Dear Alice,
At least Patrick got the “dear” right.
The way the mail is up here, I suppose I could be home by the time you get this, but I felt like writing anyway. We’re having a great time, but it’s still going to be nice to get back and see you.
I felt all warm and mushy inside. It’s wonderful to have a boyfriend. To know there’s a guy out there who likes you better than any other girl in the whole world. I hope.
I’ve been thinking about things we could do together in school next year—you know, clubs and stuff. I’d sort of like to work on the school newspaper. Would you like something like that?
The place we’re staying here in Banff has an Olympic-size swimming pool, and Dad and I have been having races every day. Mark says there’s an eighth-grade swim team that holds meets at the Y. That’s something I’d really like. How about it? Will you try out with me? We could go to the swim meets together, if we make it.
Save all your kisses for me.
Love, Patrick
8
SPECTACLE
I DIDN’T THINK I COULD STAND IT. Patrick was my last hope. Patrick’s telling me that if I didn’t want to go to the pool anymore, he didn’t either. Patrick’s saying what was the big deal about being able to swim in water over my head? I had good rhythm, didn’t I? Who cared if I couldn’t swim? We’d find something else to do. Somewhere else to go. If the other kids wanted to fry themselves out under the August sun, they could, but he and I would take long walks together and talk about important things.…
Any other time I would have run to the phone and read his letter aloud to Elizabeth and Pamela. I would have read that last line to myself over and over again—“Save all your kisses for me.” And especially, the “love.”
Now I knew that my dreams were as phony as the St. Jude letter. As phony as Scheherazade and her thousand and one nights. As Miss July in Playboy with her rosy nipples. Patrick was going to try out for the eighth-grade swim team, and if I couldn’t go with him, he’d probably find a girl who could.
Elizabeth, Pamela, and I agreed to meet at Mark’s the next day, and I walked downstairs like a robot.
“I’m going to Mark’s,” I said to Dad, standing by his chair while he was working a crossword puzzle.
“Have a good time,” he said, not even looking up.
I hesitated, wondering if he was still mad at me.
“Love you,” I told him.
“Love you too,” he replied, and smiled at me as he wrote down another word.
If parents knew everything that goes on in their kids’ heads, they’d be really surprised, I think. Dad had no idea that I always said “love you” before I went to Mark’s pool, so that if that turned out to be the day I sank to the bottom, the last thing I would have said to my father was “love you.”
It wasn’t exactly the recipe for a fun day, because my fantasy of laughing gaily as the boys tossed me into the deep end was all mixed up with the sound of an ambulance racing down side streets, neighbors gathering, lights flashing, paramedics trying to get me breathing again, and then Dad and Lester coming to the morgue to identify me.
There was a big crowd this time. I guess we all sensed there wasn’t much left of summer, and everyone wanted to party, party, party. Jill and Karen were there, some boys I didn’t even know, even Tom Perona, Elizabeth’s old flame from sixth grade. He goes to St. John’s. He broke up with Elizabeth because she wouldn’t let him kiss her, and I could tell by the way he was looking at her this time that he wondered if she’d changed any. I knew that all it would take for him to get interested in her again was to find out she had smuggled Arabian Nights to a sleepover and read some of the juicy parts out loud.
I tried to be cheerful for my friends’ sakes.
“Elizabeth,” I said, when we were lying on our stomachs around the shallow end. “You’re all forgiven for taking Arabian Nights to Pamela’s house, aren’t you? I mean, the priest forgives you and your folks forgive you and God forgives you, right?”
“I think so,” she said.
“Then would it really mess things up if I just casually mentioned to Tom Perona that you were reading stories from that book?”
Elizabeth looked shocked. “Alice! I sinned, and you’re going to go around telling everyone about it?”
“But it’s only a statement of fact, right?”
“Yes, but …”
“Is it a sin to state a fact?”
“No, but …”
“If I feel guilty, I’ll confess to my father,” I promised. “Just say I can do it, Elizabeth.”
“Well, I can’t control what you do,” she said, and laid her head back down again. That was a yes if I ever heard one.
I walked over to the side where Tom had just climbed out and was shaking water out of one ear.
“Hi, Tom. Haven’t seen you for a while,” I said.
“How ya doin’?” He thumped one side of his head.
“Elizabeth looks great, doesn’t she?” I commented. Real subtle, that’s me.
“She always looked great,” said Tom, and went on pounding his head.
“Have you talked to her lately? She’s really changed,” I told him.
Tom glanced in Elizabeth’s direction. She was starting to get that S curve that women get when they lie on their stomachs at the beach.
“Different how?” Tom asked.
I shrugged and gave a little laugh. “Oh, just more fun. Not so stiff.”
“Yeah?” said Tom.
“She’s really crazy, sometimes. We had a sleepover a couple weeks ago, and you know what she smuggled along?”
“What?” asked Tom, looking interested.
“Tales from the Arabian Nights.”
He stared at me blankly. “What’s that?”
I forgot that St. John’s would be the last school in the world to have that book on its shelf.
“Well, they’re pretty racy stories. She was reading them out loud to Pamela and me.”
“No kidding?” Tom grinned and looked over at Elizabeth again. Elizabeth was turned the other way.
I spread my towel out on a deck chair, way back from the pool, so that Tom and Elizabeth could get acquainted all over again. The next time I looked that way, I saw Tom flipping his towel at Elizabeth’s bare legs, and she was drawing up her feet and squealing.
I closed my eyes to the sun and tried to think when Patrick was coming back—what day he’d told me. I was remembering the way he had kissed me when he walked me home on his birthday—a really nice kiss, not that quick wet peck on the lips he’d done back in sixth grade. I had to tell someone about my fear of deep water, and I decided I’d start with Patrick. I had worried all this time about what Dad would do if I told him, or what Elizabeth and Pamela would do—whether they’d tell the other kids. The person I was most worried about, though, was Patrick, so I’d tell him as soon as he got back and get it over with.
My mistake was that I was thinking about Patrick when I should have been paying attention to what was going on around me. Because suddenly it seemed to get very quiet, and I had barely opened one eye when I heard a bunch of guys yell, “Get Alice!”
Then they were all around me, trying to grab my arms and legs and I was kicking with every ounce of strength I had.
I screamed. My fingers closed around the vinyl slats of the deck chair, and I hung on as though I were being pushed off the edge of a cliff.
“Get her hands!” someone yelled.
I kicked even harder, but someone had my left foot now. The boys were tumbling around all over me, trying to get my feet and hands, and the deck chair collapsed beneath us.
There was this incredible tangle of boys and arms and legs and vinyl slats, and I was screaming, and the next thing I knew I was crying. Big gulping sobs.
As suddenly as it had all begun, the wrestling stopped. I was lying in a heap on the deck chair, and the boys were just standing there awkwardly, staring at me.
I would
have been glad to faint right then and wake up in a hospital. Instead, the boys just sort of slunk away. They didn’t know how to handle it.
Pamela crouched down beside me, helping me get untangled from the chair.
“What’s wrong?” she whispered.
“I panicked.”
“Why?”
My face burned with embarrassment. Tears were filling my eyes again. I just hate it when I cry in public like that.
“I … I can’t swim.”
“What?” She was looking at me as though I were nuts. “What are you talking about, Alice? I’ve seen you dog paddle!”
“Not in deep water.”
“Water is water! If you can swim in the shallow end, you can swim in the deep end.”
“Not me, Pamela. All I want to do is go home.”
“Oh, just stay here. The boys will forget all about it,” she said.
“No, they won’t. They’re looking at me like I have an eye in the middle of my forehead.”
“Just laugh it off.”
“Pamela, I’m still bawling!” I wailed.
Elizabeth got up and came over. Now all the boys were standing in a little group, about as far away from me as they could get.
“What’s the matter?” Elizabeth whispered.
“Alice can’t swim.”
“What? Alice, we were in the ocean together last year!”
“Up to our waists,” I said miserably. “I can’t swim in deep water. I freak out.”
“You want us to walk you home?” Pamela asked.
“No. I want you to go back to whatever you were doing before I made a spectacle of myself, and I’ll just quietly walk off the edge of the earth. I’m embarrassed enough already.”
They hung around a few more minutes to make sure that’s what I wanted. Then Pamela drifted back to the diving board and Elizabeth sat down again on her towel. When I finally pulled on my shorts and left, Tom and Elizabeth were sitting side by side, and Tom was running his finger up and down her back.
I couldn’t help staring. Elizabeth in her halter-top bathing suit was actually sitting so close to a boy that their thighs were touching, and he was running his finger down her back. Whew! I guess she figured that having confessed to reading Arabian Nights was sort of like an antibiotic—the forgiveness covered all kinds of transgressions for at least ten days or so, and she was still in a period of grace.
Sometimes, when Lester has had a really bad day and tells us about it later, he says, “I was hating life.” Well, on the way home from Mark Stedmeister’s, I was hating life about as much as I ever had. I didn’t see how I could come back and face my friends again. Elizabeth and Pamela, yes, but not the other kids. Especially not the boys.
I had probably ruined my entire future, I decided. The story would spread all around school. I just knew that as I walked down the halls at high school, even, people would nudge each other and say, “That’s the one who threw the fit at the pool.” My face burned with embarrassment.
I walked up the front steps, opened the door, stepped inside, and looked at Lester, who was just coming out of the kitchen with a 7UP. Then I burst into tears. If I was going to make a fool of myself in public, I guess, I might just as well include my family.
Lester stared at me. “Was it something I said?” he joked. And when I went on sobbing, he said, “It’s not the last 7UP, Al. There’s still some left.”
“L-L-Lester,” I sobbed, falling into his arms. “I’ve just ruined the r-rest of my life.”
“How many people did you shoot?” he asked, patting me on the back.
I sobbed even louder. “I embarrassed myself in f-front of everyone. Everybody saw! The b-boys think I’m weird.”
Lester walked me into the living room, holding me by the arms, and gently sat me down on the couch. Then, realizing that my bathing suit was soaking through my shorts, he hauled me up again and sat me down in the beanbag chair. I sat there all scrunched up like a prune, the tears continuing to pour.
“It will be at least five minutes before the police or FBI get here, so tell me what you did,” Lester insisted.
In bits and pieces, with gasps and sobs, I told him about the way the guys had grabbed me and how I’d ended up entwined in a deck chair.
I thought Lester would laugh, but he looked pretty serious.
“I had no idea you couldn’t swim, Al,” he said. “I just never knew that at all.”
“N-n-no one d-did, not even Dad,” I blurted out. “I was afraid he’d m-make me take lessons, and they just don’t …” My voice was rising higher and higher until it sounded like a kitten’s mew. “… don’t work with me, Les. I’m hopeless.”
“I don’t believe that for a moment,” Lester said. “Listen, Al. We’ll figure something out. It doesn’t have to happen again.”
Of course it wouldn’t happen again, I thought, because I would never go near a pool for the rest of my life. I went upstairs and sat down in my bedroom with the new furniture from Sears in it. It seemed like such a waste, the $499. What girl would ever want to come and spend a night here with a lunatic? Why spend $499 on a girl who went around collapsing in public on a folding chair, whom boys whispered about behind her back? There went my chances for the eighth-grade Semi-Formal, the Junior Snow Ball, and the Senior Prom. For love and marriage and happiness, and maybe even a career.
When I came down for dinner that night, my first words at the table were, “I want to move.”
“Oh?” said Dad, putting a big bowl of steamed shrimp on the table and a loaf of Italian bread. “Where to?”
“Where there aren’t any lakes or rivers or oceans or swimming pools. Dry land as far as the eye can see,” I told him.
“Nevada,” said Les, peeling a shrimp. “Definitely Nevada.”
I sat there glowering at my plate. “And no YWCAs, either. No health clubs.”
Dad put a salad on the table, then started to cut the bread. “Well, maybe we can find you a cave somewhere.”
“Yeah, Al, we’ll work on it,” Les told me. I was glad he didn’t tell Dad what I’d told him. I picked up a piece of bread and chewed without tasting.
“In the meantime,” said Dad, “Janice Sherman’s going into the hospital tomorrow for a hysterectomy, Al, and I wondered if you’d be willing to go with me to see her in a few days.”
I knew that an “ectomy” means something’s taken out, like an appendix, but a hysterectomy?
“What’s missing?” I asked.
“Her uterus, Al. It’s a common operation, but Janice is a little young for it, I guess, and she’s feeling kind of down.”
“What am I supposed to do? Give her mine?” I quipped. I wasn’t feeling sorry for anybody but myself.
“Oh, you might just stop by her room with me. We’ll pick up some flowers. The truth is, I’d feel a little more comfortable having a female along. It might be embarrassing talking to her about it by myself.”
It’s amazing what a change it makes in the way you feel just knowing somebody needs you.
A few days later we went to see Janice. I didn’t like Holy Cross Hospital any better than I had when I went to see my sixth-grade teacher, Mrs. Plotkin, after her heart attack, but it wasn’t so bad with Dad along.
We found her room, Dad gave a little knock on the door, and we went in—me with a box of chocolates and Dad with the flowers. I don’t think I’d ever seen Janice without her makeup, and she looked thinner and paler than she had before, but otherwise okay.
“How’s my favorite assistant manager?” Dad asked, which doesn’t mean a whole lot because she’s his only assistant manager.
Janice forced a smile. “As well as can be expected, I guess,” she said.
“We brought you some chocolate turtles,” I told her. “Your favorite.”
“Thanks, Alice. Just put them there on the night table, will you? And the flowers are lovely.”
There was already another box of turtles and at least three other bouquets, but I figured the mo
re the better to make up for a missing uterus.
“I called the hospital this morning to see how you were doing, and the nurse said you were coming along fine,” Dad said, sitting down in the one chair. I leaned against the windowsill.
“Well, it’s not the nurse who’s here in bed, it’s me,” said Janice. “It’s the thought of it that’s hard to get used to, I guess. This is something I never expected at all. Like an … amputation.”
“I can understand that,” I said. “Pamela got gum in her hair last spring and had to have her hair cut off. It used to be so long she could sit on it. Now it’s a short feather cut, and she feels naked.”
There was silence in the room, and then Dad quickly started a story about something that happened at work. I didn’t know what I’d said that was wrong, but I knew enough not to open my mouth again until we said goodbye.
“Al,” Dad told me on the way back out to the car, “couldn’t you have thought of something a little more sympathetic to say to Janice? I know you meant well, but …”
I was puzzled. “What was wrong with it? I really want to know.”
“You made it sound as though her operation wasn’t too much different from a haircut. Janice can’t ever bear children now, you know.”
“But she’s not married anyway!”
“And this just emphasizes the fact,” he said.
I thought about that all the way home. I wondered if anyone had made thoughtless remarks to my mother when she was in the hospital. I hoped not. Dad says that unless you’ve lost your uterus, you probably can’t even imagine what it’s like. I say that unless you’ve lost three feet of blond hair, or have a fear of deep water, you can’t imagine that, either.
The fact is, I guess, nobody knows what it’s like to be in a certain situation except the one who’s in it. But just as there was a big difference between what happened to Janice and what happened to Pamela, there was a big difference between what had happened to them and what was happening to me. There wasn’t a thing they could do about their situations; they had to deal with them after they happened. There was plenty I could do about mine, but I was too afraid to try, and that got me thinking.