Read Online Alice Alone by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor - Free Book Online Page A

. Patrick wasn’t the only one who had extra things to do and places to go after school.
    At home, we could hardly keep up with Dad. All week long he had been relandscaping the whole yard, front and back, putting a dogwood tree in one place, a red maple in another, azaleas on bothsides of the front steps, rhododendron, tiger lilies, ivy, a magnolia …
    “How do you know Sylvia will like all this stuff?” I asked him as he came in with muddy work gloves to get a drink of water.
    “Because I’ve chosen all her favorite plants and trees,” he said.
    “Are we going to keep living here, then, after you’re married?”
    “We’ve talked about it,” Dad said. “She loves her own little place, but it’s just too small for the four of us, so it makes sense that she move here.” Dad smiled at the thought of it. “She’ll certainly make the house a home, with all her little touches.”
    “It’s already a home,” I said, somewhat resentfully.
    Dad looked over at me from the sink. “Of course it is, honey. But won’t it be nice to have a mom around?”
    “You know how much I’ve wanted this, Dad, but she’s really not my mother. I don’t think I can ever call her that.”
    “You don’t have to. ‘Sylvia’ will do.”
    I continued nibbling a carrot. “Are you going to visit her again before she comes back in June?” I asked.
    “I’d like to. We’ll have to see.”
    “Christmas?”
    “Not Christmas. That’s our busiest time at the store, and I won’t have Janice this year, remember. Besides, Sylvia plans to do a little traveling over the holidays, see a bit more of the country before her year is up.”
    How could two people in love stay away from each other that long? I wondered. A lot could happen in eight months.
    It was my turn to make dinner, and I was having hamburgers, oven-made French fries, and a salad. As I scrubbed the potatoes and cut them in long strips, I tried to imagine another person living in our house. Dad’s bedroom is the largest. He has two huge closets on either side of a bay window. There are clothes poles in only one of them, though. The other has built-in drawers at the back for blankets and stuff, and shelves along the sides, so I don’t know where Sylvia’s clothes would go. And we only have one bathroom. That could be a problem. It’s already a problem!
    I sprinkled the potato slices with olive oil and salt and stuck them in the oven while I looked around the kitchen, trying to see it through Sylvia’s eyes.
    It’s a big, old-fashioned kitchen with lots of cupboards, but little counter space. We have a large dining room, a large living room, and a full basement.Dad uses a corner of our dining room for his office, but all that will change when he marries Sylvia, he says, because she’ll need an office, too.
    “I’m thinking of finishing the basement,” Dad said at dinner. “Insulation, paneling, wall-to-wall carpet… . I want Sylvia to have plenty of room for her school things, and I could use a real honest-to-goodness desk. If I turned half of the basement into office space, would that be okay with you two?”
    I dipped one of my French fries into a pool of catsup and thought about Miss Summers’s house, the few times I’d been in it. I know how she liked having her desk by the back window overlooking the yard and bird feeder.
    “How do you know she’ll like working in a basement?” I asked.
    “It’s all we’ve got,” Dad said simply. “But she can hang plants all over the place if she likes. Decorate the house any way she wants.”
    “Not my room!” I said. “I want my room exactly the way it is now.” I guess you could call it jungle decor—the bedspread, the chair, the large rubber plant in one corner …
    “I’m sure Sylvia isn’t going to touch your room, Al. Or yours, either, Les. You can keep your rooms the way you want them.”
    “Seems to me the solution would be for me toget an apartment somewhere and let you and Sylvia use my room as