Incredibly Alice

  “He certainly has a wonderful sense of timing,” Ryan said, and the play went on without anyone knowing he’d missed a line.

  Les and Kay came backstage when the play was over, and Kay handed me a single rose.

  “Hey! A budding actress!” she said, and gave me a hug, laughing at all my eyeliner and blush. “Wow, Alice! Look at you! So twenties! You were great.”

  Les looked happy, and I decided that whatever had happened the night before was explained and forgiven.

  “Did you like it, Les?” I asked.

  “Yeah, especially that Joe Scales guy.”

  “The cheerleader? You liked him?” I asked.

  “Sure. You should have gone out with him, Al,” Lester said, grinning, and imitated the cheer that Joe Scales teaches my younger brothers in the play. “Hoo, rah, ray, and a tiger!” We laughed, and then he said, “You were good, Al. Loved those black stockings.”

  “Oh, weren’t they hideous!” I said.

  “We’re off to meet some friends,” Les explained. “I’ll drop by tomorrow, Al. Sylvia invited me to brunch.”

  “See ya,” I said, and turned to look for Pamela and the others.

  The whole cast went bowling afterward. I guess I was surprised how many people went bowling at eleven o’clock at night, but we had to wait for a couple of alleys, and then we got two side by side.

  Ryan was an excellent bowler, and he knew it. Just the way he paused after letting go of the ball, the angle of his body, the tilt of his head, the position of his arm showed a guy who expected a spare, if not a strike, and he usually got one.

  When I asked how he got to be so good, he said, “Hey, I was born in Bowling Green, what do you expect?”

  I found myself studying his body, and I wondered if that was the way guys studied girls. I wasn’t exactly undressing him with my eyes, but I did imagine the way his thighs must look in swim trunks, the V shape of his upper body. I think he caught me watching him once and paused just a nanosecond, watching me back, and I felt my face flush.

  What was happening here? I wondered. My guy goes off to college, so I’m suddenly attracted to my “leading man”? Was this the Hollywood syndrome or something? Was I not to be trusted? Still … Where was Patrick tonight? How did I know what he was doing?

  Penny was the real cutup. Because she’s petite, you might expect her to be “one with the ball,” since she’s closer to the ground, and I guess she was, in a way. The ball was too heavy for her, and the first time she let it go, she sat down with that surprised look on her face that cracked us up.

  The guys were teasing her, of course, but Ryan seemed more interested in showing me how to position my hand when I released the ball and had to wait till I quit laughing at Penny so he could demonstrate.

  He drove me home afterward, dropping Penny off first, then Pamela. Liz was riding with someone else. When we got to my house, I reached to open the car door, but Ryan turned the engine off and gave me a little more than friendly hug—a sort of prolonged friendship hug—which is difficult to do in bucket seats.

  “What are you going to do over spring break?” he asked.

  “Recuperate,” I told him, and he released his grip a little. We both sank back a few inches. “Catch up on sleep. I feel I could sleep for a week.”

  “Well, when you do wake up, maybe we could get together,” he said.

  “Maybe we could. If I ever catch up with homework. And I’ve got an article to write for The Edge.” I knew I was making excuses as fast as I could think of them. Why? Hadn’t Patrick said to enjoy my senior year? Hadn’t I been having the time of my life? As he’d told me, we both knew how we felt about each other. “But I know I’ll have some free time,” I added. “Yeah, let’s get together and do something.”

  He kissed me then. It wasn’t a long, slow kiss or a quick peck on the cheek. If there was ever an in-between kiss, that was it—one hand cupping the back of my head, a soft kiss on the lips, both of us leaning over the center console.

  Then he was smiling at me. “Okay,” he said. “See you Monday.”

  “Thanks for the ride,” I said, and got out of the car, my face warm, my head spinning.

  Once inside the house, I waited for his car to pull away, then leaned against the wall and waited for my pulse to slow down. Oh, man! Now what?

  18

  HOLDING BACK

  Sylvia made crêpes for brunch on Sunday. Crêpes with powdered sugar and strawberry sauce. When I got up around noon, I pulled on a pair of sweatpants and a long-sleeved jersey, tied my hair back with a scrunchie, splashed water on my face, and came to the table to find Les already eating a mound of scrambled eggs with cheese on his plate.

  “Awwwrrrk! What is it?” Les cried when he saw me, but I only stuck my face up close to his.

  “Here’s what a female looks like without makeup,” I said. “Be grateful I brushed my teeth.”

  “Lester thought you were great last night. He told me so,” Sylvia said.

  “How did Kay like it?” I asked.

  “Loved it,” said Les. “Kay said she’d always wanted to be in a play or sing in a musical, but her parents wouldn’t allow it. Too frivolous. Anything she did had to be ‘academically oriented,’ as she put it.”

  “Seems like a very controlling atmosphere to grow up in,” said Sylvia, resting her elbows on the table and tucking her hands in the opposite sleeves of her kimono.

  “And they’re still at it. She called me yesterday and said that there was some big hassle at the last minute Friday night, and she apologized for standing me up.”

  “I’d think her parents would take the hint by now,” said Dad.

  “Oh, they get the hint, all right. They just don’t seem to feel it makes any difference. They feel she owes them this, to marry into a respectable Chinese family that they’ve known for a long time. Her mother told her that after all they’ve done for her—bringing her to this country so she could get a good education—she’s being disrespectful to her father by not marrying into the family of their friends.”

  “Wow,” said Sylvia. “That’s a lot of baggage to have to carry around.”

  “You know it,” said Les.

  “Any more news on the job search?” Dad asked him.

  “Not much. I’m holding on to the one I’ve got until I find something better. I’d like something here in the area, but I’m beginning to send my résumés farther and farther out.”

  “Just make it something you love,” said Dad.

  “Meanwhile, what’s happening back at your apartment?” Sylvia asked.

  “With Andy?” Les shook his head. “That’s what we’d like to know. For a woman who takes most of her meals in her room, she certainly has a lot of visitors. Mostly male, though not always.”

  “Maybe she’s feeding them, and that’s where all the food goes,” I said, happy to probe around in the mystery.

  “And Otto Watts likes her?” asked Dad.

  “Seems to. No complaints there.”

  “Does she pay her share of the utilities?”

  “Yep. First of the month. Cash. People come, people go… . Some stay a long time, some a little. Except for the man on Friday nights who turns on the TV, it’s generally pretty quiet in there. Low voices.”

  “So there really is more than one boyfriend?” I asked.

  “I can’t tell. Maybe guys need more tutoring in English and history than women do. Or maybe she’s just … uh … unusually attractive to men.”

  I couldn’t help laughing. “What are you going to do? Evict her for corrupting the morals of a minor?”

  “Too late for that,” he said. “No, I guess we’re just going to sit tight and see what happens. See where Paul and I get jobs, that’s the main thing.”

  I should have spent the whole afternoon catching up on homework, but I took a couple hours off to go to the mall with Gwen and Liz and Pamela. We’d received invitations to a surprise baby shower for Jill on the eighteenth.

  “Isn’t t
his a bit early for a baby shower?” Sylvia had asked me when I’d opened the envelope. “I mean, even before the wedding? Is this done?”

  “I don’t know, but Karen’s doing it,” I’d said. “She figures that so few friends from school have been invited to the wedding, thanks to Mrs. Collier, that she’ll give some kind of party they can attend now.”

  “Well, I didn’t want to sound mean. It’s just that sometimes a pregnancy doesn’t go well, there isn’t a baby, and then there are all those baby things sitting around to remind you… .”

  I’d never thought of that. But this was a chance to be magnanimous, so we all decided to go along with it.

  “When I get married, Sylvia, please don’t shut out my friends,” I’d said dramatically.

  “I promise, but try to have your baby after, not before,” she’d replied.

  As we drove to Bloomingdale’s at White Flint Mall, Liz said, “It’s more fun buying baby gifts than towels. Besides, Jill and Justin are getting a bunch of hand-me-downs from Mrs. Collier, Karen said.”

  “That’s what I heard. Things from their attic and odd pieces of furniture from their summer place at Hilton Head,” Pamela told us. “Jill’s not real happy about starting out with secondhand stuff. She thinks Justin’s dad talked to the trustee at the bank, because she was all set to go furniture shopping, but then the bank told Justin the trust would cover only apartment rental, not furniture,” said Pamela.

  “Ouch. No shopping spree for Jill,” I said. “That must have hurt.”

  We were being incredibly catty about someone we were about to spend more money on than we cared to.

  “Do you realize that our main social activity for the next ten years will be showers?” Gwen said, turning into the parking lot off Nicholson Lane. She was driving the car she’d bought from her brother, and we were all impressed that she was the very first girl in our crowd to have her own car. “I’ve been to showers for three cousins and one aunt all within the last eight months,” she said. “And I’ve been a bridesmaid at three of those weddings.”

  I found myself counting too. So far I’d been to a bridal shower for Crystal, one of Lester’s old girlfriends. I’d been to Marilyn’s wedding and a shower for her baby. I was a bridesmaid at both Carol’s and Sylvia’s weddings… . “Wow!” I said “We need to set aside a special account just for showers, I guess. They really start adding up. Jill is going to expect something exquisite, you know that.”

  “Why do you think we’re going to Bloomingdale’s?” said Pamela.

  As we got out of the car, Gwen said, “I suggest we all go in together and get one gift from all four of us. Then, if she doesn’t like it …”

  “… she can’t pick on any one of us,” I finished.

  “No. Then she’ll simply return it and buy a fantastic negligee for her wedding night,” said Pamela, and we laughed.

  It was easier knowing that all four of us would make a decision together and that the strain wouldn’t be quite so heavy on our wallets.

  Walking into the baby section at Bloomingdale’s was like entering an imaginary land. There was a different stuffed animal beside each sign—BABY BOY, BABY GIRL, INFANTS, TODDLERS… . Some counters were arranged by color, others by article of clothing, and we milled about with young mothers and grandmothers, some with toddlers in tow and an occasional husband.

  “This is more fun than looking at shoes,” said Liz.

  “Not quite, but close,” said Gwen.

  I held up a ruffled print top and matching leggings by Juicy Couture. “Did we ever wear anything this cute when we were babies?” I asked.

  Gwen checked the price tag. “At seventy-eight dollars, no.”

  I dropped the outfit as though it burned me. “There’s hardly anything to it!” I protested. “A yard of material at most.”

  “The smaller the package, the higher the price. First rule of retailing,” Gwen said.

  We proceeded toward the boutique section, where an elephant rocking chair had caught our attention. “Something like this, maybe, from all of us?” Liz said. She checked the tag and shook her head. “A hundred twenty, plus tax. Too steep for me.”

  “Let’s decide what each of us planned to spend,” said Gwen. “Twenty-five dollars is tops for me.”

  I was too embarrassed to say I was thinking more like fifteen. Liz and Pamela offered twenty. That made the ruffled top and matching leggings about right for our price range, but it seemed a rather puny gift coming from four girls. We kept looking.

  “Look!” said Gwen, holding up a pair of UGG infant booties. We oohed and aahed until we checked that price too. Fifty bucks.

  “I can buy a pair of stiletto heels for less than that,” said Pamela.

  Liz found a package of infant sneaker socks for twenty-eight dollars.

  “Maybe we should buy a diaper bag and fill it with small items,” she suggested, and we all were in favor of that. We checked out a Rebecca Minkoff baby bag and gasped at the price: three hundred ninety-five.

  “I’ve got a better idea,” said Gwen. “Why don’t we buy the largest but least expensive thing they have here, ask for a gift box, then go to Old Navy and buy some more stuff to add to it. I was shopping with my aunt last month and we got a pair of baby fisherman sandals for eight dollars. A newborn pajama set for ten.”

  We considered that a moment.

  “Yeah, but if she tries to exchange them, they’ll tell her that most of the stuff wasn’t from Bloomingdale’s,” said Liz.

  Pamela had wandered off and was looking at a little pair of cotton jeans for seventy-nine dollars.

  “You’re not serious?” I asked.

  She didn’t answer, just pointed to the size tag: 3 MONTHS. I looked at her quizzically.

  “That’s how old my baby would have been … if I hadn’t miscarried,” she said.

  That was about right, I figured. Three months. What is a baby doing at three months? Are babies rolling over yet? Laughing out loud? Sleeping through the night or not? What would Pamela be doing if she had a three-month-old baby? Nursing? She certainly wouldn’t be thinking of working on a cruise ship come summer.

  Two aisles up, a woman carrying a baby in a baby sling was comparing two packages of knit shirts. Her husband, who might have been slightly younger than she, stood with hands in his pockets, a diaper bag over his shoulder. Neither was smiling, though that said nothing about who they were or what they were feeling. Not everyone smiles when they’re shopping.

  But Pamela had seen the couple too, and as she put the little blue jeans back on the shelf she said, “That would have been Tim right now, and he’d hate me.”

  “Why do you say that?” asked Liz. “I don’t think Justin hates Jill because she’s pregnant.”

  “They’d been planning to marry,” Pamela said. “Tim and I hadn’t. And even if we had, who wants to start married life pregnant? Puking in the mornings? Jill probably won’t end up hating Justin either, but I bet she’ll hate living in an apartment with his parents’ cast-off furniture. You know”—she looked around at us—“for the first time in my life, I sort of feel sorry for Jill.”

  I couldn’t go that far. “Let’s just hope they bring up a happy kid,” I said. “So … what are we going to buy?”

  We ended up purchasing a Ralph Lauren reversible blanket for twenty-five dollars, a Spunky dog for twenty, a white Ralph Lauren beanie hat and booties for twenty, and the infant socks that looked like sneakers for twenty-eight. It all came to ninety-three plus tax, more than we’d wanted to spend, but it all fit in a Bloomingdale’s box and didn’t look too bad for a present.

  Patrick called me that night to see how things had gone. I told him everything … except that Ryan had kissed me. And that we were going out over spring break. I told myself that it had just been an affectionate kiss—that we were feeling close because we were in the play together, that it was our senior year—you can’t help but feel a certain closeness, but it didn’t necessarily mean anything.

&nbs
p; “So how are you going to celebrate when it’s all over?” he asked.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “The first night we went to the Silver Diner, and the next night we went bowling. We’ll probably do the same—a good way to get rid of tension. I don’t think you need to worry that we’re going skinny-dipping or anything.”

  “Here in Chicago they celebrate by jumping in Lake Michigan,” Patrick said.

  “What? In April? In the nude?”

  Patrick chuckled. “Okay. I made that up. I’m not part of theater, so I don’t know what they do. Something crazy, probably. You sleeping any better?”

  “No, but I will by this weekend. I’d be okay if I didn’t have to get up early for school.”

  “Well, I’ll be thinking of you Friday and Saturday nights. Wondering what you’re doing, who you’re with… .”

  “You already know most of the cast, Patrick.”

  “That’s true. I know they’ll take a lot of pictures for The Edge. Save a set for me.”

  “I will,” I told him.

  After I signed off, I sat on my bed, my arms locked around my knees, and stared at the wall. What does it mean when you hold something back? What does it say about a relationship? After all those wonderful things Patrick had said to me just over a week ago when I called him, crying, why would I even be thinking of going out with someone else over spring break?

  Because we weren’t engaged, that’s why. Because we were expected to go out with other people till we could be together full-time. Would Patrick have told me if he’d driven a girl home and kissed her? If he had a car, that is? Would I be understanding if he did? Would I realize this was a temporary situation? How on earth did you ever know for sure?

  19

  MAIL

  It was a surreal week. We had rehearsals again Monday through Wednesday, and I had trouble sleeping again; missed two more mornings of school because of it. But I went to the rest of my classes and did the best I could, light-headed for lack of sleep, excited, nervous about Ryan, thinking about Patrick… .

  In physics Ryan told me he’d been accepted at the University of Iowa, that this might push him in the direction of becoming a writer.