Incredibly Alice

  Along with the stroller and bottle warmer, the diaper pail and mattress cover, Marilyn received some novel gifts as well. The Melody Inn gave her a crib and a fancy mobile to hang above it. There were five different sound tracks a parent could choose to put her baby to sleep—Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms, and Liszt—while colorful little birds, with tiny lights in their wings, swirled around and around with the music. Kay’s gift for the baby was a tiny hand-embroidered robe from China, with little silk slippers to match.

  “This is fun,” I said to Marilyn as she held up each outfit for inspection. “Aren’t you excited?”

  “Excited, scared, impatient, eager … ,” she confirmed, and the other women laughed.

  “Don’t forget tired,” someone reminded her, one of Marilyn’s friends with a platter of little frosted cakes that looked like baby blocks.

  Another friend, who had been working in the kitchen, pulled a chair into the circle next to Sylvia. “Hi, I’m Julia,” she said.

  Sylvia smiled and shook her hand. “Hello, I’m Sylvia,” and, nodding toward me, she said, “and this is my daughter, Alice.”

  “Hi,” Julia said, smiling at me. “Yes, I see the resemblance,” she added, looking back at Sylvia again. Then, “I’m glad we moved the shower here. When your back hurts, you just seem to hurt all over,” and she made room for still another woman to join the circle.

  I sat flushed with … what? Surprise? Astonishment? Was I offended that Sylvia had claimed me as her daughter? As much as I’d always wanted her to marry Dad, there was a part of me that held back, that told me I belonged to Mom. I tried hard to concentrate not on how I thought I should feel at that moment, but on how I truly did feel. And I was pleased.

  Did we have to go on saying stepdaughter and stepmother forever? I could never deny my true mother, never remove her picture from my dresser or forget the few years I had with her, but if Sylvia wanted me to be the daughter she never had, then whenever I was with Sylvia, she could call me her daughter. And I found I was smiling.

  I handed Marilyn each gift and helped unwrap them if they were large, stacking them all behind her when she was ready for the next one. When the last present had been opened and I was gathering up wrapping paper, Marilyn asked, “Alice, would you mind going up to our bedroom and bringing me a little green pillow to go behind my back? You may have to hunt—I use it during the night, and it could be under the covers or even under the bed—a small flat pillow. Top of the landing to your left.”

  “Sure,” I said, getting up and stepping over boxes. I went up the short flight of stairs and into the bedroom on the left.

  It felt sort of strange walking into a couple’s bedroom. I turned on a lamp on their nightstand. The bed was unmade, the covers awry. The usual bedroom scene—a T-shirt hung over the closet’s doorknob, a pajama bottom and shoe on the rug. I looked around for the pillow but didn’t see it, so I crouched down and found it poking out from under the bed, just as Marilyn had guessed.

  As I stood up again to turn off the lamp, I hesitated. The drawer of the nightstand was slightly ajar, and it occurred to me that if I just took a peek, no one would ever know. It wasn’t as though I had come into Marilyn and Jack’s bedroom as a spy. But people often kept their most intimate stuff in their night-stands, and it was normal to be curious, wasn’t it? It would only take a second to peek.

  But I didn’t. Marilyn had trusted me to go into her bedroom as an adult, and I wanted to come out the same way. As my fingers groped for the light switch once more, I took one last look at the bed. Both pillows were there in the middle, touching, sort of turned toward each other, as though Jack and Marilyn were used to talking together in the night. It gave me a happy feeling, and I was still smiling a little as I went downstairs and tucked the pillow behind Marilyn’s back.

  There was an empty chair beside Sylvia, and she was holding a little dessert plate of cream puffs.

  “I know you like these, so I saved some while I could,” she said, handing it to me.

  “Thanks, Mom,” I said, and sat down beside her. We grinned at each other, and she patted my knee.

  Jack came in a little later, a light dusting of snow on his cap and sprinkled in the dark stubble of his face. He went around the room greeting the women, hugging the ones he knew. Someone begged him to take a plate and join in, but Jack said he had a present first for his wife. Then he brought out his guitar and sang a song he had composed for their baby. He said he was performing it for the first time here at the shower, the first time Marilyn had heard it too:

  “Been waitin’ for you, baby child,

  Wonderin’ when you’d come.

  Mama gettin’ bigger,

  Pacing to and from.

  Bedroom’s been all painted,

  Car seat’s set to go;

  Daddy’s growing restless,

  Mama gettin’ slow.

  Once you’re here, we’ll hold you,

  Kiss your downy head,

  Count each chubby finger,

  Keep you dry and fed.

  Breathe upon my shoulder,

  Sleep upon my chest.

  You’re the little sweetheart

  Gonna make us blest.”

  When he had finished and strummed the final soft chords, we all had tears in our eyes, and Marilyn reached over to hug him.

  “It’s so beautiful, Jack. So beautiful!” she kept saying, and the woman named Julia made us laugh by passing around a box of tissues.

  Jack broke into a lively song next, as the women gradually started straightening up the living room, gathering coffee cups and plates to wash, collecting the gift bows. Sylvia and I worked side by side, and it felt incredibly good.

  I couldn’t put it off any longer. I had to give Mrs. Rosen an answer. For a week my mind had toyed with the same dull phrases, and then, like a balky horse, it just stopped working. The ivy grows / it climbs ever upward, / reaching higher. So what? Nothing profound about that. The ivy in the early spring / is colored like the evergreen … A thousand yucks.

  I delayed gathering up my stuff at the end of class on Monday and waited till everyone else had gone.

  “Mrs. Rosen,” I said, “I’ve been thinking it over, and I just don’t feel I’m the right person to compete for Ivy Day Poet.”

  “I know others have felt the same way, Alice. Are you sure you don’t want to try for it?”

  “I’m sure,” I said. “I really don’t. But I appreciate your thinking of me. And I hope you get a great poem.”

  I called Les that weekend to see how things were going. His voice sounded tired and pained.

  “Paul says it’s either him or Andy—one of them has to go,” he replied.

  “Paul would leave? He actually said that?”

  “Not in so many words. He says with her around, everything’s changed. No more breakfasts in his shorts. No more gratifying belches with our beers. She tutors, she tells us, but as far as we’re concerned, Andy’s about as social as a mole. Shuts herself up in that bedroom and even takes her meals in there from what we can tell. Students come in and out occasionally, but even then, her door’s closed. Food appears and disappears from the fridge, bathwater turns on and off. Once in a while we get a fleeting glimpse of her in the hallway.”

  “So what does it matter if you belch or not, if you never see her?” I asked.

  “It doesn’t feel like home to either of us. She’s like a spook when she’s around, and all we do is plot to get rid of her.”

  “But at least you and Paul can go out on the same night.”

  “Yeah, and don’t think we don’t take advantage of it. We told her Paul and I each stay home two evenings a week and she stays home for three. She asked why she got the short end of the stick, and Paul said because she was the shortest.”

  I laughed. “What did she say?”

  “I quote: ‘You’re so full of human kindness, it’s coming out your ass.’ I think it was meant to be funny.”

  “Whew!” I said. “The tem
perature’s rising already. Why don’t you and Paul just tell her it isn’t working out?”

  “Because we need to have at least one person here who knows how to care for Otto in case we get jobs somewhere else. We’ve both got résumés circulating, and we’d still have to find two other people to take care of Mr. Watts if both of us moved out.”

  “Of course, the next two people could not only have purple streaks in their hair and hide in their rooms, but they could be making counterfeit money,” I said, enjoying myself.

  “Not to worry. Nobody else gets a room up here without a shakedown, fingerprints, and an FBI check,” Les said.

  6

  CALL FROM AUNT SALLY

  Gwen drove us to school on Monday because her brother was buying another car and she was negotiating the sale of his old one to her.

  “I just want to see how this really drives before I commit all my earnings,” she said, testing the brakes. Liz and I were glad to give our opinion, which was that any car that ran was a good car.

  After we picked up Pamela, Gwen said, “You’ll be glad to know that Yolanda’s filled out an application to work on the cruise ship. And I think we’ve talked her out of her little procedure. That’s the good news.”

  “Yay!” we said. “What’s the bad?”

  “She’s trying to talk her boyfriend into applying too.”

  “Boo!” we hissed.

  I went to the newspaper office when we got to school and had barely walked in when Phil said, “There’s some protest going on outside the library, Alice. Would you check it out for a story? When Sam gets here, I’ll send him down for a photo, if it’s worth it.”

  I had a half hour before first period and had planned to proof a couple of stories, but Phil said he’d do it for me, so I headed for the library. I could see a line of protesters as soon as I turned the corner.

  A few of the students were carrying homemade signs: FREE THE CAGED BIRD, read one. BAN BONEHEADS, NOT BOOKS, another. And DON’T CENSOR THE INDIAN’S DIARY.

  Now what? I wondered.

  The protesters seemed to be mostly juniors, a few sophomores, their faces serious and defiant. The library itself was empty.

  “What’s up?” I asked a guy, falling in step beside him as he picketed back and forth. “Is the library closed?”

  “Close-minded,” he said, and pointed to a large sheet of paper they had stuck to the door: NOW RESTRICTED READING. MAKE YOUR VOICES HEARD.

  I got out my notebook and wrote down the titles that were listed below: The Color Purple; The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian; Catcher in the Rye; I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings; The Kite Runner; and The Diary of Anne Frank (Definitive Edition.)

  Through the window of the library, I could see Miss Cummings back in the workroom, peering tentatively out at the gathering crowd. I stopped another girl who was handing printouts to anyone who passed by. “When did this happen? These can’t be checked out?” I asked.

  “Not without a note from mama,” she said. “Some parent wants them removed from the library, so Miss Cummings put them on a restricted shelf. Mrs. Garson would never do something like this. I don’t even remember a restricted shelf.”

  Mrs. Garson, I knew, was on medical leave for a month.

  Someone started a chant: “We want books! We want books!”

  Sam appeared with his camera. “Any idea what’s going on?” he asked me.

  I motioned toward the sign on the door. “All those authors are restricted reading. Parent’s signature required.”

  “Are you kidding? Alice Walker? Maya Angelou? What did Maya do to deserve this?”

  “Got raped,” I said. “Probably some mother doesn’t want her daughter to read about it.”

  “Is this high school or grade school?” Sam murmured, taking a picture, then another of the protesters.

  “It’s sure not college,” I said.

  Someone tried the door of the library and found it locked. He rapped on the glass. Miss Cummings was on the phone.

  Then Mr. Gephardt was coming down the hall, a puzzled, bemused expression on his face. When the protesters saw him, they began chanting in earnest. “We want books! We want books!”

  “Whenever we want,” added a loud voice.

  “Whenever we want.” The crowd took up the chant.

  Miss Cummings came to the door of the library, now that she saw the vice principal. She unlocked it.

  “What’s going on out here?” Gephardt asked her.

  Miss Cummings tried to put on a brave front. “I think this must be about the books I’ve placed on the restricted shelf, waiting a final decision,” she said.

  “Just because a parent wants them removed from the library doesn’t mean that no one can read them!” a girl said, speaking above the chants.

  Mr. Gephardt looked at the sign. “You took all these out of circulation?” he asked the librarian.

  “Only until a decision is reached. I promised the parent,” Miss Cummings said hesitantly.

  “Let’s go inside,” he said, and followed her back to her office.

  While Sam took a few more photos and I made some notes, the students milled around, making up new chants, and Mr. Gephardt came back in five minutes. “A simple misunderstanding,” he said. “We have a procedure in place for anyone making a complaint, and the parent will have to come back and put it in writing. Then it goes before a faculty committee. But for now, I think you’ll find those books back where they were.”

  I figured the answer would be something like that, but everyone cheered. Actually, I think they would have preferred a larger battle. The leaders looked a little crestfallen, reminding me a bit of myself in earlier semesters.

  “It just goes to show that we keep fighting the same battles,” said Phil when Sam and I got back to the newsroom.

  “Yeah, but maybe it’s a good thing that each class learns something from the one before,” I said. “Last year it was us having a protest march because a parent complained about Mrs. Cary. Remember?”

  “Yeah. Wonder what we’ll protest when we get to college,” said Sam.

  “The food,” said Phil. “What else? Start with food and work your way up to Wall Street.”

  Wouldn’t you know, Aunt Sally called that very night? She likes to make sure we’re all living and breathing and eating our vegetables. When she promised my mom she’d take care of us, she’d meant what she said. Never mind that Dad married again and Les lives in an apartment and I’ll be going away to college soon; Aunt Sally keeps her word.

  “Hi, Aunt Sally,” I said. “How much snow did you get in Chicago so far?”

  “Oh, it’s not as bad as last year,” she said. “How are things in Maryland, dear? I haven’t heard from anyone since Christmas.”

  “We’re doing fine,” I told her. And added, “Lester’s living with a woman now, you know.”

  Why do I do these things? Aunt Sally cared for us for a long time. She washed our clothes and cooked our meals and braided my hair, and I still can’t resist the urge to set her off.

  I started counting the seconds of silence. Finally Aunt Sally said, “Just tell me this, Alice. Has she reached the age of consent?”

  “Oh, she’s beyond that,” I said. “I think she’s in grad school.”

  “Did he choose her for her looks?”

  “Not likely,” I said. “Her body?”

  “Doubtful.”

  “Is she wealthy?”

  “Not at all.”

  “Are we talking about the same person—your brother Lester?” she asked.

  “One and the same.”

  “Then she must be quite a catch,” Aunt Sally said.

  “Oh, he’s not chasing her,” I said. “They’re not even sleeping in the same room.” And then I stopped tormenting her. “They’re just roommates. She’s moved into George’s room.”

  Aunt Sally gave a long, loud sigh of relief. “Well, tell me what’s going on in your world, Alice,” she said.

  “For
one thing, I covered a protest today,” I said.

  “Good heavens, what was that all about?”

  I told her about book censorship and the restricted shelf, the people with signs and chants.

  Aunt Sally listened quietly, and then she said, “Alice, you have pierced ears, don’t you?”

  I wondered if I’d heard right. “What?”

  “In the future take off your earrings before you go to a protest. It’s important!” Her voice was grave.

  “Why?” I croaked. “No one’s against earrings.”

  “Earlobes can get torn in protest marches. I read that women should always remove their pierced earrings if they take part in riots.”

  “It wasn’t a riot, Aunt Sally,” I told her. “I guarantee there isn’t a person in school who wants books banned from the library. We’re all on the same page.”

  “Oh.” There was another sigh from Aunt Sally. “Alice,” she said finally, “did you ever feel that you were out of step with all the women who came before you, the women who were the same age, and the women who came after?”

  I thought about that a minute. “I’m only seventeen, Aunt Sally. I guess I haven’t.”

  “Well, I have, and I do. When my mother used to tell us about the twenties, I could never understand why women would want to bob their beautiful hair. When I became a woman, I couldn’t understand how some of us wanted to burn our bras. And now I can’t understand why girls who are crazy enough to punch holes in their ears would risk having their earlobes torn off by taking part in a riot.”

  I sort of ached for my aunt just then. I guess I always do when she gets personal and lets me in on her world a bit.

  “Aunt Sally,” I said, “I probably won’t ever understand the world that you and Mom grew up in, but I love you for it just the same. How’s Uncle Milt?”

  “Not so good, Alice,” she said. “He takes so many medications he hardly has room for lunch. And he’s slower than he used to be. He says that everyone walks too fast, talks too fast, eats too fast, and he can’t keep up.”