CHAPTER 3

Al and I have been friends for almost a year. Well, actually, about eight months. I feel as if I’d known her forever. When Al and her mother moved into our building, right down the hall from us, Mr. Richards was the assistant super. Then he died. Now we have one crummy assistant super after another. Mr. Richards was a retired bartender, a superior person, a prince among men. We miss him. He told us he thought we’d be stunners someday. We’re still waiting. Al will be fourteen in August. I’ll be thirteen in September. Al keeps waiting for something exciting to happen to her. I do too—to me, I mean. I think she’s had enough excitement for a while. She’s going to the farm, and she got a postcard from Brian, from Chicago, where he was on a trip with his 4-H club. Now it’s my turn.

When we got off the elevator, I saw an envelope on our hall table. It was a letter from Polly. Polly stayed with us while her parents went to Africa. Now she’s up on the Cape visiting her aunt and uncle. I tore open the letter.

“It’s from Polly,” I told Al. “She’s having a blast. She goes sailing and swimming and clamming every day.”

“That’s not so much,” Al said. “Write her back and tell her we went to the zoo and saw the baby monkey. That’ll make her wish she was back here, pounding the pavements, smelling the good smells of New York in July.”

Al did a couple of bumps and grinds and opened her front door at the same time. She’s getting really good at her burlesque routine. We grabbed a handful of carrot sticks from the refrigerator and went into Al’s bedroom. Her bed was piled so high with clothes it looked like a rummage sale was going on.

“What’s this?” I pointed to a box of clothes sitting on the floor. On top was Al’s brown vest. She only wears that vest when she’s in the pits.

“Everything in that box is going outsville,” she said. “It’s nothing but stuff that freaks me out when I wear it. I’m sick of being drab, wearing drab clothes. From now on I only wear stuff that enhances my personality.” She went over to the mirror and examined her gums to see if they were receding. She’d read about how receding gums are a big problem these days. Lots of people’s teeth fall out due to receding gums, so Al keeps a close eye on hers.

“I’m heavyset,” she announced after she checked her gums. “There are no two ways about it. I’m heavyset.”

“What’s that mean?” I asked.

“My features are not—how you say it in this country?—piquant. They do not sparkle. And another thing.” She turned toward me, her face all puckered. I thought for a minute she was getting ready to cry.

“How come my hair doesn’t move?”

I didn’t say anything. I figured she really didn’t expect me to.

“I use conditioner, the way they tell you to. I wash my hair so much it’s a wonder I’m not bald. So what happens? Nada. Zilch. When I move my head, my hair just stands there. Doing nothing.”

When I first knew Al, she wore pigtails. Then she went to her mother’s beauty shop and they styled her hair.

“In no way,” Al said, spacing her words carefully, “in absolutely no way does my hair resemble the hair of one of those chicks in those shampoo commercials. It just stands there.”

She tossed her head from side to side. She was right. It did just stand there.

“Did I show you this?” Al dragged out a sweater from her bottom drawer and gave it to me. It was the exact color of violets. I touched it. It was very soft, very beautiful.

“I bet it cost plenty,” I said.

“My mother gave it to me. As a going-away present.” Al put the sweater back in the drawer.

“That was nice of her,” I said. My mother almost never gives me presents, going-away presents. Maybe that’s because I don’t go anywhere.

“I wish she wouldn’t give me so many presents,” Al said. She sat on the edge of her bed and put her hands between her knees and looked at them. “Sometimes I think she gives me a lot of things to make up for the fact she’s not here when I come home after school. I think my mother suffers a lot of guilt feelings about me.”

“Why should she? She’s a good mother. Lots of kids’ mothers work. Practically everyone’s mother works.”

“Yours doesn’t,” Al said in what seemed to me to be a cold voice.

“So what?”

“Nothing. But she doesn’t.”

“Yeah. All she does all day is lie around eating bonbons and reading dirty French novels,” I said in a sour tone. Boy. What got her started on my mother not working? What was I supposed to do—apologize to her because my mother didn’t work? Holy Toledo. I didn’t like where this was headed.

“Hey,” I said. “What’s with you? How come you’re feeling sorry for yourself? You’ve got a lot of things going for you. Here you are packing for a trip that sounds great. A barn dance and everything. You heard from Brian. You heard from your father. What more do you want? How come you’re on a feel-sorry-for-Al kick?”

When Al gets down like this, for no reason, it makes me mad. She broods too much.

“I am not.” Al went into the bathroom. I felt like leaving. One minute we’re having a great time, the next she’s in the pits. I don’t get in the pits nearly as often as Al does. I don’t know why but I don’t. Maybe it’s because my mother doesn’t work. Ha ha. While she was still in the bathroom, I took the brown vest from the box and put it on.

“O.K. if I take this?” I asked Al when she came out. “As long as you’re giving it away anyway?”

She frowned. “What do you want that old thing for? It’s a mess.”

“I want to keep it as a reminder.”

“A reminder of what?”

“Of when you were young and in the pits. When you’re middle-aged and famous, I’ll take it out and show it to my kids and say, ‘Al wore this when she felt bad. Then she gave it to me and she never again felt bad. She never got depressed again. Because all the bad feelings went with the brown vest.’ How’s that?”

She thought about it. She wasn’t sure if I was serious or not. Neither was I. But I saw her lips twitch. Just a little.

“Sure. Take it. That’s not a bad idea. Next vest I buy is going to be bright orange. You know. The same color the school crossing guards wear. If that doesn’t cheer me up, nothing will.”

“Not only will it cheer you up,” I said, “it’ll also keep you awake. That is some color.”

“I do believe,” Al said earnestly, “that colors cheer people up. It stands to reason.” She went to her bureau and pulled the violet sweater out, put it around her shoulders and tied the sleeves around her neck.

“Is that preppy or is that preppy?” she said, turning this way and that, like a model, so I could see how preppy she was.

“You better not tie that sweater around your neck when you get to the farm,” I said. “They don’t dig that kind of stuff in the boonies.”

“You just said a very interesting thing.” Al sat down on her bed again. “I have to watch my step when I get there. They talk about different things in the country. They have different interests. Like, for instance, I better bone up on feed and crops and weather conditions. That’s the kind of stuff the 4-H club members relate to. Cows and horses and pigs. When you come right down to it, I know practically nothing about cows and horses, much less pigs.”

“If worse comes to worst,” I said, “you can always give them a shot of monkey talk. They don’t have monkeys up there, do they?”

“I heard something last night on the TV,” Al said. “It might be good to throw in if the conversation lags. I wrote it down.” She went over to her desk and picked up a tiny piece of paper. She’s always writing tidbits of info on tiny pieces of paper.

“Did you know,” Al began, looking over the tops of her glasses at me, “that a female panda is fertile only twelve hours a year?”

After a bit I said, “That ought to do it. That might stir things up in farm country. You got any more of those lying around?”

“No,” she said. “But I’ve got a few days left before I go. Keep your ears open, will you? If you hear any interesting animal facts, write ’em down for me, will you? I’d appreciate it.”

I said I would. I sat and watched her pack a little while longer. At the rate she was going, I thought it was a good thing she’d started early. No sooner did she put something in her suitcase than she put her chin in her hands, thought about it, then pulled out what she’d just put in and put something else in.

“Hey,” I said finally, “I’ve got to go home and fix meat loaf. It’s just me and my father. My mother took Teddy to the cousins in Connecticut for a visit. You want to take potluck with us?”

“I’d like to,” Al said. “But I better not. I promised myself I’d stick around every night until I go. My mother and I talk about stuff. We’re better friends now. Than we used to be, that is. As a matter of fact”—Al gave me her owl eye—“last night we had a candid conversation about sex.”

“You did? What’d she say?”

“Nothing I didn’t already know. But I didn’t tell her that. She really never got off the ground, but I gave her A for effort. I’ll take a rain check, all right?”

“Sure,” I said, and went home to make my meat loaf.