Including Alice

  “Okay, we’re ready, Alice,” Elizabeth said. “If you have to go to the bathroom, go now.”

  Pamela had not only covered the bikini bra with newspaper, but she’d let five-inch strips of paper dangle down all around it, like a fringe, so that it looked more like a loose top.

  “Wow!” said Elizabeth when I was dressed.

  Even before I got to the mirror, I could hear the newspaper rustle with each step. And there I was, a Hawaiian dancer.

  “Wow!” I repeated, staring at myself, the way the paper skirt trembled and swayed with the slightest movement, like rushes in the wind.

  “Woo! Shake it, babe!” said Pamela.

  “She needs a Hawaiian lei,” said Elizabeth, crumpling pieces of the comic section into flowers, to be strung on a thread.

  “And a flower behind her ear,” Pamela decided. “Man, Patrick should see you now!”

  “Why Patrick?” I asked.

  “All the guys should see you!” said Elizabeth. “Who’s driving you to the party, Alice? One of the seniors? You’d better watch you don’t get attacked in that outfit.”

  “Don’t worry, I’ll take an anti-rape pill,” I joked.

  Elizabeth stopped stringing flowers together and stared at me. “There’s an anti-rape pill?” One thing Elizabeth and Aunt Sally have in common: Their sense of humor isn’t very developed.

  “Sure,” said Pamela, without cracking a smile. “You take one of these pills before you go on a date, and if a guy tries something you don’t like, your blood pressure rises and this activates the pill, which makes you give off this really foul odor, and he’s instantly repelled.”

  “What?” said Elizabeth, her eyes widening. “Really?”

  “You’ve never heard of them?” I said. “Liz, where have you been?”

  “So tell me!” she begged.

  “Well, the odor starts at the lips, the instructions say, so that your breath is horrendous, and then it travels on down your body. It comes from your nipples next, and if the guy keeps going and tries to get your pants off, the odor will almost knock him out.”

  “What is it? What’s it called?” Elizabeth asked. Pamela and I exchanged glances.

  “I think it’s called S-T-O-P,” Pam said. And suddenly we couldn’t help ourselves; Pamela and I doubled over with laughter. Then Elizabeth started to laugh.

  “I swear, Liz, you’ll believe anything,” said Pamela.

  Shortly after Pamela and Elizabeth went home, I came downstairs to wait for Tony. Dad had finally agreed to let me ride to the dance with him as long as he came inside first and they met. He wasn’t just going to sit out on the driveway and honk, Dad said. I’d told Tony that at school.

  “Whatever,” he’d said. I didn’t think that whatever would get him any points from my dad.

  Sylvia gasped and clapped when she saw me. “Oh, I’ve just got to get a picture of this!” she said, and went for her camera.

  “I assume there’s more underneath that skirt than meets the eye?” Dad said.

  “Not to worry,” I told him, whirling around so he could see how well my paper skirt worked with the spandex shorts.

  I heard Tony’s car drive up and went to the door to meet him. I could hear laughter coming from the car, so I knew he’d picked up some of the others first.

  “Hi,” I said as he came up the steps. I don’t know who made his costume, but he looked like the king of Siam in full newspaper pants gathered at the ankles. “Wow! Look at you!”

  “Heeeey!” he said. “Look at you!” I led him inside.

  “Dad, this is Tony,” I said.

  “Hello,” said Dad, putting down his magazine.

  “How you doin’?” Tony said.

  Dad smiled as he studied Tony’s costume. “Something out of Arabian Nights!”

  “King of Siam, I think,” I told him.

  “My sisters made it for me, actually,” said Tony.

  “Any idea what time this party will be over, Tony?” Dad asked.

  “Haven’t the faintest,” Tony said. Sylvia came to the doorway just then and took a picture of the two of us.

  “Sylvia, this is Tony Osler. Tony, my new stepmom,” I said.

  “Hi,” said Tony.

  “I’ll get an extra print for you if the picture turns out,” Sylvia told him.

  “How far away is it you’re driving?” Dad asked Tony.

  “Couple miles. Jayne’s on the other side of Silver Spring.”

  “Well, I’d like the assurance that there won’t be any stopping on the way home when the party’s over. And it goes without saying that I expect you to stay drug- and alcohol-free,” Dad said as I cringed. Then he added, a twinkle in his eye, “And, of course, you will keep yourself physically strong, mentally awake, morally straight, and obey the Scout law.”

  Tony put up his hands as if in surrender. “Hey, what kind of a party do you think this is?” he said, laughing a little. “Our adviser’s going to be there too, you know.”

  “Glad to hear it,” Dad said. “Have a good time, then. And, Al, if you ever need to call home, just do it. I don’t care if it’s the middle of the night.”

  “Okay, Dad. Bye,” I said, almost stumbling over my feet to get away. I grabbed my jacket from the closet. “Bye, Sylvia.”

  When we got outside, Tony said, “Man, is he something else!”

  “Yep! That’s my dad!” I said.

  Sam Mayer was in the car along with one of the junior roving reporters. I couldn’t tell what their costumes were, but there was a constant rustling of paper from the four of us—just breathing made it rustle—and that got us laughing.

  I wasn’t the only one at the party in a grass skirt. In fact, Jayne was wearing one too, and so was one of the guys, complete with a black wig with a flower in it. Miss Ames, our adviser, came in a long gown made from want-ad sections, and half the fun was watching someone’s costume rip. Jayne’s dad took pictures of us singly, then as a group. I noticed the way Jayne and her mom laughed together as they put out the food, shared a secret passing through a doorway, caught each other’s eye sometimes, and laughed at a joke. I wondered if Sylvia and I would ever be like that. I was too afraid that whatever closeness we felt would be too much like pretending—too much like what it was between Penny and me.

  After all, you can’t just suddenly feel close to somebody. As much as I loved Sylvia, she still didn’t seem like a relative. Somewhere I read that a newborn calf can tell its mother from all the other cattle just by her smell and the sound of her moo. And I suppose human babies, from the time they’re born, are familiar with their mothers’ voices and smells and touch and feel. I never had that with Sylvia. I never knew what it was like to snuggle against her when I was hurt or scared. And I was afraid that no matter how much I had wanted her for a mom, I would never be that close to her.

  But the party was fun. The guys kidded around, trying to read an article on my bra top, turning me this way and that.

  “Watch it!” I said, playfully slapping Sam when he tried to read under the fringe of my top, and he just caught my fingers and grinned at me.

  “So how’s it going?” he asked at some point during the evening.

  “What’s ‘it’?” I said.

  “Oh, life in general. Your love life in particular,” said Sam, smiling.

  I laughed. “How’s yours?”

  He shrugged. “Jen and I broke up, you know.”

  “Yeah, I heard,” I said.

  “And so did you and Patrick.”

  “Yeah, I heard that, too,” I said, and smiled back.

  The doorbell kept ringing all evening as trick-or-treaters came to the house, but it usually ended with the kids craning their necks to see all the people inside dressed up in newspaper.

  We danced later. Jayne taught us a dance called the Fish, which is about the silliest dance I’d ever seen, in which we shaped bubble rings coming out of our mouths with our fingers and waved our rear ends from side to side like fish swimming ups
tream. Everyone danced together so we didn’t need partners, and I thought how nice it is sometimes to just be part of a group, not a couple.

  We ended the evening trying to melt candy corn over a candle and mixing it with a Milky Way bar to see what it would taste like (pretty good, actually), but Jayne’s mom was afraid we’d set our costumes on fire, so she snuffed the candle out. I wasn’t the only one with a protective parent.

  “We’ve got a good start this year, gang,” Miss Ames said as we were getting ready to leave. “We had a great response to the article on what students would like to learn before they graduate, and that means The Edge is relevant. We need more articles like this, so keep the ideas coming.”

  Tony drove us home then. He didn’t drink and he wasn’t on drugs, but I was a little uneasy when he took the other kids home first, though he’d picked me up last. But all he wanted to do, it seemed, was talk.

  “You going to get your driver’s license soon?” he asked.

  “As soon as I can,” I told him.

  “When’s your birthday?”

  “May.”

  “Do it! It’s like you’re suddenly free, you know? You’ve got wings. You can go almost anyplace you want.”

  “Great! I’ll head for Miami Beach,” I joked. “Is this your own car?”

  “Yep. Dad said if I passed my driver’s test, I’d get a car.”

  I glanced over at Tony. “That’s all you had to do? Get your license and he bought you a car?”

  “Yeah, but if I have an accident, I’ll have to start paying for my own insurance, so I drive careful. It’s a used car, of course. A demo. We got a good deal on it.”

  “Yeah, it’s nice,” I said, though I can’t tell one car from another. If a guy thinks I’m going to be impressed by his car, he’s going to be disappointed. Things seem to come so easily for some people, I was thinking. I would never in a million years expect my dad to buy a car for me just because I passed my driver’s test and got a license.

  Tony talked about his dad then—the kind of work he did and how he was so busy that Tony didn’t see much of him. He told me that his family used to live in Massachusetts before his dad got transferred here and that he himself had a genetic heart defect so he couldn’t play football, but at least he’d made sports editor for the newspaper… .

  And then we were turning in the driveway at my house, and he said good night and that was it. All he’d wanted, it seemed, was someone to listen to him talk, mostly about himself. I didn’t know whether to feel insulted or flattered. Flattered, I decided, because I suppose that shows I’m a person people feel comfortable talking with.

  But if I’m a person people can talk to so easily, why couldn’t I feel more comfortable talking with Sylvia? Why couldn’t I come to breakfast in an old mangy bathrobe without brushing my teeth and hair and ask if she’d ever had bad cramps? She comes to breakfast half asleep sometimes. Why couldn’t I ask her how to do my hair in a French braid? Ask her to rub my back or whether she’d like me to rub hers?

  Is that the way mothers and daughters talked to each other? I wondered. I didn’t know. I had a mom now, and half the time I couldn’t even think what to say.

  Dad and Sylvia were still up. Dad was sitting at one end of the couch, and Sylvia was lying down, her head at the other end, her legs over Dad’s lap. He was caressing her feet. I sat down and told them all about the party.

  “Aren’t you freezing?” Dad asked.

  “Now that I think about it, yes. Guess I’ll get in the tub,” I said, and went upstairs so they could enjoy their “quality time.”

  I figured it was too late to call Pamela and Elizabeth and tell them about the party, but after I’d had my bath, I checked my e-mail. There was a message from Penny:

  So how did it go, the grass skirt? I’ll bet

  you were hot!

  I e-mailed back:

  It was fab. I’ll show you the pictures

  when I get them.

  It was almost easier talking to Penny than it was to Sylvia.

  12

  Tooth Troubles

  Now that the wedding was over, I felt I couldn’t wait any longer to tell Dad about my visit to the dentist a few months back. I knew that braces were expensive, and this on top of the wedding… . Could Dad even afford the remodeling if we had to wire my mouth?

  “Dad,” I said on Sunday morning when he and Sylvia were having coffee. By nine o’clock on weekend mornings Sylvia’s usually talking in sentences. “You know when I went to the dentist after I came home from camp? Well, I didn’t want you to worry about this until after the wedding, but he thinks I need braces. He says I should see an orthodontist.”

  “Oh?” said Dad. “Why?”

  “I’m not sure. I forget exactly. Something about my bite.”

  Lester had come in the back door while I was talking. He often drops in on Sundays when he knows Dad will be home. Frankly, I think he misses us. I asked him once which he missed most: me or Dad’s pancakes. And he said, “Pecan or plain?”

  Now he poured himself a cup of coffee and said, “Did I hear someone say ‘braces’?”

  “Me,” I said mournfully.

  Lester leaned against the counter and studied me.

  “Underbite?” he asked. “Do this.” He thrust out his lower jaw.

  I thrust out my jaw while he examined me.

  “Hmm,” said Lester. “Overbite? Do this.” He pulled back his lower lip so that his upper teeth stuck out over the lower. I did what he said.

  “Now,” said Lester, “say ‘Freddy fries five flavorful fish’ six times, as fast as you can.”

  “Les-ter!” I said. “Can’t you be serious when my whole high school career is in jeopardy?”

  Lester dramatically clutched his heart.

  “Did the dentist say how long you might need to wear them?” asked Sylvia, looking unkempt but natural in a brown-and-yellow silk robe.

  “About two years,” I said, and immediately felt tears well up in my eyes. Why do they do that? When will I stop crying every time there’s a problem in my life? What will I do when something really serious happens? Explode? But I was beyond reason. “Two years out of the best years of my life!” I wept. “Two years looking like I’ve got a razor wire fence in my mouth. No boy will want to kiss me. Boys won’t even want to get near me!”

  “Good,” said Dad. “I feel better already.”

  “Ben,” said Sylvia, chiding. And then she said, “I used to wear braces.”

  I stopped whimpering. “You did?”

  “I was a little younger than you are now, but my overbite needed correcting. If it’s boys you’re worried about, look at me: I married the man of my dreams.”

  Dad had a banana-shaped smile on his face.

  “If you really need them, Al, then of course you’ll get braces. We’ll make the appointment, and I’ll go with you,” he said.

  Sylvia reached over and put her arm around me. “Think positive. Who knows? The next two years of your life could be wonderful.”

  Yeah, right, I thought.

  Dad doesn’t fool around. The next week I was sitting in the orthodontist’s chair, watching the plastic model of human teeth open and close in the doctor’s hand. He was standing beside my chair explaining my problem to Dad. He moved the bottom teeth forward until they evenly matched the top teeth. Then he overlapped the top teeth so they stuck out over the ones below. He pointed to the incisors at the sides of the dental plates. He pointed to the gums behind the two rows of teeth, where the wisdom teeth were poking through.

  At some point he put the plastic model back on the tray and turned to Dad again, using his hands to explain something.

  I picked up the teeth, squeezed the sides, and watched them open and close on their hinges. When the jaws snapped together, the teeth were firmly locked in place. I couldn’t help myself. I squeezed the plastic teeth open and gently clipped them to the bottom of Dr. Wiley’s white coat. I saw Dad’s eyebrows rise, then come together over
the bridge of his nose as Dr. Wiley kept right on talking and gesturing. Dad was trying not to laugh, I could tell.

  Dr. Wiley swung around then, and the teeth clunked against my chair. He reached down and found the plastic teeth clamped to the hem of his jacket. He looked at me and laughed. I figured that any man who could laugh at teeth hanging over his rear end at least had a sense of humor.

  “All you need to decide now, Alice, is what color beads you would like on your braces,” he said. “That’s all the rage. You don’t fight your braces, you flaunt them!”

  I was about to choose green, but then I figured it would always look as though I had lettuce stuck in my teeth. But if I chose pale pink and blue, my mouth would look like a baby’s crib. “No colors,” I said. “Just stick to silver, please.” Then I settled back to let him make an impression of my teeth and do the preliminary work.

  You know what I was worrying about? Not so much the pain, which most of my friends had said was bearable. Not even the fact that food would get stuck in my braces and everyone would know it but me. I think I was scared that on some level I was going to be left behind by my friends. Most of the girls who got braces in middle school had them off by now. All the jokes and embarrassments and agonies were passé, and the kids I hung out with had moved on to more sophisticated topics. And here I would come, with my sore gums and wires and metallic smile, like the girl who doesn’t get her period till she’s seventeen.

  Guys might think of asking me to the Snow Ball and then remember The Mouth. Girls might get together for pizza but wouldn’t invite me because they weren’t sure what I could eat. I hadn’t even got the wires on yet, and already I had excluded myself from half the human race.

  That night I e-mailed Eric in Texas.

  You think you’ve got problems? I’m going to have a mouthful of metal soon. Braces! Ugh!

  Back came an e-mail from Eric: