Simply Alice

  “Oh, Les! Really? I’ve heard kids talk about it.”

  “You seemed to have such a good time with Fiddler on the Roof. I could get tickets for us next Friday night, the day before your birthday. They were sold out on Saturday.”

  I threw my arms around him. Going somewhere with Les was always special. Then I wondered if I had to share him with Lauren.

  “Is Lauren coming, too?” I asked.

  “No, she has something else going on.”

  Good! I thought. “How should I dress?”

  “Like you’re going to a wedding, I suppose. The audience is part of it, I think.”

  I wish he’d said I could bring some friends, but knowing how expensive tickets were these days, I knew he was already spending far over his budget.

  “We could go Dutch,” I said. “I’ve got some money saved.”

  “Hey, kiddo. It’s your birthday. It’s on me,” he said. “Just don’t do anything to embarrass me, okay?”

  12

  Tony and Tina

  Aunt Sally and Uncle Milt had sent me a check for my birthday, and I splurged on a dress I really loved. Marilyn went with me on a lunch hour at the Melody Inn to buy it. It looked sort of like a slip—just a short, backless, cream-colored sheath that covered the front of me, but was completely bare in back from the waist up except for the halter strap around the neck and two thin strings that tied below it.

  I giggled when I saw myself in the mirror. So did Marilyn.

  “Lester will have a spaz,” she said, “but it’s good for his heart. He needs to exercise it a bit.” We giggled some more.

  “Now shoes,” said Marilyn. “You need something light.”

  “I have a pair of beige flats with thin cross-straps over the top,” I told her.

  “Perfect,” she said.

  “But what do I do for a bra?” I wondered, checking the dress again.

  Marilyn put her hand to my ear. “You don’t wear one,” she said.

  “But … my nipples!”

  “So you have two little points down there. It’s not against the law.”

  “But, Dad—”

  “I know. Better not let your dad see you in it at all.”

  “Oh, Marilyn, I love this dress, but do you think I should?” I asked her.

  “Be adventurous,” she said. “And blame it on me.”

  Fortunately, the night we were to go to Tony ’n’ Tina’s Wedding, Dad was going to a chamber music concert with the clarinet instructor from the store and his wife, and they left before we did. I waited till he was out the door and down the drive before I put on my new dress and came downstairs, where Lester, in his good sport coat and pants, was reading the paper.

  “I’m ready,” I said.

  “Good for you! Right on time,” he said, looking at his watch. “Never keep a date waiting if you can help it.” He looked me over. “Nice dress.”

  “Thank you,” I said.

  “Except for your … uh … mammary glands,” he said. “Can’t you sort of walk round-shouldered so they’re not so prominent?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous, Les,” I said, and started for the door.

  “Al!” he gasped. “You’re naked back there!”

  I tried not to laugh. “I am not. There are strings—”

  “What if some guy reached out and pulled them?”

  “They’d untie, I suppose,” I said. “But there’s still the halter strap.”

  “But … there’s nothing at the sides! A guy could slip his hand in there!”

  “Not with you here to protect me,” I said. “You sound like Aunt Sally, Lester. Don’t tell me you wouldn’t be delighted if Lauren wore a dress like this.”

  “You’re not Lauren, Al. You’re fourteen years old.”

  “Fifteen tomorrow,” I said.

  “In that dress, you’re jailbait.”

  I just smiled sweetly. “Shall we go?”

  One of the things I like about my brother is that when he offers to take me some place, he treats me like a grown-up. He’s not patronizing, doesn’t act as though he can’t wait for the evening to be over. It was my birthday present, after all.

  So we headed toward the beltway and the road that would take us to Baltimore, and I had to keep reminding myself that I was dressed. I’ll admit, though, I felt as naked as Lester thought I looked. I wasn’t used to feeling the back of the car seat against my bare shoulder blades, but I looked, well, sexy in front, the shape of my thighs under the thin fabric of my dress, no slip underneath.

  “Am I dressed appropriately for the occasion, Les?” I asked. “I mean, do I look as though I’m going to a wedding?”

  “No, you look as though you’re going to work in a strip joint.”

  “Les-ter!”

  “A nice strip joint, I mean.”

  “Les-ter!”

  “A really classy dump.”

  “Lester, I don’t care what you say, I am going to Tony and Tina’s wedding in this dress and I think I look ravishing.”

  “So you do. That’s why I worry.”

  Lester pulled up to the address that was on our tickets, and after we’d parked, we went inside and up the stairs, where a crowd of people were milling about a lobby outside a makeshift chapel. Immediately a grandmotherly looking woman in a navy blue dress came up to me and said, “It’s been ages! Oh, you look so good, and you should see Tina! She’s absolutely beautiful.”

  While I was still staring, an elderly man grabbed Lester by the arm and kept shaking his hand up and down, saying, “So glad you could come! So glad! I’ve got another grandchild since I saw you last. Look here at little Anna.” And he pulled out a worn plastic picture folder with photos of people we had never seen before, and I guess we were supposed to play along, because Les said, “And look at little Teddy there. He’s the spittin’ image of you, Gramps!” The man laughed and slapped Les on the shoulder, and ambled off to show his pictures to someone else. I grinned at Lester, and he grinned back. This was going to be fun.

  “You want a 7UP or something?” he asked.

  “Sure.”

  We had to stop by a desk to turn in our tickets and were given our table number for the reception. The woman sitting there was obviously doubling as a bridesmaid. Two men in tuxedos were arguing loudly nearby as to which one had dated the bride most recently, and everyone was watching and laughing. It was as though we were all onstage, and none of us knew our lines, but it didn’t really matter. We were just part of the chorus. As long as I didn’t have to sing, I didn’t really care what happened.

  While Les was at the bar getting my soft drink, a third man in a tuxedo sidled up to me and said how much he liked my dress. “An extraordinary dress,” he said, examining it from all angles.

  Les moved in. “Excuse me, she’s with me,” he said.

  The tuxedoed man put up his hands. “Hey, hey! No offense! Just looking, no touching.”

  Then a large guy wearing shades, who looked like a member of the Mafia, stepped up on a chair and bellowed, “Okay now, all youse who came to celebrate the marriage of my buddy Tony to his dame shoulda got your table assignments by now, and you can put your drinks down where you can find ’em later and go in the chapel there. No fair takin’ somebody else’s drink when you come out, either, you’re too cheap to buy your own.”

  We laughed and headed toward a door with fake stained glass, and found ourselves in a small chapel with flowers in front. Les and I sat down next to the aisle because I wanted to see the bride when she came in. The old grandfather was the first relative to come in, though, and he was still stopping along the aisle to show off pictures of his grandchildren. Then the father of the groom came in with his new trophy wife in a very low-cut red dress with black fishnet stockings, and finally the mother of the bride, who had greeted us when we first arrived.

  The recorded organ music began, and an actor in priest’s robes stood up in front along with a nun who was supposed to be a relative of the bride.

  I
t was a funny ceremony, with the grandfather having to go to the bathroom in the middle of it, the nun leading the congregation in a rousing hymn she’d written herself, then the wedding procession, with one of the bridesmaids obviously pregnant and chewing gum.

  Tony, the groom, was too laid back to suit the priest, and Tina, a beautiful actress, was annoyed with him because he kept forgetting what to do. But at last they were “married,” and we all went to a large room for the reception and dinner.

  Les and I were seated at a table where we could see both the wedding party at their table and the dance floor, and there was something going on every minute. Having taken part in the school production, I could appreciate all that the actors and actresses had to do, because they had to improvise a lot, and they doubled as waiters and waitresses, wheeling out the steam tables, dishing up the food, and organizing the buffet line.

  We never knew what was going to happen next because the actors kept mixing with the audience, coming by and pretending they knew everyone, as though we were all relatives. Of course one of the bridesmaids got a little “drunk,” and somebody’s aunt “fainted.” Tony and Tina themselves got into an argument because she thought he had insulted her mother, but toasts were made, then there was dancing, and when one of the ushers invited me out on the dance floor, Les just smiled and shrugged. “Enjoy,” he said.

  While we were dancing, though, the actor kept peering around at the back of my dress, making the audience laugh, and then he began fumbling with the strings as though he was going to untie them. Tina, who was dancing with her “father,” reached over and slapped his hands, and everyone laughed again, including me. When he took me back to our table, Les grinned, and I admitted I’d actually enjoyed being out there on the dance floor, like I was one of the performers myself. It was fun going along with the act.

  Then the father of the groom insulted the mother of the bride, the father’s new wife climbed up on a table and began dancing, the nun kept trying to lead the audience in song, and the tipsy bridesmaid came over to our table and invited Les to dance. “C’mon, honey,” she said. “I’ve had my eye on you all evening.”

  Wanting to be a good sport, he got up and escorted her out on the floor with some other couples.

  For the first few minutes they danced like everyone else, the tipsy bridesmaid smiling at him and flirting. Les rolled his eyes at me as they waltzed by our table, and I laughed. But then the bridesmaid began leaning more and more heavily against Les, as though she were barely able to stand up straight, and he struggled more and more to hold her up. She put her head on his shoulder, one arm draped around his neck, and when they danced by a second time, I saw that her other hand was clutching the seat of his pants.

  There were a lot of other crazy things going on around the room, but the people in the audience who were sitting nearest me saw the little drama going on between Lester and the bridesmaid. More and more people began watching, laughing and pointing, and I could tell that the bridesmaid was not about to stop and let him go. In fact, two of her fingers were drumming a tattoo on Lester’s behind while she scrunched up his pants even tighter.

  For one of the few times I could remember, I saw Lester blush. His neck, his cheeks, his forehead were pink, and he was good-naturedly trying to extricate himself from the woman, but she wasn’t about to let him go. The more he tried to edge her back to a table, the more she clung to him, and Lester, his face really red now, resigned, kept on gallantly moving her around the floor while she played with his bottom.

  I don’t know how I had the nerve—emboldened maybe by being Charlene’s substitute in Fiddler, or the fact that the audience was supposed to play along with the story, or maybe because I knew that no matter how outrageously I behaved, I’d never see any of these people again. But I suddenly got up from the table and, taking my 7UP glass with me to look more sophisticated—it was in a wine goblet—I edged out onto the dance floor and over to Lester and the bridesmaid. I couldn’t tell if Les was more relieved or alarmed, but I tapped the bridesmaid on her broad back and said, “Excuse me, I’m cutting in.”

  I saw some of the other actors glance around, amused.

  The bridesmaid never got out of character for a moment. She opened one eye to look at me sideways and, in a slurred voice, said, “Yeah? You and who else?”

  “You’re dancing with my fiancé,” I told her.

  “Well, sweetie, I think your fi-an-say fancies me, if I say so myself,” she said, and plunked her head on Lester’s shoulder again.

  I was really in the spirit of things now, and everyone was looking at us and smiling. It was all a big joke, I knew, and they were playing for laughs, but there was a slight edge of anger roiling up inside me, too. I had to save my brother!

  I tapped her again. “I want him back,” I said.

  She kept her head next to his, her lips an inch away from his face, and said, “She wants you back. Imagine that. Well, she can’t have you, luv, ’cause you’re mine. Allllll mine!”

  Les was beet red now.

  She turned her body so that she and Les were dancing away from me. I simply held out my hand and poured my 7UP right down her back.

  Everyone gasped, but the other actors and actresses were laughing, and a couple of them even applauded.

  The bridesmaid instantly let go of Les and stared at me. And then, actress that she was—and mindful that I was a paying customer—said, “Well, don’t have a hissy fit, sweetheart. He’s all yours!” and she huffily left the floor, the large dark stain spreading out over the back of her dress.

  I set my empty glass on the nearest table, smiled sweetly at Lester, and put one hand on his shoulder as he danced me around the floor. Everyone was smiling at us.

  “Hey, babe, I didn’t know you had it in you,” he said, looking slightly stunned.

  “Neither did I,” I said, and gazed at him with fake adoration. It was so much fun. Everyone figured we were a couple. So this was what it felt like to be one of Lester’s girlfriends, I thought; this was the way it was for Crystal and Marilyn and Eva when they danced with him. For Lauren, too, maybe. Except they were in love with him, and I simply loved him as a brother.

  I lifted my head and looked into his eyes again. “Les, do you remember the time you took me out to a club on my thirteenth birthday and while you were in the rest room this guy came on to me, and you rescued me?”

  “Yeah. How could I forget?”

  “So now we’re even,” I said.

  “Thanks,” said Lester.

  The bridesmaid came back with a big towel stuffed down the back of her dress, and that made it all the funnier. Every time she passed our table she hissed at me and gave me dirty looks, but I could tell she was enjoying herself as much as anyone.

  I guess when you put on the same play night after night, you hope something spontaneous will happen to liven things up. You want the audience to react and keep you going—anything to help your performance.

  As soon as the wedding cake was cut and served, Les said. “You ready to call it a night, Al? Should we duck out?”

  “I’m ready,” I told him. “We’ve got to drive back to Silver Spring.” We moved over to the door where some of the wedding party were saying good-bye to guests. The bridesmaid was at the end of the line, and when I got to her, she smiled and gave me a quick kiss on the cheek. “No hard feelings, luv,” she said, and gave me the rose in her hair as a memento. As we started up the stairs, however, she reached out and gave Lester a pinch on the behind.

  I’d forgotten that Dad would be home before we would, but when I saw him, I burst into the living room, full of our evening, wanting to tell him everything.

  “Al!” he said, before I’d got a whole sentence out. “Where’s your dress?” I looked down quickly, afraid it had somehow fallen off. “What?”

  “Uh … that is her dress,” Lester said, throwing his suit coat over the back of a chair.

  Dad was horrified. “It’s just a slip!”

  I decided I
might as well get this over with, so I struck a modeling pose and turned slowly around.

  For a moment, Dad was speechless. He stared first at me, then at Lester. “You let her go like that?”

  “Well, Pops, she is fifteen. And I was along to see that nothing happened.”

  “And you’re going to go along every time she wears that dress?” Dad asked.

  “Dad, backless dresses are in now! You should see what the prom dresses look like this year!” I told him.

  Dad leaned back against the sofa and shook his head. “I don’t think I’m ready for this, Al,” he said.

  “Marilyn thought I looked great in it, and so did …” I started to say “all the men at Tony ’n’ Tina’s Wedding” but I knew that would send Dad over the edge. “So did Lester,” I finished.

  “Well, it is a nice-looking dress,” Lester admitted.

  “Come here,” Dad said to me, and when I walked over, he sat me on one knee. I laughed.

  “I can remember,” he said, “when you were only a year old, in a little pink playsuit, and I’d bounce you on my foot.”

  “I don’t remember that at all,” I said.

  “Of course. You were too young. And when you were three … four … wearing your OshKosh overalls, you’d sit in my lap and snuggle back against me while I read Goodnight, Moon or Little Bear’s Visit. And now here you are, almost all grown up, attracting the glances of admiring men… .” He smiled at me and patted my hand. “I wish I could put you in a protective bubble, hon, and keep you safe forever, but I know I can’t.”

  “She’d miss all the fun,” said Lester.

  “I know,” said Dad.

  “I’d never meet anybody,” I told him.

  “I know,” said Dad.

  “I’d probably grow up to be neurotic as anything.”

  “I know,” Dad said again.

  “And I’d never marry or get a job, and I’d be on your and Lester’s hands for the rest of my life,” I added, leaning over to kiss his forehead.