Just Plain Al: The Al Series, Book Five (10 page)

As luck would have it, Teddy was lurking. Scratching himself and lurking. Teddy's fading fast. His spots now look like freckles on their way out. He's full of pent-up energy. He's going back to school on Monday. The whole family is offering up thanks for small favors.

“I heard you!” Teddy screeched. “I heard you! Don't think you can keep it a secret from me! Al's mother's going out with our grandfather. What's going on here, anyway?” Teddy scrooched up his face into a tight knot. I couldn't get over his resemblance to my favorite baby monkey at the zoo.

“Keep your hair on, kid,” I told Teddy. “It's strictly a platonic friendship.”

Teddy clapped his hands over his mouth. His beady little eyes sparkled gleefully.

“I'm telling, I'm telling!” he crooned from behind his hands. “A platonic friendship, huh?” Teddy was onto some pretty hot stuff here. He went happily into the bathroom, complete with fins and mask. Teddy liked nothing better than to go snorkeling in the tub. Usually he sings while preparing himself for descent.

“My bonnie lies over the ocean,” I heard Teddy shouting. “My bonnie lies over the sea.”

Someone had told Teddy that the song was very dirty. My mother said it was dirty only if you had a dirty mind.

Teddy was crestfallen when she said that. Which was a joy in itself. Nothing I like better than to see that kid's crest fall.

If I want to make his day, I bang on the bathroom door while he's singing and cry, “The sheriff's on his way to arrest you if you don't quit singing that dirty song!” So, feeling big-hearted, I did just that.

I banged and shouted, and I could hear Teddy gurgling with pleasure as he submerged.

I mean, you can hear dirtier songs in your friendly neighborhood record shop. Any day of the week.

chapter 20

Saturday was hot and muggy. Thick clouds scudded overhead. Planes coming into LaGuardia and Kennedy flew low, parting the clouds as if they were nothing.

“I love flying through clouds,” Al said. “You feel as if you're nowhere—you're suspended above the earth and you're not sure if you're coming down or going up.”

Al's flown a lot. I never have. Everyone I know flies. Even Melvin Ticknor went to Cancún last summer. His mother got divorced and she heard there were lots of single guys down there, plus she owed herself a trip. She took Melvin along to Mexico. He got Montezuma's revenge and never got out of the motel room. Melvin's mother wants to go back next year, to see if this golf pro she met is still there. Melvin says he wouldn't be caught dead there. “Didn't see nothing but the bathroom,” Melvin told me glumly. “That and lousy TV.”

Al looked up as a 747 flew so low it practically ruffled our hair. “What if one of those bozos crashed?” she asked me.

“Chaos,” I told her, not wanting to dwell on it. I thought I saw tiny heads at the plane's windows, but I couldn't be sure.

We waited on the corner where we'd seen the woman with the eyes. We must've waited half an hour. Al had a five dollar bill to give her. The digital clock said it was 77 degrees, and 11:07. The woman didn't show. “Maybe the police told her to move along,” Al said.

I said, “Maybe she's dead.”

“Now who's putting a damper on the fun?” Al said.

When at last we gave up and walked west, we were in search of Rudy. It seemed like a good time to listen to some of his fantastic tales. He always cheered us up. We checked all his familiar haunts. He wasn't around. Finally, we went up to a guy playing a mournful guitar on the corner of Forty-fifth Street.

“Do you know Rudy?” Al said.

The guy scratched his carefully arranged black hair. “What's he play?”

“Violin.”

“Oh, that Rudy. Gotcha.” His wide black mustache rippled as he talked. “He's took off, I hear from the grapevine.”

“Took off? Where to?” Al and I said, practically in unison. “He wouldn't leave without telling us good-bye,” I said.

“Yeah, well, the way I heard it,” the guy put on his cowboy hat and smiled at a passing pretty girl, “Rudy came on hard times. Somebody stole his violin. He went looking in every pawnshop on the west side, not to mention the east side. Never found it. I hear he was pretty down, pretty discouraged. He went to Florida. St. Pete, around there. His brother lives down there. Maybe it's his sister. I don't know. He said he'd never find another violin like that one. He was pretty broke up, I heard. It was his father's violin, very valuable, they say. Came from Germany. Or maybe Austria.” The man's eyebrows went up. “What do I know?”

“Rudy was from Brooklyn,” I said. “Coney Island.”

“All I know is what I'm telling you.” Two more pretty girls stopped to buy a pretzel from a street vendor and the guy began to serenade them with a spirited tune, flashing his eyes, taking tiny steps, inviting them to dance with him. They turned their backs and walked away, not giving him a second glance.

“Sorry, girls,” the guitar player called in a loud voice as we walked away. We looked back, not knowing if he was talking to us or to the girls who'd ignored him.

“Rudy wouldn't have taken off like that, without letting us know,” Al said.

“How could he let us know? He didn't even know our last names,” I said. “Or where we live. He didn't know anything about us. When you come right down to it, he didn't know squat about us. We knew about him, or what he told us about himself. We'll probably never see him again.”

“We'll never find that woman, either. I feel it in my bones.” Al's shoulders slumped, and she fumbled in her pocket for the five dollars. We both looked at the money stupidly, as if wondering how it had gotten there.

“The city's too big,” I told her. “You hardly ever find anyone you're looking for.”

“Let's go to St. Patrick's,” Al said. “Sit down and smell the incense.” Al was crazy about the smell of incense.

“All right,” I said. St. Patrick's Cathedral is beautiful and vast. It makes me feel as if I'm in Europe when I go there. There are lots of cathedrals in Europe, I understand. St. Patrick's may be as close as I'll ever get to Europe.

We sat and watched the people taking pictures, wandering around, admiring everything. On our way out, there was a box marked For the Poor of the World. Al carefully folded her money and slipped it in the slot. We went down the church steps, and the humidity made us gasp.

“At least I did something positive,” Al told me.

“That beats nothing,” I said.

chapter 21

“How's your little boy?” I asked Mr. Keogh when Al and I stopped to see him Monday morning on our way to class.

“He's a pistol. Turned two last week. We gave him a set of blocks for his birthday. First thing he did was make a towering structure which he says is a church. My wife thinks he's aiming to be an architect. I think he might be aiming to be a priest.” Mr. Keogh grinned. “Hard to tell, at this age.”

Mr. Keogh fiddled with a pencil.

“I have a favor to ask of you,” he said.

“So ask,” Al said.

“Right. Well, here it is.” Mr. Keogh cleared his throat. “If you're not busy next Saturday morning, how about coming with me to visit my father in his nursing home?”

I looked at Al, and she looked back. Flabbergast city.

“To do what?” Al got out.

“Talk. Read to them, the old people, I mean. Sing songs, if you want.” Mr. Keogh tapped his teeth with the pencil. “The point is, they need distraction. Most of them sit in the same chairs, in the same places, day after day. They watch television, but that's about it. Lethargy sets in and it's bad for them. They lose interest in things, in life. The doctors asked me, after they found out I was a teacher, if I knew any kids who might be willing to visit the patients. They've experimented and found that old people benefit greatly from contact with young people. Just having them around, the doctors said, is extremely beneficial, even for a short while.

“So I thought of you right off. You're good kids. I wouldn't ask just anyone to come up there with me.” Mr. Keogh smiled tentatively at us.

Al said, “I could tell their fortunes.”

“Great! Who doesn't like to have their fortunes told?”

“I can't do anything,” I told Mr. Keogh. “I can play the harmonica but only a little.” I wasn't at all sure I wanted to spend Saturday morning talking to a bunch of old fogies.

“Harmonica's great, too. Fortunes are always good.” I had the feeling if one of us said we could pick pockets, Mr. Keogh would say, “Great! Picking pockets is always good for a laugh.”

“It's purely an experiment, don't forget,” Mr. Keogh said. Then the bell rang and we breathed a sigh of relief. It had been a short but stressful interview. We said all right, we'd go. Mr. Keogh said he'd pick us up Saturday morning outside our apartment at ten sharp.

“Thanks, girls.” He shook hands. “You won't regret this, I promise you. You're doing a good deed, and maybe both of you will benefit from it, just as my father and the rest of them will benefit from having you there.”

“I'm not hot on this deal,” I said, as Al and I hurried back to our home room. “I don't know what to say to them.”

“Neither do I. But I'll say this.” Al's eyes glittered. “This is our chance to make something of ourselves, to do something selfless. We're getting points in heaven for this one, baby.”

“I'm not out to get points in heaven,” I told her.

“I don't know why not.” Al's eyebrows did their disappearing act. “You need all the points you can get.”

How does she know I need points?

She has some nerve.

When I told my mother about Al and me going to the old people's home to cheer them up, she flipped. I mean, you would've thought I'd said I was going to become Florence Nightingale.

“Marvelous!” she exclaimed, giving me a bear hug and an approving look. She frequently gives me bear hugs. Approving looks are in shorter supply. While I basked in my mother's approval, a dismaying thought crept into my head.

Suppose they're deaf? Lots of old people were, I knew. Suppose they couldn't hear when I played my harmonica? Well, I was so bad at it, it might be a good thing if they were deaf. Still, knocking myself out on the harmonica for a bunch of deaf oldsters has got to be straight out of a Fellini movie. Fellini is an Italian movie director who deals in the existential absurdities of life.

Maybe Martha Moseley could come with us and give a lecture on pierced ears and fourteen-karat-gold earrings. That oughta get her points in heaven, too. Which, I figure, she needs a heck of a lot more than I do.

When I went down the hall to Al's to discuss our plans for the oldsters, she was deep in her math homework. If Fellini had ever observed Al doing her math homework, he would've signed her to a ten-year contract on the spot. Math is Al's worst subject. She sweats bullets over it.

“I'll come back when you're done,” I said.

“No! Stay. I'm almost finished.” I read a fashion magazine and listened to her breathing. When I heard her slam her book closed, I knew she was through.

“I wish I hadn't said I'd go,” I said. “I won't know what to say, what to do. I don't know anything about how to treat old people.”

Al looked surprised. “How about your grandfather?” she asked.

“He's not old old, he's just old,” I said.

“No offense, but to some people he might be considered old old.” Al hadn't brought up the subject of her mother and my grandfather's date again. Neither had I.

“I guess we just play it by ear,” I said. “Just act natural.”

“Listen.” Al held up a finger and waved it under my nose. “I read the Diary of Anne Frank last night.”

“Again?” We've read that diary about a hundred times, each of us.

“She was only our age when she said, ‘I felt lonely, but hardly ever in despair!' That's when she was shut up in that room, hiding from the Nazis. How do you like that? She said she'd hardly ever been in despair. It makes me ashamed of myself when I read that. Doesn't it make you ashamed?”

“No,” I said. “She wrote that diary to keep herself sane. I'm sure of that. If it hadn't been for those creeps that gave her away, the Nazis never would've found her hiding place.”

“The world is full of creeps,” Al told me. “I know I agitate too much about trivial things. Like, am I popular, am I pretty, am I a winner? And we all know the answers to those, right?” Al began to pace. “But I'll tell you one thing. I can't help it. I think about those things. Am I an achiever? Heck, no. But I'm smart.” She turned to look at me, and I saw tears in her eyes. Reading Anne Frank did that to us, me and her. “Chalk one up, for me. Am I gorgeous? Heck, no. But I might be someday. Am I a winner? Heck, no, but someday my name may be a household word.”

“What's the household word?” I asked because I knew she wanted me to.

“Try Comet,” she said. “Or how about Listerine?”

“Would you settle for Pepperidge Farm?”

“I have often been in the pits,” Al said, “but never forever. Do you ever wonder what you'd do if you were in Anne Frank's shoes?”

As long as I've known Al, I've never gotten used to the way she switches subjects.

“That's like saying do you know what you'd do if somebody pulled a knife on you,” I said. “You can't know until you're actually faced with something terrible.”

“It just so happened that Anne Frank and Joan of Arc had the strength and the inner fortitude to face death without flinching.” Al stood in front of the mirror, looking at herself.

“Is that the face of someone with inner fortitude?” she asked her face. Then she answered, “Heck, no, it's the face of an abject coward.”