When Patrick came by that evening, we sat out on the porch steps while he unwrapped his gifts.
“Hey!” he said, pleased, when he saw the chocolate-covered potato chips. “These are really great!” He offered one to me, and I let him have the rest. He ate them all before he opened the second present. There were oodles of tissue paper around it, because I didn’t want the Lucite to get scratched.
“Wow!” he said. “Alice, this is really nice!” He turned the little drum set around and around in his hands. “I’ll keep it on my dresser,” he said. And then he leaned over and kissed me. It seemed so natural that I didn’t even get flustered.
I sort of turned the tag around on the drum set so he’d be sure and notice, and when he didn’t say anything, I said, “Genuine Lucite.”
“Oh, yeah!” said Patrick. “Well, it’s really nice, all right.”
We walked around the neighborhood holding hands. Once, on a long stretch of sidewalk where thick trees blotted out the light from the streetlamps, Patrick put his hands on my shoulders and turned me around and kissed me. (That would make four paper clips to put on my dress!) This time it wasn’t just a quick smack on the mouth, but a real kiss. He really put his arms around me. He really pulled me close. It was so romantic, my legs felt as though they were melting. I could feel my heart pounding, pounding, beneath my checked shirt. Your lips, your arms!
I wondered if this was how you felt when you said, “I want you! I need you!” But I figured you had to go through a lot of kisses first before you ever told a boy something like that. I was really proud of myself that day, for choosing such nice gifts for Patrick, for not giggling or anything when he kissed me.
Patrick acts a lot older than his age. I guess it’s because he’s traveled so much and seen so many things. I wonder sometimes if he practiced kissing girls before me. Then I remember that first kiss on our porch with the chocolate-covered cherries and decide he hadn’t. The thing about Patrick is he doesn’t get embarrassed easily. I get embarrassed about everything. I get embarrassed for getting embarrassed.
Sunday afternoon I sat down with Lester to watch Wide World of Sports on TV. Lester watched, actually. I was staring dreamily out of the window.
“You look like the cat that swallowed the canary,” Lester said during a commercial.
“I am,” I told him.
“You and Patrick get engaged or something?”
“Very funny,” I said. “I happened to find the perfect birthday present for Patrick, that’s what—a miniature drum set to put on his dresser.”
“Sounds nice.”
“It is. He really likes it.”
The sailboat races came on again and Lester’s eyes were glued to the set.
“Lester,” I said, interrupting. “What’s Lucite?”
Lester shrugged. “Some kind of plastic, I think.”
I leaned back hard against the couch. Plastic? I gave Patrick a present with a little gold tag that said genuine plastic?
I called Elizabeth and Pamela. The nice thing about telling girlfriends what you’ve done is that it spreads the pain around. The way they moaned and wailed, it was as though we were all in it together.
The next time I called Aunt Sally in Chicago, I was going to add a new rule to her list: Never give a boy anything with a little gold tag that says LUCITE.
4
THE GIRL WITH THE CORKSCREW CURLS
WE MADE UP OUR MINDS THE DAY AFTER that—Pamela, Elizabeth, and I—that we would make Elizabeth so ravishing that the next time Tom Perona looked at her, he’d just have to ask her to go with him. Unless boys from St. Joseph’s aren’t supposed to look at girls that way.
“What way?” Elizabeth asked as we brushed her dark curly hair.
“You know,” said Pamela. “With passion.”
“Don’t talk about that,” said Elizabeth.
So we just brushed.
When we got through brushing her hair, though, she looked about the same. Absolutely gorgeous. We even put blush on her cheeks and gloss on her lips and that hardly changed her a bit. Elizabeth is one of those girls who is simply born beautiful.
So we turned our attention to Pamela to see what lip gloss and blush would do for her. The fact is, however, that when you’ve got blond hair so long that you can sit on it, you don’t need to think about your face at all.
Then Pamela and Elizabeth turned their attention to me and hardly knew where to begin. They brushed for about twenty minutes, but all it did was make my hair stand out away from my head as though I’d been hit by lightning.
“I don’t know, Alice,” Pamela said finally. “Maybe you need a haircut or something.”
I hadn’t had a haircut since I’d been to Chicago during spring vacation and my cousin cut it. I guess Pamela was right, because that evening Lester told me I was beginning to look like a sheepdog. But it wasn’t until the next day when Dad said, “Al, we’ve got to do something about that hair,” that I knew it was just too awful to ignore.
Lester was trying to read the paper on Tuesday before he went to work, but I wanted to try out a few ideas on him. First I piled my hair on top of my head and tied it with a ribbon, sort of like you’d wrap a perfume bottle for Christmas.
“Lester,” I said, leaning in front of his newspaper. “Imagine how I’d look if all this hair up here was curly. What do you think?”
Lester leaned way back, as though I were a wet dog trying to crawl onto his lap. “Give me a break,” he said.
I went back up to my bedroom, untied the ribbon, parted my hair on one side, and pulled it down over my eye, tucking the other half behind one ear.
“Is this any better?” I said, back downstairs again.
“You look like someone from the Addams family,” Lester told me. “What’s that woman’s name? Morticia?”
It was Dad who had the idea. That night, when I told him I thought I’d look better with curls, curls like Elizabeth has—large, luscious curls that spread out over her pillow—he said, “Your mother used to get perms. Why don’t we make an appointment for you to get a perm, Al?”
There was something about knowing I was going to fix my hair like my mom’s that made me feel all soft and warm inside. Which is why, that very Saturday, I was sitting with a plastic cape around my shoulders in La Chic Salon, handing little white squares of paper to the beautician who was using them to wrap each curl around a roller until my whole head looked like a telephone switchboard. After that she poured a bottle of something that smelled like cat pee on my head, and then I had to sit under a dryer for fifteen minutes with a long roll of cotton around my face to keep the cat pee from trickling down into my eyes. When that was over the beautician rinsed the curls, poured on something else, rinsed my hair again, and finally took out the rollers.
“Don’t wash your hair for seventy-two hours,” she said as I left, curly headed, and all the way home I wondered what would happen if I did. I still smelled like a cat’s litter box, but the beautician had said that would disappear in a few days.
I knew I still had the same face—I didn’t look like Elizabeth or anything—but somehow I had thought the curls would look better than they did. They were tight and small.
“Give me a break,” Lester said again when he got home from selling washing machines and saw me.
“It’s like Mom used to wear her hair,” I told him.
“On Mom it looked different,” Lester said.
When Dad got home from the Melody Inn, I could tell by his eyes that the perm hadn’t turned out the way he’d thought it would, either.
“Look,” I said, gulping. I picked up a curl with two fingers, pulled it out away from my head, and let go. It sprang right back against my scalp like a bedspring. The girl with the corkscrew curls. I felt like bawling.
As the evening went on, my hair got even worse. The curls seemed to be shrinking smaller and tighter. Patrick was out of town for the weekend with his parents, and I was glad because I knew that if he got close to me, h
e’d think a cat had sat on my head.
I went to bed early so I wouldn’t have to think about the permanent, but when I woke the next morning, even my pillow smelled like cats. When I looked in the mirror, I couldn’t believe it. I looked like a little old lady with curls stuck tight to her head. And suddenly the word permanent struck home. I remembered spilling some permanent ink on my jeans once, and it never did come out, not even with Clorox. Was I going to look like this for the rest of my life? What could be worse than starting seventh grade without a boyfriend? Getting a perm at the La Chic Salon, that’s what!
Patrick got home late Sunday night, so he called me Monday morning and asked if he could come over.
“I’m sort of sick, Patrick,” I said.
“What’s the matter?” he asked.
That’s one thing about boys: They ask dumb questions. What if I’d had diarrhea? Elizabeth said once that if there’s something embarrassing wrong with you, you can always say you have the flu. I guess the church doesn’t consider that a lie or anything.
“I’ve got the flu,” I told Patrick.
“What kind?” he asked. “Chest or stomach?”
Why do boys do that? How do you tell him it’s flu of the hair?
“I think it’s in my head,” I said finally.
“That’s respiratory,” said Patrick. “That can stop up your ears and everything. Gee, I’m sorry, Alice. I was hoping I could see you tonight.”
“Yeah, my lucky day,” I told him.
As soon as dinner was over, Dad went off to a friend’s house to play chamber music on his violin. It was Lester’s turn to do the dishes, and he was waiting for his girlfriend, Crystal Harkins, to come over. I had just taken a piece of Sara Lee chocolate cake upstairs to eat in my room when I heard the doorbell ring. I paused at the top of the stairs, the cake halfway to my mouth.
“Hey, Patrick!” I heard Lester say. “How you doing?”
I froze. I mean, it’s like in a dream where you’re standing on the railroad tracks and you see a train coming, but you can’t move.
“I was wondering how Alice is,” Patrick said. “I just thought I’d come by and leave these here for her.”
There was a three-second pause.
“Alice?” said Lester, as though he’d never heard of me before. “What’s wrong with her?”
I closed my eyes and leaned against the wall.
“She’s got the flu,” said Patrick.
“She has?” I could almost hear the wheels turning in Lester’s dull brain. “Oh! The flu! I guess she doesn’t look so good today,” he said finally.
I let out a sigh of relief and took a bite of the chocolate cake. As soon as Patrick left, I’d go down stairs and see what he brought me.
“Maybe I could give her these myself,” Patrick said.
I bolted from the wall and spit out the cake in my hand. No! I whispered, trying desperately to communicate with Lester by mental telepathy. Say no, Lester. Please say no!
“I don’t see why not,” Lester said. “Hey, Al! Patrick’s coming up for a minute. Okay?”
I raced down the hall to the bathroom, shut the door, flushed the cake down the toilet, rinsed out my mouth, sprayed my head with room deodorizer, and wrapped a towel around my head like a turban. Why do boys do that! What if I didn’t have any clothes on and Patrick was on his way up? Don’t brothers ever think?
I opened the bathroom door and there was Patrick, clutching a bouquet of flowers. He stared. I walked slowly toward him, steadying myself with one hand and holding the towel with the other.
“Gosh, Alice, you look different,” he said, following me back to my room.
My room! Patrick was coming into my room! I still had yesterday’s underpants on the floor. I still had my training bra hanging on my chair. I had sneakers that smelled like sneakers on the rug. I hadn’t made my bed, and there was still a half-eaten piece of pizza on my dresser.
As I walked into the room, I kicked both my underpants and my sneakers under the bed. I grabbed the bra and stuck it under my T-shirt. Then I sat down on the edge of the bed, holding the towel with one hand and the hidden bra with the other. I felt miserable.
“You look miserable,” said Patrick, handing me the flowers. I took them with one hand and held them against my T-shirt so the bra wouldn’t fall out.
“Thanks,” I said.
“Why have you got that towel on your head?” Patrick wanted to know.
“Well … I’ve … uh … sort of got medicine on my head,” I told him.
“Oh,” said Patrick, and stared some more.
“I have to leave it on for another day. Thanks for the flowers,” I said again, hoping he’d leave.
“They’re from Mom’s garden,” said Patrick, and took a step closer.
No! I thought. Don’t try to kiss me, Patrick. Please don’t try to kiss me!
He took another step. “1 wouldn’t want you to catch anything,” I said. “I’ll bet I’m contagious as anything.”
“I don’t care,” said Patrick. He leaned over and gave me a light kiss on the cheek. “Whew!” he said, straightening up again. “I sure hope that stuff on your head helps.”
“It’s awful, I know,” I told him.
When Patrick left, I began to bawl. I went to the top of the stairs and screamed at Lester. By that time I was crying so hard, I could hardly talk.
“I hope all your hair falls out and your teeth rot and your feet go flat!” I bellowed, sobbing. “How could you do that to me, Lester? I hate you!”
Lester came to the bottom of the stairs and looked up at me, his mouth hanging open.
“What the heck’s wrong with you, Al?” he said. “What was I supposed to do? Send him back home? I didn’t even know you were sick.”
“I’m not sick!” I shrieked, and then, “I’m ugly! I’m ruined! My room smells like dirty socks, and you let Patrick see me like this!”
“Hey, easy! Easy!” Lester said. “You think Patrick’s never smelled feet before?”
But I rushed back into my room and threw myself on the bed. If ever I needed a mother, it was then.
At that precise moment, Crystal Harkins rang the bell, and Lester let her in. Before I knew it, I could hear Crystal and Lester talking in the hall outside my room and Lester saying how upset I was. He actually sounded sorry for me. I heard footsteps going away and I thought they had both gone back downstairs, but then I felt someone sit down on the edge of my bed.
I don’t know how Lester does it, but with all his faults, he’s had some really nice girlfriends. Crystal had sort of reddish hair, real short, and a big bosom. She was pretty in a friendly sort of way, which is the prettiest way you can be. She put one hand on my shoulder, and I just curled up there on the bed with my head against her leg. I’ll bet my tears were soaking right through her jeans, but she didn’t seem to care. The towel had fallen off my hair, and I knew that Crystal was seeing me at my worst.
“Looks like somebody had a perm,” Crystal said, and ran one hand through my hair. I didn’t know how she could stand it.
“It’s … it’s … going to stay this way forever,” I sobbed.
“Only until your hair grows out,” Crystal said. “Perms only last a few months.”
I stopped crying. “It will be gone before I start junior high?”
“Most of it. But you may want another one by then.”
“Hoo, boy, not me!”
“You wait and see. I’m going to make you beautiful,” said Crystal.
Those are the six most wonderful words in the English language: I’m going to make you beautiful. I couldn’t believe my ears.
Crystal took me into the bathroom and washed my hair at the sink. She said we didn’t have to wait the full seventy-two hours if we did it very gently. Then she dried it with a towel and showed me how to take a circular brush, wrap it around a lock of hair, and hold it out away from my head while I dried it with the blower. Result: one big, beautiful, gorgeous curl, just like Elizabeth
’s. Crystal did half my head and let me do the rest. She said that for the next week, until my curls loosened up a bit, that’s the way I could make myself beautiful. After that, for a few months, anyway, the curls would take care of themselves.
I just stared and stared in the mirror. I looked like one of those shampoo girls on TV.
You know what I did? I threw my arms around Crystal and hugged her. I wished that Lester would marry her and she would live with us always. I wanted to ask her how she felt about Lester. I wanted to ask how long you had to go with a boy before you stopped worrying about your breath and your hair and everything, but I just kept saying, “Thank you, Crystal, thank you!” I hugged her again and she hugged back.
I walked downstairs like a princess. Lester stared. I turned around slowly so he could see how beautiful I was from all sides.
“It looks great, Al!” he said. “Really!”
“I know,” I told him.
When Patrick called later to see if I was any better, I thanked him again for the flowers and told him that I was feeling much, much, much better.
“Good,” said Patrick.
5
BAD MOMMIES
WE’D GO WHOLE DAYS IN OUR HOUSE WHEN it seemed as though Dad hardly worried about me at all. Then, all of a sudden, he’d ask a question or give me a look or something that let me know that The Summer of the First Boyfriend was making him a little bit nervous, too.
“What’d you do all day, Al?” he’d ask sometimes. And then, “Did Patrick come over?” And when he found out that Patrick came by almost every day, he began asking, “What’d you do today?” almost as soon as he got home from work.
At first, I acted smart about it. I’d say, “Well, I got up and walked in the bathroom and brushed my teeth, and then I went downstairs and made some toast and put butter on it, and …” It would take me five minutes just to get as far as lunch. But when I realized that Dad was really concerned about me, I’d tell him what he wanted to know—namely, what Patrick and I did together.