Incredibly Alice

“Hi,” I said.

  “How you doing?” she answered, ushering the new guy into her room and closing the door behind them.

  Les came out to the kitchen to get more dip.

  “How many boyfriends does she have?” I asked, nodding toward Andy’s room.

  “Haven’t asked,” said Les.

  Maryland lost and was out of the play-offs, but it was a close game and the team played well. I love basketball because it’s so easy to follow: If the ball goes through the basket and there’s no whistle, the team scores. You don’t have to know the rest of the rules.

  But the play was taking my full concentration these days, especially now that the costume committee was beginning to outfit the cast. I hated what I had to wear for the first act, but Mrs. Cary thought it was just right, so I wore it—a black pleated skirt that came just below the knee, a long green sweater that fell halfway down my thighs, and a black belt a few inches below the waistline. Worse yet were the black cotton stockings that made my legs look fat.

  Pamela and Chassie, as Martha, the third-oldest sister, got to wear white sailor tops with navy blue kerchiefs around their necks; and Angela, as Lillian, the youngest, got to wear a pinafore, white knee-length stockings, and Mary Jane shoes. But in the final act I would be wearing a thin, filmy sleeveless dress with silk hose. They made my legs shine, but it was still a beautiful costume, and I guess the audience was supposed to see how much I’d managed to improve between the first and third acts of the play.

  The rehearsals were wearing me down, though, and by the last weekend in March, when Karen called and said a bunch of girls were going to Clyde’s restaurant for dinner Saturday night, I said I’d go. I was so amazed to be invited that I was going mostly out of curiosity. Liz and Pamela were going too, but Gwen was singing in a concert at her church.

  Pamela drove this time—her dad had finally let her use his car—and she said if I’d quit gasping every time she reached a stop sign, she’d drive more often.

  “It’s just that you never brake till the last minute,” Liz told her. “Your passengers think you’re going to sail on through.”

  “But I do stop, don’t I?” said Pamela. “Do I have to sing an overture before I stop?”

  “I’d settle for just taking your foot off the gas pedal,” I said.

  We drove to Clyde’s at Tower Oaks in Rockville—a great place for crab cakes, a sort of safari-themed restaurant with animal trophies and canoes on the walls. Lots of couples go there before proms, but we like to go as a group because half of us order a plate dinner and the others order appetizers. Then we share, and we can stay as long as we like.

  Jill had reserved a large table, and some of the girls were already there when we arrived. One of them was talking about receiving an acceptance from Towson State.

  “It’s so great to know that at least somebody wants me,” the girl was saying, and the discussion turned to how many colleges—four? five? six?—you should have applied for to be on the safe side.

  “And what about Pamela here!” I said. “Isn’t she amazing?”

  We clinked our glasses in tribute, and Pamela made a funny face.

  “She auditioned as Adelaide from Guys and Dolls,” I said, in case anyone hadn’t heard. “Just goes to show that even an understudy has possibilities.”

  I realized too late that Jill may have thought I was taking a dig at her for backing out. But Jill was biding her time, I guess, because she listened with a sort of condescending air, and then she said she had an announcement: “We’re getting married April twenty-third.”

  We stared. “Whaaaaaat?” we said, almost in unison.

  Jill basked in the limelight and smiled coyly around the table, her elegantly manicured fingers splayed out in front of her. Without a ring, however. “The Colliers gave in. Justin told them we were marrying as soon as school was out, and it would be either in a church or before a justice of the peace—it was up to them. When they realized that we were serious and, probably more to the point, that I hadn’t miscarried yet—I’m in my second trimester now—Justin’s mom caved and said they’d pay for the wedding. But, of course, there are conditions… .”

  “Wow, Jill! Right in the middle of the semester?” said Liz.

  “It’ll be spring break. Mrs. Collier doesn’t want me walking down the aisle obviously pregnant, and there’s to be no civil ceremony for their son. Like I said, whatever they do, they do big.”

  “This is unbelievable,” I said. “I never thought they’d give in.”

  “That’s what Mom said,” Jill went on. “She had the invitations engraved and in the mail before the Colliers could change their minds. And I wish we could invite you all, but the witch is in charge of the guest list.”

  “Where’s it going to be?” asked Pamela.

  “The Episcopal church near Chevy Chase Circle. That was one of the conditions. They’ll pay for most of the wedding if we agree to the conditions.”

  “What are the others?” asked Liz.

  Our drinks arrived and Jill leaned back, waiting for our server to leave before she continued. Then she began counting them off on her fingers: “Number one: We marry in April. Number two: We marry in their church. Number three: Justin finishes college no matter how many children I ‘manage to produce.’ His mother actually wrote that down. She crossed it out after and inserted ‘you have’ instead of ‘Jill manages to produce,’ but she left it in so I’d know she suspects I planned to get pregnant.”

  “Well … it was a plan … I mean, both of you planned it,” I said.

  “Damn right,” said Jill. “And I don’t care if she does know it. Number four: that we pay for the honeymoon ourselves. Ditto, the ring. Numbers five, six, and seven: Justin works summers for his dad’s company until he’s through college, we have to live in this area till he graduates, and we don’t deny the Colliers access to their grandchildren.”

  Jill took a deep breath, held it, then let it out.

  “Wow. She forgot to add the pound of flesh. She didn’t put that in,” somebody said. “And you don’t have to name your first daughter after her?”

  “Yeah, I know. They more or less own us till Justin’s through college, but at least they didn’t insist we live with them. They’re paying for everything except the ring, our honeymoon, and our apartment, and Justin says we can pay the rent out of his trust fund. But Mom could never afford the kind of wedding the Colliers want for Justin.”

  The appetizers came and we began dividing them up—a bit of crab cake on each saucer, a wedge of fried onion… . Jill held up the chicken satay on a stick: “This is one of the appetizers we’ve chosen along with the shrimp,” she said. “The dinner menu, of course, is completely Mrs. Collier’s, but she did run it by Mom first.”

  “How do they get along—Mrs. Collier and your mom?” Liz asked.

  “It’s all surface, you know? Mom was terrified to meet her, actually—she’d heard so much about her from me. All bad. Mr. and Mrs. Collier came over on a Sunday afternoon—the usual courtesy call—and said that a spring wedding would be so much more appropriate than a summer one, didn’t Mom agree? And asked how long we’d lived in the Washington area, meaning: Where are your ‘people’ from? Since then, everything’s being arranged by a middleman—woman, I should say. Mr. Collier’s secretary relays messages to Mom and she replies to the secretary. Every day Mom gets a memo on something else that’s been decided for us.”

  “And … you don’t mind?” another friend asked.

  “Of course I do. But I’m going to keep my mouth shut as long as they don’t try to break us up. I’ve just been really, really tired lately. If they want to do all the planning, so be it. It’ll be an even fancier wedding than I could ever afford, and I’m just going to pretend the Colliers aren’t there. The parents, that is.”

  The dinners arrived and we divided those up too, and afterward Jill passed around photos of what the wedding cake would look like, the place settings and favors and flowers. I guess when you p
ut everything in the hands of a wedding planner and money is no object, you can put together a wedding in six weeks and make it look like you’ve been thinking about it for a year or more.

  “When you do go on a honeymoon, where do you think it will be?” Pamela asked.

  “Hawaii. We’re going as soon as school’s out. We have to decide between a honeymoon and a diamond, though, and I don’t want to start out with something small, so we’ll put the engagement ring off till later,” Jill told us. Then she reached in her bag and pulled out a brochure of a resort hotel on Kauai, tucked in a cove with palm trees and flowers and blue waves beyond a white sandy beach.

  Jill was right. She did look tired. Just as pretty, just as svelte as she always looked, but tired. Just thinking about her next four years with a baby while Justin was in college made me tired too.

  15

  INSOMNIA

  The feathery green of spring.

  The star magnolias had blossomed in the middle of March. Crocuses came up next, then daffodils, and the forsythia was a brilliant yellow against the new green of the lawns. Near the end of the month, cherry trees had burst into bloom, and on every tree in the neighborhood, little feathers of leaves appeared, trembling in the breeze.

  But I felt like I was trembling too. I had to give the University of Maryland a reply by April 1 as to whether or not I was going to attend. And every day I waited to hear from William & Mary. I couldn’t believe that everything was coming at me at once, with the first play performances beginning the following weekend.

  I wanted so much to be able to call Pamela and say, Guess what? To tell her that I, too, was striking out in a new direction. And then, on March 29, after a late rehearsal, I got home to find that Dad and Sylvia had gone to a movie. A pile of mail had been dumped on a chair, unsorted, and there, near the bottom, was an envelope from William & Mary. My heart began to race. I pulled it out from among the stack.

  But it was not a large manila envelope. It was a white business-size envelope, and I felt my throat constricting even before I opened it, my eyes filling with tears. I sat down on the bottom step of the stairs and balanced it between the palms of my hands. Then, furiously, I ripped it open and read the first two lines—Dear Alice McKinley: We are sorry that we will be unable to admit you to our college this coming fall. We know that …

  I ran upstairs like a crazy person, sobbing loudly, and threw myself on my bed. Why? What was it about me that they didn’t like? Wasn’t I a B+ student? Didn’t I have a lot of extracurricular stuff on my application? Hadn’t Mrs. Bailey written an excellent recommendation? I loved the place; why didn’t they love me back? And why did Dad and Sylvia go off to a movie when if ever I needed somebody’s shoulder, it was now? Even though I knew that wasn’t fair, that Dad and Sylvia hadn’t even looked at the mail, I needed someone to listen to me, comfort me, and because there was no one there, I impulsively called Patrick.

  Even as I punched in his number, I knew I was in no condition to carry on a conversation. At the same moment I was afraid he might answer, he picked up. “Hey, Alice!” he said.

  “P-P-P-Patrick!” I sobbed.

  “Alice? Alice?” His voice was instantly tense, concerned. “Alice, what is it? Where are you?”

  “Oh, P-Patrick,” I wept. “They d-didn’t …” I couldn’t stand the childish sound of my voice, the stammering. I could feel my cheeks blaze, and I suddenly pressed END and dropped the phone on my rug, doubling over in anguish.

  Almost instantly the phone began to ring, and I stared at it there on the rug. Stared at it through the flood of tears dripping off my lashes. There was something steadying about the insistence of its ring, and I realized that if I had been childish calling him in the first place, I was even more childish not to answer now. So I picked it up and tried to get hold of myself.

  “Patrick?” I mewed.

  “Alice, don’t hang up. Are you listening?” he said. “Don’t hang up, no matter what. Where are you?”

  I spoke so softly, I could hardly hear myself. “I’m home.”

  “Okay. Just take a couple breaths or something. I’m listening. I’m not going away.”

  “I’m s-so sorry,” I said. “I knew I shouldn’t have c-called. Are you busy right now?”

  “I was watching TV with the guys. I’m out in the hall now, sitting on the floor, and nobody’s around. What’s the matter?”

  When I remembered what the matter was, the tears came again. “William & Mary rejected m-me.”

  “Oh, man. I’m sorry, Alice. I really am.”

  “But—but that—that makes me even sadder,” I wept. “Because I know y-you wanted me to g-go there.”

  “It’s what you want, Alice! Why should I—?”

  “It’s true, Patrick,” I said, wiping my nose on my arm. “You’re going to Spain and Gwen’s in a pre-med program and Pamela’s going to New York and everybody’s going places and doing things … and … and …” I was sobbing again. “Why do you even b-bother with me? Why do you like me at all? There are all kinds of girls who know m-more than I do and travel all over and speak Russian and Japanese, and I—I—All I know is here, P-Patrick! The only places I’ve l-lived are Chicago and Maryland. All … I really know … is … m-m-me!”

  Patrick was quiet for so long I thought he’d hung up on me except that I didn’t get a dial tone. And then I heard his voice, firm and steady.

  “Alice, before we moved to Maryland when I was in sixth grade, I’d already lived in four different countries—”

  “I know!” I wept, my voice high and tight. “That’s what I’m talking about!”

  Patrick continued: “There wasn’t any one place to call home. And when we moved to Maryland and Mom said we’d be there for a while, it was the first place I started to make friends … I mean, friends I knew I’d see for more than a year or so. And yet, even there in Maryland, my dad traveled so much and was home so little that it never seemed like a real home, not the home that other kids had, and certainly not your home, the way you feel about it, the way you and your dad and Lester made it home. And that’s what I love about you. Among other things,” he added quickly.

  “You love me because I stay home?”

  “I love you because you love home. It doesn’t mean you’re never going to get out. It doesn’t mean you’re not curious about other people and places. You are! You care about people who are different from you—Amy Sheldon, for example. Lori and Leslie. That Sudanese guy you told me about. You want to know what it feels like to be them. You don’t have to live somewhere else or go to William & Mary to do that. You open your mind to the world, Alice. That’s what makes you you.”

  “Oh, Patrick. I wish you were here,” I said, still crying, but managing it now. “I’m just so keyed up over everything and rehearsals run late and I’m behind on my homework and I’ve got to let Maryland know I’m coming and—”

  “And it will all work out. Trust me. It will.”

  “I trust you,” I said.

  Patrick’s phone call helped more than he knew, and I soldiered on, grateful for Dad and Sylvia’s reassurance that Maryland was a fine school, which of course I knew. For the next week, I focused entirely on the play and got caught up in the excitement of our final round of rehearsals. Too caught up, because I started having trouble sleeping. I’d lie awake till two or three in the morning, then the alarm would go off at six thirty, and I’d feel half dead.

  When I woke on Wednesday, though—just two days before our first performance—there was no alarm sounding on my nightstand. The sun was already shining full on my bedspread. I rose up on one elbow and stared at the clock. Nine fifteen! I leaped out of bed, then saw the note stuck on the back of my door.

  Alice, you’ve been exhausted, and we don’t want you sick for opening night of the play. I’ve called the school and told them I’m letting you sleep in. They understand. Sylvia

  Omigod! I thought. I don’t want anyone to think I can’t handle this! I showered, but I let my hair
go, pulled on my jeans and a knit top. Sylvia had left two blueberry muffins on the table along with her car keys, but by the time I got to school, I’d missed the first two periods.

  “Somebody was up late last night,” Gwen said diplomatically when she saw me at lunch. Saw my hair.

  “I’m not sleeping well,” I told her. “I haven’t been falling asleep till around three, and I’m exhausted when I try to get up. Sylvia turned off my alarm and let me sleep in.”

  “Best thing she could have done,” Gwen said.

  “Does this ever happen to you?” I asked her.

  “Once in a while. I go through spells. I find that if I take a warm bath, read a while, drink some milk, and let my mind wander over old movies or books or dreams after I lie down—never what I have to do the next day—I eventually fall asleep. The secret is to make a list before you turn in of all you have to do the next day so you won’t forget something. Then tell yourself that those things are off-limits once you get in bed. You’ll deal with them tomorrow.”

  “Gwen,” I said, “you’re a walking Google. No matter what I ask, you have an answer.”

  Pamela put my hair in a French braid in gym, and I felt reasonably recovered when I walked into rehearsal at three. But Ryan took one look at me and said, “You look tired. You getting as little sleep as the rest of us?”

  “Even less,” I said. “But this morning they let me sleep in. I didn’t get to school till around ten.”

  Every rehearsal this final week was a dress rehearsal, and Penny waylaid us when we got to the dressing rooms and had a thin little paste-on mustache she wanted Ryan to wear for his part as Larry. “C’mon, just for a joke,” she laughed, grabbing his arm. “See what Ellis thinks.”

  He was still fending her off when I went in the girls’ dressing room and took off my shirt. It was stuffy in the room—the one window didn’t open, and the lights over the long makeup table were hot. We took turns sitting on the worn stools in our underwear and bras, brushing color on our cheeks, darkening our eyebrows, going heavy on the eyeliner and mascara. Occasionally, we could make out bits of conversation from the guys’ dressing room on the other side of the wall, and we’d grin.