Including Alice Read online

  “You mean none of my other friends can see you guys get married?” I asked incredulously.

  “Al, how do we drive off to the reception after the ceremony and leave half the guests behind?” he said.

  “Dad!” I wailed. “I’ve told all my friends about your engagement! Everyone at school has been hearing me talk about this for months! For years!” My eyes filled with tears. I hate that! I hate that I’m fifteen years old and I still cry when I get upset.

  “Look, I’ll talk to Sylvia,” Dad said quickly. “I know we can’t have any more people at the reception, but I’ll see what I can work out at the church.”

  Inwardly, I had to admit that I’d fantasized about everyone I know watching me walk down the aisle ahead of Sylvia in my teal bridesmaid dress with the thin straps. I imagined them watching me take my place across from Dad and Lester, my eyes on Sylvia, but all of my friends’ eyes on me.

  I stayed off e-mail that evening and didn’t use the phone, either. I didn’t want to say one word to one more person about the wedding and then find out I’d have to un-invite everyone.

  When the phone rang later, Dad answered, and finally he stopped in the doorway of my room, where I was working on a history assignment.

  “Sylvia says that of course your other friends are invited to the ceremony, Alice. She said we’ll order some punch and cookies there in the church lounge for people from school who would like to attend.”

  Life was looking up. “How many can I invite?” I asked, thinking of the whole sophomore class.

  “Oh, I don’t know. Five, maybe?”

  “Five?” I shrieked. “Dad, it has to be at least fifteen!”

  “Sylvia thinks other students from her junior high school may drop in unannounced, Alice, and the sanctuary just isn’t that big. We don’t want this to turn into a circus. Let’s compromise: ten, max. Including Elizabeth, Pamela, and Gwen.”

  When Dad went back downstairs, I wrote the numbers 1 to 10 on a sheet of paper and put a name beside each number:

  1. Elizabeth

  2. Pamela

  3. Gwen

  4. Patrick

  5. Lori

  6. Karen

  7. Jill

  8. Mark

  9. Brian

  10. Justin

  These are the friends I’ve known the longest. I could have included Donald Sheavers, my friend back in Takoma Park, but he didn’t know Sylvia. I could have included Leslie, Lori’s girlfriend, and Faith and Molly from the high school stage crew, and some of my friends on the newspaper staff, but they didn’t know Sylvia either. The one person I was sure I would not invite was Penny, the girl who had caused the breakup between Patrick and me.

  I heard Lester come in later to talk with Dad about some problem he was having with his car. So I took the opportunity to work on the wedding gift I was making for Dad and Sylvia. I’d wanted it to be something I made with my own hands, because those are the kinds of presents that Dad likes most.

  I’d bought a set of white percale sheets and pillowcases, and I’d gotten this really fancy monogram pattern with an M in the middle, a B (for Ben) on one side, and an S (for Sylvia) on the other, with flowers and doves forming a circular border. It looked great on the pattern, and I’d finally gotten the outline transferred to each pillowcase and in the center of one hem of the unfitted sheet. All I had to do was embroider it.

  The M would be embroidered with teal-colored thread, Sylvia’s favorite color. The B and the S would be royal blue, her other color for her wedding, and the flowers and doves would be shades of green and gold. It was going to be beautiful, but I wasn’t very good at sewing and it seemed I took out a stitch for every two I put in. I hadn’t realized I had to make stitches so tiny. So far all I’d got done was the M and the B and half of the S, plus one dove on just one of the pillowcases. I didn’t know how I was going to finish in time for the wedding. Each night I tried to put in a half hour on it before I went to bed, but it wasn’t easy to find time when Dad wasn’t around.

  I heard someone coming upstairs and quickly put the sheet away, but it was Lester coming to say hi to me. I asked what he was giving Dad and Sylvia for their wedding.

  “I gave up my room, didn’t I?” he said.

  “That’s all?” I asked. Lester has teased me for so long, it’s hard to know when he’s serious.

  He laughed. “Actually, I found a clock. The face is embedded in burled wood, and the grain’s absolutely gorgeous. They can put it anywhere they like, but if it were mine, I’d set it on the mantel. We’ve never had a decent clock in this house. They all look like they came from Sears.”

  “It sounds great,” I said, wondering how my embroidered sheets and pillowcases would look compared to that. I also wondered what Lester’s apartment looked like now that all three guys had moved in. The furniture was all chrome and glass, I’ll bet.

  “Pamela wants to know when she can come over and visit you,” I said. “Elizabeth, too.”

  “Hmm,” said Lester. “I’ll have to check my social calendar. Two … three years, maybe.”

  “Lester!”

  He grinned.

  “They want to meet your roommates,” I told him. “Are they studly? Pamela wants to know.”

  “Ugly as trolls,” Lester said. “One’s got warts all over his face, and the other’s got a third ear.”

  Now it was my turn to grin. “Elizabeth can’t wait for the wedding. She wants to see you in a three-piece suit, and Pamela wants to see you without anything on at all.”

  “Make that ten years before they can visit me,” Lester said.

  Just before homeroom the next day Karen told me something she’d just heard—that Penny had asked Patrick out. You can’t believe half of what Karen says because her day isn’t complete unless she riles somebody up. Karen has a lot of good points, but discretion isn’t one of them.

  “So?” I said, putting my jacket in my locker. “It’s a free country.” They’d broken up months ago, but, I suppose, like Patrick and me, they were still friends. “Why are you telling me this?”

  “Well … I just thought you should know … because it’s the day your dad’s getting married,” Karen said, wincing a little.

  Now I was mad. I was steamed. I was furious. I had saved one of my ten precious slots for Patrick, and she’d asked him out? She knew that was the day my dad was getting married. Maybe I didn’t want Patrick again for my boyfriend, but I wanted him to see me in my bridesmaid dress! I wanted him to watch me come down the aisle. I wanted to see him all dressed up, smiling at me at a wedding.

  “So?” I said again, trying not to show just how upset I was. “Did Patrick say yes or what?”

  “I don’t know,” Karen said.

  I had planned to e-mail the seven new people I was inviting to the ceremony when I got home that afternoon, but now I was determined to invite them in the cafeteria the next day. Since Penny usually sat with us, it would be much too obvious if I called out ten names and hers wasn’t one of them, but I was going to make sure she knew she was excluded. Let her see how it felt to be unwanted. Let her get a taste of being odd man out.

  I guess I had never fully admitted to myself how angry I was at her for stealing Patrick away from me. Even though it was Patrick’s decision as much as it was hers. Even though they weren’t even going out together anymore. I never wanted her to know how much that had hurt me. But now I was surprised at how strangely satisfying it felt to know I could exclude her from the wedding.

  So after I finished my egg salad at lunch that day, I got up and casually moved around both tables—we always push two together—whispering the invitation, the time and place, adding that they were invited to stay for punch and cookies afterward.

  Even though I told Jill about the invitation when Penny was talking to Mark, and I told Mark when Penny had turned to Jill, Penny could sense that something was up and looked quizzically around the table. She glanced my way then, and I, Miss Innocent, laughed a little too loudly
at a joke Brian just told, ignoring her. Totally. I can’t say that my dad’s wedding was making me a better person exactly, but I’d have to admit it gave me a lot of pleasure.

  The thing was, Amy Sheldon had been sitting at a table next to ours, and she must have overheard me say something about the wedding. Because she got right up from her chair and came over.

  “Alice,” she said, “am I invited now?”

  I couldn’t believe she asked me outright like that, even though I’d told her before that she wasn’t. And because I figured that at least one of my ten friends wouldn’t be able to make it, and because I knew that Penny was listening—okay, especially because I knew she was listening—I said, “Sure, Amy, we have room for exactly one more, and you’re it.”

  Penny looked away then and gathered up her books. I should have felt bad I’d hurt her feelings, but I didn’t feel sorry in the least.

  2

  Mixed Feelings

  Sylvia was back, and I was discovering just how much work there was to planning a wedding. You not only have to find a cake and a photographer and musicians and a dressmaker and a florist; you have to find hotel rooms for all the guests coming from out of town.

  I guess we’re sort of short on relatives. My mom’s parents died a long time ago, and so did Dad’s mother. But Uncle Harold and Uncle Howard were driving up from Tennessee with their wives and were bringing Grandpa McKinley with them. Aunt Sally and Uncle Milt were flying in from Chicago, along with their daughter Carol, who’s a few years older than Lester. Sylvia’s sister was coming, of course, and so was her brother and his family from Seattle. They all needed places to stay. There were now lists taped all over our house—to cabinet doors and mirrors and walls—hotel numbers, airline numbers, taxi service, car rental… .

  “I’d forgotten you have a brother,” I said to Sylvia as she posted his flight information above our phone one night when she came for dinner. “I never hear you talk about him much.”

  “Kirk? No, I guess I don’t. I was always closer to Nancy, I think.” She paused a minute. “I’ve always envied your closeness with Lester.”

  I wondered if I had heard right. Sylvia envied me?

  “How come you weren’t closer?” I asked. “Or is that personal?”

  “Maybe because there’s a five-year difference in age between Kirk and me, while there’s only two years between Nancy and me,” she said.

  “Is he older or younger than you?”

  “Older,” she said, and added ruefully, “and always treated me like I didn’t have a brain in my head.” She sighed. “Actually, our falling out was over politics. We’ll never see eye to eye on that, and we’ve sort of agreed to disagree. But he’s very active politically, so there hasn’t been a whole lot to talk about, it seems. He’s married, I’m not; he has children, I don’t—that sort of thing. Maybe now we’ll feel closer.”

  Wow! I thought. Lester and I never discuss politics, but we talk about all kinds of other things.

  “Is he going to be in the wedding?” I asked.

  She laughed. “Oh, yes. I asked him if he wanted to give the bride away, and he said, ‘Gladly!’” I laughed too. Then she added, “I think it was Nancy’s being sick that helped bring us together again. All the while I was in Albuquerque taking care of her, Kirk called every day and flew down there twice. Sometimes it takes something serious to make you realize what’s important. Kirk told me I could vote for Mickey Mouse after that, and he still wouldn’t hold it against me. So maybe that old saying’s right—you know, about something good coming out of something bad.”

  I had a thought just then that I didn’t even put into words: The worst thing that had ever happened to me was losing my mother. Would the nicest thing that ever happened be that I got Sylvia for a stepmom? And my mother had to die for that to happen?

  Ten days before the wedding Sylvia called us before Dad went to work, and I answered. “I’m going to be picking up your gown in Bethesda this afternoon,” she said. “There’s a really great restaurant over there on Norfolk Avenue,” and she gave me the address. “Why don’t you and Ben meet me there for dinner, and we’ll have a quiet, relaxed meal, just the three of us, before all the wedding craziness takes over.”

  “Sure!” I said.

  At six o’clock Dad and I met her in Bethesda. I put on my best top and necklace because I wanted to show Sylvia that I could be a daughter she was proud of in public, and we had a great seafood dinner, except that one of my sleeves dragged in the tartar sauce.

  Sylvia caught me trying to clean it off with a napkin I’d dipped in my water glass. She grinned. “It happens,” she said. Mellow, that’s what she is. I’ll bet I could have dumped my whole dinner in my lap and she would have just smiled.

  We drove back to our house in two cars. I rode with Sylvia, her backseat full of purchases, including my dress. After we got it upstairs, Sylvia handed me a small bag. “I took a chance on your size and bought you a strapless bra,” she said.

  I squealed when I saw VICTORIA’S SECRET printed on the bag. I’d never had anything from there. But it was the dress with the thin straps that made me gasp. Even though she’d let me choose the style, it was more beautiful than I’d imagined.

  “It’s so gorgeous!” I told her. “I’m going to wear it to the senior prom!”

  She laughed. “Well, that’s half your problem solved, then!” and I suppose she meant that finding a date was the other half.

  I doubted Sylvia Summers had ever had a problem getting a date. She has light brown hair and blue eyes, great cheekbones, and a medium-size figure. Five feet six, I’d guess—maybe 130 pounds. She doesn’t look like a half-starved prisoner of war, as Lester calls the supermodels. I’d never met her sister, but I wondered if she looked anything like Sylvia.

  “Was Nancy ever married?” I asked as I carefully hung my dress in the closet.

  “Once. They divorced,” Sylvia told me. “I was never quite sure what the problem was. She just said they grew apart, but I suppose that could mean a number of things. In any case, she seems happy being single.”

  “Has she decided whether or not to be in the wedding?” I wanted to know. “Is she okay now?”

  “Not completely okay, but so much better. She’s still weak, but she’s bringing her dress along with her, even if she decides not to be part of the ceremony.”

  My first thought, of course, was that if Nancy wasn’t in the wedding as maid of honor, then I would take her place. But I saw that Sylvia was opening another box on my bed, and she winked at me.

  “Help me try this on,” she said. “Just to see how it will look.”

  There was the bridal veil and then the headpiece, a delicate wire frame with floating pearls on it.

  She sat down on the edge of my bed, and I lifted the veil in my hands. It was as though I were being admitted into the inner sanctum. As though I had suddenly got to be twenty-one. As though I were Sylvia’s sister, not her stepdaughter-to-be. I carefully arranged the long veil over Sylvia’s hair and placed the headpiece on top of that. The pearls appeared to be scattered here and there in Sylvia’s light brown hair. We studied the effect in the mirror.

  “It’s beautiful!” I said. “You’re beautiful!”

  “Right now I think I’m the luckiest woman alive!” she answered.

  We heard Dad shuffling around in the hall. “So what’s taking so long in there?” he called, and we giggled and placed the veil back in the box so he wouldn’t see it till the wedding day.

  “Nothing,” I called when the lid was on the box. “You can come in now.”

  The way his eyes lit up when he looked at her, even without the veil, made me wonder if he’d ever looked at my mom like that. He must have. I’d just been too young to notice.

  “So how are my girls doing?” Dad asked.

  “Women!” Sylvia corrected in mock seriousness, and I glanced in the mirror to see if I still looked as elegant as I had at dinner. Maybe I did look older these days. My hair was
certainly getting darker. I used to think of myself as a strawberry blonde, but I was looking more brunette every day. And there was hardly any “baby fat” left under my chin.

  “I’m getting lonely downstairs,” Dad told Sylvia, taking her hand. “We’ve still got a lot to talk about.”

  After she left, I peeked into the Victoria’s Secret bag. There was a white strapless bra, the top half all lace. Sylvia was a good judge of size: I tried it on and it fit well. Sexy! I thought, and giggled. A real hottie! Too bad no one would see it but me.

  Dad and Sylvia were having coffee at the diningroom table when I went down. I settled myself in the living room to read a chapter from my literature book. Little wisps of conversation came to me now and then as they went over their checklists.

  “I settled with the photographer on the number of prints, one set for each relative… .”

  “Martin’s going to bring the musicians over some evening and let me hear his trio… .”

  “I know Nancy wants desperately to be in the wedding, but she just has no stamina… .”

  After a while I went out in the kitchen to get some sherbet for myself, and as I was dishing it up I heard Sylvia say something about “the addition” and whether the tub should be a Jacuzzi.

  “What’s this?” I asked, going to the doorway.

  “Daydreaming,” Sylvia said.

  “We’ve been toying with the idea of an addition on the back of the house,” said Dad.

  “Really?”

  “It might be nice to enlarge our bedroom, add a bath on the upper level, with a study below next to the dining room,” said Sylvia.

  I gave my head a little shake to clear it. Weren’t there enough changes right now without changing the house too? After all, it was my house as well.

  “Which means, of course, that you’d have our present bathroom all to yourself,” Dad said.

  “I thought you were going to use Lester’s room for a study,” I told him.

  “It’s okay for now, but it’s not nearly big enough for both Sylvia’s things and mine. She has lessons to plan, I have records to keep. We’d turn Lester’s room into a guest room so that there was always a place for company. What do you think?”