Simply Alice Read online

  But Dad’s never been able to do that, so he padded to the door in his stocking feet, taking the mint chocolate chip with him.

  I heard the door open, and then what sounded like a cry from Dad, followed by, “Sylvia!”

  “Oh, Ben!”

  Les and I scooted out from the table and peered down the hall. My father had his arms around Sylvia Summers. All I could see of her was her light brown hair against Dad’s face, her black slacks and turquoise sweater, because her lips were probably against Dad’s, her arms were around his neck, he was hugging her close to him, while a cab pulled away out front.

  I quietly tiptoed out into the hall, rescued the mint chocolate chip from where it had fallen beside Sylvia’s suitcase, and took it back to the kitchen.

  7

  Conversation

  Les and I both finished our ice cream before Dad came up for air. We just sat at the kitchen table grinning at each other, and finally Dad and Sylvia walked into the kitchen. She looked flushed and girlish, and Dad had the look of a little boy in love, lipstick on his chin.

  So … are you going to elope?” Les asked, and that made us all laugh.

  “I really intended to spend spring vacation traveling around England,” Sylvia explained, sitting down at the table, “but as I was packing I thought, I don’t want to do this without Ben; I don’t want to see all these places until I can share them with him. And suddenly I knew that what I wanted most was to spend my two weeks back here. I called the airline, and they said a plane was leaving in three hours. I never packed so fast in my life. And here I am.”

  “Oh, Sylvia!” I said, jumping up and hugging her.

  All I could think of, of course, was where she was going to sleep. And then Dad said, “Let me take a quick shower and I’ll drive you over.”

  While Dad was upstairs, Sylvia explained that the woman who had been renting her house had decided to go to Syracuse the month before. “I’m anxious to see my place, drive my car, see how my plants survived the winter… .” She looked at me and smiled. “I guess I was just plain homesick. For Ben. For all of you.”

  “Are you going to stay?” I asked.

  “Oh, no. I’ve got to go back. A contract is a contract. But July will be here before we know it. I can hardly wait.”

  “Neither can I!” I said happily.

  “I don’t know if I’m ready for all that hullabaloo,” Les joked. “The ribbons, the flowers, the invitations, the clothes, the photographers, the… .”

  “How do you know, Les? You’ve never been married,” I said.

  “I’ve been best man at too many weddings. I know,” he said. “Besides, weddings are like infections. They’re contagious. Once dad gets caught up in it, we’ll all be caught up in it.” And then he said, “Seriously, Sylvia, we’re all glad you’re back. He’s a new man when you’re around.”

  “He’s the same old Ben to me,” she said, and smiled some more.

  She ate ice cream with us while we told her all our news and she told us more about Chester. And then Dad came down in a fresh shirt, his hair washed and combed, and as he threw on his jacket he said, “I don’t know just when I’ll be back. Carry on!” And, with his arm around Sylvia, they went out to his car.

  I looked at Les.

  “Shut up,” he said.

  “What? All I was going to say was—”

  “Don’t even go there,” said Les.

  I grinned. “I think we should have given Dad a curfew.”

  Les smiled back. “It wouldn’t have done one bit of good.”

  Of course I had to go right to the phone and call Elizabeth, then Pamela.

  “Where is she going to sleep?” asked Elizabeth. She sounded just like me.

  “Dad’s driving her back to her place.”

  “Oh, Alice! Isn’t this exciting! In four more months you’ll be calling her ‘Mother.’ You never guessed, did you, when you walked in her English class back in seventh grade that someday she’d be marrying your father?”

  “No. And Dad never guessed it, either. Boy, he was so lonely back then, Liz. Isn’t it amazing how fast your life can turn around?”

  I stayed up late watching an old ER rerun with Lester, and then I conked out. Around eleven-thirty I felt someone shaking my shoulder and opened my eyes to see that I had fallen across Lester’s lap, one arm on the couch cushion, one dangling on the floor, my feet at an awkward angle on the rug.

  “Hey, Al, go to bed,” he told me. He’d turned the TV off, and I realized I must have been asleep for a while, because my neck was stiff. I slowly unwound my feet and sat up.

  “Is Dad home yet?” I asked, flopping back against the cushions.

  “Not yet.”

  “I just had the weirdest dream, Les! I”—I yawned, then snapped my jaws together—“I dreamed that there were all these people—I don’t know where I was, but we were in this big crowd, and you were chasing me, only I don’t know why, and Dad and Sylvia were there but they didn’t try to stop you, and I realized I knew how to fly. I climbed up this tall ladder … no, maybe it was a tower … and I got to the top and was so sure that if I just put my arms straight out and flapped them up and down, I would fly. I just knew it. And you got to the top of the tower and I said I was going to jump off and you said no, wait, and all the people were looking up and I jumped … and then I woke up. I wanted to see if I could do it, but I woke up! I was so sure!”

  I yawned again and hugged myself with my arms, my eyes half closed. “Why were you chasing me?” I asked.

  “How the heck should I know? It was your dream.”

  “What do you think it meant?”

  “Aha!” Lester stroked his chin and took on the voice of a Viennese psychiatrist. “Und vat ver you vearing?”

  “Uh … shorts, I think. And a T-shirt; I’m not sure.”

  “Un vat vass I vearing?”

  “I don’t know. Jeans, maybe.”

  “Vat iss your first azzoziation to my chazing you?”

  I thought about it. “I don’t think I was scared. I just wanted to show you I could fly.”

  “Aha!” said Lester. And then, in his normal voice, “Obviously, you’ve got a crush on your older brother and—”

  “I do not!” I said.

  “And to gain his approval, you wanted to show that you could do something extraordinary. In this case, that you could fly.”

  “I thought dreams were supposed to be predictions of things to come.”

  “You want predictions? Okay. You are going to do something scary that you have never done before. How’s that?”

  “And? What happens, Les?”

  “You fall flat on your face.”

  “Les-ter!”

  “So go to bed, Al,” he said. “I’m tired.” He got up and began turning off lights.

  “You’re going to leave one on for Dad, aren’t you?” I said.

  “Oh. Right.” He left a light on by the phone in the hallway, and we both went upstairs. I put on my pajamas and fell into bed. I slept soundly till about two-fifteen. I was desperately thirsty from all the corn chips Les and I had eaten, so I got up to get a drink. The light was still on downstairs. I glanced at Dad’s room. The door was open, his bed untouched.

  I was in my Huck Finn costume the next morning and just getting ready to leave when Dad came downstairs in his robe, looking very sleepy. Les glanced up from his coffee and raised one eyebrow at Dad, smiling.

  “Guess I overslept,” Dad said, reaching for a mug from the cupboard, trying to keep his eyes open and look more awake than he was.

  “And … uh … what time did you get in last night?” Les said.

  “Pretty late, I’m afraid. We had a lot to talk about.”

  “Uh-huh,” I said.

  “She sure took us by surprise, didn’t she?” said Dad.

  Les cleared his throat and looked at me. “I don’t know, Al. Do you think we should have some rules around here? A curfew, maybe?”

  “I don’t think that el
even o’clock would be at all unreasonable,” I said.

  “And of course we need to know where you’ll be, Dad, and who you’re with,” Les continued.

  “And you have to promise to call if you see you’re going to be late,” I said.

  Dad just chuckled. “Go ahead,” he said. “Have your fun. But you can’t get a rise out of me, because I’m mellow.”

  “Cool, you mean,” said Lester.

  “Yes,” said Dad, smiling still. “Very cool indeed.”

  The Metro was really crowded the next day. Some big event was going on in Washington, and there was standing room only. It wasn’t too difficult for Pamela and me to maneuver in our costumes, but Elizabeth, in her monster suit, with footpads and claws, didn’t have such an easy time of it. Half the stuff on her costume was attached by Velcro, and she didn’t want to lose any of it. Of course, she could have carried it in a bag and put it on once we got to the library, but that would have ruined the fun.

  We had to squeeze to make sure we all got on the same car, and when the train stopped at the next station, everyone had to move back even more. The closer we got to downtown Washington, though, the more people got off, and when there was space enough to breathe again, I looked at Elizabeth and said, “Liz, your goggle eyes are missing.”

  “What?” She reached up and felt the space above her own eyes where the huge goggle eyes of the monster were supposed to be. They were gone.

  We immediately started looking all around as people smiled at us and children pointed, and then Pam said, “Oh, look!”

  A very dignified man in a gray pinstripe suit had a briefcase in one hand, and was holding on to the handrail overhead with the other. He was standing near the front of the car, and the band of Velcro with the goggle eyes on it was stuck to the bottom of his suit coat.

  “Pamela!” Elizabeth gasped.

  “Go get them!” I said. “The next stop is Metro Center, and half the car will be getting off.”

  Someone moved forward in the aisle, brushing past the man in the pinstripe suit, and now the goggle eyes had slipped down to the dignified man’s pants and seemed glued to his bottom. A little boy saw them and began laughing.

  “Liz, go!” I said again.

  Elizabeth lurched forward as the train began to slow, her footpads flopping on the floor of the car, and when she reached the gentleman she said, “Excuse me, sir, but I believe my eyes are on the seat of your pants.” And she bent down and peeled them off while he stared at her incredulously. Two rows of people who were watching burst into laughter, and then the man laughed, too.

  He turned and looked at Pamela and me, and then Elizabeth again. “You look like something out of a book I used to read to my son when he was little,” he said. “‘The night Max wore his wolf suit and made mischief of one kind or another, his mother called him wild thing… .’” He winked at us. “Maurice Sendak, I think,” he said, and as the door opened, he stepped out onto the platform and into the crowd.

  Sylvia and I went shopping the last day of spring vacation. Dad didn’t feel he could take any more time away from the store, and Sylvia needed some things she couldn’t find in England, so she asked if I would like to go to White Flint with her. When I got home from the library and changed clothes, she drove over from Kensington and picked me up, and we went to Bloomingdale’s and Lord and Taylor’s. I would have followed her wherever she went, lost in a trail of her wonderful perfume.

  White Flint Mall is a fancier kind of mall than Wheaton Plaza, and it was having a strolling fashion show. Models walked around all three levels in clothes I wouldn’t wear in a million years, and there were strolling musicians and a photographer taking people’s pictures.

  We had just bought some panty hose and a white jacket for Sylvia, and a couple of shirts for me, and were having tea and scones at a little table outside a restaurant on the top level when the musicians came over to play for us. One was playing an accordion and the other a violin, and they smiled at us—at Sylvia, mostly—as they played. And while we were listening, a photographer snapped our picture and gave Sylvia a number and an address in case she wanted to order a copy.

  “I’m glad I came back over spring vacation,” she said when he’d gone.

  “I’m glad you came, too,” I said. “I’ve never seen Dad so happy.”

  “And I’ve never felt so happy,” she said. “I can’t believe I’m so lucky to get a ready-made family. You know what it felt like today, shopping with you? As though I were with my sister again.”

  “She’s out west, isn’t she?”

  “Yes. I almost feel guilty not going out there while I’m back, but I’ll see her in just a few months when she comes for the wedding. We used to do everything together when we were growing up, and I miss that sometimes.”

  “What all did you do?” I asked.

  “Well”—Sylvia took another sip of her tea—“let’s see. She’s a couple years younger than I am. I wheeled her around in my doll buggy once. I remember that because I accidentally tipped it, and over she went. I taught her to play hopscotch. We sang duets together. We curled each other’s hair, I don’t know… . Some girls fight with their sisters, but we were really close.”

  “It’s good you remember so much,” I told her.

  “What do you remember of your mother?”

  “Not very much. But I think she and Dad loved each other a lot.” I wondered suddenly if I should have said that. Or why I’d said that. Why did my brain think of what might upset someone the most and then direct my mouth to say it? But it didn’t seem to bother her a bit. If anything, she liked to hear it.

  “That’s a good sign,” she said. “I don’t think I would be comfortable marrying a man who had been miserable in a marriage. This means he liked being married, and knows it will probably make him happy again.”

  “But don’t … don’t you want him to forget about Mom when he’s with you?” I asked.

  Sylvia cocked her head and looked at me with her blue-green eyes. “Why on earth would I expect that of him, Alice? Marie was such a big part of his life. There were some men in my life who I like to think about now and then. Little things that remind me of them. Ben and I like to share these memories with each other.”

  “What?” I said. “You actually tell each other you’re thinking of someone else?”

  She laughed. “Why not? There’s a lot of difference between just thinking about a person and actually going out and being with another person—in a close, intimate way, I mean. That kind of relationship is reserved for your dad.”

  I sighed. “It sounds very adult to me. I’m not sure I could ever feel that mature about things. I mean, that I wouldn’t mind if a guy I was with was thinking about another girl. To tell the truth, I don’t understand a lot about love.”

  Sylvia chuckled and divided the last scone between us. “To tell the truth, I don’t, either. But we don’t have to, you know. All we need to do is enjoy it.”

  She went back two days before her school reopened after spring break. I thought Dad would be really down, but he wasn’t. He seemed just as happy as he was before, as though her love would keep him going for the next few months until she was in his arms again. I was almost jealous of her—that she could make him feel that good.

  When I kissed him that night, I played our little game. “Like me?” I asked, rubbing his nose with mine.

  “Hm?” he said.

  I tried again. “Like me?”

  “Rivers.” He grinned.

  “Love me?”

  As I said the words, however, the phone rang and he sprang up to answer. It was someone collecting used clothes for Purple Heart. When he came back to the sofa, he said, “I thought it might be Sylvia saying that her flight was canceled or something.”

  I repeated the phrase. “Love me?”

  “Of course,” he said.

  “No, Dad! You’re supposed to say ‘oceans’!” I told him.

  “Of course. Oceans,” he said. But he could have
put a little more feeling into it.

  8

  Production

  We had three weeks after we returned from spring vacation to get the musical in shape. The cast worked to master their lines, the orchestra to fine-tune the music, the stage crew to get all the props and costumes. The production was to run for four nights—Friday and Saturday of one week, and Friday and Saturday the next. Dad gave me both Saturdays off from the Melody Inn, and a couple of the teachers even gave us an extra week to do our assignments.

  The stage crew was down to the nitty-gritty now—no goofing off. Because I was matter-of-fact with the three guys who had “tattooed” me, they began to treat me okay. Harry, in fact—the fourth guy on the stage crew—apologized for not stopping the other boys when they’d pulled my jeans down. “Next time I see something like that,” he said, “I’ll do more than just tell them to stop.”

  “Let’s hope there’s no next time for anybody,” I said.

  A week before the first performance, Mr. Ellis told us that the entire cast and crew were invited to the home of Kurt Weinstein, the guy who was playing Tevye, to observe the Sabbath. At first they said only the cast members were to go, then they said everyone was invited, that the Weinsteins had a big house. Some of the kids couldn’t make it, but the rest of us, maybe thirty in all, sat or stood around the Weinsteins’ family room on a Friday night, meeting the parents and grandparents who spent the Sabbath with them every week, as well as the ninety-eight-year-old great-grandfather.

  We shared stories and listened to the grandfather’s hesitant account of a grammar-school production he was in after his family came over from Russia.

  “And because I did not still know the English well, I was given no lines to say, but was to play the part of the mule,” he told us, and we laughed.

  Kurt’s father studied his watch and, at sundown, signaled that the Sabbath candles were to be lit. We all squeezed into the living and dining rooms, where two long tables had been placed end to end, extending from one room into the other. The meal had been cooked, and the heavy silver candelabrum polished. Kurt’s mother, wearing a beautiful silk blouse, lit two candles, and Mr. Weinstein explained that they were symbols of peace, freedom, and light, which the Sabbath brings to the human soul. Copies of the blessings had been given to each of us, and we watched in fascination as the candlelight flickered and the prayers were said.