Patiently Alice (7 page)

Mary paused a moment, then smiled and, letting go of her sister’s hand, allowed me to slide between them on the bench.

“Mission accomplished,” murmured Gwen, and I caught her smile from across the table.

Later that morning, as Jack Harrigan led the kids on a nature hike and the assistant counselors tagged along, G. E. came up beside me. His real name, he’d told us, was Gerald Eggers, but his friends all called him G. E. And I wondered sympathetically if that was because he was shaped like
a hanging lightbulb, smaller at the top than the bottom—narrow chest and shoulders, heavy legs. He had a terrific voice, though. If you closed your eyes and listened to him, it was only his voice that was important.

“So how’s it going?” he asked. “This your first time being a counselor?”

“Assistant counselor,” I answered, and nodded. “You almost need a degree in psychology to know what’s going on with these kids.”

He chuckled. “First time for me too. But you seem a natural with the kids. Thinking about teaching somewhere down the line?”

“No. Psychology, actually.”

“Yeah? I’d like to work with children. I was thinking about pediatrics, but I doubt I could get into med school. So I suppose I’ll go into teaching.”

Elizabeth and Pamela moved up behind us then, and G. E. went on ahead to walk with Ross and Craig.

“Guess who Gwen’s pairing off with,” Pamela said. “Joe.”

“What do you mean, pairing off?” I asked.

“He had his arm around her back there.”

I gave a quick glance behind me. Joe Ortega was giving Gwen a shoulder massage. “Good for Gwen,” I said, grinning.

“Where do you suppose we’ll go tomorrow night? What’s in town?” asked Elizabeth.

“Richard says there’s a place that has line dancing and a lot of the counselors hang out there on their night off,” Pamela told us.

“I’m ready for a break,” said Elizabeth.

“A Ross break,” said Pamela.

“I saw him first,” said Elizabeth.

“No, you didn’t,” said Pamela. “He’s mine!”

There was an hour of music after the hike. Whenever there’s a special program, the assistant counselors get some time off, seeing as how we don’t get paid. It’s a chance to wash our underwear or call home or just nap. But I decided to go for a walk by myself. I wanted to take in the scents and sounds of the woods without a bunch of chattering kids around me, so I set out for the overlook.

I was halfway down the path when I heard someone say, “Mind if I join you?”

I turned to see Gerald walking briskly up behind me.

I really didn’t want him along. I didn’t want anyone along, actually.

“Or did you want to be alone?” he asked, looking at me uncertainly.

I didn’t have the heart to tell him to go back.
“Oh, I was just trying to get away from the noise of camp—give my ears a rest,” I said.

“I know what you mean.” And then, unsure of himself, he said, “But if you’d rather I didn’t come…”

Oh, for Pete’s sake, don’t be so wishy-washy!
I thought. “Of course not,” I said, and walked on. He gave a little skip to catch up.

Isn’t it strange how just the slightest mannerism can turn you off? That little skip, and I knew for certain I could not feel romantic about Gerald Eggers in a million years.

“Penny for your thoughts,” said Gerald.

I sighed and closed my eyes. He wasn’t just in my face, he was in my head.

“Thinking about this summer, that’s all. This’ll be the longest I’ve ever been away from home,” I said.

“Homesick?”

“Not really. I’m just hoping I can hold out another two weeks. Kids can sure be exhausting. I can’t imagine what it’s like to be a mother and be around little children all day.”

“I think you’d make a great mother,” said Gerald.

“That’s a long way off,” I said. I was beginning to get bad vibes.

“I had a cousin who married at eighteen, and
she’s really happy,” said Gerald. “She’s a great mother, too.”

“Good for her,” I said.

“I guess that’s the first thing I look for in a girl,” Gerald went on. “How she gets along with kids tells me what kind of mother she’d make.”

I stared straight ahead. Was this a test?
Oh, brother.
Was this guy looking for wife material at the grand age of fifteen? If I said I loved children, would he propose? Ask me to wait for him while he worked his way through grad school?

I found myself suddenly babbling on about school and how I’d be entering tenth grade in the fall and how long I’d been on the newspaper staff and what had happened during our production of
Fiddler on the Roof
and how my dad was marrying my seventh-grade English teacher—anything to change the subject—and then I realized it might sound as though I were trying to impress him, show him I was the kind of girl he wanted to marry. My jaw snapped shut.

He glanced over at me. “Get a bug in your mouth?” he asked.

“No, my foot,” I said. He gave me a quizzical smile.

We’d reached the end of the path and were facing the low stone wall, the overlook beyond. It was a gorgeous day, and the taller trees were
spreading their shadows out over the ones below. All the assorted greens of summer were stretching before us, and beyond the trees the blue and purple layers of hills grew fainter and fainter in the distance. If I couldn’t be alone, why couldn’t Richard have followed me up here, or Andy or Craig?

And then I felt an arm around my waist as Gerald edged in closer to my side. Yikes! He
was
going to propose! He’d get down on one knee and pull a gold-plated ring out of his pocket—one size fits all—and… I moved away and went over to lean my elbows on the stone wall.

“Sorry,” said G. E. “I guess I moved a little too fast.”

The third reason not to like him. I swallowed. “I’m really not looking for romance this summer, Gerald,” I said.

I heard him sigh. “Let me guess,” he said. “You’re about to give me that ‘I like you as a friend, but…’ line.”

“And?”

“Well, you aren’t the first girl who’s said it.”

“Maybe you come on a little too strong too fast,” I said.

“So if I slow down, do I have a chance?”

It just seemed that everything Gerald said made it worse. He seemed so desperate, as though he
had to pin down the rest of his life—his love life, anyway—in case he never got another chance.

“Maybe sometimes it’s better to make a girl worry a little that you
won’t
like her,” I said.

He gave a small laugh. “That’ll be the day.”

I wanted to get back to camp. Even sitting on my bunk flossing my teeth seemed more exciting than continuing this conversation with Gerald. I started back along the path. “Sometimes it’s nice just to be friends, G. E. You don’t have to make it anything special,” I said. “Okay?”

“The story of my life,” Gerald said morosely. He put his hands in his pockets, and we walked along in silence for a while.

I thought of a girl I knew back in junior high who didn’t have a lot of friends and finally stood in front of a train. It
didn’t
exactly help to tell someone just to forget about having somebody special. There wasn’t anyone special in
my
life just then, but I felt pretty sure there would be someday. Why was Gerald worrying about that now?

“Well, thanks for being honest with me,” he said when we got close to camp again.

And that’s where I lost it. “G. E.,
listen
to yourself! We’ve not even been here a week, I hardly know you, and you tell me you’re looking for a girl who’s good with children. I’m not thinking that
far ahead! I’ve got a lot of living to do, and so do you. Be a radio announcer or something. Be a singer!”

“I am a singer,” said Gerald. “How did you know?”

I was so relieved to have something else to talk about that I actually smiled. “Because you’ve got a great voice. You’ve got the best-sounding voice of any guy here. I’ll bet you sing bass.”

He grinned a little. “I do. I sing with the madrigals at our school.”

“See?” I said. “You just need to get reacquainted with your good points. G. E., meet Gerald. Gerald… G. E.” He laughed, and so, finally, did I.

When I got back to our cabin, I faced a drama of a different sort. The Coyotes were back from the music program, and Gwen was having a face-off with Estelle. Gwen’s voice was loud: “I don’t care what you thought Latisha was saying about you, girl! If you’ve got any complaints, you bring them to me. You don’t go dumping someone else’s stuff on the floor.”

“She got my shoes!” Latisha was shouting. “She done something with my shoes!”

“Have you got Latisha’s shoes, Estelle?” Gwen demanded.

Estelle was just begging for a fight, I could tell. Tossing her long black hair behind her, she thrust
her face forward, scrunched up her eyes and nose, and said, in a mocking voice, “No, I don’t have her stinking shoes, smelling up the place.” And then she muttered, “Those nigger-smelling feet.”

It took both Gwen and me to pull Latisha off her and get the girls separated.

“She think niggers smell, she ought to smell her own shit,” shouted Latisha. “Her shit smells worse’n anybody’s, all that dog food she eats.”

Now it was Estelle lunging for Latisha. This time I took hold of her and kept her back. Kim was cowering on her bunk, about as far away as she could get, and Mary had Josephine on her lap and was rocking her back and forth. Ruby simply watched from a top bunk, swinging her legs.

Don’t get stuck on the language here,
I told myself, remembering the advice in our handbook.
Focus on the feelings behind the words.
Estelle had prejudice, Latisha had attitude, and Latisha most of all wanted her shoes back.

I gripped Estelle by the shoulders and looked her square in the eyes. “Where are Latisha’s shoes?”

Estelle tossed her head again. “Out there.”

“Out where?”

She pointed and I went to the door to look. Latisha’s sneakers, the laces tied together, had been tossed up over a sign strung above the road outside the cabins. An arrow pointed up the hill
toward the dining hall. Latisha’s sneakers hung down over the “c” in “Office.”

Gwen and I looked at each other. “Why did you do that?” she asked Estelle.

“I
told
you why!” Estelle countered. “Latisha’s always leaving them for me to stumble over, and they stink!”

“No worse’n yours do!” Latisha shouted.

“And Latisha’s always bossing us around, telling people what to do,” said Estelle.

“Yeah? She bossier than
me.
She thinks
she’s
white too!” said Latisha. “
She’s
colored too, ain’t she, Alice? You got taco blood in you, you’re colored.”

“Okay, here’s the deal,” said Gwen. “We’ve got two girls who have to learn to get along with each other and a pair of sneakers dangling over the wire out there. You’ve got till three o’clock this afternoon to figure out a way to get them down, and you have to do it together. You can’t ask anyone else to do it for you. If you’re still enemies but you get them down, you get one point. If you get them down and you’re not enemies anymore, you get two points. And if you get them down and decide to be
friends
the rest of the time we’re here, you get three points.”

“So what do we get with the points?” asked Latisha.

“One point, you get an extra bag of popcorn at the movie Saturday night. Two points, you get two bags of popcorn and a Milky Way. Three points…”

“Three points you have to kiss Joe Ortega in front of us!” said Estelle.

The cabin suddenly erupted in laughter, Latisha and Estelle both hooting together.

“You got it!” said Gwen, looking a little unnerved. “You get the shoes down and figure out how to be friends, and Joe and I will kiss right here in the doorway for all to see.”

The Coyotes squealed and carried on, hands over their mouths, eyes wide with delight. We herded them to the dining hall for lunch.

Afterward it took some doing, but Estelle and Latisha finally borrowed a stepladder from the caretaker, carried it down to the cabin, and set it up, under Gwen’s supervision. Estelle got an oar from the boathouse, climbed halfway up, with Latisha holding the ladder steady, and managed to knock the sneakers off the sign. They fell to the ground with a thud.

Estelle looked at Latisha uncertainly, but there was devilment in her eyes. “Okay, we’re friends,” she said.

“Really?” I asked.

Latisha gave a shrug. “Yeah,” she said.

“Is this a promise that you’ll really try?” asked Gwen.

Now Latisha was grinning. “Yeah. Now you got to go get Joe.”

After Estelle climbed down and the ladder was returned, Gwen went in search of Joe Ortega and brought him grinning to the door of the cabin, the boys from his own cabin trailing curiously behind.

“Okay, girls, get ready,” Joe said. He glanced up toward the office. “Nobody looking, are they? You want to see me kiss this lady?”

“Yesssssss!” all the girls chorused, and kids from other cabins gathered too.

Joe Ortega put one arm around Gwen’s waist, the other under her shoulders, and dramatically swooped her backward, giving her a movie-star kiss. All the little campers clapped and screeched hysterically.

And suddenly I looked up to see Legs coming down the hill from the parking lot.

It was like a movie. One minute we were watching Gwen and Joe in their movie-star embrace, accompanied by all the squealing kids, and the next we were watching long-legged Leo coming down the hill toward us, taking in the whole scene.

“Uh… Gwen,” I said. “Company.”

Joe brought her back to a standing position, then said to the little group from his own cabin, “And
that’s
the way you kiss a lady.” Then he saw Legs right in front of him, and I heard Gwen gasp.

I guess the next scene in a movie would be Legs punching Joe in the mouth, but that didn’t happen. Legs looked at Joe a moment, then at Gwen, and said, “Well, hello.”

“You drove all the way up here?” Gwen asked. We could see Jack Harrigan coming down the hill from the office.