Alice Alone (8 page)

“I’ve got this friend who has a tattoo on her butt,” said Karen. “Permanent! She’ll never get it off!”

“What kind is it?” Elizabeth wanted to know.

“Popeye! Can you imagine?”

“Can you imagine lying naked while a man tattoos you?” asked Elizabeth.

“Hey, that would be the best part!” said Penny, and we laughed some more. A senior in front of us glanced around with a bemused expression, and that set us off again.

“Hey, Alice, did you find the picture Karen took?” asked Jill.

I didn’t miss a beat. “Yeah, Patrick told me about it. The artificial kiss,” I said, and couldn’t believe how natural I sounded. How comfortable and confident and easy.

“We were just acting up,” Penny said. “I always get nutty around friends.”

How did I know I wouldn’t like this girl? I thought. How did I know she might not become one of my best friends? I felt one hundred percent better by the time we got to school. Two hundred percent better when Patrick came up behind me as we were getting off and slipped his hands around my waist, kissing me on the side of my
neck. I nuzzled him in return. Everything was back to normal. I felt loved and secure.

The drama club met for the first time after school. Mostly we just sat around talking, the drama coach, Mr. Ellis, outlining his plans for the spring production, telling us some of the plays he was considering, as though we had a vote in the matter.

Pamela was the only person there I knew. She fit right in with that blue streak in her hair, because a lot of the kids wore black, with black makeup and purple lips and hair. But when one of the purple-lipped girls asked a question, she sounded intelligent. Even nice. Maybe my world was broadening, I thought. Maybe I could learn to get along with girls I was jealous of, and people who looked and dressed like they lived on another planet.

“Just so I can get some idea of what we have here to work with, how many of you are interested in acting, and how many are here for stage crew?” Mr. Ellis asked. “Let’s see a show of hands for actors.”

Most of the kids, Pamela included, wanted to act.

“When it’s time to do casting, we have to open it to the whole school, of course, so there are no guarantees,” Mr. Ellis said, “but I’ve found that the bulk of the major roles each year go to members
of the drama club. Now, how about stage crew— set design, costumes, props, lighting—that kind of thing. Everyone else here for that?”

The rest of us raised our hands. There was only one other girl besides myself, I discovered, who wanted to be part of the crew. She was short and squat, dressed in overalls. Her hair was light brown—modified punk—and she had huge blue eyes. We gave each other sympathetic smiles when we realized all the rest of the crew were guys.

“Anyone here for something
other
than acting or stage crew?” Mr. Ellis asked, smiling. “Simple curiosity, maybe?”

A guy sitting to one side, dressed completely in black and purple, raised his hand. “Director,” he joked, and we all laughed.

“Looks like we’ll be seeing a lot of each other,” the blue-eyed girl said when the session was over. “I’m Molly.”

“I’m Alice,” I said.

It felt good to be branching out—to feel myself
stretch
. Patrick wasn’t the only one who had extra things to do and places to go after school.

At home, we could hardly keep up with Dad. All week long he had been relandscaping the whole yard, front and back, putting a dogwood tree in one place, a red maple in another, azaleas on both
sides of the front steps, rhododendron, tiger lilies, ivy, a magnolia …

“How do you know Sylvia will like all this stuff?” I asked him as he came in with muddy work gloves to get a drink of water.

“Because I’ve chosen all her favorite plants and trees,” he said.

“Are we going to keep living here, then, after you’re married?”

“We’ve talked about it,” Dad said. “She loves her own little place, but it’s just too small for the four of us, so it makes sense that she move here.” Dad smiled at the thought of it. “She’ll certainly make the house a home, with all her little touches.”

“It’s already a home,” I said, somewhat resentfully.

Dad looked over at me from the sink. “Of course it is, honey. But won’t it be nice to have a mom around?”

“You know how much I’ve wanted this, Dad, but she’s really not my mother. I don’t think I can ever call her that.”

“You don’t have to. ‘Sylvia’ will do.”

I continued nibbling a carrot. “Are you going to visit her again before she comes back in June?” I asked.

“I’d like to. We’ll have to see.”

“Christmas?”

“Not Christmas. That’s our busiest time at the store, and I won’t have Janice this year, remember. Besides, Sylvia plans to do a little traveling over the holidays, see a bit more of the country before her year is up.”

How could two people in love stay away from each other that long? I wondered. A lot could happen in eight months.

It was my turn to make dinner, and I was having hamburgers, oven-made French fries, and a salad. As I scrubbed the potatoes and cut them in long strips, I tried to imagine another person living in our house. Dad’s bedroom is the largest. He has two huge closets on either side of a bay window. There are clothes poles in only one of them, though. The other has built-in drawers at the back for blankets and stuff, and shelves along the sides, so I don’t know where Sylvia’s clothes would go. And we only have one bathroom. That could be a problem. It’s
already
a problem!

I sprinkled the potato slices with olive oil and salt and stuck them in the oven while I looked around the kitchen, trying to see it through Sylvia’s eyes.

It’s a big, old-fashioned kitchen with lots of cupboards, but little counter space. We have a large dining room, a large living room, and a full basement.
Dad uses a corner of our dining room for his office, but all that will change when he marries Sylvia, he says, because she’ll need an office, too.

“I’m thinking of finishing the basement,” Dad said at dinner. “Insulation, paneling, wall-to-wall carpet… . I want Sylvia to have plenty of room for her school things, and I could use a real honest-to-goodness desk. If I turned half of the basement into office space, would that be okay with you two?”

I dipped one of my French fries into a pool of catsup and thought about Miss Summers’s house, the few times I’d been in it. I know how she liked having her desk by the back window overlooking the yard and bird feeder.

“How do you know she’ll like working in a basement?” I asked.

“It’s all we’ve got,” Dad said simply. “But she can hang plants all over the place if she likes. Decorate the house any way she wants.”

“Not my room!” I said. “I want my room exactly the way it is now.” I guess you could call it jungle decor—the bedspread, the chair, the large rubber plant in one corner …

“I’m sure Sylvia isn’t going to touch your room, Al. Or yours, either, Les. You can keep your rooms the way you want them.”

“Seems to me the solution would be for me to
get an apartment somewhere and let you and Sylvia use my room as an office,” he said. “I’ve sponged off you long enough, Dad.”

“For one thing, Sylvia wouldn’t hear of it,” Dad told him. “And for another, it saves us a lot of money, your living at home. Until you’re out of school, Les, money’s going to be tight, and we enjoy having you around.”

“For what? The court jester?” Lester said. “If I could share an apartment with a bunch of guys, it might not be so expensive.”

“Les, you are free to do whatever you want. But I think Sylvia would be very distressed if you moved out on her account. Why don’t you live at home for at least another year while we all get acclimated to one another, become a family, and later, if you want to live somewhere else, you can make the decision then.”

Somehow I’d never thought of Lester leaving home. Oh, if he married, of course. But living single somewhere else? Away from Dad and me? I wanted change, and I didn’t. Looked forward to it and dreaded it both at the same time.

I was over at Elizabeth’s when she and her mom had this argument. I’ve almost never heard of Liz and her mom arguing at all, and especially not in front of other people. She and I were sitting on the
couch looking through a magazine and her mother had just put Nathan down for his nap.

Mrs. Price stopped in the doorway of the living room and said, “Did you get my note about your piano lesson? You said you couldn’t make it Friday, so he’s going to squeeze you in Saturday at one forty-five.”

“I already called him and canceled,” Elizabeth said, turning the page again to an article titled, “Does He Want You for Your Mind or Your Body?”

Mrs. Price was carrying an armload of Nathan’s clothes to the basement, and she leaned against the door frame. “
What
?”

“I canceled. I’ve got a big paper to write this weekend.”

“Elizabeth Ann, all you said was that you couldn’t do it Friday, and Mr. Hedges has gone out of his way to move appointments around so he could take you.”

“Well, he’ll just have to move them back again. You never told me you were making it Saturday,” said Elizabeth.

I pretended to be engrossed in men who want you for your mind, but I was right in the line of fire between Elizabeth and her mom.

“Why didn’t you
say
you didn’t want a lesson at all this weekend?” Mrs. Price asked in exasperation. “We are so lucky that Mr. Hedges accepted
you at all, and now, after he’s taken an interest in your playing, this seems so ungrateful.”

“Well, I’m not having a lesson this weekend, Mother, and I’ve taken care of it,” Elizabeth said, and I noticed her voice was shaking.

“I just wish you’d told me earlier,” her mother snapped, and went on down to the basement.

Elizabeth didn’t say any more, but I could see she was upset, and I went home shortly after that.

When I went to the Melody Inn the following Saturday to put in my three hours of work, I discovered that Janice Sherman was leaving sooner than she had expected. She had an offer to manage a Melody Inn in Toledo, Ohio, and wanted to go early to find a place to live. Dad said she could, that we’d make do somehow till he got a replacement. Everybody was being ultrapolite and friendly to her, and she was being her usual methodical self, putting Post-it notes on every shelf in her office, on every box and drawer, saying exactly where everything was so we wouldn’t go bananas after she left.

“When did all this happen?” Marilyn whispered to me when I dusted the shelves in the Gift Shoppe, the little boutique under the stairs leading to the practice cubicles above. “Did she and your dad have a fight or something?”

I didn’t want to say more than I should, so I just told her, “No, I think Janice figures it’s time she moved on.”

But Marilyn didn’t buy it. “Move out, is more like it. Your dad comes back from England with the news that he and Sylvia Summers are engaged, and suddenly Janice Sherman is looking for a new place to work. We all know she’s nuts about him.” When I didn’t answer, she asked, “Who’s he going to get to replace her?”

“I don’t know,” I answered. “I suppose he’ll advertise. Or maybe headquarters will send a replacement.”

All day long the instructors stopped by Janice’s office and stood in her doorway with their cups of coffee, making small talk, saying how they’d miss her, asking about the store in Toledo.

“I think living in Ohio will be a nice change of pace,” she’d say.

I guess almost any place can be nice, but I don’t think I would give up a job near Washington, D.C., for Toledo. Still, she seemed genuinely pleased that the instructors thought enough of her to ask, and Dad took her out to lunch.

When they got back, Marilyn and I had decorated Janice’s office with good-bye balloons. We’d all chipped in to buy her a jacket from the shop next door, a red jacket that she’d mentioned to
Marilyn she liked. I’d gone across the street for brownies and grapes, and Janice was delighted by the fuss we were making over her. I had to admire her for looking so cheerful when I knew she was leaving because it was hopeless to stick around a man who was in love with another woman.

Would I keep hanging around a guy who was in love with someone else? I wondered. Why did life have to be so complicated? Dad was in love with Miss Summers, but for a while she’d been in love with Jim Sorringer. Janice Sherman was in love with Dad, who didn’t love her back. Marilyn was still in love with Lester, who wasn’t in love with anyone at the moment. Wouldn’t it be simpler if we were just assigned somebody when we reached the age of twenty-five? Maybe there was something to the custom of arranged marriages after all.

Marilyn and Dad took turns darting in and out of Janice’s office to wait on customers, then they’d come back, and we all watched while Janice tried on the red jacket. The instructors stopped in between students for a cup of coffee and a brownie, but by two o’clock, it was past time for me to go.

“Good-bye, Janice,” I said. “I hope you’ll be really, really happy in Toledo.” If only I’d stopped there. Why didn’t I just say, “We’ll probably hear that the Toledo store is leading all the others in
sales, once you take over,” or something. Instead, I said, “Next thing you know, we’ll probably hear that you’re married.”

There was a three-second silence, but it seemed like three minutes to me. Everyone stared at me, then they all started talking at once, cleaning up cups, taking another grape, and Janice said, “I’m not going to Ohio to look for a husband, Alice; I’m going for the job.”

I blushed and tried to avoid Dad’s withering stare. “Of course! I just mean, that’ll probably happen, too! I mean …” I tried to laugh it off. “You in that red jacket, well … Wow!”

“She does look great in it,” one of the instructors said.

But Dad said, “If you hurry, Al, you can still make the two-twenty bus.”

I gave Janice a quick hug and left the store, my cheeks burning. Why don’t I think before I open my mouth? And yet, was it really so terrible?

Lester got home before Dad. He clerks at a men’s shoe store on weekends—an upscale store, he says, where all the customers wear navy-blue dress socks up to their knees, and have tassels on their Italian-made loafers.