“How do you know when you’re allergic to something?” I asked.
“You break out in hives, your eyes roll back, and your body goes into spasms,” said Lester.
Dad gave him a look. “You usually break out in a rash, Al. Why? What do you think you’re allergic to?”
“Chlorine.”
“How so?”
“Oh, I sort of itch after I’ve been in Mark’s swimming pool,” I said.
“Sounds more like a sun sensitivity to me,” said Dad. “Maybe we ought to have the doctor look you over.”
“Not!” I said. “Why can’t you just give me a note saying I can’t get water up my nose?”
“Why should I give you a note?” said Dad. “If you don’t want water up your nose, don’t put it there.”
“Al, if you were allergic to chlorine, you’d start itching every time you took a drink of water,” said Lester.
They had me there.
Monday I stayed home from the pool, but the day wasn’t a total loss because that night Dad took me to Sears after we ate, and I picked out a bedroom set. My first thought was that since I was probably soon to be an ex-member of the Pool Group, plus I probably wouldn’t have another friend for the rest of my natural life, all I needed was a hammock suspended from the ceiling and wicker baskets for clothes. I could fill the rest of the space with plants, so that when I went to my room it would be like going on safari. No one would be able to find me, and I’d never have to clean anything—just water it.
Dad suggested I choose a double bed, so if we ever had a houseful of company there would be more sleeping space. I got a double bed with a long low dresser and chest of drawers, and drapes and a bedspread with a jungle motif—lions and leopards mingled with exotic plants. And because I’d chosen one of the least expensive sets, Dad said I really could have a large rubber plant in one corner. He even bought me a pillow shaped like a koala for the bed. The stuff was delivered two days later, and when everything was set up, it looked like the kind of exotic bedroom where Scheherazade would have entertained her sultan.
I had to invite Elizabeth and Pamela for a sleepover, of course, and they loved the room. They said I had good taste, but you know what’s weird? When you’re worried about the one big thing that’s wrong with you, nothing else seems to matter. I wasn’t Alice of the Good Taste or Alice with a Good Sense of Rhythm, but Alice the Girl Who Can’t Go in Water Over Her Head. Only nobody knew it, which made it even worse.
“Look, Alice, there’s still sawdust in the drawers,” Elizabeth said. She helped me sort my underclothes and match my panties and socks so that everything was color coordinated. Only Elizabeth would think of that.
What I liked most about the double bed was that we could all stretch out on it at the same time and talk, and we’d brought Dad’s old army cot up from the basement to put alongside it, so we could even roll off onto that.
We were lying there talking about school and earrings and boys and cramps when I noticed two things: Elizabeth seemed quieter than usual, and somebody smelled.
It was the kind of sweaty odor you smell when you’ve run two blocks in hot weather to catch the bus. I hoped it wasn’t me. The next time I stretched and put my arms up over my head, I turned my nose to one side and sniffed an armpit. Then the other.
Nope. Not me. I could still smell the roll-on I’d used that morning. Musk, I think.
Seemed to me that I’d been noticing that sweaty smell a lot lately, and I wondered which of the two hadn’t tried deodorant yet—Pamela or Elizabeth. I hadn’t been using one myself for very long, and probably wouldn’t be doing it yet, except that one day when I was on my way to the shower, Lester poked his head out of his room and said, “Hey, Al! Present! Catch!” and tossed me a Lady Mennen. I guess if you stink and your brother has to tell you about it, that’s as kind a way as any.
Pamela was talking about who had been most popular at school in seventh grade and who hadn’t, and what subjects she was going to like most in eighth and which she was going to hate. At some point I got up to get Patrick’s postcard from Canada to show them, and when I crawled back onto the bed, I noticed that Elizabeth was lying on her side, a tear rolling down the side of her nose.
“Elizabeth,” I said, “what’s wrong?”
Pamela stopped talking and looked over. “What’s the matter?”
Elizabeth shook her head and quickly wiped the tear. “Nothing.” Maybe it was Elizabeth who smelled! Maybe she just realized who it was and was dying of embarrassment.
“Come on, Elizabeth, what is it?” I asked. “People don’t just cry for nothing.”
The tears came even faster. Elizabeth sat up and blew her nose. “I wish I hadn’t read you what I did from Arabian Nights,” she said.
I stared.
“That was a week ago!” I told her. “You weren’t crying then.”
“Well, I’ve been thinking about it a lot lately, and I just feel bad, that’s all.”
“Why?” asked Pamela. “If your parents had it on their bookshelf, then why couldn’t you read it?”
“Because it was their book, and I didn’t ask.”
I guess different families do things differently. It would never occur to me to ask Dad or Lester if I could read a book I found in our house, just as I wouldn’t feel I had to ask if I found something to eat in the fridge. I’d figure that as a member of the family, I was entitled to it.
“Well, you can quit crying because I’ve forgotten most of what you read to us,” said Pamela, going over to the mirror, wetting one finger with her tongue, and running the finger along her eyebrows to make them darker.
Elizabeth looked hopeful. “Have you forgotten it, Alice?”
Since this was a moral problem of deciding right from wrong, it just didn’t seem the place to lie.
“No,” I said. I didn’t tell Elizabeth, but just that morning I had been thinking about Nubian lasciviousness, wondering what the heck it was. In fact, all it takes is somebody telling me to forget something, and I’ll remember it the rest of my life.
“See?” said Elizabeth, clouding up again. “That’s two things I’ve got to confess.”
“What do you mean?”
“I not only read the book without asking permission, but I read it to you guys, and tainted you, too.”
Tainted?
“Listen, Elizabeth. I forgive you, if that makes you feel any better,” I told her. “You don’t have to confess because of me.”
“I’m glad to know that, Alice.” Elizabeth blew her nose again. “But I have to know that God forgives me. So the next time I go to confession, I’m going to tell the priest.”
“Whatever,” said Pamela, over by the mirror.
I’d promised the girls we could have midnight waffles, which is a special treat at our house. It’s when you get so hungry in the middle of the night you can’t stand it, so you go downstairs and make any kind of waffles you like—orange pecan, chocolate chip, cinnamon mocha.… We decided not to wait until midnight, so we started the waffles around eleven, and the aroma filled the house. Lester ate one with us when he came home from Marilyn’s, and Dad even came down in his robe after he’d gone to bed and asked for a chocolate chip and orange peel waffle, which is my favorite.
It was when Pamela reached across the table to give Dad his waffle that I realized it was Pamela’s armpits that smelled. It was hard to believe, because she’s so careful about her face and her fingernails and everything. But there was no mistaking it. Pamela’s armpits smelled.
“This is delicious, girls,” Dad told us, and Lester put a dollar on the table for a tip.
I let Elizabeth and Pamela have my new double bed, and crawled onto the army cot next to Elizabeth’s side. After the lights went out, though, I could hear her reciting her rosary, so I knew that despite the waffle break, she was still worried about Arabian Nights. When she stopped finally and grew quiet, I could hear Pamela’s deep breathing on the other side of her, and decided to take Elizabeth?
??s mind off confession.
“Elizabeth,” I whispered.
“What?”
“I want to ask your advice about a little problem.”
She rolled over so that her face was looking down at me in the darkness.
“Pamela doesn’t use a deodorant.”
“I know.”
“What do you think we should do?”
“What can we do? Give her a bath? I don’t think we can do anything, Alice. Do I smell?”
“Huh-uh.”
“Well if I did, I’d want you to tell me. I mean, what if a boy mentions it to her sometime? She’ll say we weren’t really her friends or we would have told her.”
“You’re probably right.”
“Are you sure I don’t smell?” she asked.
“You don’t.”
“My feet?”
“No.”
“Positive? Maybe you should smell them.”
“I don’t have to smell your feet, Elizabeth.”
“My breath?”
“No. Really.”
“I knew a girl once who had smelly hair,” Elizabeth went on. “Are you sure my hair doesn’t smell?” She leaned over the side of the bed and dropped her hair right in my face. It just smelled like hair, that’s all.
“Your hair is beautiful, and it doesn’t stink,” I told her. “Now what are we going to do about Pamela? Maybe we could give her a whole set for her birthday—deodorant, bath salts, talcum, the works.”
“Her birthday’s already passed, Alice.”
“That’s true.” We thought some more.
“Maybe we could put it in her mailbox with a note saying, ‘From a friend,’” Elizabeth suggested.
“She’d know,” I said.
We must have fallen asleep thinking about it, because suddenly it was morning. I was taking a shower when I got an idea. When I went back in the bedroom, wrapped in a towel, I had two deodorant sticks with me. One was musk and one was floral bouquet.
“What do you like best, Pamela?” I said. “Musk or floral bouquet? I can’t make up my mind.”
Pamela was reading a movie magazine she’d brought with her. She took a sniff of each. “Musk, I guess,” she said, and went on reading.
I stood right there, putting it on in front of her just so she could see how it was done, but she didn’t even look at me.
“What scent do you wear?” I asked.
“I don’t wear any at all. I don’t need it,” Pamela said, eyes on her magazine.
Elizabeth looked at me. I looked at Elizabeth.
“That’s what I thought until Lester gave me one as a present. Then I got the message,” I said.
Pamela put down her magazine. She looked from me to Elizabeth. “Are you guys trying to tell me something?”
“We both use deodorant, Pamela,” Elizabeth said. “I wouldn’t leave the house without it.”
Oh, boy. This was it. The moment of truth. Now Pamela would die of embarrassment and she wouldn’t talk to us for a month and …
Pamela took the stick out of my hand and opened the top. She held up one arm and smeared some in her armpit. Then the other arm. Then she handed the deodorant back to me and went on reading her magazine. Isn’t it weird the way we worry sometimes about things we didn’t have to worry about at all?
But Elizabeth was still troubled about Arabian Nights, and I was still worried about deep water. Pamela’s mother came by to take her to the mall, so Elizabeth was the last to leave. I walked her to the front door.
“When you’re really worried about something, Elizabeth, what do you do? Other than confession, I mean?”
“Pray about it,” Elizabeth said.
I went back up in my room and sat on my new bed. Then I put my hands in my lap and closed my eyes and tried hard to concentrate on the picture of Jesus at the front of our family Bible.
Dear Jesus Christ, I prayed. Help me learn to jump off the diving board into deep water.
I was afraid that might not do it, so I tried again: Dear Jesus, if I ever fall in the deep end, don’t let me drown.
To be honest, I wasn’t entirely sure what a real prayer sounded like, so I tried to think what Elizabeth would say if she were doing the praying: Dear Jesus, if I ever drown, take me to heaven. Amen.
The thing is, when I was asking Elizabeth’s advice about Pamela the night before, why didn’t I ask her for advice about myself? Why did I go on letting chance after chance slip by for confiding in my two closest friends?
Because everyone would be after me then to do something about my fear, and I just couldn’t. It was the scariest thing in the world to me, and things that are that scary, you keep to yourself.
I don’t know what connection God has to Aunt Sally, but I think it’s very, very odd that that same night, Aunt Sally called again. Of course, she didn’t exactly call to talk about my fear of deep water, because she didn’t even know about it. What she called to find out, actually, after she’d beat around the bush a little, was whether my English teacher was Catholic, Protestant, or something else.
“I don’t know,” I told her. “She sang in the Messiah Sing-Along last Christmas, but maybe she just likes to sing.”
“Oh,” said Aunt Sally. “Well, what have you been up to, Alice?”
“I’ve been going swimming a lot,” I told her. I even lie to Aunt Sally. I shouldn’t have said swimming, I should have said pool sitting.
“In the public pool?”
“No, actually it’s a pool belonging to a friend.”
“No lifeguard?” asked Aunt Sally.
“No. The kids just keep an eye on each other, that’s all.”
“Are the parents even there?”
“Mark’s mom is there, but she stays inside mostly.”
“Alice, this is a very dangerous situation,” Aunt Sally said. “One of you could be drowning and the others not even know it.” My thoughts exactly. Maybe God was warning me through his prophet Sally.
“Now listen,” said Aunt Sally. “Here’s what my grandmother used to tell me, and I think you’ll find it useful. You’ll increase your chances of staying alive by one hundred percent if you just paint a wine cork red, put it on a string, and wear it around your neck every time you go in the water. Then, if you are ever floating unconscious six inches below the surface, the cork will bob around on top and someone will notice.”
I tried to imagine going to Mark Stedmeister’s with a wine cork around my neck. I tried to imagine the kids all eating pizza beside the pool, glancing out over the water, seeing the cork, and saying, “Oh, look! There’s Alice. Do you think we should pull her out?”
What I imagined instead was somebody getting his arm tangled up in the string and accidentally strangling me under the water.
“Thanks, Aunt Sally,” I told her. “I’ll look for a cork as soon as I hang up.”
I sat staring at the telephone. I felt worse than I had before. Which would I rather do, wear a cork around my neck or drown? Which would I rather do? Die of drowning or die of embarrassment?
Four weeks of vacation left, and I wasn’t any closer to solving my problem than I was before. I knew one thing, though. If I ever left the Pool Group, I’d still have Patrick. Patrick is so mature for his age that he doesn’t care much what the other kids do. If there was ever a guy who makes his own rules, it’s Patrick.
So what if the other kids got together around Mark’s pool every summer all the way through high school? So what if they became known in eighth grade as the Pool Group, or the Swim Kids, and I wasn’t a part of it? Patrick and I would find things to do together. Maybe we’d become known as the Beautiful Couple and everyone would envy us! And suddenly, four weeks before school began, things didn’t look so bad after all.
5
SPIES
DAD SAID HE COULD TAKE US CAMPING the following Saturday, and that Miss Summers was going with us. When I told Elizabeth and Pamela, all they could talk about was where she was going to sleep.
Eve
ryone talks about sleep when they mean sex. “Do you think he’s sleeping with her?” people say, when they really mean, “Are they having intercourse?”
“You know, Dad,” I said at dinner that night, “a lot of people are really very curious about you and Miss Summers. If you’d just come right out and say whether or not you’re having sex with her, then people could think about other things.”
“Other people, meaning you,” said Dad.
“I mean Pamela and Elizabeth and … everybody!”
“Then there are a lot of people worrying about something that isn’t their business in the least,” said Dad. “There are, Al, believe it or not, many things in this world that are just as important, if not more so, than sex.”
“There are?” asked Lester.
“Does anyone ask if we’re having interesting conversations?” Dad continued. “Why is it that the only thing that interests other people is whether or not we’re having sex?”
“Hey, Dad, don’t knock it,” said Lester.
I thought about Dad’s question, though. “I guess it’s because sex is one of the few things you do in private, so that’s what everyone is curious about. And maybe they think that if two people are having sex, they’ve already had interesting conversations.”
“Wrong!” said Lester. “I know guys who sleep with girls and don’t even know their last names.”
“That’s what I’m talking about,” said Dad.
“Well, just tell me where Miss Summers is going to sleep on this camping trip, and then I won’t ask anything else,” I told him.
“In a tent all by herself,” Dad declared. “Satisfied?”
I nodded. I kept thinking that if Dad would just hurry up and propose, they could sleep in the same tent. Then I could go to sleep out under the stars knowing that I finally had a mom.
On Saturday, Dad and I both took the day off work at the Melody Inn. Elizabeth came over with her sleeping bag, Dad drove us to Pamela’s, and then we all went to Saul Road in Bethesda, and the tiny little house where Miss Summers lives.
With some people, everything about them seems perfect. It seemed perfect that Sylvia Summers should live in a tiny house surrounded by trees and flowers, that her last name should be Summers, that she should have blue eyes and brown hair, and that she should teach English.