Patiently Alice (20 page)

“What a treat!” Dad said, reaching for the bread. “This was a nice surprise, Alice. I’ll have to bring Sylvia here sometime.”

I finally began to relax, because I figured nobody would serenade the same girl twice. It was fun now just watching. Every so often another waiter or waitress would stop serving and start singing—sometimes two or three of them together—and occasionally all the servers would join in the chorus, stopping whatever they were doing to sing. Several of the songs were in Italian, and it was great to see Dad enjoying himself so much.

“Oh, listen to this one!” he said when three men sang an aria from
Cosi Fan Tutte,
which, Dad told me, means “Women Are Like That.”

Later, though, after we’d finished our salads and entrées, the most surprising thing happened. A waiter was serving at a table next to ours, and a waitress across the room, began singing to him in Italian.

Dad leaned forward. “Listen, Alice,” he said. “This one is beautiful.”

What is beautiful to my father, of course, sometimes sounds like noise to me, but then I’m
tone-deaf, so that doesn’t count. But because Dad loved the piece so much, I paid special attention. He was mouthing the words as the singers sang. It was obviously a duet, because the woman would sing a few measures and then the waiter would sing a few back to her. Dad sang softly along with the waiter.

And suddenly the waiter, noticing, bowed slightly and gestured toward Dad when it was his turn to sing next. The pianist waited. For just a moment Dad looked flustered; he hesitated, and then—to my astonishment—he rose to his feet and, with one hand extended toward the waitress, sang the baritone part. When it was the woman’s turn, he didn’t sit down, but waited while the waitress sang to him, smiling, and then he finished the piece with a flourish. His voice faltered a little on the high notes, but he brought it to a rousing end, and the whole room broke into applause. Some of the people at adjoining tables even stood up to clap for him. All the waiters and waitresses were smiling and applauding, and I don’t think I ever saw Dad so pleased with himself when he sat back down again.

I could feel tears in my eyes. He was having such a good time! He needed times like these while Sylvia was away. I vowed that until she came back, I was going to take better care of my father.

I reached across the table and gave his arm a squeeze. “You were
wonderful,
Dad!” I said. “Wait till I tell Sylvia about this. You really surprised me!”

“Sometimes I even surprise myself,” Dad said, beaming.

Lester had come in before we did and was up in his room, but I didn’t describe our evening because I wanted to let Dad do the telling. I went up to the bathroom just as the phone rang. Dad was locking up for the night, so he picked up the phone in the hall downstairs.

“Sylvia!” he said when he answered, and I thought what a perfect time it was for her to call. I was tempted to lift the upstairs phone and tell her that Dad had been the hit of the evening, but I didn’t dare.

I knew I should go on in the bathroom and close the door, but I always like to wait a minute or two when Sylvia calls to listen for Dad’s response. I don’t know why, I just have this feeling that… that after losing Mom… if Sylvia were to break their engagement, it would do my father in.

How did I know that her old boyfriend, Jim Sorringer, hadn’t heard that Sylvia’s sister was sick and had flown out to New Mexico to comfort Sylvia? If he could fly to England to surprise her, he could fly to Albuquerque. What if after Sylvia
got out there, she decided that her sister needed her more than Dad did, and made up her mind to stay?

I leaned against the bathroom door, ready to duck inside if Dad looked up or Lester came out of his room.

There was a long pause from below, then a murmur, I couldn’t make out what Dad was saying. But suddenly I heard, “Oh, Sylvia!”

I think I stopped breathing. I
know
I stopped breathing. My whole body grew rigid—waiting… waiting.…

And then he said, “Sweetheart, that’s wonderful! That’s the best news I’ve had all day. October it is, then. I’m so glad Nancy is doing well.”

I danced silently around the hall upstairs. I waltzed into Lester’s room, twirled around on his rug, and said, “Get ready to be best man in October, Lester!” And then, with Les still staring after me, I rushed downstairs, unable to control myself, threw my arms around Dad’s middle, and gave him a bear hug. He just laughed and patted my head and went right on talking to Sylvia.

On Labor Day weekend Lester wanted to take some of his stuff over to the new apartment. “Okay,” he said to me. “Call the Harpies and tell them they can help if they want.”

I looked “Harpies” up in the dictionary. It said a Harpie was a creature in Greek mythology that is half woman, half bird. “Why do you call us Harpies?” I asked.

“Because you chatter like birds,” said Lester.

“Then why don’t you call us chicks or something?”

“Harpies are more you,” he said.

I called Pamela first.

“You mean,
all
weekend? We can sleep over there and everything?” she asked excitedly.

I covered the phone with my hand and looked at Lester, who was drinking his coffee. “All weekend? she wants to know. Can we sleep over there too?”

Lester shot out a mouthful of coffee and coughed. He wiped his lips with one hand. “No, you’re not staying all night. You can take your choice, tomorrow or Monday.”

“Tomorrow,” said Pamela when I told her.

“Tomorrow,” Elizabeth agreed when I called.

“Okay,” Lester said. “Tell them to be over here at ten o’clock, ready to work. We’ll take some boxes over to the apartment and sort them there.”

Pamela believes in dressing for success—we just have different definitions of “success”—and at ten on Sunday morning she arrived in short shorts. I
mean, she didn’t even have to bend over to show us her cheeks. She sported a halter top and thong sandals. Elizabeth, on the other hand, came over wearing the same jersey top she’d worn to mass that morning and had just pulled on a pair of cutoffs to go with it. I was in my usual jeans and T-shirt.

Elizabeth studied Pamela, who was stretching and giving an enormous yawn while we waited for Lester. “Why don’t you just wear a sign saying
FEEL ME?
” she asked her.

Pamela glanced down at herself. “Why? What’s the matter?”

“Those shorts!”

“If you got it, flaunt it,” Pamela sang.

Lester came clattering downstairs carrying two boxes, one on top of the other.

“Well, this is a start,” he said. “Good morning, ladies. Open the door for me, will you, Al?”

“Good mor-ning, Les-ter!” Pamela trilled.

He raised one eyebrow as he paused beside me at the screen. “Take my keys, would you, and open the trunk? I’ve got a couple more boxes upstairs.”

We were soon rolling south on Georgia Avenue toward Takoma Park, and because it was a Sunday and a holiday weekend, the streets were deserted. Seven minutes later we were cruising down a tree-lined street of old Victorian houses, and thirty
seconds after that Lester swung his car into the driveway of a large yellow house with brown trim and a wraparound porch.

“Oh, Lester!” I gasped. “You get to live
here
?”

“Isn’t it great?” he said. “I still can’t believe it.” He turned off the motor. “Okay, everybody out, and carry something in with you. We take the stairs at the side of the house.”

We headed for the separate entrance but bumped into each other because we kept stopping to exclaim over things: a huge sycamore with peeling bark, the two dormer windows at the front of the house, a little stone statue among the shrubbery, some old wicker furniture on the porch—a swing and a rocker.

“Come on up,” Lester called, holding the door open with one elbow as he balanced a footlocker on his knee.

The apartment smelled of fresh paint, and the entryway was only half finished, but there was a stained-glass inset above a window on the opposite wall that let in the morning sun.

We put our boxes down and went exploring, excitedly commenting on every new detail we found. Lester tagged along, smiling broadly, pleased, I could tell, that we were so enthusiastic.

There were two large rooms with closets on one side of the hallway, two smaller rooms with closets
on the other side. In between the smaller bedrooms was a sitting room with French doors that led out onto a screened porch.

“That’s what was known as a sleeping porch at the turn of the century,” Lester said. “Without air-conditioning, the kids—sometimes the whole family—would sleep on cots out on the porch in the summer. But see, if we open the French doors, it extends the living room so we can get more people in.”

“Party, party, party!” Pamela cried. If I’d worried about Pamela being too subdued over the summer, it didn’t seem I’d have to worry about that now.

Back inside, Lester pointed out the door that had been cut between the sitting room and one of the small bedrooms. The closet in that room had been removed and a kitchenette installed—a sink, a counter, a refrigerator, and a stove and oven.

“Not the best kitchen I’ve ever seen, but it’ll do,” Lester said.

“So who gets the two larger bedrooms, and who has to take the small one?” I asked.

“Paul and I get the big ones, and George gets the small one, because he’s not sure he’ll be here next summer. We might have to look for someone else.”

“Boy, Lester, you are so lucky!” I said. I imagined
Elizabeth and Pamela and I sharing an apartment like this when we went to college. Sleeping out on a porch.

“Okay. Work time!” Lester said suddenly. “Here’s what I want you to do. These are boxes of stuff I’ve had since grade school. Some of them, anyway. I want you to go through everything and sort them into three piles: stuff that looks like I should definitely keep, stuff you’re not sure about, and stuff I could possibly throw away. I’ll go through them after you decide, but this will make it easier. Got it?”

“Got it,” said Elizabeth.

Lester went into his bedroom with some hardware and began adding more shelves to his closet.

We sat down on the floor, each of us with a box between her legs, and began. It was obvious Lester wasn’t going to let us go through anything current—love letters from former girlfriends and stuff. But this would be interesting enough, we figured. Opening the first box, I found an odd assortment of stuff: an ashtray made of clay with Lester’s initials on the bottom, a pin for perfect attendance, a flag, string, thumbtacks, a model jeep, scissors, wrapping paper, an old wallet.…

Elizabeth kept finding the most interesting stuff in her box. “Oh, m’gosh, his first-grade class
picture!” she cried, and gave a little shriek. She showed us the photo with an arrow at the side pointing to a little boy with two missing teeth, grinning broadly. “Is that
Lester
?”

We howled and dug around some more. We could hear the tap of Lester’s hammer back in his closet. I felt a little like a preschooler, having been given a box to entertain myself so I wouldn’t get in the way.

“Having fun?” Lester called when he heard all the laughter.

“Oh, definitely!” said Elizabeth.

Lester wandered in to see what was so funny. He looked at the picture. “I was a real ladies’ man, all right,” he said, and went back to work.

Pamela seemed to have all Lester’s school papers and notebooks. Every so often we’d hear her chuckle, and then she’d read something to us. But then we heard her say, “What’s this?”

We watched her untape a yellowed piece of tablet paper, used as a wrapper around something else, it seemed. We stared in surprise as out fell a small pair of cotton underpants with lace around the legs.

Elizabeth clapped her hand over her mouth in amusement as we looked wide-eyed at each other.

“What does the paper say?” I asked.

Pamela turned it over. “It’s just a spelling paper.
Looks like first or second grade with Lester’s name at the top.”

“What do you suppose…?” Elizabeth said.

Suddenly Pamela took the underpants and pulled them over her head like a hat.

She motioned us to follow her and walked across the hall into Lester’s bedroom.

“Boy, you find all kinds of stuff in boxes, don’t you?” she said. “Ta da, Lester!”

Lester backed himself out of his closet and turned around. He stared at Pamela, then at her head, squinting slightly. “What’s that?” he asked.

Pamela took the underpants off and read the label on the inside. “‘Buster Brown, size 6,’” she said. “Hey, Les, you weren’t a cross-dresser back in elementary school, were you?”

And suddenly, right before our eyes, Lester’s face and neck and ears grew as pink as Elizabeth’s jersey top. He reached out for the underpants, but Pamela snatched them away and held them behind her, eyes flashing mischievously. “Not until we hear the whole story, Les!” she said.

We hooted.

He laughed a little. “Some things were meant to stay private,” he said.

That only made us more curious. “Tell us!” we begged.

He groaned and gave us a look. “Well, I was in second grade, and there was this little dark-haired girl named Maxine—Maxie, we called her—that I had a wild, secret crush on, and I was too shy to tell her.”

“You?
Shy?
” cried Elizabeth.

“But not shy enough to take off her pants, huh?” teased Pamela.

Lester held up one hand.

“Go on,” I said.

“One day on the playground Maxie jumped off the swings, and when she landed, she must have wet her pants. I didn’t know what had happened at first, I just saw her jump and fall, and then she had this strange look on her face as she glanced around. A few minutes later, though, I was on the monkey bars and saw her go off behind the bushes in one corner and take off her underpants. She just left them there. When the bell rang, she came back and stood in line like everyone else, and I was the only one who knew she was naked under her dress.”

“And you spent the afternoon trying to peek?” asked Pamela.

“No, no. But I kept thinking of her all afternoon, and when school was out, I went back there and got her underpants. They were wet, and there were ants all over them, but I took them home and
rinsed them out. I was going to let them dry and then take them back to her the next day, but I was too embarrassed. So I never did. I kept them.”