Patiently Alice (13 page)

“You’ll love it,” said Craig.

I got up shakily. “That’s what they all say,” I told him. “Will you still respect me in the morning?” Everyone laughed.

They helped me into one of the harnesses while Richard got in the other. Then, side by side, we were lowered over the edge. I was breathing so fast, I wondered if my heart would give out. What a coward I was! First the horse, and now this!

“Al-ice!… Al-ice!” came the voice from below.

I let myself down a little more, a little more, almost glad for the darkness so I couldn’t see the
river. All of a sudden Richard grabbed hold of my rope and swung me over beside him. I gave a small shriek, afraid we’d both go crashing down. But all he said in my ear was, “Shhhh. Don’t make a sound.”

And the next thing I knew, my feet were on solid ground. We couldn’t have traveled more than ten feet.

In the moonlight I could see Pamela and Andy grinning at me, fingers to their lips. I looked around and stepped out of the harness. The “cliff” was only a high bank over a hill below. The real drop was a lot farther on, but in the dark, from above, we couldn’t see that. I put my hands to my face and suppressed a giggle.

“Tom-mie!… Tom-mie!” the voice came, and I sat down in the wet grass beside Pamela as we waited for all the girls’ names to be called, wondering how many times this trick had been played on the assistant counselors—the girl counselors—at Camp Overlook. Had the guys decided in advance who was pairing off with whom? I wondered as we waited for Tommie to come down. But it was great fun, scary as anything, and when all the girls were down, we were allowed to talk again. We hooted and laughed at ourselves.

“Alice was hyperventilating,” said Pamela. “I could hear her all the way down the bank.”

“I was afraid she’d pass out on me,” said Richard.

I think Elizabeth was having the best time of all. It was hard to see her and Ross in the dark, but whenever they stepped into moonlight, they were together. They didn’t hug or kiss in front of the little campers when they were on duty, but I would see their hands touch momentarily, the smile that passed between them, the softening of Elizabeth’s face when she watched him, and it almost made me want to stand up and shout,
Yes!
Here in the woods, though, they didn’t have to hide how they felt about each other.

It was a long way down on the path to the river, but our ordeal wasn’t over yet. Halfway there, Phil stopped us again.

“Okay, we’ve come to a tunnel,” he said, “and we’ll have to crawl through one at a time.”

By now I was feeling more confident of myself. If I could ride a horse, I could rappel down a bank. If I could rappel down a bank, I could crawl through a tunnel. So I volunteered to be first in line after Phil, Pamela behind me. I wedged my body through the narrow opening on my hands and knees, feeling quite sure we were simply between two large boulders. I bet we could easily have walked around them, but this time I felt certain I was up to it.

Halfway through, though, one strap of my overalls came loose and, dangling between my legs as I crawled, caught its buckle on something. I couldn’t go backward or forward, and the space was so narrow that I couldn’t maneuver my arms to reach it.

“You coming?” Phil called over his shoulder.

“What’s the matter?” asked Pamela, bumping into me from behind.

“I’m stuck!” I yelped. “My buckle’s caught on something.”

“Can you reach it?” Phil asked.

“No.”

“I’ll help you,” he said.

“No!” I insisted. “Pamela, you’ve got to do it.”

We were both wrestling with the strap, her hands between my legs, with scarcely enough room to move our arms, while somebody else bumped into Pamela. All we could do was laugh. It’s a wonder we got me loose at all.

Free at last, we were still laughing about it when we reached the river, but there was the kelpie—someone with a huge rubber horse mask, complete with mane, swimming about in the water. Of course he came charging out as soon as he saw us, and of course a mock battle ensued, ending with all of us in the river. We had a great time.

“Hey, Gerald,” I said when I noticed him sliding into the water. “You make a great kelpie.”

“What do you mean?” he asked innocently. “I just got here. It’s the guy with the horse’s head you should be talking to.”

“I mean the voice. Voice of the kelpie. You should work for Voice of America or something.”

I could tell he was pleased.

The guys had brought sodas and chips, so we sat on the bank, talking and laughing and swatting at an occasional mosquito. The “kelpie,” one of the older counselors, joined in. Phil and Craig told us stories of past Kelpie Hunts—the night even Phil had lost his way, for instance, and Jack Harrigan had to come looking for them.

Finally, though, we girls headed back to the showers to wash the river water from our hair. Pamela moved up behind Gwen and me. “Anybody see Elizabeth?” she asked.

I looked around. “She was with us all evening.”

“Not on the bank, she wasn’t,” said Pamela. “At least I didn’t see her.”

We all stopped and looked about.

“What about the guys?” I asked. “Weren’t they all there too?”

“All except Ross,” said Tommie.

Pamela and I looked at each other. She didn’t say a word; her face said it all.

We went on to the showers and took off our wet clothes. Even lukewarm water felt good to us after the cold of the river. I knew that the topic of conversation was going to be Elizabeth, but just that moment she walked in.

Her hair was tangled and there were leaves on the back of her T-shirt. Her face was flushed and she was breathless.

“Oh,
here
you are!” she said, as though
she
had been looking for
us.

“Aha! She’s got grass on her back!” said Tommie.

“Somebody check out Ross,” Doris kidded.

“Naw. He’d have grass on his knees,” said Gwen.

Elizabeth just took off her clothes and turned on a shower.

“Where did you go?” Pamela asked. “We’ve been wondering where you were.”

“Ross and I went for a walk, that’s all,” Elizabeth said. She closed her eyes and turned her face up toward the spray.

The rest of us looked at each other and grinned.

“Uh-huh,” said Tommie knowingly. “The way we figure, Liz, you’ve been missing for about forty-five minutes. Maybe longer.”

“So it was a long walk,” said Elizabeth, smiling.

But Pamela and I wouldn’t let her off so easily.

“Well,” I said, “what happened?”

“What do you mean? Nothing. We just talked.”

“Elizabeth…!” said Pamela.

“Her cheeks are red,” said Gwen.

“And getting redder,” said Doris.

“You might as well tell us,” Pamela teased, and I think she was beginning to enjoy it. “If you don’t, we’ll go ask Ross.”

Elizabeth suddenly turned and faced us triumphantly. “Well,” she said, “I
did
it.”

There was no sound at all in the showers except running water. Pamela reached up and turned hers off, and we continued staring at Elizabeth as though she had just risen from the dead.
Elizabeth? Elizabeth
had done IT before any of the rest of us? Elizabeth
Price
?

“Really?”
It was all I could think of to say.

“With Ross?” Tommie asked.

Still grinning stupidly, Elizabeth nodded.

“Elizabeth?” I said again, disbelieving. “
Really
really?” We were flabbergasted.

“Did you use a condom?” Gwen asked her.

Elizabeth blinked and stared back at us. “Not
that
!” she exclaimed.

I let out my breath.
“What,
then?”

Elizabeth smiled. “I… let him touch me.”

Gwen rolled her eyes. “First base, second base, third base…
what
?”

“My breasts,” Elizabeth whispered. I mean, for Elizabeth, this was major,
Major
!

She just kept on grinning. “I… I never let a guy do that before,” she said.

Well, I hadn’t either. Not even Patrick and I had done that.

“Details! Details!” I said. “Did you take off your bra or what?”

“I wasn’t wearing one,” said Elizabeth.

I turned my shower off too and wrapped my towel around me. Pamela and I sat Elizabeth down on the bench at one end of the room as Tommie and Doris and Gwen gathered around.

“Okay, slowly. One step at a time. You
planned
this?” I asked, really curious.

“Of course I didn’t plan it. I didn’t even know what we’d be doing on the Kelpie Hunt. I just knew it would be dark.”

“And Ross…?”

“He just invited me to go for a walk. And we kissed. And—”

“And…? Don’t stop, Elizabeth!” Pamela scolded.

“And he worked his hands up under my sweatshirt in back while he was kissing me, and… and when he discovered I wasn’t wearing a bra… his hands came around and he touched me in front. And… I let him. I wanted him to.”

We relived every second of it with Elizabeth.

“Is that all?” I asked finally.

“No.… Then he… he kissed them.”

He
kissed
them?

“Kissed your breasts?” I asked. Oh, this was wild. I couldn’t believe it!

Elizabeth just grinned.

Gwen gave an exaggerated, romantic sigh that broke the tension, and we laughed a little. “Hey, girl, you don’t have to spill everything,” she told Elizabeth. “You going to take us along on your wedding night?”

“It’s just that… we promised once—Pamela and Elizabeth and I—that we’d tell each other everything,” I explained.

“Ha! Not even guys do that, I’ll bet. Only the parts that make them look good,” said Doris.

“I don’t think I should be telling you this,” said Elizabeth, now that she’d told. “Ross said he wouldn’t tell anyone.”

“We won’t ask any more,” I said.

“There isn’t any more to tell,” Elizabeth said, and sighed happily.

We began talking about other things then, but I couldn’t help remembering that only two years before on a train trip to Chicago, a man had touched one of Pamela’s breasts, and Elizabeth had wanted her to go to a priest the next day and have it blessed. It was a different Elizabeth who sat rapturously now in the shower house, grinning still. I wondered what she’d tell the priest this time when she got home. Or if she would tell him anything at all.

Saturday was a day of “last times.” The big canoe race, then our last lunch together, our last volleyball game, our last swim.

The hour before dinner was devoted to packing up, making sure all the campers were taking home everything they’d brought with them. And after dinner, while the kids watched cartoons, the assistant counselors were sent back to scour our cabins and see if we could find anything that remained unpacked that we wouldn’t need in the morning. We looked under the bunks, behind the door, up on the rafters.

As we went back and forth to the trash can outside, throwing out broken shoelaces and pieces of
pretzel and torn pages of comics, Tommie called over, “We should have some sort of ceremony—the six of us. Toss something in the river to show we’ll return.”

“Like the Bible says, ‘Cast your bread upon the water’?” asked Doris.

“Huh?” said Pamela, coming down the lane from cabin number twelve.

“Well, something like that,” said Tommie.

“We
should
!” said Elizabeth. “Flower petals or something!”

Gwen suddenly smiled. “What about a six-pack?”

“What?” I said. “A
six
-pack?”

She went inside our cabin and returned with the box of Trojans. While we gathered around in amusement, she tore open one end and took out six little foil wrapped condoms, dropping one in each of our hands.

“To the river!” she said, thrusting one fist in the air, and giggling, we set off.

At the water’s edge each of us made a wish, then tossed her little foil-packet out into the river.

“I want to come back someday to Camp Overlook,” said Tommie, tossing hers.

“I want to see Ross again,” said Elizabeth, going next.

“I want to see
Joe
again!” said Gwen.

Doris thought for a minute. “I want to get through geometry next year.” Out went her condom into the water.

I didn’t have to think long about my wish. “I want Dad and Sylvia’s wedding to finally come off this fall.” I threw overhanded, and my condom sailed out way past the others.

Pamela was just drawing back her arm when Craig came down the path to secure the canoes.

“What’s this? What’s this?” he asked, squinting at the little foil packets that were bobbing about on the slow-moving current. Then he looked at the one in Pamela’s hand. “Is that what I think it is?”

“Yeah,” said Pamela. “An end to summer.”

“Well, hey! Don’t let it go to waste!” Craig said, trying to grab it from her.

Pamela threw. “It’s all yours,” she said.

“Have a good swim!” Gwen said with a laugh, as we turned and made our way up the bank.

“You didn’t tell us what you wished,” I said to Pamela.

“The same old,” she said. “About my mom.”

Saturday night, of course, started with the Kelpie Hunt for the young campers. It was a little different from ours. They could squeeze through “the
tunnel” if they wanted, with plenty of light from the lanterns, but no one rappelled down a bank, and only the bravest, the most eager, heard their names called. The rest were closely guided by counselors, so that everyone got the excitement of going into the woods at night, but only a few confronted the beast head-on. And when they got to the river’s edge, the counselor who played the kelpie let some of the boys pull off his horse mask so that all the kids knew it was a fun joke.

After our showers later we changed into our pajamas and had our last session around the campfire. It was a quiet, sentimental affair, with the campers clinging to their counselors, reluctant to let go. Some of them clung to each other, their newfound friends. Estelle had taken to Gwen, despite all her racist remarks, but Latisha seemed as aloof as ever. When I put an arm around her shoulder, her body was stiff, and she almost imperceptibly shrugged me off.