Including Alice

  “Okay!” I said. “Wow! All these changes!”

  “Sort of makes your head swim, doesn’t it?” she said.

  We got out of the way when the men came down again, carrying the empty wrapper, and finally, after Sylvia signed the delivery papers, we scurried upstairs for a look.

  What a difference it made in Dad’s room! Instead of his old bed and chest of drawers, there was a brand-new mattress set and headboard, two nightstands, a new chest of drawers, and a long dresser with six drawers and a tall mirror attached at one end. I noticed Dad’s old desk had stayed in the room, and then I saw a smaller, narrow chest with eight shallow drawers in it. I’d never seen something like that.

  “What’s the little chest for?” I asked, pulling out the top drawer.

  Sylvia grinned. “Lingerie,” she said. “Slips in one, bras in another, panty hose, nighties… . We really should say that this is not only our Christmas present to each other, but Valentine’s Day and birthdays, too!”

  “It’s beautiful!” I said, running my hand along the top of the long dresser, the wood’s grain the color of wheat. “What did you do with Dad’s old stuff?”

  “It’s in Lester’s room, and that will be the guest room. Right now it’s squeezed in there along with his twin bed, but we’ll think of something.”

  I stood looking around. “The room sure seems smaller with all this in it,” I said.

  “I know. But when we build the addition, we can move Ben’s desk down to the new study. I think it will work.”

  The phone rang just then, and Sylvia went out in the hall to answer. I wandered over to the bed and sat down on the soft new pillow-top mattress. I could hear Sylvia talking to Dad. “Yes, darling, it came, and you’re going to love it,” she was saying.

  But suddenly my eyes fell on the mattress label: BEAUTY REST, it read. QUEEN SIZE.

  I felt a dull hollowness in my chest, my throat growing tighter. I got up and walked down the hall, past Sylvia, into my own room, and shut the door behind me. The set of bed linens I had bought and spent weeks and weeks embroidering was for a double-size bed, Dad’s old bed. I curled up against my pillow, angry tears in my eyes. All that time I had been working on that set, all the stitches I had taken out and restitched! The evenings I had stayed up far past my usual bedtime to get it done, and they had gone out and bought a different size bed!

  Sylvia tapped on my door. “Alice? Ready to help me make the bed? I bought new sheets, a new bedspread, and matching drapes.”

  I struggled to sound normal. “I guess I can’t,” I called out. “I really should study for a test.”

  There was silence outside the bedroom. “Sure?” she asked finally.

  “Yeah,” I said.

  More silence. She tapped lightly again. “Alice? Is anything wrong?”

  “Of course not,” I lied.

  At last she said, “All right. I’ll surprise you too, then, and you can see it all done when your dad gets home.”

  I hated myself then, but it didn’t stop the anger. And I was also angry at the way I sulk sometimes and don’t say what’s wrong. “You’re not made of glass,” Dad told me once. “I don’t know what’s the matter unless you tell me.” But how could I tell a new stepmom that she’d just ruined the gift I’d worked on for so long? How could I say that things were happening too fast and that ever since she came, nothing had been the same? It was as though I was in a snit and couldn’t shake it—as though I’d fallen into a well, and no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t climb out.

  I guess I couldn’t believe they would have gone out and bought a whole bedroom set without even mentioning it to me. Always before, Dad and Lester told me everything that was about to happen to our house. I even knew when we were going to paint a room or buy a new toilet seat!

  When Dad came home, I heard his footsteps on the stairs. Heard him exclaim over the new spread and drapes. Heard him sliding drawers open and closed.

  “Looks even better here than it did in the showroom,” he said.

  “Isn’t the spread perfect, Ben?” Sylvia said. “See how the wood picks up the background color in the drapes?”

  “Alice!” Dad called. “Sylvia and I are celebrating Christmas early. Come and see what we got.”

  I tried hard to fake enthusiasm as I went down the hall to their room. “I already saw the furniture,” I said, opening and closing a drawer. “The spread’s nice.” And then, because I was afraid I might bawl, I left the room, went to my own, and took their wedding present from my closet, all wrapped and tied with ivory ribbon. I went back to their bedroom, where they were still staring after me, and tossed it onto their bed.

  “Your wedding present,” I said. “I finally got it done.” Then I went down the hall and closed my door.

  There was only silence from their room. Finally I heard the sound of tissue paper rustling. Murmurs. And all the while I sat on the edge of my bed staring out the window, angry, embarrassed tears rolling down my stupid cheeks.

  I didn’t know who I was angriest at—Dad and Sylvia or myself for being such a dork. I heard my door opening behind me, and they both came in, but I wouldn’t turn around.

  “This is something you’ve been working on for a long time, right?” Dad said. “It’s really a gift from the heart, Al. Thank you.”

  I just sniffled.

  “The colors are gorgeous, Alice,” said Sylvia. “I love them! I’ve never had monogrammed sheets before. It was really thoughtful of you!”

  I still wouldn’t look at them, but I heard myself say, “Well, it might have been thoughtful if you guys had told me you were buying a queen-size bed, because after all my work, they won’t fit.”

  “Only the bottom sheet,” said Sylvia, coming around where she could see my face, but I turned away. “We can easily buy another one of those to match.”

  “The top sheet won’t look right,” I said angrily. “It will barely cover you.”

  Dad walked around my bed too and sat down a few feet away. I felt like a specimen in a petri dish, the way they were both studying me, and knew my nose was red from crying. My nose is always the giveaway.

  “Well, we’ll make it work!” he said brightly. “We could save this set for our guest room. They’ll fit perfectly on my old bed.”

  “I didn’t make them for a guest room, I made them for you!” I said. “If you’d just let me in on what’s going on around here once in a while, I might have bought the right size to begin with.”

  I couldn’t believe I was talking like that in front of Sylvia! Couldn’t believe my voice could sound so shaky.

  “We have several options,” Sylvia said finally. “You didn’t embroider the fitted sheet, so that’s no problem to replace. I can use just the top sheet and the pillowcases for our new bed, or we could put both sheets in the guest room but save the pillowcases for us alone. Then we can enjoy your embroidery, and so can our guests.”

  That did seem the best solution, but it didn’t solve everything.

  “It doesn’t solve the way you two just go ahead and do things without telling me,” I said.

  “Al,” said Dad, and I thought I sensed impatience in his voice. Embarrassment even, at the way I was acting. “If we had known what you were planning, we certainly would have told you our plans. But I really don’t think that the size bed we wanted to buy was something we felt we had to share with you.”

  I could feel my cheeks burning. It really ticked me off. “It’s not just that! You made plans to remodel the house and didn’t tell me about that, either. You turned Lester’s room into a guest room before I knew anything about it. You went off on your honeymoon without even saying good-bye. Suddenly I’m just the third wheel around here.”

  If I thought they were going to sit down on either side of me and hug me and tell me how important I was to the family, I was mistaken. Sylvia leaned against my dresser, still holding the pillowcases in her hand, and Dad just stared out the window with me.

  “I guess the chan
ges aren’t all to the house,” he said. “There are also going to be changes in the way we do things, and maybe this is a good time to talk about it. Because this was a present between Sylvia and me, we didn’t feel we needed to run it by you first.”

  He waited, and when I still didn’t say anything, he said, “I know how disappointed you must be after all the work you put into your present, Al. But we’ll make good use of the set, and we really do appreciate it.”

  I began to feel like a third grader then, a pouting sulky kid of eight.

  “Okay,” I said in a small voice. “I didn’t mean to act so juvenile.”

  “Well, I still say they’re beautiful,” said Sylvia. “And I’m going to sleep very well tonight with my head on an embroidered pillowcase.”

  We talked a little while longer, and then they went downstairs. But it was all so academic sounding. All so buddy-buddy, so understanding. Maybe I would have felt better if I had yelled at them and they had yelled back and we got some real feelings going here. Even when we were mad at each other, we were still too polite. We just didn’t sound like family.

  I made a mistake telling my girlfriends about David, the hot new employee at the Melody Inn. Because Karen said she stopped by one day after school and got a good look at him, then Pamela did, and when I went to work the following Saturday, Marilyn told me that there had been a parade of girls coming by all week.

  “That first one couldn’t have been more obvious,” she said.

  “Who was she?” I asked.

  “I don’t know. Tall, light brown hair, very sexy, and probably a 34C. Maybe even a D.”

  “Jill,” I said. “It had to be Jill.”

  “Well, I wish you’d tell them to lay off. I think they’re making David uncomfortable,” Marilyn said.

  “I didn’t tell anyone to come in!” I said. “I did tell them he was hot, though. I guess I shouldn’t have.”

  “Duh!” said Marilyn.

  “So … did he flirt with any of them?”

  “David is very professional, and that’s one of the reasons we hired him,” Marilyn said. “I think your busty friend was disappointed that he didn’t fall all over her.”

  “That’s Jill, all right,” I said, and laughed.

  Around three fifteen, just after Marilyn had gone on her break, Dad was on the second floor filling in for a violin instructor who was sick and David and I were trying to run the store ourselves when I saw a whole scouting party, you might say, approaching the store for the second time. There they were: Jill, Karen, Pamela, and—believe it or not—Amy Sheldon. I had a sinking feeling in my stomach. I could tell by the look on Jill’s face that she was up to no good.

  They stood just inside the door, pretending to look at a rack of CDs while David waited on a customer, but Amy was the focus of their attention. I would have gone over, but I had a customer who had asked to try on a pair of tiny piano-shaped earrings from the gift wheel, and with something as small as an earring, you don’t walk off and leave a customer alone.

  The woman at David’s counter paid for her selection and left the store, and I saw Karen nudge Amy forward. I tried to catch Pamela’s eye, but she wouldn’t look at me—on purpose, I’m sure.

  Amy went across the store while the other girls watched.

  “Pamela!” I hissed, but she pretended not to hear.

  After my customer had paid for the earrings, the other girls came over to the Gift Shoppe, crowding around the counter and watching Amy.

  “What are you guys up to?” I asked.

  “This is going to be a riot!” said Jill. “I told Amy that there’s this guy at the Melody Inn who watches her pass the store each day on her way home—she lives in those apartments on the next block—and that he’s been dying to meet her. I said she ought to come in and introduce herself, and she is! She’ll fall for anything.”

  “You told her that David’s interested in her? Jill, how could you? That was cruel!” I said, remembering all too well the remark I’d made about Amy.

  “Oh, she’s so thick, she won’t even get it,” said Karen. “But at least we’ll find out his love-life status. I told her I think he’s gay.”

  “Karen, that’s none of our business!” I said.

  “It is if we want to go out with him,” she told me. “Jill practically fell in his lap, and he didn’t bite. He’s got to be gay.”

  “Did it ever occur to you that maybe some guys … ?” I didn’t finish, because our eyes were glued on Amy. She was leaning her elbows on the counter in the sheet music department. The fuchsia sweater I’d seen her wear at school on special occasions wasn’t a color that looked particularly good on her, but she had obviously curled her hair that morning and had it delicately framing her face.

  “Look at her!” Karen said, laughing. “Giving him the ol’ bug eyes!”

  “And look at the way he’s backing up!” added Pamela, giggling. “I’ll bet he wishes there were a trapdoor under her and a button he could press.”

  But David didn’t seem to be trying to get away. In fact, he was backing up to sit on a high stool that Marilyn kept behind the counter, as though he’d like to continue their conversation. There were all sorts of excuses he could have made if he’d wanted to get away from Amy, all sorts of places he could hide. But he didn’t. And then we saw him study Amy for a minute and smile.

  We were flabbergasted.

  “If she gets a date with him, I’m going to be sick,” said Jill.

  I remembered what Karen had told me last summer about Jill and Justin having sex. “I thought you and Justin were … uh … involved,” I said.

  “So?” Jill said, and laughed. She pretended to be looking at jewelry on the gift wheel, but I knew she was straining to hear the conversation between Amy and David. Every time David looked our way, the girls started talking with each other.

  Marilyn came out of the stockroom then, where she’d taken her coffee. She looked at me and then at my friends. “You want to take your break, Alice?” she said. “Why don’t you go now, and then I’ll let David go.”

  I was glad to get out of there and take the girls with me. Dad and Marilyn don’t like my friends hanging around the store when I’m working on Saturdays. We lingered just long enough to signal to Amy that we would be in the coffee shop next door. We saw her straighten up and smile at David. Then we saw her lean over the counter and kiss him on the cheek.

  “Oh … my … God!” said Jill.

  Amy came toward us, smiling, and we practically dragged her out the door and into the coffee shop. We gathered around a table in one corner.

  “What happened?” Karen said. “Did he ask you out?”

  “No. I asked him out,” said Amy.

  “What?” we all cried together.

  “If he said yes, I know I’m going to be sick,” said Jill.

  Amy sat back and touched one hand to her lips, as though remembering the kiss. “He said no,” she told us.

  “Where were you going to take him?” I asked, curious, feeling a secret admiration for Amy Sheldon.

  “I asked him if he liked to Rollerblade, and he said yes, so I told him I knew a rink where we could go, and he said that it sounded like fun but that he was afraid he couldn’t.”

  “Did he say why?” asked Pamela. We all waited to hear.

  “Well, I asked him if he was gay, and—”

  “Amy, you didn’t!” I said.

  “You actually asked him that?” Jill said.

  “Yes, and he said no,” Amy went on. “He said he broke up with a longtime girlfriend recently because he’s thinking about becoming a priest, and he doesn’t want to get involved with anyone else right now.”

  We sat in silent awe of Amy Sheldon. She couldn’t have been with David the Hottie for more than five or six minutes, but she found out more about him than the rest of us could in a week. Just by being Amy.

  “A priest!” Karen said finally, disappointed. “What a waste!”

  I thought of how David
must have sensed what was going on, must have realized that Amy was sort of the ugly duckling and that the other girls had put her up to talking to him. Of how kind he’d been to her. “Oh, I don’t know,” I said. “I think maybe he’d make a very good priest.”

  “A guy that good-looking shouldn’t be allowed to be a priest!” said Jill. “I think one of us ought to come in every week for the next six months and ask him out so he won’t make the mistake of a lifetime.”

  But it was Amy who had the last word: “How do you know it wouldn’t be the mistake of a lifetime to take you out?” she said simply.

  We gasped, and Pamela gave a little whistle.

  “Well, maybe I had that coming,” Jill said, and laughed uncomfortably.

  “Just because he wouldn’t talk to you, Jill, doesn’t mean that guys won’t talk to me,” Amy added, a little defiantly.

  And then I saw a way to redeem myself with Amy Sheldon. “He never says much to me, either, Amy, and I see him every Saturday,” I said. “Maybe there’s something about you that makes guys want to open up and confide.”

  Amy looked at me, and a slow smile spread across her face. “I guess so,” she said, “because he’s taking his coffee break in fifteen minutes, and he said he’d buy me a Coke.”

  Karen and Jill and Pamela sat dumbfounded, but I raised one fist in the air. “Go, Amy!” I said, and then we all laughed.

  Somehow she would do all right, I thought.

  I was checking my e-mail that evening when an IM popped up from somebody using the screen name ZooGirl.

  Who? I thought, and clicked READ. Rosalind! Who else?

  Rosalind: Hey! That you, Alice?

  Me: Rosalind! I should have known! It was so great to see you at Dad’s store in October! How’d you get my e-mail address?

  Rosalind: Oh, I just messed around till I found it. We’ve got a lot of catching up to do.

  Me: I know. I’ve got a million things to ask you. Major, major questions, like what happened to Jody and Dawn and Megan, and are you going out with anyone?