Outrageously Alice by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor

it was four times as big, so that had to count for something.
    It was her bedroom that would tell the most, I figured. Whichever man’s picture was in her bedroom was the one she most wanted to see before she went to sleep at night, the man she most wanted to dream of. I couldn’t leave her house without peeking into her bedroom.
    “Well, your dad’s ready to come home, Alice,” Miss Summers said, coming back into the kitchen. “I even talked with him. He says that from now on, Lester can clean the gutters.”
    “Great!” I said. “Could I use your bathroom before we go?”
    “Certainly,” she said, and I headed for her bedroom.“There’s one right there in the hall, Alice,” she called.
    I stood in the doorway of her bedroom, wanting terribly to go in, but she was watching. Reluctantly I turned and went to the bathroom in the hall. We left without my ever knowing whose photo she kept by her bed.

11
REHEARSAL
    “WELL, I GUESS I PUT ON QUITE A CIRCUS,” Dad said when we walked in the emergency room later. He was sitting by the door with an attendant.
    “I was scared, Dad,” I told him. “Lester wasn’t home, and I didn’t know who else to call.”
    “I hope you’re not apologizing for calling me !” Miss Summers said. She bent over and kissed Dad on the forehead. “How are you feeling, Ben?” One hand lightly massaged his arm.
    “Giddy, but not quite so out of it as I was.”
    “Well, they wouldn’t be sending you home if they didn’t think we could take good care of you.”
    “Sylvia, I hate to be such a bother.”
    She leaned closer as though they were having a private conversation, but I heard her say, “Now that’s a word that isn’t even in our vocabulary.”
    “Our.” She said “our,” as though they had a secret language or something! I beamed.
    The attendant insisted on helping Dad out to the car and strapping him in the front seat beside Miss Summers. I crawled in back, happy to see them sitting together.
    As we drove home, Miss Summers said that she was going back to her house to make some soup after she let us off, and that if I would check on Dad while she was gone, she’d take over after dinner and stay until Lester got there.
    Dad seemed normal enough as he went up the steps between us, and after we got him seated on the couch with the Sunday paper, Miss Summers went on home. Dad leaned back and closed his eyes, and I flew around straightening up the house so if Miss Summers decided to stay awhile, she wouldn’t think we lived like pigs. Every so often I’d go over to Dad, though, and pull open one of his eyelids with my thumb and finger to see if his pupils were dilated.
    “Okay,” he said finally, “I can see I’m not going to get any nap today,” and he picked up the newspaper.
    Elizabeth called.
    “Alice, what happened? We saw you and Miss Summers helping your dad up the steps a while ago.”
    I told her about Dad’s falling off the ladder, and how Miss Summers was coming back with our dinner. She obviously called Pamela, because that’s who phoned next. “Is Miss Summers going to stay all night?” she asked.
    “Why would she stay all night?”
    “He’s sick! They’re in love! She wants to be close to him! He needs her!” Pamela said. Dad falls off a ladder, and all Pamela can think about is sex.
    The next time I checked Dad, he was sound asleep and snoring, the newspaper on the floor, so I decided to let him be. When he woke up about forty minutes later, he said he felt a hundred percent better.
    “Good! Miss Summers is coming over after a while with our dinner.”
    “Then I’m going to shower,” said Dad.
    I went up and sat down outside the bathroom door to make sure he didn’t fall or anything, and a few minutes later I heard him singing in the shower. I wasn’t sure, but I think it was “Fascination.” I had to leave him once, though, when the phone rang. It was Janice Sherman wanting to tell Dad about a gorgeous piece of organ musicshe’d