Patiently Alice (21 page)

“Awwwwww!” we sang out together.

“She never knew?”

Lester shook his head. “Nope. One of the tragedies of second grade. And that’s why I am what I am today.”

“A lech?” asked Pamela.

“No! Hey!”

“A ladies’ man,” I said.

“Right,” said Lester. “And now may I have Maxie’s underpants, please?”

Pamela handed them over. “What are you going to do with them?” she asked.

“I don’t know. I’d forgot all about them. But if ever there’s a grade school reunion and I go back to Chicago and find Maxine, wouldn’t it be something to walk up to her and say, ‘For you, madame’ and hand her the Buster Browns?” He stuffed them in one pocket.

“Ah! You never forget a first love,” I said.

We went back to search for more of Lester’s secrets, but that was the major find of the day.

Around two o’clock Lester went out to get some pizza for us. The minute he was gone, Pamela said, “I’ve got a great idea.” She picked up
the tissue paper that was in the first box and a pair of scissors, and while we watched, she made a life-size cutout of a pair of woman’s underpants, scalloping the pant legs to look like lace. We grinned, puzzled. She cut out a bra next.

“What are you
doing
?” I asked.

“Watch,” said Pamela. She took the ball of string and tied an end around an empty picture hanger on the wall of Lester’s bedroom. Then she stretched it across the big window, cut it, and tied the other end around the hinge on his closet door. She took the pair of tissue panties and stapled them to the string, like clothes on a line. Then she stapled the bra. They blew slightly in the breeze.

We shrieked in delight and set to work cutting out more undies—panty hose, more underpants, another bra, a slip, even. By the time we heard Lester’s car pull up again, there was a whole clothesline of women’s tissue-paper undies fluttering in the breeze in front of Lester’s window.

“You’re a genius!” Elizabeth said to Pamela. “Oh, this is sweeeeet!”

“Break time!” Lester called, coming in the door. “Come and get it!” He took two boxes of pizza to the counter in the kitchen, and then, hearing us
laughing in his bedroom, came to the doorway and stopped dead still. Suddenly he started to laugh.

“I see the Harpies are at it again,” he said. “Very clever, girls, I must say.”

We thought he’d rip them down, but he said, “George and Paul are coming by tomorrow with some of their stuff, and I think I’ll leave it up, get a rise out of them.”

We laughed some more.

“Of course, if Mr. Watts happens to check our apartment over the weekend, we could be out on our ear,” Lester said. “But he may even want to borrow them for a while. Hang them up in his own window, get the neighbors talking.”

We had a wonderful time!

After the first day of school I came home to find a cardboard box sitting on our porch addressed to me. The mail carrier had set it between the screen and the front door. There was a
DEPARTMENT OF RECREATION
sticker return address in the upper left corner, and all I could think of was that I probably left something behind at Camp Overlook and they’d finally traced it to me. Sneakers, maybe. But it wasn’t heavy enough for sneakers. In fact, it hardly weighed anything at all. I sure hoped it
wasn’t dirty underwear. That would be so embarrassing!

I took it inside, set it on the kitchen table, and opened the flaps. It seemed to be full of shredded paper. I found an envelope, also from the Department of Recreation, with a letter inside from Connie Kendrick:

Hi, Alice.

We found this on the steps of the building last week when we came to work. There’s a letter in it addressed to “Alice,” and we decided that can only mean you. We’re sending the whole thing exactly as we found it. Thanks for being part of our team this past summer. We loved having you.

Connie

Was this a joke? I wondered. I couldn’t see how there could be anything else in the box except paper. Then I found a grocery sack at the bottom,
the top folded over. I opened it and lifted out a twig basket. Inside was a note on tablet paper:

Alice,

This for you Becaus that nite I was hiding in the tolet and you hug me I gess you like me a little too. If you decid to keep it maybe you will think of me sometimes.