Alice on the Outside

  Elizabeth tried again, and this time, because the dress was so tight, the pouch pushed Pamela’s breast up so high that a nipple popped up over the top. We screamed again.

  “Donald would pass out,” Pamela said, wiping her eyes.

  “He wouldn’t even know what it was,” I said, and we howled some more.

  Then we heard Lester’s voice outside the dressing room.

  “… try to overlook a lot,” he was saying. “I’m acting custodian for the day.”

  We hushed.

  “What’s the matter with them?” The saleswoman’s voice.

  “Developmental problems, you know.”

  “Oh. They seemed perfectly normal … ,” the clerk said.

  “Yeah, they’ll fool you every time,” said Lester.

  7

  LORI HAYNES

  I SPENT MOST OF APRIL, IT SEEMED, PLAYING with Elizabeth’s little brother, Nathan, who’s almost seven months old now, and really cute. He’s just beginning to cry when she hands him to strangers, and I feel pretty flattered that he’ll let me carry him around.

  Pamela and I play peekaboo with him a lot. Once, up in his room, Pamela got down on the floor on one side of his crib and I got down on the other, and we kept popping up—first one of us on one side, then the other—and saying, “Boo!” and he got so excited he just crowed. Screamed, almost, then giggled. When you look at a little baby like that, you realize that if he thinks this is exciting, wait till he rides his first Ferris wheel! Steers his first bike! Tries out a pair of RollerBlades or goes down a hill on a sled. All the stuff this little kid has waiting for him! And I think how, if I’m a parent, it’s up to me to protect this new little life so he’ll grow up to have a future.

  “Is it scary?” I asked Mrs. Price as I helped her get a shirt over Nathan’s head, which must be something like trying to put a sweater on an octopus.

  “Scary?”

  “Knowing that you’re responsible for him till he’s eighteen years old. Maybe more,” I said.

  She laughed. “With your first one, you’re extra cautious, I think. You always check to make sure he’s still breathing. But after a while you relax a little and the baby relaxes, and, of course, you get a lot of help. There are always people eager to tell you how to raise a child. Mostly, you just have to trust yourself.”

  Interesting, I thought, how often I hear, “Trust yourself.” Trust yourself that you’re smart enough to get through algebra. Trust yourself to act natural with a boy. Trust yourself that you’ll choose the right career. Sort of makes you feel like everyone else has a more grown-up self than you do.

  “What philosopher was it who said, ‘Trust yourself’?” I asked Lester. He was standing at his mirror putting on a tie.

  “Emerson. ‘Trust thyself. Every heart vibrates to that inner string.’ Or something like that.”

  “Whatever. Do you trust yourself?”

  “Most of the time.”

  “Do you know, then, why you keep turning down wonderful girls like Marilyn and Crystal?”

  “Is this conversation going somewhere?”

  “I’m just asking, Lester, why you keep letting wonderful women get away. I think it’s because you’re afraid that if you really fall for a nice girl, she might die, like Mom did, and you can’t stand the possibility of being abandoned twice.”

  “Who are you? Sigmund Freud?”

  “I read it in a magazine at the dentist’s. This woman wrote that her nephew never dated nice girls since his mother died; he always dated floozies.”

  “Floozies? How old was that magazine? The nineteen twenties?”

  “I worry about you, Lester! All these girls are madly in love with you, and—”

  “There were two, to be exact.”

  “And you let them get away.”

  “One fell in love with someone else, remember.”

  “But Crystal still loves you, and you know it.”

  “Well, I’m flattered,” Lester said, “but I don’t go out with married women. Which is why, if you recall, you promised to fend off any more phone calls from Crystal, if there are any.”

  “I’ll remember,” I told him. I realized he’d never worn a tie to work before. “Where are you going?” I asked.

  “New job. Shoe store, ten to five on Saturdays, plus Tuesday and Thursday evenings. Need some extra money.” He slipped his arms in his suit coat. “See you, kid,” he said, and clattered downstairs.

  I stood at the window as Lester got in his car and drove away. Everything seemed to be changing lately. People made changes in their lives without even telling me about them. But it was nothing like I felt when I saw Pamela going up the steps of Elizabeth’s house across the street. Nobody said anything to me about going to Elizabeth’s! I turned and stared at the phone in the hallway, waiting for it to ring. It didn’t.

  I slid down on the floor against the wall and cried. Just because I didn’t like to talk about dresses and makeup all the time. Just because I didn’t like to fool around with my hair. They could have invited me anyway, couldn’t they? They could at least have let me refuse!

  “I saw you at Elizabeth’s this morning,” I said to Pamela later when she called.

  “Oh, yeah,” she said. “We were trying on earrings. We didn’t think you’d be interested.”

  Gwen and Lori had both been extra nice to me since CRW. Maybe they were feeling a little guilty because they’d been part of the A group, with all its perks.

  “Here,” said Gwen, dropping a paper on my desk during homeroom the following week. “I picked up an application for candy striper at Suburban Hospital this summer and got an extra one for you, if you’re interested.”

  “I am!” I said. “Thanks.”

  Lori made it a point to sit by me in biology when she got the chance, and we always walked to and from the gym together. She’d be a lot more attractive if she’d stand up straight, I thought, but she hunches over her books when she walks as though she’s trying to be as short as everyone else. If tall girls only knew how they looked when they did that, but I guess none of us wants to be told how we really look.

  She’s right across from me in the locker room, and Lori’s got a nice shape, even though she doesn’t have much bosom. I guess you’re not supposed to look at each other’s bodies in the locker room, not so it’s noticeable, anyway, but of course we all do. We’re comparing ourselves with everyone else. The seventh-graders frankly stare. I stared too in seventh grade, because I’d never seen so many naked girls all at one time, but in eighth grade we don’t pay that much attention anymore. I caught Lori looking at me, though. I guess if you’re tall and feel different from other girls, you always want to see how you measure up. I’ll bet boys peek at each other all the time.

  It’s really amazing how different girls’ bodies are. No two are the same. Some have fine silky hair over their arms and thighs and abdomens; some have navels that poke out, some have belly buttons that tuck in; some have big nipples, small nipples, big buttocks, no buttocks—every single part of a woman is different in some way, which means that every single one of us is normal. You might think, Nobody else has a part that looks like mine, but if you look long enough you’ll find hundreds. Thousands. Millions, I’ll bet. Pamela says the “ideal” figure is the way models look, and I say if American girls all looked as skinny as models, other countries would be sending their corn and wheat to us!

  Lori and I were talking about our brothers in gym. We’d just come out of the shower, and I told her how Lester goes around the house in his Mickey Mouse shorts. She laughed.

  “I’ve got two brothers,” she said, drying the back of her neck.

  “Older or younger?”

  “Older, like yours.”

  “Is your mom living?” I asked, and then, when she looked at me sort of weird, I realized that most people don’t go around asking that. You just assume that their mothers are there, unless they’ve run off with NordicTrack instructors or something.

  “Of c
ourse,” said Lori. Then she said, “Why don’t you come over Friday and meet my family? Spend the night?”

  “Sure,” I said. “Except that I work in my dad’s store over on Georgia Avenue on Saturday mornings.”

  “Mom will drive you,” she said.

  So I agreed to go home on the bus with her on Friday.

  Why is it that as soon as you do something with a new girlfriend, your best friends get upset? Elizabeth and Pamela had been doing all sorts of things without me, but as soon as I did something different, I heard about it.

  “You’re going to Lori Haynes’s?” Pamela said when I mentioned it to her.

  “Yeah. She asked me. She’s got brothers too. She seems nice.”

  Pamela and Elizabeth grew quiet.

  “We’ve always done stuff together on weekends, Alice,” Elizabeth said. “And she didn’t invite us.”

  “Hey, we’re not Siamese triplets,” I told her, trying to joke about it. “We can still do something on Saturday. You guys do things sometimes without me!”

  The weird thing was, I got sort of the same reaction from Dad.

  “What’s her last name?” he asked.

  “Haynes.”

  “Ever meet her parents? What does her dad do?”

  I was beginning to get ticked off. “I don’t know. You want to call the FBI and check them out?” I snapped.

  “Honey, I just don’t like the idea of you sleeping in a home where there’s a father I don’t know anything about.”

  I went to the phone and called Lori. I told her my father was insane, and that somehow we had to convince him that her dad wasn’t an ax murderer or a rapist. She laughed. “I’ll have my mom call your dad,” she said, and ten minutes later, the phone rang.

  I don’t know what Mrs. Haynes said, but I could see Dad beginning to relax, and when he hung up, he said, “That was Lori’s mother. She assures me you’ll be well taken care of, and I feel I know the family a little better. You can go, Al, but call me if you ever feel uncomfortable somewhere.”

  Ha! If I called Dad every time I felt “uncomfortable,” I’d have to wear a walkie-talkie. I’d have called him the time Patrick took me to his parents’ country club for dinner. I’d have called him from Mrs. Plotkin’s room back in sixth grade, and from Mark Stedmeister’s swimming pool. From the doctor’s, the lingerie shower for Crystal, and from the broom closet at school on Halloween. Dad has no idea that I spend 95 percent of my life feeling “uncomfortable.”

  “Uncomfortable, or in danger of my life?” I asked.

  “Life, limb, or moral values,” said Dad, which meant that for ordinary, common, garden-variety embarrassments, I was on my own.

  Lori seemed really glad to have me. On the bus to her house—she lives out in Glenmont near Wheaton Plaza—she stretched out one leg alongside mine, and I noticed how really long it was. I felt like a shrimp next to her.

  “When did you start school?” I asked her. “I don’t remember you here last year.”

  “No one remembers me,” she said ruefully, pulling her dark bangs down over her face like she was trying to hide. “I was here, but I’m pretty shy, I guess. I got my growth spurt around December of seventh grade, and shot up like a beanstalk. I honestly think some kids thought I was a different person. Didn’t even recognize me when I came back last fall.”

  Her house is a Cape Cod, with one big room on the second floor. Her mom’s always been a housewife, Lori said, and her dad’s an engineer. He didn’t say much, but her mom was friendly. She made taco salad for dinner, which was great. Her brothers seemed really shy. They’re sixteen and seventeen, and have rooms in the basement, so Lori and I had the whole upper floor to ourselves. There were twin beds and a dresser at one end, and a foam rubber sofa and hassock and TV at the other—sort of like her own little apartment.

  “Lori, this is great!” I told her. “You could have parties up here and everything!”

  “I guess,” she said, pleased that I liked it. “One of the perks of being the only girl in the family, I guess.”

  We took off our shoes and sat on her sofa, our feet sharing the hassock, and looked through some screamingly funny books Lori had showing baby pictures of famous people. You were supposed to match the baby pictures with the right people. Some of the kids were picking their noses or pulling up their pants, and we’d yelp with laughter.

  Then Lori got out a photograph album of her own, pictures of herself when she was small, and we laughed some more. I told her finally about Mom, and she didn’t say anything at first. Then she just rubbed one of her feet gently against mine and said, “I’m really sorry, Alice.”

  “Thanks,” I said. And that was all.

  Her dad brought up some popcorn and went right down again, and I had to smile when I thought how my dad was probably at home still worrying about whether Mr. Haynes or one of his sons was going to molest me. I thought about Nathan again too, and how much worrying Mrs. Price will do about him. There sure must be a lot to worry about when you’re a parent!

  “Want me to tell your future?” Lori asked after we’d finished the popcorn and were watching some stupid movie on TV, the sound turned so low it was practically off because it was so stupid.

  I laughed. “Sure. As long as it’s good.”

  “No. Really. I read a book on it once. All about life lines and stuff.”

  “Okay.”

  She took my hand and placed it palm side up in hers, and explained about what it meant if certain lines met or intersected or passed by each other entirely. I tried not to laugh, but it really tickled for some reason, the way she was running her finger along my palm. It wasn’t very helpful—the fortune was so general it could have been anybody’s—but the thing was, when she finished, she didn’t let go of my hand. I’d just dropped it down between us, but she still had hold of it.

  She’s lonely, I thought. Maybe tall, shy girls are just naturally lonely.

  I was feeling a little awkward, though, and I guess she was too, because she looked down at our hands, lifting my fingers up one at a time with her own, then letting them drop back down again, and then she said, “I really like you, Alice.”

  “I really like you too,” I said. “I’m glad you asked me over.”

  “Are you?” she said.

  “Sure. I’ve been trying to broaden myself this year. Meet new people.”

  “That’s not what I meant,” said Lori.

  And finally I figured out what this was all about. My first thought was not to call Dad and ask him to come and get me. It wasn’t to pull away from her, either, although I did remove my hand from hers and put it in my lap. I just wanted to sit there and listen to how she felt.

  “Well,” she joked. “You passed the first test. You didn’t run screaming from the room.”

  “Why should I?” I said, and then I was sorry, because I could tell she thought maybe I liked her in that way too.

  She glanced at me sideways. “You know what I mean, don’t you?”

  “That you like girls better than boys? Romantically, I mean?”

  She took a deep breath and let it out. “Yeah, I think so,” she said, without looking at me.

  “Well, I like boys best—in a romantic way, I mean.”

  Lori tipped her head back and sat like that for several seconds. “Oh, gosh,” she said, and slapped her forehead with the palm of her hand. “I came on too strong, didn’t I? I shouldn’t have hurried you.”

  “Lori, it wouldn’t have made any difference if you’d taken a year to tell me this. I like you a lot, but I could never fall in love with you. Not like that. We’re just different, that’s all.”

  “You were always so nice to me. I guess I hoped.”

  “I’m really sorry.”

  We were both quiet for so long it was embarrassing.

  “Do you want me to go home?” I asked finally.

  “No, of course not,” she said quickly. “Mom would ask why, and …”

  “She doesn’t know?”
>
  “Hardly anyone does.”

  “We could say I got sick.”

  “No. Really. I want you to stay. We can at least talk, can’t we?”

  “Sure. Why not? I’m curious about why … Well, I just don’t have the same feelings that you do. What made you think I did?”

  “Nothing much. You smiled at me, that’s all. You were always nice.”

  “But you must have heard I’ve been going with Patrick Long.”

  “That doesn’t necessarily mean anything. I’ve heard of girls who went with boys first before they realized they were gay.”

  “Is that what you call it?”

  “Well, lesbian. There. I’ve said it.”

  “Are you really sure? I mean, it’s not as though you’ve felt this way for twenty years.”

  “Well, I’ve never had a girlfriend before, but I’d like to.”

  “Why won’t you tell your folks?”

  “I don’t know. I’ll have to eventually, I guess. Maybe I just want them to figure it out for themselves. I mean, I’m their only daughter. Mom’s always buying me stuff with lace on it that makes me look like Goldilocks or something. A Cinderella doll when I was little. After two boys, she finally got a girl, but not the girl she wanted.”

  I wished I knew what to say to Lori. I tried to imagine what my own mother would say if I told her I was a lesbian, but I didn’t ever know my own mother, so I can’t imagine it. All I can imagine is my ideal mother. Or what my old sixth-grade teacher, Mrs. Plotkin, might say. Even Miss Summers.

  “I’ll bet she loves you for a lot more than you think,” I said. “Not just because you’re a girl.”

  “Maybe. But my dad … gosh, it would kill him.”

  “I doubt it. He looks pretty strong to me.”

  “My brothers probably wouldn’t even speak to me.”

  “Lori, how do you know all this? I think the more you keep it from them, the worse you imagine things would be.”

  She shook her head. “I’ve read stories of what other girls go through when they tell.”