Alice At The Home Front (15 page)

“Alice, do you think if I got some of those cards, I could learn to spot planes too? Sylvia and I were thinking … we’re getting tired of those artsy cards.”

“Sure, Jody. I can get some for you.”

“Swell! Then maybe the boys’ll pay attention to us like they do to you.”

Alice smirked as they turned away. “Once a dumbbell, always a dumbbell.”

Of course, the party was for Jimmy too, even though his friends had already given him parties. But he wouldn’t take any of the honors and was figuring out how to fasten Alice’s armband properly, while Bagheera was curled up on the top of the landing ready to pounce.

Most of the guests had wandered outside for a breath of fresh air. In the corner, a pile of 78 records on the Victrola played “Mairzey Doats,” “Ya Gotta Accentuate the Positive” (probably requested by Mother), and “Don’t Sit under the Apple Tree.” When that record came on, they all joined in, even the Brownells and the Parkers: “Don’t sit under the apple tree with anybody else but me till I come marching home.”

And Alice, who was looking around for an apple tree she could sit under with Jimmy, sang the loudest of them all.