Alice Alone

by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor

  So on Friday after school, I looked up the number for the Salvation Army and called. I said that I wanted to invite some people who might otherwise be alone on Thanksgiving. And then, thinking of Lester, I said maybe the Salvation Army knew of some young women who were working as maids or something, or were far away from their families this Thanksgiving, and might like to share our dinner with us.

  How many people could we serve? they asked. I mentally counted the number of chairs. Six in the dining room, four in the kitchen. Then I realized I would be doing the cooking, and I’d never cooked for ten people in my life.

  “Uh … three, I guess,” I told them. That would be double the size of our family.

  The Salvation Army said that mostly they had whole families of eight or nine needing a place to go on Thanksgiving, but if I got in touch with an organization called CCFO, perhaps they would know of some young women who would be glad for a refuge on Thanksgiving Day.

  I liked that—a refuge. I liked thinking of our house that way. So I called the number he gave me, and was startled when a voice said, “Community Connections for Female Offenders, may I help you?”

  I blinked, then swallowed and told them how the Salvation Army had given me their number, and that we had room at our table for three young women on Thanksgiving, and did they know of any ladies who didn’t have anywhere to go?

  The man on the phone asked if I knew anything about their organization, and I said no. He said that their purpose was to help women offenders, now out of prison, to readjust to the community. To help them find places to live and jobs so they wouldn’t return to a life of crime.

  I gulped.

  Then he assured me that he would not send us anyone who had been accused of a violent crime, and they would all have places to live, but that CCFO, for their part, needed assurances that we were what I claimed we were, simply a family who wanted to share our holiday, because they don’t just send three young women out to anyone who asks. After they had checked on us, he would like to call my father at his place of employment, so I gave him Dad’s number at the Melody Inn.

  “Very good,” he said. “We appreciate your call, and we’ll be in touch.”

  At least it gave me something to take my mind off Patrick.

  A letter from Sylvia had come that day, and Dad was in a good mood all evening. He always read her letters three or four times before he folded them up and put them away, and she must have said all the right things because he was still smiling when he tucked it back in the envelope.

  “Dad,” I said from across the room where I was slouched down in my favorite beanbag chair that he’s been trying to get rid of. “I thought it would be nice if we invited some poor people to our house for Thanksgiving this year. I mean, people who ordinarily wouldn’t have anyone to spend the holiday with.”

  Dad looked at me over the rims of his glasses. “That’s a noble thought, Al. I think it’s a fine idea. Do you know of a family?”

  “Well, no, but I called the Salvation Army—just to see how we might go about it—and they referred me to another organization that knows of”—I remembered what the man at the Salvation Army had said about people needing a refuge—“refugees who would appreciate Thanksgiving in someone’s home, and so I called and this man is going to phone you at work. He said they always check people out first. They don’t send … um … refugees out to just anyone who asks.”

  “Of course not. Honey, I’m real proud of you. How many did you say we would take?”

  “Just three,” I said quickly. “I wasn’t sure how many I could cook for.” The fact was, I’d never roasted a turkey in my life.

  “That’s great. Les and I will help, of course. It’s a fine idea.”

  I called Elizabeth and told her what I’d done and she said it was a fine idea, too. Elizabeth goes for noble things. She said they were having her grandparents for Thanksgiving, but she could come over that day and help me out for a couple of hours, that she wanted to do her part for the refugees, too.

  “They speak English, don’t they?” she asked.

  “I’m sure of it,” I said, and began to wish I hadn’t said anything at all about refugees.

  The next day at the Melody Inn, both Dad and Marilyn were with customers and I was answering the phone when a call came from CCFO.

  “Dad,” I said, going over to the center of the store where he was showing a cello to a couple. “You have a phone call.”

  “I’m with a customer, Al. Can’t you take it?”

  “They have to speak to you,” I said.

  “Excuse me,” Dad said to the couple, and went back to the counter. “Hello?” I waited, holding my breath. “Yes, that’s correct. I’m her father, and she told me we’d be having guests. We’re delighted to have them… . Yes, that will be fine… . Yes… . I wonder if I could put my daughter back on the line. I’m with customers at the moment… .” He handed the phone back to me.

  The man from CCFO wanted directions to our house and asked what time the women should be there. I hadn’t even thought about it. I figured it would take most of the morning to cook, though, so I said maybe two o’clock.

  “Well, we do appreciate your thoughtfulness,” the man said. “It means a lot to former prisoners to experience Thanksgiving in a friendly home. One of the women will be driving the other two, and their names are Shirley, Charmaine, and Ginger.”

  12

  Expanding My Horizons

  There are two ways that putting your mind on other people makes you feel better. First, it simply gives you something to do, and second, you don’t feel so alone, as though fate singled you out to be more sad than anyone else you know.

  As soon as I got home from the Melody Inn on Saturday—Dad always works an hour or two after closing on Saturdays—I called Aunt Sally in Chicago and asked her how to roast a turkey. I didn’t want to get into who exactly we were having for dinner, so I told her we were having some refugees.

  “My goodness, Alice, you are so grown up!” she said. “Your dad must be very proud of you.”

  “How big a turkey should we get?” I asked.

  “It depends how long you want to eat leftovers.”

  We like leftovers at our house because, if the food was good to start with, it means nobody has to cook for as long as it lasts. I imagined us eating turkey sandwiches for a week after Thanksgiving, and I liked the idea a lot. “A long time,” I said.

  “Well, then, you certainly couldn’t go wrong with a twelve-pound turkey. That’s two pounds per person, but if you’re serving refugees, no telling how much they’ll eat. And it would be a really nice gesture to send each one of them home with a little package of turkey. Why, I’ll bet even a sixteen-pound turkey wouldn’t go to waste.”

  “Okay, but how do I roast it?” I asked.

  “The important thing to remember is to remove the neck and gizzard.”

  “What? I have to kill it?” I cried.

  “No, no, but it will come packaged with the dismembered neck stuffed in the neck cavity, and the heart and kidneys and gizzard stuffed in the cavity below,” she said. If ever I had thought about being a vegetarian, I should have made a commitment right there. But Aunt Sally continued: “All you really have to do is follow the instructions on the wrapping and you shouldn’t have any trouble. Rinse it well, and don’t stuff it until you are just ready to pop it in the oven. You can find a recipe for stuffing on any package of croutons. You need to figure on a roasting time of about twenty minutes per pound of turkey. I’ll be here all Thanksgiving Day if you need me.”

  “Thanks,” I told her. And then, “Oh, one little piece of news: Patrick and I broke up.”

  There was silence at the other end. Then Aunt Sally said softly, “It was the sleepover, wasn’t it?”

  I thought back to the sleepover. In a way she was right. That was the night Karen took a picture of the fake kiss between Penny and Patrick, which led to the definitely unfake kisses ever since.

  “Sort of,” I to
ld her.

  “Oh, sweetheart, how I wish you’d listened to me. All those bodies together there on the floor … !”

  “It wasn’t that, Aunt Sally. Somebody was taking pictures,” I said.

  “Alice, do you mean to tell me that boys and girls were all over each other and someone was taking pictures? Where was your father? Where was Lester?”

  “It’s not what you think,” I said. “It was Patrick and the new girl, and Karen arranged it so it only looked like they were doing it, but actually …”

  “What?” cried Aunt Sally.

  I decided to quit before things got any worse. “Thanks for your help,” I told her. “I really have to go. I’ll let you know how the turkey comes out.”

  Another thing that helped was my job as one of the roving reporters for the school newspaper. My piece about the mystery meat in the school cafeteria turned out well. Everyone was laughing about it, and the result was that the cafeteria stopped serving it. They substituted turkey franks, which tasted a lot better, and I realized I had not only entertained, I had made a difference.

  “Good job, Al!” Nick O’Connell said to me at our next meeting. He wasn’t so pleased with the photos I’d taken, though, so on my next assignment, he sent Sam with me. We were to ask six different students what they would give our school as a Christmas present if they could give anything they wanted.

  I liked being paired with Sam Mayer. He and Jennifer Sadler were going together, so it wasn’t as though we were a couple or anything, but Sam had liked me in junior high school and we were still good friends.

  “You always want to catch a person alone,” Nick had told us. “If you ask somebody in front of his friends, he’s more likely to give you a flip answer. Get him alone and he’s more thoughtful. Makes better copy.”

  Sam and I decided to meet before school on Friday and just roam the halls, catching kids at their lockers, or at the juice and bagel bar in the cafeteria. I had to ask Lester to drive me there early, and he was grumpy.

  “Lester,” I said, balancing my book bag on my knees, “if you were in a position to give the university a Christmas present—anything you wanted—what would it be?”

  “Al, it’s seven forty-five, and I haven’t had breakfast,” he grumbled.

  “Really, though,” I said.

  Lester slowed to a stop at the light. When it turned green he said, “A bike path to the university from every neighborhood in the metropolitan area, and a babe on every bike.”

  “What you need is female companionship,” I told him.

  “I don’t even have time to clip my nails, and you want me to have a girlfriend,” Les said.

  I was on the verge of telling him about Shirley, Charmaine, and Ginger, but decided I’d better hold off. “I know you’re taking extra courses this semester and don’t have time for a serious relationship, but that doesn’t mean you can’t at least have some casual women friends,” I said.

  “Yeah, sure. So round me up some casual women friends,” he muttered.

  I just smiled and went on swinging my foot.

  Sam and I met outside the cafeteria and found our first student sitting at a table, eating a bagel with cream cheese. We didn’t want to embarrass him while his mouth was full, so while Sam adjusted his camera, I filled the guy in on what kind of a story we were doing for the paper and asked if he had any ideas of what would make a good present for our school.

  “A swimming pool,” he said. Then, after he swallowed, he added, “for skinny-dipping only.”

  I smiled and wrote it down while Sam took his picture, and we set out to find someone else.

  “I heard about you and Patrick,” Sam said.

  “Yeah. About everyone in the whole school knows, I think.”

  “Patrick must have rocks in his head to let you go,” said Sam.

  “Well, it was more or less mutual,” I told him, which wasn’t entirely true. But it was partly because of something I had said, so I figured it was true enough. And then I added, “How are things with you and Jennifer?”

  “Great!” he said, and I was glad that we saw a girl on ahead, standing at her locker, and zeroed in on her next, because I really didn’t want to get in a discussion of Sam and Jennifer versus Patrick and me.

  We had our six student comments done by the first bell, and all I had to do was condense or expand their replies to fill up half a page, with head shots. We got some interesting answers, though. The news editor had told us that two years ago they had asked the same question and got answers like, “Put belly dancers in the cafeteria,” or, “Reduce the drinking age to fifteen.” This time the kids said things like, “Repair the school rest rooms and make sure there are doors on all the stalls,” and, “Build a student lounge so the kids would have some place to gather in bad weather before and after school.”

  “I had an interesting assignment for the school newspaper,” I told Dad and Lester at dinner, glad that I could talk about something pleasant for a change instead of moping around over Patrick. And I told them what Sam and I had done.

  “Sounds as though you’re enjoying ninth grade, Al,” Dad said.

  “I got an interesting assignment today, too,” Lester said sardonically. “I have to compare the moral systems grounded in Kant’s Categorical Imperative, Benthamite utilitarianism, and Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics in terms of whether they commit the naturalistic fallacy.”

  “I’m never going to college,” I said.

  Dad raised an eyebrow.

  “Well, I’m never majoring in philosophy,” I told him.

  Elizabeth’s family was going to eat Thanksgiving dinner in the evening, so she promised to come over that morning and stay long enough to help me cook our meal. I hadn’t told her that our guests had been in prison, only that I’d called the Salvation Army for suggestions. Besides, I thought, everyone deserves a break—we all make mistakes. If nobody knew they were ex-cons but me, maybe they’d be treated more like ordinary people and could put their past behind them.

  Lester and I went out to buy a turkey the Monday before Thanksgiving, and I remembered what Aunt Sally had said about sending some home with each of the refugees when they left. Why stop at sixteen pounds? I thought. Why not get a twenty-pound turkey, and maybe Dad and Lester and I wouldn’t have to cook for a month!

  “Okay by me,” said Lester. “You’re the chef, babe.”

  I couldn’t explain it, exactly, but there was something about doing a good job on that newspaper write-up, and now, learning to roast a turkey—to make a whole Thanksgiving dinner, in fact—that made me feel less lonely. Or maybe just not so dependent on Patrick to make me feel like a lovable, worthwhile person. Maybe this was a good time to try my own wings, to concentrate on learning new things. An Alice Time—all for myself.

  Dad and Lester said they’d clean the house, since I was doing most of the cooking. Elizabeth arrived about seven Thanksgiving morning. At twenty minutes per pound for a twenty-pound turkey, we figured it would take six hours and forty minutes to roast. If I wanted to serve at two-thirty, it had to be in the oven by seven-thirty.

  We went down to the basement to get the turkey out of the freezer. It was so cold, I could hardly carry it, and it sounded like a rock when I dropped it on the table.

  Elizabeth looked worried. “You know, Alice, I think you were supposed to defrost it first,” she said.

  I looked at the microwave. “So?” I said, pointing to the button that said defrost.

  “I don’t know … ,” said Elizabeth.

  I turned the turkey around and looked at the print on the wrapper. Defrost in refrigerator 2 to 3 days prior to cooking, it read, and I went weak in the knees.

  “Oh, Alice!” said Elizabeth.

  We took the shelf out of the microwave and tried to cram the turkey in, but it wouldn’t fit. We were trying to turn it upside down when Lester came downstairs. “What the heck are you doing?” he asked, and that’s when I lost it.

  “Lester, it’s supposed to de
frost for two to three days, and the people are coming at two o’clock!” I wailed.

  “Al, you blockhead!” Lester said, and that brought Dad to the kitchen.

  Lester explained the problem. “What do you think?” he asked. “Chain saw or dynamite?”

  The upshot was that they took the turkey outside, cut it in half lengthwise with Dad’s power saw, and then we defrosted a half at a time in the microwave until it was merely icy. I didn’t have to stick my hand into the neck or abdominal cavity to remove the innards because Dad had already sawed them in half.

  Lester said he couldn’t watch, but after we’d rinsed out the turkey, Dad stuck both halves together with duct tape so we could stuff it, and told me to remove the tape before we put it in the oven. Then he went upstairs to scrub the bathroom.

  Elizabeth had been chopping the mushrooms and celery for the dressing, and I melted the butter and added the bread cubes. We looked at the turkey, its legs akimbo, and then at each other.

  “It’s positively obscene to have to stick your hand in there,” Elizabeth said. “I am never going to have a baby.”

  “Relax,” I told her. “When you have children, they won’t cut your head off first.” We took turns spooning the dressing into the turkey’s cavity. Then, while I held the two parts together, Elizabeth removed the duct tape, and we used wooden skewers to sew the bird up. At a quarter of nine, we brushed it with melted butter, covered it with foil, and put it in the roasting pan. It took both of us to get it in the oven, and I turned the heat up fifty degrees higher than it had said to allow for the fact that it was half frozen.

  We did the pies next. Mrs. Price had sent over some ready-made piecrusts, so Elizabeth and I made the three easiest pies in the world: pumpkin, pecan, and mince. Even a six-year-old could make them. After that we tackled the sweet potatoes and mashed them with melted butter, cream, and orange rind.

  Lester poked his head in the kitchen around eleven-thirty. “What time will the turkey be done, Al?”