Alice the Brave

  All three of us watched breathlessly as Dad went up to the door and waited, and Miss Summers came out in a pair of jeans and sneakers, a blue and white shirt tied in front at the waist.

  “Hi, girls,” she said, as she helped put her stuff in the trunk. “Guess I’m the official den mother or something, huh?”

  “Hello, Miss Summers,” said Elizabeth, as though she were still in class.

  It wasn’t until we were on Route 270, heading toward Sugarloaf Mountain, that we all began to relax. Dad readjusted the radio so that the music played mostly in the backseat, and tuned it to our favorite station. But Pamela, Elizabeth, and I sat watching every move Dad or Miss Summers made, listening to every word. We’d be chattering away and then Dad would turn to Miss Summers and say something, and we’d stop talking in midsentence. Or Miss Summers would lean her head back against the seat, her hair falling over the edge, and we’d fix our eyes on it, noticing how shiny it looked.

  Pamela found a couple gray hairs, and silently pointed them out to me, and then we started guessing all over again how old we thought she was.

  Thirty-eight, Elizabeth wrote on a piece of paper. Pamela shook her head and crossed it out. Forty-three, she corrected.

  I really didn’t care if her hair was all white. White hair and blue eyes, with a long white wedding gown and a bouquet of tiny blue and white flowers.

  What I had imagined was that we would be camping beside a crystal lake, and somehow I would get up the nerve to swim out to a raft beside Miss Summers. I would want to please my teacher so much that I would get up my nerve and suddenly, miraculously, overcome my fear of deep water.

  But when we turned off 270 and got where we were going, there wasn’t any lake at all. Dad parked out in a meadow near the base of Sugarloaf Mountain, and there was just a shallow little stream we could have crawled through on our hands and knees.

  Miss Summers didn’t seem to mind at all. As we got out of the car, she said, “This is a first for me. I’ve never been camping in my life.”

  Dad looked surprised. “Never?”

  “Unless you count sleeping in a tent in the backyard with my sister.”

  “Sorry, doesn’t count.” Dad smiled. And then, “Okay, all hands on deck. You girls stick around long enough to get the tents up, and then you can explore.”

  Once we all had something to do, we didn’t gawk at Miss Summers the way we had. We felt around on the ground until we found a spot without any rocks or roots in it. We helped Dad set up his tent, Dad helped Miss Summers put up hers, and by that time we could put up ours by ourselves.

  “I’ve brought my field glasses,” Miss Summers said, lifting the hair up off the back of her neck to cool. “Would you believe I’ve seen most of the birds that are found in the mid-Atlantic states, but I’ve yet to see a Baltimore oriole?”

  “Well, I suppose you might have to go to Baltimore for that, but let’s give it a try,” Dad told her. “Anybody want to take a hike up Sugarloaf?”

  I felt Pamela nudge me. “No,” I said. “We’re going to walk along the creek.”

  It was after they disappeared through the trees that Pamela said, “You want to follow them? I’ll bet they’re going to make love.”

  “Pamela!” Elizabeth frowned. She sure didn’t want any more on her conscience.

  “I only said the obvious,” Pamela declared. “Didn’t you see the tender way he looked at her when she lifted up her hair like that, and her breasts sort of rose? They’ll find some grassy spot halfway up the trail and make love.”

  Elizabeth was staring in spite of herself. “Outdoors?”

  “Of course!” said Pamela. “Under the trees, beside the ocean, on the sand, in the water …”

  In the water? I’m sure I looked as shocked as Elizabeth did. Did this mean that when I got older I had to worry not only about keeping my head above water, but knowing how to make love at the same time? The possibility of a drowning death was looking more certain all the time.

  “Well, I don’t want to hear about it,” said Elizabeth, and she meant it. “Come on. Let’s go to the creek.”

  We all traipsed down the hill to look for crawdads, and forgot about things we didn’t have to worry about then. It was just fun to be outdoors. Everything smelled different—fresh and warm when we were walking in the meadow, dank and earthy when we walked along the creek. Our footsteps made crunchy sounds in the weeds, squishy sounds on the bank, and even the breeze felt different on our faces than it did back home.

  Every so often we found a place we could cross, and stopped to watch all the stuff swimming around. Elizabeth could name each fish and insect and would have made our seventh-grade science teacher proud. I was mostly concerned about getting to the other side without my foot going in.

  By the time we got back, we were starved. Dad and Miss Summers had already started dinner.

  “How does grilled chicken and corn on the cob sound?” Miss Summers called when she saw us. “I could use some help shucking the corn.”

  It sounded wonderful. She held up a bag of corn, and we set to work, while she cut some peppers, onions, and mushrooms into strips, sprinkled them with olive oil, and put them over the coals.

  “How come we’re the only ones camping out here?” she asked Dad, as the chicken sizzled over the fire.

  “Because it’s private property. One of my customers owns the land. He lets the Scouts use it occasionally, so I figured it was good enough for us.”

  That got me thinking. “So where’s the bathroom?” I was surprised Elizabeth hadn’t asked yet. She’s usually pretty particular about things like that.

  “Don’t ask,” Miss Summers said, and she and Dad both laughed.

  Elizabeth froze.

  “There’s an outhouse of sorts beyond the trees over there,” Dad said, “and up there by the fence at the horse pasture, you’ll find a faucet for washing up.”

  Elizabeth never moved.

  It was a good dinner, and I could tell that Dad was enjoying it. Both the food, and having Miss Summers sitting there in her jeans, her hair fastened up off the nape of her neck with a comb.

  Maybe it was watching Miss Summers eat chicken with her fingers that relaxed us, but by the time she’d got through her corn on the cob, she didn’t seem like our teacher any longer—just an older cousin, maybe, or a favorite aunt who was along on a picnic.

  Elizabeth hardly said a word throughout the meal, though, and as soon as it was over, she whispered, “Alice, I’m about to burst. Go to the restroom with me?”

  “The restroom?” I said. Only Elizabeth would call an outhouse a restroom.

  Pamela said she’d come too, so all three of us headed in the direction where Dad had pointed.

  When we got to the outhouse, we found no house at all, just a tiny shelter with a roof and three sides, and a bench with two holes in it over a shallow pit.

  Elizabeth stared. “What is it?”

  “Toilet,” I said.

  “What’s the second hole for?”

  “Whoever else has to go.”

  “No!” Elizabeth cried. “I won’t use this thing, Alice. I …”

  “Elizabeth, shut up,” said Pamela. “Just go.”

  “Don’t watch!” Elizabeth whimpered.

  We turned our backs to her, but I couldn’t help yelling, “There’s the farmer, galloping this way on horseback!” and Elizabeth almost fell off the john.

  We sat around the campfire that night eating s’mores with Miss Summers. Dad said he’d never seen anything so disgusting in his life as the little graham cracker, marshmallow, Hershey’s bar concoctions we were melting over the fire. I guess any girl who has ever been a Girl Scout, seen a Girl Scout, or heard of a Girl Scout knows how to make s’mores.

  As usual, though, I was just beginning to enjoy myself when somebody started singing old camp songs. Even though Elizabeth and Pamela both know I can’t carry a tune, they forget sometimes. Dad knew right away how I was feeling, because when they started the s
econd song, he put his arm around my shoulder, and as much as I wanted to snuggle up against him, it’s not the sort of thing you do in front of your friends. Then I got this brilliant idea.

  “Why don’t you and Miss Summers sing a duet, Dad?” I said.

  “Like what? Are we taking requests?” he asked.

  “Well … the Messiah, maybe?” I suggested.

  Dad threw back his head and laughed, and Miss Summers joined in. It had a wonderful rhythm to it, their laughter—Dad’s tenor and Miss Summers’s alto.

  “How about ‘Scarborough Fair’?” Miss Summers said. “Only, I wish we had a guitar. Ben, can you do the canticle?”

  Dad said he thought he could, that he might not know all the words, but he’d wing it.

  I wouldn’t know a canticle from a cuticle, but Miss Summers began, and Dad joined in, and about halfway through the song, I realized that Miss Summers was singing one set of words and Dad was singing another. It was as though they were singing two different songs entirely, but it was beautiful.

  When it was over, I could see Dad’s hand sort of move along the ground, and his fingers close over Miss Summers’s fingers there in the light of the campfire. I yawned and said it was time for bed, and gave Elizabeth and Pamela a look. Was this the night Dad would propose? It was all I could think about after we’d crawled into our tent.

  6

  TENT TALK

  “BOY, HAVE THEY EVER GOT THE HOTS!” said Pamela as soon as we’d zipped up our tent.

  “They don’t have the hots, Pamela! They’re in love with each other,” I said. Now I was beginning to sound like Elizabeth, but when it’s my dad we’re talking about, I didn’t want the way he feels about Miss Summers to just be “the hots.”

  “Well, excuse me!” said Pamela. “He doesn’t have the hots for her, then.”

  That didn’t sound quite right either.

  “Being in love is probably a whole lot of things,” I told her.

  We’d no sooner put on our pajamas than all three of us had to go to the toilet, so we crawled out of our tent with a lot of coughing in advance so Dad would know we were coming. He had his arm around Miss Summers there by the fire, but he got up to get us a flashlight, and we set off.

  “When we get back, let’s go right to sleep, because if I have to go to the bathroom again before morning, I’ll never go alone,” Elizabeth said.

  I don’t think we’d noticed all the hopping kinds of things there were in the field before. Pamela started to step on a stone and discovered it wasn’t a stone at all. It was a toad that hopped right at her. She screamed and then we all screamed, and when we got back Dad said it sounded like a massacre over by the outhouse.

  He and Miss Summers were still there by the campfire, backs against a log. She had her knees drawn up, arms wrapped around her legs. We told them about the toad, and they laughed.

  “If I have to go in the night, may I wake one of you girls to go with me?” Miss Summers asked. I couldn’t tell if she was teasing or not.

  “I’ll go,” I said. “Just poke me, and I’ll get right up.”

  I meant it, too. I’d walk right through that field holding the flashlight for her, and I imagined us both sitting down side by side on the two holes of the toilet and her telling me that Dad had proposed.

  Do you know what’s weird? What’s weird is lying in a tent with your two best friends while your father and his girlfriend are smooching out in the dark. I suppose this is the way Dad will feel about me someday. He’ll be in bed listening to me come home with a guy, and he’ll wonder what we’re doing downstairs. What we’re talking about.

  “What do you suppose men ask women when they go out together?” I said suddenly. “I mean, what do they really want to know about them?”

  We lay there thinking about that.

  “What does Mark ask you?” Elizabeth said to Pamela.

  “If I’ve ever been to a roller derby. When you were going out with Tom Perona, what did he ask you?” Pamela said in return.

  “He used to ask me if his hands were sweaty,” Elizabeth said, remembering. “What about Patrick, Alice?”

  “He asked which I liked best—Snickers or Milky Way.”

  We were quiet a long while.

  “Do you suppose boys are just born that way?” I asked finally.

  “It’s probably passed down from father to son, something in the genes,” said Pamela.

  I think we were all amazed, when we stopped talking, how noisy it was out here in the field. No horns or traffic, of course, but the insects had started a symphony concert. In the direction of the trees we could hear skitterings and scratchings, scufflings and slitherings. As though there was a whole world that came out after dark.

  Elizabeth went to sleep first, then Pamela. I just felt too excited. Like something wonderful was going to happen out there by the campfire—the way you feel on Christmas Eve when you’re a little kid, and you think you hear sleigh bells and stuff.

  I was thinking about how a lot of life is taking chances. I mean, that’s what life is, really. Dad had taken a chance that Miss Summers would go on a campout with him and a bunch of girls. And after she said she would, he was taking a chance he’d have some time alone with her. And then, when he did, he was probably taking the biggest risk of all and proposing to her.

  I guess I went to sleep after all because I remember dreaming that it was morning, and Dad and Miss Summers looked really happy, but they wouldn’t tell me anything. And then I realized it was the middle of the night, and I had to go to the toilet. Why had I drunk that second glass of lemonade? I could be sleeping peacefully like Pamela, or snoring like Elizabeth, if only I had stuck with one glass.

  I rolled around a little, hoping that either Pamela or Elizabeth would wake up and go with me, but neither of them stirred. So finally I crawled out of my sleeping bag and crept outside.

  The sky looked alive. I couldn’t ever remember, in my whole life, looking up and seeing so many stars. So many bright stars. Like the sky is different out here than it is back in Silver Spring.

  It was about then I discovered I didn’t have the flashlight and didn’t know where it was. And I wasn’t about to walk through the field by myself in the dark, so I just went off into the weeds, squatted down, and studied the stars.

  I made my way back to the glow of the campfire when somebody said, “Can’t sleep, Al?”

  “Dad!” I whispered.

  He was sitting on a log back by the trees, so I went over. “What are you doing up?”

  “I don’t know. Just seemed like a good night for strolling around.”

  “Then you’ve got the flashlight.”

  “Oh, right! Sorry.”

  I sat down beside him. This was even more weird than before. His girlfriend was asleep in her tent. My girlfriends were asleep in mine. And here I was with Dad, sitting out under the sky. It was like a magical night. I wondered if he would tell me the big news, but I didn’t want to ruin things by asking.

  “Why aren’t there stars like this back in Silver Spring?” I asked.

  “Oh, they’re there, Al. We just don’t see them because of city lights.”

  I stuck my legs straight out in front of me and wiggled my toes in the wet grass.

  “You having a good time?” he asked.

  “Of course! But I shouldn’t have drunk so much lemonade.” I looked at him sideways. “Are you?”

  “It’s a whole different feeling, being outside, away from the store. You wouldn’t think a music store would be all that hectic, but once you get away …”

  “Is Miss Summers having a good time?” I asked.

  “She said she was.”

  The magic went on. There were chirps and croaks and the occasional call of a whippoorwill. At least Dad said that’s what it was. “Do you know what strikes me about this sky, Al?” he said. “That we are looking at light from stars that died out ages ago. They’re that far away. So you really can’t tell, when you look up there, which ones
are alive and which ones aren’t. We just go on enjoying their light.”

  I wasn’t sure how I felt about that. It seemed sort of depressing, actually, as though Dad was talking about death. Mom’s death, maybe. And then I began to get scared. I’ll bet he proposed to Miss Summers but she realized he was still too much in love with Mom, and said no.

  “Did you tell me once that you and Mom spent your honeymoon in a tent? Camping out?” I asked.

  Dad smiled. “That’s right.”

  “What did you talk about?”

  “Al, that was over twenty years ago! Probably all kinds of things. I do remember we talked about astronomy.”

  “Astronomy? On your wedding night?”

  “Marie had taken a course in college. What interested her, she said, was the order of the universe. The solar system, the moons orbiting the planets, everything staying on course year after year, and what a marvel it is.…”

  I tried to imagine my mother saying that. Being interested in that. Maybe she felt that up there in the stars, it wasn’t as risky as things are down here. I’d agree with that. Up there it’s not important whether or not you learn to go in water over your head or borrow your parents’ Arabian Nights.

  “I even named a star for her,” Dad said.

  “You did?”

  He grinned. I could just make out his face.

  “We’d noticed a particular star that night—sort of a blue color. A far-off blue-colored star. I asked Marie what star it was, and she didn’t know, so I said I’d name it after her. The Star Marie.”

  I smiled. “Is it up there now?”

  “I wouldn’t know. In fact, twenty minutes after we took our eyes off it, we couldn’t seem to find it again, either.”

  I leaned against Dad, and he put his arm around me. “This is sort of a magical night too, isn’t it?” I said.

  “Every night is magical in its own way. We just don’t take the time to enjoy it,” he told me.

  And then I thought about Elizabeth and prayers and confession and everything, and wondered if maybe that’s what this night was all about.