Alice Alone (6 page)
After that he took a jar of U-Bet chocolate-flavored syrup from the cupboard and a half gallon of milk from the fridge.
“That’s it?” asked Karen. “Oh, and a spoon. Very important, the spoon!” Lester said, and took one from the drawer. Then, with a flourish, he said, “Observe!”
He carefully spooned an inch of chocolate syrup into the bottom of each glass. When they were all filled, the beer steins and the mason jar, too, he added an inch of whole milk on top of the syrup, going from one glass to the next. Then he took the first glass, tilted it, inserted the spoon and, with his other hand, sprayed the seltzer from the pressurized dispenser directly onto the spoon so that he got a big chocolatey head. He stirred and handed the first glass to Elizabeth.
“Enjoy!” he said.
I don’t know what fascinated me most—the way Elizabeth’s cheeks turned pink as she took the glass from his hands, or the way the other kids were watching. This was not a treat Elizabeth would ordinarily have allowed herself, certainly not last summer, but Lester had chosen her—
her
—to get the first glass. So she lifted it to her lips and drank.
“It’s
wonderful!
” she said. And then, as though counting calories, “It’s only milk and syrup and seltzer?”
“You got it!”
“Where does the egg come in?” asked Penny.
“Search me,” said Lester. “It’s an old New York drink. Some say it comes from Russia. But is that good or is that good?” He handed the second glass to Penny.
“Ummmm! It’s good,” she said. And offered Patrick a sip until he got his. I was glad Les served Patrick next.
We migrated back into the living room and sat around savoring the egg creams. There are times I absolutely love my brother. He was the hit of the evening. It was going on one o’clock, and when Les came in with his own egg cream in the mason jar, he said, “Ah, yes! An excellent bedtime drink,” hoping we’d take the hint.
“In your dreams,” said Pamela.
“We’re good for another three hours!” said Justin.
“Besides … ,” Elizabeth added, and looked at Karen and Jill. Suddenly looks traveled all around the room, and Elizabeth and Karen went upstairs to my bedroom and came back down carrying a cake with lighted candles. They’d ordered it from the Giant, and on the frosting, in blue letters, it said,
T
O
O
UR
N
O
. 1 S
TUD
. The girls started singing “Happy Birthday” and everyone joined in, even the ones who didn’t know what it was all about. “Happy birthday to you, happy birthday …”
I was sitting on Patrick’s lap on the couch, and we started singing, too. Patrick did, anyway. I
never sing “Happy Birthday” because I can’t carry a tune.
“Happy birthday, dear Studly … ,” sang Pamela.
As soon as the cake was in Lester’s hands, Karen took a picture.
Lester looked a little embarrassed. “Stud?” he said, looking around. “Somebody here named Stud?” Then he laughed.
“Make a wish!” Penny instructed. “Make a wish with all us gorgeous girls around you, and maybe it will come true.”
“You mean I can wish this party was over, and you’ll all go home?” Lester teased.
“Better than that. Maybe one of us could be your teddy bear for the night,” said Pamela.
“Pamela!” Elizabeth scolded. We all laughed again.
“I don’t know about that. My old teddy bear had one ear chewed off and an eye missing,” Lester said.
“Blow, Lester! The wax is dripping,” Gwen told him.
Lester blew out all twenty-two candles, everyone clapped, and then Jill got a knife and cut the cake into twenty pieces. We all dug in.
“Presents! Presents!” cried Pamela. I looked around in surprise. I’d expected the cake, but no one had said anything about presents. I stared as all the girls—all except Leslie and Lori, who hadn’t
known about it, either—retrieved little packages from their sleeping bags, some flat, some in tiny balls, some in small boxes, and gave them to Lester.
“What’s this? What’s this?” he asked.
“Open them!” said Elizabeth. “You have to open them in front of everyone.”
“Uh-oh,” said Lester. “I don’t like the sound of that.” But he did, and we shrieked as he unwrapped or unrolled, untied or unwound, pair after pair of boxer shorts, each one wilder than the one before. Boxers that looked like newsprint; boxers with ants painted all over them; boxers in a leopard print, boxers with lipstick marks …
Les looked around at the girls. “Somebody trying to tell me to change my underwear more often?” he joked.
“No, we want you to model them!” Pamela said, and all the girls laughed.
“Hey, we came empty-handed!” Patrick said. “No one told us about presents, Les, but I’ll give you the shorts off my bottom if you like.”
“No. Thanks, anyway,” said Lester.
“How about mine?” said Brian. He stood up and lowered his jeans just enough to show us three inches of bright purple boxer shorts with yellow zigzag lines on them.
“I can top those,” said Donald Sheavers, showing
off his racing car boxers, and suddenly all the guys were lowering their jeans and all the girls were screeching, and Lester looked relieved when I slipped another movie in the VCR and eventually everyone turned around to watch.
We weren’t ready for sleep, though. Lester went upstairs to put in a half hour of study while we goofed off. Elizabeth and I were gathering up glasses and washing silverware—stepping over bodies and carrying stuff to the kitchen—when we heard a lot of muffled laughter coming from the next room and I wondered what I was missing. But after all the work Dad had put into the food for the party, I didn’t want him to come down the next morning to a sink full of dirty dishes. I went back to the living room for a final check and heard Jill whisper, “There’s Alice!” and instantly all heads in the living room jerked toward me with grins on their faces.
“Yeah? What?” I said, laughing.
“Nothing! Nothing!” Brian said.
“Just a little innovative photography,” Justin added.
Actually, some of the kids had already staked out spots for their sleeping bags—under the dining room table, beside the couch, behind my beanbag chair,
on
my beanbag chair. I put in still another video while the girls trooped upstairs in twos and
threes to change in my room and brush their teeth. Most of us just took off our jeans and pulled on shorts or sweatpants, but it felt so daring, somehow, to come downstairs with our sleeping bags and put them down next to the boys’ on the rug.
There was always a short line outside the bathroom, and the boys were joking about going out in the yard to pee. By the time Lester came back downstairs, almost everyone had found a spot to roll out his sleeping bag, and he went around turning off lamps while the movie on the VCR played on, the volume low.
Patrick had saved a spot for me under the grand piano next to him, so I crawled in my sleeping bag, and he rolled over and kissed me on the mouth.
“Hey! Hey! None of that!” Mark called. “Hey, Les! Over here, man! Sex alert! Sex alert!”
Lester, on the couch, sleepily raised one eyebrow, gave me a look, and rolled over on his side.
We were all pretty tired. It was almost three o’clock, and I knew that Dad probably hadn’t had much sleep yet and was hoping we’d all quiet down. The music, the movie, the food, the warmth of the sleeping bag … Patrick and I kissed a while longer, and I was thinking how it would feel if Les wasn’t here and we really did both crawl in the same bag. But he fell asleep even before I did, and for most of the night, I slept. So did everyone else,
though I woke up briefly around four and was aware that Lester had turned on a table lamp and left it on. I guess he figured that the next best thing to his staying awake all night was the light from a lamp.
I woke again about eight to whispers and giggles, and lifted my head to look around. Lester was sound asleep on the couch, his mouth agape, snoring peacefully, but Pamela and Jill were slowly, delicately propping Q-tips at odd angles in his thick brown hair.
Other kids began to stir, and when they saw what Jill and Pamela were up to, they began to giggle. Jennifer took some dental floss out of her overnight bag, and Jill unwound it and wrapped it around the Q-tips, draping it from stick to stick, turning her head away so she wouldn’t breathe or giggle in Lester’s face. It looked sort of like a crown. Pamela went out to the kitchen and returned with a sheet of foil. She tore off little pieces and carefully squeezed them over the ends of each Q-tip so that they looked like silver. Both Patrick and I were each sitting up on one elbow now, laughing silently. Karen took a Polaroid picture.
Les gave a sigh and opened his mouth even wider. Penny got in the act and stuck one finger in his mouth. Then she turned to the other kids, most of whom were awake now, all but Donald
Sheavers, and mimed that she was going to stick two fingers in without touching the sides of Lester’s mouth. Lester snored on. Penny’s dimples grew even deeper as she indicated three fingers and gently guided them in without waking Lester. Somebody clapped. This time Penny held up four fingers, but at that moment Lester’s mouth snapped shut, and then his eyes opened. He gave a snort, and Penny sat back on her heels.
“Wha’sup?” Lester said groggily. He saw Pamela and Jill and Jennifer all looking at him and laughing. Les swung his legs off the couch and looked around. As he did so, one of the Q-tips slipped and dangled over his eyes. “What the … ?” Lester cried, running his hand over his hair. Then he leaped up. “Oh, for crying out loud,” he said as the crown fell off, and everyone laughed.
Dad stepped in from the kitchen. “Anybody for waffles and sausage?” he said.
“They’re all yours, Dad. I’m outta here,” Les said, bolting up the stairs with his blanket and pillow.
Some of the girls went upstairs to shower, two and three crowding into the bathtub at once to save time, a couple of guys went back to sleep, but by ten, half of us had eaten Dad’s waffles and the other half were getting dressed. A few kids, Patrick included, had already gone home, and the rest drifted away, one by one, most of them telling me
that they’d had a really great time, and I knew they meant it. You can just tell.
When the last person had gone, I went out in the kitchen to help with the dishes. Dad looked at me. I looked at him.
“Whew!” he said, and we both laughed.
“Thanks, Dad,” I told him. “Everyone had a really great time. And there wasn’t any sex going on, if that’s what you’re going to ask me next.”
“I wasn’t, but I’m glad to hear it,” he said.
I spent the next hour putting the house back in shape, running the vacuum over the rug and the dining room, cleaning the popcorn off the sofa and chairs, rearranging the furniture, carrying more glasses to the kitchen. There were Polaroid pictures all over the top of the piano, and I got myself a glass of orange juice and sat down on the sofa to enjoy them.
There was a photo of Brian eating a piece of pizza; Elizabeth carrying the birthday cake; Lori and Mark and Jill and Justin playing cards; Gwen and Legs watching the movie; me with my mouth open, eating popcorn; Lester holding up a pair of boxer shorts; Lester on the couch with Q-tips in his hair, and then … I suddenly felt like a block of ice without any heartbeat at all. Because there in my hand was a picture of Patrick and Penny with their arms around each other, kissing.
I couldn’t breathe for a moment, and then I sank down on the couch, not taking my eyes from the picture.
On this couch, this very couch where I was sitting, Penny and Patrick were turned toward each other in the photo. She had one hand on his shoulder, he had a hand on her waist, and their faces were turned at an angle so you could see most of the back of Patrick’s head and one side of Penny’s face.
How
could
they? How could
he?
My eyes were brimming over, and tears spilled down my cheeks. I felt humiliated, angry, and lost. How could they do this in my very own house? Here at my
party?
Why had Karen taken their picture? And then I remembered when I’d walked in the living room once and heard someone whisper, “There’s Alice,” as though a secret was traveling
around the place. Everyone was in on it but me.
I leaned back against the sofa cushions, covered my face with my hands, and sobbed. Maybe Karen had left it behind just so I’d find out. Maybe Patrick had been seeing Penny for weeks and no one had the nerve to tell me.
The phone rang, but I didn’t want to answer. Lester was still sleeping, though, and Dad was outside raking leaves. So I got up, swallowed, and walked to the phone in the hall.
“Hello?” I said, but it didn’t sound like me.
There was a pause.
“Al?” Pamela’s starting to mimic Lester now, calling me “Al.”
“Yeah? What do you want?” I said hoarsely.
“My gosh, it doesn’t sound like you at all. I think I left my sweater at your place. I’m on my way over to pick it up, okay?”
“All right.”
Another pause. “You sound like you’ve been crying.”
I swallowed again.
“Alice, have you been crying?” she asked.
“Pamela!” I bawled. I couldn’t hold back any longer.
“What’s the matter? What’s
happened?
” And then, before I could say anything, she said, “You saw the picture, I’ll bet.”
Everybody knew, then! Everyone was waiting. All the kids knew that Patrick was falling for Penny, and no one knew how to tell me, least of all Patrick.
“I’ll be right over,” Pamela said, and hung up.
I sat down on the stairs, too weak to do anything else. Yesterday had been so wonderful. I’d felt attractive and popular and clever and fun. Now I felt like old news, yesterday’s leftovers. I felt tricked and pitied.
I knew I should go wash my face before Pamela got here, but I couldn’t even make myself do that. Now that she said she was coming, I wanted her to hurry and get here. I wanted to know how long she’d known Patrick was cheating on me and how many of the other kids knew.
