I had that sinking, hopeless feeling. “But… if he starts hanging around again?” I asked.
“Uh-uh. I think he finally understands. But my parents want me to see a counselor during the summer to find out… well, why I was attracted to a guy who would knock my teeth out.”
I went from hopeless to hopeful. “I’m glad,” I said. “Because… well, Ron might want to talk you into going out together again.”
“Not on the agenda,” Faith told me. “Besides, I’m sort of going out with Chris now. We had a really good time in New York.”
22
Decision
“Oh, Les, you missed the best party!” I said later, when he stopped by with my present.
“Yeah? I heard about the Mexican food,” said Lester. “Any left?”
“I put a whole platter away for you,” Sylvia said, and slid it in the microwave.
I sat down across from Lester while he ate. “What is it?” I asked, holding his gift in my lap.
“Now, why do people always say that? Open it and see!” said Lester.
I took off the paper and lifted the lid. There was the most gorgeous silk robe. It was a heavenly shade of turquoise with a mandarin collar and decorative button loops in front.
“Lester, it’s beautiful!” I said. “You never gave me clothes before!”
“You were never sixteen before,” he said. “You just never know what a sixteen-year-old girl is going to do, and I figure if I give you something to wear, at least you won’t run around naked.” Then he added, “Actually, Tracy helped me pick it out.”
I stood up and slipped it on over my jeans and T-shirt, loving the way the silk draped over my body. I had no idea when or where I would wear this, but just knowing that something so beautiful, so adult, would be hanging in my closet gave me a thrill.
“Now, doesn’t she look sophisticated!” said Sylvia.
“Thank you!” I told Lester. I went around the table and kissed him. “You know what Dad gave me? A check for a hundred and sixty dollars!”
Lester gave a whistle. “What are you going to do with it?”
“Save it for a special trip or something. And Sylvia gave me a beaded purse to take to dances.”
“Which reminds me,” said Lester. “Are we supposed to dress up for Marilyn’s wedding next month? There was a message on my answering machine from her. All she said was ‘Bring a guest.’”
“Your dad’s wearing a suit and tie,” Sylvia said.
“Are you going to bring Tracy?” I asked Lester.
“Of course,” he said.
I wondered who I should bring. I didn’t want to tag along with Dad and Sylvia all evening. I didn’t want to come as Lester’s little sister, either. But the thought of inviting Sam to a wedding… like we were a couple…
The phone rang and Sylvia said suddenly, “I’ll bet that’s your aunt Sally, Alice. She got the dates mixed up and thought your birthday was today. She called earlier during your party, and said she’d call back.”
I went down the hall and picked up the phone. It was Aunt Sally.
“Oh my goodness, there is my sixteen-year-old niece!” she said. “Why, Alice, you even sound more grown up.”
“Thank you,” I said.
“Carol chose your birthday gift, but we didn’t get it mailed until yesterday. It’s a big box of bath oils and soaps and powders, Alice. I’m just telling you this in case something leaks.”
I smiled. “I’ll enjoy it no matter what,” I said.
“Well!” There was a pause. Aunt Sally always gets the superficial stuff out of the way first, and then her worries take over. “Sylvia told me you were having a party when I called before. So how does a sixteen-year-old girl celebrate nowadays?”
I told her about the treasure hunt and the Tex-Mex food and the silly little presents.
“Oh, Alice, that sounds like good pure fun!” she gushed gratefully.
The “pure” bothered me a little, so I decided to head her off at the pass and change the subject. “I’m getting ready to take my driver’s test,” I said. “Wish me luck.”
“Oh, I forgot all about driving! Now, Alice, you know what can happen to a girl in a car, don’t you?”
Did Aunt Sally ever think of anything besides sex? I wondered. “Yeah,” I said. “She could run off the road.”
“All sorts of things, dear. Don’t ever drive in fog, Alice. And if you’re in a bad rainstorm, just pull over to the side of the road and put your emergency blinker on. If the car breaks down and a man stops and asks if he can help, don’t roll down your window. And here’s a little safety hint. If a man ever comes to your window with a gun and tries to get in the car with you, pretend you’re having a heart attack and fall over on the horn. Just plop right over as hard as you can and let that horn blow. That’s what I told Carol when she was learning to drive, and she hasn’t had to use it so far, but it just might save your life some day.”
“I’ll remember that, Aunt Sally,” I said.
When I hung up and went back to the kitchen, a wide smile on my face, I said, “Les, do you remember when Aunt Sally used to tell us to wear red corks on a string around our necks when we went swimming? So that if we were ever floating unconscious beneath the water, the cork would bob about on top and someone might rescue us?”
Lester grinned. “No, but I remember her telling me that if I was out with a crowd and somebody handed me a beer, I should take it in the bathroom, pour it down the toilet, replace it with water, and no one would ever know.”
We laughed. “Well, now she wants me to fake a heart attack and fall over on the horn if a man ever tries to get in my car.”
“Well, for Pete’s sake, make sure it’s not me trying to get in, or I’ll be the one having a heart attack,” said Lester.
I spent my actual birthday taking my driving lesson and then doing my usual routine at the Melody Inn. Everyone made a fuss over me, of course. But the following Saturday I had to go to the orthodontist before I went to work in the afternoon.
“Go ahead,” I said ruefully. “Tighten the wires and make me miserable.”
“For an ordinarily pretty girl, you do a lot of complaining,” he said.
I shut up then because I wasn’t sure what he meant. Had he meant “extraordinarily pretty” or “pretty in an ordinary way” or “pretty ordinary”? It gave me something to think about while he worked on my teeth, and I took a Tylenol as soon as he was done to head off the soreness in my mouth. I even managed to say “Thanks” as I left the office.
“Now, that’s a change!” he said.
Once again, without my asking him, Sam was there in the waiting room to drive me to the Melody Inn.
“I told Dad I’d take the bus,” I said.
“Well, I figure any girl whose teeth are hurting needs a ride,” he said.
“I thought you were working for your mom this weekend,” I told him.
“I am, but she’ll always give me time off to see you,” he said.
I shut up then, and we rode in silence for a while. Then Sam looked over at me and said, “Sometimes I get the feeling you’re not too happy to see me, Alice.”
I didn’t want this conversation today. “My mouth is sore, that’s all.”
“Sometimes even when it’s not sore,” he said, and this time he stared straight ahead.
“It’s just that… that sometimes… sometimes I sort of feel you’re smothering me, Sam.” I couldn’t believe I’d actually said that. Even after I said the words, they seemed to echo around in the car.
“Loving you… is smothering you?”
“Sam, I just don’t know how I feel about you!”
“That’s okay,” he said. Then he added, “Mom really likes you. She says maybe you’re about the best thing that ever happened to me.”
I turned and looked at him. “Sam, she doesn’t even know me! Not really!”
“Sure she does. I’ve told her all about you.”
“You run everything by you
r mom?”
“Well…” He grinned a little. “Not everything.”
“Look,” I said desperately. “I can’t honestly say that I love you.”
“I can wait.”
I leaned back against the seat and closed my eyes. “That’s just what I’m talking about! You’re almost too nice! You’re… you’re always here! Always kissing me, looking after me…”
“Well, excuse me! I thought that’s what a girl wanted in a guy.” His voice took on a different tone.
“Well, it is… and it isn’t. Not twenty-four/seven.”
“So what do you want?” he asked, and he was angry this time. Sam angry was better than Sam hurt, I decided. “The tough guy, like Ron? You want to be knocked around a little?”
“No.”
“Then what?”
“I don’t know, but it doesn’t have to be either/or. You don’t have to either follow me around like a puppy or knock me around.” I stared out the side window. “There’s more to life than us, Sam. I just… want you to get a life too. Apart from me, I mean.”
“I was sort of hoping I might have a life with you,” he said.
And that, I guess, is when it happened. Right there in Sam’s car, two blocks from the Melody Inn on a busy Saturday morning, stuck in traffic. I said, “Sam, this just isn’t working. I’m really very sorry.”
Sam’s face actually turned pale. Like the blood had drained out of it. It frightened me for a moment.
“Alice, you can’t mean that. Remember the bus ride home from New York?”
I remembered it all too well. Touching each other under Sam’s jacket. What guy wouldn’t have thought it was a sign she really liked him. But I also remembered his waiting outside my hotel room in New York and the uncomfortable dinner at his mother’s condo and Sam picking me up at the orthodontist and waiting for me at my locker and following me down the halls and Sam and Sam and Sam and Sam….
Slowly, he pulled up to the fire hydrant outside of the Melody Inn. I already had hold of the door handle.
“You’re one great guy, Sam. I mean it, and I still like you very much. But I want to be friends and that’s all.” I looked over at him. “Okay?”
It was not okay. He didn’t answer. I waited. Finally he just waved one hand toward the door as if to say, So go on, why don’t you?
I got out. “Thanks for the ride,” I said. And then, “Sam, I’m really sorry,” and I closed the door. Running inside, I went straight back to the stockroom, where I sat on a couple of boxes. I was breathing hard.
David—who’s a few years older than me—followed me back. “You okay?” he asked.
“Yes,” I said. Then, “No. I just broke up with one of the nicest guys in the world.”
“Oh?” He came over and sat on a box across from me. “How’s that?”
It was as though David was already a priest and I had come to him for confession, and I’m not even Catholic! “Is it possible for someone to be too nice, David?” I wondered if anyone had ever said that about him.
He studied me. “Nice, as in…?”
“Always there! Always kissing! Always needy! Always wanting me, me, me till I’m almost sick of myself! It’s like… like he and his mom… like he filters everything through her eyes. Like someone else is pulling the strings. I mean, I don’t want a guy who’s just excited about me; I want him to be excited about life, you know? His own life. His own decisions. Am I making any sense at all?”
“Perfectly. But that might be a lot to ask of a guy his age,” David said. “Most guys have no clue what they’re going to do in life. Look at me. I’m still debating the priesthood. Maybe you’re the first thing—the first person—he’s ever been excited about. Maybe this is the closest he’s got to making life plans.”
“Arrggghhh!” I said, clutching my head. “I’m sixteen! I don’t want to be part of anyone’s life plan yet! Sometimes he talks like he’s twenty-six!”
Marilyn stuck her head through the curtain in the doorway. “Customers are waiting,” she called. And then, “Something wrong?”
“I just broke up with Sam,” I told her.
“Oh my gosh!” she said, stepping inside. “Are you okay?”
“Not really,” I said. “But I won’t be bringing him to your wedding.”
“Bring anyone you like,” said Marilyn. She came over and put her arm around my shoulder. “Are you sure you’re okay?”
I nodded. “You don’t have to put me on suicide watch or anything,” I told her, and managed a weak smile.
All afternoon, though, I relived that conversation in the car. I had no idea I was going to do that. To do it then, anyway. It was so abrupt! I knew how Sam must be feeling. Remembered how I had felt when Patrick and I broke up. I worried that Sam might really be taking this hard. Was that love, being this concerned about him?
What helped, I guess, was that Sam didn’t change. When I got home from work that evening, there was a message on my cell phone to call him, but I didn’t. On Monday he even sent flowers. If he wasn’t trying to please his mom, it seemed, he was trying to please me. All Sam could think of to do were all the things that made me break up with him in the first place.
I had spent all of Sunday on the phone with Liz, with Pamela, with Gwen. I’d started calling them before I went to the “Our Whole Lives” class at church and continued calling when I got home. I wanted to tell them how awful I felt, relieved I felt, guilty I felt, free I felt…. Mostly they just listened, which is the very best thing a friend can do.
By Friday Sam had stopped calling and leaving messages. And I was relieved when I saw him around school to know he hadn’t thrown himself off a bridge or anything.
It was so weird, really, that the very things girls talk about wanting guys to do turned me off a little when Sam did them. They hadn’t at first. I’d loved all the little considerate things he’d done, and I’d really fallen for him. I thought—and still think—he’s one of the nicest guys I’ve ever met. But sometimes, maybe, when you get to know a person as more than a friend, the chemistry just isn’t there. Something gets in the way. You begin to see things you hadn’t noticed before, and it’s like a big yellow CAUTION sign lighting up inside your head. No matter how much I’d try to love him, no matter whether or not I thought I should, if I didn’t or couldn’t, it wasn’t fair to stick around. I had to keep reminding myself of that.
And then on Saturday, his mother called. When she told me who she was, I almost dropped the phone.
“Oh, hi,” I said, and waited, my heart pounding. Was she going to bawl me out for breaking up with her son?
“This is a belated birthday present, Alice,” she said, “but I’d be glad to do a professional portrait of you if you’d like to come over sometime.”
I couldn’t even answer, so she went on: “I do lots of portrait photography, and I often do things for Sam’s friends. It would be my present to you. Just tell me when you’d like to come over, and I can set up the lights and camera right here.”
“Oh… um… thanks,” I said. “I don’t know…”
“Well, think about it,” she said, and gave a little laugh. “The offer’s good for a month. My treat.”
“Thanks,” I said again. And then, without waiting for her to say it first, “Good bye.” I hung up, and the phone was wet with my perspiration.
Had she actually done that? Called the girl who had dumped her son and tried to bribe her back again with a photo session? Had she done the same with Jennifer? Did Sam know? Had he asked?
I made two decisions right then, and one was so mature, I surprised even myself. First, I would not go. Second, I wouldn’t tell any of my friends about the phone call. If I did, it would be all over school that Mrs. Mayer had tried to get me back with Sam again, and he was too nice a guy for that.
“Maybe you are growing up,” I said aloud, looking at myself in the hall mirror.
It was hard to figure out, really—Sam and his mother. Maybe it had to do with the fact that h
is father wasn’t there. Maybe his mom felt Sam was all she had left and was trying to set up his future for him. Maybe Sam was the kind of guy who didn’t do well alone, who always had to have a girl in his life. I didn’t have to understand him, though. I just had to be honest about what worked for me, and that relationship just never completely jelled, that’s all. Pamela had to discover she was more than a body part, Faith had to convince herself she wasn’t a doormat, and I had to accept the fact that I wasn’t a life preserver. Sam’s whole life couldn’t depend on me.
Of course, I didn’t have anybody waiting in the wings. I’d given up the security of going out with a guy whenever I wanted—his kisses and more. But I felt about a zillion times stronger than when Patrick and I broke up. I was still the same me, and I didn’t need a boyfriend to prove it.
But some of my friends just couldn’t let it drop.
“So what happened?” Karen asked in the locker room at P.E. “Tell us everything.”
“I felt like I was suffocating,” I said.
“He was getting on our nerves in New York,” Elizabeth told them, “but—I don’t know—if it had been Ross and me, I think I’d have wanted him around all the time.”
“That’s probably the way most people feel when they’re in love, so I guess I wasn’t in love,” I said.
“You looked like you were in love at the dance,” Jill said, studying me hard. “You looked like you were in love on the bus from New York. Especially on that bus!” She gave me a wicked smile.
“I know. But he liked me more than I liked him, and it just didn’t seem fair to go on pretending.”
This didn’t seem reason enough, though, to Jill and Karen, and they kept trying to figure it out. “He wanted to go to third base, and you wouldn’t let him?” Karen guessed.
I just laughed. “Maybe if he’d tried, I would have let him,” I joked. “I liked all that.” Maybe that was one of the reasons I’d broken it off, I thought. I’d liked that, but I hadn’t liked Sam enough to continue. It wasn’t honest. In a way, Pamela had been more honest with Hugh, because when she did what she’d done, she was nuts about him.
Alice on Her Way Page 18