Dad did it for me. “And he let himself be caught?”
I nodded vigorously and went on crying, curling up against his leg as though it were a pillow.
“Love is really hard sometimes,” he said. And I was glad he said “love.” I was glad he acknowledged that I loved Patrick, and didn’t modify it with “puppy love” or “high school infatuation” or something.
“It’s worse than being sick, worse than throwing up,” I told him, my nose clogged.
“I know,” said Dad.
“I feel like there’s nothing left. That Patrick’s gone and taken a part of me with him.”
“In a way, I suppose he has,” said Dad.
I was doubly grateful that he didn’t immediately start talking me out of my crying jag, that he accepted how I felt.
“I feel alone and ugly and scared, like I don’t know what to do next. Like … like I don’t even know how to act without a boyfriend. It’s all so stupid, and yet … oh, Dad, it hurts! It really hurts.”
“I know, I know,” he said.
Deep inside, however, I felt maybe it wasn’t over. That Patrick would go home and feel as bad about this as I did. That he’d E-mail me, maybe, or the phone would ring about ten o’clock and his voice would be soft and gentle the way it often was after we’d argued. I could even imagine him saying, Alice McKinley, may I have the honor of escorting you to the Snow Ball? and I’d sort of giggle and maybe cry, and we’d both say how dumb the argument had been. He’d tell me how he couldn’t bear to lose me, and I’d say I’d been insanely jealous, and everything would be okay again.
Except that the phone didn’t ring and Patrick didn’t E-mail. I had a horrible night. I looked incredibly awful the next morning—my eyes were all puffy. I wanted to stay home. I wanted Dad to write an excuse, say I needed sleep, but he wouldn’t.
“Al, do you really want everybody to notice that you aren’t on the bus? Do you want the news of your breakup to travel around, and everyone know that you’re taking it hard?”
That, I realized, would be even worse than letting them see my puffy eyes. I wrapped some ice cubes in a dish towel and sat at the kitchen table, holding the ice to my eyes, taking deep breaths to quiet my nerves.
Lester came clattering down the stairs for breakfast. I saw him pause in the doorway, staring at me, and then, out of the corner of my swollen eyes, I saw Dad shake his head at him sternly. Les came on in the kitchen without a word to me, mumbling something about how his car needed gas and he’d just drink a little coffee and get a muffin on campus. Then he was gone.
When my face began to feel numb, I dumped the ice in the sink and went upstairs to shower. I knew I couldn’t keep anything down if I tried to eat, so I skipped breakfast and concentrated on my face. I carefully put on foundation and blush and powder, dropped Murine in my eyes, blow-dried my hair, and dressed in a beige top and khakis. Walking beside Elizabeth to the bus stop, I kept my face turned away from her a little, and she didn’t seem to notice my eyes.
She was talking about an English assignment and how she’d almost forgotten to wash her gym clothes the night before, how her shorts were still damp, and when the bus came, we got on and sat together across from Pamela. I could sense Patrick’s presence at the back of the bus, but I didn’t hear his voice and dared not look in his direction.
Pamela and Karen were sitting together comparing nail decals. This time the older kids on the bus were so loud that anything we said was drowned out. They were making up a new cheer for basketball games, with a lot of bawdy words in it, and of course all the ninth graders were drinking it in.
Elizabeth in her usual way was trying to carry on a conversation with me as though she weren’t subjecting her ears to their banter. “I forgot to take them out of the dryer and they’ll be a wrinkled mess,” she was saying. She stopped and studied me for a moment, then leaned forward and looked directly into my face. “My gosh!” she said.
I could feel tears welling up again. “It’s that bad, huh?”
“What’s happened?” she asked softly.
I didn’t answer, and she looked quickly around to see if anyone else was listening. “You and Patrick?” she asked again.
I nodded.
“You and Patrick?” she repeated, unbelieving. And when I didn’t answer, she said, “You broke up?”
I leaned my head on her shoulder, swallowing and swallowing, till I’d managed to control my tears. She put one hand on mine and squeezed it, and I was never so glad for a friend.
9
Pain
I didn’t want anyone to pity me, though. I didn’t want to feel like “poor, rejected Alice.” I was pretty sure Elizabeth wouldn’t tell anyone until I said she could, but it turned out that Jill asked Patrick if he was taking me to the Snow Ball, and he said, “Probably not.”
That’s when Jill told Karen and Karen told Pamela and Pamela cornered me outside the cafeteria and said, “Alice, what happened?”
“It was by mutual consent,” I said.
“Was it Penny?” she asked.
“It was everything,” I said, starting to move away before the bell. Before I started crying.
“I’ll be over after school,” Pamela called after me, and disappeared down the corridor.
How do you look cheerful when you’re crying inside? How do you act interested in friends’ conversations when all you can think about is what you said to Patrick and Patrick said to you and how he looked when he said it? How do you keep your mind on the blackboard and tomorrow’s assignment when tomorrow seems about as bleak and colorless as a tomorrow ever seemed?
It’s weird, but I was almost more depressed about breaking up with Patrick than I remember being over my mom dying, I think, because I was too young to understand what dying meant. That it was final. Forever. I remember everyone else crying at the funeral, but I kept thinking, “But when she’s better, she’ll come back!” The breakup with Patrick seemed pretty final to me because—even if we got back together sometime, how could it ever be the same? How could I ever feel that Patrick liked—loved—me best of all?
“Alice? Up here, please,” my history teacher said, tapping the pointer against a wall map. “You can’t see China out the window.”
At lunchtime, I noticed Penny studying me warily from the end of the long table where we ate, but I avoided looking at her. I found myself laughing a little too readily at Mark’s jokes, being flirtatious and silly with Brian, teasing Justin Collier. It was sickening. Exhausting. Pretending can wear you out, and so, about halfway through, I just stopped talking and concentrated on my chicken salad sandwich.
Patrick wasn’t on the bus going home. The band had left for a state competition that afternoon, and I was glad of that. Pamela got off at the stop with Elizabeth and me, and we walked the block and a half to my house. I held up pretty well until we got up in my room, and then I lay down on my bed and started crying.
Pamela sat on one side of me, Elizabeth on the other. Pamela was stroking my hair, Elizabeth rubbing my back.
“Alice, it wasn’t about ‘everything,’” Pamela said. “Nothing is about ‘everything.’ It had to be more specific than that.”
“We just … we had a big fight,” I said. “He came over last night, and we argued and … and he left. I said some things … he said some things … and … it’s over. We just … just grew apart, I guess.”
Pamela fell back on the bed and stared up at the ceiling. “I hate those words! I hate ‘we just grew apart.’ People say that to explain things, and it doesn’t explain anything at all. Mom said it when she decided to leave Dad for her NordicTrack instructor. I didn’t like it, but it wasn’t exactly a huge surprise because there always seemed to be a lot of friction going on between Mom and Dad. They were always fighting about something. But you! Alice, you and Patrick have been going together for so long, I almost began to believe in true love.”
“We’re only fourteen,” Elizabeth reminded her. “How can we know what true love i
s when most of us have never been in love at all?”
I was sobbing again. “I did love Patrick,” I said. “I don’t know if it was real love or true love, but I really cared about him. And I thought he c-cared for me. And now he’s going to ask Penny to the Snow Ball.”
“He’s what?” Pamela choked, sitting up again. “Just like that? Is that how he broke it to you? Just, ‘I’m taking Penny to the Snow Ball?’”
“No. I … I told him to.”
“You what?” cried Elizabeth.
I had to go over everything Patrick and I had said to each other. Every step we took. How we started out kicking leaves in the street and walked around our whole block, and by the time we were six houses from home, we’d broken up.
“Well, here we are,” Elizabeth said at last, propping one of my pillows against the headboard and leaning back. “Just two months into high school, and all three of us are without boyfriends.”
“It doesn’t bother me,” said Pamela. “I like playing the field. It just bothers me about Alice and Patrick, that’s all. What about you and Justin?”
“I don’t think I want a full-time boyfriend. That’s just not in the picture right now,” Elizabeth said.
Why couldn’t I feel like they did—content to be unattached? Why did I feel so incomplete without Patrick liking me, calling me, kissing me, touching me, without being his special girl?
“What you have to do, Alice, is let the guys know you’re available,” said Pamela.
“What am I? A hooker?” I asked, blowing my nose.
“You know what I mean. Pretend you like things this way. Flirt with all of them. Act relieved it’s over.”
I shook my head. “Acting’s no good, Pamela. I’ve got to be me.”
“So what are you going to do? Cry in the cafeteria?”
“No, but I’m not going to try to get a boyfriend on the rebound.”
“Good for you, Alice. That’s the worst thing you could do,” said Elizabeth encouragingly. “Just be yourself.”
“My ugly, clumsy, overgrown self,” I said.
“That’s not true, and you know it,” Elizabeth said, and I thought how recently, when she wasn’t eating, we were saying the same thing to her.
“If people start talking about Patrick taking Penny to the Snow Ball, I’ll tell them it was your idea,” said Pamela.
“No, don’t say anything. Don’t go around making excuses for me, please,” I said. “Just let it be. Let Patrick do the explaining.”
I was almost glad my friends had come over, because the more they talked about Patrick and me, the more sick of it all I became.
I felt somewhat better after they went home, and even went down to the kitchen and made a Jell-O salad with fruit cocktail for dinner.
But by the time Lester got home from the university, I was near tears again. The house seemed so quiet. Too quiet, because one thing I knew: Patrick wouldn’t call. He was at the state competition, of course, but even if he wasn’t, he probably wouldn’t have called. Perhaps not ever. I struggled not to cry through dinner. Dad was working at the Melody Inn till 9:00 every night that week, going over work that Janice had left behind, so Lester and I were eating alone, and my eyes looked like two pink pillows. Every so often a tear slid down my cheek and chin, landing on my lasagna. I could see Les looking at me sideways.
“Is it … uh … too indelicate to ask what’s wrong?” he said finally, almost gently.
I swallowed. “Patrick and I broke up last night.”
“Ouch!” said Lester. “I’m really sorry, Al. Anything in particular, or was it just time?”
“You mean that a relationship just runs its course, and when it’s time—when it runs out of steam— it’s over?” I asked incredulously, my lips quivering.
“No, I just meant that in ninth grade, with four years of high school ahead of you and another four, at least, of college, you need to run through a number of relationships, and the longer you stick with one guy right now, the more you’re going to have to hustle to work the others in later.”
My face began to scrunch up again, and my voice became mouselike. “I don’t want any other guys, Lester. I want P-Patrick! I never liked anyone as much as him.”
“It’s hard, kiddo. No doubt about it.”
“He likes another girl. Penny. She’s cute and fun and petite, and I feel like a horse around her. I can’t stand that he likes her so much.”
“He told you he does? That he likes her more than you?”
“No, but he likes her. He says he likes us both, that he and I should both have a lot of friends.”
“Chalk one up for Patrick.”
“We argued, and I told him if he liked Penny so much, maybe he should just take her to the Snow Ball instead of me, and he said maybe he would.” I started crying again. “Half the time I want to run over to his house when he gets home and bang on the door, begging him to take me back, and the rest of the time I want to bang him on the head and ask how dare he do this to me.”
“That’s exactly why they should lock up girls around the age of fourteen and not let them out till they’re twenty-one,” said Lester.
We did the dishes together, putting some food away for Dad in case he hadn’t taken time to eat, and Lester said that the pain of a breakup doesn’t go away all at once, but it does go away in time.
After the kitchen was clean, he went up to his room to study and I went to mine. But I couldn’t concentrate. I lay on my back, staring wide-eyed at the ceiling, and every so often a tear would trickle down and land in my ear. From Lester’s room I heard a song on his radio that Patrick’s combo played once at one of our junior high dances. I just didn’t feel I could stand it. It used to be Dad who was the sad one in our family, with both Lester and me getting along in our love lives, and now it was Dad who was having all the luck, and Lester and me who were out in the cold. Lester and me and Mr. Sorringer, the assistant principal, who was in love with Miss Summers and isn’t over her yet.
And suddenly it seemed as though everybody in the world except Dad was grieving for someone, and that Lester and I might be loveless the rest of our lives. Weeping pitifully, I got up in my stocking feet and padded down the hall to Lester’s room. He was propped up on his bed with text books scattered all around him.
“L-Lester,” I wailed from the doorway.
He looked up, then reached over and turned the volume down on his radio. “Yeah?” he said.
“D-do you think we could be h-happy if you and I just grew old together?” I wept.
“What?” Lester said and turned the radio down even more.
“If we don’t ever m-marry, Lester, we could always get a house together somewhere. I’d do all the cooking and you could take care of the yard and the p-plumbing, and at least we could look after each other in our old age,” I sobbed.
Lester opened his mouth, then closed it again, and finally he said, “Correction: They should lock up girls when they’re fourteen and not let them out till they’re thirty. Whatever gave you a cockeyed idea like that?”
“I don’t want to go the rest of my life alone!” I wailed.
“So get a roommate! Get a dog! Join the Peace Corps! Adopt some orphans! Al, there are as many ways to enjoy your life as there are people. Just because you’re alone today doesn’t mean you’ll be alone tomorrow.”
“But I want Patrick!” I cried. “If he doesn’t want me anymore, how could anyone else?”
Lester pushed his books aside and motioned for me to come over and sit beside him. I was only too glad. I crawled up on the bed, leaning back against the pillows by the headboard, and snuggled up against him. He even put one arm around me.
“You’re talking a little nutty, Al, you know? Aren’t you the same person you were a couple weeks ago?” He lifted my face with his other hand as though looking me over. “I don’t see any facial hair; don’t see any fangs.”
I just sniffled.
“Fourteen years ago,” Les went on, “Patric
k Long was just a squalling little blob of protoplasm in messy diapers who grew up to play the drums. He’s just one of the three billion males on this planet, and—even assuming that he hates you, which I doubt—are you going to let that one sack of skin and blood and bones named Patrick make the decision about whether you are likable or not? Attractive or not? Are you going to let that one squalling blob of protoplasm just fourteen years out of diapers determine your self-esteem?”
I sniffled again. “I thought you l-liked Patrick.”
“I do! But when did you let him have all this power over you? If he likes you, you’re witty and beautiful; if he doesn’t, you’re dog doo. Am I right here?”
I just leaned against Lester and didn’t answer, loving the closeness. He smelled of taco chips and beer. He handed me a Kleenex, and I blew my nose.
“The one thing about life, Al, is it’s always changing. Bad things don’t last forever. It’s okay— it’s normal—to feel depressed over this, but it won’t last. Trust me.”
“But if bad things don’t last forever, if everything changes, that means good things don’t last, either,” I countered.
“True. People do die, after all. But most of us find some level at which we can be, if not deliriously happy most of the time—and nobody is— we can be reasonably content, with healthy spurts of excitement and joy. If you care about yourself, then the things that happen outside yourself, things you can’t control, can hurt, but they can’t destroy you. Philosophy 101.”
I could tell from the way Lester shifted his body slightly that his arm was getting numb, but I went right on leaning against him. It was too comforting to give up. “Do you ever miss your old girlfriends?” I asked.
“Some of them.”
“Crystal?”
“I think about her once in a while, and hope she’s happy with Peter. I don’t think it would have worked out if I’d married her.”
“Eva?”
“I’m glad that’s over.”
“The dingbat?”
“Who?”