Reluctantly Alice (18 page)

“I've been to only one Messiah Sing-Along, but that was years ago, and I always wanted to go again,” my teacher said. “So here I am.”

“Here we are!” I chirped happily.

Dad turned the key in the ignition and swallowed. “My daughter asked you to be ready rather early, I'm afraid. We'll probably be among the first ones there.”

“That's fine. I can believe that of Alice because she's never late to class, either.”

“That's good to hear,” said Dad. I beamed at Dad, but he still wouldn't look at me. “I hope her schoolwork is as good as her punctuality,” he added.

“Good and getting better,” said my teacher.

I beamed again. I felt like the Cheshire cat. And then it happened.

“You have a wonderful store,” Miss Summers said.

Dad looked surprised. I saw him glance at her in his rearview mirror. “The Melody Inn?”

There was a pause. “Of course.”

“So you've been in it, then! Yes, it
is
a good store. I'm so glad you like it.”

There was no other sound from the backseat, and I knew I'd goofed by not telling Dad earlier. Miss Summers had believed me when I'd said that Dad and I were inviting
her. She probably figured Dad had seen her in the store, found out more about her, and then suggested we invite her to go with us. Now she knew that the invitation was only from me.

I closed my eyes. Nobody spoke much again all the way to the church. Dad couldn't figure out what was wrong, but he knew something was bothering Miss Summers. I knew they were going to hate each other. I knew they were going to hate me. This was going to be a terrible afternoon, and Miss Summers would want to be taken home as soon as possible after the concert was over.

We all climbed out in the parking lot, and no one was smiling. I couldn't stand it any longer and flattened myself against the side of the car.

“It's my fault!” I cried. “Miss Summers, I invited you because you said you liked Mozart, and then I realized we didn't have an extra ticket and tried, but they were all sold out, and I was going to be sick at the last minute so you could use mine, but Lester's going with his girlfriend. Please don't be angry. I just wanted you to come, and I think Dad's glad you're here even though he didn't know it.”

Dad looked more like a cooked lobster this time than a shrimp. His face was almost as red as his tie. Suddenly Miss Summers threw back her head and laughed. She put
one arm around me and laughed some more. Then Dad started to smile, little chuckles coming from his throat, and finally we were all smiling.

“Alice,” my teacher said, “this is exactly the kind of thing I would have done when I was your age.” She looked at Dad. “I wondered why you looked so surprised when I answered the door. You probably thought I was going to be a young friend of your daughter's.”

“No, he thought you were going to be an old lady,” I said.

Now Dad was laughing, and he grabbed an arm of each of us and started for the building. “The important thing, Miss Summers, is that you're here,” he said.

“Please call me Sylvia, Ben.”

“Sylvia,” he said, and we went inside.

It was easy after that. Now that things were out in the open, nobody had to pretend. We laughed again when we got inside and saw that no one was there yet but the orchestra. I wanted to take seats in the very first row of the singers' section, but Dad decided that was a little too close, so we got third row instead, right in the middle, about where the tenors and altos would meet. Dad went in first to save a seat for Lester, my teacher followed him, then I came last to save a seat for Crystal. That's just how I
wanted it. I was still afraid to sit too close to Dad.

By 2:45, the singers' section began filling up fast. When Lester and Crystal came in, I waved.

“Excuse me . . . excuse me . . . ,” Crystal kept saying as she made her way into our row from the other end, Lester behind her. “Merry Christmas, Alice.” She smiled when she sat down on the other side of me, meaning that she was delighted that she, not Marilyn, had Lester for the day, and maybe we'd be sisters-in-law after all.

“Merry Christmas,” I told her. What I didn't tell her was that Lester was spending Christmas Eve with Marilyn. He'd already told me.

Lester sat down on the other side of Dad, then leaned forward to see if Crystal was settled in okay, and suddenly his lips fell apart and he positively stared.

“Miss Summers, this is my son, Lester, and his friend Crystal Harkins,” said Dad.

Lester and Miss Summers shook hands across Dad's lap, Lester still gawking at my teacher.

When everybody had settled in and Dad and Miss Summers were talking again, I heard somebody go “Pssst!” and looked around behind my teacher. Lester was leaning way back in his chair.

“Who
is
she?” he mouthed.

I smiled sweetly. “Sylvia,” I whispered, and faced forward again, folding my hands on my purse.

As last-minute singers took their seats, I could catch little snatches of conversation between Dad and my teacher:

“. . . when Alice was five.”

“Oh, I'm so sorry . . .”

“. . . doing okay. I think we'll make it. How about you? You teach, but you're a musician, too?”

“. . . the piano. I love your selection of sheet music.”

I happily wiggled my toes.

The soloists arrived, and the rehearsal began. After we'd gotten the basic instructions and practiced a few numbers, the ushers opened the doors, and the audience filed in.

The Messiah is really long, and you have to sit through lots of solos, but some of them are good. I liked to sit there listening to the story of Jesus in song and sort of pretending I was Mary, just finding out from the angel that I'm pregnant, only I get it mixed up with “The Cherry Tree Carol.” I kept waiting for the song about Mary asking Joseph to gather her some cherries, and then remembered Handel didn't write it.

Near the end, when everybody stood up to sing the Hallelujah Chorus, I sang, “
Hal
-le-lu-jah!
Hal
-le-lu-jah!”
right along with them, and if Crystal or Miss Summers realized I was off-key, they didn't let on.

When it was all over, we stood there talking while the musicians packed up their instruments. Dad explained to Lester and Crystal that Miss Summers was my Language Arts teacher, and Lester looked back and forth from Miss Summers to me. I just smiled sweetly again and glanced away, and then my breath almost stopped because there, among the sopranos next to the wall, was Marilyn. She was with a girlfriend, but her eyes were on Lester and Crystal, who hadn't seen her.

I didn't tell Lester that he probably wouldn't be spending Christmas Eve with Marilyn after all. I figured he was a big boy and could take care of himself.

Lester and Crystal went somewhere in Lester's car, but I was so afraid Dad would take Miss Summers right home that I invited her to our house.

“I can make grilled cheese sandwiches, and there's butter pecan in the freezer,” I told Dad. And when he still looked horrified, I added, “The bathroom's clean, remember.”

Miss Summers started laughing again, and so did Dad, but that's what we did. Came to our house. I rushed upstairs and put a fresh towel in the bathroom for Miss Summers, because I saw Aunt Sally do that once when
we came to visit unexpectedly. Then I set to work on the sandwiches while Dad played the piano for Sylvia.

He liked her, I could tell. She asked for a certain piece by Brahms that's one of Dad's favorites, and he smiled as he began to play it. She hummed. I pretended not to watch, but every time I passed the door of the kitchen, I looked. Dad was still smiling, and Miss Summers was still humming.

We ate at the coffee table in the living room, and Miss Summers took off her shoes so she could sit more easily on the floor. Her toenails were polished.

“You have pretty toes,” I said.

“Thank you,” she told me, and ate a carrot stick. I served carrot sticks, cheese sandwiches, applesauce, and butter pecan ice cream (which I hate, but I took all the nuts out of mine first).

“This has really been a lovely afternoon,” Miss Summers said at last, “but I've got to get home. I tell you what. Why don't we drive through the grounds of the Mormon temple on the way back and see all their lights. Did you know that at Christmas they put thousands and thousands of tiny white lights on the trees on their property?”

Dad and I didn't know that, so we drove to Kensington and I let Miss Summers sit up front with Dad. There
was already a long line of cars at the gate, and we oohed and aahed at the thousands of little sparkles there in the darkness as Dad drove us around.

I could tell that he was having a good time because he didn't seem to be in any hurry to take Miss Summers home—drove right by the exit to go around again. When we finally got to Miss Summers's house, though, I wished I wasn't along. I wished that she'd invite Dad in, and they'd talk and talk and someday I'd have a new mother.

She said good night to me, and told me again what a nice time she'd had. Then Dad walked her up to the door. They didn't kiss or hold hands or anything. Just talked some more. Finally she went inside and Dad came back and got in the car. I was still in the backseat.

“Get up front, Al,” he said.

Uh-oh, I thought. I got out the back and climbed in the front. “Don't the Mormons have nice lights?” I said.

“Al . . .”

“I
really
liked the concert, Dad.”

“Al!”

I shut up.

Dad started the engine, and when the car was moving down the block, he said, “Don't you ever do that again.”

My heart sank. “I—I thought we all had a good time.”

“You thought I would fall in love and marry your teacher and you'd have a mother, that's what you thought. Well, things don't work that way, Al.”

“But you had a nice time!”

“I did.”

“And so did she! I
know
it!”

“She seemed to.”

“Well, then, what's the—?”

“You don't know the first thing about love, Al. And she's too young for me.”

“How young is she?”

“I don't know.”

“You
liked
her!” I insisted.

“Yes, I did, but I have no idea how she feels about me. Not really. For all I know, she's dating other men and may even be serious about one of them.”

“Then why did she come out with us?”

“Because you asked her.”

“Because she thought
you
asked her too!” I corrected.

“Listen, Al. I asked what she was doing Christmas Eve, if she'd like to go out to dinner with me, and she said she was spending the holidays with a friend.”

There was still hope. “Maybe it's a girlfriend.”

“I think she would have mentioned that if it was. And
I don't want you doing anything—
any
thing—to get us together again. If we see each other some more, that's up to us, not you. Is that strictly understood?”

“Yes,” I said in a voice I could hardly hear.

“No hints, no suggestions, no nothing. I
mean
it! This woman or any other.”

“Okay,” I said softly.

We drove almost all the way home in silence, but a few blocks from our house, I realized that Dad was whistling softly under his breath:
Hallelujah! Hallelujah!

“Hal-le-e-e-lu-jah!” I bellowed out loud. Off-key, of course.

That made Dad laugh, and we sang it the rest of the way home. The Halleujah Chorus. The only thing missing was the orchestra, and of course we couldn't stand up to sing.

On Monday, the last day before Christmas vacation, Denise and I both turned in our biographies. We let each other read them first, which was one of the rules, so we could change anything we didn't like or thought was too personal. But neither of us did.

Mine was longer and neater than hers, but hers was better than I'd thought it would be. One of the things we were supposed to do in the write-up was analyze what
obstacles we thought the other person had to overcome to be a success, and what she had going for her.

I wrote that Denise had to overcome her habit of bullying other people if she wanted to make new friends, and that what she had going for her was that she was a leader; she could persuade other people to do what she wanted. I think she was surprised I'd called her a leader.

Denise, in turn, wrote that I was too sensitive about not being able to carry a tune, and she said what I had going for me was guts. That's just the way she put it. That I took chances. I sort of liked that, too.

Just as I was going out the door to get the bus, Denise passed me in the hall.

“Merry Christmas, Denise,” I yelled.

“You too,” she said.

When I sat down with Pamela and Elizabeth, Pamela said, “I can't believe it. I just can't. I never thought you and Denise would be friends as long as you lived.”

“Neither did I,” I told her. “Life's weird, isn't it?”

“After all she did to you!” said Elizabeth. “I'm not sure I could ever make up with her until she apologized.”

“Maybe she did,” I said, “in her own way.”

Two things happened the day before Christmas. I found a note in our mailbox from Miss Summers, thanking
me for inviting her to the concert. “Please tell your father that it was a wonderful afternoon,” she wrote, “and I hope we can do something like that again soon.” I yelped with delight when I read it, and showed it to Dad. He didn't say anything, probably because his smile was so wide.

The other thing that happened, though, was that Marilyn called and told Les that she had other plans for Christmas Eve.

“Lester,” I said, “I don't understand. If Marilyn doesn't want to get engaged, why is she mad that you're going out with Crystal?”