Sitting up there with my feet on the railing, I was thinking that it’s a long way from all the horsing around that boys do at the beach to the polite conversation that was going on below. It was hard for me to think of Dad ever yelling and running around on the sand like a savage, but I suppose he did.
The thing is, sometimes Patrick and Mark and Tom acted as though they were practically grown men, and the next minute they were like four-year-old kids. Sometimes we were proud to be out with them, and sometimes we were actually embarrassed. But I was still glad that the three of us had boyfriends back home and, as Dad turned some music on down below, I was thinking how lucky we were—Pamela, Elizabeth, and I—to be able to start seventh grade as couples.
11
LESTER’S SURPRISE
SOMETIMES I LOOK AT LESTER AND WONDER if he was left on our doorstep as a baby. I actually asked Dad once if Lester was related to us. What was he like as a little kid, I wanted to know. Dad said the thing about Lester was that whatever you asked him to do, he did the opposite. He said that if Mama wanted him to come in for dinner, she’d have to tell him he couldn’t come in the house until bedtime, and right away he’d be banging on the back door. If she wanted him to play outside, she’d tell him he couldn’t go out. The way they raised Lester, I guess, was to talk to him backward.
It’s not that Lester’s mean to me or anything. He just doesn’t think. Or if he thinks, it’s the wrong thing. Like sending Patrick upstairs right after I got a perm. I remember the week before my eighth birthday, when Lester told me he got a really nice present for me. A bike? I wondered. A dollhouse with real chandeliers? I was trying to guess, and that’s when Lester told me that it was alive. Then I was really excited. A pony? A dog? On the day of my birthday Lester gave me this big box and told me to open it gently. Kittens, I thought, because it was so quiet. You know what I found in the box? A cactus—because I’d hardly ever have to water it, he said. I cried.
“I thought it was something that moves!” I told Lester.
You know what he gave me for my ninth birthday to make up for it? A hermit crab. Even though I took good care of it, it only lived for about a year and then it dried up and its legs fell off. You can never tell about Lester.
So on Saturday morning at the ocean, a day before we left for home, I wasn’t surprised to see Lester coming across the beach toward us. I was sitting there in my gorgeous new green and silver swimsuit with Pamela, who was trying to stick on the little metal butterflies that kept falling off her toenails and still keep on her hat and shirt and sunglasses so the boys wouldn’t know who she was if they came around again. We were all listening to Elizabeth’s radio and wondering what the guys were doing back home.
To tell the truth, I think we were all a little homesick. Now that we’d had a week to ourselves, we wanted to see the boys again, to be back in our own neighborhood to finish out the summer. The plan, though, was for Lester to come down Saturday and bring Crystal. She was going to sleep in the fourth bunk bed in our room, and I was secretly hoping that somehow I would get to see her big breasts. Without any clothes on, I mean. Not having a mother, I’d never really seen live breasts up close. So I wondered why Lester was there without Crystal.
Before I could open my mouth, he said, “Now, Al, don’t get mad.”
I squinted up at him. “Why should I be mad?”
“If you don’t like the idea, I’ll turn right around and drive back to Silver Spring.”
“What idea?” I asked. That’s Lester. He always talks in code.
“Just say no, and I’ll take him back,” Lester said. I could tell he was trying to be very, very careful, and my first thought was that Lester had brought Jimmy Benton here for me to take care of.
“Who?” I asked.
“Patrick,” said Lester. “I told him to wait in the car.”
“Patrick!” we all shrieked together.
“Crystal had to work. She couldn’t come. So I thought maybe Patrick might like to come for one night and ride back with us tomorrow.”
How is it that a brother who can buy you a cactus as a birthday present can do something so absolutely wonderful? Before I could say a word, here came Patrick, holding his shoes and socks in one hand, gingerly making his way across the hot sand.
I got up and ran to meet him. I felt like one of those women in the shampoo ads, running across the meadow in slow motion to meet her lover, her beautiful hair blowing in the wind. Patrick stopped right there, the sand sticking to his feet, and stared at me.
“Gosh, Alice, you look great!” he said. And he put one arm around me and gave me a little kiss, right in front of all the boys who were watching.
That day was probably one of the nicest days of my life. After Patrick had talked with Elizabeth and Pamela awhile, he went back to the cottage to change, and then he and I went out in the water. It was really weird standing there in the water with our bare legs touching. When a breaker came in, I’d hold onto Patrick tightly, and we’d both jump up to get over it. Once, though, we were looking the other way and it turned us over, the water thrubbing in our ears, the sandy bottom scraping our elbows. Patrick had a great time.
Later, after Pamela and Elizabeth went back to the cottage, Patrick and I stayed there watching some high school kids horsing around in the water. It’s a teenage game, I guess. Two boys were playing. Each got a girl to sit on his shoulders and held her legs in front. The object was to see which girl could push the other off the boy’s shoulders and into the water. There was always a lot of screaming when a girl fell off. I wondered if I’d ever do things like that when I was fifteen or sixteen. I liked my life just as it was that very minute—just sitting there on the sand with Patrick—our bare feet rubbing together, our arms touching, the sun warm on our backs.
That evening was fun, too. Lester went out and brought home Popeyes Chicken for supper—spicy chicken, red beans and rice, butter biscuits, cole slaw, and lots of hot apple pies—so much for everyone that all six of us ate until we were stuffed, and there was still food left over.
After that, Lester and Dad went bowling, and Patrick, Elizabeth, Pamela, and I put on our sweatshirts and headed down the boardwalk toward the amusement park at the end. We went on the rides and took a tour through the haunted house, sitting in a coffin that went around on a track where dead bodies jumped up and wax dummies of people were being sawed in two in front of our very eyes. I screamed a lot, and Patrick kissed me. There was sure a lot of kissing that night. I would have had paper clips all over my clothes if I had lived forty years ago. Maybe I would be one of those girls who rode around on a boy’s shoulders when I was sixteen.
When we got back, Pamela and Elizabeth went on upstairs, but Patrick and I went down to the water to walk along the beach in the dark, and then we went up and sat in the rockers on the porch, me in Patrick’s lap. We didn’t even hear Dad’s car coming back. Dad went next door to visit the neighbor lady, and the next thing I knew, there was Lester sitting in a rocking chair beside us, his feet on the railing. He could at least have coughed or something.
I felt a little guilty about Pamela and Elizabeth that night. I mean, they were my guests, and here I was, out on the porch with Patrick. Pamela had said she’d leave us alone so we could “make out.” I didn’t like it when Pamela talked like that.
It was two o’clock in the morning before we all went to bed. Lester and Patrick were sleeping in the front bedroom next to ours. I was so tired, I just crawled into bed without a bath, but I could hear Pamela and Elizabeth giggling in the other bunks.
“What’s so funny?” I asked.
“I promised not to tell,” said Elizabeth, and then her voice turned serious. “But it’s a sin,” she added, “what Pamela’s going to do.”
I couldn’t imagine what Pamela could possibly do to upset me and was too sleepy to care. I must have gone to sleep within two minutes.
Sometime during the night—maybe only a few minutes later, maybe an hour—I was conscious of someb
ody walking across the bedroom floor. I heard a door open. A floor creak. Quiet.
And then I heard a scream—a sort of squeaky squeal, actually—then footsteps again. There was Lester’s voice, a screen door slamming, footsteps running, and suddenly Pamela came crashing into our room and dived into her bed.
“I told you!” said Elizabeth.
I raised sleepily up on one elbow. “What’s going on?”
“Pamela tried to get in bed with Patrick,” Elizabeth said reproachfully.
Now I was really awake. “What?”
“It was just a joke!” Pamela panted. “I was just going to surprise him and make him think it was you.”
“Pamela!” I yelled. I was really getting sick of her.
“I got the wrong bed!” Pamela wailed. “It was Lester.”
I didn’t know whether to laugh or not. “Serves you right,” I said.
“You could go to hell for that, Pamela,” said Elizabeth.
The room got very quiet.
“Just for going into a boy’s room?” Pamela asked.
“You did more than that,” said Elizabeth.
“Just for crawling in a boy’s bed as a joke with all my clothes on?” asked Pamela.
“You were touching,” said Elizabeth.
“The minute I felt his body I knew it was Lester and I got out,” Pamela said. “For heaven’s sake, Elizabeth, you can touch a boy’s leg without going to hell.”
“I don’t know… .” Elizabeth said doubtfully.
“Well, I never learned that it was a sin, so it doesn’t mean me,” Pamela told her.
“It doesn’t matter if you learned it or not,” Elizabeth argued. “It’s in the Bible about going to bed with boys.”
“Elizabeth, we were all lying on the beach next to Patrick,” Pamela said. “What difference does it make if you’re on the beach or in bed? Nothing happened!”
“It could have. It was dark in there.”
Now I was getting interested in the conversation. “It could be dark on the beach, too,” I suggested.
“Well, if it was dark on the beach when you were lying beside a boy, then that would be a sin,” said Elizabeth.
I tried to figure it out. “So if you lie beside a boy on the beach before nine in the evening, it’s okay, but after nine it’s a sin?”
“Something like that,” said Elizabeth.
I wondered if I was getting the proper religious instruction.
“What about you, Pamela?” I asked. “How come your mother doesn’t want you to kiss before you’re sixteen? Is that your religion or something?”
“She just doesn’t think I’m ready till then.”
“Hoo boy!” I said. “Little does she know. You said she’d cut off your hair if she found out.”
“Our kind of kissing doesn’t count,” said Pamela.
“Why not?”
“Because I hold my breath.”
I sat straight up in the darkness. “What does that have to do with it?”
“We don’t breathe each other’s breath,” Pamela told me.
I decided there were a lot of things I didn’t know. I wasn’t sure if this was sex education, health education, or religion, but I knew I ought to give Aunt Sally a call one of these days and have a talk.
Elizabeth had just started to tell us the difference between a mortal sin and a venial sin when someone pounded on the wall next to us.
“Will you girls kindly knock it off?” Lester called. “Patrick and I want to sleep.”
12
BREAKUP
LESTER SAID HE WAS GOING TO GIVE DAD some relief and drive us all back home in his car, which made Dad happier than anything else that had happened the entire trip. Dad decided to stick around and have an early supper with the woman next door. So we put all our bags in Lester’s trunk. Elizabeth and I got in the backseat with Patrick and made Pamela sit up front with Lester. Pamela was so embarrassed about what had happened the night before that she draped a beach towel over her head and sat like some veiled woman in a Spanish church all the way back to Silver Spring.
I kept thinking about what a wonderful weekend it had been. It was hard to remember that just last year I had moved to Silver Spring, started sixth grade in a new school, and been assigned to a teacher I didn’t think I could like in a million years. I had felt so jealous of Elizabeth Price and Pamela Jones, I could hardly stand it. And here I was, sitting in the backseat of Lester’s car with a boyfriend, having looked absolutely gorgeous on the beach in a new bathing suit. Life was wonderful all of a sudden. It was unreal.
Patrick held my hand all the way home, too. He kept his other arm around me and every so often he’d lean over and we’d kiss. Elizabeth always squirmed when he did that, the way I used to squirm during the kissing scenes in movies. I tried to keep the conversation going to include Pamela and Elizabeth, but Pamela was pretending to be asleep under her red and white striped beach towel, and Elizabeth was sitting as far as she could on her end of the seat to keep her leg from touching Patrick’s.
Lester drove Patrick home first because we were passing his house, then Pamela, then Elizabeth. All of us agreed that we’d meet on the playground later with Mark Stedmeister and Tom Perona, and all go to High’s together to celebrate being home again.
“Have a good time?” Lester asked me as we went in the house.
“Fantastic!” I said. “Thanks for bringing Patrick.”
“Well, you never know about girls—what they’re thinking,” he said.
I almost wished I could wear my bathing suit to the playground that night to show Mark and Tom how ravishing I was in it. I considered wearing just the top, with jeans, or the bottom, with a long shirt over it, but I lost my nerve and put on shorts and a T-shirt instead. Since Dad wouldn’t be home for dinner, Lester and I ate plums and cheese crackers, and I was looking forward to the ice cream at High’s.
Mark Stedmeister was really glad to see Pamela. They kissed and kissed on the swings, and I remembered how Pamela was holding her breath all the while so they wouldn’t breathe into each other’s nostrils or whatever, and wondered just how long she could go without air. Aunt Sally told me once that when she was young, she thought you got pregnant from kissing.
We talked and kidded around for half an hour before we realized that Elizabeth and Tom Perona hadn’t come yet.
“Where’s Tom?” I asked Mark.
“I don’t know,” he said. “Haven’t seen him much all week.”
I looked at Pamela. “Elizabeth said she’d be here, didn’t she?”
Pamela nodded. “Around seven, she said.”
We waited until eight o’clock, then we all walked up the street to Elizabeth’s house. Mrs. Price came to the door and said that Elizabeth wasn’t feeling too well and had gone to bed early. We went to Tom Perona’s next, and he wasn’t there, so we went to High’s without them.
Patrick was pretty tired, so we all went home at about ten. Lester was watching TV and I had just gone out to the kitchen and was standing by the refrigerator with the door open when the phone rang. It was Elizabeth.
“Alice,” she whispered. “Come over.”
I didn’t even ask what was wrong. I stuffed another cheese cracker in my mouth and ran across the street. Elizabeth was standing out on the sidewalk waiting for me, and as soon as I was within three feet of her, she started to sob.
“Elizabeth!” I said, putting one arm around her. “What’s wrong?”
She sobbed even harder. She leaned her head on my shoulder and simply bawled.
“Want to sit down on your steps?” I asked.
She shook her head. “Let’s walk,” she said. “I don’t want Mom to hear.”
We walked.
“What’s wrong?” I kept saying about every five seconds.
Finally, in answer, Elizabeth held out her arm. I stared at her. Had she tried to slit her wrists or something?
“What?” I kept saying.
“No ID bracelet,” she
cried. “T-Tom and I b-broke up. It’s over.”
I kept hoping it was going to be something silly like what happened between Pamela and Mark and the Uplift Spandex Ahh-Bra. I kept thinking that by tomorrow I’d find out that Tom had brought her a box of Whitman’s chocolates and that everything was all right. I wanted us to go on the way we had been—six people, three couples, all going into seventh grade.
“Why?” I asked.
“H-H-He …” Elizabeth’s words came out in jerky sobs. “He’s g-going with somebody else.”
Somebody else? Elizabeth goes to the ocean for one week and Tom Perona finds somebody else?
“Who? I hate her already!” I cried loyally.
“I don’t know. S-Somebody from St. Joseph’s,” she wept.
We sat down on a low stone wall in front of a house, and I kept my arm around Elizabeth as though she were my little sister. Bit by bit the story came out. When Elizabeth got back from the ocean, Tom called and said he wanted to talk. When he came over, Elizabeth came out on the porch and Tom didn’t even sit down. He just stood there with his hands in his pockets, staring out at the street. He said he’d been doing some thinking while she was gone, and he’d met this girl, and he thought maybe he’d like to give his ID bracelet to her, and could he please have it back.
I just couldn’t believe it. How could a boy like you one week—love you, even—and want his bracelet back the next? Elizabeth was bawling all over my shoulder. She desperately needed someone to talk to. She couldn’t tell her mother about Tom asking for his bracelet back because her mother didn’t even know she had it in the first place.
Oh, man, did I ever hate Tom Perona! I even felt a little mad at Mark and wondered what he had been up to while we were gone. Even Patrick! Then I remembered how Pamela had flirted with the boys at the ocean until her bra came off. It wasn’t just boys who could get attracted to someone else. It was anybody. I felt sort of sick to my stomach.
“I’m going to be an outcast in seventh grade,” Elizabeth said.