Are You Alone on Purpose? (18 page)

“Alison, you're screaming.” Mrs. Shandling was on her feet, pointing a finger at Alison, shaking it. “You never scream. It's that boy's influence on you. I know it.” Her own voice rose to a shriek.

“Of course we're interested,” the professor cut in. He shot his wife a wary glance. “If you and your mother would just calm down—”

“It's all very well for you to be calm,” snapped Mrs. Shandling. “I happen to have a very good idea where she's been. She's been with that Harry Roth! I saw how he was looking at her last Saturday at Adam's bar mitzvah. I figured it all out today after Rosalie told me Alison and Paulina had a fight.” She turned to Alison. “Over that horrible boy, right?”

There was silence. Adam got up, picked up the box with the extra cheese pizza, and left the kitchen with it. He disappeared into his bedroom down the hall.

“You think you know everything, don't you?” whispered Alison finally. Her face was white.

“Perhaps you'd like to tell me what I've missed?” her mother said.

“What's this about Harry Roth?” asked the professor. He was several minutes behind in comprehension. “Alison, did you have a fight with Paulina?”

“Oh,” said Alison, “you have some interest in what I have to say about this?” She was trying not to cry.

“Honey—” Mrs. Shandling started.

“Don't you call me honey!” Alison said. She turned her body away from her mother, toward her father. “Dad. It's nothing to do with Paulina. Paulina's found a friend she likes better than me, but that's not . . .” She swallowed. “It's Harry Roth. He's my boyfriend. It only just happened. I would have told you”—she shot an angry glance at her mother—“but I wanted to wait awhile. It's a little private.”

“Just a minute,” said the professor. “You're too young to have a boyfriend!”

“Dad! I'm nearly fifteen!”

“Too young!” Her father was glaring now, too.

Alison clenched her teeth. “I'm going to my room,” she said.

“Wait,” said her mother. “It's true, then? Harry Roth?” She sounded incredulous.

Alison turned back, slowly, to face her. “Yes,” she said distinctly.

“Are you out of your mind?”

Alison suddenly had a blinding headache. “I knew you would never understand,” she said.

“You're damned right—”

Alison turned on her heel and ran down the hall to her room.

She could hear them still, though, even from behind a closed door. Not everything, but tones, and the occasional clear word or phrase. She listened hard, still shaking.

Her mother: “Now I've got two kids in the middle of tantrums....” A murmur from her father. Then her mother again, louder, angrier: “You've never been interested . . . always at the fucking lab . . .” And her father, equally loud: “You've never goddamned let me—”

Alison stuffed her fingers in her ears. After a few minutes, though, the shouting stopped, and she listened again. There were only undertones now. They'll be here soon, Alison thought. They'll want to talk.

Suddenly, from her mother, she heard distinctly: “She's only just a baby.”

Alison froze. No, she thought, with sudden clarity. That's what they don't understand. I've never been a baby. I've never even been a little girl.

After a while, she heard her mother come down the hall. She paused outside Alison's door, but then continued on to Adam's. She went in and began speaking to him.

Alison turned off her light. She slipped under the covers in her clothes. And when her mother finally did knock, she didn't answer.

 

“I'm sorry,” her mother said abruptly to Alison, the next morning. Alison had been standing by the living room window, watching a rabbit hop across the backyard. She swung around. “I'm sorry about yesterday,” Mrs. Shandling repeated.

Alison didn't reply. She eyed her mother cautiously, waiting.

“I shouldn't have flown off the handle like that. I guess Harry Roth isn't exactly what I had in mind for your first boyfriend, that's all.”

“He's not
your
first boyfriend, he's mine,” Alison said. She said it quietly and listened to the sound the words made in the air. Part of her couldn't believe she had said it. “It's not your business,” she added.

“I don't agree,” said Mrs. Shandling. Her mouth primmed into a tight line. “You're my daughter, and you're only fourteen years old, and I am entitled to an opinion—at the very least—about everything in your life.”

Alison tried to recall a subject about which her mother did not have an opinion. “You think you're entitled to an opinion about everything in the world.”

“Well, I am,” Mrs. Shandling said. “It's the First Amendment.”

“Maybe,” said Alison. “But does that mean you always have to have a fit about things? Yell and scream at other people? Tell them exactly how right you are and exactly how wrong they are?” Her voice rose. She was making a scene, she thought incredulously. She wasn't being good.

Her mother was breathing hard. “Is that what you think I do?”

“Yes,” Alison said defiantly.

“Like when, may I ask?”

“Like yesterday, about Harry.”

“I have a goddamned—no, God-given—right to yell and scream about what my daughter is up to. Right now you couldn't possibly understand what I'm talking about, but one day, when you're a mother yourself, you will.”

Alison clenched her hands. She fought her impulse to back down. It didn't matter if her mother was right. Alison was right too. “No,” she said. “You may have the right to an opinion, but you do not have the right to yell and scream it at me.” She felt a surge of power. She was saying what she thought.

She took a deep breath. “And you didn't have the right to scream those things at Rabbi Roth last year. I don't mean the stuff about Adam. I mean the stuff about Harry. And . . . and the stuff about me. In fact, I shouldn't even have been there. Whether Adam went to Hebrew school had nothing to do with me! It had absolutely nothing to do with me! Why did you make me go? Why did you make me hear those things? Why did you make me see you and Rabbi Roth that way?”

Her mother began, “I thought I apologized—”

Alison cut her off. “It's actually pretty funny, because if I hadn't gone with you that day, I might not be going out with Harry now. But I couldn't believe how you dragged Harry in when you were supposed to be talking about Adam. Just like you dragged me in.” She looked up and met her mother's eyes. “Just like you always drag me in with Adam. Just like you always have.” She looked down. She discovered she was crying.

“Baby—”

“I'm not a baby! And don't you touch me! Not now. Not until you hear what I have to say.” She had a rushing in her ears. She couldn't see very well. She needed a handkerchief.

Somehow there was a box of tissues in front of her. Alison blew her nose. She heard her mother's voice. “I'm listening,” it said.

Alison pulled out another tissue and wiped her eyes. She crumpled the two damp tissues together in her hand. She managed to look up again at her mother. “Please get Daddy,” she said. “I want to tell him too, and I don't think I can say this more than once.”

Her mother nodded. Alison saw that her eyes were full of worry. I'm sorry, she thought. I never wanted to make trouble, but I have to. She waited.

Quickly, too quickly, her father was there. “Alison, what—” he started, but his wife stopped him with a hand on his arm.

And suddenly they were gone, all the words that not a minute before had been pounding in Alison's head for release. She closed her eyes. She wrapped her arms around herself.

“Is this about Harry Roth again?” said the professor, after a minute or two. “Because I don't care who he is, Alison, you're too young to have a boyfriend. Your mother agrees with me. And that's final.”

“Jake—” her mother began.

“No,” Alison said. She cleared her throat. “I want to tell you....” She stopped, swallowed. That there's something wrong, she thought. It's about Harry, but it's not. And it's not really about Adam either.

Inevitably, her mother asked, “Is it something about Adam?”

Alison whipped around. “No! It's about me! It's—it's...” She stopped, stared at her parents.

They stared back. “Honey,” her mother said, “we're trying to understand.” And when Alison said nothing, she continued, “Sweetheart, look, you're fourteen. It's a difficult time, adolescence. Your emotions just take you over. You're growing up. It's natural you're confused.”

“Hormones,” said the professor, nodding. “Not your fault. Really nothing you can do.”

Alison closed her eyes for a moment. “Just listen to me,” she said. “Please just listen.”

Her father looked surprised. “Well, we are,” he said.

Now or never, Alison thought. Whatever comes out.

She walked to the chair near the sofa, where her parents were sitting, and sat down in it, gingerly, on the edge. She spoke to her hands, twisted together, in her lap. “Well, I am confused, but not the way you think. Not about being fourteen; I know all about that stuff. I know I'm in a stage, but that's not what this is about. And even if it were, you should still listen to me.”

“Well, of course,” said Alison's mother. “You shouldn't doubt—”

“Shhh,” said her father.

Alison flung him a quick, grateful glance before looking down again. “I think,” she said, “that I want to talk to you about me. About who I am. About who I am in this family. About what you expect of me. About what
I
expect of me.” She bit her lip. “I guess this part maybe is about Adam, too. There's no way around it; I'm Adam's sister. His twin sister. And...

“And . . . I've never felt just like me, just like Alison. I can't be myself in this family because it's more important that I be... this person who's not Adam. Who's normal. Smart. Good. Who's not . . .” She paused, swallowed. “Who's not autistic.”

“Honey, that's absolutely—”

“I'm telling you how I feel!” Alison shouted, at one of them, at both of them, she wasn't sure; she didn't know who'd spoken, and she didn't care. “Don't you see when it comes to this, it doesn't matter how you feel? What I think is what matters right now! Can't you see that?”

There was silence. Alison got up abruptly and reached for the tissue box. She busied herself blowing her nose again. After a while, she heard her mother's voice.

“Alison? Are you saying... do you really mean that you think we love you only because you're not autistic like Adam?”

“Alison?” said her father.

“I'm not saying you realize it,” said Alison quietly. She was suddenly filled with despair. They would deny it. Of course they would.

“Oh, God,” said Alison's mother.

Even if He's there, thought Alison, He's not going to help. She poked with one finger at a small hole in the knee of her jeans. We're on our own. There was silence. And, then, in it, she heard a peculiar, snorting, wrenching noise, and looked up.

Her father was crying. Her mother had her arms around him, her body against his, her cheek on his head. But her face was toward Alison, and it was frightened and wrinkled and old.

I am a horrible human being, thought Alison. She tightened up, became as small as possible in the chair. “I'm sorry,” she mumbled to her knees. She thought her parents could not hear her, but her voice would not get louder. “I'm so sorry.” She wished she could be somewhere else. She wished she had not started. Why had she thought it was so important? There were children starving in India. In Boston. There were kids whose parents beat them. Or worse.

Did it matter why you were loved? So long as you were? She listened to her father sob. Why didn't he stop?

Then he did. “Alison,” he said. And again, “Alison.” It wasn't his voice at all. And then, when she dared look again, she watched him disentangle himself from his wife and get up and leave the room.

Alison's mother got up too. She stood uneasily by the sofa for a second and then advanced and put her hand on Alison's shoulder. “We'll talk more about this,” she said. “Honey?” Awkwardly, she knelt next to the chair and put her arms around Alison. “We love you, honey. We do.” Her arms tightened. “We just have to find some way to explain... love isn't simple.”

Alison thought of Harry. “I know that,” she said. Her voice croaked.

“Oh, honey,” said Alison's mother. Alison could hear that she, too, was near tears. “You only think you do. Love gets worse when you get older. It gets even more complicated.” And then she was gone.

Alison stayed, alone, in the chair. She wondered how she would feel if Harry cried.

 

Dinner that night was brief. Alison almost didn't join the rest of them. She had a headache. She wasn't hungry. But Adam came to her door and stood there and looked at her. “There are french fries,” he said, and waited, and finally Alison went with him to the table.

Her mother was there, but not her father. She went out of her way to give Alison another hug, and Alison felt a little better, but not much. “Your father is in the den,” Alison's mother said. “He's trying to write you a letter.”

“Oh,” said Alison. She took a small bite from her casserole. “He doesn't need to write a letter.” The pounding in her head increased. She watched Adam make a house, stacking the fries as if they were Lincoln Logs. “It's okay. Can we just forget it?”