“I don’t know, I guess so,” I said as I heard Sylvia’s car drive away. “I’m so angry, I can’t even think.”
“Well, maybe it’s for the best,” Liz said. “I’ve still got some homework to do.” But I knew she was disappointed.
Gwen called and said that she and Yolanda were going to rent a video. Then Pamela called to see if Sylvia had changed her mind. I told her what had happened.
“Shit,” she said, and hung up.
I was too angry to concentrate. Every time I put my mind on my history book, I could see only words in front of me … letters … and I found myself reading the same paragraph again and again.
Of course Sylvia was right. I knew it even as I was yelling at her. I hadn’t told either her or Dad that I wanted the car for that night because I hadn’t known until that morning that we were going. And I was a selfish pig for suggesting that she and her friend change their plans just for me.
At the same time hadn’t she and Dad known how much this week meant to me? Hadn’t I been talking about it forever—about being able to drive my friends somewhere? How many times had they heard me mention “the last week of November”? How could they not have realized I’d want a car—any car—every chance I could get?
As my breathing slowed, I tried to calm down. But every time I looked at my carefully polished nails, tears rolled down my cheeks again. The guys from St. John’s knew we were coming. Pamela had passed it on. They’d be waiting for us, and here we were, stuck at home. I looked down at the cat puke on my rug and felt the surge of anger once again. I just wanted to do something to get even … I don’t know what. Running away was the first thing that came to mind, ridiculous as that was. Just go somewhere and sit for five hours and make them worry. I remembered when Pamela had had a fight with her dad once, and I’d smuggled her into my bedroom. Her dad went nuts looking for her. Maybe Sylvia wouldn’t even care.
I got up finally and cleaned up the vomit. Fortunately, I was able to get it off my shoes without it leaving a stain. I took off my clothes, my silk shirt and tight jeans, and hung them up, putting on my pajamas instead. I felt drained. Exhausted. Also a little scared. If Sylvia told Dad what all I’d said to her, I bet he’d move the date for the end of my driving probation period back to December or even later.
Around nine o’clock I went downstairs and ate a bowl of cereal, ignoring the salad Sylvia had left for me. I watched TV for a while but turned it off when I heard Sylvia’s car in the driveway.
She came in and, without a word, put her car keys on the mantel. Her light brown hair was windblown, and she looked trim and tailored in a periwinkle blue blouse with matching slacks and a black sweater.
I took a deep breath and said, “Sylvia, I’m sorry for spouting off earlier. I was just really mad.”
“I guess I was pretty mad too,” she said, turning.
We studied each other, knowing there was a lot more to say. I had expected her to immediately offer me a hug or something, but she didn’t.
“I just … I guess I thought that everyone … like you and Dad … knew how much I’d been looking forward to this week. That I’d want a car as much as possible.”
“You’re not made of glass,” Sylvia said, and she sounded tired. “We can’t know what you’ve planned unless you tell us.”
Was she going to forgive me or not? I wondered. There was still a slight edge to her voice.
“Well … whatever,” I said flatly. “But I would like to ask a favor—that you not tell Dad about our … our argument.”
She didn’t answer right away. Seemed to be considering it. “It’s something he should know, perhaps,” she said finally.
“No, I don’t think it is. I think it’s something we have to work out ourselves,” I told her. “And I’d really appreciate it if you didn’t mention this to him.”
She looked at me for a moment as if debating it still, and in that moment we heard his steps on the front porch.
“All right,” said Sylvia. “I won’t.”
Dad came in and took off his coat. “Feels a little like snow out there,” he said, “and if it does, I’m sure glad I’m not back on the beltway.” He smiled at me, then at Sylvia. “Oh, it’s good to be home,” he said, and, to Sylvia, “Nice of you to wait up.”
“I just got home a few minutes ago,” she said, and I saw a hidden message in the glance she gave him. I knew then without a doubt that the minute they were alone, she would spill the whole story. I didn’t know whether to stick around as long as I could to keep her from telling him or to go to bed. If I stalled, she’d only tell him later, so I decided on bed.
“I think I’ll go on up, Dad,” I said, going over and kissing his cheek. “Hope you had a good conference.”
He gave me a quick hug. “It was okay. Too long, though. Speakers could have said what they had to say in half the time.”
“G’night, Sylvia,” I said, and went upstairs.
I know she’ll tell him! I thought. She was lying through her teeth! I went into my room, closed the door just hard enough to be sure they had heard it, and then, with my light out, I carefully opened it again and crept to the top of the stairs, listening for the sound of their voices.
Instead, I heard them going around turning out lights. The click of a lamp. The clank of the dead bolt on the front door. They were coming upstairs! Sylvia would tell him after they went to bed!
Suddenly a wild impulse swept over me. I reached back and silently closed the door to my room, then went down the hall into their darkened bedroom and opened the door of the blanket closet. Pushing the suitcases to one side in the lower half, I crawled in and pulled the door almost closed, all but the last inch. It took only five or six seconds for me to realize that this was a mistake. A terrible mistake. But it was too late, because they were coming down the hall, and the next thing I knew, they were in the room.
9
On Impulse
I couldn’t believe what I was doing. Couldn’t believe I was sitting on the floor of their bedroom closet, hugging my knees, watching Dad take off his shirt and tie, Sylvia remove her sweater and start to unbutton her blouse.
“… not worth your time?” Sylvia was saying.
“Not worth a whole day and evening, that’s for sure,” Dad said. “Heard a few things that will be helpful in the store, but I don’t think I’ll go to a management conference again. How did the dinner go?”
I held my breath.
“Well, we got off to a rocky start …,” Sylvia began.
My anger began to swell.
“… Beth is really in a lot of pain. I don’t think she should be trying to get out and do things so soon, but she wanted so much to attend Millie’s dinner. I’m glad Joyce went with us, because I needed help getting Beth out of the car.”
I began breathing again. Maybe she’d tell him after they got in bed. But then her voice might be so soft, I wouldn’t be able to understand what she was saying. I’d probably hear Dad, though, and he’d explode!
“You’re a sweetheart,” Dad was saying, and he went over to put his arms around her, caressing her back. She was in her slacks and bra now. “You look tired, honey.”
“It’s been quite a day,” said Sylvia.
They moved out of my field of vision then, and when Sylvia passed in front of the closet again, she was in her knee-length nightgown. She went across the hall to the bathroom, and I could hear water running, the lid of a jar dropping onto the counter. The sliding of the medicine cabinet door. Five minutes later Sylvia came back into the room, and Dad crossed the hall in his shorts.
My heart pounded. What if they needed an extra blanket? What would I say if he opened the door? What could I say that he would ever understand? I was sixteen, not six.
When Dad came back, he turned the lock. My eyes widened. The lamp went off by their bed, and I heard Dad’s grateful sigh as he climbed in and lay down. Only a small night-light near the baseboard gave any light to the room.
“… c
ome here,” I heard Dad say.
Murmurings.
“… not that tired …,” said Sylvia.
Dad said, “I’m so hungry for you …” And I knew they were going to make love! The look that had passed between them down in the living room didn’t mean that there was something waiting to be said, but that yes, it was a good night for making love. That’s why they had both come right up.
Omigod! I should leave! I shouldn’t be here! I told myself, my head throbbing from guilt and shame.
Another murmur from Dad. An answering murmur from Sylvia.
“Let me help,” Dad was saying.
A little giggle from Sylvia. “I think my arm’s caught in the sleeve.”
He was taking off her gown!
There was no way I could leave the room without unlocking their door, and even in my bedroom at the end of the hall, I often heard that loud click. I sat with my hand over my mouth, my eyes as big as coat buttons, horrified. Rustlings and murmurings … murmurings and rustlings …
My face felt so hot, I thought it would melt. My mouth, my tongue, my throat were dry. I sat with my forehead resting on my knees, my eyes shut tight with embarrassment. And then … the bed began to squeak, a rhythmical squeaking, and I put my hands over my ears. I should not be listening! This was a horrible invasion of their privacy. If Sylvia thought I’d been bad before, this was bad beyond belief.
I pressed my hands against my ears harder, harder, tighter and tighter, and kept whispering in my head, Don’t listen, don’t listen, don’t listen, to drown out anything that might slip through.
I’m not sure how long I sat there like that, shutting out all the sounds that I could. Five minutes? Ten? I was supposed to be getting more mature as I got older, and this was one of the worst things I’d done—worse than anything I’d done in grade school.
Finally, my hands aching from the pressure of pushing against my ears, I relaxed my fingers and found that the squeaks and rustlings had stopped. Only an occasional murmur came from the bed.
“… every inch of you,” Dad was saying, his voice relaxed and sleepy.
And finally there were footsteps on the floor. I saw the shadowy silhouette of Sylvia’s nude figure slipping into a robe, and then she left to go into the bathroom, leaving the door to their room ajar behind her.
I waited fifteen, twenty seconds and was grateful for the sound of Dad’s deep, steady breathing. I pushed the closet door open a foot more, then crawled out on my hands and knees, pushing it almost closed again behind me. With my heart in my mouth, I crawled across the rug, through the doorway, and on down the hall toward my room.
The bathroom door opened before I could open my own door, and I crawled behind the stair railing, cowering in one corner. But the bathroom light went out before Sylvia stepped out into the hall, and I heard her footsteps once again and the closing of their bedroom door.
I went inside my own room and buried my face in my pillow. I felt as though I were running a fever, my head was so hot. The shame of what I had done! The shame of it!
Then another sound. The click of the front door. Soft footsteps. Silence. After a minute or two the sound of someone rummaging through the refrigerator. Lester!
I leaped off the bed and hurried downstairs, practically falling on the last step, and threw myself into the kitchen.
“Lester!” I whispered, holding on to the edge of the table. “I’ve done an awful, terrible thing!”
He was holding a glass in one hand, orange juice container in the other. “Are the police on the way?” he asked.
“Listen to me!” I gulped. “I just … I just …”
Something about my face—the flush of it, perhaps—caught his attention, and he put the orange juice on the counter. “What’s wrong?” he asked. “You sick?”
It came out in breathy spurts. “I was mad at Sylvia … and wanted to see if she’d tell Dad … what I’d said to her, and I … I hid in their closet, and they just had sex.”
Lester put down the glass. “You what?” he said, disbelieving.
“It’s awful, I know! I didn’t realize they were going to do it. I wanted to hear what she told him after promising me she wouldn’t, and she didn’t tell him. They made love instead, and I heard!”
Lester kept staring at me, shaking his head. “I can’t believe you did that,” he said.
“I can’t either,” I wept. “How am I going to tell Dad?”
“What?”
“I’ve got to apologize, and he’ll be furious,” I continued.
“No,” said Les.
I looked up. “What?”
“You don’t have to tell him. And you shouldn’t.”
“Why, Lester? It’s a terrible thing I did. I’ll never feel right again if—”
“Al, listen to me.” Lester came over, took me by the shoulders, and sat me down in a chair. “For once you’ve got to be an adult. You’re never going to mention this to either Dad or Sylvia. This is something you’ve got to keep to yourself.”
I just stared at him. “I’ll never be able to face them again! Every time I look at them, I’ll remember, and—”
“And you won’t say a word,” Lester said sternly.
“I’ve … I’ve never kept big things from Dad before,” I cried. “I have to know he forgives me.”
“This is going to be one of the most grown-up things you’ll ever have to do, Al,” said Lester, “but you’ve got to deal with this yourself. You’ve got to save Dad and Sylvia the embarrassment of knowing you were listening to something very, very private. It’s not like they were in the next room and you couldn’t help but overhear. They had every reason to believe they weren’t within hearing distance of your room.”
I shook my head. “I’ll never feel good about myself again if I have to keep this all bottled up,” I cried.
“Yes, you will, because you’ll be a better person, knowing how absolutely wrong you were tonight.”
If I thought it would be hard to tell Dad what I’d done, somehow it seemed a lot harder not to confess. I suddenly wished I were Catholic. If I were Catholic, I could go to a priest and tell him what I’d done, and he would tell me how many Hail Marys it would take to be forgiven. At least, I think that’s how it works.
“Lester,” I said plaintively, “pretend you’re a priest.”
“What?”
“I want someone to tell me I’m forgiven.”
“You’re forgiven.”
“You’re not God.”
“Then pray to God.”
I sank back in the chair, arms dangling at my sides. “What makes me do stuff like this, Les?”
He was rummaging through the refrigerator again and pulled out a slice of pound cake. “I don’t know,” he said. “Mixed-up chromosomes or something. Anyone saving this pound cake?”
“You can have it,” I said.
“What’s with the shrimp and spinach salad?”
“You can have that, too,” I said. And as Lester began to eat, I said, “None of this would have happened if you had been home this evening when I called and had agreed to drive five girls to Edgar’s in Georgetown.”
“If I had been crazy enough to drive five girls to Georgetown, I’d be the one with the mixed-up chromosomes,” said Les.
I got down some graham crackers and drank a little milk. “Where were you this evening, anyway?” I asked.
“Took a woman to the movies, if you must know. Just a friend, not a date,” Les said. “I wanted to get something to eat afterward, but she had to get home. And since we were in Silver Spring, I naturally thought of stopping here after I left her off. If I’d known you were upstairs hiding in a closet, I would have come earlier and dragged you out.”
“I guess you’re right about never telling them,” I said. “I’m glad you came by, Les. It’s always good to talk about things with someone.”
I put my glass in the sink, and as I started for the stairs, I heard Les say, “Go, my child, and sin no more.” And I sm
iled for the first time that evening.
It was a strange couple of days, those days before the Snow Ball. When I woke in the mornings, it seemed as though hiding in the closet were just a bad dream—that it couldn’t possibly have happened. Then I knew that, no, it really was. It really did. It really had.
I was quieter than usual, but I was good around the house. I helped without having to be asked. Did everyone’s laundry, not just mine. Had salads waiting in the fridge when Sylvia came in. Set the table. But I kept finding it hard to look right at Dad and Sylvia when we were talking, as though they suspected. Maybe I had left the suitcases all pushed to one side, and they guessed. Maybe I’d left the closet door open a little too wide.
But once, as I was putting fresh towels in the bathroom and peeked into their room, I saw that the closet door still remained open the same few inches, and when I had a chance, I pushed all the suitcases together again. I don’t think they ever noticed. It was, though, as Lester said, a secret I’d have to carry with me all of my life. The only redeeming thing was that I had, supposedly, become a better person because of it. Of that, I wasn’t so sure.
By Thursday evening, however, I was a little sick of feeling guilty. My friends had simply put our plans to go to Georgetown on hold, and now I was thinking about the Snow Ball the next night. Liz and Gwen were going to spend Friday evening at Molly’s, they told me, having a “foodless” party, as Molly gets nauseated so easily. They were going to bring over balloons and Saturday Night Live videos, and Gwen and Liz were going to demonstrate the steps to some new dances. I hoped that I would be that generous when a dance came along to which I wasn’t invited: spend the evening with someone who was too sick to go.
When Sylvia came home from school Friday, I’d already showered and was in my underwear and strapless bra, doing my hair. She tapped on the bathroom door, and I cut off the dryer.
“Anything I can do to help?” she called.
“Well … you could zip me up once I’m in the dress,” I said.
When my hair was dry, I curled it, then let it cool down while I put on my dress. Just as Liz had done, Sylvia pulled the material down around my hips where it tended to bunch.
Dangerously Alice Page 9