I Know You, Al: The Al Series, Book Two

by Constance C. Greene

  She hung up. “You just left,” she said. We went out in the hall and rang for the elevator.

  “Next time you come over to my house and I’ll fix lunch,” I said. “We’ll have my famous peanut-butter surprise and I’ll ask Al to come too.”

  Polly said that’d be great. She grabbed me and kissed me on both cheeks, the way the French do.

  “Have a weird day,” I said, borrowing Al’s line. The elevator had stopped and the doors were open. I guess my voice was pretty loud. There were a bunch of people inside. They laughed like crazy. When the doors closed I just faced the front of the car and pretended I wasn’t there. When we got to the lobby, I was the first one out.

  Sometimes grown-ups can be very rude.

  10

  “Al’s been trying to get you all afternoon,” my mother said when I got home. “I told her you’d call the minute you got in.”

  The words were barely out of her mouth before our bell rang. Al was leaning against the door when I opened it and practically fell into the room.

  “Hey, baby,” I said, “come on in.”

  Al looked as if she were about to go up in smoke. My mother said, “Why don’t you girls go into your room so you can talk without being interrupted?” Sometimes my mother is extremely tactful.

  I led the way down the hall. Behind me, I could hear Al breathing. I shut the door and said, “O.K. Tell me about it. How was your father?”

  She waved her arms and started pacing. “If you hadn’t been home this time I would’ve hurled myself from the roof,” she said. “If I had to wait one more minute to tell you, I might’ve burst right through my epidermis and messed up the entire apartment with my guts. You won’t believe what I have to tell you.” Her eyes were wild and she didn’t stop moving.

  “It’s the most bizarre thing that ever happened. Absolutely the most bizarre event of my life.”

  “You got your period,” I said.

  Al wasn’t listening. Her eyes shone at me through her bangs. In a minute she’d probably have to go to the bathroom. Whenever she gets excited, she has to go.

  “Wait a sec.” She went to the bathroom.

  “I can’t get over it,” she said when she came out, picking up where she’d left off, without missing a beat.

  “My mother is absolutely flabbergasted. Even Ole Henry is flabbergasted and he doesn’t flabbergast easy.”

  “How does he know?” I asked.

  “He was there when I got home last night.”

  “You clued Ole Henry in about getting your period?” I said. I thought that was a bit too much togetherness.

  “What?” Al stared at me. She started to track. “Who said I got my period?”

  “I thought that’s what you were talking about,” I said.

  “Anyone can get a period,” Al said loftily. “What happened to me is astronomical compared to that.”

  I didn’t think she meant astronomical but I didn’t want to interrupt her. As if I could’ve. She was wound up and nothing was going to stop her.

  “Listen,” I said, “sit down and tell me what happened. Take a deep breath. Pull yourself together.”

  Al sat down on my bed, then bounced up and started to pace again.

  “What’s your father like?” I said.

  Al put her hands on her hips. “He is really quite a nice-looking man,” she said seriously. “He is older looking than I remembered him.”

  “What’d your mother say when she saw him?” That’s what I really wanted to know. I wish I could’ve been there when he came to pick up Al for their dinner date.

  “She said, ‘Hello, Charles, how are you?’ She asked him to sit down and he said no thanks, and he helped me on with my coat.”

  I waited. I can be quite patient at times. I knew Al wasn’t going to be hurried.

  “He said, ‘You’re looking very well, Virginia.’”

  “I didn’t know your mother’s name was Virginia,” I said. “I thought it was Vi.” Once in a while Al and I call our mothers by their first names, just for laughs.

  “He called her Virginia, which she hates,” Al said. “She said ‘Thank you, Charles.’” Al put her head to one side, like a bird. “They sounded sort of, you know, sort of like people do in a soap opera. They didn’t sound real.”

  “Where’d you go for dinner?”

  “He told me to suggest a place because he was a stranger around here, so I took him to Belucchio’s and I had a sausage pizza and he had manicotti half and half. He had a glass of wine and I had spumoni. Then he had another glass of wine and he said, ‘You’re probably wondering why I’m here after all this time,’ and I looked him straight in the eye and said, ‘Yes, Dad, I am.’”

  “Good for you,” I said. “That was socking it to him. That was very good.”

  Al smiled at me. “I was sort of proud of myself,” she admitted. “It made me feel better. And then you know what I said?”

  I shook my head.

  “I said, ‘I wish you’d come sooner.’”

  “And what’d he say?”

  “He said, ‘I’m sorry, Al, I wish I had too.’” Al looked at her hands and then at me. “I felt sorry for him. I think it took a lot of courage for him to say that. Then he said, ‘I’m not going to make excuses. I did a bad thing. Now I want to ask you to do something for me.’”

  I could feel my mouth sort of hanging open, which it unfortunately does sometimes when I’m engrossed in a conversation. I shut it.

  “Are you ready for the coup de grace?” Al said. She thinks she’s red hot at French. Actually, I get better marks in grammar but her accent is better than mine.

  “Shoot,” I said.

  “My father is getting married,” Al said slowly, pronouncing every word carefully. “The favor is, he wants me to come to his wedding.”

  “Hey, that’s really great,” I said. “What a surprise. All along you thought it was going to be your mother.”

  “I told him I’d have to think about it,” Al said, as if I hadn’t said a word. “I told him I wasn’t sure I could make it. He said he’d send me an airplane ticket and everything. I told him I’d have to let him know.”

  “That was pretty nervy, telling your own father you’ll have to think about going to his wedding,” I said.

  “Well, it was pretty nervy of him to do what he did,” Al said angrily. “How would you like it if your father walked out on you when you were eight years old?”

  “I wouldn’t,” I said.

  “If I go, what would I wear? What does a person wear to her father’s wedding? Do you realize,” Al said, pouncing on me as if I was a mouse and she was a starving cat, “that I’ve never in my entire existence been to a wedding?”

  “Me either,” I said. “People don’t invite kids to weddings unless they’re related, because caterers charge by the head and it gets too expensive. Your mother will buy you something to wear, I bet. Something really cool.”

  “If I do decide to go, I hope she doesn’t buy it on sale at her store so I have to grow into it,” Al said. “I haven’t got much time.”

  “When is it?”

  “A week from Saturday. He wants me to come out a few days early so I can get to know Louise and the boys. That’s her name—Louise. I don’t know if I like it or not,” Al said.

  “Is your mother invited too?” I asked.

  “Of course not,” Al said indignantly. “You don’t invite your first wife to your second wedding. It’s very bad form.” She sounded just like her mother. Al can be very proper at times. Not too often, thank God.

  “Sometimes you do,” I said. “I’ve read about weddings where people do that.”

  “Only movie stars and actors and actresses do, as far as I know,” Al said in a snippy tone of voice. “Anyway, my mother wouldn’t want to go to my father’s wedding. It would put her in a very awkward position.”

  “I guess,” I said.

  “Excuse me,” Al said and went to the bathroom again. “It’s pretty exciting
, all that’s happened,” she continued when she came back.

  “You could’ve fooled me,” I said. “I’d never know you were excited.”

  Al smiled at herself in the mirror, a big, wide smile. Then she erased it and looked stern.

  “Do you think I look better when I’m smiling or when I’m serious?” she asked. She swept her bangs off her forehead and looked at herself sideways so she could see her profile.

  “My nose is ridiculous,” she said. “It looks as if it should belong to a wombat.”

  I didn’t know what a wombat was, so I didn’t contradict her. When most kids say something like that you know they want you to say, “Oh, no, your nose is darling,” or something, but not Al. If she says her nose should belong to a wombat, she means it.

  “Tell me the truth. Do you think I should go?” Al asked me seriously. “I don’t know if I should or not.”

  “Al, I know you. You will do the right thing and go,” I said, just as serious. It was a very deep moment between us. I felt like Ann Landers, giving advice. “I am your friend and I say, go.”

  “I will sleep on it,” Al said solemnly.

  “Five’ll get you ten you’ve already decided,” I said. “I know you, Al, and you’ll go.”

  Al put her arms around my neck, which she has only done once before in her life.

  “He could’ve got married without me,” she said. “He could’ve just called me up after and told me he was married. But he says he wants me to be there. You’ve got to give him credit for that,” she said.

  “Yeah,” I said. “And don’t think he doesn’t deserve a couple of points for going up to your apartment to call for you and seeing your mother after all this time.”

  We zapped through the living room. Teddy was watching two electric eels on TV, swimming around, recharging their own batteries. My mother and father were looking up a crossword puzzle word in the dictionary, which she said was spelled with an “a” and he said with an “e”.

  “Hey,” I said when we were out in the hall, “that’s who you can give your needlepoint eyeglass case to. Your father, for a wedding present.”

  “I think Ole Henry is counting on it for his birthday,” Al said. She did a couple of burlesque-queen type bumps and grinds. Or maybe she was belly dancing. I couldn’t tell.

  “One thing about my father,” Al said, poking her finger at me. “He doesn’t use after-shave. Like you-know-who does. He just smells like a man. I like his smell. I noticed it right away. That and his hands. He has very nice hands. A person’s smell and his hands are very important.”

  I knew what she meant. I liked the way Mr. Richards smelled.

  Teddy opened the door. “Mom wants you,” he said to me. “What’re you talking about?”

  “Ted,” Al said, putting her hand on his shoulder, man to man. “I want to talk to you. How about finishing my needlepoint for me? There’s a quarter in it for you.”

  “I don’t think I want to,” Teddy said.

  “Why don’t you tell him he can’t finish it no matter how much he wants. You want to do it yourself,” I said.

  “I won’t let you finish my needlepoint, Ted,” Al said.

  “I don’t want to,” Teddy said again.

  “Some pal you are,” Al said.

  The door to her apartment down the hall opened and a man came out.

  “It’s him!” Al hissed. “Ole Henry!” Al’s mother stood talking to Ole Henry. “There you are,” she called. “It’s getting late.” She smiled at me. “Hello, dear,” she said.

  I used to be bothered that she couldn’t remember my name. But now I realized it was just her way. Al says she has too much on her mind, being in Better Dresses and all.

  “I’ll see you in the a.m.,” Al said to me, “and I will definitely not be wearing my brown vest.”

  Teddy whined, “Mom’s calling you. Dad’s already starting to carve,” so I went into our apartment. But I left the door open just a fraction of an inch. I wanted to get a better look at Ole Henry when he went to the elevator.

  When I looked out, he’d already gone. The only way I could tell he’d been there was by the smell of after-shave lotion in the hall.

  11

  The next morning on our way to school Al made me walk in back of her and tell her if her behind wiggled.

  “If there’s one thing I can’t stand, it’s a wiggling behind,” she said. “If I thought mine did, I’d die. I might have to go on a diet.”

  Al used to be quite fat and wore Chubbies, which was a terrible cross for her mother to bear, as she’s very chic. I followed her halfway down the block. I couldn’t see her wiggling at all.

  “You don’t wiggle,” I called to her. “You look O.K. to me.” One of the doormen at 1625, a fresh dude if there ever was one, said, “You look O.K. to me too, honey.” He winked at us.

  “I wish I could say the same about you,” Al said in her frostiest tone of voice. We were quite pleased to see him get red in the face and turn away.

  “Men have to learn their place in the world,” Al said. She grabbed me by the arm. “You’re sure?” she hissed. “It doesn’t wiggle an iota?”

  “Not one.”

  “Maybe I’ll talk my mother into letting me get a black dress for the wedding,” Al said. “Black is slimming, I understand.”

  “Black isn’t for weddings,” I told her. “It’s for funerals. Boy, you’d really get off on the wrong foot if you went to your father’s wedding in a black dress.”

  Al looked at me with respect, which happened rarely. I found it very pleasurable.

  “You’re right,” she said slowly. “You are wise beyond your years, O skinny one.”

  Skinny one reminded me of yesterday. I told Al about having lunch with Polly and that next time she came to my house I’d serve my delicious peanut-butter surprise. It’s an original recipe in which I take slices of bread, cut the crusts off for class, spread the bread with mayonnaise, peanut butter, and walnuts, and top the whole thing with whipped cream. It’s very fattening.

  “Super,” Al said. “How is Polly?” I told her about Polly’s sister wanting to get married to the guy she was living with and Polly’s mother not wanting Evelyn to get married because he was from New England and very proper and it wouldn’t work. “I told Polly about artificial insemination,” I said, “and she never even heard of it. She didn’t think her mother ever heard of it either. And you know Polly’s mother. There’s not much she doesn’t know about stuff like that. I think maybe you were pulling my leg.”

  “Wild,” Al said, “absolutely wild. How long do bangs take to grow out, do you think?”

  I could see this was going to be one of those days when Al was so engrossed in her own problems she wouldn’t be able to stay away from them long.

  “A couple of weeks, I guess,” I said. “Maybe you could borrow one of your mother’s wigs to wear to the wedding.” Al’s mother has three or four wigs that she keeps handy so she’ll always be well groomed.

  Al gave me a dirty look. “Then I really would look like a wombat,” she said. “A fat wombat in a wig.”

  “A fat wombat in a black dress and a wig,” I said.

  Al started to laugh. “They’d take one look at me coming off the plane and start running in the opposite direction.” Then she turned serious. “First impressions are very important, you know. I want those little kids to like me. I want Louise to like me. If you get right down to it, I want my father to like me. People get fed an awful lot of propaganda about teenagers these days, and, after all, he’s not used to having a teen-age daughter. How does he know I’m not all spaced out and robbing poor boxes and shoplifting and all those things?”

  “He doesn’t,” I said. “For all he knows you’ve got a submachine gun strapped under your jacket and you might let him have a blast if he does something you don’t like.”

  Al stomped up the school steps as if she was mad at me. I didn’t mean anything. But she was being pretty intense about her father gett
ing married again. I guess I would be too, if I were in her shoes. It must be kind of strange, not seeing your father since you were eight years old, almost six years. When he left she was a little kid, and now she was practically a woman. Almost a woman. That must be tough. I made a mental note to treat Al with kid gloves for the next ten days. I had a feeling she was going to get more and more clutched up and by the time she was ready to hop on that airplane to take her to the wedding, she’d be ready to blow a fuse.

  “Your mother,” I said as we walked down the hall, “how does she feel about your father getting married again?”

  Al came to a dead stop. “What do you mean, how does she feel?” she said, after a minute. “She doesn’t feel anything. They’ve been divorced for a long time, after all.”

  “I just wondered,” I said. “She must feel something. Maybe she feels sad. Maybe she’s jealous of Louise. Maybe she remembers when they were first married and they were happy and everything. Before you were born.”

  Al turned away. “I don’t think they were ever happy. They used to fight a lot. I can remember hearing them fight at night, when they thought I was asleep.”

  “They must’ve been happy at first, otherwise why’d they get married at all. They must’ve been in love at the beginning. It stands to reason,” I said. “Besides, everyone fights sometimes.”

  “Not the way they did,” Al said. “They used to holler and call each other names and then not touch each other. I remember once, I was about seven, I guess, when my mother said, ‘Alexandra, please pass the butter,’ when the butter was on the table right next to my father. I got up and passed her the butter. She wouldn’t even ask him.”

  “Well, I bet your mother feels something,” I said. “Maybe this will make her marry Ole Henry faster.”

  “I bet your mother and father don’t fight,” Al said.

  “Sure they do. You ought to go driving with them. My father drives so fast he usually misses the exit we want and, boy, do they fight then!” I said.

  “That’s not the same,” Al said.

  Martha Moseley stuck out her head from the door of our homeroom. “Mr. Keogh said anyone not in their seat when the bell rings will be counted absent,” she announced in her television anchorman voice. Martha is bucking to be the first woman anchorman in the business.