A Girl Called Al: The Al Series, Book One Read online

  “Well, ladies,” he said, “you look a little the worse for wear.”

  “I slept over at Al’s,” I said. “We didn’t get to sleep until late.”

  Mr. Richards winked. “When you girls get together there’s no stopping you. I hope you’re all set for our shop lesson this morning. I found a nail or two, a hammer, and I got me some boards out. So how about a piece of bread and butter before we start?”

  He fixed us each a thick slice and poured a pile of sugar on top. We hadn’t had much breakfast at Al’s, on account of there was nothing in the refrigerator but yoghurt. Strawberry yoghurt.

  “No, thank you,” I had said when Al offered me some. “I’m not up to it today.”

  “It’s not bad,” she had said, putting it back. I noticed she didn’t eat any either.

  Anyway, we had two or three more pieces of bread and then a couple of cups of tea. Al put three lumps in hers and I put four. Mr. Richards didn’t say boo. He put five in his.

  He is a very satisfactory host. I would rather have breakfast at his house than anywhere else. Except maybe at home on Sunday. My father always makes waffles on Sunday and they are very good. He calls them superb, but I think that’s stretching it a little.

  Finally, we got down to business. Mr. Richards had set up a piece of plywood as a table for us to work on. He showed us how to nail the shelves in place and hammer in the nails without banging our fingers.

  “It’s a cinch,” Al said. “I think when I get it finished I will send it to my father.”

  We worked along for a while and pretty soon my stomach was making noises you could hear practically a mile away. It was very embarrassing.

  “Must be lunch time,” Mr. Richards said. “Time for a break. Got some soup on the stove. Care to stay and take potluck?”

  Al and I had two bowlfuls each. Some time I will tell her about how he makes the soup.

  “Do you like to cook?” Al asked him.

  Mr. Richards shrugged his shoulders. “Now and then,” he said. “You ladies know how to make a white sauce?”

  We said no.

  “You got to know how to make a white sauce, you want to cook. Very handy thing to know. Would you believe that when I got married my wife didn’t know how to boil water even? I had to show her.”

  “I didn’t know you were ever married,” I said. I wish I had known before Al did. I don’t know why but I do.

  “I was just a shaver,” he said. “She wasn’t much older’n you two. Pretty as a picture too. But it wasn’t a good thing. No, it wasn’t a good thing. We was too young. She took our baby daughter and went back to her mama and papa. Too many diapers, too much work, not enough fun, not enough money. Like I say, she didn’t know how to cook. Didn’t want to learn. It’s a bad thing to get tied down too young. Remember that, ladies.”

  “Mr. Richards, whatever happened to your baby daughter?” Al asked.

  “Well,” he said, “she’s not a baby any more. She has two, three babies of her own. Must be one of ’em about your age. I sent ’em a box of candy last Christmas, I think it was. I don’t know if they got it, come to think. I never did hear if they got it.”

  We all sat quiet for a minute.

  “I’ll show you how to make a white sauce,” he said. “First, you melt your butter, then stir in your flour slow like, then add milk, stirring all the time. Don’t stop stirring or she’ll lump up on you. Very handy thing to know.”

  “What do you do with it when you’re finished?” Al asked.

  “Creamed potatoes,” he said. “Creamed tuna fish. Creamed eggs.”

  We looked at him.

  “Mr. Richards,” Al said, “what I would really like to know is how to skate like you do. Skate on the floor with rags. Would you teach me how to do that?”

  “Well now,” he said, getting some rags out from under the sink, “that’s a puzzler. I been doing it for so long I can’t recollect when I started. I’ll tell you one thing, though. It’s not as easy as it looks.”

  Al took first turn and she wasn’t too good.

  “Glide, glide, that does it,” Mr. Richards hollered.

  Al gave up after a couple of falls. I went next. I wasn’t much better.

  “Show us again,” I said. “It looks so easy when you do it.”

  “Young folks ain’t changed a bit,” Mr. Richards said, tying the rags around his sneakers. “Think they can do anything they try first time around. I told you it wasn’t as easy as it looks.” And he skated smoothly around the edges of his shining linoleum, smiling a big smile.

  Chapter Ten

  After church on Sunday my mother started buttering slices of bread and wrapping them in wet towels and waxed paper. They were so thin you could practically see through them.

  Teddy came into the kitchen. For once his nose wasn’t running, but he had his mouth hanging open in a way I hate. He looks like a moron when he does it.

  “Mom,” I said, “I thought you promised.” I looked at him hard. “You have anything to do this afternoon!” I asked. “A science project over at your friend’s house, or how about the movies?”

  “The movie is one of those movies for mature audiences only,” Teddy said with a smirk. When Teddy smirks I would like to slap his face.

  “Dad’s taking me to the hockey game,” he said. “Boy, what a relief it’ll be to get out of this house. What a lot of baloney a tea party is anyway. How come you’re getting so fancy just for old Al and her mother?”

  “Good question.” My father came into the kitchen. “Unanswerable, but good. What have we here?”

  My mother took a blue box out of the refrigerator.

  “Swiss Chalet!” Teddy howled.

  The Swiss Chalet is a very expensive bakery where my mother goes only when my grandmother—my father’s mother—is coming to visit, which she does only about once a year. My grandmother, who is little and round and going bald like my father, has a terrific sweet tooth.

  “Let’s have a look,” my father said.

  My mother opened the box like it was full of eggs or a time bomb or something. Inside were all kinds of cookies and cakes decorated with whipped cream and shaved chocolate. “You can have one when you get back if they’re any left,” she said.

  They both looked at her and Teddy’s mouth hung open wider than ever. “I’m hungry,” he whined.

  “Please,” my mother said. “Go get a hot dog at the game. Please.” She pushed them gently toward the door.

  When we heard the elevator door slam, we each breathed a sigh of relief.

  My mother went into her room to get dressed.

  “Mom,” I said, “will you wear a little more lipstick than usual? And some of that rouge you have. And don’t forget to hold in your stomach.”

  “Same to you,” my mother said. But when she came out she looked very pretty.

  “You look pretty,” I said. “Your hair looks nice.”

  “I feel as if I was trying out for Mrs. America,” she said.

  “You’d win,” I said.

  The doorbell rang at three minutes after four. My mother smoothed her skirt and said, “Would you answer it please?”

  Al’s mother said, “Hello, dear, how are you?” and my mother said, “Good afternoon, won’t you come in?”

  We sort of stood there for a minute.

  “What a sweet place,” Al’s mother said.

  “Sit down, won’t you?” my mother said.

  Al smelled of tooth paste. She even had some around her mouth. “You’ve got tooth paste on your mouth,” I said. She wiped her face on her sleeve.

  “You want me to get the tea now, Mom?” I asked.

  “Please,” she said, then turned to Al’s mother. “Unless you’d rather have some sherry? Or a drink of some sort?”

  “To me,” Al’s mother said, “afternoon tea is one of the few civilized customs left. It revives me.” “How enchanting!” she said as I brought out the tray. My mother’s silver teapot shone and, the way I’d fixed it,
the bread and butter looked like a giant pin wheel.

  “Will you have lemon or cream?” my mother asked as she passed the cakes.

  “How delicious and how fattening!” Al’s mother cried. “I hate to think of how many calories there are in each of these.” She took one and put it on a plate. She only ate half.

  “Would you girls get some hot water?” my mother asked. We went to the kitchen and ate a few cookies and listened.

  “I want to thank you for being so kind to Alexandra,” Al’s mother said. “I have to be away from home so much of the time, it’s a comfort to me to know she can call on you if she should need to.”

  “We like Al,” my mother said. “She is a very nice child. We all like her.”

  “Of course,” Al’s mother went on, “she is very self-sufficient. She has been on her own a good deal and I think that tends to make them self-sufficient, don’t you?”

  “I suppose so,” my mother said. “Will you have another cup of tea?”

  “Thank you. I will. It was so kind of you to ask us,” Al’s mother said. “I’ve been wanting to get to know you better ever since we moved in, but what with my job, I don’t get nearly enough chance to see people.”

  “We are so glad you could come.”

  They talked about different places Al and her mother had lived and about the store where Al’s mother works.

  Then Al’s mother looked at her watch.

  “Where has the time gone?” she asked. “I had no idea it was so late. I’m afraid we must run, but before we do, I want to thank you again for all your kindness to Alexandra. It has meant a great deal to her, I know, to be a part of your family fun. I try, but I cannot make up for not being a real family. Just the two of us is hard, sometimes. It is difficult, doing it alone.”

  “I can well imagine,” my mother said. “It is often difficult even with the help of a man.”

  The front door opened and my father and Teddy came in.

  “May I present my husband?” my mother said.

  My father took Al’s mother’s hand, and instead of shaking it, he sort of bowed. He bowed low over her hand. He didn’t kiss it, but he looked like he might. Al dug her elbow into my ribs. Teddy’s mouth hung open and Al’s mother said, “How delightful to meet you. Al’s told me so much about you.”

  My father smiled. “I wish I could have gotten home sooner,” he said.

  “It’s been such fun,” Al’s mother said, and they left.

  My mother started to carry the tray out. “Charm was certainly oozing from every pore,” she said.

  Teddy crammed a whole mouthful of bread and cookies into his mouth, so for once, it was closed.

  “Was it all right?” my mother asked.

  “It was great,” I said. “Just great. I think they liked it. Thanks, Mom. Al’s mother is really very nice, don’t you think?”

  “Very nice,” she said. “Do you think those fingernails were real?”

  My father went over to my mother and bent over her hand, nibbling his way up her arm like he was eating an ear of corn.

  “Not on your tintype,” he said.

  Chapter Eleven

  “I have been invited to Al’s for supper,” I told my mother. “Her mother is out for dinner and she gave Al money to get a pizza. Please.”

  “Let her come here instead,” my mother said, darning a hole in my father’s sock. Darning always makes her cross.

  “She says she’s been here too much and that her mother wants to repay our hospitality.”

  “It’s a school night.” She sighed and put down the darning. I have noticed that she will use almost any excuse to put down darning.

  “We’ll do our homework together and we promise not to watch television,” I said.

  “You can go if you’ll be home by eight-thirty,” she said.

  “You’re the mother of my dreams,” I told her.

  I put my books in a pile and went to Al’s. She had all the lights in the entire apartment on. It made the house cosier, she said.

  We went down to the corner to Angelo’s and ordered a sausage-and-pepper pizza. To go. I wanted to stay there and eat it and watch Angelo throw the dough in the air and catch it and make the different kinds that people ordered, but Al said, “Let’s take it home.”

  It was still warm when we got it back, on account of we ran. We each had a Coke because, though I would rather have milk, all they have is skimmed milk, which is pale gray, and I don’t find it too appetizing.

  “Your mother,” I said when we were eating, “where does she go when she goes out all the time?”

  “She goes dancing, mostly,” Al said. “She is a very good dancer. Or else they go to a play or the movies or something.”

  “Does she, you know, does she go steady? With any one person, I mean.”

  Al got a little red. “You don’t go steady when you are my mother’s age,” she said. “She has to have masculine companionship. She has a very demanding job and a lot of women telling her what to do, and she likes masculine companionship.”

  “Do you think she’ll ever get married again?” I asked, helping myself to another piece of pizza.

  “I doubt it.” Al hit the bottom of the Coke bottle with her straw and gave a big slurp.

  “Who’s she out with tonight?” I asked.

  “The one I told you about. The one who wanted to take me to the circus. Can you imagine!” Al rolled her eyes. “Me, at the circus!”

  “What’s the matter with that?” I asked.

  “At my age, go to the circus? Are you crazy? I outgrew it years ago. My father wouldn’t dream of any dumb thing like that. He’d take me out to a snazzy place for dinner and then maybe to an art film.”

  “What’s an art film?” I asked.

  “Where they speak in a foreign language and have little lines underneath that tell you in English what they’re saying.”

  “You like art films?” I asked.

  “Not really.” She shrugged. “Anyway, this one’s name is Mr. Herbert Smith and he said, ‘Call me Herb,’ if you can feature such a thing. At least he didn’t say ‘Call me Uncle Herb.’ That’s the living end when they want you to call them ‘Uncle’ and they’re not your uncle. I can’t stand that. Anyway, he’s trying to buy me.” She made her eyes big and round like an owl’s.

  “What do you mean, trying to buy you?” I asked. “You’re no bargain.” I looked at her.

  “Like, he brings me things. He brought me a pair of slippers tonight. A pair of fuzzy slippers like a kid’s. He buys me something almost every time he comes to take my mother out. He thinks it makes me like him. And I want to tell you he is very much mistaken. Very much mistaken indeed.” Al paced back and forth with her hands behind her back.

  “Were they the right size?” I asked.

  She said, “What?”

  “The slippers. Were they the right size?”

  She snorted. “I didn’t try them on. I just said ‘Thank you’ and put them back in the box.”

  “Your father buys you things and you don’t think he’s trying to get you to like him, do you?”

  “That’s different. He’s my father.”

  My father hardly ever buys me things. He sends me a Valentine every year that he picks out, but outside of that, my mother does the buying.

  “Does your mother like Herb better’n any of the others she goes out with?” I asked.

  Al hunched her shoulders. “I don’t know. All I know is, when he’s coming I have to comb my hair and put on a clean blouse and I have to smile until my face feels like it’s cracking. Then he tells me about how I remind him of his niece’s little girl and it turns out she’s about six and her teeth stick out and she has her own horse. If there’s anything I hate, it’s a kid who has her own horse. Are they ever stuck-up. They are such snobs when they own their own horse.”

  “Let’s have some pie for dessert,” Al said suddenly. She switches subjects very fast. It is interesting. You never get time to be bored.


  “We have coconut cream,” she said from inside the freezer compartment.

  I felt like I had a giant ball of pizza and Coke inside me. “No, thanks,” I said. What I didn’t need was to add a little coconut cream.

  “I have to write my autobiography for English,” Al said. “I have to make it interesting and informative. I also need a picture of myself when I was little. Boy, was I ever a funny-looking kid.” She started to laugh.

  “So was I,” I said. “My mother said she felt better when she saw her babies were funny-looking. She said the funnier-looking they are when they’re born, the better they turn out in the long run.”

  “No kidding?” Al went and looked at herself in the mirror. “Is that right? If it is, I should be a winner.”

  We got down to our homework but it was sort of hard because Al was in a real chatty mood.

  “Imagine if we were sisters,” she said. “And we lived in the same house and slept in the same room and did our homework together every night. I wonder if we’d fight. Do you think we would?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Have you ever wanted a sister?” Al asked.

  “I’d trade Teddy in on a sister, if that’s what you mean,” I said.

  “He’s better’n nothing,” Al said. Then she started doing her math. When she does her math she breathes hard, thumps around, and stares at the ceiling and sighs. Finally I said, “Would you please shut up? I can’t think.”

  It was time for me to go. “I’ve got to be back by eight-thirty or my mother will never let me come again on a school night.”

  “I’ll walk you down the hall,” she said.

  “You don’t have to do that,” I said.

  “I know I don’t,” she said. She turned on the television.

  “What’d you do that for?” I said as we went out the door.

  “It’s nice to come back and hear voices,” she said. “It’s sort of like coming in to a party or a whole bunch of people. You know?”

  “Sure,” I said. “Thanks for the pizza.”