Just Plain Al: The Al Series, Book Five (2 page)

Teddy's voice came through the keyhole, announcing, “Dinner is served, folks.” Al flung open the door and almost knocked out Teddy's teeth. “
Scusa, scusa
,” Al said, planting a big juicy kiss on Teddy's cheek, thereby stopping him from hollering and claiming damages. Then she disappeared with the speed of light, and we sat down to dinner.

“Dad,” I said, “did red shoes ever make you stammer and pull at your necktie in confusion?”

“No, I can't say they ever did,” my father said. “But I once had a pair of brown shoes that did exactly that. They were too tight. How did you know?”

“I meant red shoes on a lady,” I said.

“In my day no lady would be caught dead wearing red shoes,” my father said.

“
Quel
bummer. I heard red shoes were a secret weapon and make men go cuckoo pots over a girl who wears them.”

“My friend Hubie has red sneakers,” Teddy put in his oar, “and nobody goes cuckoo pots over him.”

“Al asked me to go to the Rainbow Room Saturday night,” I said, ignoring Teddy. “Her mother's new beau is taking us to celebrate Al's birthday.” My mother and father raised their eyebrows in unison. They've been married so long they tend to react to startling news in identical fashion.

“The only trouble is,” I said, playing it cool, “I don't have anything to wear.”

Teddy lined up peas on his knife.

“Your Easter dress will be perfect,” my mother said.

“You mean the blue one?” I said, choking just a little.

“I love that dress on you.” My mother smiled at me. Teddy dipped his head, keeping a close eye on the peas.

“That's enough.” My mother spoke from the corner of her mouth, which she does very well. Teddy let the peas slide off, pretending he hadn't known they were there.

I'm talking Rainbow Room here, Ma, I thought, not Easter bunnies.

“It doesn't fit,” I said.

“What's a beau?” Teddy asked.

“A male friend,” my mother answered.

“Hubie must be my beau, then.” Teddy knows just how to touch a nerve.

“Hubie is your friend,” my mother said firmly.

“It's too small,” I said.

“Is that the one that makes your rear end wiggle?” Teddy looked up at me with guileless eyes.

My father tuned in at last, the way he does.

“Well, I guess we don't want our little darling going to the fleshpots in a dress that makes her rear end wiggle,” he said. “I guess we can spring for a new dress for such an august occasion.” Then my father excused himself. He had work to do.

The telephone rang. It was my mother's sister, reporting on her ex-husband's doings. Teddy and I sat at the table, alone.

A rush of love for my dear little brother flooded me.

“I might just kiss you, Ted,” I told him.

A look of sheer amazement and terror crept over his greasy little face. His knife shot out, a dagger held at the ready. Keeping me at bay.

“I thought August was a month,” Teddy said.

chapter 3

The next morning, when Al answered her door, I said in a snooty voice, “Podden me, but is Zandra at home, perchance?”

Al made a megaphone with her hands and hollered, “Hey, Zandra, some weird dude's out here looking for you!” then, flashing a phony smile, she held out a limp hand and said, “Oh, hi! I had a simply super time last night! My date was super! The party was super! He asked me to go to the junior prom. He's also a super dancer!”

“Super!” I said, and we collapsed on each other and laughed for about five minutes.

“Is your mother up yet?” I asked. Al's mother wears sleep shades to shut out the light. She has about a thousand little pillows on her bed. When she wants to go to sleep, she tosses all the little pillows on her
chaise longue
. That's French for daybed. The
chaise longue
is strictly to lie on during the day. I think you're also supposed to eat bonbons and read dirty French novels on it, too. Life gets very complex when one gets older and has French furniture, it seems.

“She's gone to work already.” Al made a face. She's always trying to mother her mother. This is role reversal, Al says, and is due to the fact that her mother is divorced and has been sick and needs someone to lean on.

I followed her into the apartment. I could smell coffee. I like the smell but I hate the taste of coffee.

“What's the word?” Al asked.

“If the invite's still good, my parents said I could have new duds for the Rainbow Room,” I said. I hope Al's mother and her new beau don't break up before I get a chance to check out the Rainbow Room. You never know.

“Excellent, excellent!” Al did a couple of expert bumps and grinds. She could be a burlesque queen if only burlesque wasn't dead. She also does a pretty fair belly dance. We were going to take lessons in belly dancing, but we never got around to it.

Al and her mother moved down the hall from us last fall. This is the first birthday we've celebrated together. Mine is next month, so that'll be the second.

“My mother says shopping with me drains her emotionally,” I told Al, “so that leaves you.”

“I will be your duenna, child,” she said. “Just wait'll I empty the garbage.”

We fought our way through the mirrors on Bloomingdale's ground floor. The salesgirl in the junior dress department gave us a disenchanted look. Probably her feet hurt already, and she figured us for a couple of deadbeats. And rightly so.

“Have you anything on sale?” Al asked. She was her mother's own child. Al's mother always buys her stuff on sale. “She'll grow into it,” Al's mother says.

“Not at this time of year.” The salesgirl sniffed. “Can I help you with anything?”

“Actually, we're looking for something that would be appropriate for dining at the Rainbow Room,” Al said, sniffing back.

The girl looked us over.

“What size?” Her gaze skimmed the tops of our heads.

“Petite,” Al said.

“Ah, yes, petite.” The girl smiled. “Perhaps something on this rack might do. Call me if you see something you like.”

We went through the rack in record time. “My mother says they never tell their right size,” Al said. “If they're above a size twelve, they lie. If you ask me, people in this country think too much about what size they are. Take Russia. I bet they don't think about sizes in Russia.”

We didn't find anything at Bloomie's, so we decided to go across to Alexander's, where it's much cheaper. On our way out we stopped at the food shop. Bloomie's is famous for its exotic goodies. They frequently hand out free samples. Last time we got a memorable chocolate-chip cookie.

A girl wearing a peasant costume handed us a little square of something attached to a toothpick. We each took one.

“What is it?” Al asked, putting hers in her mouth. She must've been very hungry. Usually Al wants to know what she's eating.

“Headcheese,” the girl said, flashing her gums at us.

“What's it made of?”

“Actually, it's got a bit of this and a bit of that in it.” I think she was Danish.

“Are you Danish?” I asked her.

“On my mother's side.” She had very long gums.

“What's ‘a bit of this and a bit of that' mean?” Al stopped chewing. Her cheek bulged where she'd stored her free sample.

“A bit of the tongue, a bit of the brains, too. As well as the head, of course. Hence the name ‘headcheese.'” The girl's eyes were very bright as she studied Al's face. Al has one of those faces that shows everything.

“Whose head?” Al managed to get out.

“The calf, or maybe the pig's. It depends.”

Slowly, slowly, Al spit out what was left of her free sample. Mine lay heavy at the bottom of my stomach.

“Is there a trash can around?” Al whispered, not looking at what lay in her palm.

“Gee, I don't know,” the girl said brightly. “I'm only here for the day.”

Al stomped off. I had a hard time keeping up. She went through the revolving door like a whirling dervish and hit the street at a gallop.

“Did you hear her? I almost barfed!” Al clutched her throat. “I almost lost my cookies all over Bloomie's food shop. Do you think she was putting us on? Do you think she made that up?”

“No,” I said, “I think she was telling the truth.”

“I have a feeling this is not my day,” Al said. Somehow we'd lost our interest in shopping. “Look,” I said, pointing. “There's one of those cheapo hot dog wagons on the corner. Let's get one.” Despite the headcheese inside me, I was hungry.

“You're kidding me!” Al yelled, still clutching her throat. “I may never eat again. Besides, you know what they say is in hot dogs. Unspeakable ingredients. Dog's hair, sweepings off the floor, and worse.”

“With sauerkraut,” I said. “And lots of mustard!”

“Oh, well.” Al was a pushover for hot dogs. “With all that stuff on it, we won't even be able to tell it's a hot dog, right?”

It was one of those days that sometimes drops down at the end of summer. Just when you think fall will never come, there it is, like a present. As we headed for the hot dog wagon, I saw the man. He was one of those New York crazies. Shouting, gesticulating, he lurched through the crowd. People tucked in their elbows to make a path for him, pretending he wasn't really there. He was harmless. No one so much as flicked an eye in his direction.

“Let's cross,” I whispered. I'm chicken. I'm always afraid guys like him might say or do something. I don't know what I'd do if he did.

Al had her hot dog money out, held high in her hand. It was then that I saw the woman. She was standing on the corner under the digital clock over the bank. It was 1:24. The temperature was 72 degrees. The woman's face was so deeply red it was almost purple. She wore a filthy gray sweater and billowy pants held up by rope. Her hands were huge and swollen, the same color as her face. She held a sign that read Please Help Me.

Al saw the woman the same instant I did. She veered toward her without missing a beat, the dollar bill waving in the wind. I knew Al was going to give the woman her money.

The man swooped without warning. He snatched the money out of Al's hand and took off, darting and dodging into the crowd. The Artful Dodger had nothing on him.

“Hey!” Al bellowed. “Catch him! Police!” Several people turned to stare, but nobody got excited. Things like that happen every day. I stayed where I was and watched Al also disappear into the crowd in pursuit.

I wanted to leave, wanted to forget the sight of the woman standing there holding her sign, but I didn't dare. In a strange way, I felt responsible for her. She had turned to stone and stood, eyes closed, as if she couldn't bear another thing.

If Al caught up with the man, what would happen? Maybe he'd turn on her, attack her. I should've gone with her. My feet wouldn't move. I felt as if I'd been glued to the sidewalk.

I shivered, the way you do when someone walks over your grave. Then, just when I was giving up, I saw Al threading her way through the throng of shoppers. Her face was scarlet, and perspiration ran down the sides of her face.

“Can you believe that creep?” A mustache of sweat glistened on her upper lip. “That lousy creep took it right out of my hand.”

The woman opened her eyes and looked straight at us. They tell you to avoid eye contact. Yet we looked into her eyes. They were dark gray or maybe blue. I couldn't be sure. I fumbled in my pocket and came up with eighty cents, all I had. I held the money out to her. She wouldn't look down at my hand, only in my eyes.

Then I saw her hand creep out, cupped into a little bowl, its broken fingernails curved jaggedly over the tips of her fingers. I put the eighty cents into the little bowl. Her eyes never wavered. I was the first to look away. Maybe she was deaf and dumb, I thought. Maybe that was it. Then she said something to me, maybe thanks, maybe not. Maybe she was cursing me. I couldn't tell.

“What's going on here, anyway?” Al said. “How come all these people are starving? How come all these fat cats are eating caviar and lots of people don't even have a place to sleep when it gets cold? I don't get it. How come things are so uneven?”

Al shook her head despairingly. Her face was bleak.

“What can she buy with eighty cents?” I asked. Al didn't answer me. We walked all the way home, thirty blocks, without talking to each other.

There was nothing to say.

chapter 4

All that night, awake or asleep, I kept seeing the woman's face. She and her children probably lived in one horrible little room filled with cockroaches, which scuttled under the bed and kept them awake all night. And the hallways were filled with strange, lurking people, with gray faces, making odd noises. And the children cried a lot because their stomachs were empty. It must be terrible to be really hungry. And to have no money to buy food. Sometimes, when I'm hungry after school, I try to imagine how I'd feel if there were no food in the house and no prospect of any. I can't imagine what it's really like, but I try.

So I gave her eighty cents. Big deal. I was ashamed of giving her so little, even though it was all I had.

In the morning I leaned against the sink and drank my orange juice and watched my mother getting ready to go out. This was her day to work at the hospital thrift shop. They were pricing donations today, she told me, to prepare for the grand opening next week.

“If I see a dress that might suit you,” she told me, “I'll bring it home with me. We get some very nice things there.”

“A secondhand dress for the Rainbow Room?” I tried not to sound snotty. And failed. My mother is a scrounge. She can always find a way to beat the high cost of living. My father says she works miracles, but I wish she wouldn't try to work one on me.