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.”