Achingly Alice

by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor

  Finally I remembered that Dad and Miss Summers were waiting to drive us home, so I said good-bye to Patrick and we went around to the foyer, where a dozen or so people were still milling about.

  We were just walking over to where Dad and Miss Summers were standing when I saw Mr. Sorringer talking with some parents. He turned and glanced toward Dad and Miss Summers. She guided Dad over in Sorringer’s direction.

  Elizabeth grabbed my arm and we froze. We all knew what was happening, and we were close enough to hear Miss Summers say, “Ben, I’d like you to meet Jim Sorringer, our assistant principal.” Dad and Mr. Sorringer shook hands about as stiffly as if their arms had been mop handles.

  “If they were dogs, they would have attacked by now,” Pamela whispered.

  “A very interesting program!” Dad said to Mr. Sorringer. “I hadn’t realized that there was anything but an orchestral arrangement for the Haydn, but it worked very well, I think, for brass.”

  “Yes, I thought the kids did a great job,” said Mr. Sorringer, in his professional voice. He looked at Miss Summers. “And how did you enjoy it, Sylvia?”

  Pamela poked me again.

  “It was terrific!” she said. “The whole atmosphere was so festive—a great start to the holiday season.”

  They made a few more polite remarks, and then Dad gently put one hand on Miss Summers’s back and glanced around. “Well, we’ve got three girls waiting for a ride home,” he said. “It was a pleasure meeting you, Mr. Sorringer.”

  “Same here,” said the assistant principal.

  “They lie through their teeth!” whispered Pamela.

  And then Sorringer added, “I’ll be talking with you later, Sylvia.”

  How dare he say that! I thought. He just had to put in that dig to show Dad he had a claim on her, too, didn’t he?

  Elizabeth sighed. “I thought when you were grown up you didn’t get jealous anymore.”

  “And the way Sorringer kept calling her ‘Sylvia,’” said Pamela.

  But I was still feeling awfully good about the evening as we followed them outside. Miss Summers had invited Dad to the concert knowing they might run into Mr. Sorringer. Dad had put his arm around her to show she was almost his. And I think I saw her slip her hand into Dad’s once during the concert.

  I wondered if, once they were engaged, I could start calling her “Sylvia.” And how long after they were married before I would feel comfortable calling her “Mom.”

  There were snowflakes in the air—little baby snowflakes—that disappeared almost as soon as they fell on our coats, but still, they gave a magical feeling to the night. A great beginning! I told myself. A promising start! Nice going for a girl who was about to make things happen.

  2

  ROOMMATES

  THERE WAS ONE LITTLE CLOUD ON THE horizon. When I asked Dad what he and Miss Summers were going to do on New Year’s Eve, he said that, actually, Miss Summers had a long-standing commitment that she didn’t feel she could break, so they wouldn’t be spending it together. Karen, who works at the attendance desk before school, overheard Jim Sorringer tell the school secretary—an old friend of his—that he and Sylvia would be going out.

  I hated Jim Sorringer for that. I hated everything connected with him, even the motherly school secretary who rode with him occasionally to Pizza Hut for lunch. I hated his car and his tie and his fingernails and his office, and became obsessed, almost, with New Year’s Eve and the fact that he was celebrating it with Sylvia Summers. I needed to get on with my life, and couldn’t as long as I was worried about Dad.

  Pamela, Elizabeth, and I talked this over in the cafeteria the next day.

  “That’s bad news,” Pamela said knowingly. “Of all the days in the year, New Year’s Eve is uno supremo. You’re supposed to save New Year’s Eve for the love of your life.”

  My heart sank.

  But Elizabeth wasn’t so sure. “Still, Pamela, how can that compete with Christmas Eve and Christmas Day both?”

  “And the Messiah Sing-Along,” I added hopefully.

  “New Year’s Eve is about sex, though,” Pamela told us.

  “Yes, but Christmas means family,” Elizabeth argued. And then she said loftily, “New Year’s Eve is about lust, but Christmas is about love.” It occurred to me that for three girls who had spent Christmas with their families for as long as they could remember and had never had a New Year’s Eve date in their lives, we were sounding very wise.

  “But on a scale of one to ten, New Year’s Eve is a ten!” declared Pamela.

  “Christmas Eve is an eight, though, and Christmas Day is at least a six, so that makes fourteen,” said Elizabeth.

  “And the Messiah Sing-Along!” I squeaked again. “That’s at least a one.”

  “So there you have it! Fifteen points!” said Elizabeth, and I felt a whole lot better.

  Justin Collier stopped by our table. “What’s the big discussion?” he wanted to know.

  “Math,” said Pamela.

  He has got to be one of the most gorgeous guys in our whole school, and he finds every opportunity to be near Elizabeth.

  “Justin,” I teased, “if you had to choose, which would you rather spend with the girl of your dreams—Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, or New Year’s Eve?”

  Justin smiled. “I’d kidnap her around the twentieth of December and be with her for all three,” he said. He looked at Elizabeth, and her cheeks turned as pink as her shirt.

  Of the three of us, Elizabeth is naturally beautiful, with her dark hair, long lashes, and milky skin. Pamela is pretty in a sophisticated way—she looks best in makeup. Me? I’m half-and-half. I’ve got fine freckles that disappear under foundation and powder, I’ve got green eyes and strawberry blond hair, but I need a little lip gloss and blush. We can’t all be Elizabeths, I guess.

  “Lester,” I said that evening, “let’s say you had three girlfriends, and you wanted to date them all between Christmas and New Year’s. One was your favorite, one was next-best, and the third you didn’t like as well as the others, but you didn’t want to lose her. What day would you reserve for which?”

  “Is this multiple-choice or an essay question?” he asked.

  “Entirely up to you,” I told him.

  “Hmmm,” said Lester, putting down his Coke and propping his stocking feet on the coffee table, philosophy book in his lap. “What I’d probably do is book my favorite for Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, and New Year’s Eve, and stop by on Christmas afternoon to take my number-two girl some perfume and out to a movie on New Year’s Day. Number three? I don’t know. A box of Russell Stover candy, maybe, and a promise to call her sometime. Why?”

  “No special reason,” I said. “I’m just learning about life.”

  Still, Dad seemed awfully happy that Miss Summers was coming for Christmas, so I got in the spirit of things and helped clean the house. I baked cookies, got out Mom’s recipe for scalloped potatoes, pressed our tablecloth and napkins, and helped Dad select the most beautiful Christmas tree on the lot. Then I called Aunt Sally in Chicago.

  “Alice, how nice to hear from you! What’s the matter?” she said. Aunt Sally always expects the worst.

  “Nothing!” I said. “Everything’s fine, as a matter of fact. Dad’s invited Miss Summers here for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, and I just wanted to be sure I’ve thought of everything.”

  There were ten seconds of silence at the other end of the line. With Aunt Sally, my announcements are always followed by silent meditation.

  “Where is she going to sleep?” Aunt Sally wanted to know.

  “Now, Sal,” I heard Uncle Milt say in the background.

  “I’m not sure,” I told her.

  “Of course it’s none of my business, Alice,” Aunt Sally said, “but we do have to think of your sheets.”

  “Sheets?” I said. “We have plenty of sheets.”

  “But are they clean and pressed?” asked Aunt Sally. “Now here’s what I would suggest, and I assume
you’re writing this down: flowers, if only a poinsettia; candles for your Christmas Eve dinner; sweet rolls for Christmas morning; and a present for Miss Summers that’s neither too personal nor too cheap. Good soap would be perfect.”

  “Thanks, Aunt Sally,” I told her.

  “And Alice?” she said. “Once you go to bed on Christmas Eve, stay there.”

  After I hung up, I tried to figure out what that meant, so I asked Lester.

  “She means don’t go barging in Dad’s bedroom unannounced,” he told me.

  “I never barge in Dad’s bedroom without knocking,” I said indignantly.

  “Well, Aunt Sally would probably prefer that you didn’t go near Dad’s bedroom at all.”

  I wonder how sex got to be so important in the first place.

  As it happened, Miss Summers came to our house on Christmas Eve with a shopping bag full of gifts for us, but without an overnight bag.

  “I’ve got a Jell-O salad at home in the fridge for tomorrow,” she told me, “but I wasn’t sure whether you opened your gifts Christmas Eve or Christmas Day, so I figured I’d bring them now.”

  I was disappointed that she wasn’t spending the night with us, and I’ll bet Dad was, too, but I suppose Aunt Sally would have been pleased. Still, we had a great evening. At our house we open gifts Christmas morning, but we have our big dinner the night before. I had the table set for five, because Lester had invited Marilyn. Dad had made a rib roast, and the house was filled with its marvelous scent.

  All of us had sung in the Messiah Sing-Along a week before. I always sit with Dad, who sings tenor, and turn the pages for him, but I don’t open my mouth till we get to the “Hallelujah Chorus.” Then I join in because it’s so loud, nobody can tell that I’m singing off-key.

  “Wasn’t that fun?” Miss Summers was saying as we all sat down at the table. “I’d always wanted to sing the Messiah, but never got the chance, really, till Alice invited me last year. Now I want to make a tradition of it.”

  I beamed. So did Dad.

  “You’ve got a standing invitation,” he told her.

  Marilyn and Miss Summers seemed to get along fine, another good omen, because if Dad married Sylvia and Les married Marilyn, they’d be in-laws, too. Marilyn had brought, along with a chocolate pie, English “crackers” to put at each plate—bright little foil-wrapped cylinders. When you pulled the strips at both ends, they snapped, making a popping sound, and broke open to reveal paper hats, trinkets, and riddles—stupid things like, “What did the optometrist say to his assistant?” “You’re my star pupil.” We groaned. But we all looked festive and silly in our paper hats, which added a lot to the fun.

  “Do they still have to memorize poems in seventh-grade English and recite them out loud to the class?” Marilyn asked Miss Summers. “I remember having to do that. We memorized ‘The Raven’ by Poe.”

  “Back in my day,” Dad put in, “we memorized ‘The Highwayman’ and ‘Lochinvar.’”

  “Well, we still ask students to memorize a poem and present it to the class, but they get to pick their own,” Miss Summers said.

  I didn’t say anything because I remembered the day in Miss Summers’s seventh-grade English class when I started to recite one poem but found I was reciting another that reminded me of my mom. And then I cried, right in front of everybody. One of the most embarrassing moments of my life that, somehow, Miss Summers salvaged and helped me survive.

  “How about you, Lester?” Marilyn asked. “How did you get through seventh grade without a poetry recitation?”

  “I didn’t,” said Les. “The worst moment of my life, actually. I went to junior high in Chicago, remember, and I chose the ‘The Cremation of Sam Magee.’ Except that my voice was changing, and every time I said the word ‘cremation,’ it cracked, and the class, in turn, cracked up. The teacher felt so sorry for me that she let one of the other guys, who had chosen the same poem, recite it with me. That was even worse. Sort of like riding your bike in front of the class with training wheels to hold you up.”

  We all laughed. Miss Summers tipped back her head, her hair beautiful and loose around her shoulders, and I couldn’t believe Christmas was going so well. Even when our Tennessee relatives called to see how us folks in “Silver Sprangs” were doing and to wish us Merry Christmas, Miss Summers just busied herself in the kitchen.

  I hate those calls where everybody in one family has to talk to everybody in another, and you think you’re talking to an uncle about the weather when you hear a cousin asking if you’ve ever had chicken pox.

  But Marilyn and Miss Summers put things in the dishwasher while Dad and Lester and I took our turn on the phone, and then Dad put another log on the fire and said whatever dishes wouldn’t fit in the dishwasher could wait until morning.

  Lester and Marilyn left soon after to make the rounds of friends who were home for the holidays, so I watched the King’s College choir in concert on TV, and when Miss Summers took off her shoes, I figured it was time for me to clear out.

  I stretched and faked a yawn. “Well,” I said, “I think I’ll go to bed.”

  “So soon, Alice?” Miss Summers asked. “It’s only ten.”

  “I always go to bed early on Christmas Eve,” I told her. “I used to think that if I lay real still, I could hear sleigh bells, and Mom … I think it was Mom … told me that Santa was on the way.”

  Dad smiled. “You did hear bells, Al.”

  “Huh?”

  He laughed out loud. “I guess you’re old enough now to be in on the secret. Every Christmas Eve after you’d gone to bed, I used to take a string of sleigh bells, slip outdoors, and walk around the house, ringing them, so you’d think Santa Claus was coming.”

  “Ho, ho, ho!” I said, laughing.

  “Well, I make a pretty good Santa, don’t you think?” asked Dad.

  Miss Summers laughed, too, and for just a moment rested her head on his shoulder.

  I went up to my room, put on my pajamas and robe, and curled up to read The Giver, to the sound of an icy rain against my window. When the phone rang, I tumbled off my bed and answered in the hall so Dad wouldn’t be disturbed.

  “Alice?” came Elizabeth’s voice from across the street. “I see her car’s still there!”

  “Yeah, but she’s not staying over. She’s coming back in the morning,” I said. “Pass it on.”

  The wind had really picked up, and the house creaked. This time I crawled between crisp sheets, which I’d put on all the beds, along with fresh towels in the bathroom and clean dishcloths in the kitchen. I liked the thought that our house was cleaner and prettier than it had ever been since we’d moved in, and we were probably as close to having a complete family as we’d ever had since Mom died. When I turned off the lamp, I could see huge snowflakes coming down outside in front of the streetlight. New snow, a new beginning—it just seemed right, somehow.

  I could hear footsteps below, a door opening, voices, a door closing, more voices, a TV commentator’s voice, and then Dad saying, “Sylvia, I just won’t let you …”

  I crawled out of bed and opened my door softly.

  “It’s simply too dangerous out there!” I heard Dad say.

  And then there was the sound of Lester’s voice, accompanied by stomping feet: “… ice, snow, then a layer of ice again. We didn’t even get to Wheaton. I barely made it out of Marilyn’s driveway. The radio said there was a nine-car pileup on the Beltway.”

  And finally Miss Summers saying, “Ben, I didn’t even bring a toothbrush!”

  “We’ll surely find an extra one around here,” said Dad.

  “Oh, I just don’t know …”

  “If the lady needs a room, I will gladly donate mine,” said Lester.

  I was halfway down the stairs in seconds. “She can sleep with me!” I said. “I’ve got a double bed, Miss Summers, and I put clean sheets on it this morning!”

  I couldn’t read Dad’s face right then, but Miss Summers turned around and laughed. “Okay,
it’s a deal. I’ll bunk with Alice. Ben, I need a pair of pajamas.”

  “Coming right up,” Dad said.

  The phone was ringing again, and I tore back upstairs and grabbed it. Pamela. “Elizabeth says she’s still there,” Pamela said.

  “She is, and she’s going to sleep with me!” I whispered excitedly. “Pass it on.” And I hung up.

  I scurried around my room, picking up underwear and throwing it under the bed, fluffing up the pillows, adjusting the blind. It was like a dream: My teacher, last year’s fantastic, beautiful, lovely, glamorous English teacher—my stepmother-to-be—was spending Christmas Eve at our house and sleeping in my bed!

  Lester had put on his boots and gone back outside to start shoveling the steps and walk, but I could hear soft footsteps going back and forth outside my room, a closet door opening and closing, murmurs, and a silence so long that I just knew Dad and Miss Summers were kissing outside my very door!

  Then I heard the bathroom door close, water running, Dad’s voice downstairs talking to Lester from the porch, footsteps again, and finally the door to my room opened, and silhouetted there in the light from the hallway was Miss Summers wearing Dad’s pajamas, the bottoms swirling around her feet.

  She tripped on them once, getting across the room, but then slid in beside me. “Well, this is certainly a surprise, isn’t it?” she said, bringing her wonderful scent along with her. “This is a storm that nobody saw coming.”

  “I’m glad, though,” I told her.

  “Well, I guess we’ll have to do without my salad tomorrow, but I think we’ll manage,” she said. “I usually sleep on my left side, Alice. How about you?”

  “Oh, I can sleep any way.”

  “Good. I wouldn’t want to keep bumping knees with you all night,” she said, and we both laughed.

  Could this really be happening? I wondered. I could think of a million questions I wanted to ask her, but didn’t have the nerve.

  How could I possibly sleep? What if I kicked in the night? What if I snored or belched or worse? I decided I would be the perfect roommate if I had to lie awake all night long. I would not pull the covers off her. I lay with one hand on top of the blankets to scratch anything that itched above the neckline, one hand beneath to reach stomach and thighs.