Now I'll Tell You Everything (Alice) (49 page)

I swallowed and tried to speak through my sobs. “Patrick, if . . . if I die before you . . . or if you die suddenly and I don’t have a chance to tell you . . .”

“I’ll know you loved me in a hundred ways you never said. Even if we’ve just had an argument and I get run over by a bread truck, I’ll always know I had your love. Okay?” He jostled my hand and coaxed a smile out of me.

“You’ll know that the argument was just on the surface? And that there was a river of . . . an ocean of love underneath?” I asked.

“Absolutely.”

We drove home slowly through the late-morning traffic. Patrick had phoned Tyler at the airport and left a message. Patricia’s plane would be arriving soon, and I knew that I was going to have to help her make peace with the knowledge that she had not been able to say good-bye to her grandfather. The fact that I had not said all the things I’d wanted to say would let her know that life goes on in spite of regrets, and that it’s not the things left unsaid that are so important but rather the feelings underneath, too deep for words.

*  *  *

Dad had asked that his body be cremated. “I don’t want it taking up precious space on a shrinking planet, and I especially don’t want something that you kids and Sylvia have to look after,” he had told me once.

So we held a memorial service at the church on Cedar Lane—the church where they’d been married. I sat staring at the ebony container holding his ashes, the remains of my father. How could that possibly contain all that he was—his kindness, his laughter, his music, his love?

I tried to comfort Patricia and Tyler before they went back to their own lives. They were emotional during the service, unable to hold back tears, and just watching them kept my eyes red and brimming.

“It will get easier, I promise,” I told them as Patricia sobbed first on my shoulder, then Zack’s.

“I know, but if I feel this bad for Gramps, how am I going to feel when it’s Dad?” Tyler told me.

“You’ll feel even worse, of course, but you’ll carry on, because happiness has a way of creeping in again. It really does,” I said.

A few days later, when Tyler and Patrick embraced at the airport, it was a long and tender hug.

The following afternoon I went over to Sylvia’s to keep her company. She was out in the yard in her jacket, looking over the remains of their garden to see if any mums could be rescued for inside the house. I simply fell in beside her as she traversed the yard, and we walked with our arms around each other’s waists.

“I didn’t get to tell Dad all my thank-yous, but I won’t make the same mistake with you,” I said. “Thank you for loving him, Sylvia. And thank you for coming into our lives and filling in for the mom I never had.”

“They were some of the happiest years for me, you know,” she said, and gave me a little hug. We walked in step around the garden, surveying the dry, crumpled stalks of flowers.

“I still wish I’d had a chance to tell Dad all the things I wanted to,” I said. “Apologize for some of the things I said to you. But really, you’re the one who should be hearing it. I really am ashamed and sorry.”

“Oh, I knew that, Alice. That was forgiven ages ago,” she said.

“Do you ever have regrets about your life, Sylvia? I’m asking in a general way. Is there anything you’d do differently, or something left undone?”

“Of course. That’s the human condition.” And then, reminiscing, she said, “I was in community theater for a while when I first began teaching, and I loved it. I always thought I’d like to combine the two. But teaching takes up all your spare time, it seems. It was just a choice I had to make, and no great sacrifice. And I was probably a better teacher than I was an actress. But still . . . that’s one of the things I left undone.”

“You were a wonderful teacher,” I told her. “The boys were all mad about you, and I think we girls were a little jealous.”

She laughed, but after a while she grew quiet again, and we stopped to sit on a wrought-iron bench at the back of the garden.

“And I wish I had made up my mind sooner about marrying Ben,” she said. “I regret I had to go to England for a year to even think about it. I miss him so much already.” Her lips trembled slightly.

“So do I,” I told her.

“And now . . . that’s a whole year we could have had together.” She shook her head. “Sometimes . . . when I used to think of how it would be if Ben died first, I figured if I could just remind myself of the things I
didn’t
like about him, I wouldn’t be so sad. But I’m not so sure. Right now I’d give anything to have him sitting across the room from me, reading aloud parts of the newspaper and interrupting whatever I was reading.” She smiled at me through her tears.

I smiled back. “That used to drive Les nuts too, I remember.”

“And his moods . . .” Sylvia thought about it a minute. “The thing that nobody tells you about husbands, Alice, is that they don’t always react the way you think they will. Before we married, I used to imagine that when Ben was sad or worried, he’d tell me. Just come to me and say, ‘Sylvia, my stomach hurts’ or ‘I’m afraid I made a big mistake on the income tax.’ And I’d comfort or reassure him.”

I nodded.

“Instead, an ache somewhere just made him withdrawn and silent. A mistake might make him irritable and short-tempered. I might spend half the day trying to figure out what was wrong. Women are more likely to talk it out.”

“That’s why we live longer,” I told her, and squeezed her
hand. After a while I asked, “Any thoughts on what you want to do now?”

“I’ve been thinking of inviting my sister to visit. She’s out west, and we’ve seen so little of each other. I’d really like to ask her to live here with me, but I thought if I just invited her for an extended stay, we could see how well we get on with each other before we take such a big step.”

“That sounds wise,” I told her.

She looked into my eyes. “Thank you for coming by today, Alice. I think I needed to talk even more than I knew.”

*  *  *

The year of our sixtieth birthdays, Patrick saw a notice in the county paper announcing the opening of a time capsule. It had been buried, the paper said, forty-eight years ago by a seventh-grade class at Colesville Junior High School, taught by Elmer Hensley, and former students were invited to attend the ceremony. According to instructions, the capsule was to be opened when the class reached their sixtieth year. Then it listed all the students who had taken seventh-grade history with Mr. Hensley that year: Pamela Jones, Mark Stedmeister, Alice McKinley, Elizabeth Price, Brian Brewster, Patrick Long. . . . I wondered why Gwen wasn’t mentioned, then realized that she had had a different teacher for history.

I mentioned the capsule to Patricia and Tyler, who were both home for the weekend. Tyler and his longtime girlfriend had announced their engagement, and Patricia’s little boy was having his third birthday. Little Lyle had been born up in
New Hampshire with only Zack and a midwife in attendance. (Patricia, at thirty-four, still wanted to do everything herself. “But I remembered what you said about counting to eighty-five by fives, Mom, each time a labor pain began, and that really helped!” she confessed later. “Just knowing the pain would subside by the time I got to a hundred and ten got me through it.”)

“
Go,
you guys!” said Tyler, when he heard about the time capsule. Now a thirty-one-year-old social worker, he put the emphasis on
social
where his parents were concerned. “It should be fun!”

“Of course we’ll go,” Patrick said. “Wouldn’t miss it!”

I called Pamela, who was now Mrs. William Harris, having been married on a cruise ship to a husky, kind man with shaggy gray eyebrows who treated her like a queen—when she deserved it—and whom Pamela adored.

“Pamela, do you remember burying a time capsule back in seventh grade?” I asked.

“What?” she said.

“The time capsule we buried in Mr. Hensley’s class. We all put something in it and wrote letters to our sixty-year-old selves. Don’t you remember?”

“Vaguely.”

“And the guys had just named you Wyoming, while I got North Carolina.”

“What?”
she said again.

“The seventh-grade boys gave each seventh-grade girl the name of a state, based on the size and shape of her breasts. And
you were so proud of getting Wyoming that you said you were going to put your measurements in the time capsule. Did you?”

“Alice, how do you
remember
all this stuff? I scarcely even remember seventh grade!” she said.

I guess I do have a good memory for the past. Sometimes I wish I didn’t. I think I remember every embarrassing, agonizing, humiliating thing that ever happened to me. “Hensley was the history teacher nobody liked much—until he retired, that is, and then we gave him a party,” I told her.

“I guess I do remember the party,” Pamela said.

“Why don’t you come down for the opening, just to see who shows up. It might be fun,” I said. “I guess the idea is that those of us who are still local will contact the ones who left. That’s why I called you.”

“I’ll see,” she said.

*  *  *

The thirteen or so men and women who got out of their cars and crossed the playground came tentatively, as though we were kids again and it was our first day at a new school. I imagine each of us thought we hadn’t changed much since seventh grade and were shocked at how old some people looked and surprised that others hadn’t changed much at all.

I was wearing a white tee, khaki skirt, and thong sandals, my blondish-gray hair swept back away from my face, little gold hoop earrings in my ears, and the gold heart on a chain that Patrick had given me around my neck. Patrick and I hardly knew a few of the people, but we recognized the others—Pamela and
Elizabeth, of course. Pamela was as svelte as ever, even though her shoulders were somewhat stooped. She kept her hair a lovely shade of blond, while Elizabeth’s hair was totally white—beautiful and wavy—and she was heavier now, thicker about the waist. But her skin was as gorgeous as ever, and Liz still looked about the same to me somehow because we got together so often. Her children were grown and married, and she seemed at peace with the world. Gwen came because she wanted to see all her friends.

“Brian?” I said, looking at a pudgy man who was bald on top. None of us had seen Brian for decades.

“Alice! Oh, wow! You’ve still got some red in your hair!” Brian Brewster said, giving me a bear hug. He was living in Nevada now, he told us, and a relative had seen the piece in the paper about the time capsule and sent the clipping to him.

“Jill!” I cried, recognizing the still-attractive woman—trim and tanned—despite her unusual number of wrinkles. “How
are
you?”

“Doing good,” she said. “And you look great, Alice. Isn’t this a hoot? My mom read about it in the
Gazette
.”

It was Karen I hardly recognized because she had gained so much weight. There we were on this warm May Saturday—Jill and Karen, Pamela and Elizabeth, Brian and Patrick and me, and five other members of our class. We stood at the center of the small crowd that had gathered to watch—friends, relatives, young women with strollers, and a few businessmen who seemed to have stopped on their way to lunch.

Two photographers were there with reporters from both the
Gazette
and the
Post,
and someone from the board of education was waiting for us with a ceremonial shovel.

Patrick couldn’t believe we got press coverage. “News must be slow today,” he joked to a reporter.

“We’re always interested in a good human interest story,” she said. “People like to read about time capsules.”

Our old school had been converted to a county recreation and day care center. A cluster of boys stood to one side with their basketball to watch, while small children peered at us from a fenced-in playground beyond, then continued chasing each other about, disinterested.

“What do you remember of seventh grade?” one of the reporters went around asking. What do you remember of Mr. Hensley, the school, the city, the world—as though we were the last members of a lost civilization.

“Ask Alice,” people kept saying. “She remembers everything.”

When we’d all given our names, we took turns digging in the spot Hensley had marked on a map of the school property, measuring exactly from the corner of the lot. He’d had the foresight to file the map with the board of education and leave the spot unmarked so vandals wouldn’t dig it up and destroy our project. He’d even left a copy of the map, we found out, in his will. Now, that’s planning ahead!

With each thrust of the shovel, we seemed to remember more and more and couldn’t stop talking. Seventh-Grade Sing Day, which had frightened us so; Denise “Mack Truck” Whitlock, an
eighth grader who ended her life by standing in the path of an Amtrak train; the talent show; the “Our Changing Bodies” seminar at the Y (“Omigod!
That!
” one of the women cried); gourmet cooking; Patrick’s drum solos; gym. . . .

Patrick was using the shovel when it struck the canister, and he hauled it out. It was a large metal milk can, actually, so rusty that we had to borrow a hammer and screwdriver from the building custodian to pry off the lid. But as we gathered around and the cameras clicked, we greeted each of our treasures with cries of, “Oh, look!” and “Who put that in there?” and “Brian, that must have been
your
idea.”

It was a strange assortment there on the picnic table, where we spread everything out. A copy of the
Washington Post,
dark and yellowed, with headlines about the old Soviet Union; a Michael Jordan poster; a
SAY NO TO DRUGS
bumper sticker . . .

We gingerly examined our treasures, passing them around. One was a bracelet made in Hawaii.

“What in the world is
that
?” asked Pamela. “Whose was it?”

No one seemed to know, but everyone was looking at me for the answer. It did seem familiar somehow. And then I remembered. Denise Whitlock’s bracelet—one of the personal items she had given me before she committed suicide. I had put it in the capsule so that we would remember a girl we hardly knew.