Chapter 4 #3
Dolores was not going to the prom. She said the whole thing was lame.
She’d rather watch Bewitched on TV and smoke sitting in her bedroom window, listening to Marvin and Tammi, and drink some of her mom’s Jack Daniel’s that she secretly mixed into Coke.
Though Alice still clung to a faded dream of what the prom would be like, she couldn’t help thinking that Dolores’s evening sounded much better.
But Betsy was so excited that her daughter was going to the prom.
And, a week before this outing, she’d asked Alice what she was going to wear, and, when Alice said she was planning on making a long halter-neck dress out of some old curtain material she’d found at the Goodwill, Betsy had turned pale and, hesitantly, opened her metal money box to reveal fifty dollars.
‘Honey, you’re eighteen in June. I want to get you something real special,’ she’d said solemnly. ‘I want to buy you a dress, for the prom.’
‘Mom –’ Alice had begun, but then she’d happened to glance up and saw Betsy’s pink, heart-shaped face, and all she could think of was how her mom made such a fuss every Halloween, baking cookies for all the kids; and how she made the garlands at Christmas, string threaded with nuts and silver paper cut-out stars, to hang up for the visitors they rarely had; and how, once, when Alice had measles, she had come down in the night, hot and confused, to find her father asleep on the couch and her mother scrubbing the range, knuckles white, on her knees, humming to herself, and how she’d picked up Alice and put her back in bed and then brought her some warm milk with nutmeg in it; and how strong she was, and how she didn’t look it.
‘Where did you get fifty dollars, Mom?’
‘Here and there, you know,’ her mother had said. ‘My mom left me some money, and Mr Kynaston found he owed us a few dollars too. And there’s some of your dad’s money left – only a little – but …’ She had trailed off. ‘Please let me buy it for you,’ Betsy had said quietly. ‘I’d really like to.’
‘Sure,’ Alice had said, not knowing what else to say. ‘I’d like that.’
After almost ninety minutes in Macy’s they emerged, Alice holding a fabric shopping bag, inside of which was a gun-metal-grey silk dress with cap sleeves and a stiff skirt to the floor.
Though it had a gathered waist, it was still curiously reminiscent of a sack, and Alice knew she would never wear it again, but it was the compromise that both could live with.
They went to a restaurant near Fifth Avenue, opposite Rockefeller Plaza, where her mother said Alice could have what she wanted.
Alice was exhausted, but also delighted, feeling like a kid again.
She ordered meatballs, a Coke and three scoops of ice cream.
A lady at the next table was eating alone, reading the newspaper and smoking; when the waiter brought her meal, he said, ‘A Waldorf salad, ma’am,’ and set down a silver plate of green salad topped with shavings of Parmesan and chicken; and Alice realized she should have ordered something sophisticated, that, for all her thoughts of at last being grown up now she was almost eighteen, she was still, disappointingly, a child who ordered meatballs and ice cream.
The waitress withdrew and left them smiling politely at each other awkwardly, as always when some new iteration of their changed family occurred. Alice swallowed, tasting bile in her throat. Now was the time.
‘Mom,’ said Alice. ‘Can we talk about what’s happening next year?’
Betsy busied herself pouring some water. ‘When you go off to college? I will miss you. But you must come back and visit.’
‘That’s partly it, Mom. College. But, also, I wanted to ask you where you’re going to go?’
‘Me? Go?’ Her mother looked confused. ‘Why would I go anywhere?’
‘But you know what Mr Kynaston said. We have to be out, and the time agreed is when I graduate from high school.’
‘Oh, I know what he said ,’ her mother said. ‘But there’s nothing we can do about it for now, is there? Wilder won’t evict us, I’m sure of it.’
Alice changed tack. ‘There’s no money for college either.’
‘We’ll find money for it, if that’s what you want.’
‘Mom, from where?’
‘You’ll get a scholarship,’ her mother said. She seemed remarkably unflustered. ‘Your dad always said you were the brightest kid in the year, honey.’ She smiled at Alice.
Alice wanted to scream. ‘Mom, that was when he was alive. Everything’s changed.
There’re other kids whose SATs are better, who’ve done the applications, been to the colleges.
’ Now it was here, she had to say it. ‘I – I haven’t even applied for financial aid or for scholarships.
I haven’t done a thing about it. It’s April, Mom – that dance is over.
I don’t know what you think’s going to happen, but I’m not going to Berkeley in the fall.
’ She tensed, waiting for the inevitable questions, the hammering blows of disappointment, but her mother didn’t say anything. ‘Aren’t you mad?’
‘I’m not mad,’ her mom said. ‘I wondered why you stopped mentioning it, but I’m not mad.’
‘So –’
‘Look, Allie, there’s more to life than college. Maybe you’ll have to get a job, honey. When your dad’s little pot of money finally goes, we have to have something to live on, after all.’
Alice peered at her mother, but Betsey was drinking water, and her expression was unreadable. ‘Mom, I stopped mentioning it because I knew you were worrying about money. I kinda … didn’t know what to do.’
She hadn’t known what to do, and now it was April, and it turned out almost everyone else had their offers in and they were going to Notre Dame or Stanford or North Carolina or other places, catering college, teachers’ colleges.
They were talking about long drives and sororities, majors and campuses. They were all leaving.
And Alice, for the past two years, had got up every day and gone to school, praying someone else would tell her what to do.
But slowly, inexorably, change had happened, leaving her behind, and every day she’d known it, and every day she’d hated herself a little more because of it.
She had wanted to show her dad what she could do, and she had let him down.
She knew there was no money, and she knew her mother couldn’t help her, and that her brain didn’t work as well as her dad had thought it did.
There was no point telling anyone else because they’d say she was crazy.
‘Allie.’ Her mother patted the dress next to her and stared at her daughter, eyes full of concern. ‘You shouldn’t worry about money. We’d have found it. Somehow.’
‘Mom,’ Alice said, using every last ounce of her patience. ‘There’s no money.’
‘I’m certain there is , if we just look for it.’
Alice couldn’t understand why she was being so upbeat.
‘Do you mean the orchards?’ she said. They never looked at the rows of apple trees any more, standing unkempt, surrounded by tiny saplings of pine and sycamore that grew taller and edged closer every day.
‘Did you get something for them, in the end?’
Her mother gave a short, barking laugh.
‘Honey, Wilder owns them. He bought them back off the bank after they wrote off the debt. He got a good deal.’
The waitress brought their drinks, and Alice took a long sip of Coke, enabling her to gather her thoughts.
‘So Mr Kynaston made money on them?’ she said. ‘If Dad bought them from him in the first place, and he bought them back at a knock-down price, isn’t that –’
‘Oh, hooey. Who knows.’ Now Betsy’s eyes were bright with sudden anxiety. ‘You know I hate all that financial business, Allie. And those orchards, they’re no good. Might as well tear them out and put houses on them. That’s what I told Wilder anyway.’
Alice let the wave rush over her again. She took a deep breath. ‘I’m not sure Dad would have wanted that.’
‘Oh, Allie. I don’t think he would have, no. But it happened.’ Her mother tore at a little flap of skin by her thumbnail with her teeth, leaving a tiny red ribbon behind. ‘Now listen. I know college was important to you and your dad. But …’
‘Yes?’ Alice prompted her.
Her mother looked down at the pinhead of blood on her thumb almost in surprise. ‘I wish I could have advised you better, honey.’ She took a deep breath. ‘I didn’t know what to do, these past two years, I know I got it wrong.’
‘No, Mom –’
Her mother waved her hand away. ‘So maybe college isn’t happening – it’s gone.
’ She said it as though they’d just decided to throw away some meatloaf.
‘But there’s other things you could do. You could help me around the house and with the Kynastons.
We could be what your father was, and Mavis too.
Then maybe we wouldn’t have to leave! Because Mr Kynaston sure needs that help.
So does Teddy. Look how hard it is for them this past year or so since Mavis went, and your dad –’
The waitress arrived with the food and started to set it down on the table.
‘Mom, I don’t want to help with the Kynastons.’
‘Teddy’s your friend, isn’t she? I thought you liked spending time with her.’
‘She’s not –’
She thought of the last time she’d been to see Teddy, just for Teddy, to tell her about the prom, because Teddy liked facts, loved hearing stories.
But, as ever, her brother had appeared in the doorway, and it was impossible to have the kind of conversations they used to have, impossible to explain how particular, sweet and strange their friendship was – nothing that Alice could explain to anyone else.
You’re using me, dearest girl, as a repository for your secrets, but I’m using you, as a conduit for a life I’d love to live. Don’t fret – we are using each other.
‘I want to ask about the treasures, Teddy – I know it’s a couple of years now, but are you sure you can’t remember? Did my dad give you anything to give to me? Before he died?’
But Teddy was always silent, never answered those questions, pursed her lips and turned her head away.