Alice in Lace

by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor

  “Because she’s angry at him. She’d been asking him to give her another assignment, but he wouldn’t. He says that sometimes we can’t choose the things that happen to us in life, so we can’t choose our assignments, either. Last Monday he asked her how hers was coming, and she said she hadn’t done anything. He was pretty stern, and told her she had a week to turn it in. I think that’s when she must have decided to get back at him.”

  For a whole minute Mr. Sorringer sat thoughtfully in the chair. Craggy-looking face, large hands, lanky body. I wished he’d say something so I could leave. The more I studied his hands, the more I imagined them in Miss Summers’s hair, or stroking her face, or sliding down her hips. There was nothing else wrong with him that I could see, and if it wasn’t that he was in love with the same woman my dad was, I might have liked him. I swallowed.

  “I very much appreciate your coming to me with this, Alice,” he said. “I’m sure this was difficult for you, and this is a ticklish situation, as you can imagine. We may need you to repeat this to a committee if we can’t resolve it any other way. Would you be willing to come back if necessary in the presence of Jill and Mr. Ormand?”

  “Yes,” I said, and got up to go.

  “I don’t think I got your last name.” Mr. Sorringer took the pen out of his pocket.

  “McKinley,” I said, and bolted out of the room.

  10

  WEDDING BELLS

  At dinner, I told Dad what had happened. Only I didn’t tell him it was Mr. Sorringer I’d been talking to.

  “I’m glad you went to the principal about this, Al,” Dad said.

  “What I don’t get is how a girl can simply waltz into the principal’s office and make an accusation, and the teacher’s put on leave,” said Lester. “You look at some girls cross-eyed, and they think it’s a pass.”

  “That’s a serious charge, Les, and the school has to investigate, of course, but the teacher gets his pay meanwhile. If they kept it under wraps and let him stay in the classroom while a committee looked into it, and he molested someone else, the principal would be in trouble for not acting sooner,” Dad said.

  Since I’d had to walk home that afternoon and it was my night to cook, I was trying to pretend that the He-Man dinners were something I’d made myself. I’d dished the food out of their microwave containers and arranged it on dinner plates, but I guess no one would believe I had actually roasted a turkey, made the dressing, and cooked the sweet potatoes and green peas, along with a cherry compote.

  “What was Mr. Ormand’s reaction when you told him?” Dad asked.

  I was hoping he wouldn’t ask.

  “Mr. Ormand was at a meeting so I had to tell it to the vice-principal.”

  “Oh.” Dad took another bite and chewed for a moment. “Well, what was his reaction, then?”

  “I think he was afraid I was coming to him with still another story about Mr. Everett. Then, when I told him what had really happened, he got interested.”

  More chewing. More swallowing.

  “What’s the vice-principal like?” Dad asked.

  “Ugly,” I said. “His face looks like it has dents in it. Big chin. Sort of rocky looking.” I kept my eyes on my plate.

  “I meant, more in terms of personality,” Dad said. He knew. He knew about Mr. Sorringer and Sylvia. He’d probably never even met the man, and he was trying to get a reading on his competition.

  What should I do? I wondered. If I told the truth and said he seemed nice, Dad might get discouraged and just give up. But if I made Mr. Sorringer seem too awful, Dad might not try hard enough to get Miss Summers back.

  “Well, he’s ugly, but not too ugly,” I said. “He’s nice in a sneaky sort of way. I mean, snakes are nice when you see them for the first time, but …”

  “Snakes?” said Dad.

  Lester was looking at me from across the table. I tried to read his eyes, but it wasn’t working. I didn’t know what to do.

  “I don’t know, he seems …” I dropped my eyes again. “Sort of oily. Not very, um, sincere.” I was as bad as Jill. I wasn’t describing Mr. Sorringer at all.

  “You got all that from a ten-minute conversation?” Dad asked.

  “Well, that’s just the way he seemed to me. Some people might like him, and some people might think he’s great and kind and everything, but I don’t think he’s handsome in the least.”

  I was running off at the mouth and couldn’t stop myself. Lester kicked me under the table.

  “Well, now that we know Sorringer’s a snake in the grass, what’s going to happen to Mr. Everett?” Lester said.

  “I would imagine they’ll confront Jill with what Alice reported, and if she’s smart, she’ll agree that she exaggerated a little, and let it go at that,” Dad told us.

  That’s exactly what happened. I saw Jill going into the vice-principal’s office the next morning, and on Monday, Mr. Everett was back in class. I found out later that Mr. Sorringer had phoned her parents, and they had a talk with Jill. Jill admitted she had been angry and probably exaggerated a little, and the whole thing was dropped. By this time, of course, the class knew what had happened, and when Mr. Everett walked through the door, we all cheered and clapped. He looked surprised. Jill looked out the window.

  He never did mention why he was absent, and when Jill gave her preliminary report on burying her grandmother, he treated her just like anyone else:

  “Here’s what I want you to consider, class,” he said. “If every person who ever lived claims a three-by-six plot of ground on this planet, what happens? What is it we truly want to express in a funeral service? What other alternatives are there besides burial and cremation? Yet how might burial be more comforting to a grieving family? I’d like to see a little more perspective here, Jill. Otherwise, your assignment is coming along fine.”

  In the cafeteria later, we compared notes on all that had happened to us—hypothetically that is—in our Critical Choices unit. Each of us had a different story to tell in our assignments: Patrick and I had decided to marry no matter what; Pamela had decided to have the baby and give it up for adoption; Brian had to do one hundred hours of community service for his DWI offense and attend a drivers’ seminar, so he had to give up the football team; Jill decided to give her grandmother’s body to medical science; Mark had to pay four hundred dollars a month for the next eighteen years for child support because the girl he got pregnant wanted to keep her baby, which meant he had to give up college and work two jobs; Karen had to pay a three-hundred-dollar fine for shoplifting and was banned forever from Wheaton Plaza; and Elizabeth decided she couldn’t afford a car and would wait until she had the cash to pay for a used one in full. Until then, she’d take the bus.

  Some of the other kids had been assigned problems with drugs, having a leg amputated, an alcoholic father, a mentally ill relative. We began to wonder how we could ever face life without having taken Mr. Everett’s class.

  “I probably learned more in the last six weeks than I have in my whole eight years of school,” said Elizabeth glowingly.

  “You know what we ought to do?” said Patrick. “Friday’s the last day of the unit. Why don’t we throw a bash?”

  “Yes!” said Karen. “Why don’t we throw a wedding for you and Alice, and we could all come as guests! Pamela can come to school pregnant.”

  “But don’t tell Mr. Everett!” Brian said. “Let’s keep it a surprise.”

  I was going to be a bride. No matter what else happened to me the rest of eighth grade, on Friday morning, in health class, I was going to walk, dressed in lace, down the aisle with Pamela and Elizabeth as bridesmaids. Patrick would be waiting up by the teacher’s desk with Mark Stedmeister as best man. Brian said he’d be justice of the peace, which was sort of symbolic, you know, because Mark and Brian were semi-friends again, and it was nice having the gang back together.

  That evening, I went over to Pamela’s, where she and Elizabeth had put together everything they could find made of lace—
curtains, tablecloths, shawls, a blouse, even some mosquito netting. Mrs. Jones had a box of pins and she stood me in front of their full-length mirror.

  “Here comes the bride!” sang out Elizabeth as she wrapped a lace tablecloth around me like a sarong.

  “What would you like, Alice? It’s your dress, after all,” Pamela’s mother said, sitting back on her heels. She was a tiny woman with silky blond, shoulder-length hair. “Big puffy sleeves? Long sleeves? Full skirt? Tight-fitting?”

  I wondered what my mom’s gown had been like. I saw it once in a photo, but I couldn’t remember it now.

  “Maybe tight at the top and full at the bottom,” I said. That was good for a start.

  Mrs. Jones herself was wearing a red shirt and tight black jeans. What would I be like if I had a mother who wore red shirts and tight black jeans? I wondered. Would we go shopping together? Would she teach me how to buy clothes?

  Elizabeth had brought the veil she wore for her First Communion, and said I could have some yellow and white mums from their garden for my bouquet.

  “This is so weird,” I murmured as the gown took shape. How many times had we said that since Mr. Everett came into our lives?

  “It’s like it’s really happening,” Elizabeth said in a hushed voice.

  “When it does happen, can we be your bridesmaids?” asked Pamela.

  “If it happens,” I said.

  “Make it a black and white wedding, with long, slinky dresses for us,” breathed Pamela. “Those are so cool, and I look great in black.”

  Once, while everybody was busy pinning and stitching, I stood there looking at myself in the mirror and my eyes grew moist. It happened so quickly I didn’t even know it till I saw them glistening back at me. I was thinking how, when the big day really came, if it did ever come, my mother wouldn’t be a part of it. She couldn’t help me choose the dress, couldn’t help with the flowers or invitations, wouldn’t be there smiling at me in the first row.

  I reached up and wiped my eyes before anyone could notice, but I felt a big hole in my chest, an empty place that nothing could fill. Dad and Mom had fallen in love and scrimped and saved to marry. Dad had written her love letters, and Mom had given up Charlie Snow. They’d made their plans, and look what happened. Mom only lived long enough to see me start kindergarten.

  Was it worth it, all these bold and beautiful plans? Or did it just set you up for disappointment somewhere down the line?

  Friday, just before health class, the three of us ducked into the rest room and I hurriedly put on my lace gown. Elizabeth fixed the veil on my head, and put on a frilly yellow dress she’d worn for a cousin’s wedding. Pamela, of course, was supposed to be pregnant, so she had on a yellow maternity top Mrs. Price had lent her.

  The bell had rung five minutes ago, but a bride is always late, isn’t she?

  “How do I look?” I said, my heart pounding. This was crazy.

  “Wonderful!” said Elizabeth. “Take your bouquet, Alice. Let’s go.”

  Down the hall we went, and straight ahead, coming right toward me, was Sylvia Summers.

  She stopped dead still, her eyes wide. “W … why, Alice!”

  I giggled.

  “Meet the future Mrs. Patrick Long,” said Pamela.

  “On her way to the altar,” said Elizabeth, “only we’re running late.”

  Then we laughed and told her about the assignment.

  “Well, you look absolutely lovely, Alice, and if I didn’t have a class this period, I’d come sit on the bride’s side of the church,” she said.

  I beamed.

  As we neared Mr. Everett’s room, I could hear him saying, “Hey, what is this? Come on, guys, settle down now. We’ve got work to do here.”

  Somebody saw me through the doorway, gave a signal to the others, and suddenly everybody stood up and started singing, “Here Comes the Bride.” I could feel my face flush. The blushing bride.

  Elizabeth and Pamela went ahead of me, walking in measured steps down the aisle right in front of Mr. Everett’s desk, Pamela with her protruding abdomen, and then I came in.

  Mr. Everett stared, positively stared, with his mouth open. Then I saw his shoulders drop, and he grinned. Several of the kids had cameras, and flashbulbs were going off all over the place.

  Patrick was standing up front with Mark, and Brian had on a black choir robe and was holding the dictionary as though it were a Bible.

  I noticed that Patrick had a little carnation stuck in the lapel of his jacket. He was smiling at me. Was this nuts or what? I moved up toward him, laughing a little, and took his arm, and we faced Brian.

  “Dearly beloved,” said Brian, “we are gathered here because these two nutcakes, who haven’t a penny to their names, think they can live on love and are about to go into debt over their heads. I now pronounce you husband and wife, and Patrick, you may kiss the bride.”

  And suddenly Patrick grabbed me in his arms and dipped me way back like people do sometimes on the dance floor. He kissed me so long, I almost stopped breathing. Everyone was clapping and cheering, and I figured if Mr. Ormand heard the commotion and walked in right now, Mr. Everett really might get suspended.

  But when I got up, the pins on my dress gave way, and suddenly there I was, standing in my blouse and slip, the skirt in a heap on the floor.

  It was too funny for me to be embarrassed for long. The guys all cheered as Patrick reached down and picked it up, and Elizabeth came to the rescue with a safety pin. Then Karen passed out the cake she had supposedly “lifted” from the supermarket, and we all sat around eating, laughing at Mr. Everett, who was still in shock.

  “You kids!” he said. “You kids!”

  I wore my wedding gown through study period, and then we all traipsed across the street to McDonald’s at lunchtime to celebrate. The clerks stared, thought it was real, and said our Cokes were on the house. And all the time Patrick guided me around, one hand under my arm. I wondered if I’d have as much fun at my real wedding.

  I put on my regular clothes for afternoon classes, of course, but before the day was over somebody handed me a couple of Polaroid photos of Patrick and me at the “altar.”

  That evening I laid them on the kitchen table without a word, and Lester was the first to see them.

  “Ho-ly mo-ley, what’s this?” he said.

  “Patrick and I got married,” I told him.

  Lester looked more closely at the photos, then grinned and looked at me in surprise. “And you’re still here? Still taking up space in this house? Darn! I thought I was rid of you.”

  Dad stared at the photos a long time, though, and said, “If I didn’t know better, I’d say this was Marie at eighteen. She gave me a picture of her when she was in her teens. You look lovely, Alice.”

  I didn’t actually believe him, but I wanted him to keep talking forever.

  11

  SURPRISE ENDING

  I’ll admit I liked myself in lace. I never thought of myself as a lace person, probably because Dad and Lester buy most of my clothes, so I’ve always dressed more like a boy than a girl. Unisex, at best.

  But as I sat in my room that evening finishing my algebra assignment, I kept one of those Polaroid photos in front of me, and every so often I’d pick it up and look at it closely.

  I just looked completely different. More … well … if not womanish, female. Instead of my rather straight, pageboy haircut, Pamela had created a few curls peeping out from under the veil, and the lace made me look more delicate, like something precious and breakable.

  And Patrick! I guess I didn’t have many pictures of us standing side-by-side like that, but he was at least four inches taller than I was, and his shoulders were more broad than I remembered. Then I realized he had on his blue blazer with shoulder pads, so I suppose that accounted for some of it. But still, he was looking down at me and smiling as though he meant it. As though we really were going to be married.

  I glanced at the clock. Nine twenty-five. If we had actuall
y been married this morning, what would we be doing right now? Well, maybe we’d be dancing somewhere, but we’d be thinking about going to bed.

  On your first night, do you take all of your clothes off in the bathroom? I wondered. After you take a bath, does the bride put her makeup back on? At what point do they turn out the light?

  I could hear Lester moving around in his room, so I tapped on his door and opened it. He had books spread out around him on the bed, and was drinking a can of Coke.

  “Lester, what do you know about wedding nights?” I asked.

  He choked on the Coke, and leaned forward as it dribbled down his chin. Then he swung his legs off the bed, wiping his face. “Good grief, Al! Give me a break!”

  “Who can I ask if I can’t ask you?”

  “Ask Dad.”

  “He’s on the phone, and besides, he spent his wedding night in a tent.”

  “What’s the difference? People do the same thing in a tent as in a hotel.”

  “Not the kind of things I need to know.”

  Lester raised his eyebrows. “What do you want to know?”

  “Who uses the bathroom first?”

  “What?” He was trying not to laugh, I could tell. “Whoever needs it the most, I’d say.”

  “Lester, I’m really serious about this. I know it sounds dumb to you, but when I’m married, I don’t want to louse things up. When one person comes out of the bathroom, does he get into bed or just sit around waiting for the other one and they both get into bed at the same time or what?”

  “What is this, the Rockettes? Do you think everything has to be synchronized? Two people who are just married do what seems most natural to them. I would think that on their wedding night, in fact, a couple might want to go into the bathroom together.”

  “What?” I was aghast. “In front of each other?”

  “If there was a Jacuzzi, certainly. But even a bubble bath in a plain old tub might be nice. Or soaping each other up in the shower.”