The waitress frowned, studied her nails, nodded, said, “You’re right,” gave me a quick grin, and breezed off. “Enjoy your breakfast.”
My father started in on his grilled sticky bun. He pointed his fork at the fingernail. “Very impressive. I’ll bet it brings the boys running.”
“I hate boys,” said Alvina. She started pouring syrup over her pancakes.
“Boys are rats,” said my father.
“Hey,” I said, “I happen to be the mother of a rat.”
“Sorry, forgot. Boys are weasels.”
The syrup bottle was half empty and still she poured. I took it away from her.
I knew my father was trying to get a rise out of Alvina, but it wasn’t coming. Still, he plowed on: “At the age of ten, every boy in the world should be turned upside down and a worm should be dropped into each nostril.”
I cracked up. I spewed half-chewed sticky bun all over my plate. Alvina just went on eating, didn’t raise an eyebrow.
I could feel my father percolating. He wasn’t going down without a fight. My dad has a peculiar kind of radar that senses resistance to smiling. If there’s a grump anywhere between himself and the horizon, he seems to know it. Not only that, he feels he has to do something about it. I think of it as a harmless obsessive-compulsive disorder. Also, there was the clam-up factor. Most kids—so I’ve heard—clam up in front of adults. But my father has been spoiled—he’s had me chattering in his ear for sixteen years. And now Dootsie. He’s not used to an untalkative kid.
“There’s a theory,” he said, aiming himself at Alvina, who was aiming herself at the pancakes, “that boys are actually a different species from girls. Some scientists believe boys are descended from small, smelly mammals. Possibly skunks.”
He waited for a response. None came. Alvina poured syrup on her bacon.
“So, Alvina…,” he said, “what do you think?”
“About what?” she said, mush-mouthed.
“About what I just said.”
“Whud you say?”
My father’s eyes rolled up. I think it was dawning on him that this could be his greatest challenge yet. Silently I mouthed to him: I warned you.
“So, Alvina…,” he said, “cool necklace.”
She didn’t respond. As usual, Pooh Bear’s smiling face contrasted with hers.
“Do you have one cool toenail too?”
“No.”
I knew what he was doing. He was tapping around her shell, probing for a soft spot.
“So, Alvina…you hate boys. Does that mean you hate them all?”
“Yeah.”
“Every single one in the world?”
“Yeah.”
“Including me? I’m a boy.”
“You’re a milkman.”
“I hear you have a brother. How about him? He’s a boy.”
“Him especially.”
My father whistled softly. “You’re a tough cookie.” He aimed his fork at her pancakes. “Can I have a little piece?”
“No.”
He made a pouty lip. “Just one teeny piece?”
Alvina looked up from her plate and glared directly into his eyes. She enunciated fiercely: “No.”
The fork withdrew. This was more entertaining than The Blob.
My father sent me a glance and a grin and started in again. “So, Alvina…I know you hate all boys, but I’ll bet there’s one special boy. One that you hate more than all the others combined—right?”
Alvina just munched for a while. Then she shrugged. “Maybe.”
“Does he go to school with you?”
“Maybe.”
“Do you think about him sometimes? I mean, how much you hate him? You think about how you’d like to torture him? Like, dumping a whole wheelbarrowful of stinging ants on him? Stuff like that?”
She shrugged. “Maybe.”
“Yeah,” he said, “I know what you mean. I hated somebody like that once.”
She popped the last piece of pancake into her mouth. “Yeah?”
“Yeah. We were in seventh grade. She was in my home-room. I hated her more than anybody in the world.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. Know what I did to her?”
She was all eyes and ears. “What?”
He grinned. He pointed to his ring finger. “I married her.”
I wanted to stand and applaud, but I restrained myself. Alvina just rolled her eyes and wrinkled her nose as if a bad smell had come through the door.
My eyes accidentally landed on the clock above the pie case. “Dad, we’re already late.”
But my father was on a roll. Like me, he doesn’t know when enough is enough.
“So, Alvina…how old are you?”
She poured syrup into the cold remainder of her coffee. We hadn’t allowed her a refill.
“Eleven and three-quarters.”
“You sure it’s not eleven and four-fifths?”
She shrugged. “Could be.”
“Well,” he said with exaggerated dismay, “that’s too bad.”
She took a sip of the cold, syrupy coffee, decided she liked it, and gulped down the rest. Then looked up at him, debating whether to ask the obvious question. She did. “Why’s that?”
He wagged his head grimly. If you hadn’t known my father, you’d have thought he had just come from a funeral. “Why? Because you’re coming to the end of a beautiful, wonderful time. Your kidhood is almost over. You know what happens next, don’t you?”
Experience had taught Alvina nothing—she rose to the bait again. “What?”
“Twelve. That’s what happens. And you know what then?”
She didn’t really want to answer such a dumb question, but she couldn’t resist finding out where all this nonsense was leading. “Thirteen,” she said.
My father snapped her a finger-point. “Exactly! In other words, you’ll become a teenager.” He sighed mournfully. “Such a shame.”
Alvina looked at me, at him. “Why?”
“Why? Because you know what they say.”
“Who’s they?”
I thought: Score one for you, girl.
My father ignored the question. “They say teenagers are rotten. They go from being cute and cuddly little kids to monsters who want to stay out late and walk a block behind their parents.”
I was a little uneasy. I knew my father was just toying with her, trying to provoke her, but I wasn’t sure if Alvina knew. She took a long look at me. I think, for once, she saw me. She seemed about to say something, and I swear I could see the words forming on the other side of her lips: Stargirl isn’t rotten. But they never came out. She twiddled her spoon in the empty coffee cup. She shook her head. “Not me.”
My father and I were both caught by surprise. The spoon twiddled in the cup. Finally my father prompted her. “Not you?”
The twiddling stopped. She stared into the cup. “No. I’m backwards. I’m a rotten kid now, but I’ll be an amazing teenager.”
I know it didn’t really happen this way, but the whole diner seemed to catch its breath, as if sensing that something remarkable had just been uttered and that it must be properly framed in silence. My father and I looked at each other. I fought off tears. Alvina resumed her twiddling.
At last my father reached across the table and placed his hand over hers. “I think you’re right, Alvina. Except for one thing.”
She didn’t look up. She didn’t need to say, What?
“You are not a rotten kid.”
She turned away. She gazed out the window into the night.
We were on our way then. I explained Alvina’s job to her: she would fetch the order notes and used bottles from the customers’ front steps, she would read the notes to me, I would fill the carrier, and my dad would deliver it. At the first house, the Turners’, she reached for the carrier I had just filled and said, “Let me take it.” My father didn’t hesitate: “Go ahead.” And off she rattled with the order for the Turners’ front-step box. From then on, as long
as the delivery was outside, Alvina did it.
We were running late, and the sky was graying in the east when we pulled up to 214 White Horse Road—the Huffelmeyers. 1 qt buttermk, 1 qt choc. I told Alvina to be very quiet, we were going inside. As my father turned on the fringed table lamp, she surprised me for the second time this morning—she took off her shoes. At first she stayed behind me as I pointed out my favorites in the gallery of family photos in the living and dining rooms. Then she was off by herself, moving around the rooms from picture to picture. When my father returned from the kitchen and tapped her on the shoulder, she ignored him. “Dad,” I whispered, “wait.” She was utterly lost in the generations of Huffelmeyers. Several times she reached out a fingertip and touched a photo. We must have waited a good ten minutes (by clock time) before I finally grabbed her sneakers and dragged her out.
The sun rose. I thought daylight would inhibit Alvina, but it didn’t. She continued to sit on my lap. And she seemed proud to have people see her working as a milk kid.
We ate lunch (breakfast for people on ordinary time) at the Creamery, where my father resumed his boy-bashing efforts to make her smile:
“When a baby boy is born, the doctor slaps its face instead of its hiney.”
“What’s the difference between turtles and boys? Turtles have brains.”
“If you subtract all the boys from the world, you’d get an A in math.”
My father kept it up for the rest of the run after lunch. To his growing frustration and her own credit, Alvina never cracked.
When we returned her to her house in mid-afternoon, she climbed down from my lap for the last time. She started off, then leaned back in and whispered in my ear: “Is your dad cuckoo or what?”
September 29
O = (BY)1334 Cranberry(F)
October 5
This morning I meditated at the picnic table in the park where Dootsie came into my life. It took me longer than usual to get started, because I couldn’t stop thinking of Alvina’s words: I’m a rotten kid. Of course, I loved the words that followed, and I hoped she truly meant them; but for now, to define herself as rotten for the next year or so, well, I just wished it didn’t have to be. But eventually, twitter by twit, I began to vanish. Here, now, Alvina, Stargirl—all evaporated like fizz bubbles from soda foam.
I was out of my self. I was nowhere. And everywhere. No When. No Then. Only Now. Existence in such a state is so pure that memory cannot get a foothold. The more successful I am in a meditation, the less I remember of it. And I remember nothing at all of my meditation today—only my entrance into it, as my last thoughts of Alvina dissolved away, and my exit out of it, when I opened my eyes to discover…
…Perry!……sitting next to me.
He was sitting cross-legged, his hands, palms up, cupped in his lap, back erect, shoulders square, eyes closed. Just like me. Was he mocking me? Or had he been doing this for years?
I stared at him, waiting. Not a flutter from his eyelashes. I thought of you and me in the desert, when I gave you your meditation lesson. I felt a sudden pang for you. It was all so new to you (how much of me was new to you!). You didn’t understand it, you weren’t very good at it—but you tried, you did your best. For me, I think.
When Perry finally opened his eyes, he continued to look straight ahead, as if I weren’t there.
I said, “You lied.”
Only his eyes shifted my way. “Huh?”
“You lied. You said on the roof you don’t meditate.”
“You’re right. I lied.”
“Don’t you ever go to school?”
“Don’t you?”
“I am in school,” I said. “This is part of my homeschool.”
“Advanced Meditation?”
“Elements of Nothingness. I don’t think I’ll ever be as good as I want.” I was wondering if he was ever going to turn and really look at me. “Are you mocking me?”
He turned. “No.”
“You do this a lot?”
“No.”
“Are you good at it?”
“Yes. Very.”
I believed him. “So this is how you escape that crappy world you live in?”
He shrugged. “I guess.”
“And the roof.”
“And the roof.”
I looked around. “Well, congratulations. You’ve been here for a while and you still haven’t trashed up the place.”
He stuck a finger in the air. “That reminds me.” He took a pack of chewing gum from his pocket. He pulled out a stick and offered it to me. I said no thanks. He unwrapped it and put it in his mouth. He crumpled the wrapper. He looked around. He grinned. He held it out to me. I took it and put it in my pocket.
“Seriously,” I said, “don’t you get in trouble not going to school?”
“I go,” he said. “I just get sick a lot. I’m sickly.”
“Or are you just sneaking off from your harem—Dandy?”
“Guy’s gotta have a break.”
“So how’s it work, Dandy? Do you go out with them one at a time? Or all at once?”
He wagged his finger. “That’s classified. Secrets of the harem.”
“Is the number classified too? How many Honeybees are there? Just the three I met at Pizza Dee-Lite?”
“That’s all,” he said. “But there’s no limit. There’s a slot open for number four. Want to apply?”
“Sorry,” I said. “I’m not a harem kind of girl.”
“You get to wear a Honeybee tattoo.”
I swooned. “Where do I sign up?”
He laughed. “So you’re a one-guy kind of girl, huh?”
I’m not good at playing coy, but I was trying. “Maybe.”
“Arizona Leo?”
He remembered. Did that mean something?
“You have a good memory.”
“The guy who dumped you.”
“I never said that.”
“Dootsie did.”
“Dootsie lies. She admits it.”
He looked off across the park. “Well, anyway, dumped or not, he’s there….”
“And you’re here.”
He threw out his arms. “Up close and personal.”
I had a premonition of those arms closing around me. And a memory of yours. “Such wonders I must be missing,” I said with mock dismay. “Me and my silly anti-harem principles.”
He turned those deep blues on me. “Yeah. Too bad.”
The words fit our quippy, flirty script, but his eyes said something else. We were still sitting cross-legged on the picnic table. Our knees were touching. I felt the need to keep chattering.
“So, is that what this is, a recruiting trip? You’re trying to sign me up?”
He put on a face of mock innocence. “Where’d you get that idea? Why would I want to do that?”
“That was answered back at Pizza Dee-Lite—you think I’m fascinating.”
“Stephanie said that. I said ‘interesting.’”
“So”—I nudged his knee—“what is it you find so fascinating about me?”
“Interesting.”
“I prefer fascinating.”
He pretended to think. “Well…for one thing, you’re not a typical girl.”
“Old news. I already told you that on the roof that night.”
“You were right.”
“And you were wrong.”
He sighed. “Mea culpa.”
“So,” I said, “how am I not typical?”
“You want specifics?”
“I want specifics. I want details. I want flattery.”
He turned himself ninety degrees so he was now facing me broadside. His stare was a blue-eyed laser that seemed to peel the skin from me.
“You have freckles across your nose. They spill onto your cheeks a little.”
“Piddlefoo. Freckles are common.”
“Eleven.”
I boggled. “You counted them?” I had never counted them myself.
“In the libr
ary that day. While you were yelling at me.”
“You were spitting lemon seeds all over the library. And I did not yell. I berated. What else?”
He stared some more. I was uncomfortable being a target in profile, so I rotated a quarter turn. Now we were face to face, knees to knees.
“You don’t wear designer labels.”
“I hate labels.” I looked him over. “I guess you hate them too.”
He seemed to wince at that, then said simply, “Yeah.”
I regretted my words as soon as I said them. The shirt he was wearing was the same one he wore every time I saw him. He lived in a little space behind a bike and lawn mower repair shop. He stole food. He shopped in Dumpsters. Hate had nothing to do with Perry Delloplane and labels. He was simply poor.
It was in me to apologize, but he would say, “Why?” and I would have to reply, and I was afraid to bring the subject out into the open. So I tried to steer us back to safer ground. “So that’s it? Labels and freckles?”
“You’re not stuck on yourself. You don’t touch your hair every ten seconds. You don’t look into a mirror every five minutes. You don’t wear makeup.”
“I plucked my eyebrows once.”
“Not lately.”
We laughed.
“You don’t act like you’re gorgeous.”
“Even though I am, right?”
“No, you’re not.” He said it so casually, I knew he meant it. “Neither are most girls. But that doesn’t stop them from acting like it.”
“Wait a minute. Let’s go back to the part where I’m not gorgeous.”
His eyebrows arched innocently. “Problem?”
He had me feeling wobbly again. Talking with this guy never seems to go the way I want.
I shrugged. “Well, I guess not. Not if beauty is in the eye of the beholder—and you’re the only beholder I see around here.”
He nodded. “Good.”
“So,” I said, “let me get this straight. I’m typical because I’m not gorgeous, and I’m not typical because I don’t act as if I am gorgeous.”
“Something like that.”
“So…if I’m not gorgeous, what am I?”
He grinned. “You’re asking for a label?”
I grinned. “Touché.”
He made a bubble with his chewing gum and popped it. “So what’s his last name?”
I flinched. “What? Who? Where’d that come from?”