On Saturday morning when I went to the Melody Inn, there was Marilyn Rawley in the Gift Shoppe.
“Marilyn!” I said.
“Hi, Alice!” She smiled. “Can you believe this? I got the job! Lester mentioned that Loretta was leaving, and I thought, ‘Hey, that’s a job I could do!’”
“When Dad told us you had applied, we both said, ‘Hire her!’” I said.
Marilyn looked at me. “Your dad asked you what he should do?”
“No! I mean, he already knew he wanted you. He said you were super-qualified. He just wanted us to know.”
“Well, I’ll get to see you every Saturday,” she said as I set to work cleaning the glass on her display cases.
Already Marilyn had made changes. Loretta had always done the ordering before, so along with the Beethoven T-shirts, there were bikini briefs with a name of a composer on the seat of the pants, notepads with the words “Chopin Liszt” at the top of each page, a mug with a conductor on it who, when the cup was filled with hot coffee, lost his clothes.
All of those items had been placed on a back shelf, and the display case had been completely rearranged. Taking center stage was a music box with The Phantom of the Opera on top; a gold charm bracelet with miniature instruments dangling from it; a necklace made of clef signs; silk scarves with a green and silver harp motif; and boxes of notecards featuring scenes from the birthplaces of six famous composers. The store had suddenly taken on more class.
“It’s lovely, Marilyn!” Janice Sherman told her.
“Should have done this long ago,” Dad said.
Marilyn smiled and looked pleased.
“It will take me a little longer to finish school this way because I’ll have to cut back on my courses, but at least I’ll have some spending money on the side,” she told me. “I’m tired of living at the poverty level.”
I was taking my time cleaning the glass because I wanted to stay in the Gift Shoppe as long as possible that morning.
“What are you majoring in?” I asked her.
“Well, it’s sort of a general course of study right now, with an emphasis on music. I don’t think I want to teach music in schools. I’m not real good with lots of people at once, I’m better one-on-one. So I’m looking into music therapy in nursing homes, psychiatric wards—places where music can make a difference.”
I wished I could take Marilyn to Mr. Everett’s class as Exhibit?—thinking about your life in advance. I know I shouldn’t have said it, but the question just slipped out: “Does a husband figure in any of these plans, Marilyn?”
She smiled back. “Life is full of surprises,” she said. Which is about the way Lester would have put it.
Pamela, Elizabeth, Jill, Karen, and I went to Wheaton Plaza on Sunday afternoon, accompanied by the pillow pregnancy, just for the fun of it. Just to see if anything would happen that Pamela could put in her report.
We even went into a maternity shop and Pamela tried on black slinky cocktail dresses for mothers-to-be. She came out of the dressing room to check herself in the three-way mirror, and the sales clerk told her how beautiful she looked and how romantic it would make her husband.
“Oh, she doesn’t have a husband,” Elizabeth said with a straight face.
The sales clerk stopped in her tracks.
“She’s not even sure who the father is,” I added.
The clerk backed off. She said to remember to dry-clean the dress and disappeared.
We met several kids from our class when we were going down the escalator, and soon we had grown to a group of ten. We were just passing the Orange Bowl when I saw Donald Sheavers. I nudged Elizabeth on one side, Pamela on the other, and as Donald came toward us, Pamela held out her arms dramatically and called, “Daddy!”
Donald stared. Other customers stopped and stared.
“Here he is!” Pamela cried. “The father of my child!”
Donald Sheavers will never be the same again.
8
BACKSEAT DRIVERS
I hadn’t talked to Miss Summers, other than a “Hi” in the hallway, since the day I’d overheard her talking with our vice-principal.
She’d smile her warm smile, of course, and usually add a little something, like, “That’s a great sweater,” or “You must be keeping busy; I hardly see you anymore,” but it never lasted longer than ten seconds.
But just when I’d about given up hope that she and Dad would become “an item,” as Pamela put it, Dad mentioned that the Melody Inn was sponsoring a concert at Montgomery College to benefit the homeless, and that Miss Summers was helping design the posters. Maybe they were going to have one of those meaningful platonic relationships that Elizabeth talked about. Maybe my father was destined to be a troubadour who sang to his lady and loved her from afar. The best thing I could do, as Lester said, was keep my mouth shut.
But Mr. Sorringer was a different matter. I felt as though I hated the man. My algebra class was just down the hall from his office, and every time I saw him in the hallway, I stared straight ahead or right through him, even though he said hello. He was a friendly person who always talked to students, and once, when I was getting something from my locker and he passed with a “How you doing?” I just slammed the locker shut and walked on.
“How mature of you,” Lester said later when I told him.
I couldn’t help how I felt, though. If it weren’t for him, Dad and Miss Summers might be married. Engaged, anyway. Every weekend she wasn’t out with Dad, I figured she was out with Sorringer.
Aunt Sally called one night to see how Pamela’s pregnancy was progressing, how the wedding plans were coming along, and whether or not Elizabeth had bought a car. Now that Aunt Sally and Uncle Milt’s daughter, Carol, is grown and has an apartment of her own, I guess Aunt Sally needs someone else to nurture.
“We’re going to hit the used car lots with Elizabeth this weekend,” I said. “Pamela is in her sixth month, and Patrick and I have to buy furniture.”
“Is there an end to this unit, Alice?” she asked. “I mean, how far, exactly, does this Mr. Everett carry things?”
“Well, Pamela’s not going to actually deliver in class, if that’s what you mean,” I said.
“And how have your father and Miss Summers been getting along?” If there’s any trouble afoot within seven hundred miles, Aunt Sally can smell it.
“I don’t know. I don’t ask,” I said.
“Well, I suppose that’s best. You never really know what’s going on in a relationship anyway, do you? Before your mother met Ben, we were sure she was going to marry someone else,” Aunt Sally told me.
“She was?” I said, surprised.
“You never heard of Charlie Snow?”
It rang a faint bell. Somewhere, sometime, I seem to remember someone saying to my dad, “Better watch it, or I’ll run off with Charlie Snow.” I hadn’t heard that line for years. I guess I’d always thought of Charlie Snow as a mythical creature, sort of like the bogeyman.
“That was her boyfriend?” I asked.
“Yes. And I think he was on the verge of proposing when Marie met Ben. Your dad absolutely swept Marie off her feet. I never would have guessed it in a million years.”
“What was he like—Charlie Snow?”
“Well,” said Aunt Sally, “he was as tall as Marie, lots of muscles, I remember that. He used to whirl her around as though she were some petite thing. A little too fast-talking for my taste. He had money, certainly more than Ben. I think he had a degree in business or something. Went to work for IBM.”
“And?”
“And along comes Ben, an inch or so shorter than Marie, not exactly muscular, not much money, quiet as Charlie was loud, and your mom fell in a big way. To tell you the truth, I think it was Ben’s love letters that did it. As far as I know, Charlie Snow never wrote her any letters, but she’d get one from Ben and her eyes would fill with tears, he was that romantic. She set her heart on Ben McKinley and never looked back. And I’m glad she didn’t.�
�
I tried to imagine my mom in the arms of a muscular man named Charlie Snow who whirled her around. In the end, she’d chosen Dad. Maybe there was hope for him yet.
“Dad,” I said at dinner. “This is a personal question.”
“About my life or yours?” he asked.
“Yours.”
“Watch it, Al.”
“All you have to say is yes, no, or no comment.”
“Now, Al …”
“Have you and Miss Summers ever—?”
“Alice!”
“… corresponded,” I finished. “Ha! Gotcha!”
“Corresponded?”
“Have you ever sent her any letters?”
“I may have, a note or two. Why? Have they turned up in the Washington Post?”
“No, I just think … women love to get letters, that’s all.”
“Thank you, Alice, for your very deep concern about my love life. I shall certainly take your suggestions under advisement,” he said, which was another way of telling me to bug off.
• • •
It was a week later, on Sunday afternoon, that Pamela, wearing her pillow again, Elizabeth, and I made the rounds of used car lots looking for a car for Elizabeth. We had dressed as sophisticated as we could so the salesmen would think we were eligible, and with Pamela’s abdomen as evidence, I guess the salesman thought we were bona fide customers.
“I’d like to see something in a good used car,” Elizabeth said. She was wearing hose and heels and had piled her dark hair up on top of her head with a comb. She could have passed for eighteen.
The salesman was all smiles. “Certainly. For you?”
“Yes. I asked my friends to help me pick it out.”
The salesman’s eyes settled on Pamela and me, but especially Pamela. Especially her abdomen. He smiled at us, too, but I could see he would have preferred we weren’t there. Were we going to make or break a deal? he probably wondered.
“Why don’t you tell me the kind of car you have in mind, and the price range, and then we’ll find one custom-made just for you,” he said.
“Let’s start with the car first and then talk price,” Elizabeth said. She had obviously been coached by her father. “I want a safe car, low maintenance, one that will give me several years of trouble-free service before it needs any major work.”
The salesman jotted it down, or pretended to. Actually, when I stole a look at his worksheet later, he had drawn three happy faces, probably an indication he was dealing with three airheads whom he could sweet-talk into anything.
“And what about special features?” he asked. “Besides safety and durability, what would you most like to have in your car?”
“A stereo,” said Elizabeth.
The salesman smiled politely.
“Leather upholstery,” said Pamela, without thinking, and I had to nudge her to remember that Elizabeth was doing the choosing.
“Anti-lock brakes,” Elizabeth went on, reading off the list her father had made for her. “Dual air bags, power steering, power brakes, air-conditioning—”
“The works, in other words.”
“And a holder to set my Coke in,” Elizabeth finished, wanting to add a little something of her own.
The salesman gave a polite cough to stifle a laugh. “Are we talking, uh, Mercedes here?”
“Oh, no, I could never afford a Mercedes,” Elizabeth said quickly.
“A Lincoln Town Car?”
“Probably not.”
“Well, that narrows it down some. I don’t have anything on the lot at this moment with dual air bags, but I would suggest you look at this Buick Century over here,” the salesman said.
It was sky blue with dark upholstery. I could see Elizabeth’s eyes light up as soon as she saw it. The salesman showed us all the features, but they meant nothing much to me. The only thing I understood was the rear window defroster.
We looked at four more cars, and finally Elizabeth asked to see the Buick again.
Now the salesman was eager. He was closing in for the kill.
“I’ll give you the key and you can road test it yourself,” he said.
We stared at him in horror. Naturally, none of us had a license yet, least of all Elizabeth, who is the youngest.
“No, no,” she said. “We’ll sit in the backseat and you drive it for us.”
The salesman looked puzzled.
“You can tell a lot about how a car rides by sitting in back,” said Pamela.
So the three of us climbed in the backseat, and the salesman took us a couple of miles down the road, explaining the features all over again.
“It certainly is smooth back here,” I said.
“Yes, I thought maybe I was having labor pains a few minutes ago, but now they seem to have stopped in this wonderful car,” said Pamela.
The salesman studied us uncertainly in the rearview mirror.
At a traffic light, we looked over and saw Brian in the car next to us, sitting beside his father.
Pamela rolled down the window and we all screeched and waved.
Brian turned, stared, then rolled down his window.
“Hey, what’s up?” he called, looking at the salesman in the front seat.
I don’t know what got into Pamela. “We’re being abducted!” she shouted. “Call the police!”
“Pamela!” I gasped.
“What?” said Brian, looking at the salesman again.
“Now just a minute,” said the salesman.
“Get the license number!” called Pamela as the light changed and the Buick bolted forward.
“What the heck—?” the salesman said, and turned at the next corner. Brian’s father cut across a lane of traffic and turned, too.
“Pamela!” Elizabeth kept saying under her breath.
Brian’s father pulled right up beside us, forcing the Buick to stop. Brian got out.
Brian’s father got out, too. “You girls all right?” he asked, coming over.
Elizabeth flattened herself against the back of the seat, while Pamela sat with one hand over her mouth, her body heaving in silent laughter.
“I don’t consider this very funny,” the salesman said. “Maybe your time isn’t valuable, girls, but this is my job.”
“We’re really sorry, but she’s been this way ever since she got pregnant. I think it’s a sort of psychosis,” I said.
Brian’s father stooped down and stared at Pamela.
“Who’s pregnant?”
“Dad, let me explain,” said Brian. “It’s an assignment.”
“We’re going back,” said the salesman, and pulled out into the road again.
Pamela waved gaily at Brian and his father as the Buick moved away, and as we stared out the rear window, Brian was talking earnestly to his father there in the street.
I think the salesman would cheerfully have dumped us all in a gravel pit.
We trooped into the sales office, though, and Elizabeth asked him to make the very best offer he could.
“I could only pay a little bit a month,” she told him. “Show me the smallest amount I could pay to buy the car.”
The salesman took his calculator and for the next five minutes, worked at the figures. “The best deal I can give you is two hundred dollars a month,” he said. “This beauty has only thirty-six thousand miles on her. Mint condition. I could let you ride it out of here today for eighty-nine hundred dollars.”
“Two hundred a month for how many months?” I asked.
“You’d have it all paid for in six years. Six years, and the car is yours.”
I’ve never been real good in math, but I took my notebook and scribbled a little. Two hundred dollars a month is $2,400 a year, times six is $14,400, close to twice the so-called selling price.
I showed the figures to Elizabeth.
“Well, thanks a lot, but I’ll have to talk it over with my dad,” she said.
The salesman looked disgusted. “Hey, that car isn’t going to stay on this
lot more than one weekend. I can hold it till tomorrow, maybe, but after that it’s God’s gift to the first customer who puts up the down payment.”
“I can’t do anything without Daddy’s permission,” said Elizabeth staunchly.
“Well, let’s just go over that deal again and see if we can’t do a little better.”
I could see the panic in Elizabeth’s eyes. What if the salesman made her an offer she couldn’t refuse?
“I’m having pains,” Pamela said suddenly.
The salesman looked around.
“She’s having pains,” I said.
“Do you think we should call an ambulance?” asked Elizabeth.
“No, just get me back to the bus stop, and I’ll be fine,” Pamela told us.
The salesman watched us go, slowly shaking his head.
In Mr. Everett’s class on Monday, Karen gave her report on shoplifting. She had obviously done a lot of research and interviewed some police officers.
With a lot of giggling from us, she stood in front of the class and told how it all happened—hypothetically, of course: “Well, at first it was just a dare from my friends,” she said. “It was a tube of Revlon lipstick from the mall, and I really couldn’t believe how easy it was. There was nobody in that aisle, and I just picked it up, tucked it in the palm of my hand, and a couple of minutes later, dropped it in my jacket pocket. I paid for a magazine at the checkout counter and walked out with a lipstick, too.
“Then it was sort of a game. I took things I didn’t even want or need just to see if I could do it. There was a kind of thrill, like I was getting away with something. And the next time I’d want to go for something bigger.”
Even though we all knew that Karen’s report was imaginary, it came across as real, and by the time she was halfway through, all the giggling had stopped.
“It was the feeling that if they didn’t care any more than to leave their stuff around where anyone could walk off with it, they deserved to have it stolen. Like I was teaching them a lesson. Doing them a favor, even! So at first it was a game, then it became a habit, and finally, if I went to the mall and didn’t lift something, I felt incomplete. Once I even went back just to shoplift something I didn’t get the first time.”
Alice in Lace Page 7