The Agony of Alice

by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor

  I was trapped. If I went home, Elizabeth Price would be waiting to tell me all the wonderful things she was going to do in Mr. Weber’s class. If I went back to the playground, I’d run into Mrs. Plotkin. I couldn’t stay around on the street either. No telling where the boy with the blue underpants would turn up next. I decided to keep right on walking the four blocks to Georgia Avenue and spend the next hour at the Melody Inn.

  Dad’s store is on a corner. The show window facing the side street is full of T-shirts and guitars and drum sets with blue transparent heads. The show window facing Georgia Avenue has a piano in it with a violin resting on top and a pair of white gloves on top of the violin. A yellow book called Mozart: Nineteen Sonatas for the Piano is on the music stand.

  Mostly what you see when you first walk in are clarinets and organs and violas and cymbals. There are stairs at the back of the store leading up to the loft, with the glass cubicles for lessons.

  It’s the low-ceilinged room under the loft that I like best, the Gift Shoppe. The shelves are full of little boxes, each holding a certain size guitar string or pick. There are drum keys, tuning pegs, bow screws, chinrests, and snakelike things for cleaning the spit out of trumpets. T-shirts in all designs and colors hang from hooks on the ceiling; rock posters decorate the walls.

  “Well, Alice, what are you buying today?” Loretta Jenkins always asks me. Loretta runs the Gift Shoppe. She’s got wild curly hair and she always pulls a T-shirt over whatever else she’s wearing. On this day she was wearing one that said, BRAHMS DOES IT BEST.

  Dad says Loretta is sort of a birdbrain, but I like her better than Janice Sherman, who works over in the sheet music section. Janice wears glasses with a chain around them. I get ten percent off on anything I buy, but I never buy sheet music because I can’t even carry a tune. Whenever there’s a birthday and I start to sing, people stare at me. I can tell it sounds awful, but I can’t tell you why.

  Once, when I was in second grade, we were practicing “The Merry Little Horses” for a PTA meeting, and the teacher stopped the music and had us sing it row by row. When she got to ours, she had us sing it two by two. When it got down to me and a girl named Margaret Keiler, the teacher asked me if, instead of singing, I might like to play the triangle. At the PTA that night, while the other children sang, I held the triangle in one hand, a stick in the other, and at the end of each verse, I went, Ping.

  Anyway, as soon as I come in the Gift Shoppe, Loretta starts the gift wheel. It’s a circular glass case that goes around and around. If you see something interesting, you can press the button and the wheel will stop.

  There are music boxes with little conductors on top who wave their arms, coffee mugs with composers’ names on them, plaster busts of Bach and Handel, pads of paper that say “Chopin Liszt” instead of “Shopping List,” plastic rain bonnets with notes painted round the edge, and little ceramic insects playing instruments. Sometimes, if something gets chipped, Loretta lets me have it. I waited weeks for someone to drop a ceramic cricket, but nobody did.

  On this particular day, however, there was something new on the gift wheel—a tortoiseshell barrette with the treble clef painted on it in gold. The minute I saw it, I thought of Miss Cole and her beautiful hair.

  Loretta saw me looking at the barrette. “Just got that in this morning,” she said.

  I pressed the button to make the gift wheel stop, and Loretta got it out for me and laid it on the counter.

  I ran my finger over the smooth finish. “How much?” I asked her.

  “Three dollars, less ten percent,” she said.

  I imagined walking into Miss Cole’s safety patrol meeting the next day. I imagined myself going up to her afterward and giving her the barrette. Then I imagined how she would put her arm around me and together we would go back to Mrs. Plotkin’s classroom and move all the stuff out of my desk.

  Loretta waited for me to make up my mind. She keeps a wad of gum stuck in one cheek to chew when my dad isn’t around, and I could hear her jaws working on it. I ran my finger over the tortoiseshell barrette once more, then reached down in my jeans pocket, took out my entire allowance for the week, and laid it on the counter.

  6

  LOOKING AFTER LESTER

  WE GOT PIZZA FROM SHAKEY’S AND TOOK it home. Dinner is family time in our house. Dad won’t let anybody watch the news or turn on the radio or bring a magazine to the table.

  “You mean I have to sit here and look at her?” Lester said once. That was when I was still chewing with my mouth open.

  “The way you eat, Lester, that amounts to about five and a half minutes,” Dad said.

  I learned to chew with my mouth closed, but that’s about all the table manners I know—that and how you don’t reach across someone’s plate for the butter. I’m always afraid I’ll get invited somewhere and they’ll have two spoons or two forks at each plate and then I’ll just die.

  I do a lot of my dying at the table, actually. There are just too many things that can go wrong. I read somewhere that if you have dinner with the queen and you make a mistake, she’ll make the same mistake just so you’ll feel better. It told how a man picked up his finger bowl once and drank the water, so the queen had to do it too. And another time a woman ate a paper doily that was sticking to the bottom of her tart, so the queen had to eat hers too. I decided right then that there are lots of things brought to tables that aren’t meant for you to eat at all.

  But the problems don’t end there. I know for sure. The week after we moved here, Elizabeth Price had a birthday and her parents took some of her friends to a Chinese restaurant. We don’t eat Chinese much because of the monosodium glutamate, so I just let Mrs. Price order for me. All the dishes came to the table with silver covers on them, and Mrs. Price told each of us to take some of whatever was closest and pass it on.

  Everyone else found snow peas and bamboo shoots and things, but I found a stack of thin white circles about the size of handkerchiefs. I looked helplessly around the table, but everybody was exclaiming over the shrimp and chicken, so I just lifted one of the little circles out. It was warm. I decided right away it was one of those hot napkins waiters bring for you to wipe your sticky fingers, so I carefully began wiping each finger with the warm circle.

  Suddenly a girl exclaimed, “Look what Alice is doing with the pancakes!”

  Pancakes? I stared.

  “Oooh! Yuck!” everyone screamed.

  Mrs. Price tried to laugh it off. She showed me how to spread the circle out on my plate, dump some mooshi pork in the center, bring up the edges, and fold them over like a baby in a blanket. If I had sat at that table for a thousand years, I never would have guessed that this was the way you ate moo-shi pork. I had never even heard of moo-shi anything.

  “Terrific day,” Dad was saying now at our own table. He picked up a piece of pizza and wound the long string of cheese on top before he took a bite. “I got three more sign-ups for music lessons—two for piano and one for saxophone. I’m going to have to hire another instructor at this rate.” Dad looks like Lester will probably look in thirty years except he’s neater and he doesn’t have as much hair.

  “Had a pretty good day myself,” said Lester. “Got this absolute fox for my anthropology teacher.” He grinned and looked over at Dad. “Maybe I could introduce you.”

  Dad smiled too. “No thanks.” He turned to me. “What about you, Al? First day go okay?”

  I flicked a black olive off my pizza. Then I flicked off a piece of anchovy and a mushroom. Should I tell them? I wondered. Should I say that I missed out on getting the most beautiful woman in the world for my teacher, and then humiliated myself before the class? Should I say I was asked to stay after school for being sassy and then ran into the one boy in the whole world besides Donald Sheavers whom I never wanted to see again?

  “It went great,” I said.

  “Good!” Dad smiled. “It looks as though we’re all getting settled then! I’d like to see you have some friends in once in
a while, Al. They’re welcome anytime, you know.”

  Simply marvelous, I thought. Alice McKinley cordially invites Elizabeth Price, Mrs. Plotkin, and the boy in the blue underpants. I’m delirious with all the fun I’m having in Silver Spring.

  I really was excited about school the next day, though. I made a tuna fish sandwich, and then I scraped the tuna off and put chicken slices on the bread instead. I didn’t want to go in Miss Cole’s room with a smelly sandwich. I put on my new Levi’s and a red T-shirt from the Melody Inn with Leonard Bernstein’s face on it. Then I slipped the tortoiseshell barrette in my back pocket and started off.

  All through social studies and math I watched the clock, waiting for the magic moment. Mrs. Plotkin smiled at me when the bell rang at noon. I smiled back, picked up my lunch, and went hurrying across the hall to Miss Cole’s room.

  She had placed the chairs in a circle, and we all ate with our lunches on our laps. Miss Cole introduced us, the regulars first and then the substitutes. When the redhaired boy was introduced, I could feel a blush spreading across my face. Knowing that his name was Patrick made it worse. It was like knowing that his underwear was Fruit of the Loom or something. After the introductions, Miss Cole passed around some cookies she had made herself.

  “They’re kamikaze cookies, because they’re suicide on your teeth.” She laughed.

  They were the most delicious things I had ever tasted—little heaps of peanuts, chow mein noodles, and melted chocolate. I tried to imagine Mrs. Plotkin making cookies like that. If Mrs. Plotkin made cookies, they’d be oatmeal.

  When Miss Cole moved, her legs sort of swung from the hips. When she ate, her beautiful white teeth sank delicately down in her sandwich. Even when she swallowed, it was never a gulp. Her beautiful long throat just seemed to ripple. I tried holding my sandwich exactly the way she held hers. She crossed her ankles, I crossed mine. I even tried to get my cheeks to dimple, and kept putting my finger up to check.

  “I’ve ordered some sweatshirts for us,” she announced, “and each of you will get one. I want all of you to look really sharp on your posts this year.”

  I beamed with pleasure.

  We watched a short film about the seven most dangerous things children can do in traffic and what to watch out for when it rains. I loved being in Miss Cole’s classroom, smelling her perfume and listening to the little clink of her bracelets. I could have sat there forever, but when the film was over, so was the meeting.

  Patrick put the projector away, so I began straightening the chairs, going as slow as I could so that everyone else would leave before me. Finally, there I was, alone with Miss Cole.

  “Oh, don’t bother with those chairs,” she told me, turning toward the window. She closed her eyes and smiled at the sun on her face. “Go out and enjoy this beautiful weather while you can. There are only five minutes left of the lunch period.”

  I reached down in the pocket of my jeans.

  “I … I wanted to give you something,” I said, and took out a folded tissue.

  “It’s clean,” I told her, so she wouldn’t think I’d used it. Out fell the barrette. “It’s for your hair,” I said, handing it to her. “I saw it in my dad’s store and thought you might like it.”

  Miss Cole didn’t seem to know what to say. Her green eyes opened a little wider and her forehead sort of buckled into a frown, but she was smiling. She was trying to smile, anyway. “Well!” she said finally. “This is a clef sign, isn’t it? What kind of store does your father have?”

  “The Melody Inn. He’s the manager,” I told her, and my voice was shaky with excitement. I kept wanting her to put it in her hair, but she just stood holding it in the palm of one hand.

  “It’s lovely, Alice,” she said. “I don’t wear barrettes much, but … I think it might be just the thing to keep the hair out of my eyes when I play tennis on Saturdays. I will certainly think of you each time I wear it.”

  “I thought you might like it,” I said again. Whenever I can’t think of anything to say, I repeat myself.

  I went back out to the playground happy, and turned my face up to the sun, just like Miss Cole.

  There were only two things that afternoon that I hated: going back to Mrs. Plotkin’s class and passing Patrick on the way home. Patrick and I have this system, though: When I look at him, he turns away; when he looks at me, I turn away. I know if I ever tried to say anything at all to him, it would be something dumb like, “How are your Fruit of the Looms this morning?”

  When I got home, my brother’s car was parked out front. I went inside and back to the kitchen to feel around under the bread for the potato chips. Lester always hides the things he likes. After I found those I looked under the lettuce in the refrigerator for the dip. Once you know Lester’s system, you can find almost anything. I had just started down to the family room with my snack when I heard a girl’s voice from upstairs. I stopped there in the hallway. The sound came again, the sound of a girl laughing in Lester’s room.

  Something told me that Lester wasn’t supposed to have a girl in his room. Not with the door closed, anyway. Not when Dad wasn’t home.

  I thought of knocking on his door and asking for help with my homework. I thought about pounding on his door and yelling “Fire!” Then I thought of something else.

  I took the potato chips and dip to the top of the stairs and began eating as loudly as I could just outside Lester’s door. I tried eating two chips at a time with my mouth open, then three, then propping them sideways between my teeth. I practiced mouthing all the vowels while I was chewing to see which one was loudest. Chewing makes the most noise when your lips are open in the shape of an i or an e, if anybody wants to know. After each swallow, I smacked my lips as hard as I could and slurrrrrrped the dip off each potato chip.

  Lester’s door flew open.

  “Just what the heck do you think you’re doing?”

  I held out the chips. ‘Want some?”

  “Drop dead.”

  I slurped again.

  “Beat it, Al,” he told me.

  “It’s a free country.”

  “Beat it!”

  “I have as much right to be here as you do,” I said. I was being so bratty I could hardly stand myself. I just didn’t know what to do about Lester and that girl in his room.

  Suddenly Lester’s door opened wider and the girl came out. She had long straight brown hair and pink-tinted glasses. She was holding Lester’s high school yearbook.

  “Maybe we should go downstairs, Les,” she told him, and she smiled at me as she stepped over my legs to pass. I thought she was kind of nice.

  I knew that Lester could have stepped on my legs and broken them in three places, but he just glared down at me and followed the girl over to the couch where she opened the yearbook again.

  “I’m Marilyn Rawley,” the girl said to me.

  “Delighted to meet you. I’m Alice McKinley,” I answered in my very best company voice. I had rescued the girl and saved Lester’s reputation. Mother, if I had a mother, would have been proud.

  That night I took out the poster from behind my dresser and added a few more things. In the “Forward” column I wrote that I no longer chewed with my mouth open, that I had given Miss Cole a present she liked, and that I had learned to get girls out of Lester’s room. In the “Backward” column I had to write about how I had wiped my fingers with moo-shi pork pancakes and how I had treated Mrs. Plotkin. The columns were exactly even; I was just marking time.

  7

  THE MAHARAJA’S MAGIC

  THREE WEEKS AFTER SCHOOL STARTED, I was standing on the steps at recess watching the fourth graders jump rope. Charlene Verona was showing us her new designer jeans with a horseshoe on the back pocket.

  “Miss Cole says she has a pair exactly like mine,” Charlene said proudly. “When we have our class picnic, she’s going to wear hers, and we’ll be twins.”

  I was so jealous of Charlene at that moment I could hardly breathe. My lips were smil
ing, but my teeth were clamped together so hard that the fillings hurt.

  “Miss Cole is so much fun!” Charlene went on. “She even let me use her nail polish yesterday after school.”

  I choked.

  Elizabeth Price was not to be outdone, however. “I’m really glad I got a man for a teacher this year,” she said. “He treats us like we’re grown up. Sometimes he even calls us ‘Miss’ and ‘Mr.’ ‘Miss Price, would you care to put the third problem on the blackboard?’ he’ll say. I heard he plays the guitar, and when you go on the overnight, everybody sings.”

  Right away I fantasied everyone singing around a bonfire while Mr. Weber played his guitar, with me standing in the back with a triangle going, Ping.

  And then I realized that both girls were looking at me.

  “It’s too bad you got Mrs. Plotkin,” said Elizabeth.

  The only thing I hated more than being in Mrs. Plotkin’s room was being pitied, and I simply was not going to let that happen. I laughed my “Miss Cole” laugh and sort of tossed my hair.

  “Oh, it’s not as bad as you think,” I said gaily. “Mrs. Plotkin is so nice, and every day, no matter what we’re doing, she stops at two thirty and reads us part of a book.”

  I knew that didn’t sound like much compared to matching designer jeans and singing around a bonfire. The girls were looking at me strangely, and I went on: “If I could choose any class I wanted, I just might stay right where I am.”

  I could see they didn’t quite believe me. In fact, they weren’t even looking at me any longer, they were looking somewhere behind me, and I turned to see Mrs. Plotkin standing just inside the door. She smiled as she came out on the steps, holding a plant she was setting out to sun.

  “What a nice thing to say, Alice!” she said. “And if I could choose any girl in the whole school to be in my room, I just might put Alice McKinley at the head of the list.”

  I gave Mrs. Plotkin a weak smile, and she edged on down the steps with her potted geranium. The terrible, awful truth was that now I had boxed myself into a corner. Even if Miss Cole asked me to be in her class, how could I switch?