“Yeah. Well, we were both at the same place at the same time… .”
Are guys especially programmed to drive you nuts or what? “Patrick, we’re both at the same place at the same time when we’re at school, and we don’t wait for each other after,” I said.
“Good point. So … where did you go?” he asked.
“We had a full car. Gwen was driving.”
“Yeah?”
“I was so glad Molly could go up onstage. And everyone gave her a standing ovation. I almost cried.”
“Yeah, I gave her a little drumroll. Did you notice? You didn’t tell me where you went after, though.”
“We went to the Tastee Diner.”
“And who was the guy?”
The guy? Aha! So this was it! “David?” I said, innocently.
“You’re asking me? I don’t know. Was that his name?”
“Yes! David! He works part-time at the Melody Inn.”
“And the rest of the time?”
“A student at Georgetown.”
“Really? I didn’t know you knew anyone at Georgetown,” said Patrick.
“Only because he works for Dad.” I hoped Patrick couldn’t hear the smile in my voice.
“So … he’s a college man, right?”
Oh wow! Was Patrick ever jealous!
“Yes, he’s a college man.” I couldn’t help myself from adding, “He just broke up with his girlfriend, Patrick, and I was trying to cheer him up.”
There was silence. “And … did you cheer him up? When I looked, you had your hands all over him.”
I remembered that I’d had grabbed David’s hands and made him clap extra hard for Molly. “We all cheered him up, Patrick. Gwen and Liz and Molly and I. We had a good time and so did he.” Then I decided to take pity on him. “Patrick, do you know why he broke up with his girlfriend?”
“Do I want to know this?”
“Yes. He’s going to become a priest.”
“Oh!” said Patrick.
“I don’t understand you,” I said, still hoping he wouldn’t detect the smile in my voice. “You didn’t seem to care when I went to the dance with Scott.”
“Scott I can understand,” said Patrick. “But College Man …”
“You’re going to be a college guy yourself pretty soon.”
“Then maybe you’ll invite me out with your girlfriends?” said Patrick, and we laughed.
We talked a little more about school, about homework, about Patrick’s dad retiring from the foreign service, and finally he said he had to study for a test and we said good-bye.
I turned off my cell phone. Then I stood up and looked at myself in the mirror. I looked pretty good. I was grinning.
He’s jealous! He’s jealous! I said to myself as I danced around and around the room. I never thought it would happen.
The following week everyone connected to the show was a zombie. We were trying to catch up on all the assignments we had missed the week before, and we still had three more performances to get through the coming weekend, with more rehearsals every day after school. Some teachers were understanding about it, some weren’t. But finally it was the weekend, and I was able to give Pamela my full attention backstage.
Adelaide’s chorus girls had to change costumes the most, and Pamela was afraid she’d get her period and leak through her satin pants. But every show went off without a hitch, and on the final night, as I watched Pamela onstage, I felt a little down. Envious again. Jealous, even, and it bothered me. She’d dash backstage with the other chorus girls, and all I had to do was have her costume ready. Help yank off the pink top and pull on the blue. Unzip the satin shorts and help her step into a skirt. Zip her up, put on the headpiece, give her an encouraging pat, and send her off again.
What was I, anyway? A mother hen? I got to write a feature story about the musical, of course, but was that it? Was I just a byline? A shoulder to lean on? Was it so much to ask that just once in my life, I’d get to walk onstage in front of a zillion people in an auditorium with crystal chandeliers and receive a prestigious award to the wild applause of admirers?
Well, okay. Without the chandeliers, maybe.
And maybe not a zillion people.
And maybe not wild applause.
But when would I get a little public appreciation and recognition, just for me? For something important? When would I get to say, Thank you very much?
Not this night, evidently, because Pamela rushed back to tell me I had handed her the wrong shoes, and she barely made it onstage in time.
• • •
What I really did feel bad about was that Pamela didn’t invite her mom to the show. Didn’t even tell her she was in it. Her dad came, bringing Meredith, and they came backstage with a little bouquet from the grocery store, like many of the other parents did. But I couldn’t understand why Mrs. Jones couldn’t have come to a performance. She would have loved it, loved seeing Pamela up there.
“Why didn’t you invite her, Pamela?” I’d asked.
“Are you kidding?” she’d answered. “She would have embarrassed me! She’d be trying to outdo all the other moms by cheering and carrying on. She’s breaking her neck trying to be ‘The Good Mom,’ and the harder she tries, the more it turns me off.”
Pamela brought Tim to the cast party on the second Saturday night, of course, and I could tell he was relieved that the musical was finally over and he’d have Pamela to himself. I’d missed the cast party last year because I was sick, but this time I rode over with Patrick. Orchestra members hadn’t been invited, but cast and crew were allowed to bring dates.
The guy who played Sky Masterson was having the party at his house—a big house in Kensington—and his folks even had caterers in the kitchen, serving up Coney Island hot dogs and Junior’s cheesecake from New York. Patrick was wearing a black shirt with his jeans, and stage crew wore black too, so we wouldn’t be so visible in the wings.
At the party the main characters got to perform all over again. They put on little skits—dance routines and parodies of songs that they’d obviously cooked up in advance for the party. The senior who played Adelaide, Kelsey Reeves, did a really funny takeoff of a stripper, except that just when you thought she was down to bare skin—and I could tell that Mr. Ellis was looking nervous—we saw that she was wearing a body stocking with signatures of the entire cast written all over it.
Pamela, as her understudy, did a tap dance with a top hat twirling on one finger, and Sky Masterson and Sarah Brown sang a duet.
The funniest act, though, was the one the three directors—Mr. Ellis, Mr. Gage, and Miss Ortega—put on. The two men played guitars, and Miss Ortega wore a long silky tunic and a blond wig with bangs. They pretended to be the folksinger trio Peter, Paul, and Mary, popular back in the sixties. They sang “Puff, the Magic Dragon” but completely overacted, which made us howl with laughter.
Mostly we stage crew members just watched and applauded, and I thought to myself, Well, if it weren’t for the audience, there wouldn’t be anyone to perform for, would there? Besides, I was content just to be there with Patrick, even though he had a headache from three nights of staying up late and playing the drums. We kissed in the car when he took me home, but I know it’s not easy to be romantic when you have a headache—or a cold, a sore throat, cramps. So I told him to go home and get some sleep, and he seemed grateful.
But I was feeling dissatisfied, not with Patrick, but with myself. Looking over the past few months, I couldn’t help thinking that Liz got to chase a cute guy around the school gym to a cheering crowd; Pamela got to tap dance; Gwen got an award in front of the whole school; but the only applause I’d received so far was for climbing out of a coffin, and I’d almost missed my cue to do that. I had to be good at something, but it was taking me a long time to find out what.
15
Waiting
There was only one more full month left of school, and it made us crazy. Seniors could more or less coast—they had their colleg
es nailed down, their jobs for the summer; that was my theory, anyway. I guess we always think that seniors have it made.
My SAT results had come back, and they were better than my PSAT scores—not fabulous, but pretty darn respectable, and I decided I’d let them stand. It tired me out to keep comparing them against everyone else’s scores, especially Gwen’s or Patrick’s. I kept thinking about the way I compare myself to others, to my friends. Why I couldn’t seem to be content to just be me. On the whole, it had been a pretty good year, and I thought of all the people for whom it had been bad. Molly, for example. Brian Brewster, for another, though I wasn’t sorry for him in the least. Amy Sheldon, for whom every year, it seemed, was a bad year.
I was thinking about what I might propose for The Edge when I went to our planning session on Wednesday. My feature story on the Day of Silence had been well received, though it hadn’t made the huge buzz I’d hoped for. Hadn’t stirred up much controversy, and perhaps that was good. It would be great if we didn’t even need a Day of Silence to remind us what gays go through. Didn’t need a GSA. But still, it would have been nice to get a little more attention.
A lot of kids liked the article about teachers’ secrets, and everyone liked the photos of Guys and Dolls, thanks to our photographers, Don and Sam.
“What do we have for our last two issues?” Miss Ames asked.
“We already decided to delay the final issue until we get some pics of the prom,” Scott said. “And we always do a farewell piece for any teacher who’s leaving.”
He went around the table, asking each of us in turn what we had for the next issue. “What about features, Alice?” he asked.
I read off the list of ideas I’d been keeping in a notebook: a story on favorite hangouts, an article on the school parking lot situation, the current policy on suspensions and expulsions, summer footwear with photos, student representation at school board meetings… .
“All good,” said Scott. “Let’s see what you work up first.”
After the meeting I was all the way down to my locker before I realized I’d left my jacket in Room 17. I turned around and went back, and just as I reached the journalism classroom, I heard Don say, “We’re good for Saturday night, then—you and Kendra and Christy and me?”
“Yeah, we’re on,” Scott answered.
Then Don: “You and Kendra are really tight, huh?”
And Scott: “I guess so. She’s even talking about switching colleges and coming to mine.”
“No kidding?”
I took three steps backward as they came out the door and bent quickly over the drinking fountain as they started down the hall. Rising up, I swallowed the gulp of water and said, “Forgot my jacket. See ya!”
“See ya,” said Scott.
“Take care,” said Don.
I went inside the empty classroom and slowly put on my jacket. I guess a lot had happened in the last two months since the Sadie Hawkins Day dance. Maybe Scott had agreed to go with me because he wasn’t sure of Kendra. Maybe Kendra hadn’t been sure of him. And maybe I had invited Scott because I wasn’t sure of my feelings for Patrick.
In any case, the crush was definitely over, and I was almost relieved to hear that Scott and Kendra were “together,” and he was out of my dreams for good.
The first week of May was spent on catch-up. Catching up on all the homework I’d let slide, the papers that were late, the feature story I was writing for The Edge, straightening my messy room, doing my wash, answering e-mails… .
I took time out to give Sylvia a hand in the garden after work on Saturday, though—the first Saturday of May—and it helped chill me out. The lawn had been so torn up during the renovation that we had all new shrubs planted along one side, and Sylvia splurged on tulips and daffodils, already in bloom when we replanted them: purples and yellows in one place, reds and yellows in another.
“If you hadn’t become a teacher, would you be a gardener?” I asked, seeing how much pleasure she took in it.
She chuckled. “Gardening’s one of the things I enjoy part-time, but I’m not sure I’d want to make it my life’s work.”
“Did you ever want to be anything else? Like a … Shakespearian actress or something?”
“I don’t know that the stage can support too many Shakespearian actresses, Alice, though it might be fun to work at it for a summer. No, I think I’d miss the interaction with students. An audience doesn’t give that much feedback. And I’d probably be bored with so much attention to myself,” she said.
That was a strange thought, I decided. I didn’t think performers ever got tired of themselves. But maybe they had to be constantly fed by an audience in order to feel good about it. Still, could you really get tired of a life of applause and adulation?
“Where should we put these?” I asked, lifting up the last pot of white tulips—SNOW WHITES, the little tag read.
Sylvia thought for a minute. “You know, I think they deserve a spot all to themselves. They’re not as showy as the reds, but they’re beautiful in another way. Let’s give them a green backdrop—right over here—and let them have center stage.”
Dad and Sylvia were going out that night, and I was tired from all the gardening. I didn’t really want to go anywhere, but I didn’t want to spend the evening alone, either. I called Liz.
“You doing anything tonight?” I asked. Liz has gone out with a guy three times since the Sadie Hawkins Day dance—not the same guy, either—and probably had a waiting list, but I asked anyway.
“A guy in my biology class said he’d call, but a girl told me he’s a ‘hands-on’ type of guy, so I was going to make some excuse if he did,” she said.
Every time Liz has a date, I want to call out the cheering section, but then I remember what Patrick said about how a lot of reassurance can make somebody insecure. So I just played it cool, like, Of course guys like you! Why would they not?
“Want to sleep over, then?” I said. “Eight o’clock? Earlier, if you want. I imagine Pamela’s out with Tim, but I’ll call anyway. Gwen, I know, is at her aunt’s for the weekend.”
I called Pamela on her cell phone, and it was a while before she answered.
“Hello?” she said finally.
“How you doing? I thought maybe you were out with Tim,” I said. “Liz is going to sleep over.”
“He’s got a really bad cold,” Pamela told me. “I suppose I’ll catch it next.”
“Then you want to come? Dad and Sylvia are out.”
There was an uncharacteristic pause. “Yeah,” she said finally. “I guess so.”
“Don’t let me twist your arm.”
“No, I’ll come,” she said. “Will Gwen be there?”
“She’s at her aunt’s. Come about eight, okay?”
“See you,” she said.
The usual letdown after a performance, I thought. The stage crew feels it, but it’s worse for the cast. All that attention, the footlights, the spotlight, the costumes, the makeup … For six weeks or so, you’re part of a group, a family, a team, a production. You’re all involved in the same thing—the excitement, the inside jokes, the sharing—and then … poof! It’s over. Fini. I checked the freezer for Pamela’s favorite ice cream, coffee. Perfecto.
Liz arrived first and brought some brownies she’d made. “Everything cleaned up at your place?” I asked her, realizing I hadn’t seen cleaning crews outside her house for a while.
“We were able to wash down some of the walls, but the hall had to be repainted,” she said. “And of course we had to replace the dryer. Dad’s getting over it now, but he was so mad at me! I don’t think he’ll be buying me a car anytime soon.”
Pamela didn’t realize she’d forgotten her sleeping bag until she walked in. “I’ll go back,” she said.
“Never mind,” I said. “You can sleep on the couch. Come on. Liz brought brownies.”
I brought out the whole half gallon of ice cream, and we carried our bowls into the family room, making brownie sundaes. P
amela settled down with a little sigh and spooned ice cream into her mouth.
“Post-performance letdown?” I said.
“I guess. Everything happens at once.”
“I know what you mean. How’s Tim?”
“He sounded awful on the phone. Temperature, too. He says he’s probably contagious, so he’s staying in this weekend.”
“Lucky for us!” said Liz. “Girlfriend time! I wish Gwen were here, but she’s got so much family, somebody’s always celebrating something.”
“That must be nice,” I said. “I’ve got to go all the way to Chicago or Tennessee to see my relatives.”
We rehashed old news, new news, tidbits, gossip… .
“You heard about Jill and Justin, didn’t you?” asked Liz.
“They didn’t break up, did they?” I asked.
“Are you kidding? They’re plastered together with industrial-strength glue!”
“Yeah, I heard that Justin’s parents took them both to the Bahamas over spring break,” said Pamela. “First they were going to take Justin alone to get him away from her; then they ended up taking them both.”
“Well, that’s not quite the way it happened,” Liz confided. “I got it straight from Karen. Mr. and Mrs. Collier took Justin to the Bahamas, all right, to get him away from Jill, whom they consider to be a grade-A gold digger. But guess who showed up at the hotel next door? Justin sent her the money, and Jill flew in. His folks were furious.”
“Omigod!” I said. “Why didn’t we hear about this before?”
“We don’t move in the same circles, I guess. I don’t have any classes with them, do you?” said Liz.
“No. I think his parents better give in,” I said. “It’s a losing battle. They’ve been together a long time.”
“Karen says the Colliers are hoping that college will put a brake on the romance. Get them as far away from each other as possible.”
“Unless she follows him there,” I said, thinking about Scott and Kendra.
“And she probably will,” said Liz.
We all sat pondering that a minute.
Then Pamela said, “I’m two weeks late.”
Almost Alice Page 14
