“Thank you,” I said, taking out the money and examining the box some more. It didn’t look new, and I figured there was a story behind it somewhere. “Was it Mom’s?” I asked.
“Not quite. It was a present from her to me. I’ve been keeping my cuff links and tiepins in it. But I thought now that you’re past your tenth birthday, you might like to have it. Because she chose it for me, you know that your mom picked this out herself. It must have been something that caught her eye, that made it special. And maybe you’d like to keep special things in it.”
“Juicy love letters and stuff,” said Lester, grinning.
“You’re really giving it to me?” I asked Dad, surprised. Worried, maybe.
“She actually gave me two, Alice, and I’m keeping the smaller one. But I think she’d be very pleased to know I gave you this.”
I wasn’t sure what I would put inside it. Maybe I could choose some small thing from each year of my life.
“Thanks, Dad,” I said, giving him a hug. “You too, Lester.”
I liked going around all evening wearing my cape and crown. I sat on my bed later with the carved wooden box on my lap, tracing the parrots with my finger and thinking about the mother who had bought this special box, how her fingers must have traced the same deep-cut lines.
I needed something really special to put in the box, and I chose Sara’s birthday card. It just fit. A special letter from a special friend inside a special box on my eleventh birthday.
17
NEWS
“I HAVE SOME RATHER IMPORTANT NEWS,” Dad said after dinner the following night.
Lester and I both looked up from our veal chops. When we have veal chops for dinner, you know that Dad did the cooking.
“You and Elaine are getting married after all?” I asked.
“No, Al. I’m not even seeing her anymore,” said Dad.
“You’re buying me a new car? A Mustang?” asked Lester.
“Sorry, no. I’ve been thinking for some time that we really should be buying a house, not renting. Rent is just money down the drain that we could be putting toward a purchase. So I’ve been doing some looking off and on, and recently, a two-story house came on the market that interested me. It’s in Silver Spring, much closer to my work, and I liked it so much, I made an offer on it this morning.”
“You did?” exclaimed Lester. That was news! Les and I looked at each other, not very sure of what this would mean.
“I have to leave all my friends?” Lester said next.
“Les, you’ll have a car soon, and it’s only about fifteen or twenty minutes from here.”
Lester brightened.
“But I don’t have a car,” I said, not even sure if I was sad or excited.
“No, but we can still arrange for you to come back here for a day now and then. Maybe you could stay with the Sheaverses,” said Dad.
“Not the Sheaverses!” I protested.
“Besides, you’ll be making lots of new friends over there, because you’ll be going to a different school if we get the house,” Dad said.
I liked the idea of a bigger house, but I didn’t like the thought of a new school. I liked the idea of new friends, but I didn’t want to leave Rosalind. But when Dad said, “So… the real estate woman said she’d be at the house at seven tonight if you want to take a look at it,” I was in the car in thirty seconds. Lester wasn’t far behind.
It was exciting, and I decided to be The Girl Who Is Having a New Adventure. Something new was happening, and I was part of it. Maybe the house would be really nice. Maybe the new school would be great. I wouldn’t have to walk to school with Donald Sheavers anymore.
“We still have a full basement in the new house,” Dad told Les as we rode down Georgia Avenue, “so you can still have your drums down there.”
“I’ve been thinking of selling my drums,” Lester said.
“Really?” said Dad.
“Yeah, I think I’m more into guitar now.”
I wondered if Lester was trying to get more money to spend on Lisa at the prom.
Dad went past the Melody Inn, turned at the corner, drove a few blocks, and turned again. The business section gave way to houses, and the shady trees made a roof over the streets. The houses were a little bigger than our house in Takoma Park. Some even had porches. I always wanted a porch.
The car slowed down, and Dad stopped in front of an ordinary-looking white house with a front porch and dark green shutters on the windows. There was a big tree in the front yard. I could see several more in back. It wasn’t a beautiful house. It wasn’t ugly. It was one of the smaller houses on the street, actually, but it looked like home.
The real estate woman was waiting for us and got out of her car when we pulled up. She was pretty and sort of young, and I saw Lester brush back his hair when he saw her.
“I’m still waiting for a call from the owners, Mr. McKinley,” she said to Dad. “I phoned them your offer this morning.”
Dad introduced us, and we followed her up the steps to the porch, a wide wooden porch with an old glider at one end. I tried to imagine how it would feel to live there. If these were our steps, our glider, our porch.
Inside, the living room was a lot bigger than the one we had now. The rooms were empty—the people had already moved out—and our voices had a hollow sound when we called to each other from room to room.
I raced upstairs because I wanted to see which room would be mine. I liked having an upstairs and a downstairs.
“Which bedroom would be mine?” I yelled back at Dad.
“I’d like the large one at the rear, but you and Lester can duke it out for the other two,” Dad said.
Lester wanted the bedroom with all the built-in bookshelves, and that was okay with me, because I liked the one with green and white wallpaper. Downstairs, the kitchen was big and old-fashioned. It had high cupboards that reached the ceiling, and everything was old—the stove, the sink, the refrigerator. But it looked out over a big backyard.
“I love it, Dad!” I said. “I really love it!”
“I guess it’s okay,” said Lester, coming up from the basement on his crutches. “Okay” is about the most excited he gets about anything. “Lots of room down there.”
“Well, it’s not ours yet,” said Dad. “I don’t want you to get your hopes up. I offered about the most we could afford. But if this doesn’t work out, we’ll get a house somewhere else.”
I didn’t want another house, I wanted this one. Maybe it was because it was the first house I’d looked at, but I wanted to eat in that kitchen, sleep in that bedroom, sit on that front porch.
When we got home, Dad said we should stay off the phone in case the real estate woman tried to call us. Lester sat on the couch, his physics book on his lap, his foot in its cast propped on the coffee table. I sat in my beanbag chair, trying to do my math problems. Dad was in his chair reading the newspaper, but I saw him look toward the phone every time he turned a page.
At a quarter of nine the phone rang. Lester and I looked at Dad. He got up and went to the phone.
“Hello?” he said. There was a long pause. Too long a pause. “Oh,” he said finally. “I’m so sorry.”
I closed my eyes and swallowed. Lester didn’t move. “Of course,” said Dad. “I can understand how you feel… .”
The conversation didn’t make sense until I heard him say, “Keep your chin up, Sal.”
It wasn’t the real estate woman, it was Aunt Sally. And when Dad hung up at last, he said, “Carol’s getting divorced.”
I stared. “They just got married!” I said.
“Well, a year ago, yes,” said Dad.
“When you marry a sailor, you only stay married for a year?” I asked.
“Some things don’t work out, Alice, and I guess that elopement was one of them,” Dad said. My cousin Carol had left college and gone off to marry a sailor without even telling her parents. “It’s a real heartache for Sal and Milt.”
“Is she going to go back and
live with her folks?” asked Lester.
“No. Sal says she’s taken an apartment in Chicago, not too far from them, and that’s good, I think. I’m just glad there were no children. A divorce is always hardest on the kids.”
I didn’t see how a divorce could be worse than a death, though. At least if Mom and Dad were divorced, we could still see them both. I wondered if I should write Carol a sympathy note or something. Maybe I should say that she could always marry a soldier. The evening that had started out exciting—a new adventure—now seemed sad and gloomy. Even if the real estate woman called to tell us we got the house, it wouldn’t seem right to be happy. My fifth-grade year was getting worse by the minute.
Nine o’clock became nine thirty and then ten.
“Go on to bed, Al,” said Dad. “She won’t call this late.”
“Rats!” said Lester, and slammed his physics book shut.
I got up from my beanbag chair and had just started for the bathroom when the phone rang again. We all looked at each other as though no one wanted to answer. Finally Dad picked up the phone.
“Yes?” he said. Then “Yes?” again, even louder. I saw his eyes begin to crinkle at the corners and his lips begin to smile. “We did?” he cried, and nodded to us.
I’ll bet I gave a yell that the real estate woman could hear. Maybe even the Sheaverses could hear it next door. Lester tossed his pen in the air and caught it, and when Dad hung up, we all began yelping like puppies. We all began talking at once. You can be sad at one thing and happy about something else both at the same time, I discovered. And at eleven o’clock that evening, on a school night, we were still out in the kitchen, eating ice cream and making plans.
18
HELPING OUT
I COULDN’T WAIT TO GET TO SCHOOL THE next morning to tell the girls. I saw Rosalind and the others in a corner of the playground when I got there. I ran over, eager to tell them my news. But even before I reached them, I could see that Megan was crying and the other girls were trying to comfort her. Dawn had one arm around Megan’s shoulder.
“What’s wrong?” I asked, looking Megan over to see if she was hurt. I thought maybe she’d fallen off the monkey bars or something.
“It’s her sister,” said Jody, who then looked at Megan to see if she wanted to tell it. When Megan didn’t say anything, Jody said, “Marlene’s got a kidney tumor, and she’s having an operation.”
I tried to imagine a kidney tumor. I didn’t even know where the kidneys were. “I’m really sorry, Megan,” I said, and wondered if I sounded sincere.
Megan just cried some more. I put my arm around her too. “When is the operation?” I asked.
“T-Tomorrow,” sobbed Megan. I guess you still cry for a sister even when you can’t stand her.
“Are you going to be at the hospital?”
She shook her head. “Mom wants me to come to school. She says they’ll call me when the operation’s over.”
“Then we’ll stick by you all day tomorrow,” I promised, and the other girls nodded their heads. We patted Megan’s shoulder and gave her a hug.
I decided I’d wait until lunchtime to tell anyone about our new home. But all through the geography lesson, while Mrs. Swick was talking about Lewis and Clark, I thought about Marlene and her kidney tumor. I wasn’t sure what a tumor was, but I knew it wasn’t good.
How were you supposed to feel, I wondered, when somebody you didn’t like very much got sick? When that person might die? When deep down inside of you, you were sort of, kind of, well… not exactly glad, but maybe not too sorry, either?
But that thought seemed so awful, so terrible, I was ashamed to have thought it. Rosalind was probably the only other person I could tell that to, and I was sure she would understand. But when I sat down beside her at lunch, I wondered if maybe it was even too awful to tell Rosalind, so I didn’t.
We needed something nice to talk about instead, and because Megan and Jody and Dawn were still in line with their trays, I decided to go ahead and tell Rosalind about the new house.
“Guess what!” I said.
“You got another cat?” she guessed.
“No. I’m never going to get another cat. Something else.”
“I don’t know.”
“Dad bought a house in Silver Spring.”
Rosalind stopped chewing and just stared at me. “You’re going to move?”
And suddenly I knew that this might be good news to me, but it sure wasn’t for Rosalind. Sara, our other best friend, had moved away. Megan was sad over her sister’s kidney, and Jody and Dawn weren’t exactly our “best” friends. What was there for Rosalind to be happy about?
She snapped another bite off her hamburger and shrugged. “So?” she said, and chewed as though she wasn’t even tasting it. “What do I care?”
I stared back at her. It wasn’t my fault we were moving! I hadn’t told Dad to buy a house. It wasn’t my fault that Sara had moved away. It wasn’t my fault that Marlene’s kidney had a tumor. I hadn’t had such a good year either. My cat died, my dad wasn’t getting married after all, Lester broke his ankle… . Wasn’t anybody sorry for me?
But as the afternoon went on I kept glancing over at Rosalind during our history lesson and I watched her during math. I caught her looking out the window, her mouth turned down at the corners, and she reminded me of how Lester looked when he thought he couldn’t go to the prom.
And even though I could have said something mean back to Rosalind at lunch—told her that if she didn’t care, then I didn’t either—I remembered that I wanted to be a helper, not a hurter. I wanted to make things better, not worse.
When the last bell rang and Rosalind was putting books in her backpack, I went over and said, “Lester’s prom is on Saturday. Do you want to come over and spend the night?”
Rosalind looked up.
“We could take a picture of him in his tuxedo jacket and shorts and watch him drive off in a limousine.”
Rosalind began to smile. “Okay,” she said. “And eat at your place?”
“Sure,” I said. “You can come for dinner, too.”
The next day at school we stayed with Megan wherever she went. We crowded around her at recess and sat with her through lunch. It was like we made a wall around her so no other bad news could get through.
About two in the afternoon the secretary’s voice came over the loudspeaker. “Mrs. Swick, would you please send Megan Beachy to the office? There’s a phone call.”
Megan got up from her seat without smiling. I thought maybe her legs wobbled a little bit. Mrs. Swick knew about Megan’s sister. She glanced around the room. “Alice, would you go to the office with Megan, please?” she said.
“Yes,” I said quickly. I followed Megan out the door.
In the hall I grabbed Megan’s hand, and it felt cold. I couldn’t think of anything to say, so I just squeezed it. She squeezed back.
When we got to the office, Miss Otis told Megan to go in and see the principal, and I sat down outside to wait. Miss Otis looked over at me and gave me a worried smile. I gave her a worried smile back.
One minute went by. Then two minutes. What if Marlene had died? What if the operation didn’t help and they had to remove her kidney? Could you live without a kidney? I wondered if I should be praying while I watched for Megan, but then I wondered why I had to tell God how worried we were. If He was God, didn’t He know already?
The door to Mr. Serio’s office swung open, and Megan came out. She was smiling. The principal was smiling. “That’s very good news, Megan,” he said.
I stood up and Megan came over. “Dad said everything went well, and the doctor says Marlene will be fine,” she said, and gave a big sigh, as though all the worried air in her chest was coming out and she was breathing in only happy things.
I hugged her and Miss Otis smiled. We smiled back. And all the way down the hall Megan talked about a funny card she was going to make for Marlene in the hospital. You folded paper and cut it in such a wa
y that when you opened it up, it looked like a bird opening its beak and saying hello.
The thing about being a helper is that when other people are happy, they want to share it with you. When you’re a hurter, they don’t want you around.
“I have some sparkles you could glue to the card,” I said.
“Perfect!” said Megan.
During our afternoon break we took a jump rope and let Megan jump the longest.
“Look!” Dawn said suddenly.
We let the rope dangle and looked toward the steps where Mrs. Swick was talking with another teacher. They were laughing. Mrs. Swick was laughing. I think it was the first time I had seen the dimples in her cheeks when she laughs. No one even knew she had dimples.
When the bell rang and I stopped at the drinking fountain, I heard one teacher say to the other, “She and Tom are so happy. They’ve wanted a baby for so long… .”
I knew right away they were talking about Mrs. Swick. When I walked in the classroom, I stared at my teacher and listened to the new sound of her laugh. Maybe she had been trying for years and years to have a baby. Maybe her doctor had put an egg and sperm together in a laboratory and she had just heard the news. Maybe they were going to China and adopting a baby there. It didn’t matter. Somehow I wanted to show Mrs. Swick how happy I was for her.
That afternoon I got out my colored pens and a sheet of notebook paper. I wrote Congratulations! one letter in pink and the next in blue. Pink… blue… pink… blue… . Underneath I wrote, Lovingly Alice, and then I left it on her desk.
When I got home from school, Lester was eating Fritos at the kitchen table. He didn’t have to use crutches anymore and could put weight on the foot that was in the cast. I would think that a person who could walk on his own two feet again would want to be nice to everybody in the whole wide world, but Lester said something mean.
“Al,” he told me, “when we get our new phone number at the other house, I don’t want you to give it to Mickey. Understand?”
“What am I supposed to say if she asks?”
Lester shrugged. “I don’t know. Tell her anything,” he said.