Almost Alice

by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor

  “Have you heard from your girlfriend lately?” I asked him back in the break room. “Or shouldn’t I ask?”

  “No harm in asking,” said David. “I may go up there for Easter. Father Bennett asked me to be a reader at mass.”

  “And … Connie?”

  “Well, I’d see her too, of course.” He smiled. “She sent me a valentine last month.”

  “David, when you guys go out, what do you do for fun? What is there to do in New Hampshire?”

  “What is there to do?” he exclaimed, putting down his fork in mock horror. “You never heard of the White Mountains? Never heard of the Atlantic Ocean?”

  “Ocean? New Hampshire’s squeezed between Vermont and Maine! How can there be ocean?” I asked.

  “Look at a map, Alice. We’ve got thirteen miles of beaches at the southern tip.”

  I was embarrassed. “I’m a geographic imbecile, David. I didn’t know it had ocean; I didn’t know it had mountains! I didn’t even know there were mountains in Utah!”

  “You’re kidding!” said David. “Utah’s one of my favorite states. You haven’t seen the U.S. till you’ve been to Canyonlands, Arches National Park.… Utah’s gorgeous!”

  “So, back in New Hampshire, you and Connie …?”

  “We hike. Swim. Canoe. Camp out sometimes.”

  “Uh … separate tents?” I was pushing it, I knew.

  He grinned. “Separate sleeping bags. We like old movies, classical music, Brahms.… We both love the church. Love poetry. Crossword puzzles. Sailing… .”

  I studied his face. “If you give her up, won’t you be lonely?”

  He smiled again. “Some of the time, probably. No, absolutely, I’ll miss her. But it’s not as though I won’t have anything to do. I’ll have the whole parish. And I’ll be with other priests who love the church.”

  I sighed and took another bite of dessert. “I guess I’ve never loved anyone that much. Well, my dad maybe.… But I can’t even imagine loving a church so much that I’d give up all that.”

  “What about loving God?”

  “If I ever get to that place, I’d want human love too, David.”

  “Many people make that choice, and it’s a fine choice. But I don’t just want to love, I want to be close to God … in a totally committed way.”

  I thought of David’s girlfriend back in New Hampshire, waiting for his decision. Of David and Connie lying out under the stars. Canoeing, sailing, reading poetry … And David, okay with being alone.

  “You know what I think?” I said at last. “I think you’ve already made up your mind, and somehow I think Connie knows it.”

  He was nodding his head before I’d even finished. “I think so too.”

  But I still couldn’t understand it. Would I ever feel that absolutely committed to anything? Anyone? “I just wonder how long it takes a person to really, really know herself,” I said.

  “Forever,” said David. “You’ll discover new things about yourself as long as you live.”

  “Well, that’s discouraging. Every time I think I’ve got a handle on who I really am and what I really feel, something happens and I’m back to square one,” I told him.

  “That’s called ‘life,’ Alice. You have to live with”—his fork flashed, and he swiped my last bite of cheesecake—“risk,” he said.

  On Wednesday evening Sylvia and I drove over to Marilyn and Jack’s. Marilyn’s husband is a folk guitarist, and he was putting on a children’s program somewhere, so we had their little two-bedroom house in Rockville to ourselves.

  Marilyn was one of Lester’s first serious girlfriends, and I’d always hoped he’d marry her, but that wasn’t meant to be. The original “nature girl,” Marilyn usually wore cotton and sandals, and I couldn’t imagine her in a long crepe dress, but there it was, all laid out on the bed.

  “It’s beautiful,” said Sylvia. “Whoever this friend was, she had taste.”

  “I figure maybe I’ll borrow it again for my twenty-fifth wedding anniversary or something,” said Marilyn.

  I’d worn my strapless bra, so I took off my shirt and jeans, and Sylvia lowered the dress over my head and let it fall gently around my hips. The dress skimmed my legs as it fell. She zipped me up, and I turned toward the mirror.

  “It’s … gorgeous!” I breathed.

  I could tell by Marilyn’s and Sylvia’s smiles that they thought so too.

  “The straps need shortening just a bit, but I can do that without hurting the dress or making it permanent,” Sylvia said. “We’ll lower them again before we return it. What do you think, Marilyn?”

  “I think my friend must have known somehow that I’d be generous with this dress, because she told me to keep it as long as I like,” said Marilyn. “And I can’t think of anyone I’d rather share it with.”

  I didn’t dress up for the Murder Mystery Dinner Theater on Thursday, but I looked good. I was wearing the same tight jeans I’d worn to the Sadie Hawkins Day dance, minus the patches, and a cream-colored shirt.

  When Patrick came to pick me up, I was still getting dressed. From down below, I heard Dad answer the door. “Well, Patrick! Good to see you! Come in, come in!” he said.

  “Hi, Mr. McKinley.” Patrick’s voice.

  A shiver of excitement went through me. How long had it been since Patrick was in our house? I wondered. Was the last time he had stepped on our porch the night we broke up? The night we walked around the neighborhood and, when I realized we were only going to make it one block, I knew it was over?

  I heard Sylvia’s footsteps then, and she said, “My gosh, let me get a good look at you! Patrick, you can’t have grown a foot since you were in my class! And don’t you hate it when adults talk this way?”

  Patrick laughed. “Actually, I sort of like it. Not bad, looking down on everybody for a change.”

  Dad chuckled.

  “Hey, this place has changed too,” Patrick said. “New addition, huh?”

  “And it’s almost done,” said Sylvia. “Tomorrow the men will be here to take down these horrid plastic walls, and we can move all this stuff back where it belongs.”

  “Sweet!” said Patrick. And here’s the reason my dad likes him so much: The next thing Patrick said was, “I’m working tomorrow, but I could stop by afterward if you need any help.”

  “We just might,” said Dad, “or we may be all moved in by then. I’m taking the day off. Saturday, too. Stop by anyway and see what we’ve done to the place.”

  I came down then and found both Dad and Sylvia beaming. Did they really think that Patrick and I were back together again, as a couple? Didn’t they know—surely they knew—how complicated relationships are and how little time Patrick had for me? The fact that in a few months he’d be going to the University of Chicago, a thousand miles away?

  Patrick was wearing a dark red shirt, a black sweater thrown over one shoulder. I must say, we made a great-looking couple. We walked out to the car, Patrick with his hand lightly touching my waist as if to guide me along the boards that served as our sidewalk.

  “Well, I guess this has been fun,” he joked, nodding toward the Porta-John.

  “Everybody makes cracks about that,” I told him. “No, we didn’t have to use it, thank God.”

  The night was gorgeous—clear sky with a three-quarters moon. Even above the lights of Silver Spring, we could see stars.

  Patrick was driving his mom’s car—a silver Olds. He opened the door for me and waited till I’d found the seat belt, then came around to the other side.

  “Are you taking a car to Chicago?” I asked.

  “Naw. I won’t have a car there. I’ll take Metra or grab a bus to the El if I want to go downtown. And I’ll have my bike around the university.”

  “You’re officially accepted, then?”

  “Yep. Start the summer quarter. I don’t even have to wait till fall,” Patrick said.

  That meant we wouldn’t be together over the summer! But I might have known. Whenever Pa
trick saw a chance to get ahead, he took it. I was determined, though, that nothing would spoil the evening.

  “Then tonight we’re going to celebrate your going to the University of Chicago?” I asked cheerfully.

  He smiled as he started the engine. “We’ll celebrate whatever you want,” he said.

  The Blakely Mansion was a huge old brick house on the border between Silver Spring and Takoma Park. It had balconies and turrets and high narrow windows with black shutters, some of them closed.

  Patrick and I walked up the steps and were greeted by a man who looked like something out of a Victorian melodrama—dark slick-backed hair, mustache, heavily painted eyebrows. He checked our reservation.

  “Please follow,” he said, barely smiling, and pointed to a smaller man with a stubby beard and an eye patch. We were led to a table covered by a purple cloth, a purple candle in the center. Heavy black drapes obscured the walls and windows, and at times they rustled as though there were open doorways behind them.

  Stuffed crows looked down on us from a high ledge, their steely yellow eyes seeming to catch every movement, and a thin woman in a black dress somberly plucked a harp in one corner, her black lip gloss matching her nails.

  “Creepy!” I said to Patrick. “Have you been here before?”

  “No, but I’ve heard about it. Something a little different,” he said. Same thing Scott had said about going to the dance with me.

  It wasn’t the sort of restaurant where you gaze into each other’s eyes by candlelight exactly. In elaborate script above a doorway were the words Expect the Unexpected. Patrick smiled at me from across the table. “Soooo?”

  I smiled back. “So? Are we going to give each other an account of what we’ve been doing for the past week or past month or past year?”

  “All of those, if you want,” said Patrick.

  “Well, let’s see. I’ve grown another half inch, gained a couple pounds. I’m letting my hair grow longer, I may get my braces off this spring, I’m taking an accelerated course in English, and I’m running three times a week before school.”

  Patrick grinned. “And you’re looking great,” he said.

  “Thank you,” I told him.

  A man with a Van Gogh beard and a bandaged ear brought us our menus and a black olive appetizer. We laughed at the menu. The steak was “hoary beef,” the salad “plucked shoots,” the dessert “black raspberries with clotted cream… .”

  I studied Patrick as he studied the menu. His hair wasn’t as fiery red as it had been back in grade school, but he had the complexion of a redhead, and his eyebrows were orange as well.

  The biggest change I saw in him, though, was that he didn’t talk about himself the whole time. It wasn’t that he had been conceited before. It was just—well, there was always so much to tell! He was involved in so many things. But this time he was interested in Les getting his master’s degree; he asked what colleges I was planning to apply to and what it was like having my seventh-grade English teacher for a mom. He even asked about Aunt Sally. I was surprised he remembered her. I started to fill him in on my relatives in Chicago when the harpist stopped playing and a man wearing a long black cape took the microphone.

  In a low raspy voice he said that his name was Edgar (yes, as in Edgar Allan Poe), he welcomed us to his house, to his banquet, and asked us to please make ourselves at home. He must, however, ask us to confine ourselves to the dining room, the library, and the restrooms, for there were portions of the house, unfortunately, that were unsafe.

  “I regret to inform you,” he said, “that my brother, Allan”—everyone laughed—“of a somewhat deranged mentality, has escaped his quarters in the upper story and may possibly be roaming the halls. He is quite harmless unless cornered, but let me assure you that his keepers are searching for him even now. I don’t wish to disturb your meal in any way, so please, please continue… .” And with a flourish of his cape, he disappeared behind a curtain to the applause and laughter of the guests.

  As we ate our dinner, I finished telling Patrick all the news about my family—Uncle Milt’s heart attack and recovery, my cousin Carol moving in with her boyfriend, and how Aunt Sally found out. Every so often we would hear muffled shouts or exclamations, and there would be movement behind one of the curtains. Once a figure darted through the dining room, chased by the cook, and somebody said, “Allan’s on the loose again.”

  For dessert we shared a slice of devil’s food cake, slathered with whipped cream. We each started at one side of the dish and smiled when our forks touched in the middle.

  “The mystery starts after dinner, I think,” Patrick said.

  “Then I’m going to the restroom first,” I told him, and picking up my purse, I asked a waiter directions to the ladies’ room, then followed as he ushered me to a long hallway, with only dim lighting overhead.

  I groped my way along, pausing at each closed door, looking for a LADIES sign, and finally saw it down near the end. Inside, I wished that Patrick could have seen it. There was an old bathtub on one side shaped like a coffin, and both of the sinks were empty skulls. When I sat down on the toilet seat, a groan came from beneath me, and I jumped to discover an electronic monitor that had triggered the moan of a man being crushed. I laughed out loud.

  When I came out of the stall, one of the blackclad waitresses was reapplying her lip gloss. Her face was chalky white, and her eyes were heavily outlined in mascara.

  “Hi,” I said as I approached one of the sinks.

  “Au revoir,” she murmured, and slunk out the door.

  I put on fresh lip gloss, gave my hair a few swipes, then opened the door and started back down the hallway toward the dining room.

  Suddenly a hand clamped tightly over my mouth, my arms were pinned to my sides, and before I could think, I was lifted off my feet and carried up a flight of stairs.

  “Shhh,” a male voice whispered. “Relax. You’re part of the show. One more flight, please.” And two men hustled me on up to the third floor.

  All I could think about was how glad I was they had kidnapped me after I’d peed.

  We entered a large room, a parlor of some kind, only slightly more lit than the hallway and stairs. I couldn’t make out the men’s faces exactly, but the guys were dressed like two of the waiters. They walked me over to a large painting on the opposite wall. One of the men pushed against it, and the painting swung open. The men hurried me through into another hallway and, from there, into another old-fashioned bathroom, with one dim light above a cracked mirror.

  “Sorry about this,” one of the men said, smiling apologetically, “but you worked so perfectly into the plot that we just had to make use of you. Georgene, our scullery maid, was waiting in the bathroom to see who showed up first, and we were so happy it wasn’t a three-hundred-pound woman.”

  “What am I supposed to do?” I asked, my heart still pounding.

  “Nothing at all. When it’s time for you to reappear, we’ll come get you,” said the second waiter.

  “But please don’t come out before then,” the first man said. “It would ruin everything.”

  “Can you at least tell me the plot?” I asked.

  “It changes each night,” he said. “But they’ll start searching for you in about twenty minutes.”

  “The customers, you mean?” I asked.

  “Yeah, but unless someone leans against that painting, they won’t find you here,” he said. “Try not to make any noise.” He grinned again. “If you use the john, don’t flush.” And putting their fingers to their lips, they slipped back out again, closing the door behind them.

  I looked around. The toilet was so old-fashioned, its tank was high on the wall. The claw-footed bathtub had a ring of rust around the drain, and there were little pieces of chipped plaster in the sink. I had my purse with me, but no cell phone.

  And suddenly I thought of Patrick. They said I needed to be here for twenty minutes! What were they telling Patrick? Were they telling him anything at all? W
hat if he thought I’d called a cab and gone home?

  My mind raced with possibilities. What if he called my dad? What if he called the police?

  Oh, sit down and enjoy it, I told myself. Except that there were only two places to sit—the edge of the tub or the toilet seat. I chose the seat. Ten minutes went by. Fifteen.

  “Alice!”

  It was a faraway voice. My eyes opened wide. It seemed to be coming from outdoors, but I had to crank open the window and stand on tiptoe to see the ground.

  There, walking back and forth in the parking area, was Patrick, looking all around him. “Alice?” he called again. They hadn’t told him! A few other people were milling about the veranda.

  I looked around the bathroom. There were no towels to wave, no shower curtain to use as a flag. Nothing but a half roll of toilet paper sitting on the floor.

  I picked it up, went back to the window again, unfurled it six or eight feet, and let it dangle. Back and forth, back and forth I moved it, but Patrick didn’t look up.

  “Pssst!” I whispered loudly, but of course he didn’t hear. I didn’t dare call out to him, because others would have heard it too, and it would have ruined the mystery.

  Patrick started back inside, heading to the door beneath the window. I had to let him know I was okay. Holding the roll out as far as I could, I let it drop.

  Peering down below, I saw Patrick stop, stare at the toilet paper, then up toward the second floor.

  Up here! Up here! I wanted to call. He looked down at the toilet paper again, then tipped his head way back and looked up. This time he saw me and stepped backward a foot or two. I held my finger to my lips, ducking back as another couple looked up at the same time, then peeped out again after they’d walked on. Patrick was grinning now. He gave me the OK sign and went on inside.

  Now there were voices and laughter from below. The search party had begun. The sound of footsteps going up and down the stairs; voices calling out to each other from the next room.

  It was another twenty minutes before the two men came back, and this time they had two more men with them, carrying a plywood box painted like a casket.

  “I’ve got to lie in that?” I said.