Now I'll Tell You Everything (Alice) (6 page)

I laughed, and Dave was all business again. “You said you wanted to be outdoors more. That’s about all there is where we live—mountains, valleys . . .”

“Sounds nice. I’ll keep it in mind,” I said.

I had to admit I was attracted to this guy. Patrick was pretty sophisticated, but every once in a while he used to do something childish, like speak with a British accent for a day. Dave didn’t act like that. He was a bit more casual, more quiet, but he could always make me laugh. Just little things, like, he’d make funny little stick people out of straws when he was waiting for
me to finish lunch—have them talk to each other, describing the inside of my mouth, maybe. Or I’d just catch him watching me, smiling, ever ready to get a napkin for me, open a door, share his coat—a mixture of humor and consideration. Maybe Dave had outgrown kid stuff by now. But then, maybe Patrick had too. It had been almost a year since I’d seen him.

We walked all around campus that evening and just talked. Walked, talked, sat on a stone bench under a budding cherry tree as petals rained down on us, and talked some more. When we finally got up to go back to my dorm, we passed under an arch of branches that gave off a sweet scent—linden trees—and Dave leaned over and kissed me. I wouldn’t call it passionate, but it was more than just friendly. And I realized that I might be having some of the same kinds of feelings for him that I’d had for Patrick. Was this possible?

*  *  *

Lester and Stacy got engaged in May. Even after predicting to Sylvia that Stacy was the one, I was still in shock.

“I can’t
believe
it!” I cried when he told us. He’d made a quick trip home to celebrate my nineteenth birthday, and at my request we had all my favorite dishes for dinner. When else could you have tortellini with vodka sauce and chicken Alfredo both at the same meal?

“Why?” he asked.

“You’ve only known her since Thanksgiving!”

“
You’ve
only known her since Thanksgiving. I’ve known her a little longer than that.” Lester stared quizzically down at
the two dishes of pasta before him, then shrugged and took a spoonful of each. Sylvia tried to hide a smile as she passed him a huge spinach and strawberry salad to go with it, my one healthful suggestion for the meal.

“I just didn’t think . . . I thought you’d be old and gray by the time you settled down,” I said.

Les tipped his head in my direction and pointed to his hair. “A couple there already.”

“Well,
I
think it’s exciting, Les, and I really like Stacy,” Sylvia said.

“So do I, and I’m happy for you,” said Dad. “When’s the wedding?”

“We haven’t set a date yet. She’s still debating whether or not to go for her master’s, because the job prospects might be a lot better if she had one. I think she needs to make up her mind about that first.” He turned to me. “Would you please stop staring at me bug-eyed and eat?”

I obliged. “Well, I’m happy for you too, Les,” I said. “
Really.
So that makes three of us.”

“Good. So what do you want for your birthday? I didn’t have time to get you anything. But I will.”

“I want to bring some friends to the wedding,” I said, giving him a wide, determined smile.

He grinned. “I think that can be arranged,” he said.

*  *  *

I took Dave’s advice and signed up with a temp agency for the summer. On the days when I didn’t get called in, I helped out
at Dad’s music store, but by the end of July, I was sick of temp work. Probably half the time I didn’t get called at all, and when they did send me out on a job, it was hideously boring—file clerk, receptionist, stock girl, shampoo girl.

I really wanted to be outdoors. Where were the dog-walking jobs, playground supervisors, car washers? Taken, taken, taken, they told me, if there were any at all.

And then on a Monday night, I got a call. A construction company on an emergency road repair needed a flag person for one day—their flagman was sick. Only one day, low pay, did I want it?

The following morning I was up at four and putting on my raggedy jeans for ventilation, a thin cotton shirt over a tank top, and a blue bandana around my head. I slathered myself with sunscreen, made a sandwich, filled a thermos, grabbed my sunglasses, and was off. I drove Dad’s car to a two-lane road north of Gaithersburg, slowing down when I saw a few cars parked on the shoulder near a bulldozer.

It may have been a two-lane road, but it was a busy one, and it curved and disappeared behind a line of trees. I parked and got out, studying the five men drinking water from a cooler on the back of a pickup. I was supposed to check in with someone named Ed, so I went up to a guy holding a clipboard. “Are you Ed?” I asked. “I’m the flag girl today.”

The men stopped talking and looked around. “No,” said the man, peering at me over the rim of his safety goggles. He nodded toward the guy in a faded baseball cap, so I went up to him.

“Ed?”

“No, that would be the man over there in the checked shirt,” he answered.

The men exchanged smiles, and I looked about suspiciously, but I was a good sport, so I turned to the man in the checked shirt, and he said, “If you’re looking for Ed, he’s—”

“No,” I said, “I’m looking for the boss.”

“In that case, it’s me,” said a guy with a tattoo on his bare shoulder.

“Nah, that’s me,” said the guy with the clipboard.

By now, though, they were all laughing, and I laughed with them.

“Sorry, we’re just having a little fun with you,” the clipboard guy said. “I’m Ed Crawley, and these SOBs are your partners for the day.”

“I’m Alice,” I said, and the other men called out their names, grinning broadly.

The men were repairing a sewer line that led to the houses farther out. The left lane of the curving road had already been blocked off.

Ed explained my job, which could hardly be more simple: I was to stand at one end of the long stretch of construction with a sign on a pole that said
SLOW
on one side and
STOP
on the other. Shorty, the guy with the tattooed arm, was at the other end of the broken pavement with his own sign. When Shorty turned his sign to
SLOW
for oncoming traffic on his side of the road, I turned mine to
STOP
, and vice versa. Shorty called the
shots. If my attention wandered and I didn’t respond, he’d give a loud whistle and I’d go into action.

The only thing I could say for the job was that it got me outdoors. There was more physical action for me at a filing cabinet than there was out here on a country road.

As the morning heated up, I edged more and more to the right to keep in the shade, until finally there was no shade at all. The trickles of perspiration running down my legs and back were maddening.

I’d been standing there for five hours when I realized I had to pee.

A Porta-John sat somewhat precariously back near the pickup truck, and I couldn’t help but wonder if it would tilt if I went inside, but I had no choice. I couldn’t just put down my sign and walk off, however. I tried to get the attention of one of the men, but a jackhammer was going, and no one could hear me. I must not have been able to get Shorty’s attention, because he kept waving his line of cars on through. The next and the next and the next . . .

When someone saw me at last and took my place, I ran for the Porta-John. I barely made it. I pulled the door closed behind me and tried not to look down the hole, managing to hold my breath most of the time until I escaped back into fresh air. I even thought about going without water so I wouldn’t have to use the john again, but that wasn’t a good idea.

At twelve we opened the lane back up temporarily and sat down under a single tree beyond the truck. When I unwrapped
the sandwich I’d thrown together that morning, though, it was disgusting. The bologna was warm, the cheese had melted, and the whole thing drooped. I was holding it between two fingers when Ed noticed.

“Don’t eat that,” he said. “Here.” He handed me half a beef sandwich, the meat a quarter inch thick between the bread slices, all of it still chilled from the cold pack in his bucket.

“I can’t eat yours,” I protested.

“Yes, you can. I’ve got another to go with it, and a piece of cake.”

“Now what’s she up to? Takin’ our lunch?” called the guy in the bandana, who had been working down in the trench. “Here, skinny gal, have some chips.” And he passed the bag over.

I smiled and took a handful. Nobody had referred to me as skinny since second grade, and I was grateful for the candy bar someone gave me too.

But lunch hour is never a full hour on a construction gang. A half hour, at most, and then we were back on the job.
SLOW . . . STOP . . . SLOW . . . STOP . . .
My arms were hot to the touch from the sun. Even taking off the cotton shirt barely made a difference.

By three o’clock I had to pee again—I’d downed two cups of water from the big cooler on the back of the pickup and could have drunk more. The Porta-John had been in the sun all afternoon, and just lifting the metal latch burned my fingers.

I considered leaving the door open for a moment, but it faced the men and the road, so I didn’t. Sweat rolled down my face.

The stench from the toilet was overwhelming, and the toilet paper was gone.

Trying not to retch, I got it over with as soon as possible, pulled up my jeans, and wished for the fifteenth time that I’d worn shorts, then fumbled for the door latch.

It wouldn’t turn.

No!
I gave it a hard jiggle. Nothing. I was stuck! I was sweltering! I was being cremated alive!

I bore down with all my strength, but I couldn’t even see the latch through all my sweat. The guys must have been playing a trick on me—just waiting till I got inside. This wasn’t funny! I’d die!

In a panic I banged on the walls of the Porta-John, and finally I heard a man’s voice say, “Alice? Turn the handle.”

“I
am
!”

“The other way,” he instructed, and suddenly the door flew open, and I almost fell out, gasping for air. I’d been in such a hurry to leave that I’d been turning the latch the wrong way.

“You all right?” asked the burly man in the bandana.

I smiled sheepishly. “I am now,” I said, and wiped my arm across my forehead.

“Easy does it,” he said. “Only thirty more minutes to go.”

At three thirty we put the safety cones and the tools in the truck and finished off the water.

“Thanks for helping out,” Ed told me. “I see they’ve got you down for the bulldozer tomorrow. Come a little early and Lou will show you how to drive it.”

My mouth fell open.

“I thought she was going to run the jackhammer,” said Shorty, and then I knew they were joking again. I thanked them for putting up with me and couldn’t wait to get back in Dad’s car and turn on the air-conditioning.

Note to self: On construction jobs bring water, bring ice, bring toilet paper.

I sat hugging my knees, my forehead pressed against them, feeling vaguely sick to my stomach. The letter was crumpled between my chest and the anthropology book on my lap, and a gust of October wind rustled the crisp leaves that had blown up the steps of McKeldin Library, where I’d been for the last ten minutes.

Was I relieved that Patrick had written me first? Would I have written him? It wasn’t a phone call. Wasn’t an e-mail. It was one and a half pages long, handwritten, one of the few letters I’d received from him in my life.

How long had I known him? Seven, eight years? Ever since sixth grade. We’d broken up once but had gotten back together, and when he went to college, a year ahead of me, it
was understood we could go out with other people. But the understanding was a sort of veneer over the feeling that he and I were really special to each other. Now I wondered if I was the only one who had felt that way.

I turned my head sideways and stared up at the bare branches that were dancing in the wind.

I’ve been putting this letter off because I wasn’t sure how I felt, and I’m writing to say that I’m still not sure. . . .

How had I known what the rest of the lines would say before I’d even read them? But the deeper question was one I was afraid to ask myself: Was I possibly feeling the same way?

Patrick found that he was around women he liked very much, and wanted the freedom to get even closer. Maybe it was a mistake for us to get serious about each other, he wrote, especially because he’d been accepted into the Peace Corps.

What was the big deal? We’d already agreed we could see other people, so what was he telling me—that he was cutting me out of his life? That I was no longer special? The Peace Corps was no surprise. Once he had mentioned it, I knew he would follow through. That was Patrick. The rest? Trying to fence Patrick in was like trying to harness the sea. And yes, if he wasn’t sure about me, he
should
be going out with other women.

But damn it, Patrick!
I stood up and the anthropology text and notebook in my lap tumbled to the step below. I kicked them the rest of the way down, ignoring the guy in the hoodie who was passing below and gave me a wary glance.

This was the second time Patrick dumped me. And he was
being so damned civil about it. Didn’t he have any feelings? What about the way we’d been together on that bench at Botany Pond? What about the way we’d held and touched each other in the limo coming back from the Bay Bridge? The way we’d kissed?

The binder had fallen open and papers were blowing around. I discovered I was crying as I went down the steps to pick them up. Had Patrick cried at all when he wrote the letter? How long had he thought about it? Hesitated, even? Wondered how I’d take it?

My papers collected and the books in my arms again, I began walking down the sidewalk, not caring where I went. The thing was, I found that I kind of liked a number of the guys here at Maryland. As the girls had pointed out, the selection was bigger in college. More diverse. I hadn’t met anyone I liked
more
than Patrick, but I’d met several whom I felt I could maybe like as much, Dave in particular.