Alice on the Outside Read online

  6

  APRIL SHOWERS

  THE WASHINGTON POST RAN A FEATURE story in the Metro section on CRW, but I didn’t think their pictures were as good as Sam’s. When our school newspaper came out with a two-page photo spread—mostly kids’ faces reacting to one of the rules—four of the pictures were taken by Sam. Mine turned out only so-so.

  “Great photos,” I told him in Camera Club when it met after school the following Wednesday. Everyone was praising Sam.

  He grinned, obviously pleased.

  “You know how many shots I took in all? Thirty-six. Divided by four makes nine. Only one out of nine made it.”

  “Well, they didn’t use any of mine,” I said.

  “Next time,” he told me, and squeezed my arm.

  “But you see picture possibilities in things that the rest of us probably wouldn’t consider. And you’d have had to have split-second timing to get some of those, Sam.”

  “More like luck,” he said, and went on over to help frame one of the enlargements for the school bulletin board.

  I watched him kidding around with some of the other club members. In some ways he’s like Patrick, and in some ways he’s just the opposite. Patrick’s tall, Sam’s shorter. Patrick’s lean, Sam’s heavier—slightly muscular. Patrick has red hair, Sam’s is dark. Patrick’s more confident, I think; Sam’s quieter. But they’re both really nice. They both pay attention to me, listen to what I say. I felt like Miss Summers must feel, I guess: I had two guys I liked a lot.

  Now that we’d all survived CRW, everybody’s thoughts turned to the eighth-grade semi-formal, meaning that girls get to wear fancy dresses, but the guys just wear suits. Before, it was mostly couples who were already going together who started making plans, but now people were making dates, and every day we’d hear about another girl who’d been asked or a girl who had asked a guy.

  I was going with Patrick, of course, and Elizabeth with Justin Collier. Mark and Brian both asked Pamela, but she turned them down. Elizabeth and I were afraid she’d go with one of the Bikers, but for kicks, she really did invite my old boyfriend from Takoma Park, Donald Sheavers. Maybe he’ll grow up to be a nuclear physicist, I don’t know, but he’s not very smart as far as human relations go. Elizabeth and I were so glad that Pamela wasn’t going with one of the bleached boys, though, that we told her she was welcome to ride with us.

  The deal was that Justin’s father would take us all in his van and Lester would pick us up afterward. Actually, Justin and Patrick wanted Donald Sheavers to go in with them and rent a limo for the evening, but Patrick’s dad wouldn’t hear of it. If anyone in the whole school could afford a limo it was Mr. Long, but he said that if a guy rented a limo for his eighth-grade semi-formal, he’d have to rent a yacht for his high school prom. And if he rented a yacht for the senior prom, he’d have to rent the Concorde for his wedding, because what else was left?

  Anyway, it was good to be thinking about the semi-formal, with CRW behind us. Elizabeth said she thought everyone was kinder to each other since CRW. I wasn’t sure of that, but I think we were a little more thoughtful, at least.

  The first week of April, Miss Summers stayed after school a couple of hours each day to finish some work she had to do.

  “Why don’t you come by the house later and have dinner here, Sylvia?” I heard Dad ask her over the phone. “I’m making shrimp and pasta. It’s no trouble.”

  She must have said yes because Dad hummed as he made dinner that night, and I set the table with extra care, trying not to make a big deal of it. I knew that if Miss Summers eventually chose Mr. Sorringer over Dad, it would be hard enough for him without me getting upset over it too.

  At first I thought she wasn’t coming. She’d told Dad she’d probably be here by six forty-five, but at five of seven she still hadn’t shown, and Lester was hanging around the kitchen, his stomach growling.

  “You can go ahead and eat, Les,” Dad said. “I’ve got the pasta warming in the oven.”

  “That’s okay,” Lester said. “I can wait.”

  Seven came, then five after. Dad wordlessly took out the pasta and mixed it with sauce. Then we heard a car door slam, footsteps on the porch, and Dad’s face lit up like a flashlight.

  “I’m so sorry!” Miss Summers said, slipping off her sweater. “I was blocks away from the school when I realized I’d left some papers behind that had to be mailed off to England, and I had to go all the way back. I hoped you’d start without me.”

  “If I’d gotten a head start, there wouldn’t be any left,” Lester joked.

  “You’re worth the wait, Sylvia,” Dad said. “Please sit down.”

  Miss Summers has light brown hair and blue eyes. She’s beautiful and smart and exactly the right size and shape for my father. They look great together. What Dad calls her, though, is “serene.” She’s easy to get along with, he says. Interesting to talk to. A good listener. A good friend.

  “I see you survived CRW,” she said to me, unfolding her napkin and spreading it on her lap. She was wearing an olive green knit dress with a green and gold scarf at the neck. Her nails were polished a rich clay color.

  “It was okay, but I’m glad it’s over,” I told her. “One more day, and I don’t know what would have happened. Tempers were really hot on Friday.”

  “I know. There was a sign over the copier in the teachers’ lounge saying that the group A teachers got to use it first. If any A teacher wanted something copied, any B or C had to let her go first. We joked about it, but by Friday, the brunettes were really getting ugly looks. I had an orange circle, so I was sort of in-between.”

  “Me too,” I said. “The worst of both worlds.”

  “Well, turnaround day on Friday must have been something!” said Lester. “All the Had-Nots attacking the Hads.”

  Miss Summers laughed. “Actually, we were quite civilized about it. Though Mr. Ormand, who chose to be in the C group even though he’s bald, did admit that one more day without a bacon cheeseburger would probably have put him over the edge.” She took a bite of shrimp. “Oh, Ben, this is delicious!”

  “I’m glad you came by,” he told her, and I think they touched hands under the table.

  “How are things going with you, Les?” she asked, lifting her coffee to her lips and looking at Lester with her blue, blue eyes. “How’s the philosophy major?”

  “I’ve barely gotten my feet wet,” Les told her. “This semester we’re studying the Socratic method, but it’s still introductory. I’m looking forward to the seminars in graduate school.”

  “And after your master’s degree?” she asked.

  Lester made his usual joke: “I’ll sit on a mountaintop and reveal the meaning of life.”

  “His secret of life is to stay in school as long as possible and live off his old man,” Dad said, and we all laughed.

  “What about you, Sylvia?” Lester asked. “You leave in June, don’t you? You must be pretty excited.”

  “I am. Though in a way, I hate to leave. But I’ve found a renter for my house for a year who says she’ll take good care of my flowers. If I don’t go now when I’ve got the chance, I probably never would, so I’ve talked myself into it,” Miss Summers said.

  We all knew that she was going to England for a year as an exchange teacher so she could decide between Dad and Jim Sorringer. But we pretended it was just travel that interested her.

  “I’m trying to get Ben to come over and visit me while I’m there,” she added.

  I put down my fork and looked at Dad. I could tell that Lester had stopped chewing too. If she was going to England to be by herself and think, and then she wanted Dad there, didn’t that mean that … ?

  “You’re going, of course,” Lester said to Dad.

  “Well, I’m taking it under consideration,” Dad said. “Janice would have to take over the store, and I’d be leaving you two alone for a week or so.”

  “Go, Dad!” I said. “You’ve never been to England. Janice Sherman is perfect
ly capable of running the place. That’s what assistant managers are for. You’ve got to go!”

  “That’s what I told him,” Miss Summers said. “I think he’d enjoy it.”

  “You know I would,” Dad told her, smiling. “I’m working on it.”

  “You won’t have to worry about a thing here,” Les said. “If Al gets out of line, I’ll just chain her in the cellar till you get back. No problem at all.”

  After dinner Les went bowling with some of his buddies, and Miss Summers absolutely insisted on doing the dishes. I started to protest that I’d do them, but figured it was a way for her and Dad to be alone, so I took my books up to my room to study.

  I worked for about an hour, then noticed it had been raining lightly—an April shower. With my window open, I could smell the sweet scent of damp earth and new grass. I stretched and wondered when it was safe to go back downstairs. I hadn’t heard Miss Summers’s car leave, but I didn’t hear any dishes rattling in the kitchen, either.

  I turned off my light and went over to the window. Sitting down on the floor, I rested my arms on the sill and drank in the spring perfume. The gentle raindrops sounded like tiny drummers in the rain gutter overhead. I was watching a couple far down the block moving past the streetlamp and into the shadows of the trees, then emerging again, stopping to kiss. As they came closer, I realized it was Dad and Miss Summers, and they didn’t have an umbrella. I’ll bet they didn’t even know it was raining.

  I don’t know why, but I cried. I was thinking of my mom, whom I hardly even remembered. I wished I had at least one memory of Dad kissing her.

  We were starting to think about dresses for the semi-formal. I’d be wearing the jade green bridesmaid’s dress, of course, that I’d worn for Crystal’s wedding. And shortly after Justin Collier had asked Elizabeth to go to the dance with him, Elizabeth and her mom went shopping and bought an off-the-shoulder pink satin dress with a slim skirt. Elizabeth held it up against her for Pamela and me to see, and it looked like a rose against her creamy skin. Elizabeth has the most beautiful skin of any girl I’ve ever known.

  Pamela was the only one of us who didn’t have a dress. Her father said it was her mom’s job to help her choose one, but Mrs. Jones was off somewhere with her Nordic-Track instructor, so once again Pamela was out in left field.

  Elizabeth and I said we’d go shopping with her, but we were a little worried about the kind of dress she might choose, the way she’d been acting lately. I knew she liked Lester, though, and would probably listen to him, and I tried to figure out a way to get him to come with us.

  When he got home from bowling, I made some popcorn and took it up to his room. “Want some?” I said, and set the bowl on his desk.

  “Thanks. Now if you’d bring me a beer … ,” he said.

  “We don’t have any beer, Lester.”

  “Well, I’ll make do,” he said, and settled back on his bed with a philosophy book in his lap.

  “Lester,” I said, “what would you say if I told you that someone needs you in a very special way?”

  Lester slowly lowered the book. “Needs me how? Who’ve you been talking to, Al? Marilyn? Not Crystal?”

  “It’s one of my friends, Lester.”

  “Oh, no! The last time somebody ‘needed’ me, it was Elizabeth who’d never seen a naked man.”

  I grinned, remembering how I’d tried to get Lester to buy a magazine for her—one of those magazines of hunks.

  “It’s not that,” I said. “It’s just that Pamela’s parents are fighting, and her mom’s off with her NordicTrack instructor, and her dad says it’s her mom’s duty to help her buy a dress, but …”

  “So what am I supposed to do? Shoot the guy on the NordicTrack?”

  “Take Pamela shopping.”

  “Are you totally out of your mind?”

  “Elizabeth and I will go with you, but Pamela’s been sort of wild lately, and we’re afraid she’ll buy a dress that’s embarrassing or something. She’d listen to you, though.”

  “I don’t know anything about dresses.”

  “You’d know if it was indecent,” I told him.

  “I’d rather have a root canal,” said Lester.

  “When was the last time you did something really selfless and noble and good and true?” I said.

  “It’ll cost you, kid.”

  “How much?”

  “If Crystal calls, you have to get rid of her for me.”

  “Lie?”

  “Be creative. I don’t want to be involved in her squabbles with Peter.”

  “Okay. Deal. Wheaton Plaza on Saturday?”

  Lester sighed. “I’ll meet you there after I get off work. I’ll give you from three to five, but at five o’clock, I walk.”

  On Saturday, I put in my three hours at the Melody Inn, and was able to avoid Marilyn. I talked a few minutes with Janice Sherman, but Dad asked me to help put up shelves in the store basement for supplies, so all I said to Marilyn was hello and good-bye. I didn’t know if she was still crying over Les, but I didn’t want to be around if she was.

  Lester came to Wheaton Plaza as promised, and we explained that there were five stores we wanted to visit even if Pamela didn’t try anything on. She didn’t want to buy a dress only to find out that there was a better one right next door. So we walked on ahead, and Lester followed at a safe distance.

  “Like a Secret Service agent,” Pamela giggled.

  The first store didn’t have any dresses that Pamela liked, so we headed for the next one and got waylaid at an accessory shop looking at earrings.

  “Nope! Nix! Move on, ladies. You buy a dress and I go home. That was the bargain,” Lester called from the doorway. The customers turned to stare at us, but Pamela only giggled. She loved having Les along.

  We lost him momentarily, however, when we passed Victoria’s Secret, because there was a mannequin in the window wearing black bikini panties, a black garter belt, white stockings, and heels, and on top, nothing but a black tuxedo jacket, unbuttoned, of course.

  “Nope! Nix! Move on, Lester,” Elizabeth called, and I believe he actually blushed a little as he moved up behind us and we set out for Penney’s.

  In the juniors department, Lester leaned against a pillar with his hands in his pockets while we slid the dresses along the rack, checking each one.

  Pamela found a black dress made of fake leather and held it up for Lester to see.

  “Get real,” he said.

  Then we saw a royal blue dress that was nice—long and sleek—with a slit almost up to the panty line. The three of us went in the dressing room while Pamela tried it on. It wrinkled a little at the waist—they didn’t have it in size six—but we persuaded her to come out and show it to Lester anyway. He was chewing gum and eyeing a customer over in the lingerie section. When he turned back again, there was Pamela, smiling at him.

  I think he swallowed his gum. “Go put your clothes on,” he said.

  “Les-ter!” I chided.

  “It’s too long waisted,” he argued. “It wrinkles. You can do better than that, Pamela.”

  That convinced us, so Pamela got dressed again, and we tried two other stores and didn’t find anything. Then we walked to Hecht’s at the other end. There were two dresses that looked right for Pamela, and the salesclerk, a tall blonde, hung them outside a corner dressing room with a three-way mirror and left us to ourselves.

  Pamela put on the deep purple one first, something like the blue dress, but cut low in back, with a halter top.

  “Oh, Pamela!” I said when I saw her in it. “It’s perfect!”

  “It’s a little low in back,” said Elizabeth. “A boy could put his hand inside if he wanted.”

  We both looked at Elizabeth.

  “She’s going with Donald Sheavers!” I reminded her. “She’d have to give him directions.”

  “Go show Lester,” Elizabeth said.

  Pamela opened the dressing room door. Lester was sitting on a folding chair. He’d found a
newspaper and was reading the sports section.

  “Lester!” Pamela called, walking toward him like a model, one leg out in front of the other, and she did a pivot right in front of him, one hand on her hip.

  “Ye gods!” said Lester when he saw the back of the dress. Or rather, the back of Pamela where there wasn’t any dress.

  “I think it’s perfect,” I told him.

  “Too tight,” said Lester.

  “It’s not, Les! That’s the way it’s supposed to fit!” Pamela argued.

  “It’s indecent,” he said. “Look at the back!”

  “See?” said Elizabeth triumphantly.

  We went back to the dressing room, and I began to wish I hadn’t brought my brother. I didn’t think he’d be this much of a prude. He still thought of us as children.

  “Put on the red one,” I said to Pamela, pointing to the dress with the short swishy skirt and the low, low neckline.

  She did, and even I decided she’d set off a fire alarm. “Tell Lester it’s between this and the purple.”

  The way Pamela was looking at herself in the mirror, I was afraid she’d choose this one. It was Pamela, all right—the way she’d been behaving lately, anyway. I began to wish I hadn’t come. I didn’t want to be responsible.

  “Go show Lester,” was all Elizabeth could muster.

  Pamela flounced out of the dressing room and stood in front of Lester, her breasts puffing out at the neckline.

  He blinked. I think he could tell that Pamela liked this one too.

  “It’d be great for Halloween,” he said. “Great if you want to look like a hooker. But if you want to look sexy yet subtle, exciting but sophisticated, choose the purple, Pamela.”

  “Okay,” she said, much to our relief, and went back in the dressing room.

  There, however, we discovered a little plastic bag with foam rubber cups in it that came with the red dress. When we investigated, we discovered that there were pouches in the bosom of the dress, and if we inserted the foam rubber, it would push Pamela’s breasts up even farther.

  We couldn’t resist. I thrust my hand down one side of the neckline to insert the foam rubber, and Elizabeth thrust her hand down into the neckline on the other side. When Pamela stood up straight, though, and thrust out her chest, one of the foam pads popped out like popcorn, and we shrieked with laughter.