3
REKINDLING THE FLAME
THE NUMBER MUST HAVE BEEN JUST about over when we started to dance, because the moment we came face-to-face with Crystal, the music stopped.
“Well, well!” said Crystal, staring at me in astonishment, then at Lester.
“Friends, I presume?” said the man she was with.
“Why, yes,” said Crystal. “Steve, this is Les and Alice McKinley.”
The man looked us over. “Newlyweds, I’ll bet.”
And before Lester could open his mouth, I said, “How did you guess?”
Lester pinched my arm, but I could see Crystal’s eyes laughing.
“They’re the perfect couple, don’t you think?” she said to Steve. And then, when the music started again, she told him, “Les is an old friend of mine, so I’d like a dance for old times’ sake.” And she turned toward Lester and put one hand on his shoulder.
Steve didn’t seem to think that was such a great idea. But he said, “Sure, go ahead. I’ll dance with Alice.”
The thing is, I don’t know very much about dancing, and Steve must have realized that because he soon gave up the fancy footwork and sort of moved back and forth from one foot to the other.
I realized it was the first time I had ever been in a man’s arms other than my dad’s. Or Lester’s. Patrick’s put his arm around me, but he wasn’t a twenty-five-year-old man who shaves. I looked over at Crystal and Lester, who were talking intently. Crystal was still as beautiful as ever, with her short red hair layered against her head, her smooth pale skin, and full bosom. I remembered when she had helped me turn a mess of a perm into natural-looking curls. I wanted to look as mature and sophisticated in Steve’s arms as she looked in Lester’s.
“So how’s married life treating you?” he asked me, holding me a lot closer than I liked. I had to tilt my head back to see his face. How did you talk and dance at the same time? I wondered. What if there was garlic on my breath?
“Okay, I guess,” I told him.
“Only okay?” He laughed. It was about then I decided that women don’t tip their heads back to talk to men while they’re dancing; they sort of dance with their cheeks close together, and talk to each other sideways.
“That’s better,” said Steve, and held me closer still, grazing his cheek against mine.
The next time the music stopped, Crystal came over and took me by the arm. “We’re going to the ladies’ room,” she told Steve, and before I knew it, she was pulling me through a dark hallway behind the bar and into a little wall-papered cubicle with a toilet in it. She locked the door.
“Listen, Alice, Les is going to help me escape. Steve is a real jerk. He’s an octopus, with hands everyplace they shouldn’t be. Somebody introduced us at another club this evening, and he’s been following me ever since. I want to shake him so I can go home, but he gets mean when I try. Will you help?”
I had only been a teenager for one week, and already I was being asked to help out in the romance department.
More than that, I might even be saving Crystal’s life!
“Of course!” I said eagerly. “What do you want me to do?”
“Every time I’ve tried to leave, he’s stopped me. So Lester said I could ride home with you, and then I’ll take the Metro back downtown tomorrow and get my car. But we’ve got to sneak out the back way without Steve knowing.”
I felt chills run up and down my spine and wondered if the octopus was outside the door listening.
“What you do is, go back to the table, and Steve will follow you to ask where I am. Tell him I’m still in the ladies’ room, and ask him to get you another ginger ale or Perrier or something. When he goes to the bar, come back through this hallway and go out the exit at the end. Lester’s going to have his car waiting.”
This was the most exciting thing I’d ever done in my life, next to being kissed by Patrick for the very first time.
I opened the door a crack and looked out. “He’s there,” I whispered.
“Okay,” Crystal said. “Tell him I’ll be out in a few minutes.”
I opened the door and started back through the hallway, Steve the Octopus at my heels.
“Where’s the redhead?” he asked.
“She’ll be out in a few minutes,” I said, leading the way back to our table. “Would you get me another ginger ale, please?”
He gave a short laugh. “Child bride, huh?” he said. “What’d you do? Marry at sixteen with your parents’ consent?”
“You think I’m sixteen?” I said, trying to look shocked.
“Could pass for twelve, easy,” he told me. And then, he simply snagged a passing waiter and asked him to bring another ginger ale to the table. Now what did I do? Crystal and Lester were waiting for me outside in the car. They wouldn’t leave without me, would they?
“I like your earrings,” said Steve.
“Thank you.”
“You a gambling woman?”
“Not really,” I said, beginning to feel very uncomfortable. I was watching the way his hand was moving across the table toward mine. I put my hand in my lap.
“Hey, not afraid of me, are you? Your husband disappears with an old flame, at least we can be friends.”
“I think maybe I have to go to the bathroom again,” I said, getting up.
Steve got up too, but he blocked my way to the bathroom. He put both hands on my waist, and turned me around toward the dance floor, pulling me right up against him. Suddenly I could feel one of his hands on my backside, and I wondered if Steve the Octopus was sprouting hands every which way. At that moment I heard Lester’s voice behind me.
“Time to go, Alice,” he said. “Nice meeting you, Steve. Take care.” And then we were making our way through the dancing couples, down the dark hallway behind the bar, and out the exit door at the end.
Lester’s car was parked right outside. “Get in,” he said, and I slid in the front seat beside him as Steve came bursting out the back door and looked around.
“Hey, you see where Crystal went?” he called. “What’s with the redhead? Where’d she go?”
“She said something about another appointment,” Lester called out the window, and swung the car around in the parking lot, and out onto M Street. It wasn’t until we were inching our way through Georgetown traffic that Crystal rose up in the backseat and we all broke into laughter.
“He was awful!” Crystal said. “I didn’t think I would ever get away, Les. Thank you so much! You too, Alice, for letting me spoil your big evening. I’m really sorry about that.”
“You didn’t spoil it at all, Crystal. It was fun!” I told her.
“You should watch out for guys like that, Crystal,” Lester said. “They can be mean.”
“I didn’t think you cared,” she answered.
“Of course I care.”
I leaned back in the seat and closed my eyes. There was so much to tell Pamela and Elizabeth I hardly knew where to start. I thought Lester would take me home first and then go off somewhere with Crystal to talk, but he didn’t. He drove Crystal home, waited to see that she got inside okay, and then drove home with me.
“Lester, it’s been a great evening!” I said. “I loved it. The dinner and the play and the dancing and rescuing Crystal and everything! And you look so great in that suit.”
“Well, you look pretty good yourself, kid. You’re going to wow the guys, you know.”
I was quiet for a while. “Les, if you hadn’t been there to help Crystal, what should she have done? What should I do if it ever happens to me?”
“Call home,” said Lester. “Call home, and wherever you are, Dad or I will come and get you.”
I think I really, truly, absolutely felt that Lester loved me right then.
It was sort of like Cinderella after the ball, I guess. Pamela had left some Pond’s cold cream to wipe off my makeup, and it slipped right off. I got out of the dress with the bouffant skirt, took off the dice-shaped earrings and the black panty
hose and heels, and put on my green pajamas. When I looked in the mirror again, I didn’t see the gorgeous creature I’d been at the Kennedy Center, but plain old Alice, with the same skinny legs, and wondered if this was the way all women felt—even Crystal and Miss Summers—when they got home from a date and took off the outer layers.
The phone rang, and I ran out in the hall and answered before it could wake Dad. It was Pamela.
“I’m over at Elizabeth’s,” she said. “We noticed your light was still on. Come on over.”
I slipped my feet in my loafers, gathered up my clothes and toothbrush, and left a note on the kitchen table for Dad, in case he got up to see if I was home. Then I went across the street in my pajamas, and Elizabeth let me in. We tiptoed upstairs to her room, where they’d pushed Elizabeth’s twin beds together, and all three of us crawled beneath the sheets while I told them about pâté de foie and dessert flambé, and how we had saved Crystal Harkins from the Octopus. It was exciting and scary both to think of all the things we were in for in the years ahead.
“What I wish,” said Elizabeth, “is that after I’m married and the wedding night is over, I could come to your house and we could all talk under the covers, just like this.”
“Elizabeth, after you’re married you’re supposed to talk to your husband!” Pamela said. “Under the covers!”
Elizabeth sighed. “Not like this, though. It would never be like this.”
One of the things that was bothering Elizabeth, I knew, was the thought of ever being pregnant, because her mother was expecting in October. But I was getting sleepy, so the talk petered out. In the morning, we made our own breakfast because Mrs. Price can’t stand to look at food at that hour, and then I went home.
But when I passed Lester’s door, I heard him talking on the phone. I paused just long enough outside his room to hear whom he was talking to.
Crystal.
4
THE PENCIL TEST
I DID SOMETHING AT SCHOOL ON MONDAY that I’d been thinking about since fifth grade but never thought I’d have nerve enough to do. I guess I was still thinking about Porgy and Bess and how beautiful it was when that woman sang “Summertime.” And when Bess sang to Porgy, and Porgy to Bess, and all the street vendors were singing together. I wished I knew how it felt to be up on a stage singing like that—even in the back row of a chorus, where, when you opened your mouth and made a sound, people didn’t turn to stare at you.
It was right after lunch when Pamela and Elizabeth and I were leaving the cafeteria to sit outside on the steps. We passed the chorus room, and I noticed the teacher standing by his desk, sorting through some sheet music.
“I’ll meet you outside,” I said to Elizabeth and Pamela, and ducked through the door.
I walked over to where he was working. I didn’t even know his name. Maybe thirteen makes you bolder or something.
“Hello?” he said, smiling a little, and kept sorting.
“I’m not in chorus, but I’ve got a question,” I began.
“Shoot.” He was looking at me now.
“People say that when my mother was alive, she used to sing a lot. My dad plays the flute and piano, and my brother plays the guitar. They both sing too. I can’t carry a tune, and don’t understand it. I just wondered if it’s genetic or something.”
“Well, now,” he said, and continued smiling, “it’s probably a question no one has an answer for, but are you quite sure you can’t carry a tune?”
“Trust me,” I said, and explained how all through grade school, when the other kids sang for the PTA, I was given the triangle to ping at the end of each stanza. And when I sang “Happy Birthday” at parties, it brought down the house.
The teacher listened. “Well, some people believe in the Suzuki method, which goes on the theory that everyone can learn to carry a tune if they’re exposed to music at an early age.”
“I probably listened to it before I was born,” I told him. “But I can’t even tell you if notes go up or down.”
He studied me a moment. “There are no guarantees, but if you really want to make the effort, I’d be willing to work with you each day for fifteen minutes and see what we could do. The real question, though, is how unhappy you are with yourself just as you are now. Would this make a big or a little difference in your life? Or no difference at all?”
I thought about that. Would I rather have fifteen minutes a day to sit out on the steps with Pamela and Elizabeth after lunch and talk to the guys, or did I want to embarrass myself by trying to make my voice match the notes on a piano? And if I finally did get to the place where I could carry a tune, would I break into song when I saw my boyfriends coming toward me on the sidewalk?
“I guess maybe I’m pretty happy the way I am,” I said finally.
He grinned. “Okay. If it ever bothers you enough that you feel genuinely unhappy about it, come back and we’ll see what we can do. If it’s only a mild annoyance, you probably wouldn’t want to spend the time and effort.”
I went outside smiling. I think it was the first time in my life that a teacher told me I could survive without knowing his subject. That I could live a long, healthy life and still not know diddly about what he was teaching. Maybe when you were thirteen, people treated you more grown-up. Maybe I was on my way to womanhood, and people could see it already in my face.
I told Dad that night what the teacher had said. “I hate to admit it,” he told me, “but he’s right. There was a time I fantasized that my children would be musicians when they were grown. Career musicians, I mean. And now I realize that if you were anyone other than who you are, you wouldn’t be the Lester and Alice I love, and I wouldn’t trade you for the world.”
And that was the second time in a week I’d felt really, truly, totally, absolutely loved.
As the week went on, it got unusually hot for May, and when I came home from school on Thursday, Lester and Crystal were sunbathing in the backyard.
Lester had spread an old blanket on the grass and was lying on his back, wearing his sunglasses, his radio playing beside him. Crystal was lying on her stomach in her bikini bottom and top, only the top was unhooked, and her back was bare.
I was noticing the S shape that a woman’s body makes, from the small of the back and over the rise of her bottom. I wondered whether, if I was lying on my stomach and someone was watching me, I’d look that pretty. I don’t think so. I wasn’t as flat as an ironing board, but I didn’t have hills and valleys either. Just a middle-of-the-road, in-between shape. Lester and Crystal seemed to be talking to each other, and suddenly, right before my eyes, Lester sat up, reached for the suntan lotion, and began slathering it on Crystal’s back. Only he didn’t just slather her back. He rubbed it in good up around the neck and shoulders, and then his fingers slid around to the sides, right next to her breasts, and when he finished that, he rubbed the lotion right under the top edge of her bikini bottom.
Later, when Crystal had gone home, I said, “Lester, you sure get friendly in a hurry.”
Lester took a long, slow drink of lemonade and said, “I haven’t the slightest idea what you’re talking about, Al. What are we playing? Twenty questions?”
“I saw the way you were slathering Crystal,” I told him.
“Slathering Crystal? You make it sound as though I was salivating on her.”
“The way you put your hands in her bathing suit.”
Lester stared at me. “You know who you sound like, Al? Aunt Sally.”
Aunt Sally? I swallowed. I didn’t want to sound like Aunt Sally. I mean, I like my aunt, but I don’t want to be her. I could feel my face starting to burn.
“And for your information, my hands weren’t in her bathing suit, I was running one finger under the edge because that’s a place people usually burn. And as for being friendly in a hurry, I have known Crystal for over a year.”
I shut up then and tried to figure out why I was feeling so Aunt-Sallyish. Jealousy, I guess. Jealous that when Crystal Harkins
had sat up finally and fastened the bra to her suit, she had cleavage that Pamela and Elizabeth and I would die for. I’ll bet if Crystal Harkins was ever a spy, she could hide a secret message between her breasts, and nobody would ever find it.
Sometimes it seems to me that thoughts go floating around in the air like germs, and everybody catches an idea at once, because it was my night to cook dinner, and I’d just started to boil the macaroni when Pamela called.
“Alice,” she said, “come over to my house right away. It’s important.”
“I’m cooking dinner,” I told her.
“It’ll only take thirty seconds.”
I turned off the stove and walked the two blocks to Pamela’s. She and Elizabeth were up in her bedroom. “What’s going on?” I asked.
“The pencil test,” said Elizabeth mysteriously.
“What?”
“To see whether or not we should be wearing bras,” said Pamela.
“But we already do,” I told her. “Most of the time, anyway.”
“The pencil test tells you whether you should ever go without one,” said Pamela, “so we’re going to test each other. I’ll go first.”
While I stared she unbuttoned her shirt, then took her bra off. I was too astonished to be embarrassed because Pamela picked up a pencil and slid it crosswise underneath one breast, then held her arms straight out at the sides.
“Ta-da!” she said, proving that her breast alone would hold the pencil there, I guess.
“So?”
“So I can’t ever go without a bra. Except to bed, of course. The magazine said so. You next,” she said to Elizabeth.
“Not here!” Elizabeth said, shocked, and took the pencil into the bathroom and closed the door.
We waited so long I began to think that Elizabeth had climbed out the window and gone home, but finally the bathroom door opened.