She had a plan.
58
The SAT class was pointless and so Alice skipped it. Leonard didn’t even put up a fuss. Alice looked through her drawers for her tape recorder and brought it with them to City Diner, where they had grilled cheeses and two orders of french fries.
“Tell me about your cousins,” Alice asked. “Who was your elementary school nemesis? Who was your first kiss? What was Mom like when she was young?”
Leonard laughed into his coffee cup. But then he answered her questions, one at a time. There was a cousin called Eggs who’d ended up as a bookie; there was a girl named Priscilla who had broken his pencils in half; there was Priscilla again, a few years later; there was Serena at twenty-two, blond and effortless. Every now and then Leonard would pause and say, “Are you sure you really want to hear all this?” But Alice would nod vigorously and point to the tape recorder. “Keep going.”
59
They had to have dinner at Gray’s Papaya and so they did, even though Alice was getting tired of hot dogs. She had systematically worked her way through the juices, and papaya was the winner. It made Leonard happy when Alice got more stuff on her dog, and so she loaded it up, the works. Sam wrinkled her nose, but Alice could tell she was impressed, too. They had to get the ice cream and so they did. Alice made sure that Sam always said the right thing, giving her alley-oops over and over again until the thought was nudged out. Sometimes Alice got hot fudge and sometimes she got butterscotch. That didn’t seem to make a difference.
60
There were a finite number of parties in one’s life, and so Alice decided to let her dad go to the convention after dinner. There were too few opportunities, as an adult, to be surrounded by friends after midnight. She had decided to let Tommy make his own mistakes—she didn’t have to intervene. Alice and Sam wore silky slips and tiaras and dark lipstick like sexy vampires and they were having a great time before anyone else even rang the doorbell. When Helen and Lizzie came over, Helen said, “What is this,The Craft?” and that was all Alice and Sam needed to hear. For the rest of the night, they were teen witches, casting spells and making each other levitate by standing behind each other and hoisting up their bodies. When Phoebe came with her brother’s drugs, Alice said sure, why not. The boys rang the doorbell and came in like a little parade, like always.
“Did you guys pick each other up, like one at a time? Like a hurricane picking up couches and doors, like inThe Wizard of Ozor something, only it’s just teenage boys?” Alice stood aside, giggling, as the boys all came in, a cloud of Polo Sport carrying them into her livingroom. Tommy was in the middle of the clump, surrounded by admirers and acolytes, as always, and Alice let him kiss her on the cheek. He was a good guy, even if he wasn’t her good guy. The boys collapsed onto the couch and leaned against the counters as if they were all unable to support their own weight. Whatever was in the pill was starting to do its job, and Alice felt the heavy wood of the door against her skin. Kenji Morris was the last one in line and stood on the welcome mat.
“Are you okay?” he asked, tossing his head to the side to swing his bangs out of the way.
“Your hair is really nice,” Alice said. “It’s like a waterfall.”
“Thanks,” Kenji said. He looked slightly afraid that she would reach out and touch him, and shimmied sideways through the front door.
Lizzie was on Tommy right away. She had a Ring Pop on and was licking and sucking like she was auditioning for a porn movie. There wasn’t a heterosexual teenage boy alive who could have resisted. Sam walked by and turned to Alice, rolling her eyes hard.
“I need more cigarettes,” Alice said. A few people threw wads of cash at her and made requests—a pack of Newport Lights, a pack of Marlboro Lights, some papers.
“I’ll go with you,” Kenji said. He’d been sitting quietly at the end of the table, bobbing his head to the music.
•••
The closest deli that didn’t ask for ID was on Amsterdam. Alice had been so hot inside that she’d forgotten it was fall outside, and as soon as they’d walked out through the iron gates, she was goose-pimpled and freezing.
“Here,” Kenji said. He pulled his North Face fleece over his head and handed it to her. Alice quickly shoved her arms through the sleeves.It smelled like laundry detergent and cigarette smoke, though Kenji himself didn’t smoke, she didn’t think. She’d never paid much attention.
The block between Broadway and Amsterdam was silent. So much of high school was spent roaming around with enormous herds of people—college, too—and Alice had had this feeling before, of suddenly being alone with someone you’d never been alone with, despite having been in the same room with them hundreds of times. She didn’t know what to say, but then she thought about it, and she did.
“Hey,” Alice said. “I know this is totally out of the blue, and I’m sorry if it’s a weird thing to say on the way to the bodega, but I’m really sorry about your dad.”
Kenji stopped. “Whoa, okay.”
“I’m sorry,” Alice said. “I shouldn’t have said that, that was totally weird timing.”
“No,” Kenji said, “it’s cool. It’s just, you know, no one ever mentions it. Or people apologize, like, once, like they just stepped on your foot, and then it’s all cool, you know?”
Alice thought about how many times she’d done the same thing. Helen’s father had died when they were in college, after a long illness, and had she even sent a note? She thought so. The whole thing had just made her uncomfortable, and she didn’t want to do or say the wrong thing, and so saying nothing and staying out of the way seemed better. But it was obviously not better. Alice could already tell how much she would hate people who did the wrong thing when Leonard died, and the people who said nothing at all, even as she would simultaneously forgive those who hadn’t lost a parent or a loved one, because they just didn’t know.
“I get it. How old were you?”
“Twelve,” Kenji said. He shivered in his enormous white T-shirt.
“Fuck,” Alice said. “I am so sorry. It was cancer, right?”
“Yep,” he said. “Lymphoma.”
They walked in silence until they got to the corner. Kenji started to walk toward the door of the deli, but Alice put her hand on his arm. “I’m really sorry that happened. I bet you miss him a lot. My dad is sick, too. And my mom may as well be dead—I know that’s not the same thing, but she left us a long time ago, and so it’s just me and my dad. And it’s scary.”
