I Know You, Al: The Al Series, Book Two

by Constance C. Greene

  She ignored him.

  “Yes,” she said, “I can see that might be her reaction. Still, I remember how she longed for him to come and see her when she first moved in. Her feelings about him are ambivalent.”

  “What’s that mean?” I asked.

  “Well, she wants to see him but, on the other hand, she’s resentful toward him. For leaving her and her mother. She feels both positive and negative about him.”

  “I’m pretty ambivalent about you too,” my father said. “Most of the time I think you’re smashing. It’s only when I get a whiff of some of the goodies in the refrigerator that I’m not so sure.”

  “Hadn’t you better shave if we’re going to the Babcocks’?” my mother said in a frosty tone.

  “All the Babcocks talk about is people we don’t know,” my father complained.

  My mother gave him what Al would call “a piercer.” My father would just as soon stay home on Saturday night and watch the Mary Tyler Moore show, but my mother says she can stay home and watch TV any night.

  “But not Mary,” he says every time. He knows he’ll wind up going to the Babcocks’ but he’s a man who believes in trying.

  “Does Teddy have to stay here?” I said.

  “No,” she said, very slowly and clearly, “the Babcocks would be mad about having a nine-year-old boy around all evening.”

  “Maybe Teddy knows some of the people the Babcocks talk about all the time that I don’t know,” my father said hopefully. “Why don’t we send him over instead of us?”

  8

  The second my mother and father went to the Babcocks’, Teddy started in. First, he had to call his friend Hubie about some spelling words. Then he wanted a piece of lemon meringue pie he knew perfectly well was for Sunday dinner. When I put the kibosh on everything, he started whining about a composition he had to write for English about what he’d do to clean up the city.

  “Put all the dogs in a giant kennel,” I said, “and only let them out every six months or so. Stop all cars at the city limits and make people take the bus or subway from there on. How’s that for starters?”

  “How about if I invent a gigantic vacuum cleaner that sucks up all the garbage and fumes and everything?” Teddy said. “Then give every person a horse to ride to work.”

  Sometimes Teddy surprises me. He really does.

  “Why don’t you sit down and write that instead of making noise?” I told him. “Those are two good ideas.”

  One kind word and that kid takes off like a 707. That’s the trouble with him. If you keep a foot firmly in the middle of his back and snarl at him regularly, he stays in line. But tell him something nice, he’s atrocious. He started mincing around the room, pretending he was trying out for the Miss Junior High of America contest. He twirled an imaginary baton, tossing it up in the air and down between his legs. Baton twirling is very big in those contests. Actually, Teddy would be quite amusing if he were somebody else’s little brother. It’s when you have to live in the same house with him, day to day, that he gets you down.

  “There’s Al!” he shouted when the bell rang. I told him Al said she’d stop in so I could see how she looked for her dinner date. Teddy likes Al because she gives him the time of day. Being an only child herself, she has more patience with him than I do.

  “Ta-dah,” Al said when I opened the door.

  “Say it like you meant it,” I told her. Usually she throws her arms wide, as if she were announcing a big event. Tonight she just sort of said it like “So what?”

  “You look nice,” I told her. Her cheeks were pink and her eyes were sparkling and she’d probably have to go to the bathroom about a thousand times, she was so nervous.

  “I look like a frankfurter stuffed into a bun that’s too small for it,” she said. “A sale purchase of my mother’s. What do you think?”

  She had on a suit, I guess you’d call it, or a two-piece dress. It had a pleated skirt and a middy top. I couldn’t decide whether it was too old or too young for Al.

  “It makes your rear end stick out,” Teddy said. I could’ve smacked him. I did. Not hard. He only yelped a little. Teddy has a thing about rear ends sticking out. At his age.

  “That’s what I thought,” Al said dismally. She sat down. “I can only stay a minute. He’s coming at six. I heard my mother tell Ole Henry not to come for her until seven. I brought my needlepoint. I figure I’m on the verge of a nervous breakdown anyway. What’s one more push toward the abyss?”

  “Hey, can I try?” Teddy asked.

  “Nah, Ted,” she said, “you don’t want to do needlepoint.”

  “Sure I do,” Teddy insisted. Anything you tell him he doesn’t want to do, he automatically wants to do ten times more than before you told him he didn’t want to.

  “It’s very hard,” Al said. “But I will say when it’s finished it’s worth the effort.”

  She moved over on the couch and Teddy sat down beside her. “This is the way it goes,” Al said, handing him the eyeglass case and the needle. “You just stick it in this hole, pull it through, then stick it in from behind and pull it through again.”

  Teddy turned out to be a natural at needlepoint.

  “How’m I doing?” he’d holler every time he completed a stitch and Al would check his work.

  “For a boy, you’re not bad,” she said. Teddy beamed.

  “I like it,” he kept saying. “I really like doing needlepoint.”

  “How was lunch?” I asked Al.

  She shrugged. “O.K. Ole Henry said I could have whatever I wanted so I had an avocado stuffed with shrimp and a hot fudge sundae. He’s not so bad.”

  Al and I watched television while Teddy relaxed over Al’s needlepoint. She kept going to the door and peering into the hall. “I thought I heard the elevator,” she said.

  “You did the kid a big favor,” I said. “He was all clutched up before you got here about writing a composition for English. Now he’s as soft as a grape.”

  “I wish I was Teddy’s age again,” Al said wistfully. “Life was pretty simple back in those days.” She got up and started to walk around the edges of the living-room rug.

  “You know something?” she said, putting one foot directly in front of the other, going round and round, not looking at me. “I’m getting awful tired of waiting.”

  “Waiting?” I said. I thought she meant for her father.

  “Yes.” Al sounded angry. “I’m tired of waiting to be good looking. I’m tired of waiting to be popular. I’m tired of waiting to get my period.”

  Al was almost crying. Most of the time she doesn’t get emotional.

  Teddy stopped doing Al’s needlepoint.

  “What’s she mean, her period?” he asked me.

  “It’s O.K., Ted,” I said. “Why don’t you go into the kitchen and whip up one of your famous sodas? There’s coffee ice cream in the freezer.”

  Teddy wanted to know what was up but all you have to do to divert that kid is say “ice cream” and he wouldn’t hang around to find out where Captain Kidd’s treasure is buried. He made a big racket in the kitchen, opening and shutting doors. There’d be a mess when he was through.

  I sat beside Al on the couch. “Relax,” I said. “You’ll probably have a neat time tonight and find lots of things to talk about to him.”

  “It’s not just seeing my father,” Al said. “It’s everything. My mother, Ole Henry, the works. The world is too much with me,” she said. I guess I looked dumb. “That’s a line from a poem I like. It says what I feel.”

  She put out her hand and almost touched my arm. “What would you think about going to live in a commune?” she asked me suddenly.

  “Well,” I said, “I guess it’d be all right. I don’t know. I never thought about it much. One thing, you’d have a ready-made family. Everybody takes care of the babies together and they share the work and everything.”

  “Yeah,” Al said. Her mouth turned down. “I guess I better split.”

  “It�
�s only twenty to,” I said, looking at the clock.

  “I better go. I want to be home when he gets there. You know.” Al stuffed her needlepoint in her pocket. We went to the door.

  “The one thing about a commune is you eat all that organic food and stuff. And no meat. They’re practically all vegetarians. I don’t think I’d like that.” She looked out at me from behind her bangs. I didn’t know what to say.

  Al put her head down as if she was trying to tuck it between her shoulders. I was glad she didn’t have any farther to go than down the hall. I waited until she went into her apartment before I closed the door. She didn’t say “Have a weird day” or anything.

  I watched at the door for a long time, trying to catch a glimpse of her father but I must’ve missed him.

  9

  I wanted to call Al first thing Sunday morning to find out how things had gone but my mother wouldn’t let me.

  “Let well enough alone,” she said. Whatever that means. “I’m sure Al will be in touch when she’s ready.”

  The sun was shining. I could actually see a sliver of fantastically blue sky between buildings when I looked out the window. It was a good day to be alive. I hope Al thought so too. Polly called and asked me for lunch. I felt as if I were deserting Al. She might want to have a heart-to-heart. On the other hand, Sunday was togetherness day at her house. It was the only day her mother had completely free. She liked Al to stick around so they could do things. Sometimes Al thought it was a drag. Not always. Probably from now on Ole Henry would be part of the togetherness, thus throwing Al into a real pit of depression.

  When I got to Polly’s, the kitchen was a shambles because she was fixing lunch. Polly wanted to go to the Cordon Bleu, which is a really fancy cooking school. She snorted when people said all the really great chefs of the world were men. Polly planned on being a really great chef.

  “Long time no see,” Polly said, chopping onions and garlic and shallots like a mad woman and throwing them in a pan. She started chopping all that stuff before she knew how to boil an egg. As a matter of fact, she still couldn’t boil an egg. That easy cooking didn’t interest her. The place smelled strong but good. She had on a huge billowing apron. All I could see of Polly was her hands and feet. She had what my mother called “an interesting face.” Which meant she wasn’t pretty and probably never would be, but when she got old, like around forty, she’d be better than pretty. She had straight blond hair, green eyes, and lots of bones. Everybody has bones, I know, but Polly seemed to have more than most people. Her eyes slanted a little. She looked sort of like a skinny, aristocratic cat.

  “I was hoping you might bring Al,” Polly said. She and Al had hit it off right from the start. “I should’ve said to. I’m inventing a new kind of omelet and there’s going to be plenty.”

  “Al’s father showed up to take her out for dinner last night,” I said.

  “Super,” Polly said. “She must be beside herself with joy.”

  “She is in a pit,” I said. “She says who does he think he is to just come as if he’d never been away. Not only that, she hasn’t got her period yet, and she’s the only one in the class who hasn’t. She says she’s sick of waiting for things to happen. She thinks her mother might get married to Ole Henry, and he wears after-shave lotion and a ring on his pinkie.”

  “Bad news,” Polly said, stirring.

  “What’s going on with you?” I said, sitting on a kitchen stool. The Petersons have all kinds of odd looking pots and pans hanging on their walls. Mr. Peterson is in the diplomatic service and has been posted in France and Egypt, among other places.

  “Life is very dull,” Polly said. “Evelyn came home last weekend from Boston and said she’s thinking of getting married. My mother says we never should have let her go to New England in the first place.”

  Evelyn is Polly’s sister. She has even more bones than Polly. She is twenty and studying to be a ballerina. She has been living with boys ever since she was eighteen. Polly’s mother and father are very progressive, or liberal, however you want to call it. The first time Evelyn came home and said she was living with a boy, the only one who got excited was Polly.

  “Evelyn’s got to put herself on a pedestal,” Polly told me. She was only eleven at the time and still believed in women being put on pedestals. Polly read a lot about the early days of our country when I guess this was not unusual. Anyway, the guy Evelyn was living with had lost some teeth in an accident and he had a set of false ones, which he used to flip in and out, and that got on her nerves.

  The strangest thing about me and Polly being friends is that my family is so conservative and hers is so far out. I guess that’s what attracted us to each other in the first place.

  “Who’s she thinking of marrying?” I said, helping myself to an olive. “The one with the dentures?”

  “No.” Polly beat up a couple of eggs as if she was mad at them. “This one is studying to be a lawyer. His family is very proper, and my mother says she doesn’t think it’ll work. Basically,” Polly said, wiping her hands on the front of her apron, “my mother is against marriage.”

  “She is?” Polly’s mother is a weirdo but nice.

  “She’s thinking of changing her name back to what it was before she married my father, but he says too much water has gone over the dam or under the bridge. He’s not sure which. He says she’d lose her credibility if she did that. My mother is just getting warmed up. No telling where she’ll end.” Polly slid the eggs into the pan with all the other stuff and turned the heat down low.

  “My mother says she doesn’t think Evelyn should get married to anyone for a long time. She also doesn’t think she should keep living with different people.”

  “She doesn’t?” I watched while she slid the eggs around in the pan gently until all of a sudden they looked just right, then flipped them out on a plate with all the onions and stuff in the middle. I tried to do this myself once but the whole thing turned into a disaster. “I thought you said your mother was against marriage,” I said as we sat down and started to eat. “It’s delicious,” I told Polly.

  “It needs salt,” she said. “My mother isn’t against marriage per se. She doesn’t think Evelyn is ready for marriage. That’s why she said we never should have let her go to New England where people get married a lot. She says New Englanders are superconservative. She thinks Evelyn should settle on one person and live with him for a few years until she is ready for a more permanent relationship. But you know Evelyn.” Polly shook her head. “She’ll do what she wants to do and woe to anyone who stands in her way. If she does marry this guy from Boston, I feel sort of sorry for him. You know?”

  I nodded. I felt sorry for him too. “How’s Thelma?” I said.

  Polly put her head on one side. “Thelma’s getting kind of uppity,” she said. “Her zits cleared up due to some miracle salve her dermatologist gave her, and she lost five pounds from around her waist, and guess where they went?”

  “Don’t tell me,” I said.

  “Right. Those five little old pounds traveled from Thelma’s waist right up to her chest and stayed there. Boys started calling her up and everything. If I lost five pounds from around my waist, they’d go straight to my ankles like a homing pigeon.”

  “And if I lost five pounds from my waist, they’d go to my ears or my fingers or my knees,” I said.

  “If you lost five pounds from anywhere, they’d haul you off to the SPCC and arrest your mother and father for not feeding you enough,” Polly said.

  “You should talk,” I said. We laughed for about five minutes and then decided we’d better clean up the pots and pans before Polly’s mother and father got home.

  “That’s the worst thing about cooking, the cleaning up,” I said.

  “When I get to be one of the world’s great chefs, I won’t have to clean up,” Polly said, scraping out the frying pan.

  “How come?” I said.

  “A great chef doesn’t scrub pots and pans, any more
than a queen scrubs out the bathtub,” Polly said haughtily. “There are plenty of menials around to do the dirty work. Are you ready for dessert?”

  Polly had made a torte, which is a very rich cake with nuts, and put it on the table.

  “It didn’t rise very well,” I said.

  “It’s not supposed to rise. There’s no flour in it. It’s supposed to be like that—all flat.”

  I tasted it. “Not bad,” I said. I prefer ordinary cake but I didn’t want to hurt her feelings. “Polly,” I said, “do you know about artificial insemination?”

  “Artificial what?” Polly said.

  “It’s when a lady can’t have a baby, so they get some unidentified male donor and shoot his sperm into the lady and, presto, she’s pregnant,” I told her.

  “You’re out of your tree,” Polly said. “I never heard of such a thing. Why don’t they just do it the old-fashioned way?”

  “I told you,” I said, very patient. “The lady can’t have a baby the normal way so that’s what they do. It’s a sort of last resort, I guess.”

  “I should hope so,” Polly said indignantly. “That’s the dumbest thing I ever heard of. Who told you?”

  “Al did. She read it somewhere. Al is very up on things like that. We were talking about if she never got her period and she couldn’t have a baby, and she said she didn’t think she was cut out to be a mother, and that’s when she told me.”

  “I’m going to ask my mother,” Polly said. I could see she was put out that her mother hadn’t told her, that I knew something she didn’t know.

  “Maybe your mother doesn’t know about it,” I said. “I guess it’s the latest thing.”

  The clock the Petersons had brought home from the Hague where Mr. Peterson was posted before Polly was born boomed out four times.

  “I better get going,” I said, “or my mother will be on the horn to find out if I’ve started.”

  The telephone rang.

  “Tell her I just left,” I said, one hand on the doorknob.

  “Oh, hello, how are you?” Polly said in a juicy voice. “She just left. I hear the elevator going down now. O.K., see you soon.”