men and women. If I was sitting at the kitchen table barefoot, in sweatpants, with spaghetti sauce in the corners of my mouth, and Patrick walked in, I’d be up the stairs already. Lester, however, kept right on chewing.
“I’m doing all right,” Marilyn said.
“Applesauce?” I asked, offering her the jar and spoon.
“No, thanks.” She turned her attention to Les again. “How are you doing?”
“Studying hard. You know.”
Marilyn nodded. Les nodded.
“They fixed up that old coffee shop down on Georgia Avenue—the one that used to have all those ferns in the window,” Marilyn said. “Now they show silent movies in the evenings. It’s fun. I thought you might like to walk over there, just for old time’s sake. Have a cup of coffee.”
“Uh … well …” Les looked about uncertainly.
“I’ll do the dishes,” I offered. I didn’t know if I was helping or not, but I wanted Marilyn back at that moment almost more than anything else. I wanted a sister-in-law, so we could talk earrings and sex and love and life. But I didn’t want Lester hurt again, and I didn’t want Marilyn hurt, either.
“Let me put on some shoes,” Lester said, and went upstairs.
I looked right at Marilyn. “How come you came back?” I asked. I had to know.
“Because I missed him.”
Love, I am absolutely convinced, is the weirdest thing there is. Romantic love, I mean. “What did you miss?” I asked her. “Really.”
“Oh, the way he sort of held me whenever I was worried about something. Real protective, you know. The whipped cream he puts in his coffee—sprays in his coffee, actually. I never see a can of Reddi Wip without thinking of Les. The way we could talk about all kinds of things. Just him, you know?” She glanced over at me. “Is he dating anyone else?”
“Not that I know of.”
“Crystal Harkins?”
“No.”
“I’ve got a chance then.”
“As much as anyone else,” I told her, and I noticed that when they walked out the front door together, she was clutching his arm. I mean, Lester probably hadn’t even washed his armpits, and Marilyn was clutching his arm.
What would it be like to have another female in the house? I wondered. I mean, if Lester and Marilyn married and moved in upstairs or something? If mine weren’t the only underpants and bras hanging on the line in the basement? If I wasn’t the only one in the house with a menstrual cycle? If Dad could learn to treat hot curlers and panty liners like hot curlers and panty liners instead of small strange animals that lived in the cabinet under the sink?
I brought my notebook out to the kitchen table and wrote down the names of everyone in our family. I wrote The Music Man by Dad’s name, Li’l Abner by Lester’s, and I thought about my mom. Maybe I should call her My Fair Lady, but it didn’t exactly fit. Then I remembered what Carol had told me about Mom joking with the paramedics. I smiled, and beside her name I wrote Funny Girl. The hardest title to come up with was the one for myself.
What Miss Summers wanted us to do was zero in on a major characteristic, like I’d done with the others. Music for Dad, bare feet for Lester, jokes for Mom. But me?
What’s the first thing I think about when I think of myself? I wondered. I mean, if somebody else said I could tell them only one important thing about myself, what would it be? I knew before I even got to the end of the question. I was missing a mom.
“Alice McKinley,” I wrote on my paper, and beside it I scribbled Annie (as in Little Orphan).
I cleaned up the kitchen, ate the rest of the spaghetti cold, and debated whether I should take a long, hot soak in the tub or make some banana pudding. The recipe was on the side of the vanilla wafer box, but by the time I read it to the end, I’d eaten half the wafers. So I went back to the living room to finish the chapter on hormones for the Our Changing Bodies unit.
It’s amazing how grown up I began to feel, just knowing what all these hormones were getting ready to do inside me. I wondered when the names changed on the doors of restrooms, from BOYS to MEN, and GIRLS to WOMEN. High school? College? Reaching puberty, I guess, is the next best thing to having a mother or sister. Your body marches in step with the other girls in your class, the hormones leading the way. I needed that—marching in step, I mean. I liked the feeling that I belonged.
The front door opened about eight thirty, and I figured it was Dad coming in for dinner. It was Lester. “Guess what?” he said.
“You’re engaged.”
“Don’t be dumb. We’re friends again, nothing romantic. Just plain friends. Marilyn said it’s ridiculous for us to go on not speaking.”
“You were doing a good job of being friends before, until Marilyn discovered you were friends with Crystal Harkins too,” I reminded him.
“Well, I think everything’s clear now. You can be friends with a lot of people at the same time, and I’m sure Marilyn understands that,” Les said. He took off his jacket and stretched out in a chair, smiling contentedly.
I propped my feet on the coffee table and studied my brother from across the room. “Les,” I said, “I read an article that said that once people have sexual intercourse, it’s almost impossible to make them stop.”