The phone rang.
“Gwen said she’d call,” Pamela told us. “I’ll get it,” she called to her dad, and picked up the extension in her room. It was Karen.
“Are you ready for this? Big news,” we heard her say.
What
else
can happen tonight?
I was thinking.
Pamela held the phone out so we could all hear even better. “Okay, what?” she asked.
“Guess who’s sleeping together.”
We looked at each other.
“Sam and Jennifer?” said Pamela.
“They broke up,” said Karen.
“They did?” Pamela said, giving me a surprised look, because Sam used to like me.
“Just after school let out,” said Karen. “But I’m talking about someone else.”
“Who, then?” asked Pamela. “Elizabeth and Alice are here. Tell us.”
“Good! Then I won’t have to call them. Guess again.”
“Penny and Mark?” Elizabeth guessed.
“Not that I know of. I mean, I don’t go around
asking,
for Pete’s sake!” said Karen.
“No, she just goes around telling,” I whispered, but that didn’t stop me from listening.
“We give up,” said Pamela.
“Jill and Justin.”
“Justin?” said Elizabeth. Justin used to like
her.
“Uh-oh. Have I put my foot in my mouth?” Karen asked. “Liz? You don’t still like him, do you?”
“How do you know this, Karen?” I asked, taking the phone.
“Jill told me.”
“Well, thanks for that little piece of information,” Pamela said.
“And you know who else?” said Karen.
“Karen!” Elizabeth and I said together. At the same time, however, Pamela said, “Who?”
But Karen said, “Well, if you don’t want to know…” and hung up.
The phone rang again almost immediately.
Pamela picked it up again. “Okay,
who
?” she said.
There was a pause. And then we heard Mrs. Jones’s voice saying, “Pamela,
please
make him talk to me.”
Elizabeth looked around as though she wanted to find the escape hatch.
“Mom, he doesn’t want to! How can I make him?” Pamela said. She wouldn’t put the phone against her ear, as though it were so hot it might burn her.
“The last two years have been a nightmare,” we heard Mrs. Jones say. “That was the worst mistake I ever made in my life, and I just want to tell him.”
I wished Pamela wouldn’t let us hear. I felt as though I should cover my ears or go in the bathroom or something.
“You already told him that. You wrote him a letter, remember?” Pamela said. “But he says it’s over, Mom. It’s just over.”
“Well, forget my coming back. All I want is to talk to him.”
“If that’s your mother, hang up,” Pamela’s dad yelled from below.
“Dad wants me to hang up,” Pamela said into the phone. She sounded like she was going to cry.
“You can’t do this to me, Pamela. Please don’t hang up!”
“Mom…!”
“Pamela!” her Dad yelled again.
Pamela slowly lowered the phone and placed it back in the cradle.
“I don’t think we should stay,” Elizabeth said. “Do you guys want to come over to my place?”
“I’m afraid of what’s going to happen if I leave, but I’m afraid of what will happen if I stay,” said Pamela. There were tears in her eyes. “Well, if she’s calling from a phone, she must have gone somewhere. We might as well turn on the light.”
“Maybe she’s calling from a cell phone,” I said.
Pamela turned on the light and pulled down her shade. “I absolutely refuse to get caught in the middle!” she declared angrily. “They aren’t going to make me their go-between! No
way
!”
“Maybe you could call up that nurse your dad’s been dating. Maybe if your mom saw another woman in the house, she’d go away,” said Elizabeth, desperate to be helpful.
“
Not
a good idea,” said Pamela. She flopped down on the bed again and lay with her arms up over her head. All at once she raised her head and said, “Do you hear footsteps?”
We listened. There were footsteps, all right. The floor creaked, and the next thing we knew, Mrs. Jones was coming through the doorway of Pamela’s room, one finger to her lips. Elizabeth and I positively froze.
Pamela’s petite, blond mom was wearing jeans and a red polo shirt. She looked good, but her face was a lot more worn than I’d remembered it.
“Oh!” she said, staring at Elizabeth and me. “I didn’t know your friends were here.”
“Now, Mom,” Pamela began, sitting up.
“If you just give the word, Pamela, I’ll walk out of your life right now, and you won’t ever have to talk to me again.”
“I didn’t say that, Mom. How did you get in?”
“There’s a back door, you know, and I still have a key.” Mrs. Jones glanced at Elizabeth and me again, as if asking us to go, but Pamela’s fingers were digging into our arms. For Pamela, we stayed put.
Suddenly we heard Mr. Jones’s rapid footsteps on the stairs.
“Pamela,” he called outside her door. “Is your mother in there?”
Mrs. Jones lunged for the door to lock it, but before she could, it flew open.
“Get the hell out!” Mr. Jones yelled at his wife.
“Are you going to throw me out of our own house, Bill?” Mrs. Jones said.
I wished I could crawl under the bed. I wished I could pull Pamela with me. She always sounds so fast and sassy, but right then she looked like a little girl of seven. Her bottom lip trembled and
her eyes were gleaming with tears. I just wanted to hold her.
Mr. Jones reached in and grabbed his wife by the wrist. Mrs. Jones screamed, and he yanked her out of the room. She stumbled against the wall.
And then, while Elizabeth and I watched, heartsick, Pamela sank down on the floor beside her bed, her arms around her legs, face on her knees, and sobbed.
Mrs. Jones turned around and Mr. Jones stopped yelling. And in that silence, Pamela’s dad went down the hall to his own bedroom and shut the door.
Pamela’s mom stood where she was in the hallway, one hand to her throat. “Oh, my God, Pamela. I’m so sorry, sweetie. I’m just so sorry for all that I’ve done,” she said.
Pamela continued to cry. Elizabeth and I continued to stare.
“Pamela, is there anything I can do?” her mother said, coming back into the room. “What do you really want me to do, sweetheart? Just tell me. Go or stay?”
How could they
do
that to her? I wondered. How could parents make a fifteen-year-old girl decide what they should or shouldn’t do?
“Mom,” said Pamela, and her nose sounded clogged, “will you just go?”
There was silence.
“Are you sure that’s what you want?” her mom asked finally.
I cringed.
“Yes,” Pamela said at last.
“Sure?” her mother repeated, taking a step closer. “
Talk
to me, Pamela!”
And suddenly Pamela screamed, “Mom, I’m not
ready
to talk yet! You can’t just run off with a guy for almost two years and then expect to come home like nothing’s happened.”
“Pamela, I didn’t exactly run off. I tried to explain it to you then, and I suppose I’m doing an even worse job of explaining now. I’ve said it was a mistake, and I want to make it up to you.…”
“How can you make up for two years of not being here?” Pamela cried. “What could you ever do to ‘make it up,’ Mom? And right now I just don’t want to talk about it because it’s all too painful!” She started to cry again. “Yes! Go! Just go!” And she turned the other way.
Mrs. Jones waited a moment longer. Then she went back downstairs, left the house, and shut the door after her. Elizabeth and I sat down on the floor with Pamela between us and let her cry. There wasn’t a thing to say, really. Just things to cry.
“Do you think you and your dad might want to
talk later?” I asked. “We could go home now, Pamela, if you want.”
“What I want is for you guys to stay right here the rest of the night. You’re the two best friends I’ve ever had,” Pamela wept.
So we did.
I was afraid the next morning we’d hear on the news that a woman’s body had been found in the Potomac. But two days later Pamela told us her mother had called and said she’d taken an apartment in Wheaton. It looked as though Pamela was going to be the go-between whether she wanted to or not.
I sat in Lester’s room the following night while he trimmed his toenails. Lester has very thick toenails, and when a clipping flies across the room, you can hear it land.
“Do you
mind,
Al?” he said. “This is rather personal, you know.”
I ignored him because I needed to talk to someone about Pamela. At least he listened while I described what happened.
“I have a theory,” I said finally, “that life throws you something awful every five years. When I was five, Mom died. When I was ten, you broke your leg. Now I’m fifteen, and see what’s happened to Pamela? What’s going to happen when I’m twenty?”
Lester sent another clipping skimming across the floor. “That’s about the stupidest thing I ever heard,” he said.
“Why?”
“Because it was
me
who broke his leg, not you. And it’s Pamela who’s got the mother problem.”
“But when I think of all the scary, awful things that
could
happen, like Sylvia’s plane going down on her way home to marry Dad or—”
“Stuff it, Al! You’re ignoring all the good things that happen. Name something nice that’s happened recently.”
I thought for a moment. “Sylvia calls Dad every day.”
“Yep.”
“Pamela’s mother didn’t jump in the river.”
“Uh… okay.…”
“Elizabeth and Ross didn’t have sex.”
“For Pete’s sake, Alice!” Lester said.
I curled up on his bed and watched him finish his clipping. “Lester, here’s something I’ve wondered about. Before the wedding does a bride have to clip her toenails and clean out her navel and scrub every square inch of her body?”
“If she thinks she has lice, I suppose she should.”
“I’m serious. I just want to know the etiquette. Are you supposed to present yourself to your new
husband all clean and fresh and trimmed and filed and—”
“I don’t know. I’m not a woman.”
“How much will
you
clean on your wedding day?”
“I suppose I’ll take a shower. Give my armpits the old sniff test and see if I really need one.” He grinned at me.
I thought some more about weddings. “What if a woman starts her period just before her wedding day?”
I heard Lester let out his breath. “Man, do I ever wish you had a mother,” he murmured.
“I need to
know
these things, Lester.”
“Do you need to know right now?”
“No, but I’d like to.”
“Okay. So what if she does?”
“Well, does she postpone the wedding or what?”
“Al, that’s
life!
If her husband can’t handle a little thing like that, he shouldn’t be getting married at all. Where did you get the idea you have to be perfect? Perfectly scrubbed and manicured and deodorized?”
“The brides all look like that in magazines.”
“Magazines aren’t life, Al.
I’m
life.
You’re
life.”
“Yeah, and Pamela’s life too, but look how lousy it is.” I sat up, my chin on my knees. “You know
what, Lester? You know what would give Pamela a really, really big boost?”
“Yeah? What?”
“You could ask her out.”
Lester stopped clipping and stared at me, his mouth half open. “You’re out of your tree.”
“I don’t mean in a romantic way. Just take her out for a fun evening and cheer her up.”
“Al, I wouldn’t take Pamela out if every other girl in the state of Maryland was certifiably insane.”
“Why? She adores you, Lester! It would really give her a lift. She’s had a crush on you ever since she met you.”
“That’s exactly why I couldn’t take her out, not to mention that I’m seven years older than she is.”
“Party pooper,” I said with a pout. “Here’s a chance for you to do something kind and wonderful for someone who’s really hurting.”
Lester sighed. “Okay, how’s this? I won’t ask Pamela out, but you could invite her and Elizabeth over some afternoon to help me pack, and I’ll bring in some pizza. You could help me sort through some of my stuff.”
“Really, Lester?” I thought of Elizabeth and Pamela and I going through all the secrets in Lester’s closet. “That’s even better than taking her out! Thank you!” I cried.
“And you know what you can do for me?”
“What?”
“Crawl around the floor and pick up all my nail clippings so I don’t walk on them in my bare feet.”
I gave him a little smile. “Uh-uh, Lester. That’s life!”
Two weeks before school started, a box of clothes arrived from Carol. I love Carol! Every so often she goes through her closet and sends me stuff she doesn’t wear anymore. She doesn’t send stuff with worn elastic or missing buttons or food stains on them either. Or styles so old that you wouldn’t even wear them out on your front porch.
There was a lot to do in those last weeks of August, and e-mails were flying like crazy. Jill wanted to know what everyone was going to wear on the first day of school; Elizabeth thought we ought to take the table nearest the yogurt bar in the cafeteria for lunch; Karen asked if I knew whether she still had to take P. E. if she took diving lessons over the summer. But at the end of her message she wrote, S
o do you want to know who else slept together or not?
The Noble Alice in me would have replied,
Not
interested.
But of course that was a lie, so the Truthful Alice typed,
Who?
Karen must not have been online at the time because there was no answer, so I went back to my closet to find a T-shirt to wear the first day—the one with dolphins and sparkles all over it. I held it up in front of me at the mirror and then, on impulse, smiled a toothy smile at myself and wondered how I’d look in braces—if I had sparkles on my teeth as well as my shirt.
I put dividers in my notebook and looked for a pen refill and stuck some tampons in the zip pocket of my backpack. When I went to my computer later, I’d been signed off and had to log on again. There was only one message this time. It was from Karen. I clicked
READ.