Outrageously Alice (3 page)

Dad and Lester were already eating dinner when I came in.

“Where were you?” asked Dad. “I was beginning to worry.”

I placed my books on the counter and took off my jacket. “The world,” I said, “is my province.”

Lester rolled his eyes. “God save the queen,” he said.

That evening I got a call from Crystal Harkins. Lester answered the phone, and it was strange to hear him say, “Al, for you. It’s Crystal.”

If he was pining away for his old girlfriend, he never let on.

“Hello?” I said.

“Hi, Alice. I just wondered if I could drive over some evening and show you the bridesmaid dress I’ve picked. My aunt has already started sewing some of them.”

“Sure! Come tonight if you want!” I said. It wasn’t outrageous or remarkable, but it was better than another evening of homework and TV.

Lester’s ears picked up like a dog’s when he heard her car drive up later, and he managed to get up to his room before she rang the bell.

Crystal looked sparkly and slimmer than when I’d seen her last. I noticed she glanced around, probably looking for Lester, but she didn’t mention him, so neither did I. She dropped her coat on a chair and sat down beside me on the couch. Her perfume was absolutely wonderful.

“Here’s the dress I like, and I hope you do too,” she said. “I tried to pick one you could wear again; if you go to the eighth-grade dance, maybe you could wear it then.”

She turned to a page in a magazine that showed a bride attended by her bridesmaids, and the bridesmaids were all wearing jade green dresses, barebacked, with a full filmy net layer for the skirt, slit down the middle, revealing a tighter skirt of jade green satin beneath. The dress was gorgeous on the models, but I wasn’t sure how it would look on me.

“It’s beautiful, Crystal,” I said. “But how …” I frowned at the picture.

“Problems?”

“The bridesmaids … the ones who have breasts, I mean … how do they wear a bra?”

“Well, Alice, you can get paste-on cups that you stick on under your breasts, and they hold them up.”

I stared. “You mean, like a Band-Aid?”

“Something like that. Or you can buy a bra that fastens around the waist and there’s a sort of wire framework that sticks up in front to hold the breasts in place.”

“Like a chastity belt?” I asked. I don’t know why, I just blurted it out.

Crystal put down the bride’s magazine and stared at me. “Of course not. Where did you hear about that?”

“Forget it,” I said. “Anyway, Crystal, it’s gorgeous. Of course I’ll wear the dress. I love it.”

“Wonderful,” she said. “Since my aunt’s making them, you’ll only have to pay fifty dollars for the material. You’ll need shoes dyed to match, of course. But I’ll let you know about those next week. I’ve brought a tape measure; we need to get your sizes, okay?”

She measured me there in the living room and after she left, I was still staring after her. Dad came out of the kitchen.

“Dad!” I cried in dismay. “Did you know we have to pay for the dress and shoes? I thought the bride paid for everything!”

“Guess we’ve got a lot to learn about weddings, don’t we? Your mother would have known.…”

“But what am I going to do? I don’t
have
fifty dollars. I’m lucky to have fifty cents.”

“I think we can probably handle that. If it’s a dress you can wear later to high school dances, maybe it’s not too bad. Of course, you can’t grow at all between now and your senior year, you understand.” We laughed.

Crystal had made a copy of that page in the magazine and left it with me, so I called Elizabeth to come over and see the dress. She was only too glad to get out of the house.

“Nathan’s howling up in his crib, and the whole place smells like diapers. It’s depressing,” she said. “You know, Alice, we don’t really have to have children when we’re grown. I mean, women can live full and complete lives even if they don’t have babies, can’t they?”

“I suppose,” I said. “There’s so much out there we don’t know anything about, Elizabeth.”

I guess she was already feeling shaky, and that remark didn’t help. “Like what?” she asked warily.

“Paste-on bra cups, for one.”

“What?”

“You glue them to the underside of your breasts to keep them upright if you want to wear a backless dress.”

“How do you get them off?”

“Pull, I guess.”

“Oh, that’s so gross!”

“And then, of course, there’s a chastity belt.…”

“What?” she cried.

“It’s made of metal, and your husband locks it on you with a key when he goes on a trip to make sure you’re faithful.” I don’t know why I do that to Elizabeth.

“
What?”
she screeched.

“Never mind,” I said. “I’ll explain it to you sometime when you’re feeling strong. But remember, we don’t have to get married, either.”

ON THE NIGHT OF THE SHOWER FOR CRYSTAL
, Aunt Sally called to make sure I wore a dress, which is why I ripped one pair of panty hose, put another pair on three times before I got them right, ironed a rayon dress that was handed down from my cousin Carol, and wore a string of pearls (fake, of course) that used to be my mom’s, because Aunt Sally said you could never go wrong with pearls. Then, at a quarter of seven, Lester drove me to Betsy Hall’s.

“Les,” I asked as I sat with my legs crossed, hands over the purse in my lap, “how do you really feel about Crystal getting married?”

“Well, I think it was pretty sudden, and I just hope she
knows what she’s doing,” he said. “I mean, one minute she was dating me, and the next she’s marrying Peter.”

“One minute?” I said. “Lester, sometimes two or three months went by and you’d hardly even call her.”

“Hey, she can dial my number as easily as I can dial hers,” he said.

“She did! A lot! But you were usually out with Marilyn.”

He shrugged. “Well, that’s the way the ball bounces.”

I was feeling pretty grown-up and excited as I went up the steps and rang the bell. As soon as I walked inside, though, I knew I’d dressed all wrong, because every woman there was in jeans. They were good jeans, of course, designer jeans, with a nice shirt or sweater, but I looked as out of place in my rayon dress and pearls as a cream puff on a plate of bagels. Not only that, but I was definitely the youngest person present, and they all looked at me in surprise. All but Crystal.

“Alice!” she said. “I’m so glad you could come.”

“This is Alice McKinley,” Betsy told the others. “She’s paired with Peter’s younger brother in the wedding party.”

Just a kid
, in other words. I wished she hadn’t felt she had to explain me, but the women all seemed friendly. I took a chair beside the couch and tried to scoot it back as far as I could, to be invisible.

Everyone was drinking coffee, but Betsy got a Coke for me. I was watching a pretty woman with a clipboard on her lap and a large sample case beside her chair that read
FANTASY CREATIONS
.

“Welcome, everybody!” she said. “I’m Joan, and the only rule tonight is to remember that you’re here to have fun. I am going to help
you
make your wildest fantasies come true.”

Everybody laughed.

“Not mine!” said someone, and we laughed some more.

“Okay,
some
of your fantasies, anyway,” Joan said. “First, I want to thank Betsy for throwing this party and including my company, Fantasy Creations, and I know you all will join me in giving Crystal our best wishes for her marriage.”

Everybody clapped and smiled.

“As you probably know, this is a different kind of shower, in which Crystal will select, and hopefully model, the lingerie of her choice.”

“Now wait a minute!” cried Crystal.

More laughter and hooting.

“Here’s the way we’ll do it,” said Joan. “After Crystal has selected the items she’d most like to receive, we’ll pass the list around and you can sign up for the one you’d like
to give her as your shower gift. That way you can be sure of giving the bride-to-be something you know she really wants. And remember, if you order something additional for yourself, you will get it at twenty-five percent off.”

Betsy poured more coffee and brought out a plate of cookies.

“But now for the fun part,” said Joan. She began passing around sheets of paper and tiny sharpened pencils. “A little quiz, ladies, and remember there aren’t any right or wrong answers. Just answer honestly, and you don’t have to read your answers aloud. Circle your scores as you go.”

As soon as people looked at the sheets they started laughing, and I couldn’t wait to see what was so funny. When Joan handed one to me, I read,
Test Your Sensuality
.

All over the room I could hear murmurs and giggles. I looked at the questions:

    1. Have you ever worn a flower in your hair?

10 points

    2. Are you wearing matching bra and panties?

10 points

    3. Have you ever had a sensual experience while swimming?

15 points

I think the others were going a lot faster than I was, because there began to be loud whoops and shrieks. I was still trying to think what a sensual experience while swimming would be—certainly not the time the guys tried to toss me in the pool. So far I hadn’t gotten any points at all. No, I thought, wait a minute. I remembered sticking a dandelion behind my ear once when I was in kindergarten, so I gave myself ten points.

    4. Have you ever mentally undressed a stranger?

20 points

    5. Have you ever removed any lingerie during a meal?

10 points

“This is a riot!” said Crystal.

“Boy, I’m glad my mother’s not here,” someone murmured, and that got a laugh. What if
my
mother were here? I wondered. I think I’d have liked her to come, just to see what
her
answers might have been. I wondered what Miss Summers’s answers would be.

    6. Have you ever taken a feather and started at the top of his nose and ended at the tip of his toes?

25 points

I could feel my face getting red. People actually
did
this stuff?

    7. Have you ever gift wrapped yourself for your favorite male?

10 points

I couldn’t believe what I was reading. Maybe I
wouldn’t
want my mother here.

“A few more minutes, girls,” said Joan.

    8. Have you ever given a massage to a member of the opposite sex?

20 points

    9. Have you ever made love in a room other than the bedroom?

15 points

    10. Have you ever used whipped cream for anything besides dessert?

25 points

I hadn’t even got used to the idea of gift wrapping myself before I had to face the fact that some people made love in the dining room. Then I had to wonder what
whipped cream had to do with anything. And suddenly I imagined myself standing naked covered with whipped cream in the dining room and I sucked in my breath.

“Look at Alice!” somebody said. “Look at her blush!”

“Oh, Alice!” Crystal laughed.

“One more minute,” said Joan. “Tally up your scores, now, and we’ll go around the room and read them off.”

I tried desperately to come up with points. Ten points for sticking a dandelion behind my ear in kindergarten. Twenty points for thinking what it would be like on my wedding night if I married Patrick and how he would look in the shower; I guess that would be mentally undressing someone, but it wasn’t a stranger. I’d fudge a little on that one. Ten points for taking my socks off once during a meal (socks count as underwear, don’t they?), and twenty points for giving Dad a back rub once. Well, a shoulder rub, anyway. Sixty points.

We went around the room. One hundred and twenty, one hundred and five, ninety-five, one-forty, one-ten (that was Crystal), and finally they got to me. I thought of lying, but what if we had to turn in our sheets?

“Sixty,” I said, and they laughed.

“It’s okay,” Joan said to me, and then to the others, “You, too, were beginners once.” More laughter.

“It’s all in fun, Alice,” Crystal said, trying to reassure me, but it just made me feel that much more self-conscious.

“To Dianne, with one hundred and forty points, a little present,” said Joan, fishing in her briefcase.

“Hey, she lied!” someone called. “Boo! Hiss!”

“Hey, Dianne, what
didn’t
you do?” another woman asked, to more laughter.

“For the winner,” Joan said, and held up a fur bikini. Dianne shrieked and hid it in her purse.

“And for Alice,” said Joan, smiling at me. My heart sank. A chastity belt, that’s what the booby prize would be. Instead, Joan handed me a tiny box, and when I opened it, I found a pair of teddy bear earrings, like a little kid would wear.

“Until she’s old enough to wear a real teddy,” said Joan good-naturedly, and the women clapped. All I wanted to do was crawl out the door and go home.

After that, Joan showed us all the lingerie she had in her sample case, and Crystal made a list of the ones she liked best. The list went around the room, along with the prices, and we put our names beside the ones we decided to give to Crystal, and a check mark for anything we wanted to order for ourselves. I signed up for a pair of satin tap pants for Crystal, but that was all. I tried to imagine me wearing
underwear from this catalog and then having to undress in gym.

Most of the women took lingerie samples into the bathroom or bedroom to try them on, and once in a while one would come out and ask us how she looked in a black lace teddy or a long slinky gown with a slit up the side. Not me.

I was embarrassed from the moment I’d walked in the front door in my panty hose and pearls to when Betsy came out of the bathroom in a teddy called “Jungle Fever.” The other women shrieked when they saw her. It was a nylon leopard-skin print, and it had a paw print over each breast and another down by the crotch. It was cut so high at the sides that it looked as though Betsy’s legs reached all the way to her armpits. And the bra part pushed her breasts up so far, I’ll bet she could have rested her chin on them.