Starting With Alice

by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor

  I laughed too. But it sounded strange hearing him call my dad “Benny.” “Tell me more stories about Dad when he was little,” I said.

  “When he was just a little kid, you mean, like you?” Now Uncle Charlie was grinning. We were stopped at a light, and he began to chuckle. “Well, once, I remember, he and Harold and Howard had a contest to see who could open his mouth the widest, and your dad won…”

  I smiled.

  “. . . and ended up going to the hospital,” Uncle Charlie finished.

  “What?” I said.

  “Seems he opened it so wide, the jawbone slipped out of place and he couldn’t close his mouth. Mom had to take him to the emergency room. He was mad at me that day, though, because as they left the house, I hollered after him that he’d better put a screen over his door or else the flies would get in.”

  Now we both were laughing out loud.

  “But most of the time,” Uncle Charlie said, “your dad and I got along just fine.”

  “Did you still like each other when you both fell in love with Mom?” I asked.

  “What?” cried Uncle Charlie, and he almost put on the brakes.

  “I—I thought you loved my mom first and Dad stole her away from you,” I said, trying to remember an old family story.

  “Aha! That was another Charlie—a guy by the name of Charlie Snow. That’s right, I’d almost forgotten. Your mom did have another boyfriend before she married Ben. You’ll have to ask your dad about that sometime.”

  At the rental shop we picked up Uncle Charlie’s tuxedo.

  “One more stop,” he said as he started the car up again. “I have to pick up the wedding rings.”

  “You don’t even have the rings yet?” I asked.

  “Oh, yes. But we couldn’t decide what to have engraved inside them. We just made up our minds last week,” he said.

  I didn’t think anyone could engrave words inside a tiny gold band. The rings were waiting, though, in their white velvet box, and the clerk shook Uncle Charlie’s hand and said, “Congratulations.” Then he looked at me and said, “You make sure your grandpa behaves himself, now.”

  When we got out to the car, I said, “Do I have to take care of Grandpa at the wedding?”

  Uncle Charlie laughed. “Oh, no. He meant me.”

  “You’re not my grandpa!” I said.

  “No, but I’m old enough to be,” he told me. “All the McKinley brothers married late, I guess. I’m just your extra-old uncle who’s getting himself married at the grand age of fifty-seven.” Then, before he started the car again, he said, “If you can keep a secret, Alice, you can read what’s engraved inside the rings. Nobody knows but Marge and me.”

  I looked at him. “Sure!” I said.

  “You won’t tell a soul?”

  I shook my head.

  He opened the box, and I took out the largest ring—his—and turned it around and around until I could read the writing on the inside. It said, Forever. Mousie.

  “Mousie?” I said.

  “That’s my pet name for Marge. She’s saying she’ll be mine forever.”

  I put it back and picked up the smaller ring for Aunt Marge. I had to squint to read the words because they were so tiny. Forever. Chums.

  “And that’s her sweet-talking word for me,” Charlie said, and smiled. “We’re just two old fools having the best time of our lives and getting married.”

  “I think it’s wonderful, Uncle Charlie,” I said. “And I hope you’re happy forever and ever.”

  And I wondered if someday I might be saying that to my dad.

  I thought I had picked a nice dress for the wedding, but when I came downstairs on Saturday, everyone stopped talking and stared at me.

  “What?” I said, stopping on the bottom step and looking myself over. I had on my velvet dress and my best tights without any holes in them and my patent leather shoes. I thought I looked great.

  “You’re wearing black!” said Dad. “You don’t wear black to a wedding, sweetheart.”

  “Why?” I said. I was ready to burst into tears. It was the only dress I’d brought with me.

  Aunt Vivian came over and put her arms around me. “Darlin’, don’t you mind them one bit. You look perfectly fine to me,” she said. “We’ll just add a pink sash to that dress and put on a white lace collar, and y’all be the prettiest one at the wedding, next to the bride.”

  By the time Aunt Vivian and Aunt Linda got through with me, I looked like a piece of licorice candy dipped in strawberries. There was a pink ribbon in my hair, a white lace collar around my neck, and a pink sash around my waist, with little bunches of fake roses tied to the straps of my Mary Janes.

  All I’d done was reach into my closet for something Aunt Sally had sent me, clothes that Carol had outgrown, and grabbed something fancy. A mother would have told me I shouldn’t wear black. I wanted to bawl.

  By the time we got to the church, though, I’d lost the flowers off both straps of my shoes, and when the ceremony was over, I noticed that the bow had fallen out of my hair, and I felt better. At the reception I got rid of the pink sash, so all that was left was the white lace collar, and I decided I could live with that.

  Uncle Charlie danced with Aunt Marge, and I danced with Dad; Dad danced with Aunt Vivian and Aunt Linda, and I danced with Lester. Uncle Harold and Uncle Howard both made toasts to their brother and said it was about time Charlie got married. Then Dad made a toast to Uncle Charlie and wished him and Marge health and happiness. And then we heard Grandpa McKinley say, “Where’s the doggone wedding cake? That’s what I came for,” and everyone laughed.

  Uncle Charlie and Aunt Marge changed clothes, and then we were all going to the airport to see them off on their honeymoon.

  “Alice darlin’,” said Uncle Harold, “do you think you could entertain your grandfather while we pack up the wedding presents to take back to the house later? Your aunts are busy packing up the cake and punch.”

  “Sure,” I said, not at all sure, but I walked over to where Grandpa McKinley sat scowling in his wheelchair and sat down next to him. He turned his head and gave me a ferocious stare.

  “I said I wanted to go home,” he told me. “I’m not gettin’ on any cockeyed airplane.”

  “You’re not going on an airplane, Grandpa. Uncle Charlie and Aunt Marge are getting on. We’re just going along to tell them good-bye.”

  “So what’s wrong with their car?” he asked.

  I blinked. Sometimes it’s hard to follow Grandpa. “Nothing. But I don’t think you can drive a car to Bermuda,” I said.

  “Eh?” he said.

  I put my mouth to his ear. “I don’t think you can drive to Bermuda!” I shouted.

  “That’s what’s wrong with cars today, they don’t hold up. Won’t go anywhere!” Grandpa shouted back at me.

  I tried to think how to quiet him down. “What kind of a car did you used to have?” I asked. “What was your first car, Grandpa?”

  That seemed to be the magic button. Grandpa McKinley settled back in his wheelchair and began to smile. “I had a 1927 Model T Roadster,” he said. “A Ford Roadster.” And he smiled some more.

  “What did the car have?” I asked.

  “Why, it had headlamps, a horn, a starter, a hand-operated windshield wiper, windshield wings… . It had bumpers, front and rear, and a rearview mirror, shock absorbers, and it came with five wire wheels. Yessir, that car had everything!”

  By the time Uncle Howard came to get Grandpa, Grandpa McKinley was on his third car, a Model A Fordor sedan, and I heard afterward that he talked about cars all the way to the airport and all the way back.

  On our drive back to Maryland, we all said we were glad we had come, even Lester. I was remembering how happy Chums and Mousie looked as they went down the ramp to the plane and how I was the only one who knew what was engraved on their wedding rings.

  But something horrible happened. Two days later, when we were back in Takoma Park, we got word that Uncle Charlie had
died of a heart attack on his honeymoon.

  It was so awful—so sudden. My dad just put his forehead against the wall and cried, and that made me cry too. I pressed my face against Dad’s hand and sobbed. Lester went up to his room and closed his door.

  We drove to Tennessee all over again the following weekend for the funeral. Lester and I didn’t complain at all this time, and we didn’t ask for any more bathroom stops than we had to. Once I looked over at Dad and saw tears in his eyes again. Then I choked up.

  ‘’I’m r-really sorry, Dad, about Uncle Charlie,” I said softly.

  “Yeah, me too,” said Lester, and he wasn’t even listening to his iPod. “Life really stinks sometimes.”

  “Yes,” said Dad. “Life can be very rough sometimes.” He paused, then said, “You just have to keep going. To wade through it. You can’t go around.”

  The funeral dinner was held in the very same room where we’d had the wedding reception the week before, and I was wearing the same black velvet dress. In fact, the lemon sponge cake looked a lot like the leftover wedding cake with a little lemon sauce poured over it, and instead of everyone giving their best wishes to Aunt Marge, they were all crying and hugging her, and she was crying too.

  “Aunt Marge, I’m so sorry,” I wept.

  “So am I,” she told me. “We had two wonderful days, Alice. Two wonderful days, but that was all.”

  “Where’s Charlie?” Grandpa kept asking.

  “He died, Dad,” my father told him for about the fifteenth time.

  “Died?” said Grandpa. Then he got very quiet. He still didn’t understand, I guess. It was hard to explain things to Grandpa.

  We stayed in Tennessee until Monday, and when we left to go home, Aunt Marge gave all of us big hugs, and Grandpa even let me kiss him on the cheek. I decided that hugs could go a long, long way toward making you feel better.

  We were pretty quiet on the way home to Maryland, but there were tears in my eyes the whole way.

  “Can honeymoons kill you?” I asked Dad.

  “Usually they make you feel better, not worse,” said Dad.

  “Did you and Mom have a honeymoon?” I wanted to know.

  “Yes. We went camping,” said Dad.

  “That’s a honeymoon?” asked Lester.

  “It was all we could afford at the time, Les, and it was enough. We had each other,” Dad said.

  “Poor Uncle Charlie,” I said. “Poor Aunt Marge.” For Chums and Mousie, “forever” turned out to be only two days.

  10

  THE SAD TIME

  I TOLD ROSALIND ABOUT UNCLE CHARLIE’S funeral when I went back to school on Tuesday. We were sitting on the steps, waiting for the bell, and were trying to figure out why a man would die on his honeymoon.

  “Maybe his wife was a bad cook,” said Rosalind. “Maybe what she cooked was so awful, it killed him.”

  And when I didn’t say anything, she added, “Or maybe he’d been a bachelor for so long that when his wife saw him in his underpants, he died of embarrassment.” Finally she said, “I’m never going to get married.”

  “Maybe I won’t either,” I told her. “I don’t think I could ever love a boy as much as I love my cat.”

  “Then marry a tomcat and have kittens,” said Rosalind, and we laughed.

  The Terrible Triplets were coming up the sidewalk.

  “What’s so funny?” said Megan.

  “None of your beeswax,” said Rosalind. And then she said, “Honeymoons.”

  “Honeymoons?” said Jody. “Is that where Alice was yesterday?”

  And then it started all over again. “Hey, everybody, Alice and Donald went on a honeymoon!” Dawn yelled.

  All the kids came running over to the steps and shouted that silly chant:

  “Alice and Don-ald,

  Sitting in a tree,

  K-I-S-S-I-N-G.”

  Everybody looked at me to see if I was getting mad. I couldn’t stand it. I couldn’t stand all that teasing and hollering and kissing business. I didn’t want to have to tell them about the funeral, either, because I was afraid I might start to cry; but I had to stop them somehow, and suddenly I heard myself saying, “It wasn’t me who went on a honeymoon, it was my uncle. And guess what? He was murdered.”

  Rosalind jerked around and stared at me.

  “What?” said Megan. “Really?”

  “I just got back from the funeral,” I said, and all the kids stopped grinning.

  “Who killed him?” asked Dawn.

  “We don’t know yet. The police are still investigating,” I said. Inside, my stomach felt like a rock. How could I do this to Uncle Charlie?

  “I’ll bet his new wife poisoned him,” said a skinny boy named Ollie Harris.

  I swallowed. How could I do this to Aunt Marge?

  “I’ll bet she smothered him in his sleep,” said somebody else.

  “I’m never going to get married, ever!” said Donald Sheavers, which suited me fine, but I still felt sick to my stomach.

  The bell rang, and kids were still talking about the murder when we went inside.

  “He wasn’t, was he? Murdered?” Rosalind whispered to me.

  “Well, he didn’t kill himself,” I answered miserably.

  It was about ten o’clock and we were having a spelling test when the principal’s voice came over the loudspeaker. “Excuse the interruption, Mrs. Burstin, but could you send Alice McKinley to my office? Thank you.”

  I think my heart stopped beating for a moment. If you are called to the principal’s office, it means one of two things: you are in deep, deep doo-doo, or something awful has happened at home.

  Mrs. Burstin nodded to me, meaning I could get up and leave, and I was so scared that I had to stop in the restroom before I went to the office.

  “Go right in there, Alice,” the school secretary said when I walked in the door.

  There was Mr. Serio behind the desk.

  “Hello, Alice,” he said. “Sit down.” He got up and closed the door behind me, but the secretary could still see us through the glass window. I swallowed.

  “I understand that your family’s been through quite an ordeal,” he said quietly. He sat back in his chair and folded his fingers over his stomach. “First your uncle got married, then he died. I’m really very sorry.”

  “S-So am I,” I said.

  “When your father asked if you could miss a day of school to go back for the funeral, Alice, he told me that your uncle died of a heart attack,” Mr. Serio went on. “So I was very surprised when reports reached me this morning that he was murdered. That is terrible news, isn’t it?”

  “I—I guess so,” I said.

  “Alice,” said Mr. Serio, “what made you say that? Why did you tell the other kids that your uncle was murdered?”

  How could I tell the principal that I made up the story to stop all that kissing stuff?

  “Well… well… something killed him, didn’t it? I didn’t say a person killed him,” I explained, stumbling over my words.

  Mr. Serio just kept looking at me. He wasn’t exactly smiling, but he wasn’t frowning, either. “I think you know the difference, Alice. You’re a smart girl. So tell me why you needed to say that.”

  I could already feel tears rolling out of the corners of my eyes. “B-Because the kids were t-teasing me about D-Donald and honeymoons, and the Terrible Triplets were making fun of—”

  “The who?”

  “The three witches,” I said.

  “Alice, are you having trouble making friends here?” asked Mr. Serio.

  “No, I’m making lots of friends,” I said suddenly, not wanting anybody to feel sorry for me. “Except for the Terrible Triplets, and they’re having trouble making friends with me!”

  “I see,” said Mr. Serio. “Well, I think that somehow you have to let them know that your uncle died of a heart attack, that he wasn’t murdered. But I’ll leave it to you to figure out just how you’re going to tell them.”

  “Oka
y,” I said.

  At recess everyone gathered around. They wanted to know why I was called into Mr. Serio’s office.

  “We found out what killed my uncle,” I said.

  “You mean he wasn’t murdered?” everyone asked.

  “Well, I can tell you this much: He died of a heart attack. And you know what can give you a heart attack? A terrible, terrible shock! If someone scares you bad enough, your heart will just stop beating.”

  “Who scared him enough to give him a heart attack?” asked Jody.

  “We don’t know. They’re still investigating,” I said, and hoped that would be the end of it.

  For a while I was feeling sad about everything. Sad about Uncle Charlie and sad for my new aunt Marge and sad for my dad because he’d lost his favorite brother. On top of everything else, the milkman knocked on our door and told us that his company was going to stop home deliveries at the end of the year. All the other companies had stopped delivering milk years ago, and from now on, we’d have to buy our milk at the store like everyone else. What’s more, he was out of a job. After thirty-one years with the company, he said, he had nowhere to go in the mornings.

  He looked so sad when he told us that I could hardly stand it. On the last day he came by to pick up the bottles, I wrote a poem and stuck it down inside one of the empties. Here’s what I wrote:

  There are lots of drops in the ocean,

  There are lots of stars in the blue,

  But in the whole state of Maryland,

  There’s only one person like you.

  Alice McKinley, age 8

  I don’t know if he ever read it. Maybe he just dumped all the empties into the big bottle-washing machine and the paper went down the drain. But who says he didn’t put it in a scrapbook to treasure always?

  Aunt Sally and Uncle Milt decided that we shouldn’t be alone on our first Christmas away from relatives. So Aunt Sally called to say that they were coming to Maryland for Christmas, ready or not, and I guess that was just what we needed. Because Aunt Sally just takes over when she’s in someone’s house. Dad let her and Uncle Milt have his bed. He slept on an old army cot in the basement with Lester, and Carol slept in my bed. I slept on the floor in my sleeping bag.