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

an office,” he said. “I’ve sponged off you long enough, Dad.”
    “For one thing, Sylvia wouldn’t hear of it,” Dad told him. “And for another, it saves us a lot of money, your living at home. Until you’re out of school, Les, money’s going to be tight, and we enjoy having you around.”
    “For what? The court jester?” Lester said. “If I could share an apartment with a bunch of guys, it might not be so expensive.”
    “Les, you are free to do whatever you want. But I think Sylvia would be very distressed if you moved out on her account. Why don’t you live at home for at least another year while we all get acclimated to one another, become a family, and later, if you want to live somewhere else, you can make the decision then.”
    Somehow I’d never thought of Lester leaving home. Oh, if he married, of course. But living single somewhere else? Away from Dad and me? I wanted change, and I didn’t. Looked forward to it and dreaded it both at the same time.
    I was over at Elizabeth’s when she and her mom had this argument. I’ve almost never heard of Liz and her mom arguing at all, and especially not in front of other people. She and I were sitting on thecouch looking through a magazine and her mother had just put Nathan down for his nap.
    Mrs. Price stopped in the doorway of the living room and said, “Did you get my note about your piano lesson? You said you couldn’t make it Friday, so he’s going to squeeze you in Saturday at one forty-five.”
    “I already called him and canceled,” Elizabeth said, turning the page again to an article titled, “Does He Want You for Your Mind or Your Body?”
    Mrs. Price was carrying an armload of Nathan’s clothes to the basement, and she leaned against the door frame. “ What ?”
    “I canceled. I’ve got a big paper to write this weekend.”
    “Elizabeth Ann, all you said was that you couldn’t do it Friday, and Mr. Hedges has gone out of his way to move appointments around so he could take you.”
    “Well, he’ll just have to move them back again. You never told me you were making it Saturday,” said Elizabeth.
    I pretended to be engrossed in men who want you for your mind, but I was right in the line of fire between Elizabeth and her mom.
    “Why didn’t you say you didn’t want a lesson at all this weekend?” Mrs. Price asked in exasperation. “We are so lucky that Mr. Hedges acceptedyou at all, and now, after he’s taken an interest in your playing, this seems so ungrateful.”
    “Well, I’m not having a lesson this weekend, Mother, and I’ve taken care of it,” Elizabeth said, and I noticed her voice was shaking.
    “I just wish you’d told me earlier,” her mother snapped, and went on down to the basement.
    Elizabeth didn’t say any more, but I could see she was upset, and I went home shortly after that.
    When I went to the Melody Inn the following Saturday to put in my three hours of work, I discovered that Janice Sherman was leaving sooner than she had expected. She had an offer to manage a Melody Inn in Toledo, Ohio, and wanted to go early to find a place to live. Dad said she could, that we’d make do somehow till he got a replacement. Everybody was being ultrapolite and friendly to her, and she was being her usual methodical self, putting Post-it notes on every shelf in her office, on every box and drawer, saying exactly where everything was so we wouldn’t go bananas after she left.
    “When did all this happen?” Marilyn whispered to me when I dusted the shelves in the Gift Shoppe, the little boutique under the stairs leading to the practice cubicles above. “Did she and your dad have a fight or something?”
    I didn’t want to say more than I should, so I just told her, “No, I think Janice figures it’s time she moved on.”
    But Marilyn didn’t buy it. “Move out, is more like it. Your dad comes back from England with the news that he and Sylvia Summers are engaged, and suddenly Janice Sherman is looking for a