Alice Bliss - Laura Harrington [14]
Ellie and Janna are in Ellie’s room playing dress up. Last week Gram gave Ellie a whole bagful of scarves and belts and hats and purses she’s been collecting at yard sales. This is their first chance at the stuff.
For two hours as she tries to read chapters six through nine of A Separate Peace, Alice can hear Ellie and Janna laughing and talking. She can tell they’ve moved on to Angie’s closet and are searching for high heels. They creep downstairs barefoot, slide into the heels and clomp their way to the kitchen for a TA DA! moment: two eight-year-olds in polyester old lady dresses, elaborately and multiply belted at the waist, fake fox furs, pillbox hats, high heels, and too much lipstick.
Alice tells them they look lovely.
“We’re going on the Queen Elizabeth!” Ellie says.
“Around the world! The whole entire world,” Janna adds.
“Really!”
“The most marvelous boat in the world, darling!”
“Just the two of you?”
“And Luke Piacci!!!!!”
Ellie sweeps out like an elegant matron, trailing fur and too much perfume. Janna wobbles and then trips making her turn, but tosses a brave smile over her shoulder anyway.
Watching Ellie and Janna reminds Alice of her friend Stephie Larson or, more accurately, her former friend Stephie Larson. They were inseparable all through ninth grade after they both got stuck in crazy Mr. Bartolotto’s French class. But over the summer Stephie stopped eating and stopped being a pudgy kid and when tenth grade began she started hanging out with a different crowd at school. Last month, when Alice’s dad left for Fort Dix, Stephie was being kind of friendly, actually speaking to her in the girl’s room or between classes. Not a lot. Not anything like the way it used to be, not laughing, not making plans, just the occasional word or two, when nobody else was around. Today Alice must have lost her mind because she approached Stephie while she was talking to Jennifer White and Stephie actually pretended she didn’t hear her or see her.
She looks up to see Ellie in the front hall daring Janna to kiss the newel post.
“Pretend it’s Luke Piacci,” she giggles.
Alice wishes the phone would ring right now, with Mom gone and Ellie otherwise engaged. She wants five minutes to talk to her dad without an audience, without anyone telling her to hurry up, without Ellie shouting, “My turn! My turn!” She stares at the phone, willing it to ring, and when it does she nearly jumps out of her seat.
“Dad?”
“No, it’s me, Alice. Henry.”
“I can’t talk right now. We’re waiting for my dad.”
“I thought that was after five.”
“It could be anytime.”
“Have you done your math homework?”
“Henry!”
“I can’t get number six. Or number five either.”
“I haven’t looked at it.”
“Oh.”
“I have to go.”
“Alice—”
“What!?”
“Did you—”
“Henry, hurry up!”
“Are you avoiding me?”
“No. But I have to go.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
“Okay.”
She hangs up and sits with her hand on the phone, thinking call now, Dad, right now. She glances at the clock: ten to five. You and I could talk, then Mom gets home and you guys have your time, then Ellie. Just five minutes. Just one minute. Just . . .
She closes her eyes and she can imagine the line at the bank of phones on the base. The lucky guys with their own cell phones, talking as long as they want. The rest of them waiting to call, some poor schmo having to keep the line moving, cut the calls short.
Is he already packed? Is he hungry, is he tired, is he lonely? Is he scared of this phone call? She’s scared she’s gonna cry and end up not telling him . . . telling him what exactly? How do you take the stupid daily details that don’t mean anything at all, like yesterday’s math test and the way she just blanked out and couldn’t think at all, and the new coffee Gram is trying out in the café, and what’s in the news about the war and what’s not in the news about the