Achingly Alice Read online

  “No. Alice, do you want some tea while we talk?”

  I nodded. Somehow it would seem easier with a cup of tea in my lap, I thought. I watched while she went to the kitchen, put two cups of water in the microwave, and returned with tea.

  I thought about what she’d said, but wasn’t sure I believed her. “What I came to tell you is that”—I gulped—“I lied to you. I wanted so much for you to marry Dad that … that when I found out you were spending New Year’s Eve with Mr. Sorringer, I …” Here I let out my breath and tried again. “I made up that story about seeing Mr. Sorringer with another woman. Well, not exactly, because I had seen him in a car with Mrs. Rollins on their way to Pizza Hut.” My voice cracked a little. “I wanted you to think that if you married him, he couldn’t be trusted, so I made up that story.”

  “Oh,” she said quietly. I glanced at her sideways and saw that she had pressed her lips together. “I guess I did wonder about that some, but decided pretty quickly that it wasn’t true, and guessed at why you’d done it. The truth is, I applied to be an exchange teacher last October, not since you told me about Mr. Sorringer, so the lie really had nothing to do with my decision, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

  I stared. “Last October?”

  “Yes. I’ve always wanted to go to England again, I loved it so when I visited once. Living there as an exchange teacher sounded as though it would be ideal. So when I read about this grant last fall, I decided there was no harm in trying. I had all the qualifications they were asking for, and I just decided that … well … with all the confusion in my life right then, maybe this would be good for me. That when I came back, things would be clearer. It’s only for a year.”

  I looked at her in dismay. “Only a year! It’s a whole year out of my dad’s life, Miss Summers! It’s a whole year you could be married!” I set my cup on the coffee table and cried in earnest.

  “Oh, honey …” Miss Summers put her arm around me and drew me closer while I blew into my Kleenex. “This is all very grown-up stuff, but I think you’re entitled to know some of it. Jim Sorringer and I have known each other for a long time. I guess we sort of assumed that we’d marry eventually, though we’re both very serious about our careers.

  “He went to California to finish his Ph.D., and—as you know—it was while he was gone that I met your dad and … and fell in love with him.”

  I gasped and turned to look at her. She’d actually said she loved him.

  “Then why … ?”

  “Because I’m not entirely convinced I don’t still love Jim as well. I’d love to be your stepmother, to be Ben’s wife, but at the same time, I have to ask myself, ‘Do I know what I’m doing?’ The worry has been eating at me, Alice—I’ve even lost some weight over it—because I don’t want to make a mistake. Too many people are involved. A year away by myself just might be what I need to decide.”

  “What if you meet someone else over there?” I croaked, and this time she laughed.

  “I think I’ve got more decisions than I can handle right now.”

  “But … but … don’t you want to marry and have … have a baby while …” I never dreamed I’d be asking her anything so personal, but at this point I didn’t care.

  “While I can?” she asked gently. “I wish I could, but I’ve had a hysterectomy, Alice, so I can never have children. I guess my students are my children, and I’m happy. But I promise to come back, and whatever I decide, I know I’ll want to see you first thing.”

  I hugged her. “I’ll want to see you, too. So will Dad. And I’m sorry I told that lie.”

  “I am, too, but I understand why you did it. Thanks for coming over, Alice. This is woman-talk, you know. Between the two of us.”

  “I know.”

  I had felt as low as a centipede when I walked through her door twenty minutes before, and now, as I went back out again, I felt I had turned into a butterfly or something. I had just had a woman-to-woman talk with Miss Sylvia Summers. I knew something about her body none of the other kids knew. She had actually poured her heart out to me—to me—Alice Kathleen McKinley like … like I was a psychiatrist or something! I opened the car door and slid elegantly onto the seat beside Lester.

  He turned off the radio. “Well?” he said, glancing over.

  “You can take me home now,” I said grandly.

  Lester turned the key in the ignition, still looking at me. “Did you level with her, Al?”

  “Completely.”

  “The whole truth, and nothing but the truth?”

  “It’s confidential, and I will protect it with my life,” I said.

  “I see. And is there anything else the duchess cares to share with her chauffeur?”

  “Only that a year will help Miss Summers clear up her confusion, and that she’s looking forward to seeing us again.”

  “Thank you, Miss McKinley, for your enlightening information,” said Lester.

  I grinned at him, and he smiled back as he turned toward the Beltway and headed home.

  I did not call Elizabeth and Pamela when I got back. I was afraid I’d tell them too much. I didn’t tell Dad I’d gone to see Miss Summers, either. I knew she’d told him all she’d told me, and more. When I saw my friends at school and they asked if I’d found out anything, I just said that she and Dad were very fond of each other, but that being an exchange teacher for a year was something she’d always wanted to do, and Dad wouldn’t stand in her way.

  How was it, though, I wondered, that Miss Summers could have had a hysterectomy and still look so gorgeous and sexy, while Janice Sherman had lost her uterus, too, and acted as though if she didn’t get it or Dad or a trombone instructor or something, she would take a vow of crabbiness for the rest of her life?

  And then I remembered reading something Dad had scribbled on the inside corner of one of our poetry books: Happiness is wanting what you have. Being happy with what you’ve got. Enjoying it, and making it all it could be, in other words. I went to the shelf to read it again, but when I opened the cover I saw it wasn’t Dad’s handwriting at all: It was Mom’s.

  10

  SOMETHING HOPEFUL

  I FELT STRANGELY CALM AND QUIET THE rest of that week. It was as though I had been waiting all these months for the other shoe to drop—to find out whether Miss Summers would or wouldn’t marry Dad. I still didn’t know, but suddenly everything was on hold.

  Elizabeth had said there ought to be a day each week when nothing could happen to change your life, and for now—for Dad’s love life, anyway—we had a whole year. But maybe not. Maybe Dad would find someone else and fall in love. I had to be prepared for anything.

  The point was, whatever happened, I could live with it. As Patrick said, this wasn’t the end of the world. Miss Summers must have felt pretty terrible when she found out she could never have children, but she decided to live a full and happy life anyway. I’d be really unhappy for a while if she decided to marry Mr. Sorringer, but I’d get over that, too. And I knew that Dad wouldn’t let it ruin his life, either. He still had Les and me.

  Maybe Dad was feeling the same way, because he was quiet, but he didn’t seem as depressed. At least he knew that Mr. Sorringer wouldn’t be near her, either, and he couldn’t help but be glad she’d refused Sorringer’s ring.

  Life sort of returned to normal. In Camera Club we were practicing action shots, and there were times Sam seemed to know as much as the teacher. His mom is a photographer for a weekly newspaper, he told me, so that’s why he knows so much.

  At Elizabeth’s house, Nathan was over his colic and we were having a lot of fun—Elizabeth, Pamela, and I—trying to get him to laugh. I never knew that a baby has to practice laughing. I mean, when he laughed for the first few times, it sounded more like hiccups. He even startled himself. He’d laugh, then look around as if to say, “Where did that come from?”

  Pamela’s mom had a fight with her NordicTrack instructor and was talking about coming back home, but Mr. Jones says he doesn’t
want her back. Pamela came over and stayed with me for a couple of days to let them sort it out, and we played lots of board games with Lester and concentrated on just having fun. I think it helped, even though her mom and the NordicTrack guy made up again.

  Meanwhile, we were learning new things at school. Mr. Kessler, in biology, brought in a bunch of frogs—dead, of course, and pickled in formaldehyde—and we had to dissect them, two people per frog. I got Sam for a partner.

  “Tell me again just how knowing the difference between a frog’s stomach and spleen is going to help me in my future life,” I quipped.

  And Sam whispered, “I have it on good authority that this isn’t biology at all. It’s gourmet cooking, and after we remove the intestines, we’re going to have frog legs for lunch.” We laughed out loud.

  We each had a long pair of tweezers and were removing organs one by one and placing them on a paper towel. I had just lifted out part of the intestines when Sam said, “Alice, would you go to the semi-formal with me?”

  The intestines dropped on the paper towel, and I watched the formaldehyde stain spreading slowly across the paper.

  “Don’t look so startled,” Sam said. “I didn’t ask you to eat those or anything.”

  I tried to laugh, but my head whirled.

  “Well, I … actually, I’m … gee, Sam, I don’t know what to say,” I finally blurted out. “I’m flattered, really, that you asked, but … well, I’m sort of going with Patrick Long.”

  “Just sort of?” he said. “I mean, has he asked you to the dance?”

  “Well, not yet, but …”

  “Maybe he’s taking someone else.”

  “Oh, no. I mean, he wouldn’t …” I looked at Sam. “Is he?”

  “I don’t know. I was just asking. Listen, though. If he does take someone else, I’d like you to go with me. Just let me know, okay?”

  “Well, sure! But I don’t expect you to wait around.”

  “I won’t.”

  The rest of the day was a blur. I couldn’t have told a frog’s leg from a frog’s lung after that. When I saw Elizabeth and Pamela later and told them, Elizabeth said, “It would be wrong to go with Sam when you belong to Patrick, Alice.”

  “Belong? Like a dog or something?”

  “It would be preadultery, practically,” she said.

  I came to a stop right there in the hallway. “Preadultery? Good grief, Elizabeth, does every sin have a prefix?”

  “A lot of venial sins add up to mortal sins, you know,” she told me. I’ll bet Elizabeth has rules that not even her priest would recognize.

  But as the day went on, I decided that while I couldn’t make changes in anyone else’s love life, I could do something about my own. And when we got on the bus that afternoon, I sat down in one of the seats and pulled Patrick down beside me before he could go sit with his buddies near the back.

  “Patrick, I have to know,” I said. “Are we going to the semi-formal together or not?”

  “Of course!” He looked at me and handed me a stick of gum, but I pushed it away.

  “I mean, am I special to you or not?” I asked.

  “What do you think? I gave you a one-pound Hershey’s Kiss for Valentine’s Day, didn’t I? Do you think I put one in all the girls’ lockers?”

  “Well, if you weren’t planning to take me to the dance, I’d decided to go with someone else.”

  Now he was really staring. “Who?”

  “It doesn’t matter, but I had to know.”

  “Of course I’m planning to take you. Who else would I take? I didn’t think I had to ask. I just assumed …”

  “You took me for granted, Patrick! Like I’ll always be here waiting for you, faithful Alice, whether you ask me or not,” I said.

  Patrick got to his feet, then dramatically knelt down in the aisle on one knee and reached for my hand. The other kids stared.

  “Alice, will you go to the semi-formal with me?” he asked.

  I started laughing. “Yes, you nut,” I said, and everybody clapped.

  Lester was home when I got there, and I told him about Patrick on the bus.

  “What is it about knees, Al?” he asked. “Why do women like to see men down on their knees? Subjugation? Humiliation?”

  “Maybe it’s about the only time a girl’s taller than the guy,” I told him, and Lester laughed.

  Dad left shortly after dinner to go over to Miss Summers’s house, and I was just going out to the kitchen to see if there was any pie left when the phone rang. I answered in the hall.

  “Alice?” came a familiar voice. “How are you? I haven’t talked with you in a long time.”

  “Crystal!” I said in surprise, and Lester, who had just sprawled out on the couch with the sports section, paused with his arms in the air. “Well … well, how are you?” I asked. “How’s the bride?” Is that what you say to your brother’s former girlfriend who is now married to somebody else? I was a bridesmaid at her wedding last Thanksgiving.

  “Oh, I’m all right, I guess. How’s eighth grade going? How was Christmas?”

  “Everything’s fine,” I told her. “Miss Summers spent Christmas Eve and Christmas Day here with us, and we had a good time. I’m going to the semi-formal with Patrick.”

  “Wonderful! What are you going to wear?”

  “Your bridesmaid dress, what else? I look good in green.”

  “It’ll be perfect, Alice. You looked gorgeous.”

  “So did you, Crystal. You were a beautiful bride.”

  There was a pause. “I just wondered … Les wouldn’t happen to be around, would he?” she asked.

  I guess there was a pause on my part, too. Then I said, too quickly, stumbling over my words, “Sure. I’ll get him. Just a minute …”

  Lester was already half-standing to make his getaway, newspapers falling to the floor, and shaking his head at me, but I just shrugged and held out the phone. I’d already said he was there.

  He gave me a hopeless look and took the phone, and I took his place on the couch with the newspaper, but I didn’t read a word. I was listening as hard as I could.

  “Well, hello,” Lester said, a little too formal-sounding, I thought. “Not bad … yeah, about the same. Philosophy paper. Major research … yeah, I graduate in June, but I’m thinking of graduate school, if I can get a fellowship. What’s new with you? … hmmm … hmmm … yeah? … oh … hmmm … hmmm …”

  I didn’t know what Crystal was saying, but I could tell by the tone of the hmmms that Crystal wasn’t just talking everyday stuff.

  “Now, Crystal … ,” he said at last. “I don’t know why you’re telling me all this … yeah … yeah … but that’s between you and Peter … hmmm … Crystal, that chapter of your life is over now. You’ve got to get on with it, and you’ve got to do it with Peter … No, I don’t mean to preach, but …”

  When Lester hung up finally, I said, “Lester, I’m proud of you.”

  “Anybody ever tell you you’ve got big ears?” he said in reply.

  But I went out to the kitchen, found the last piece of chocolate pie, divided it in half, and took Lester’s over to him and set it on the coffee table. “From your admiring sister,” I said.

  I had just eaten my half and licked the plate clean when the phone rang again. Aunt Sally.

  “Hello, dear,” she said. “How are things going?”

  I told her that Dad was out with Miss Summers, and Lester had been working on a paper for philosophy, that I was going to the dance with Patrick, and that I had dissected frogs in biology. I didn’t think I had to tell her yet that Miss Summers was going to England.

  “Oh, honey, did you know that your mother was afraid of frogs?” she said.

  “She was? Frogs?”

  “Anything that jumped out at her. We just got the biggest kick out of Marie. Spiders she could stand, snakes, even, anything that moved slow. But let a mouse or a roach or a frog jump out, and she would let out a scream you could hear a block away. I don’t know ho
w in the world she survived her honeymoon in a tent.”

  “Maybe when you’re in love it doesn’t matter,” I said.

  “When you’re in love, you’re deaf and blind, my dear,” said Aunt Sally. “You’re absolutely right.”

  I don’t know why I asked—because she was on the phone, I guess—but I said, “How do you know when you’re really, truly in love with someone, Aunt Sally?”

  “Oh, my, not even the greatest thinkers of the world can agree on that,” she said. “I suppose when you care about that person almost more than yourself—when you can’t imagine going the rest of your life without him—you’re in love.”

  “But … but what if you feel that way about two different people?”

  “You’re in love with two boys, Alice?” Actually, it was Miss Summers I had in mind, but Aunt Sally said, “At your age you can’t have too many boyfriends, dear. How can you possibly know you’re in love with one unless you’ve tried a few others?”

  “Tried? Like riding a horse or something?”

  “No!” Aunt Sally said quickly. “I just mean you have to go out with lots of boys and see how you’re alike and how you’re different. Listen, dear, I really called to say that Carol has a conference in Washington, D.C., next month, and I thought I might come with her and visit you while she attends meetings. I just wondered if it would be convenient. It would be four days the third week in April. Could you ask your dad to call me?”

  “Sure,” I said.

  “And tell him I’ll cook some of his favorite dishes as a treat—Marie’s recipes,” she said.

  It would be a treat just seeing my suave, sophisticated cousin Carol again, I knew that.

  The next day at school I stopped by the office to check on spring vacation, to see if it fell during the week Aunt Sally and Carol would be in town. Mr. Sorringer was standing by the file cabinet behind the attendance desk, talking with Mrs. Rollins.

  “Her eighty-first birthday! You can’t just send your mother a card without a note in it, Jim!” the secretary was saying. “If I was eighty-one and my son didn’t bother to write me a letter, I’d disown him!”