Alice in Rapture, Sort Of Read online

We promised that, too. Nothing was too awful for Mark Stedmeister.

  “Don’t ever speak to him again unless he apologizes,” Pamela added. I didn’t promise that one right away because “ever” is a long time. But when I thought about how awful Pamela had felt when he read the label on her bra, I knew I had to stick by her, so I promised.

  We sat on Pamela’s steps for about fifteen minutes before we saw the boys coming down the street.

  “Here they come,” said Elizabeth disgustedly.

  “Wait till they get even with the house next door and then we’ll get up and go inside,” said Pamela. “We want to make sure they know we saw them.”

  It was like a movie on television. As soon as the boys got even with the house next door, we got up and went inside, and Pamela slammed the door hard. Then we ran upstairs to her bedroom and sat at the window in the darkness, watching.

  We thought they’d come up on the porch and ring the bell, but they didn’t. They stood out under the streetlight and called to us.

  “Hey, Pamela!” Mark bellowed.

  “Elizabeth!” called Tom.

  “Al-ice!” yelled Patrick.

  It was like a zoo. The yelling went on for about five minutes. We didn’t get up and go down, and they didn’t come any closer.

  Pamela’s mother tapped on the bedroom door. “Is this going to go on all night?” she asked.

  “We’re not speaking,” Pamela explained.

  “Well, then go out there and tell them,” Mrs. Jones said, and went back downstairs. Obviously, she didn’t understand.

  “Why don’t we go on home and maybe they’ll stop yelling,” I suggested to Elizabeth. We stood up and groped our way across Pamela’s bedroom toward the door.

  “Wait,” said Pamela, grabbing for our arms. “Don’t you speak to Tom or Patrick either until Mark apologizes to me.”

  “Hey!” I said. “What did Patrick do?”

  “He laughed,” said Pamela. “So did Tom.”

  “But how will they know what’s wrong unless we tell them?” I asked.

  Pamela thought about it. I could just see the outline of her face there in the darkness, the silhouette of her long yellow hair. “Well, you can tell him that none of us is going to speak to any of them until Mark Stedmeister apologizes to me,” said Pamela.

  This was getting more and more complicated by the minute.

  “Promise!” Pamela demanded.

  “Elizabeth and Tom aren’t even going together yet,” I said, trying to stall.

  “I promise anyway,” said Elizabeth. “We have to stick together or no telling what they’ll do next. That was just too awful for words.” They both turned toward me.

  “I can’t promise that,” I said uncomfortably. “It doesn’t seem fair to Patrick, even though he was a jerk for laughing.”

  “Alice, think what Mark did to me!” Pamela said indignantly. “He humiliated me, and Patrick thought it was funny!”

  “Well, it was, Pamela, in a way,” I said. Oh, boy, was that ever the wrong thing to say.

  “Alice McKinley, you’re not my friend either!” Pamela said. “And I don’t think I’ll even speak to you until you apologize!”

  “Oh, Pamela, come on!” I said, but she ran down the hall to the bathroom and locked herself in.

  I didn’t know what to do. Elizabeth and I left, walking as fast as we could so we wouldn’t have to speak to the boys. They called after us and followed us for about half a block, staying some distance behind, and then they stopped. I was hoping that Patrick would follow me home so I could explain it to him, but he didn’t.

  Elizabeth went on over to her house and I went inside mine. I waited for Patrick to at least call me on the phone. He didn’t do that either.

  It’s weird. When Patrick and I first started going together in sixth grade, everything seemed so simple. We just walked to school together and ate lunch at the same table and that was that.

  But now we were all mixed up with Pamela and Elizabeth, who weren’t speaking to Mark and Tom, and I decided that I didn’t care what kind of support and cleavage the Up-Lift Spandex Ahh-Bra could give. I didn’t want one for anything in the world.

  7

  THE MUSIC LESSON

  WHEN I WAS IN CHICAGO OVER SPRING vacation and we were talking about boys, Aunt Sally happened to mention that a girl should never call a boy on the telephone. “It just isn’t done,” she said.

  There were so many rules to having a boyfriend that I wondered why somebody didn’t put out a manual. When Dad bought a new car, he got an owner’s manual. I don’t know why a boy and a girl can’t get one when they start going together for the first time. Girls don’t phone boys, boys walk on the outside of the sidewalk, you can’t give any presents that touch the skin… . Dad even told me that when you’re going upstairs, the girl goes first but when you’re going downstairs, the boy goes first. How do you ever know these things? Who decides?

  “It’s just common sense,” Dad explained. “The man is always supposed to be in a position to assist a lady if necessary. He walks behind her on the stairs so that if she falls backward, he can catch her. He walks ahead of her going downstairs in case she falls forward.”

  I tried to figure out how that would help. I imagined Patrick walking ahead of me down a long flight of stairs, me tripping and falling forward, bumping into Patrick, and both of us tumbling down together. I tried to see the etiquette in that.

  The big problem right then, however, was not knowing how to fall down the stairs gracefully but whether or not to phone Patrick. There we were the night before, all set to have a good time on the swings, when suddenly Pamela wasn’t speaking to Mark, Elizabeth wasn’t speaking to Tom, and I wasn’t supposed to say anything to Patrick. Somebody had to explain something to someone. Elizabeth would never have a steady boyfriend by seventh grade at this rate.

  It took me half the night to decide to call him the next day, and then it took two hours to get up my nerve.

  First of all, his mom would probably answer. Patrick doesn’t have any brothers or sisters, and his dad would be at work. I had never met his mother. I knew that when you called someone, you were supposed to say who you were. Should I just say my first name if his mother answered, or should I say, “This is Alice McKinley”? If I just said, “Alice,” it would sound as though she already knew me, as though I assumed that Patrick talked about me all the time. And was I supposed to say a few polite things to her first if she answered, or ask for Patrick right away?

  I rehearsed all the different ways to talk to Patrick’s mother, and the longer I rehearsed, the drier my mouth got and the sweatier my hands became. In desperation, I just grabbed the phone, dialed, and said, when his mom answered, “Is Patrick there?”

  “Just a minute,” said the voice at the other end. It was the kind of voice where you can’t tell anything at all from it. Was she nice? Was she bossy? I heard Patrick pick up the phone.

  “Yeah?”

  “This is Alice,” I said.

  “Hi,” said Patrick.

  I waited to see if he’d talk first—give me a clue about what he was thinking. He didn’t.

  “I wanted to explain about last night,” I said, and swallowed. “I’ve probably lost Pamela as a friend because I’m not supposed to talk to you ever again unless Mark Stedmeister apologizes to her.”

  “Well, that’s the dumbest thing I ever heard. What’s that got to do with me?” Patrick asked incredulously.

  “You laughed,” I said miserably.

  “Laughed?”

  “At Pamela’s bra.”

  “I was laughing at Mark wearing the bra. It could have been anybody’s bra, I still would have laughed,” said Patrick.

  He didn’t sound very sorry to me. How did boys go from being such jerks to people that grown-up women wanted to marry?

  “Well, Pamela’s awfully hurt,” I said coldly.

  “Pamela would be hurt if you hit her with a marshmallow,” said Patrick.

  W
as this going to be our first fight? Was it going to start out with Pamela’s bra and end up with my not having a boyfriend to open my locker for me in seventh grade?

  “Anyway, things are all patched up now,” Patrick told me.

  “What?”

  “They made up—Mark and Pamela.”

  “They did?”

  “Yeah. Mark went back later and took her some Whitman’s chocolates.”

  “What?”

  “And he’s taking her roller skating tonight.”

  “He is?”

  Suddenly I was furious. Here I had worried half the night and most of this morning about how I could explain things to Patrick, and all the while Pamela was at home eating Whitman’s chocolates and getting ready to go roller skating. I could have killed her.

  “Want me to come over?” Patrick asked.

  “Yes,” I said. “I do.”

  I called Pamela. “What’s the big idea?” I demanded.

  “Alice, I would have told you, honestly, but I’ve been so busy washing and drying my hair, I just haven’t had time!”

  I suppose when you have hair so long you can sit on it, it does take a long time to do it, but I figured Pamela could have found a minute somewhere to call. I began to suspect that she wanted to eat all the best chocolates herself so that by the time she got around to telling Elizabeth and me that she and Mark had made up over a Whitman’s Sampler, there would only be coconut and jelly centers left.

  I put on my jeans and a thin gauze shirt and was waiting out on the porch when Patrick arrived. I leaned against a post, my face turned up toward the sun, my curls tumbling—well, sort of—around my shoulders, and I smiled at him like all those women in the shampoo ads.

  “What’s the matter? Crick in your neck?” Patrick asked as he got off his bike and came up the steps.

  I stopped smiling my shampoo-girl smile and sat down on the swing.

  I was glad that we had talked about last night before it had turned into a real fight. Now all we had to do was get through the last five weeks of summer and maybe we’d still be going together when we started junior high. Patrick put one hand over mine on the swing and we pushed our feet against the floor. The swing began to move, and everything was back to normal.

  And then it happened.

  I think Patrick was still thinking about the night before. “Do you know the song, ‘Sorry Doesn’t Make It Right’?” he asked.

  I nodded. It was one of my favorite songs, probably because I heard it so much. Lester played it all the time. It’s about how it isn’t enough just to say you’re sorry when you hurt someone, you’ve got to really change.

  “I was thinking about that on the way over here,” he said, “but I can’t remember a certain part.” He started to sing it then, slowing the swing down a little to keep in time:

  “‘Sorry’s sugar from your lips, a cotton candy cane’ What’s the rest of it?”

  “‘Words can help, but just so much, you’ve got to really change,’” I told him.

  “Yeah, that’s it, but how does the melody go?”

  My stomach turned over. “I … I don’t know,” I said.

  “I thought you said you knew it.”

  “Well … Lester plays it all the time.”

  “Then think, Alice. Just hum it with me and see if it comes to you.” He started humming the part again about “Sorry’s sugar from your lips …” I didn’t make a sound.

  “You hum it,” he said.

  My stomach seemed to be moving up into my chest. My throat. “I … I can’t,” I said in a half whisper.

  “Why not?” Patrick was staring at me now.

  “I can’t sing,” I said simply.

  It was as though I’d said I couldn’t breathe or something.

  “Not at all?” he asked.

  I shook my head.

  “What happened?”

  “What do you mean, what happened? I’ve never been able to carry a tune. I’m tone deaf.”

  “But …” Patrick kept on staring. This was as bad as Mark Stedmeister with Pamela’s bra. This was worse. “But your dad plays the violin! Lester plays the guitar! Your father runs a music store!”

  “So I’m the family moron,” I said sullenly.

  “Hey, Alice, I didn’t mean that. I just think you’re too hard on yourself. I don’t think you’ve given yourself a chance.”

  “Patrick,” I said, “in grade school, when our class sang for the PTA meetings, I played the triangle instead. You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “I’ll bet you just got embarrassed once and never got over it, that’s all,” he said.

  “I tried singing at every birthday party up until I was eight and they almost sent me home,” I said, exaggerating.

  “Come on,” said Patrick, and without waiting for an answer, he went inside the house and sat down at Dad’s piano. I could feel little trickles of sweat running down my back.

  “Patrick,” I said, “I am not going to make a fool of myself in front of you.”

  This time Patrick looked me straight in the eye. “Alice, there’s no way you can make a fool of yourself in front of me. I like you too much for that.”

  Something warm and mushy filled my chest when he said that, and I believed him. Sometimes Patrick talks like a twenty-year-old man. I knew that while he may have laughed at Mark Stedmeister wearing Pamela’s bra, he wasn’t going to laugh at me no matter how bad I sounded.

  He played a note on the piano. “Listen,” he said, and played it again. “Now see if you can hum it.”

  I hummed.

  Patrick looked at me sort of strangely. “Listen again,” he said, and pressed down the same key.

  I hummed again.

  “Does that sound right to you?” he asked curiously.

  “What do you mean ‘right’? I hummed, didn’t I?”

  “But it wasn’t the same note.”

  “That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you.”

  “You can’t tell the difference?”

  “What difference?”

  “You can’t tell they’re not the same? Listen. I’ll play the note and you hum at the same time.”

  Patrick played the note. I hummed. It sounded like a two-toned horn.

  “I guess it’s not the same,” I said.

  Patrick looked jubilant. “See? See? You can tell the difference. All you need is practice, Alice.”

  I couldn’t believe I’d done something right.

  “You were singing too low,” Patrick explained. “You’ve got to come up a couple of notes.”

  Low? Up?

  “Patrick,” I said. “I haven’t the slightest idea what you are talking about.”

  “Listen.” Patrick played a bunch of notes on the piano, one after another. “Each note is getting higher, right?”

  “I guess so,” I said.

  “Listen again,” said Patrick. He played another bunch of notes. “These are getting lower.”

  I could hear that each one sounded different from the note before, but that was about all I knew.

  “Now,” said Patrick at last, and played a note on the piano again. “See if you can hum it this time. Try to hear it in your head before you start.” He played the note.

  I tried. I could feel sweat under my arms.

  “Can’t you come up a little higher, Alice?”

  I stood on my tiptoes and hummed again.

  Patrick stared at me in disbelief. “That’s lower!”

  I shrugged. “So there you have it, Patrick.”

  “Try, Alice! Once more.” He played the note. I hummed.

  “Almost!” he said. “Just a little higher.”

  This time I must have done it.

  “Good!” Patrick yelled. He played another note. “Now try this.” I hummed again.

  “No, that’s the same one you hummed before. Now you have to go lower.”

  I tried.

  “Lower, Alice! Not higher!”

  I could feel an
gry tears in my eyes. I gave a loud hum. An angry hum. This time even I could tell that it was so far off, it was ridiculous.

  And suddenly I went back out on the porch, plunked myself down on the swing, and swallowed and swallowed, trying to keep from crying.

  Patrick came out and sat down beside me. He knew I was crying, but he had the decency not to stare at me then. He put one hand over mine.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I won’t do that again.”

  That night I was helping Dad make lasagna for dinner and told him about the music lesson that never got off the ground.

  “I’ve always wondered about you, Al,” Dad said. “Just seems so unusual, really, in a whole family full of singers.”

  I flared up at Dad. “So have me tested! Send me to a special school! Operate!”

  “Listen, Al, you have so many good things going for you, I can’t even count them all,” Dad said. “As far as I’m concerned, you don’t have to sing again in your life unless you want to, and I won’t say another word about it.”

  I smiled a little.

  “Do you like me?” I asked, playing our little game.

  “Rivers,” said Dad.

  “Love me?”

  “Oceans,” he said, and gave me a hug, right there over the mozzarella.

  He left me alone in the kitchen to make the salad, and while I worked I sang that song to myself:

  “Sorry’s sugar from your lips,

  A cotton candy cane,

  Words can help, but just so much,

  You’ve got to really change.”

  I didn’t know about the music, but I got the words right, and to me, I sounded just fine.

  8

  COUPLES

  ELIZABETH CALLED ME AT ELEVEN O’CLOCK two nights later, just after I’d crawled into bed. She sounded breathless and far away.

  “Speak louder, Elizabeth,” I said after I’d answered the phone in the upstairs hall.

  “I can’t,” she told me.

  “Where are you?”

  “In the closet.”

  “The closet?”

  “I don’t want Mom and Dad to hear.”

  “What’s wrong?” I asked.

  “Nothing! It’s wonderful! Come over quick and I’ll tell you.”

  I ran across the street barefoot and sat on her steps in my pajamas.