Outrageously Alice (10 page)

Twenty-three!
It sounded so grown-up and far away. Older than Crystal, even.

“I’m thinking about being a psychiatrist,” I said. It was the first time I’d said that aloud. Actually, I’d been thinking about being a school counselor, but after seeing all the misery Pamela had been going through lately, I thought maybe I should go for the heavy-duty jobs.

“A
shrink
?” asked Pamela.

“Psychiatrist, psychologist, whatever,” I said. “I just want to know why people do the things they do. Maybe stop some of the problems before they start. I think I’d like that.”

“You just want people to tell you about their sex problems,” said Pamela.

“They come to me with
sex
problems?” I said, wondering. I was a missionary, too, then?

“Pamela will know all about sex. She’ll probably be married with two kids,” said Elizabeth. “Three, even.”

“What about you?” Pamela asked her.

“Maybe I’ll join the Peace Corps. Maybe I’ll travel. Be a flight attendant or something,” said Elizabeth.

That
was a new kind of talk from Elizabeth.

“I’m wondering if it’s smart to get married,” said Pamela. “You think everything’s fine, and then—pow! I had no idea my folks were thinking about a divorce. One day we’re all eating breakfast together, and the next day we’re not.”

“You can bet they talked plenty about it when you weren’t around,” I told her.

“Then it would have been better to talk while I was there so I would know it was coming. Figure out the whys. Why do you suppose people get divorced?”

“They meet someone they think they love more, maybe,” said Elizabeth. “But maybe, after they divorce, they find out they don’t.”

“Maybe they grow apart; they’re each interested in different things,” I suggested. “Or maybe they just get tired of the missionary position.”

“The what?” asked Elizabeth.

“Never mind,” I said.

We had doughnuts and Cokes around midnight and went to sleep, but I woke up about four to hear Pamela crying. It’s really strange to be in your bed and hear one
of your best friends crying. My first thought was to get up and go over to the cot against the wall, but then I wondered if this was a private time for her.

I decided to turn over, just noisily enough to let her know I was semiconscious, but not loud enough to wake Elizabeth. I also gave a little sigh so she’d know it was me.

The room was quiet for a moment.

“Alice?” she whispered at last.

“Yeah?”

I heard her swallow, like the words were all choked up in her throat. I slipped out of bed and went over to sit on the rug beside the cot. “What’s the matter, Pamela?”

“Oh, Alice!” She put out one arm and draped it over my shoulder, and I reached up and put one hand around the back of her neck. Her skin felt hot, as though she’d been crying a long time. “Th-this is the worst thing that’s ever happened to me.”

“I know,” I said, and stroked her neck.

“I don’t even know whether I love or hate my mom.”

“You probably feel both ways,” I said.

She sat up finally and fished for a tissue on top of my dresser.

“Subtimbs,” she said, sniffing, “I really wonder if I can stand this. I mean it.”

“Pamela,” I said. “Do you remember back in sixth grade when we were in that play together, and I was jealous of you because you got the lead part, and I pulled your hair onstage?”

“Yes,” she said, and blew her nose.

“I was horrible to you, and you were embarrassed, but you got over it and you were the star of the show. Remember when Mark grabbed your Ahh Bra and waved it around the playground? And Brian put gum in your hair and you had to cut it off, and you said it was the worst thing that had ever happened to you?”

“But it
wasn’t
!” Pamela wept. “
This
is.”

“I know, but you survived it. Remember when you lost your bikini top in the ocean? Maybe those were just rehearsals, Pamela, for real life, to prove that you can take it.”

She kept on crying.

“You’ve still got a mom and dad,” I said helplessly. “They just don’t live together anymore.”

“But I
want
them to,” she wailed, and I couldn’t think of any answer to that. A lot of good I was doing.

“Alice,” she said finally, “I guess when I think about how things are with
you
, I should feel lucky.”

“Yeah?”

“I mean, gee, you haven’t had a mother since kindergarten, and your dad’s going to let Miss Summers get away, and you’ll be motherless all through high school and college. You won’t even have a mom around when you get married!” She reached forward and hugged me. “Thanks, Alice. You’ve made me feel so much better.”

“You’re welcome,” I said.

“Sleep tight,” said Pamela.

I crawled back in bed beside Elizabeth and didn’t get to sleep for a couple of hours.

Dad usually makes waffles for us when I have a sleepover, but he was outside cleaning leaves out of our rain gutters, and Lester was gone for the weekend. He and Marilyn were visiting friends in Virginia and wouldn’t be home till that night.

Elizabeth had to leave for Mass, and Pamela had promised to spend the day with her mother, helping fix up her mom’s apartment, so they both left about nine thirty. We’d had French toast, and I’d made extra for Dad and set it on a plate in the microwave so he could heat it up when he came in.

I did my homework, listening to his footsteps now and then on the roof, or the clunk of the ladder against
the side of the house. And then I heard a scraping sound from the backyard, a yelp from Dad, a thud, and a horrible clatter.

I leaped up and ran outside. Dad was lying motionless on the ground, the ladder on top of him.

“Dad!” I screamed, and rushed down the steps. I pulled the ladder off and crouched down beside him, my mouth dry and my heart thumping so hard, it hurt.

Then I started crying. “Dad!” I said again.

His eyelids fluttered.

“Dad, please sit up,” I said, and then I realized he might have broken his neck. “No,
don’t
sit up!” I begged.

He sat up anyway. He kept blinking and shaking his head, and then he reached up with one hand and rubbed the back of his neck.

“Dad, are you okay? Is anything broken?” I asked.

He just kept looking at me and blinking, and finally he said, “It’s not broken.” He was staring at the ladder.

I’d never seen him this way and didn’t know how to reach Lester. Finally I went inside and called Aunt Sally. No answer. It was Sunday, and she and Uncle Milt usually go to church and then out to eat. I wondered whether I should call Mrs. Price, but when I looked out the window, their car was gone. Janice Sherman? No. I didn’t want her
over here scurrying around and giving orders as though she lived here. I picked up the phone book, looked up a number, and dialed Miss Summers.

The phone rang about five times, and I figured she was at church too. Then she answered. She sounded breathless, and maybe a little irritated. “Hello?”

Oh, my gosh! I thought. What if Mr. Sorringer was there and they’d been making love?

“Hello?” she said again.

“Miss Summers? It’s Alice.”

“Why, Alice! What a surprise! I was outside raking and
thought
I heard the phone.”

I was relieved. “I’m really sorry to bother you, but Lester’s out of town and I don’t know where to find him and I couldn’t reach my aunt in Chicago.…”

“What’s wrong?”

“Dad fell off a ladder.”

“Where
is
he?”

“Here at home. He’s sitting out in the yard, and I don’t know whether to call an ambulance or not.”

“Did he break anything?” she asked, and her voice was shaky.

“I’m not really sure.”

*   *   *

When she came, she was wearing old jeans and a sort of ratty-looking sweater. It was about the worst I’d ever seen her look, and she still looked beautiful. She had a leaf stuck in her hair.

She hurried around the house with me and knelt down on the grass beside Dad, taking both his hands in hers.

“Ben? Ben?” she said, and shook his hands a little.

Dad started to stand up, then sat down again. “Sylvia?” he said in surprise, and I saw his fingers close around her hand. At least he knew who she was.

Miss Summers turned to me. “Who’s your doctor?”

I was so frightened that for a moment I couldn’t remember. “Dr. Beverly,” I said finally.

Miss Summers went inside and looked up his number.

Luckily, Dr. Beverly was on call. He asked Miss Summers some questions, then said that if Dad was moving around, we should get him in the car, and he’d meet us in the emergency room at Suburban Hospital.

We both went back out to Dad. He was standing up and still staring at the ladder. He looked as if he was just waking up.

“Ben, you’ve had a fall, and Dr. Beverly wants to see you,” Miss Summers said. “Come on out to my car.”

“But it’s not broken!” Dad protested, trying to pick the ladder up.

“We don’t care about the ladder, Dad, we care about you,” I said. “Come on, now.”

We got him in the backseat, and I climbed in front. Miss Summers took off like a race car driver.

It wasn’t until we got to the hospital that it hit me. I stayed in the car with Dad while Miss Summers went inside, and it was the sight of the nurses and orderlies hurrying toward us, rolling a stretcher, that made me start to cry.

I thought of being in Holy Cross Hospital after Mrs. Plotkin had her heart attack, and thought about how Mom had died in a hospital back in Chicago. When Miss Summers poked her head in the window to tell me I could come inside, I was sobbing.

“Alice,” she said. She opened the door and sat on the edge of the seat. She put her arm around me, and I rested my head against her sweater, which smelled delicious, and I cried like a kindergarten kid. I didn’t care, I was so scared.

“Wh-what if he dies?” I gulped. “I couldn’t stand it if I lost Dad, too!”

“Honey, I think he’s got a little concussion, but I don’t
think he’s in danger of dying,” Miss Summers said. She stroked my hair, and even though my crying had stopped, I wished it hadn’t, because I wanted her hands in my hair forever. She had actually called me “honey.”

“Come on. They’ll need us in there,” she said, so I wiped my face and followed her inside.

I hate hospitals. I hate the smells and the sight of people who look as though they’re dead already being wheeled rapidly along the corridors, and I hate the look of strange machines and the sound of weird noises. The only thing that made this bearable was that Miss Summers was with me.

We both talked to Dr Beverly.

“I’ve checked him over, and his blood pressure and pulse are stable,” he said. “But he’s complaining of neck pain, so we’ve sent him for X-rays. I’ll talk to you again in a little while.”

“We’ll wait right here,” Miss Summers said, and we sat down on the row of plastic chairs along one wall. Miss Summers put her arm around me again.
Why
couldn’t I ask her now if she loved him? Why couldn’t I ask if she’d be sad if he died? This would be the perfect time for her to throw her arms around Dad and say, “Ben, please don’t die! I need you!” Isn’t that what he needed, the will to live?

“Do you remember your mother, Alice?” Miss Summers asked me.

“Not very well. I confuse her with Aunt Sally, who took care of us for a while. It drives Dad crazy.”

Miss Summers smiled.

“Mostly, I guess, I remember her through the things she left behind. Some letters to Dad … her recipe file … her sewing box … some books … her pictures …”

“Those are all important,” Miss Summers said, and patted my shoulder again.

I wondered if I’d made it sound as though I didn’t need a mother, as though the things Mom left behind were enough, and I was doing just fine.

“I miss having a mother, though,” I said in a whisper.

This time Miss Summers didn’t say anything, just kept patting my shoulder and absently curling a lock of my hair around her finger. I wondered if I’d remembered to wash my hair that morning. After Elizabeth and Pamela left,
did
I wash my hair? Or was it all greasy and stringy?

It was almost forty-five minutes later that Dr. Beverly came back to the waiting room. He sat down in the chair next to Miss Summers.

“Well,” he said, “the X-rays are negative, but he’s still a little woozy. I don’t think there’s anything to worry about,
but I’d like to keep him here for observation for a couple of hours. If we don’t see anything abnormal, he could go home this afternoon. Someone will have to check him every two hours for the first twenty-four, however.”

“We will,” Miss Summers said.

I was so relieved, I started crying again. I thought when I got to eighth grade all this would stop. I was a leaky faucet. Dr. Beverly just smiled at me and handed me a tissue from the table. After he left, Miss Summers grabbed my hand. “Well!
That’s
good news! Why don’t we go get some lunch!”

We walked out to her car, and I suddenly felt very selfconscious. “I look awful,” I said. “I don’t think I washed my hair this morning, and my eyes are all red.”

“You just look like a girl who’s worried about her dad, Alice, but if it bothers you, why don’t we have lunch at my place? I’ve got some chicken salad, and I might even make us some hot fudge sundaes.”

That perked me up in a hurry.

As we drove along, Miss Summers told me about the gigantic oak tree in her yard, and how much raking she has to do each fall, but she doesn’t mind because she loves autumn. Suddenly I was
very
hungry. Starving, in fact. And then we were inside her house with her baskets
of colored yarn and her slippers just inside her bedroom, and, through the door, her unmade bed. Almost the same as I remembered it.

“I love your house,” I said, taking off my jacket.

“So do I. It’s just the coziest place!” she said.

Miss Summers slipped off her ratty sweater. She had a T-shirt on underneath, and she either wasn’t wearing a bra or it was a loose one, because her breasts sagged a little, but they were still pretty and soft-looking. I couldn’t help wondering if Dad had ever touched her breasts.