Alice on Board

by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor

  “Yeah? Yeah?” Les grabbed the envelope excitedly and read the message. “Rita Ornosky. Did she say what her job was?”

  “No. She just said that Mr. Burns had a few questions about your resume and that she’d be away from the office this afternoon, and you should call tomorrow.” I motioned him to the table, where Paul was already buttering his ear of corn.

  “Damn! What was I doing that I didn’t answer my cell?” Les wondered aloud.

  “It’s okay. She said tomorrow would be fine.”

  Les was still trying to figure it out. “What time did she call?”

  “Uh … about eleven forty-five, I think. Just before lunch.”

  “Arrrgh!” said Les. “I was in the restroom and left my cell phone on my desk. Why does this always happen to me?”

  “Because you don’t want to be one of those guys you hear sitting in a stall laughing and talking to himself?” said Paul.

  Les sat down finally. “So tell me everything this Rita person said.” He was looking directly at me. “Were you professional? What did you say?”

  “I said you weren’t here at the moment but you would call back as soon as possible.”

  “And did she ask who you were? Why you were answering my phone? I hope she doesn’t think I still live at home with my mother.”

  “Oh, she doesn’t,” I said quickly.

  “How do you know?”

  “I told her I was your secretary.”

  “My secretary?”

  “Well, she asked who I was, and you told me to sound professional, so …”

  “Holy shit! What are we here? A corporation?”

  At least Lester was on the defensive now, not me.

  “Okay,” I said. “I’ll call her back and say I’m not your secretary.”

  “No!”

  “Come on, Les, don’t sweat it,” Paul said. “Call tomorrow and say you’d be glad to answer whatever questions Mr. Burns has.”

  Lester settled down. “You’re right,” he said.

  “Unless you want to be a corporation,” I put in. “The Lester McKinley Institute of Female Studies.”

  “Center for the Advancement of Philosophy Majors,” said Paul.

  “Enough, enough,” said Les, and dug into his food in earnest.

  When the phone rang halfway through dinner, though, he almost knocked over his chair to get the landline.

  It wasn’t Rita Ornosky, however. It was Mr. Watts. He told Les he’d distinctly detected the scent of brownies baking this afternoon and what did he have to do? Beg? Les told him we’d bring some down.

  I smiled. “Actually, I was planning to take him a whole meal,” I said. “Chicken salad, deviled eggs, corn, the works. I’ll put it together.” I dug my fork into the chewy chocolate of a brownie, swished it through the glob of melting cream on top, and let them pleasure my tongue. Was there anything as delectable as this? I wondered.

  Later, after I’d come back from a long chat with Mr. Watts, I sat down in the spare bedroom to e-mail Patrick. The day had gone so well, considering. Then I found Patrick had already e-mailed me:

  Heard from Mom yesterday. They’re doing okay. Seem to

  like living in Wisconsin. Big news! They’re going to visit me

  in Barcelona for a month over Christmas.

  21

  BREAKING AWAY

  I invited Gwen and Liz and Pamela to Lester’s for a sailboat-scraping party on Saturday. It would probably be our last get-together before we left for college—two of us were leaving the second full week of August, two the week after that. There was lots of prep work to do.

  When I told Les, he said he and Paul would bring us a kebab dinner and whatever else our hearts desired. Deal! I’d planned to just order pizza, but Greek food sounded a lot better.

  The weather cooperated—it does that sometimes. You think you’re a prisoner of summer, with the hygrometer stuck on “hot and soupy,” and then a taste of fall rolls through. You wake up to drier air, something clean and crisp, and you go, Yes!

  “I didn’t think I ever wanted to see a ship again,” Liz said when she got out of the car.

  “You gals are looking good,” Les said when I brought them around back, where he and Paul had already been at work for an hour. Sweat soaked through their tanks, glistening on their shoulders.

  “So this is Fancy Pants,” said Gwen, walking slowly around it. “How many does it hold?”

  “Four, max,” said Paul.

  “Just right for us girls!” said Liz.

  Les laughed. “Start scraping.”

  It was laborious, but it didn’t seem so bad because we were part of a team, a crew—and the four of us knew a lot about crew work.

  “I got an e-mail from Flavian,” Gwen said. “He heard that the cruise line canceled the whole fall season for the Spellbound.”

  I stopped scraping. “Oh, man, sounds like they’re going under.”

  “They’re gone,” said Gwen. “No backup, no reserves …”

  “That’s scary,” said Les.

  The four of us girls stopped working for a moment, like we were observing a moment of silence. “All those plans—the ads, the brochures, blueprints, and stuff—just, like, washed away. They took a big chance and didn’t make it,” I said.

  “And you can’t even go back to mama; you declare bankruptcy,” said Liz.

  I rubbed my hand over the place I’d just sanded. “It’s bad enough when it affects only you and your own bank account. What does it feel like to have a whole staff and crew go down with the ship?”

  “Could we stop with the sinking ship analogy?” said Paul.

  “Oops! Sorry, Paul,” I said. “Don’t worry, when you take Fancy Pants out for the first time, the rest of us will be safely watching from shore.”

  “You wonder, though, where the rest of the crew will go this fall, everyone drifting off—uh, sailing off, I mean—heading in different directions,” Gwen said.

  “Mitch will be trapping,” I told them.

  “Lauren was supposed to work the Spellbound cruises,” Pamela said. “She told me she might move in with her boyfriend if that didn’t happen. Curtis will probably get a job on a freighter.”

  “What about you, Les?” Gwen asked. “What’s going on in your life these days?”

  “I’ve got an interview at the Basswood Conference Center in West Virginia. Would be great if that came through.”

  “Doing what?” asked Pamela.

  “Actually, as assistant director. Companies use the place for conferences and retreats, with a back-to-nature venue.”

  “Great!” said Liz. “And, Paul! What are you going to do with Fancy Pants when winter sets in? Don’t people usually think about getting their boats ready in the spring?”

  “That’s why I got the boat so cheap,” Paul said. “Nobody wanted to buy it and store it through the winter. Except me, maybe. After I complete my sailing course, I’d like to take a leave of absence and go cruising off the Florida coast.”

  “In this? With no cabin?” Liz asked.

  “Well, I’d go solo to start.”

  “I can see the headlines now: ‘Maryland Man Missing Among the Manatee,’” said Gwen.

  “I’ll become a modern-day Gauguin. Sail to some faraway island, marry a native or two, raise my own crew, and come back to see how the rest of you are doing.”

  Around seven, he and Les stopped to go get dinner laid out. When they called us in later, we found the table set, kebabs on a platter, rice in a bowl, pita bread, hummus, feta cheese, and olives.

  “Paul, you’ve got it made,” I told him. “First you take the woman of your dreams out for a sail on the Fancy Pants, then you bring her back for a Greek dinner, with candles, and to whatever you propose to do next, she’ll say yes.”

  “Darn! Why didn’t we think of this before?” said Les.

  We couldn’t believe that the breeze coming in the window actually made us chilly. For an end to a special evening, Les said he’d pull out t
he cast-iron grate he’d stored under the back steps since March and let us have an outdoor fire.

  “Paul and I are going to clean up the kitchen, then some guys are coming over later for poker. The patio’s yours for the evening, so enjoy!” he said.

  Les set up the grate on a heavy wood table, where we propped our feet. Once the sun set, we watched the flames dance and spit, and the fire lit up our faces so that we could see each other in the dark.

  I decided to get the bad news over with, so I said, flat out, “Patrick’s parents are going to spend a month with him in Barcelona over Christmas.”

  “They’ll love it! “ said Gwen. “Their own personal guide to—” She stopped short. “Oh Alice! Weren’t you planning a surprise visit then?”

  “Yeah. I was going to tell him, of course. I was waiting for my final paycheck to see if I could swing it. Then I got a text from him… .”

  “That really sucks!” said Liz. “Did you tell him?”

  I shook my head. “No, and I’m not going to. He didn’t know I was planning to come, and he’s excited about showing his folks around.”

  “Maybe you could still go and … no, I guess not,” said Pamela.

  I sighed. “The Longs will naturally want him all to themselves, and so would I. He’d be pulled in two different directions. Maybe I’ll go over spring break. We’ll see.”

  We watched the shadows appear and disappear on our faces. All of us had a sort of reddish glow.

  “That’s a bummer,” said Gwen. “And I get home from a cruise that’s been canceled to find the battery’s dead in the car I bought from my brother. But Austin gave it a jump start.”

  “Austin’s back in the picture?” I asked.

  She gave me a sheepish little smile. “Yeah, we went to a movie. I guess we just missed each other too much. Haven’t heard yet what he was up to over the summer, though.”

  “Will you tell him about Flavian?” Liz asked.

  “Sure. He has no worries there.”

  “No?” I was surprised. “You and Flavian were … well …”

  “We were wrapped up in a blanket and that’s all that happened,” Gwen said. “I’m not crazy.”

  We were quiet awhile. Then Liz turned to me again. “Maybe you should just take that money you saved for Barcelona and do something else with it. Go spend Christmas with Mitch in the marsh.”

  We laughed.

  Gwen bumped my foot with her own. “He’d like that.”

  “I may visit him sometime, we’ll see,” I said. “But it’s also just really nice having a guy friend, you know? Right now I’m going to concentrate on settling in at Maryland and decorating my new bedroom at home. Les is coming by tomorrow to help move my furniture back in.”

  “Hey, I met my roommate at Bennington on Facebook,” said Liz. “She seems nice. A music major.”

  “What does she play? The tuba?” Gwen kidded. “She’ll practice in your room.”

  “Voice and piano,” Liz said. “I’m so psyched to go and get started.”

  “All I know about Amber, besides her tattoos, is that she seems laid-back, casual,” I told them. “Didn’t send me a virtual questionnaire to fill out. After all the excitement of this past summer, I could do with a little take-life-as-it-comes.”

  Interesting how you never think of measuring your friends, but as we sat leaning back in our patio chairs, legs stretched out before us, I realized that Gwen had the shortest legs and Pamela had the longest. Liz’s were about as long as Pamela’s, mine were slightly longer than Gwen’s… .

  “When do you have to be in New York?” Gwen asked Pamela.

  Pamela didn’t answer right away, and I stopped measuring legs and looked over at her.

  “I may not go,” Pamela answered.

  I jerked up so suddenly, my feet slid off the table.

  “Pamela? Why?” I asked, just now realizing that she had been unusually quiet all day, that there hadn’t been the back-and-forth banter with Les that usually went on between them.

  “I think Mom needs me,” she said, shrinking down into herself.

  We couldn’t believe what we were hearing and stared at each other, then back at Pamela.

  “Pamela, what are you thinking?” said Gwen. “You haven’t officially pulled out, have you?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Then talk to us!” I pleaded.

  Pamela wouldn’t look any of us in the eye. She wrapped her arms more tightly around her body. “Mom’s just … so vulnerable now.”

  I thought of the way her mom had criticized her when we picked her up at the hospital the other day. Vulnerable is not the adjective I would have used.

  “Pamela, you’ve got a scholarship! You may never have another chance like this!” Liz cried. “After all the grief your mom has put you through, I can’t believe it!”

  “I know.” Pamela’s voice was soft, like a kitten’s mew. “There on the ship, the morning she disembarked, all wrapped up in her raincoat—I was watching from on deck. She just looked so pitiful and alone. Dad and Meredith have started a new life, and here I am—about to leave too—and … she has nobody.”

  “One of the first lessons of life is that we have to live with the consequences of our actions,” Gwen said. “And when you consider all your mom has done—”

  “I know, I know. She really hurt Dad and me when she left us that time, and she’s behaved like a lunatic more than once. But still … she just doesn’t have many friends, and I could take courses in theater arts here at Montgomery College. I could live with Mom, and … she got some brochures for me …”

  We sat in stunned silence.

  “It’s your mom’s idea, then,” Gwen said finally.

  “She wouldn’t have suggested it if there wasn’t a way I could get the same thing here.”

  It was as though Pam had been brainwashed. Where was our fiery, gutsy Pamela who had sat with her hands over her ears on the floor of her bedroom when her mom threw gravel at the window, the Pamela who refused to go down and open the door? Living at home with a manipulative mom and taking courses at Montgomery College was not the same as being on your own in New York City, studying theater arts.

  “There’s a side of her you don’t even know,” Pamela said to break the silence. “Remember how devastated I was when I found out I was pregnant? I didn’t feel comfortable telling Meredith, and I certainly wasn’t about to tell Dad. And remember how you insisted I tell Mom, Alice, and went with me to her apartment and she didn’t jump all over me or anything?”

  I remembered, and yes, I did give Mrs. Jones points for that.

  “Well, what I didn’t tell you is that later on, before I miscarried, when Mom discussed my options with me, she said whatever I decided was up to me. If I decided to have an abortion, she’d go with me and see that it was done right. If I wanted to have the baby and put it up for adoption, she’d help me through it. But she also said that I could move in with her, and she’d fix up the spare room for both me and the baby. She said she’d help me raise it so that I could still date and have a life and everything… . I mean, how many moms would willingly offer to do all that for their daughters? She even showed me the catalog of baby clothes and furniture, and she had them all picked out and a design of how to rearrange the room.”

  I was listening to Pamela, but different pictures were bobbing about in my head.

  “Pamela,” I said, “do you remember when she first moved back here from Colorado, after her boyfriend walked out on her? How she fixed up that spare bedroom then, without even telling you, and how you reacted to it then?”

  Pamela gave me a quick glance and looked away again. “Yes …”

  “Why didn’t you do it?”

  She looked a little startled. “Why didn’t I move back in with her then?”

  “Yes.”

  “Because she would’ve controlled my life! I already had a home and a room. But it’s different, offering to take in a pregnant daughter and her baby. That’s real sacrifi
ce.”

  “Pamela, don’t you see?” said Liz. “It’s all about her! She’s playing the sacrificial mother! The long-suffering woman who was going to sacrifice her life for her child and grandchild.”

  “And she’s still the mom who was so concerned about you and her family’s welfare that she rode off into the sunset with a guy she barely knew until it all fell apart,” I said.

  Pamela glared at us. “But now she needs me. She thinks she seriously hurt her shoulder when she ran her car off the road and said she can hardly lift a coffee cup. She needs someone to be there and—” Pamela stopped and closed her eyes. “I’m so damned mixed up.”

  So was I. There were so many layers here. Why would Mrs. Jones want to deny her daughter a chance to pursue her dreams in New York? Could she be envious? Was that part of it, along with her loneliness? Did she need someone to help her with her drinking problem?

  “Pamela,” I said, “if you really, truly want to help your mom, go to New York. If you don’t, you’re saying, ‘I think you’re too weak to handle things here on your own, Mom. You’re so weak that your only child has to give up her career plans, her scholarship, and move in with you.’”

  “But what if she really has hurt her shoulder?” Pamela said, facing me now. “She does need help.”

  “Yes, and before you leave, you’ll find someone who can come by regularly to check up on her,” I said. “You know her friends. You’ll call them and tell them about her accident, and you’ll get her to an AA program. You said she used to attend those meetings.”

  “Don’t be an enabler, Pamela,” said Gwen. “The sooner your mom knows that she can’t go on disrupting other people’s lives, the sooner she’ll look for her own solutions. You’ll do everything you can to help before you leave, but you’ll still leave.”

  We sat for several minutes without speaking, watching the tongues of red and orange in the iron grate, listening to the occasional rise and fall of men’s voices coming through the open windows above.

  “It doesn’t … seem selfish?” Pamela asked finally.

  “What? For you to go to New York, the chance of a lifetime, or for your mom to ask you to give it up?” Gwen said.

  Pamela already knew the answer, so she didn’t respond right away. “Okay,” she said. “I’ll go.”