Alice Alone

by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor

  “That’s exactly why you don’t say something like that. Besides, aren’t you doing a little stereotyping here? Janice can only be happy if she gets a man? You don’t have to be part of a couple to be happy, you know.”

  “But look how happy Dad’s been since he met Miss Summers!”

  “He was missing Mom, of course. But you can be part of a couple and still be miserable. Or be single and happy. I’m not part of a couple at the moment, and I’m a heck of a lot happier than I was dating Eva Mecuri.”

  I thought of Lester’s last girlfriend, and had to agree on that.

  Six o’clock came, and Dad wasn’t home, then six-thirty. Lester and I made cheese omelettes for ourselves and left the egg and cheese and chive mixture in the refrigerator for Dad.

  “Maybe he took Janice out to dinner, too,” I said. “Maybe she became hysterical at the thought of never seeing him again, and—”

  “Don’t!” Lester said, and turned on the TV.

  Six-thirty became seven … then seven-fifteen … seven-thirty. I began to get worried. I called the Melody Inn, but no one answered.

  At a quarter of eight, Dad pulled in the drive, and when he came in he apologized. “I should have called,” he said. “Sorry. Hope you two weren’t worried.”

  Lester turned off the TV. “We only called all the hospitals, the state police, and the National Guard,” he told him.

  “Did Janice Sherman change her mind about leaving?” I asked.

  “No. I thought she was rather pleased with all the attention. Loved the red jacket. I think things are rather good between us, actually. No hard feelings.”

  “Then where … ?” I asked, and waited.

  “A surprising new development,” Dad said. “Actually, I took Marilyn Rawley to dinner.”

  One of Lester’s feet slid off the coffee table, and he stared at Dad. Marilyn Rawley was an old girlfriend of Lester’s—the first serious girlfriend, in fact, who had ever come to our house. She was “country” through and through—a sort of ’60s flower child, with long straight brown hair. She was small and thin—the kind you could see walking barefoot through a meadow in a see-through cotton dress and no bra. A lot different from Crystal, with her short red hair and big breasts and her classical taste in music. But I’d liked Crystal, too!

  “Yeah?” was all Lester said, but his eyes were fixed on Dad.

  “As soon as Janice had left the store and Marilyn and I were cleaning up, Marilyn said to me pointblank, ‘Mr. McKinley, I’d like to be considered for Janice’s position.’ Just like that.”

  “Really?” I cried.

  “She’s in school!” said Lester. “She’s working on her degree.”

  “I know,” said Dad. “I told her I needed someone full time to be assistant manager, and she said she was willing to drop her courses in order to get the job. I said I didn’t think that was a good idea, but she told me she was on the verge of dropping out, anyway, that college wasn’t where she wanted to be.”

  “You’re not going to let her, are you?” asked Les.

  “I wasn’t, but it turns out she had already talked to her adviser about leaving school. She said she was dropping out whether she got the position or not. So I suggested we talk about it more over dinner, and we went to that little Chinese place just off Georgia Avenue, and … to make a long story short … over beef and green peppers … I hired her.”

  Lester frowned, but I was delighted. “Great!” I said. I could see us now—one big, happy family: Dad and Sylvia, Lester and Marilyn, me and …

  “She’s good with customers, Les, and she does know music—classical as well as folk and rock. I suggested a three-month trial period—see how she likes the business end of it, shuffling papers… . If it doesn’t work out, she can clerk full time and I’ll hire someone else for assistant manager. What do you think?”

  “I think it’s a great idea!” I said.

  “Maybe so,” said Lester. “She’s been less than motivated about getting a degree.”

  “Soooo,” Dad said, relief in his voice. “Nice to have that settled. I guess today was a day of moving onward for Janice and upward for Marilyn.”

  I watched him hang his suit coat in the closet. “How was the final good-bye with Janice Sherman?” I asked.

  “Cordial,” said Dad.

  “Cordial?” I teased. “Was there a kiss in that cordial?”

  “Actually, yes. And a hug as well.”

  “On the lips or on the cheek?” I quizzed.

  Dad laughed. “On the ear, as I remember. The kind that shows you’re not too serious. But Janice did a lot for the Melody Inn, Al. Don’t knock it.”

  “I won’t, but Marilyn will do so much more!” I said.

  “We’ll see,” said Dad.

  I was glad he didn’t yell at me for what I’d said to Janice about getting married. But I wondered if having Marilyn at the store full time would bring her and Lester together again.

  It would be the best of all possible worlds for me, I thought. Elegant Sylvia Summers in her beautiful, soft clothes and wonderful perfume, and Marilyn Rawley in her cotton dresses and bare feet. What one couldn’t teach me about life, the other could. If Lester would only fall in love with Marilyn again, and marry her, Marilyn and I would be sisters-in-law, and she and Lester could have four children, all playing barefoot in the grass and wearing flowers in their hair and playing guitars and singing folk songs, and …

  The phone rang, and I picked it up in the hall.

  “Alice!” came Pamela’s voice. “Are you going?”

  “Going where?”

  “Penny’s Halloween party. Didn’t she call you?”

  There was that cold, sliding-down feeling again. “No …”

  “Well, she will, I’m sure. At her house on Halloween. Costumes and everything. Elizabeth and I are going. All the guys have been invited, Brian told me.”

  My lips seemed to stick together. “Did you get … invitations in the mail, or what?”

  “No. She called. Oh, you’re invited, I know.”

  We talked for a few minutes, and then I made an excuse to go. I didn’t want to tie up the phone.

  But eight became nine, nine-fifteen, nine-thirty … I checked a few times to make sure no one was using the phone. It sat silently in the hallway, its buttons like little square eyes, mocking me. Twice I checked my E-mail. No message from Penny there, either.

  And then, about a quarter of ten, Penny called. “Hi, Alice. I wanted to be sure you knew about my party,” she said, and told me the date and the time.

  “Sure,” I said. “Sounds great.” But I couldn’t help feeling she’d saved me till last, that I was at the very bottom of her list.

  7

  Panic

  Things were going to be all right. Penny was just what everyone said she was—cute as a penny, funny, friendly, and open, and it was okay that all the boys, Patrick included, liked her. How could they not? Just because Patrick liked her didn’t mean he liked me less, or that I wasn’t special to him.

  I didn’t want an ugly costume, though. Penny was also pretty and petite, and I wasn’t about to go as a clown or something, with a big nose. I decided to go as a flapper, one of those 1920s girls in the short fringed skirt and headband. I told Pamela and Elizabeth, and we all decided to be flappers together. Mrs. Price said she’d help with the costumes, and we had a lot of fun getting the stuff together and trying it on.

  “We’ve got to have plumes in our headbands!” Pamela said one afternoon, lifting some stuff out of a shopping bag. “I stopped at the fabric store and found the wildest stuff!”

  I squealed as she handed me a green feather plume to stick in the sequined headband I’d be wearing, which matched the short, swishy dress Mrs. Price had made for me. It was tank-style, all one piece, no waist, with a fringe of the same color around the hem.

  “And a garter!” Elizabeth said. “We’ve each got to have a garter. Pastel panty hose and a garter.”

  Mrs. Price
had as much fun as any of us. We had to take turns watching Elizabeth’s baby brother while her mom sewed the dresses on her machine. We tickled Nathan with our plumes while he crawled around the floor, trying to get away from us and giggling.

  My dress was pale green, Elizabeth’s was red, and Pamela’s was purple, which made the blue streak in her hair stand out all the more. I bought the matching panty hose for all of us, and an hour before the party Saturday night, Pamela and Elizabeth came over to show our costumes to Dad and Lester.

  Lester was getting ready to go down to Georgetown with some friends, where all the college kids gather on Halloween. At the moment, though, he was sitting on the couch reading Newsweek and eating an apple. Pamela had brought over a CD of the Charleston, and I put it on my portable player and set it out in the hall. As soon as the music began, tin-sounding and honky, we danced into the living room, our arms around one another’s shoulders, kicking our legs out like the Rockettes, and then we each cut loose and did our own version of the Charleston.

  Lester lowered his apple and grinned. “You girls dancing or swimming?” he asked, but he not only laughed, he clapped.

  Dad got up from the dining room table, where he was going over mail orders from the Melody Inn, and stood in the doorway smiling at us. “Your mother certainly would have enjoyed this, Al,” he said wistfully. “Let me get my camera.”

  I was delighted that we were making a hit with Dad and Lester. If they liked us, the guys at the party surely would.

  Dad drove us over to Penny’s. Her house was about the same as ours—old and big, with lots of trees around it.

  Both her parents were on hand to meet us at the door, and Penny herself was dressed as a pirate— short black shorts, a red shirt and black sash, gold earrings, a red bandanna, and a patch over one eye. Adorable, was the only way to describe her, but then I felt adorable, too, so it didn’t bother me as much as it might have.

  Not everyone was there, but most of our crowd was. She hadn’t invited Lori and Leslie, I noticed, or Sam and Jennifer, and she didn’t even know Donald Sheavers, but Gwen and Legs had come, and the usual gang that hangs around Mark Stedmeister’s pool in the summers. I guessed Penny would be a part of it now.

  The guys all came as gangsters, every one of them. Well, all but Legs. He and Gwen came as Twinkies. Karen was a bag of potato chips, and Jill was a French maid. We made quite a picture. In fact, flashbulbs kept going off all evening, and Penny’s folks took a number of group pictures.

  Of course, everyone made us put on the Charleston CD and dance, and soon the whole gang was hoofing it up. The gangsters and the flappers together looked great, and I was having more fun than I’d had at my own party.

  Patrick swung me around, tipped me back, and kissed me in front of everyone; it was just a glorious Halloween. Penny’s dad drove some of the kids home afterward, Pamela’s Dad drove a bunch, too, and Lester came to pick up Elizabeth, Patrick and me. Patrick kissed me again before he got out of the car.

  “All that worry for nothing,” Elizabeth said to me after Patrick got out. “He’s still crazy for you, Alice.”

  “I guess so,” I said. “How about you and Justin?”

  “Oh, he likes all the girls,” she said.

  I couldn’t help but wonder about Elizabeth as I dressed for bed. Justin is one of the best-looking guys in ninth grade. Nice, too, and nuts—or was nuts—about Elizabeth. But just because he made a remark last summer—a joking remark—about her getting chubby, she’s been giving him the cold shoulder. It’s almost as though she looks for reasons not to get too close to a boy. And she sure isn’t chubby now. There are times I feel there will always be a part of Elizabeth I’ll never know. I wonder if anyone feels that way about me.

  I slept late the next morning and had a ton of homework, so I didn’t go running. Pamela, Elizabeth, and I had started running every morning during the summer to tone up before we started high school, and I’d vowed to keep it up after school began. I enjoyed running even when Pamela and Elizabeth weren’t with me. Sort of my own special time to think things over and plan my day.

  But now I realized I’d let too much slip by while I was getting ready for Halloween, and began to panic that even if I stayed up all night I wouldn’t be able to do it all. When I looked at the course outline for English, I discovered that a huge paper I had thought was due November 10 was due November 3, a week sooner.

  “Don’t anyone talk to me!” I bellowed, pushing Dad’s stuff to one side of the dining room table and taking over the rest of the space for myself.

  “A pleasure,” said Lester. “Who rattled your cage?”

  “High school is too much work!” I cried in despair. “Every teacher thinks his is the only subject there is—that you’ve got all the time in the world just to work on his assignments. Never mind what anyone else gives you.”

  “And you haven’t even started college, much less grad school,” said Lester, which didn’t make me feel any better.

  I had only done two problems in algebra when the phone rang.

  “Al, it’s Patrick,” Dad called. “Should I say you’ll call him back?”

  “No, I’ll take it,” I mumbled. As I walked to the phone in the hall I wondered if I should ask him to come over and help me with the algebra, but I couldn’t very well let him help and then tell him to go home. If he came, he’d want to stay awhile, and I’d lose an hour or two I just couldn’t afford. “Hi,” I said.

  “Hi. How are the legs this morning?”

  “Wobbly.” I laughed. “It was a fun party, though.”

  “Sure was,” he said. “Hey, today’s the last day for that sci-fi movie at the Cinema. Want to go?”

  Patrick is so smart, he can do his homework in half the time, even with his accelerated program. It’s maddening. “Oh, Patrick, I can’t!” I wailed. “I’m too far behind. Heart attack city! Can’t we rent the video after it comes out?”

  “I want to see it on the big screen, Dolby sound and everything,” he said. “It’s supposed to be really good. Karen and Brian and Penny and a bunch of us are going.”

  I was silent.

  “Alice?” he said.

  Maybe I should just go, I thought. Maybe I should forget the homework for once and go, be spontaneous, but I knew I couldn’t. I should have planned better. I should have checked my assignment due dates. “I can’t,” I said flatly. “Have a good time.”

  “Sure?” he said.

  “I’m positive. I’ve got a billion assignments, Patrick. I’d like to, but I can’t.”

  “Okay,” he said. “Talk to you later.” And I heard him hang up.

  I tried not to think about Patrick at the movies with Penny. There would always be a Penny. No matter what happened in life, there would always be a girl or a woman who was pretty and fun and popular and clever, and I had to get used to it. Patrick and I were an “item,” so why did I worry about it so much?

  I was relieved that I actually got through the first section of the algebra assignment by myself. The remaining problems were so hard and my patience so thin that I put them off until later to ask Lester. Then I read a chapter in history and started the essay questions at the end.

  Elizabeth called to see if I had gone to the movies with Patrick. She’d stayed home to do her English assignment, too. I told her that I was uneasy about Penny being there with Patrick.

  “It’s broad daylight!” she said. “You never have to worry about a guy and a girl going anywhere in the afternoon, even the movies. That’s so uncool, it doesn’t even count.”

  I felt better, and made myself a peanut butter sandwich with bacon bits. After I was finished with history, around five o’clock, I ate an apple and painted my nails, and then I started the paper for English. I figured Patrick would call later and tell me about the movie, what I’d missed and what everybody did after. But the phone didn’t ring. Just before I went to bed I checked my E-mail. No messages at all.

  Patrick wasn’t on the bus the next morn
ing. Sometimes he has band practice before school, and his dad drives him over. Penny was there, though, talking about the movie and how scary it was.

  Brian guffawed loudly and interrupted. “There was this part where the woman’s in the cave, afraid to come out because the creature with all the tentacles is around somewhere, but she doesn’t know it’s been cloned, and there’s another one back in the cave, and you see this tentacle sort of oozing, sliding across the rocks behind her …”

  “And then Patrick puts his hands around Penny’s neck!” laughed Mark.

  “You should have heard her scream!” Brian said.

  “Everyone in the theater turned and stared at me!” Penny went on, laughing at herself. “He was horrible!”

  “A hundred-decibel scream,” said Justin.

  “Well, he scared me!” Penny said, laughing some more.

  I slid onto the seat beside Pamela.

  “I think you should have come,” she whispered tentatively.

  “You went?”

  “Sure. I thought everyone was coming.”

  “I had tons and tons of work to do.”

  She just shrugged. “When the cat’s away, the mice will play,” she said.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Just that Patrick was fooling around. He was sitting right beside Penny.”

  “Well, he had to sit somewhere.”

  “I know. I’m just telling you.”

  I felt I was swimming against the tide. I felt as though a big steamroller was coming at me, or an avalanche or something.

  “So … what else happened?” I asked. “Nothing. That I know of.”

  “Meaning … ?”

  “I don’t know, Alice. I can’t watch them every minute.”

  “Well, I can’t, either,” I said. “And what’s more, I shouldn’t have to.”

  “Right,” said Pamela.

  I felt flat all day. Irritated. Anxious. But I made up my mind that I wasn’t going to ask Patrick about it. I wasn’t going to nag and question and put him through the third degree. If you had to do all that to keep a guy, what good was it?

  He called that evening. He told me all about the movie, but he didn’t mention Penny. Didn’t say how he’d slipped his hands around her neck at the critical moment, made her scream. How he happened to be sitting right beside her.