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

  “Yes,” I said. “I agree. It is sad.”

  “I’ll write him tonight,” she said. “I’ll tell him exactly how much it cost, tax and all.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  When Al knocked on my door the next morning she smelled clean. She had on her new sweater and her pigtails were stiff and not fuzzy the way they get at the end of the day.

  “I’m ready,” she said. I could smell tooth paste like mad.

  “How do you like her sweater, Mom?” I asked. I had told my mother all about it. “Isn’t it nice?”

  “It’s lovely,” my mother said “That pink is a very good color on you. Would you like to sleep over tonight, Al?”

  It was the first time I could remember my mother asking a friend of mine to sleep over. Usually I have to ask her myself and she mostly says, “I’ll see,” and then forgets I asked her.

  “I would like to,” Al said. “I have to check with my mother, though.”

  “Well,” my mother said, “we’d like to have you. Any time.”

  “Thank you,” Al said. “I will let you know.”

  We went down in the elevator and we did not talk to each other. I don’t know why, except that Al was depressed. I could tell. It is very easy to get depressed when things do not happen the way you plan. People think that children do not get depressed. They think it is specially reserved for grownups. They are wrong.

  “I’m glad the sun came out,” Al said when we reached the basement. “It got rid of all the snow.”

  “Yes,” I said. “That was a break.”

  We knocked our special knock—one, two, three, pause, then four. We waited. There was no noise at all. Unless you count the oil burner, which is always going. And the kids riding their tricycles around while their mothers did the wash. Little kids, like three or four, are very amusing. I like them. Al said once that this is because I identify with them.

  “Is that good?” I had asked.

  Al had shrugged her shoulders. “Good or not good, it doesn’t matter. It is the way things are. Me, I don’t think I was ever a child. Really a child, I mean.”

  I did not know what to say so I didn’t say anything. I have discovered this is a good policy.

  We knocked again.

  “Maybe he is out,” Al said.

  “Where?” I said. “Where would he be? Besides, he expects us.”

  “Open the door,” Al told me.

  “Why don’t you?” I said.

  “All right, I will.” She pushed the door open.

  Mr. Richards’s kitchen was very still. I could hear the refrigerator purring, sort of.

  “Mr. Richards.” Al looked around. “Mr. Richards.”

  “He must be taking a nap,” I said.

  Al looked at me. Mr. Richards does not take naps.

  “Look in there.” Al pointed to the room where Mr. Richards sleeps. It is a little closet kind of a room. He showed it to us once. You would not think it was big enough for a bedroom but he fixed it up with a bed and a radio and a chair. “All the comforts of home,” he had said when he showed us around.

  We tapped on the door. Then we banged. It was so quiet in there that I could hear Al’s heart beating. At least I think it was hers.

  Finally she opened the door. Just a crack. She looked in. “He is there,” she said. “He is in bed. His eyes are closed.”

  “Mr. Richards,” she yelled as loud as she could.

  I looked over Al’s shoulder and I could see him lying there, not moving. He looked awfully little.

  “We’d better call somebody,” I said. “I think that would be the best thing.”

  “Who will we call?” Al asked.

  “My mother and father went downtown to look at a new couch,” I said. “Your mother?” I was not telling her, I was asking.

  “She has a cold. Her head is stopped up and she can’t breathe. That’s why she didn’t go to work. She feels terrible,” Al said.

  “She is still your mother and we have got to call someone that we know,” I said.

  “All right.” Al made up her mind. “If she gets mad, then she gets mad. Let’s go.”

  When we got up to Al’s apartment her mother was still in bed. She had on an old bathrobe that looked sort of like the one my mother wears, and she did not have all that stuff on her face. She looked very pale and her nose looked as though she had been blowing it a lot.

  “Mom,” Al said, “you have to come downstairs. It is Mr. Richards and I think something has happened to him. He is lying in bed and he does not talk to us or move.”

  “Mr. Richards?” Al’s mother said.

  “You know. He is the assistant superintendent and he is a friend of mine. Of ours. He is all alone.”

  Al’s mother surprised me. She got up and said, “I’ll have to change. I can’t go down like this.”

  “Please,” said Al. “This is urgent.”

  “I will call the superintendent,” Al’s mother said. “Maybe you children had better stay here.”

  “No,” we said together, “he is a friend of ours.”

  Al’s mother didn’t argue. She called the super and he said he would check on Mr. Richards and see if there was anything he could do and he would call a doctor. Then we went down in the elevator and Al’s mother still had her bathrobe on, so it was lucky we didn’t have to stop until we got to the basement. She had a big wad of tissues in her hand. She said, “I do hope it is nothing serious,” and, “I look such a fright, I hope we don’t run into anyone.”

  Mr. Richards was just the way we had left him. We sat in the kitchen to wait. There was a big pot of soup on the stove. I was about to tell them how he made his soup when Al’s mother said, “Did you ever see anything like this floor? It positively shines. I wonder how he gets such a polish.”

  Al sat there and the tears started running down her cheeks. They were coming fast and she did not bother to wipe them away.

  “Why, Alexandra,” her mother said. She took out her wad of tissues and made a couple of swipes at Al’s face. “Why, I’m sure it will be all right. Don’t cry, please.”

  Al was really bawling by now. I had never really seen her cry before. Once she almost did when we had a fight, but mostly she gets mad and red in the face. I wanted to cry too, but I did not.

  “It wasn’t as easy as it looked,” Al said when she could talk. “The floor. It wasn’t nearly as easy as it looked.”

  Al’s mother patted her shoulder. She said, “Oh, Al, don’t cry,” a couple more times. She actually called her Al.

  She didn’t know what Al meant. About the floor, I mean.

  I was the only one who knew what she meant.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  The ambulance came and took Mr. Richards away. They told us if we called the hospital in a few hours they would let us know how he was. Al and I wanted to go with him but the attendant said we were too young. So the super went, although he didn’t act like he wanted to much.

  We all went back to Al’s apartment and her mother made cocoa, which we didn’t drink. Not because it wasn’t O.K. cocoa but because we didn’t feel like it. I went to see if my mother and father had come back yet from shopping, but they hadn’t. Teddy was there with a dopey friend of his and I didn’t tell him about Mr. Richards.

  I went back to Al’s and we played cards while we waited. We played double solitaire and Go Fish and Al’s mother tried to teach us how to play bridge. She kept patting Al on the shoulder and then she went to fix us some grilled cheese sandwiches.

  “She makes delicious grilled cheese sandwiches,” Al said proudly.

  The doorbell rang and it was the super.

  “He’s had a coronary attack,” he told us. “They can’t say for sure what his chances are. He’ll have to stay in the hospital for a while. Hope the poor old guy has all his insurance paid up.”

  I went down to my apartment and my mother and father had just come in. My mother started in about the beautiful couch she was thinking of buying, but I sa
id, “Mr. Richards had a coronary attack. Al and I found him and Al’s mother got the super and they took him to the hospital in the ambulance.”

  “Oh, dear,” my mother said. “The poor man. Has he any family, anyone we should notify?”

  “I don’t think there’s anyone to notify,” I said.

  Al came down a little later. “I won’t be able to sleep over tonight,” she said. “My mother had a dinner engagement but she broke it.”

  “Because of her cold?” I asked.

  “That,” Al said. “That and because she said she wanted to stay with me. She said she didn’t want to leave me alone tonight. Actually,” Al said in a confidential tone, “I didn’t think it would be such a hot idea to leave her alone either. She’s sort of down, you know.”

  “Sure,” I said. “It wouldn’t be much fun anyway. I’ll be over in the morning and maybe we can stop at the hospital and see Mr. Richards.”

  “O.K.” she said. “I’d better go and see if my mother wants me for anything. See you.”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  They said at the hospital we could visit in a couple of days. We kept calling and pestering and finally they said we could come but only stay for a few minutes. Mr. Richards was in a ward and we must remember not to talk loud or anything.

  After school we went to the florist and bought him a geranium plant. Then we took the bus to the hospital and asked at the desk for his room number.

  “He’s in Ward D,” the girl said. “Please limit your visit to five minutes.”

  Mr. Richards was in a room with a lot of other men. He looked awful white in the bed.

  “We brought you a plant,” Al said. “It’s a geranium.”

  He said, “I never saw a prettier one. Put it here.” He was there in the bed but his voice sounded like he was talking from a long way away.

  I said, “How do you feel?” because I didn’t know what else to say.

  He smiled a little. “Everything considered, not too bad,” he said. “How’s things at home?”

  We both stood there and said things like, “Fine, fine,” and Al said she was going to polish his kitchen floor until he got back and I said I’d water his plants and then the nurse stuck her head in and said we’d better leave, visiting hours were over.

  “Good-by,” we said. “We’ll come again in a few days.”

  Mr. Richards lifted his hand and let it fall. We backed out of the room. Then we stood in the hall, not doing anything.

  We heard the man in the bed next to him say, “Nice couple of girls you got there. They your granddaughters?”

  His voice came, faint and far away. “You might say that. Yes sir, you might say that.”

  We turned and walked down the hall. We rang for the elevator and went down in it and it wasn’t until we got to the street that Al said, “We should’ve kissed him. We both should’ve.”

  “He probably knows we wanted to,” I said.

  We walked out into the street. It was snowing again.

  Al stuck out her tongue. ‘It tastes like chocolate,” she said.

  I was tired. “Me too,” I said.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Mr. Richards died in the night. He went to sleep and just never woke up. My mother says it is the best way to die.

  “Look at it this way,” she said. “He didn’t have to suffer at all. That is all anyone can ever ask. He had a good death, a happy death. That is what I call it. Don’t feel too bad.”

  I had never heard of a happy death. It is a new idea and I am not sure I like it or don’t like it. I will have to think it over.

  The funeral was just me and Al and my mother and the super. Al’s mother and my father had to work. There wasn’t anyone else there except a couple of old ladies who probably liked to go to funerals.

  The super found an address in Mr. Richards’s room that we told him was probably Mr. Richards’s daughter’s. He wrote her a letter telling her about Mr. Richards’s death but he never heard from her.

  We have a new assistant super now. He is fat and has practically no neck and he looks like he could shovel snow for three days straight. He is always shooing the little kids on their tricycles away from the laundry room and he sometimes uses foul language. I hate him and so does Al. The thing I can’t stand is what Mr. Richards’s kitchen floor must look like with that man living there.

  It happened about a month ago, or more, maybe. Actually, it was five weeks and four days. I know because I marked the day Mr. Richards died on my calendar. I put a black circle around the day.

  I must have started what Mr. Richards called growing into my bones. A boy asked me to a record hop at school. He is the creepiest boy in the whole class. But he asked me. I told him my mother wouldn’t let me go.

  Al has lost about a hundred pounds. She looks great. Also, her mother took her to the place she gets her hair done and had the man wash and set Al’s hair and now she wears it long with a ribbon around it. It is very becoming, my mother says. She is right. But I miss Al’s pigtails. I wanted her to wear it this way but now that she does I’m kind of sorry She looks older and different, is all I know. Also her mother is going to take her on a trip at spring vacation. She is very excited about it.

  I have tried skating around our kitchen floor once or twice when I was all alone in the apartment. Maybe it’s because the floor is the wrong shape. It is long and narrow. Or maybe it’s because I’m clumsy. But I can’t do it. I just can’t. The last time I tried I could almost hear Mr. Richards hollering, “Glide, glide!” and I started laughing when I remembered all the good times Al and I had with him.

  That is one thing about knowing a person like Mr. Richards. You never forget. When I feel depressed I remember all the laughs we had and all the carrot sticks and the shooters of Coke, and I feel better.

  My bookcase is hanging on my bedroom wall where I can see it when I wake up.

  Maybe what Mr. Richards said about Al and me being stunners some day will come true. I only wish he could be around to see it happen. That’s the only thing I wish.

  Turn the page to continue reading from the Al series

  1

  “Why do they call it a period, is what I want to know,” Al said. “Why don’t they call it an exclamation point or a question mark or even a semicolon?”

  Al and I were discussing getting our period. She knew perfectly well why they called it a period.

  “It’s for menstrual period, dummy.” I am a fall guy for Al, which is maybe one reason we’re such good friends. She says things like that and I rise to the bait like a first-class fish every time. Everyone we know, almost, has got her period. It’s sort of like passing your driving test; when you do, people know you’re grown up.

  I got mine last month. Up until then, Al and I were the only two girls in our class who didn’t have our period. Everybody keeps check on everybody else. I never thought it was such a big deal myself. But most of the girls I know keep their sanitary belts and pads in a package in their desks as if they might have to take a trip around the world all of a sudden and don’t want to be caught short.

  I never had any cramps or anything and my mother had prepared me by telling me about the ovum and the menses and the whole deal.

  That left Al. And she was a whole year older than me, which made it worse. She said she didn’t mind not getting her period.

  “Maybe I’ll never get it,” she said. “After all, I’m a nonconformist. Maybe I’m such an outstanding nonconformist I’ll never get my period at all. I’ve read that it’s possible never to get it at all.” The top half of her disappeared inside her locker. She thrashed around, looking for something.

  “Then you can’t have babies,” I said. I know that your period and babies are definitely connected, but I find the facts rather hard to swallow. The facts of life, that is. I also know exactly what happens between a man and a woman to produce a baby. I know that my mother and father must have done it because here I am, not to mention my brother Teddy, fat, dumb an
d happy, with his mouth hanging open, as usual.

  Al took me to a store once where they sell books with pictures of men and women in ridiculous positions with no clothes on. It was enough to make you burst out laughing if you weren’t sort of horrified by the whole thing. Al had been to this store before and there were a couple of pictures she especially wanted to show me. She even had the page numbers and the titles of the books written on a piece of paper. But the guy who ran the store came up to her and said, “Listen, kid, if you keep coming in here, I’m going to have to report you to the juvenile authorities. Now scram.” So we had to leave without seeing the pictures.

  Al shrugged her shoulders. “It’s not so much, not being able to have a baby. Anyway, I don’t think I’m cut out to be a mother. But of course,” she said, picking at her cuticle, “there’s always artificial insemination.”

  Once again, she had me. “What’s that?”

  “You never heard of artificial insemination?” Al raised her eyebrows so far they disappeared into her bangs. I don’t think Al and bangs were meant for each other. She had cut them herself last week and I didn’t have the heart to tell her. If she asked me, I’d say what I thought but she didn’t ask.

  “When a lady can’t have a baby they take the sperm of an unidentified male donor and inject it into her and, presto, she’s pregnant.”

  “You made that up,” I said.

  “Could I make up a story like that?” she asked me. One thing about Al, she has a very vivid imagination but she usually tells the truth.

  “The only trouble,” Al went on, “is that the kid might turn out to be ugly, on account of its father, the unidentified donor, was ugly or maybe a murderer or a criminal or something like that. I think you take an awful chance. Still, it’s a possibility. You’ve got to admit that.”

  “Maybe the unidentified donor turns out to be handsome with a cleft in his chin,” I said. “What then?”

  Al looked puzzled. “What’s a cleft in his chin?”