Alice In-Between

by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor

  “I am wonderful,” I said. “Positively wonderful.” And I went up to my room and sat down on the bed, grinning still.

  It was 9:30 before I remembered the note about Mrs. Plotkin. I went to the extension phone in the upstairs hall and dialed the number.

  It rang five or six times, and I was about to hang up when a man answered. He sounded out of breath.

  “Mr. Plotkin? This is Alice McKinley.”

  “Oh … Alice … I just got back from the hospital and heard the phone ringing. Thought surely you’d hang up before I got the door open. How are you?”

  “I’m fine, but how is Mrs. Plotkin? I got your message….”

  “Well, she’s had a heart attack, Alice.”

  I sucked in my breath. I tried to imagine Mrs. Plot-kin, my wonderful sixth-grade teacher, in a hospital bed instead of at the front of a classroom.

  “She’s doing fine, however. It wasn’t entirely unexpected, as she’s had heart trouble for some time, but … in any case, she wanted me to tell you that she would love to see you if you had a chance to run by. She’s at Holy Cross.”

  “Of course I’ll see her,” I said. “When are visiting hours tomorrow?”

  Mr. Plotkin told me, and I said I’d go whenever Dad or Lester could drive me over.

  I sat on the floor in the hallway a long time before I got up and went to bed. She had asked to see me. It wasn’t me calling her up with some problem. Not me stopping by her sixth-grade classroom at the elementary school just to see if she remembered me. She remembered, and she’d asked me to come.

  Lester was taking a summer course at the university, working part-time at the appliance store, but had the next afternoon free, so he drove me to Holy Cross and waited down in the lobby while I took the elevator to her floor.

  I almost wished that Elizabeth was with me. There was a crucifix in the lobby, and another on the wall where I got off the elevator, and if I were Catholic, I probably would have known the right words to say to offer up a prayer for Mrs. Plotkin. Then I figured it didn’t matter whether I was Catholic or not, I could still say something in my own words, so I just said, Dear God, the world needs Mrs. Plotkin. Please let her live.

  Hospitals are scary places. They look different. The people inside them—the patients, anyway—are either worried or in pain or both. The voice over the intercom always seems matter-of-fact, but still you wonder. Dr. Edleman, 204, for example. What does it mean? That he’s to call that extension? That a patient in that room is dying? Or is it a code that he’s wanted in the emergency room?

  A hospital smells different. It sounds different. Nurses and doctors walk on thick rubber soles. I wished I was Wonder Woman, and could fly into Mrs. Plotkin’s room, pick her up, and fly her home again.

  When I got to her door, I saw that Mr. Plotkin was with her. He was sorting through some mail, but when he saw me he smiled, and then Mrs. Plotkin turned over in bed and held out one arm.

  “Why, if it isn’t Alice! Don’t pay attention to this silly gown, Alice. Come right in here and sit down.”

  Mr. Plotkin got up. “I’ve got at least three phone calls to make, and some forms to fill out in Admission,” he said. “So you just take my chair here, Alice, and stay as long as you like.”

  I walked over to her bed. Mrs. Plotkin looked thinner than I’d remembered her, and her face didn’t have a lot of color, but then it never had. I handed her a little bouquet of flowers I’d picked in Elizabeth’s yard that morning—she’d said I could have them.

  “Oh, these are beautiful,” Mrs. Plotkin said. “Could you stick them in that vase, along with those petunias Ned brought me this morning?”

  I put them in the vase and then sat down in the only chair in the room. When had Mrs. Plotkin’s hair turned so gray? There was another woman, in the bed by the window, but she was asleep.

  “How are you?” I asked.

  “Thoroughly disgusted with myself,” Mrs. Plotkin said, “and bored. The thing about being in a hospital, dear, is you get bored. We don’t have to whisper. My roommate is not only asleep, but she’s deaf as well.”

  “I was really worried when I got the message.”

  “Well, don’t be. If I had to have a heart attack, I guess, summer is the best time to have one, because I fully expect to be back in my classroom this fall. Ned tells me that your brother said you were in Chicago visiting your aunt. I want to hear all about it, so start at the beginning.”

  I told her everything. Even about Pamela being kissed in her roomette. About Elizabeth folding up into the wall. And then, because she was listening so intently and seemed to care so much, I told her about dinner at the Longs’ and how Patrick had kissed me afterward, so I guessed maybe we were “going together” again.

  Mrs. Plotkin smiled up at the ceiling. “I can remember my first kiss,” she said, “only I was older than you are, Alice. Probably close to seventeen …”

  I didn’t tell her this wasn’t my first kiss, because I wanted to hear about hers.

  “The nice part about it was that it was unexpected; I didn’t have to worry about it beforehand. Just a nice evening with a nice boy, and he kissed me before we even reached the porch. Do you know, I still can remember the smell of honeysuckle that night. It’s just the strangest thing. I never smell honeysuckle without remembering that kiss.”

  This must be the way it is when you have a mother, I thought. You tell her things and she tells you things, and it helps you prepare for what’s coming.

  “What I really wanted you to come by for was this,” she said at last, sitting up on one elbow and reaching across to a shoe box on her nightstand. “Ned has been bringing me boxes and folders and things to sort, and he brought in this old box of photographs. Do you still have the ring I gave you?”

  “Yes,” I told her. I will have that ring for the rest of my life. On the last day of sixth grade, when all of the other students were gone, Mrs. Plotkin had given me a very old ring with a large green stone in it. The silver was worn, and the stone had a tiny chip on one side, but it had belonged to her great-grandmother, who had passed it down to her. She was supposed to pass it on to her daughter, but since she had no children, not even a niece, she’d decided to give it to me.

  “Well, I found this old photograph of my great-grandmother—two photos, actually—and I thought you might like to have one. Since you have the ring, you know. To know that it once belonged to her, and then to my grandmother, then my mother, and then to me …”

  I sat very still, looking at the picture of her great-grandmother. In this photo she must have been a woman of about twenty, very serious, in a tight satin dress that had a high neck and ruffle, and a little satin hat. There was something about her mouth that looked like Mrs. Plotkin’s mouth—also something about the ears. You could definitely tell they were related. I wished I had worn the ring to the hospital that day.

  “I’ll keep it forever, along with the ring,” I told her.

  When her husband came back finally, I got up to leave. I was just going to sort of squeeze her hand, but I bent down and kissed her on the forehead.

  “I’ll see you again, Alice,” she said, “and it was simply wonderful having you come to visit. Just wonderful.”

  On the elevator going down, I was holding the picture out in front of me, and a woman said, “That’s a beautiful picture. It looks very old. Who is she?”

  “My great-great-grandmother,” I said, and decided it was close enough to the truth.

  15

  HOLDING THE FORT

  DAD AND MISS SUMMERS FLEW TO THE music conference in Michigan the following day.

  “You and Lester hold the fort now,” Dad said, just before he got in the cab.

  I was getting good at keeping things under control, I decided. There were about a dozen times over the summer I could have freaked out, but hadn’t, so that was progress.

  I was also doing well with my summer reading list. The librarian had given out one for girls and one for guys, and alread
y I was deep into the problems of other girls, which made mine seem pretty small. I had read Sydney Herself, and Izzy, Willy Nilly, and still had After the Rain; Like Seabirds Flying Home; Jacob Have I Loved; and Send No Blessings yet to go. Most of the girls in the books were older than I am, and it was like reading the diaries of older sisters, knowing that if they could get through the problems in their lives, I could get through mine.

  Except that, when I thought about it, I didn’t have so many problems right then. I was lying out on a blanket under a tree, reading, when suddenly I put my book down and realized that I was sort of between problems. I didn’t stick pencils up my nose and pretend I was an elephant as I had back in third grade, or play Tarzan on a raft with Donald Sheavers as I had in fourth, and I didn’t have love problems like Lester, either. Maybe there was something nice about being in-between for a while.

  I began to sing, if you can call it that, one of the songs from Porgy and Bess:

  “Oh, I got plenty o’ nuttin,’

  An’ nuttin’s plenty fo’ me….”

  The sky had clouded up, and I felt a few heavy drops on my legs, so I gathered up my blanket and books and went inside. I’d just stepped in the back door, when I heard voices coming from above. I stopped and listened. It didn’t sound like the radio. I went down the hall to the bottom of the stairs and listened some more. It was Lester and a woman up in his bedroom. Marilyn or Crystal?

  Now what should I do? Dad had specifically told us both that we weren’t to have anyone in while he was gone. Patrick had already called and was coming over the next day, but we’d sit on the porch. I certainly wouldn’t invite him up to my room.

  I went halfway up, trying to think. There were murmured voices, then a soft rustle, like the crinkling of a paper bag. More murmured voices, a giggle, a rustle. Talk … giggle … talk … rustle … talk … giggle … talk … rustle …

  I’ll admit I don’t know much about love, but what could they be doing with a paper bag? It was embarrassing. I had to get them out of there.

  I went back down to the kitchen and got an aluminum pie pan, then sat on the bottom step, with the pan on my knees, and began tapping out a rhythm. Every so often I hit the wall with one hand for the beat. Thump, ta ta, thump, ta ta … and when that didn’t get results, I started to sing as loudly as I could:

  “Oh, I got plenty o’ nuttin’,

  An’ nuttin’s plenty fo’ me.

  I got no car, got no mule, I got no misery….”

  Lester’s bedroom door opened in a hurry. “Good grief, Al!” he cried.

  I looked up.

  Marilyn. She was a short, slender woman with long brown hair, standing there, fully dressed in a white cotton skirt and blouse, with green-and-blue dangly earrings. She was eating a bag of popcorn. I was so relieved to see the popcorn I hardly knew what to say.

  “Hi, Alice,” she said. “I’m absolutely starved, and I just dropped by to invite Les to dinner. You’re invited too.”

  “Me?”

  “Why not?” said Lester. “It’s my turn to cook tonight, and this will save me the trouble. Let’s go.”

  “There’s a Greek restaurant I’ve been wanting to try. I’m really hungry for spanakopita,” Marilyn told me. I didn’t know what spanakopita was, but suddenly I was hungry for it too.

  “I’m ready,” I said, and we all went outside.

  It was nice, come to think of it—being invited. I didn’t have to put on flats and panty hose, but I could wear dangly earrings, just like Marilyn. I didn’t have to worry about pronouncing things right on the menu, but I knew I could carry on an intelligent conversation. I didn’t know what was happening with Crystal, and I didn’t know how Dad and Miss Summers were getting along in Michigan, but I was holding the fort here in Silver Spring, just as Dad said to, and doing a pretty good job of it.

  Find out what happens

  next for Alice in

  HANG-UPS

  A MONTH BEFORE I STARTED EIGHTH grade, I knew I was going to have to face something I’d been afraid of for a long time.

  Everybody’s afraid of something, I suppose—elevators, dogs, planes, spiders…. Up to this point, though, I’d steered around it. Made excuses. But when Pamela and Elizabeth, my two best friends, said we were going to spend the rest of the summer practically living in Mark Stedmeister’s swimming pool, I knew I had to face my terror of deep water.

  “I am going to tan like you wouldn’t believe!” said Pamela.

  “I’m going to perfect my backstroke,” said Elizabeth.

  Not even Dad and Lester, my brother, knew how frightened I was at the thought of water up over my head. When we went to the ocean, I never went out in water more than waist deep. Hardly anyone else did either, of course, so that was okay. And up until now, whenever the kids gathered at the Stedmeisters’ pool, one of Mark’s folks was always at poolside as lifeguard. I’d sit on the edge of the shallow end and laugh at the guys kidding around over by the diving board, and no one bothered me.

  But now I guess they figured that since we were going into eighth grade, and Mark is bigger than his father, even, the boys could take care of any emergency. Mrs. Stedmeister looked out of the window a lot, I noticed, but she didn’t sit out on the deck the way she used to, so we didn’t have to wait for her to come out, or for Mark’s dad to come home at night before we could swim. We had the pool to ourselves, and that’s what made it so scary. That, and the fact that Patrick, my boyfriend, was up in Canada and wouldn’t be home till the end of August.

  The more time we spent at the pool, the bolder the guys got, and last time, after a lot of whispering, they’d all descended on Pamela. They’d picked her up in her pink bikini and tossed her into the deep end. Pamela did just the right amount of shrieking and flailing before she swam gracefully over to the edge and climbed out.

  Of course, there are problems being Pamela, too. She used to have blond hair so long she could sit on it. When she was in the swimming pool on her back, her hair would spread out around her so that she looked like a goddess on a lily pad.

  Then last spring, Brian put gum in her hair, and the only way she could get it out was to cut her hair. Now she has a short feather cut, and looks even older and more sophisticated than ever.

  She doesn’t always feel that way, though.

  “I just feel so naked,” Pamela said forlornly as we were coming back from the pool one afternoon.

  Elizabeth glanced over at the bikini that barely covered Pamela’s bosom. “Well, look at you!” she said.

  Elizabeth wears a sort of halter-top suit that comes up high at the neck and is low cut in back. I guess she figures if she’s modest in front she can afford to let go a little behind. She only worries about the part she can see.

  “My head, I mean,” Pamela said. “Sometimes I can still feel my hair, you know?”

  “What?” I said.

  “It’s as though it’s been amputated,” Pamela explained. “Like a man who’s lost a leg and can still feel pain in it.”

  “Pamela, that’s spooky,” I told her.

  We were all feeling a little spooked, if you ask me. We had hardly finished congratulating ourselves on having survived seventh grade, and here we were, about to be eighth graders. We had spent the last year envious of all those gorgeous, sophisticated eighth-grade girls we’d seen in the halls at junior high, and suddenly we were the eighth graders!

  Except that we didn’t feel gorgeous or sophisticated, either one. I was feeling scared about Mark’s swimming pool, Pamela was feeling amputated, and Elizabeth was as nutty as ever about bodily functions. We were as ready for eighth grade as we were for an earthquake.

  Maybe, out of the three of us, Elizabeth was the most frightened of going back to school in the fall. She’d been shocked the way the eighth-grade girls leaned against their lockers sometimes and kissed their boyfriends—a long series of little glancing kisses on the lips—and she must have thought she was going to be required to do a certain amount of it before s
he graduated, I’m not sure. But I did notice that as July turned to August, she’d begun using the word “sex” instead of “mating,” and that was a step up. When she mentioned the subject at all, that is.

  Everything was changing, not just us. Lester was going to be twenty-one in September, and Dad just got back from a music conference in Michigan, where he’d gone with my English teacher, Miss Summers.

  I had a million questions to ask him as soon as he got in the house.

  “Have a good time?” Lester wanted to know.

  “Did Miss Summers have a good time?” I asked, getting right to the point. I want so much for Dad to marry her that I even practiced writing my name Alice Kathleen Summers before I realized that if she married Dad, she’d be a McKinley, too.

  “We both enjoyed ourselves,” said Dad.

  “How were the beds?” I asked.

  Dad raised one eyebrow as he sat down on the couch and began taking things out of his briefcase.

  “My bed, on the men’s floor, was fine, Al,” he said. (He and Lester call me Al.) “I don’t know how Sylvia’s bed was. I didn’t ask.”

  Even though Dad says I can’t ask him intimate questions about him and my English teacher, I manage to find out what I want to know.

  “I wonder if she packed that black sexy slip with the slit up the side that I saw her buying at Macy’s,” I said to no one in particular.

  “I didn’t ask her that either,” said Dad. He frowned at me and smiled at the same time. “Watch it, Al.”

  “May I ask just one personal question?”

  “No.”

  “That means you did!” I said, clapping my hands.

  Dad was beginning to look exasperated. “That means nothing of the kind! Now see here, Alice …!”

  “The question was, ‘Did you hold hands?’” I said, grinning. I know how to get Dad’s goat.

  “We did on occasion hold hands, Al. Satisfied?”

  “Then may I ask just one more personal question?”

  “No!”