And if she ever feels awful or scared or alone or goes through something terrible and miserable and horrible, I won’t leave her in her room all by herself. No, I’ll crawl into bed with her and hold her in my arms, and I’ll let her cry and cry all she wants, and I’ll press her little head into my neck and let her sob tears on me, and I won’t tell her I know it will get better, and I won’t promise her she won’t always feel this bad, and I won’t make her stop crying. I’ll let her cry for as long as she needs to. As long as she needs to. As long as she needs to.
Kurt
When I arrived at Alice’s house that early spring evening, Alice greeted me with a smile at the door and said, “So, I have a surprise!” Oh, to have a quick wit about me, to be able to respond with some clever answer. But I just followed her into the kitchen and asked, “What?”
“Look!” Alice said, pulling out a math quiz from her binder. Her face was gleeful. “An 88! Do you know how crazy this is for me? An 88!” Next to the circled grade Mr. Commons had written “Much Improved!” and underlined it.
I was thrilled and also upset. Upset that this 88 meant Alice would most likely no longer be requesting my help in mathematics. Gone would be our once or even twice weekly visits together. Gone would be the nights I could soak in her face, her eyes, her smile, the way she grips her pencil and bites her bottom lip as she works, the way she grins to herself when she gets something right.
Gone would be our conversations. The ones that—ever since the day we had lunch together at my house—have more frequently started meandering away from talk of constants and variables and begun entering into other territories. Our families. Our likes and dislikes. Our favorite things. Our funny habits.
I know, for instance, that Alice still holds her breath when she walks past the historic city cemetery on the way home from school, even though she knows it’s a silly superstition. And Alice knows, for example, that elevators make me claustrophobic. (“So I suppose it’s a good thing that we only have two of them in Healy,” Alice observed with a laugh.) And I know, for instance, that Alice’s mother is dating a man over in Clayton and sometimes leaves Alice all alone for a week at a time. (“Once she forgot to pay the power bill and I had to get ready for school in the dark, if you can believe it,” she confessed with a shrug, like she was used to such annoyances when dealing with her mother.) And Alice knows that back in first grade I liked to imagine that young, pretty Miss Sweeney could somehow become my mother since my real mother was gone. When I told that to Alice, she smiled at me.
“You know what? I kind of used to imagine that, too,” Alice had admitted.
But now, all of that sharing will be going away. Because of a wonderful, terrible 88.
I supposed my expression must have given away my sadness because Alice’s face—her beautiful face—turned from excited to confused.
“Oh,” she said, her voice soft. “Do you … you think I … I mean, I should be getting As?” Then she smiled. “Kurt, it’s nice to have your faith in me, but come on. An 88! You’ve got to be happy over this. We worked so hard.”
“No, Alice, I am,” I said. “I’m very happy for you. But I’m just…” I took a breath. I could tell Alice how I felt. I could do it. “I guess I’m just worried that maybe you won’t need my help anymore.”
Alice sat down at the kitchen table, so I did, too. She stared at the 88 and then back at me. “But I’m not, I mean … I’m not paying you to do this. Why would you.…” She stopped, and her cheeks pinked up a bit. Alice knows I’m attracted to her. She knows and she knows I know she knows. Even earlier in the fall when she’d asked me if I was only tutoring her because I wanted to sleep with her, she must have known deep down inside that I liked her.
Hadn’t she realized that as time went by, it wasn’t simply sex that I thought about? (Although I would be a hypocrite and a liar if I didn’t admit to frequently fantasizing about such unattainable acts in the privacy of my own home.) Hadn’t she’d figured out by now that I really like her—her, Alice? Not Fantasy Alice, but the living, breathing, talking, walking, actual Alice who holds her breath near cemeteries and eats grilled cheese sandwiches and has managed to survive complete and utter banishment from everyone she ever regarded as a friend and still come to school every single day.
That Alice. I like her. I like being her friend.
Alice didn’t humiliate me. She didn’t make me elaborate. She just sat there, pink cheeks, 88 in hand.
“Alice, I know that I’m not … I mean, that I’m not exactly what you’d find…” I could not find the words. I have a genius IQ, yet I could not find the words.
Alice could. She reached out across the kitchen table and put her small girl hand on top of my arm, and the warmth that pulsed from that touch heated up my entire body from my toes to the roots of my hair.
“Kurt, it’s okay. I want you to know that I don’t know what I would have done this year without you. And I don’t mean just math. I mean, that was great. But what I mean is that you were the only person in the school who would even talk to me. You were my friend, Kurt. You are my friend. And I don’t have any friends other than you. None. I don’t know if you know what that feels like,” she said, and as she said it, her voice broke a bit.
“Yes,” I said. “I do. I know exactly what that feels like.”
Alice looked ashamed as if she should have predicted such an answer. She glanced down and blushed harder.
“Of course you know,” she said. “I suck, I’m sorry. God, until everything happened, I never even gave you the time of day.”
“That’s not true,” I said. “When I helped you with your Geometry that one time in the library back in tenth grade, you were very nice to me.”
Alice let go of my hand and wiped away the tears that were beginning to fall.
“Oh sure, I was nice, but I just…” she hesitated. “I saw you as this weird nerd. This weird nerd who could be useful to me in the moment. I probably wouldn’t have been nice to you otherwise. I’m sorry, but that’s the truth. You can hate me for admitting it.”
It hurt to hear despite knowing it was the truth, but I didn’t hate Alice. I couldn’t and I can’t.
“I don’t think someone like Elaine O’Dea would have been nice to me,” I argued. “Even if she only saw me as a useful nerd. You must have known that I would have helped you with your Geometry regardless. The fact that you were nice to me even when you didn’t have to be … I mean, that has to count for something, right?”