Alice Alone Read online

“Joy what’s-her-name. Do you ever think about her?”

  “Never. I’ve forgotten all about her.”

  “Marilyn?”

  Lester withdrew his arm and rubbed his shoulder. “Yes, I think about her. But right now it’s best if I stick to the books and forget the ladies for the time being. It’s a difficult semester.”

  I blew my nose again. I was beginning to feel more like myself. “Now that you’re twenty-two, Les, do you think you’re any smarter? I mean, can a person feel himself getting wiser?”

  “Definitely. All I wanted at eighteen was my own car, a pretty girl to ride around in it with me, a six-pack, and a good guitar. And right now, none of the above is my first priority.”

  I started to grin. “Are you, by chance, wearing any of the birthday shorts we gave you? Some of the girls have been asking.”

  Lester contemplated that for a moment, then pulled out the waistband of his jeans and peered down inside. “Yep,” he said.

  “Which ones? The boxers with newsprint on them? Ants in the pants? What does the welldressed philosopher of twenty-two wear under his jeans?”

  Lester grinned. “Daffy Duck,” he said, and waved me out of his room.

  10

  Alone

  The phone rang about five minutes later, and I dragged it into my room and sat down on the bed. It was Jill.

  “Alice, are you okay?” she asked. I guess this meant we were friends again.

  “I suppose everyone’s heard by now,” I said in answer.

  “Patrick’s a jerk,” she told me. “It’s one thing to flirt with Penny, but another to break up with you.”

  I could feel tears welling up in my eyes again. “He’s just … just being honest.”

  “How can you defend him like that?”

  “Well, he can’t help liking somebody.”

  “Of course, Penny’s mostly to blame,” said Jill. I didn’t want to get into this, because I knew she was goading me into saying something against Penny, and everything I said would get right back to her. “Maybe nobody’s to blame,” I said, my voice flat. “That’s just the way it is. She likes him, he likes her.”

  “Oh, stop being so noble,” Jill said. “She’s been making a play for Patrick for months, and everyone knows it. Of course, Patrick could have ignored her, but—”

  “Listen, Jill. I’ve got to go. I’ve got homework and stuff.”

  “But are you sure you’re all right?”

  “No, but I’ll live,” I said.

  I hung up and sat with the phone in my lap, staring at myself in the mirror on the opposite wall. I looked a mess. My eyes were puffy, my cheeks streaked with tears. I wear hardly any mascara, but the eye liner on my lower lids was smeared.

  The phone rang again and I leaped, almost knocking it to the floor. I waited till the third ring, just in case it was Patrick. It was Gwen.

  “How you doin’, girl?” she said, in that wonderful, thick, comforting voice.

  I started crying again. I couldn’t believe it.

  “Not so good, huh?” said Gwen.

  “I’m pretty sad,” I mewed, my chin wobbly. “I’m just … really, really sad.”

  “I know. I guess you and Patrick have been going together for so long, we sort of looked at you as Siamese twins. Inseparable,” she said.

  “That’s the way I felt, too,” I told her. “But we’re not. And now I just feel strange and lost.”

  “Listen, if you ever need to talk, will you call me? Doesn’t matter what time, day or night, you call.”

  “Thanks, Gwen. But I’ve got Dad and Lester. I wouldn’t have to call you in the middle of the night. I’ll be okay.”

  “Sure now?”

  “No, but don’t worry.”

  I put the phone on the floor and decided to take a bath. To soak awhile with a cold washcloth over my eyes, and try to let my mind go blank. But as soon as I settled down in the water, the washcloth slid down below one eye and I found myself staring at my knees sticking up out of the water.

  They suddenly looked fat to me. Fat knees. How could I expect Patrick to like a girl with fat knees? I sucked in my breath and spread my fingers out over each kneecap. My fingers looked short and stubby, and my nails were uneven. How could Patrick like a girl with stubby fingers? It was just as Lester had said—now that Patrick didn’t love me anymore, I must be unlovable. I was appealing and attractive up until I had said, Maybe you should take Penny to the Snow Ball, and by the time he had said, Maybe I will, I had metamorphosed into this ugly creature with swollen eyes and stubby fingers and fat knees.

  The phone rang, and I heard Lester’s footsteps out in the hall, then a tap on the bathroom door. “Hey, Al. It’s Karen. You want to take it?”

  “Yes, but don’t look, Lester!” I yelped, spreading the washcloth over my breasts and doubling my legs up.

  “Blindman’s bluff!” he called as he slowly opened the door and emerged with his eyes closed, feeling his way with one hand, holding the cordless phone in the other.

  I reached for the phone and grabbed it just as Lester’s foot hit the side of the tub and he lost his balance, lurching forward. Both arms landed in the water up to his elbows. Water splashed all over the place.

  “Lester!” I shrieked.

  “What’s happening?” came Karen’s voice.

  “Am I supposed to swim my way out, or what?” Lester asked, opening his eyes anyway.

  “Don’t look!” I yelped as he tried to wipe the water out of his eyes.

  “Oh, my stars, she’s ne-kid!” Lester cried, imitating Aunt Sally.

  “Alice, what’s going on?” came Karen’s voice over the phone.

  I was swinging the washcloth at Lester to get him out, and he was trying to get to his feet to find a towel. When the door finally closed behind him, I said, “Hello?”

  “What in the world is happening?” asked Karen.

  “Lester just fell in the tub,” I said. “He tripped. I’m alone now.”

  “Well, I just called to see if you needed to talk,” she said.

  “I’m about talked out, Karen. Word sure travels fast. Everyone seems to know.”

  “I just wanted to make absolutely sure you’re all right.”

  “I’m okay.”

  “But are you sure?”

  “I’m not sure about anything! I thought I was sure about Patrick, and look what happened!” My face scrunched up. “I thought we were a couple, Karen! A real couple. That nothing could ever h-happen to us.”

  “But … surely you’ve had some interest in other guys, Alice! I’ll bet you’ve flirted a little with other people once in a while, haven’t you? That guy from Camera Club last year who used to like you. Sam Mayer?”

  “But I never gave up Patrick for him.”

  “Well, maybe Patrick hasn’t given you up for Penny. Maybe he wants to go on liking you both.”

  “I couldn’t stand that!” I told her. “Not after being special to him all this time. To have to share him?”

  “I don’t know.” Karen sighed. “I just don’t know. But I want to be sure you’re okay.”

  “I’ll be all right,” I said, impressed that so many people cared about me. Patrick wasn’t my only true friend in the world, it seemed.

  By the time I got my pajamas on and was back in my bedroom, the phone rang again. Pamela.

  “All these phone calls!” I said, trying to button my pajamas with one hand and hold the phone with the other.

  “Well, Elizabeth organized a suicide watch,” Pamela told me.

  “What?”

  “She’s divided the evening up into fifteen minute segments and one of us has to call you every fifteen minutes. I’ve got the nine-fifteen detail.”

  “What?” I cried again. “Pamela, I’m okay. Really! I’m sad and disillusioned and angry and confused and jealous, but I’m not going to kill myself. Penny, maybe, or Patrick, but not myself. Joke, joke! Please don’t call 911.”

  I put the phone back in the hallway and cl
imbed into bed. Lester came to the door and tapped.

  “Can I open my eyes now?” he quipped.

  “Very funny,” I said.

  “What’s with all the phone calls?”

  “Elizabeth’s organized a suicide watch,” I told him.

  “Come again?”

  “Somebody has to call me every fifteen minutes to be sure I’m still breathing.”

  The phone rang again. Lester reached around behind him in the hall and grabbed it. I could hear Elizabeth’s voice asking about me. “Do you think I should come over and spend the night with her?” she asked.

  “Lester to Elizabeth! Lester to Elizabeth!” Les said into the phone. “There is no cause for alarm. I repeat: No cause for alarm! Temperature’s normal, pulse is normal, her pupils aren’t dilated or anything, and I ask you, beg you, to call off the suicide watch. Okay? She needs some sleep tonight. We all need sleep.”

  “If you’re sure, Lester,” I heard her say. “You can never tell what a depressed person might do.”

  “I can tell you what I might do if this bloody phone doesn’t stop ringing … ,” said Lester.

  “I’m sorry!” Elizabeth said. “We just wanted Alice to know we care.”

  “She knows! She knows! Good night!” Lester told her, and hung up. He came back to the doorway of my room. “So are you okay, Al?”

  “Yes. Listen, Lester, how much did you see in the bathroom?”

  “See of you, you mean? I saw two knobby knees, if you want the truth.”

  Knobby knees? I had knobby knees? Skinny, bony, knobby knees? If I thought they were fat and Lester thought they were knobby, they must be somewhere in between, which meant they were about right.

  “Thank you, Lester,” I said. “That was exactly what I needed to hear.”

  I didn’t go to sleep right away, though. Dad came in late from the Melody Inn, and stopped by my room to say good night. “In bed already?” he asked. “You aren’t sick, are you?”

  “Sick with a broken heart,” I said.

  He sat down on the edge of the bed. “It’s official, then?”

  “I guess so.”

  “Want to talk about it?”

  “Not really,” I told him. “I’m about talked out. Penny made a play for Patrick, and he fell for it. Simple as that. I don’t understand how a girl could flirt with a guy when she knows he’s somebody’s boyfriend.”

  “You’ve heard the saying, all’s fair in love and war,” Dad said.

  “But you never …” I stopped, because I realized too late what the answer was, and didn’t know how to retract the question.

  “As a matter-of-fact, I did. Twice, it seems.”

  “But you didn’t know that Miss Summers had been going with Jim Sorringer until after we’d taken her to the Messiah Sing-along, right?”

  “That’s right. I didn’t even know her until you invited her to go with us. She seemed to enjoy our company, because when I called and invited her out a second time, she said yes. It wasn’t until the third date that she explained she’d been having a serious relationship with Jim Sorringer but was having second thoughts about it. And when a man is attracted to a woman who is having second thoughts about the guy she’s been dating, well … it means you have a chance, and there’s nothing immoral about giving her a choice.”

  “But you said you’d done this twice. Flirted with a woman who belonged to another man.”

  “Well, I don’t think you could say that Sylvia ‘belonged’ to Jim Sorringer, any more than you could say he belonged to her. They weren’t officially engaged yet. As for your mother and Charlie Snow …”

  Charlie Snow. It was a name I had heard before, and knew only what Aunt Sally had told me. That she used to think she could never forgive Dad for taking Mom away from wealthy Charlie Snow, and all because Dad wrote Mom such beautiful love letters.

  “So tell me,” I said.

  “The truth is, your mother actually was engaged to Charlie when I met her. It was some kind of fraternity party at Charlie’s college, and a bunch of us guys from Northwestern were invited. Marie was there, as Charlie’s fiancée, and she danced with me just to be friendly; and we talked … danced and talked… . There was something about her eyes.

  Like we were talking more with our eyes than we were with our lips, but we caught ourselves looking at each other the rest of the evening, and finally it was as though our eyes were doing all the talking.”

  “Sounds more like infatuation to me than love,” I put in, thinking of Patrick and Penny and wondering if they’d been talking to each other with their eyes.

  “I had the same thought, believe it or not,” Dad went on. “And I imagine it occurred to Marie as well. You can’t go hopping from one man to another, one woman to another, just because you make good eye contact.”

  Dad sat staring at the wall as though his thoughts were a million miles away. “I couldn’t get her out of my mind, though. I saw her again at a neighborhood theater with some girlfriends, and we couldn’t stop staring at each other. So I wrote her a funny letter, and she replied, and I wrote another, more serious, saying that I knew she was spoken for, but if she wasn’t entirely sure … and it turned out she wasn’t entirely sure about Charlie. And so she gave his ring back.”

  I didn’t know if I wanted to hear all this or not. “If she could ditch him for you, though, she could have ditched you for someone else,” I said. “It doesn’t show much loyalty.”

  “Very true. And don’t think it didn’t occur to me. But she never did ditch me. Never, to my knowledge, was unfaithful. I don’t know if it was because we genuinely loved each other, which we did, or whether we were just lucky, or both. You never know about love.”

  “How did Charlie Snow take it?”

  “He was furious, of course. I would be, too. But he was also a gentleman. He and I met and had a talk. We didn’t do anything stupid like fight. He suggested that we go three months without either of us seeing Marie, and let her make up her mind, but a week later there was a knock on my door, and there stood Marie. She said, ‘Ben McKinley, if you don’t love me, I want to know now.’ I took her in my arms and never had a single regret.”

  It was such a beautiful love story, I felt like crying all over again. I wanted to be loved like that. I wanted Patrick’s arms around me. I wanted his light kisses on my lips, and the way he’d rub my shoulder sometimes when I was upset. Everything about him I loved. And now, Penny would have all the things that had been meant for me.

  Dad reached over and pulled me to him. I cuddled against him like I used to do when I was five.

  “I miss him a lot, Dad,” I said.

  “I know,” he told me, and kissed the top of my head.

  “Do you suppose I’ll ever have a love story like that?”

  “You may have one even better,” he said. “Life is full of surprises, sweetheart.”

  I pulled away finally and blew my nose. “What am I going to say when I see Patrick and Penny together at school?”

  “You’re going to say ‘Hi.’”

  We both smiled a little.

  “It’s going to be hard, Al, but you can do this! It’s a ritual we all have to experience before we’re grown—the admission price to being an adult.”

  “But you always won out! You were never the loser.”

  “Oh, but I was. A couple of times. There was this brunette with gray eyes, for instance, and … well, the spark just wasn’t there for her, and she was honest enough to tell me so.”

  “And you lived.”

  “Yes. And met someone even more wonderful, your mom.”

  I let out my breath and looked at my father. “Okay,” I said. “I can do this! I can get on that bus Monday and not make a fool of myself.”

  “That a girl! Of course you can, honey.”

  “But I still wish I could just jump from here to being married, like you and Mom, and skip all the stuff in between.”

  “It doesn’t work that way, Al.” Dad smiled. “And
you’d miss out on half the fun.”

  11

  The Hardest Part

  At least I had the weekend to recover, and the only place I had to go was the Melody Inn to put in my three hours Saturday morning. It wasn’t until I saw Marilyn in a new dress and haircut that I realized she was now assistant manager. Instead of straight brown hair that hung halfway down her back, it was shoulder length and curled gently under at the ends. Instead of a peasant dress or jeans and a wool sweater, she was wearing a teal-colored jersey dress with Native American jewelry. She looked great.

  “Gosh, Marilyn, you’re gorgeous!” I said.

  “Hope I don’t look as nervous as I feel,” she said. “There is so much to learn. But your dad seems to think I can do it.”

  “Of course you can.”

  “What would really help, Alice, is if you could run the Gift Shoppe on Saturday mornings by yourself. In fact, if you’re willing, I’m going to ask if we can’t hire you for all day on Saturdays. It would sure make things easier for me.”

  I stared. “Of course! I’d love to! Except I don’t know how to work the cash register and add tax and stuff.”

  “That I can teach you. C’mon,” she said, and I had my first business lesson.

  I got along fine, actually. I guess I’d watched Marilyn so much when she was working the Shoppe that I’d soaked up a lot by osmosis. Around eleven o’clock Dad came out of his office and said, “Marilyn told me she’d like to hire you full time on Saturdays, Al. What do you think?”

  “Please, Dad! I need something to take my mind off things right now.”

  “All right. If you think you can spare the time.”

  I hesitated. “If something really big comes up once in a while, could I still get the day off?” I asked.

  “We could probably arrange it,” he said.

  So I was hired from ten to six on Saturdays at minimum wage. I truly didn’t think about Patrick again until I went back to the stockroom to eat a sandwich with Marilyn. I’d just been too busy. But we were sitting next to a brand-new five-piece Ludwig drum set that Dad hadn’t put out on the floor yet, and it reminded me of Patrick. My eyes welled up, just like that.

  “Alice?” Marilyn questioned. “Good grief, what’s the matter?”