Al(exandra) the Great: The Al Series, Book Four Read online

  “What’s that mean?” I asked.

  “My features are not—how you say it in this country?—piquant. They do not sparkle. And another thing.” She turned toward me, her face all puckered. I thought for a minute she was getting ready to cry.

  “How come my hair doesn’t move?”

  I didn’t say anything. I figured she really didn’t expect me to.

  “I use conditioner, the way they tell you to. I wash my hair so much it’s a wonder I’m not bald. So what happens? Nada. Zilch. When I move my head, my hair just stands there. Doing nothing.”

  When I first knew Al, she wore pigtails. Then she went to her mother’s beauty shop and they styled her hair.

  “In no way,” Al said, spacing her words carefully, “in absolutely no way does my hair resemble the hair of one of those chicks in those shampoo commercials. It just stands there.”

  She tossed her head from side to side. She was right. It did just stand there.

  “Did I show you this?” Al dragged out a sweater from her bottom drawer and gave it to me. It was the exact color of violets. I touched it. It was very soft, very beautiful.

  “I bet it cost plenty,” I said.

  “My mother gave it to me. As a going-away present.” Al put the sweater back in the drawer.

  “That was nice of her,” I said. My mother almost never gives me presents, going-away presents. Maybe that’s because I don’t go anywhere.

  “I wish she wouldn’t give me so many presents,” Al said. She sat on the edge of her bed and put her hands between her knees and looked at them. “Sometimes I think she gives me a lot of things to make up for the fact she’s not here when I come home after school. I think my mother suffers a lot of guilt feelings about me.”

  “Why should she? She’s a good mother. Lots of kids’ mothers work. Practically everyone’s mother works.”

  “Yours doesn’t,” Al said in what seemed to me to be a cold voice.

  “So what?”

  “Nothing. But she doesn’t.”

  “Yeah. All she does all day is lie around eating bonbons and reading dirty French novels,” I said in a sour tone. Boy. What got her started on my mother not working? What was I supposed to do—apologize to her because my mother didn’t work? Holy Toledo. I didn’t like where this was headed.

  “Hey,” I said. “What’s with you? How come you’re feeling sorry for yourself? You’ve got a lot of things going for you. Here you are packing for a trip that sounds great. A barn dance and everything. You heard from Brian. You heard from your father. What more do you want? How come you’re on a feel-sorry-for-Al kick?”

  When Al gets down like this, for no reason, it makes me mad. She broods too much.

  “I am not.” Al went into the bathroom. I felt like leaving. One minute we’re having a great time, the next she’s in the pits. I don’t get in the pits nearly as often as Al does. I don’t know why but I don’t. Maybe it’s because my mother doesn’t work. Ha ha. While she was still in the bathroom, I took the brown vest from the box and put it on.

  “O.K. if I take this?” I asked Al when she came out. “As long as you’re giving it away anyway?”

  She frowned. “What do you want that old thing for? It’s a mess.”

  “I want to keep it as a reminder.”

  “A reminder of what?”

  “Of when you were young and in the pits. When you’re middle-aged and famous, I’ll take it out and show it to my kids and say, ‘Al wore this when she felt bad. Then she gave it to me and she never again felt bad. She never got depressed again. Because all the bad feelings went with the brown vest.’ How’s that?”

  She thought about it. She wasn’t sure if I was serious or not. Neither was I. But I saw her lips twitch. Just a little.

  “Sure. Take it. That’s not a bad idea. Next vest I buy is going to be bright orange. You know. The same color the school crossing guards wear. If that doesn’t cheer me up, nothing will.”

  “Not only will it cheer you up,” I said, “it’ll also keep you awake. That is some color.”

  “I do believe,” Al said earnestly, “that colors cheer people up. It stands to reason.” She went to her bureau and pulled the violet sweater out, put it around her shoulders and tied the sleeves around her neck.

  “Is that preppy or is that preppy?” she said, turning this way and that, like a model, so I could see how preppy she was.

  “You better not tie that sweater around your neck when you get to the farm,” I said. “They don’t dig that kind of stuff in the boonies.”

  “You just said a very interesting thing.” Al sat down on her bed again. “I have to watch my step when I get there. They talk about different things in the country. They have different interests. Like, for instance, I better bone up on feed and crops and weather conditions. That’s the kind of stuff the 4-H club members relate to. Cows and horses and pigs. When you come right down to it, I know practically nothing about cows and horses, much less pigs.”

  “If worse comes to worst,” I said, “you can always give them a shot of monkey talk. They don’t have monkeys up there, do they?”

  “I heard something last night on the TV,” Al said. “It might be good to throw in if the conversation lags. I wrote it down.” She went over to her desk and picked up a tiny piece of paper. She’s always writing tidbits of info on tiny pieces of paper.

  “Did you know,” Al began, looking over the tops of her glasses at me, “that a female panda is fertile only twelve hours a year?”

  After a bit I said, “That ought to do it. That might stir things up in farm country. You got any more of those lying around?”

  “No,” she said. “But I’ve got a few days left before I go. Keep your ears open, will you? If you hear any interesting animal facts, write ’em down for me, will you? I’d appreciate it.”

  I said I would. I sat and watched her pack a little while longer. At the rate she was going, I thought it was a good thing she’d started early. No sooner did she put something in her suitcase than she put her chin in her hands, thought about it, then pulled out what she’d just put in and put something else in.

  “Hey,” I said finally, “I’ve got to go home and fix meat loaf. It’s just me and my father. My mother took Teddy to the cousins in Connecticut for a visit. You want to take potluck with us?”

  “I’d like to,” Al said. “But I better not. I promised myself I’d stick around every night until I go. My mother and I talk about stuff. We’re better friends now. Than we used to be, that is. As a matter of fact”—Al gave me her owl eye—“last night we had a candid conversation about sex.”

  “You did? What’d she say?”

  “Nothing I didn’t already know. But I didn’t tell her that. She really never got off the ground, but I gave her A for effort. I’ll take a rain check, all right?”

  “Sure,” I said, and went home to make my meat loaf.

  CHAPTER 4

  It isn’t very often that just me and my father are alone together. My father and I, I should say. I like it when we are. We talk about things we don’t talk about when it’s the four of us: the whole family. For one thing, we don’t have to stop all the time and explain things to Teddy. Teddy needs a lot of things explained to him. When I said that to my mother once, she said, “You did, too, when you were his age. How else do you expect to learn things if they’re not explained?”

  It was a hot, sticky night. We had air conditioning only in the bedrooms. I opened the living room window. Even when the city is very hot, the street noises go on. As a matter of fact, there are more of them in the summer because everyone who can’t afford to go to an air-conditioned restaurant or an air-conditioned movie is out on the street trying to get cool. I hoped my father would take me out to an air-conditioned movie. Or a restaurant. I doubted the restaurant, though. We almost never went out for dinner. It was too expensive. And as my father invariably said, “I like the groceries right here much better than in any restaurant.” My father is a very smart
man.

  On second thought, I wasn’t sure about meat loaf. The thought of turning on the oven made me sweat more than I already was sweating. Maybe we’d have hamburgers instead. Hamburgers are always good. There isn’t too much you can do to ruin a hamburger.

  I turned on the radio and danced around the kitchen. “Glide, glide,” I said aloud. Mr. Richards. One point for me. Al and I have this routine. Every time one of us says something Mr. Richards used to say, we get one point. That’s what Mr. Richards used to say when he was trying to teach us to polish the kitchen floor the way he did. “Glide, glide,” I shouted above the noise of the music. If anyone had heard me they’d have thought I was losing it.

  I like being alone, but I wouldn’t like to be alone all the time. I wouldn’t like to come home alone to an empty house every day, the way Al did. But once in a while being alone is a luxury. For one thing, if I didn’t know that Teddy was safely up in Connecticut, I wouldn’t be dancing around the kitchen. Because he’d catch me at it and start imitating me. I can’t stand it when he imitates me.

  I took out an ice cube and ran it over my forehead and my wrists, the way my mother did. It didn’t cool me off much. I hoped, for my mother’s sake, not for Teddy’s, that it was cooler in Connecticut. My mother was visiting her sister Tess up there. Tess has two boys, one almost exactly Teddy’s age. Tess just got a divorce. She and my mother are two years apart. My mother is older, but as far as I’m concerned, my mother looks about ten years younger than Tess.

  My mother has a cow if anyone makes a long distance phone call except on Saturdays and Sundays, when the rates are down. Once in a great while—a real emergency—she forces herself to call during the day when the rates are at their highest. Before Tess and my uncle got their divorce, I caught my mother calling her sister in the middle of the day. Quite a few times. Well, that’s when I knew something serious was going on.

  “Why is Tess getting a divorce?” I asked my mother.

  “Because he fell in love with another woman,” my mother told me. I’ve thought about that a lot. And wondered if my father would ever fall in love with another woman. Once I asked my mother if she thought he would, and she said, “He wouldn’t dare.”

  I guess my mother and father will hang in there. I hope so. I know a lot of kids whose parents are divorced. I’m practically the only kid in my class whose parents aren’t divorced—or at least separated. That used to embarrass me a little. I felt as if I had to explain why my parents were still married to each other. That was when I was much younger, of course, when I didn’t like being different. I’ve matured since then. But all these kids would come back to school on Monday or after vacations and tell these fantastic tales about where their father had taken them. I knew this one girl who said she and her father had flown to Bermuda. Just for the weekend. Well, she wasn’t even tan.

  “How come you’re not tan?” I asked her. She said, “It rained.” This girl has a reputation for not telling the truth. Still, she showed me the shells she’d picked up on the beach they’d walked on during a downpour.

  Another kid I know said her father took her and his new girl friend—who was named Clorinda, of all things—to Lake Placid to ski. She said her father and Clorinda stayed on the novice slope while she skied the intermediate ones and that Clorinda twisted her ankle first crack out of the barrel and spent most of the day sitting in front of the fire, drinking hot toddies. And holding hands with my friend’s father.

  Boy. If I get to go to Barnes & Noble to buy a discounted book, it’s a red-letter day. Big deal. I’ve decided it cuts down a lot on the excitement of your life-style when your parents stay married to each other.

  I guess you can’t have everything.

  I heard my father’s key in the lock.

  “Hi, Dad,” I said. He was carrying his jacket. He’d opened his tie and undone the first button on his shirt. That showed it was really hot out. My father is quite a tidy man. His sleeves were also rolled up. He has very muscular forearms, which he got from piloting a gigantic plane when he was in the Air Force.

  “How about a shooter of Coke?” I asked him. That’s another of Mr. Richards’ sayings.

  “No, but I’ll accept a shooter of beer if you have one handy,” my father said. He really looked wilted.

  “Coming right up.” He went to take a shower. I got him his beer. When he came out he looked much better, much less wilted. My father is not exactly handsome. He’s not very tall, and he’s going bald. But if we passed on the street I think we would smile at each other even if we were strangers. He has very nice manners, and his eyes are a beautiful shade of gray-green. I asked my mother once what made her fall in love with him, and she said it was the way his hair grew on the back of his neck. And also the way he smelled. I think the best thing about him is that he can laugh at himself. He doesn’t take himself very seriously. The worst thing about him is that he puts too much importance on getting good marks in school. When I bring home D’s in my report card, he always says, “You can do better.” How does he know? I’m doing the best I can.

  When I first met Al, she said she had a very high IQ but that she didn’t work to capacity. She used to freak me out talking like that. A lot of the time I didn’t understand her. She also told me she was a nonconformist, as if that were something very special to be, something that set her apart. She was probably right. There aren’t too many nonconformists running around these days. That I know.

  I don’t work to capacity either. I don’t know anyone who does. Except maybe the infamous Martha Moseley. She’s a girl in my class who is not to be believed. In addition to all her other charming idiosyncrasies, Martha has a habit of flashing her report card in people’s faces so they can’t miss the tidy rows of A’s and B’s she’s racked up. You should hear her carry on when she gets a B-minus. It’s enough to make a person retch.

  My father and I sat in the bedroom with the air conditioner on high and watched the evening news. Watching the evening news with my father is not the most restful thing in the world on account of he doesn’t happen to agree with anything the President says or does. He talks to the screen the entire time the President comes on the telly. Or the Secretary of State. He really has it in for the Secretary of State. This was going to be one of those nights.

  “Oh, yeah,” my father said in the special voice he reserves for talking to the President. “That’s your story. Just go on the way you’re going and you’ll be out on your ear. Just continue robbing the poor and handing the money to the rich. Then try to get re-elected. Just try.” My father chortled at the mental picture of the President trying to get re-elected. I went to the kitchen and started making the hamburger patties. I make a very neat patty, with no uneven edges, if I do say so. I could hear my father talking a mile a minute, as if he had several guests.

  As I took out a package of frozen broccoli from the freezer, I decided I would find out what my IQ was. By hook or by crook. I hope it doesn’t turn out to be a disappointment.

  CHAPTER 5

  The next morning I zapped down the hall and rang Al’s bell. I couldn’t hear anyone moving around inside. I put my ear to the door. Nothing but silence. Maybe she’d overslept. Her mother usually left for work about a quarter to nine. Maybe Al was packing and unpacking her suitcase one more time.

  I rang again. The door opened. Slowly, reluctantly. Al stood there, looking at me. She still had on her pajamas.

  “My mother’s just leaving,” she said. She made a face at me. Her mouth was thin and sort of pinched looking, the way it gets when she’s tense or nervous.

  “I’ll come back after she goes,” I said.

  “No, that’s O.K. Come on in,” Al said. Her mother was leaning toward the mirror, putting on her lipstick.

  “Hello, dear,” she said. She always calls me “dear.” I used to think it was because she didn’t know my name. But once when Al was away I visited her mother and we became friends. She calls me “dear” because she likes me. I know because Al
told me. I like her too. It’s easy to like someone when you know they like you. As a matter of fact, it’s hard not to.

  Al stood and watched her mother, her arms folded on her chest, a frown furrowing her forehead. I stayed near the door.

  “You come straight home tonight,” Al told her mother. “I’ll get dinner and you can go to bed early.” Al’s mother did look tired. And thin. But she’s always been thin. She says thin people look better in clothes than fat ones. When I first knew Al, she talked about wearing Chubbies, which are clothes for fat kids. She was always eating fattening things, as if she wanted to get fatter. Then Mr. Richards began feeding us carrot sticks and stuff like that, and Al lost a lot of weight. Right now she’s sort of in between. I’m skinny.

  Al’s mother kissed her and then she kissed me. She kisses people more than my mother does. My mother is not a kissing person. She only kisses people if she’s known them practically her entire life. Or if she really likes them. Really likes them, I mean. She’s just not a kisser.

  “You smell good,” I told Al’s mother. She always did, due to the fact she put so much gunk in her bath water (she called it a “tub”).

  After she’d gone, Al said, “She doesn’t feel so hot. I tried to get her to stay home from work today. But she wouldn’t. She thinks if she stays home one lousy day, that store will collapse. But she has this cough that won’t go away. I’m worried about her.”

  “I didn’t hear her cough,” I said.

  “Stick around at night. She coughs practically all night.” Al began to pace. “Last night,” she said in a dark voice, “last night she went out with Mr. Wright and got home late. Very late.”

  Mr. Wright is Al’s mother’s new beau. She gave Ole Henry Lynch the mitten and now she’s going out with Mr. Wright. When Al first told me about him, she said she thought he might be “Mr. Right.” In the olden days, Al said, girls used to sit on the front porch knitting and waiting for Mr. Right to come along. That was back in the days when girls got married a lot. They got out of school and then they sat and waited for Mr. Right. Bizarre. What I want to know is how did they know he was Mr. Right. He could just as easily be Mr. Wrong. Or Mr. Rong.