Alice on Her Way

by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor

  The girls were still guessing.

  “You’re not the same religion. Was that it?” Penny asked.

  “We didn’t even discuss it.”

  “His mom?” Karen said, and looked right into my eyes.

  I knew that if we got into that, I’d say more than I should. “It was a little bit of everything. When you come right down to it, I just wasn’t crazy enough about him, and Sam deserves more than that,” I told them.

  23

  Changes

  On Wednesday, Mr. Ellis called an end-of-the-year cast-and-crew meeting. Ever since that fiasco with Hugh in the cafeteria, Pamela had retreated to a daily routine and not much else, afraid, I guess, that if she took one step out of line, she’d run into him somewhere. I dragged her along to the crew meeting just to add some variety to her day.

  Molly and Faith and Pamela and I sat down in the second row, waiting for everyone to get there.

  “Okay, listen up,” Mr. Ellis said when he came in. “I know you’re busy, but every year about this time we get requests from the community for performers at various events. The choir gets requests for the madrigal singers, the drama department gets requests for readings or skits. We like to be part of the community, because the community supports our productions, but it’s not easy this time of year to find performers….”

  Groans from the cast.

  “Last year,” Mr. Ellis went on, “we sent a few small groups out to sing some numbers from Fiddler, but there isn’t really any good section from Father of the Bride that works well on its own.”

  “Not to mention that we can’t squeeze one more thing into our schedules!” said the senior girl who had played the part of the bride.

  “I know that. I’m just fishing for answers here. I’ve looked up a couple of short pieces I think would work for a meeting of the Rockville Women’s Club and one for the Lions’ Club of Silver Spring. The Hospital Volunteers want to be entertained too. The piece that would work best, I think, requires a girl and a guy at a dance, each telling the audience what’s going on in their heads. Anybody interested in memorizing about two pages and doing these performances?”

  “The prom’s coming up, Mr. Ellis!” said somebody.

  “We’ve got exams!”

  “Count me out,” said someone else.

  “Please…?” Mr. Ellis pleaded.

  “Pamela can do it!” I offered suddenly.

  Pamela, who had been sitting slouched down in her chair, suddenly bolted upright. “Alice!”

  “Yeah, Pamela Jones!” said Molly.

  “She’s good!” I went on. “We were in a production together back in sixth grade.”

  Pamela stared at me wide-eyed. “A production? You were a bramble bush!” Everyone laughed.

  Mr. Ellis smiled. “Can you come up here and give it a try, Pamela?” Mr. Ellis said. “It’s humorous. I think you’d like it.”

  “I’ll read the guy’s part,” said Harry, grinning. “C’mon, Pam.”

  “Pam-ela! Pam-ela! Pam-ela!” Molly and Faith and I chanted, slapping our thighs to the beat.

  Harry came over and grabbed Pamela’s hand, pulling her up on the low practice stage. Pamela’s face was pink, and she looked around uncertainly.

  “Okay, here’s the situation,” Mr. Ellis said, handing both Pamela and Harry a copy of the dialogue. “Boy is watching girl across the room and is trying to get up his nerve to approach her, to ask her to dance. She’s doing the same, wanting and yet afraid that he’ll come over. You guys take it from there.”

  Harry began, and he’s so expressive, I wondered why he was content to work backstage instead of trying out for a part each year. “There she is,” he said to the audience. “Girl of my dreams. I’m within ten feet of her, and already she can tell I’m a quivering mass of jelly.”

  Pamela cleared her throat and read her lines next, but her voice was so soft and unsure that we could scarcely hear her. I could tell that Mr. Ellis was disappointed.

  “A little louder, Pamela?” he coached.

  “I’ve been… watching him… all evening and… ,” Pamela said, still flat and uninspired. My heart sank.

  “Pamela,” Molly called. “Belt it out, sweetie!”

  “You can do it!” said Faith.

  “Even a bramble bush could do it!” I teased, and made her laugh.

  I saw her glance at Harry again. Then she took another breath, and this time we could hear her all over the room as she exaggerated the lines.

  “I’ve been watching him all evening, and if he walks over here, I will absolutely wilt!” she said.

  “Now, that’s more like it,” said Mr. Ellis. “Go on, Harry.”

  “I’m going to move my left foot now,” Harry continued, taking a step toward Pamela. “My left foot is moving. Now my right foot…”

  “Oh my God!” said Pamela, sounding exactly like the old Pamela now. “He’s moving! He’s breathing! He’s coming my way!”

  And we all clapped and cheered.

  “I think I’ve got my volunteers,” said Mr. Ellis.

  I could have run up onstage myself and hugged Harry for getting her up there; hugged Mr. Ellis for giving her a chance; hugged Faith and Molly for making her feel useful again.

  There was a practice session for them every day after school, and on Friday when Pamela was hurrying off to meet Harry, Brian leered at her, the way he does, and called out, “Hey, hot stuff! What’s with you, anyway? New personality or something?”

  “New direction,” Pamela called back without skipping a beat.

  Saturday after work when Pam was sitting out on the front porch with me, helping me cram for the written part of my driver’s test, we got to talking—I mean, really talking—about what had happened with her and Hugh.

  “I read so much more into it,” Pamela said. “I thought… I really thought, Alice, that he wanted me. He kept saying how much he wanted me, how good I was at it—we even kissed afterward. It’s not like it was just wham, bam, and it was over. I asked if he’d ever go out with a sophomore, and he said, ‘Why not?’ And I read into that a million things that weren’t there.”

  “It’s easy to do,” I said, slowly pushing my feet against the floor of the porch. The swing moved back and forth, the chain squeaking lightly on the forward motion.

  “He was nice to me on the bus coming back too. But when I think about it, he was probably already beginning to cool off. And then… the way he acted at school… like he didn’t even know me, practically. It was… God, I just feel so used. Same old story. What’s with guys, anyway? Ron… Brian… Hugh…”

  “They’re just as different as we are, Pamela. For every Ron, there’s a Ross, you know. For every Hugh, there’s a Harry.”

  “I suppose so.” She was quiet for a while. “I should have been in that class with you.”

  “What class?”

  “‘Whole Self’… ‘Whole Life’… the one that sounds like an insurance company.”

  “I wish you had been too,” I said. “One of our topics was ‘Healthy Lovemaking.’”

  “I’ll take hot, not healthy,” she joked. “What’d you learn?”

  “That it’s consensual, safe, nonexploitive, and mutually pleasurable,” I said, spoken like a true teacher.

  “Next time,” said Pamela.

  “Listen,” I said. “I get to bring a guest to Marilyn’s wedding. Want to go? It’s next Saturday.”

  “Can’t,” she said. “Got a date.”

  Uh-oh, I thought. Not Tony or Brian…

  “With Mom,” Pamela said. “You’re not going to believe this, but we’re going hiking.”

  I was so surprised that I let the Maryland Driver’s Handbook fall right out of my hands.

  “Your mom? Hiking?” I hit the side of my head with one hand. Was I dreaming? “When did this happen?”

  “Don’t get your hopes up that there’s any big breakthrough, but… well, you asked me if I was ever going to forgive her, and I realized that unless I did
, nothing was going to change. The only thing left for her to do was get out of my life completely, and I decided I didn’t want that.”

  “Yeah? And…?”

  “She’s been seeing a therapist, and I guess the therapist suggested a hike or something where we didn’t have to just sit and look at each other.”

  “I’m stunned!” I said.

  She smiled. “So am I. But when I realized how miserable she’d been in New York—I mean, having panic attacks and trying to get a prescription refilled—I don’t know. In one way I’m glad she was miserable. I wanted her to feel some of what I’ve been feeling for the last two years. But in another way I felt sorry for her. What can I say?”

  “I’m glad for you, Pamela. Really!” I said.

  “We’re going to spend the day walking along the C&O Canal. She’s even packing a picnic lunch. And we agreed on one rule: Each of us can say whatever we want for as long as we want without the other interrupting until we’re through.”

  “Sounds good. Have you told your dad?”

  “He says he doesn’t care what I do as long as I don’t bring her home with me.”

  “Still,” I said, “it’s a start.”

  On Sunday, I had my next-to-last session of “Our Whole Lives,” titled “Myths and Facts.” If Elizabeth had been there, she probably would have fainted dead away at some of the things we talked about, but by now we were pretty comfortable with each other, and topics like masturbation didn’t throw us.

  “It’s a healthy way to release tensions, and it only becomes a problem if you feel guilty about it or you do it to the exclusion of other things,” Gayle said. “Some people feel guilty about their sexual fantasies. Just because you fantasize about something doesn’t mean you are going to go out and do it. Most of us would never dream of doing many of the things that turn us on, but it’s okay to think about them.”

  Then Bert talked about all the negative and inaccurate things that have been taught about masturbation—that it makes you crazy or that hair will grow on the palms of your hands. Ho ho, we laughed. We all knew better than that, didn’t we? He also said that even grown-ups do it. Even married people do it sometimes!

  But then… Yikes! Bert divided us into two equal groups. The first formed a small circle, and the second formed a second circle inside the first, facing the others, so that each of us was facing a partner.

  “Okay,” said Gayle, “I’m going to suggest a topic and set a timer. For one minute—that’s about thirty seconds each—you are to talk about that topic with the person you’re facing, and when the timer goes off, the inner group moves to the right to the next partner and I’ll announce a new topic. Ready?”

  I felt a drop of sweat trickle down the small of my back. We heard Gayle set the timer, and it began to tick.

  “What did your parents tell you about sex?” Gayle asked.

  I was facing the girl who had wanted to climb out a window the first day I came to the class, so I was surprised she spoke first.

  “Not much,” she said. “It wasn’t that they didn’t want me to know. They just kept shoving books at me. How about you?”

  I thought a moment. “My mom died when I was little, so I learned everything from my dad and older brother,” I said. “I can’t remember them sitting me down and telling me stuff, but they tried to answer everything I asked. My dad did, anyway….”

  Ding went the timer.

  “Bye,” she said.

  I moved one step to the right and faced the wrestler. He grinned. Gayle set the timer.

  “Can you remember any inaccurate information you got in the past?” she said.

  “That’s easy,” said the wrestler. “One of my buddies said that you couldn’t get a girl pregnant if you had sex standing up.”

  That made me laugh. “I heard that once a girl used a tampon, she wasn’t a virgin any longer,” I told him. I actually said that. I said that to a guy!

  “Never heard that one,” he said. “But a cousin told me once that a guy had to limit how often he had sex, because he only had so many orgasms in him before his sex life was over.”

  I’d never heard that before, but the timer dinged again, and there I was, facing Lyle, the tall guy who’d had the word clitoris on his back that first day.

  “Here we go,” said Gayle. “Did you ever come across a sexual term you didn’t understand?”

  “Necrophilia,” I said.

  “Nymphomania,” the tall guy said.

  “Yemani wrigglings and Nubian lasciviousness,” I told him.

  He stared at me. “O’m’God! Somebody else read the unexpurgated edition of Arabian Nights!” he said. “Where did you find your copy?”

  “A friend brought it to a sleepover,” I said. “Where did you find yours?”

  He laughed. “A secondhand bookstore. I went in there after school for a month so I could read the whole thing.”

  I had to remember to tell Elizabeth.

  But now Bert was giving each of us a sheet of paper and an envelope.

  “I’d like you to take a full fifteen minutes,” he said, “and write down what your own values are regarding your sexuality. These are private, to be read only by you. When you’re done, seal them in the envelope and put your name on it.”

  I was glad no one else would read mine because I wasn’t entirely sure of my values. Would they be the same two years from now? Five years? When I was twenty-six? Twenty-nine?

  I think I’d have to really like a guy to get involved with him sexually. Right now, ideally, it would be nice to have intercourse for the first time when I’m married, but I don’t know that I can promise myself that. I’ll see when I get to college. But whenever that is, it’s got to be somebody I love and trust, and we’ve got to have a lot more going for us than just sex….

  The page was almost full when I stopped writing. I folded the paper up and put it in the envelope, just as Bert handed us another paper.

  “Now,” he said, “write your name at the top and hand it to the person on your right.”

  We looked at each other quizzically and passed the papers on.

  Bert smiled. “We call this our group appreciation letter,” he said. “Starting at the bottom, write a short one-or two-sentence positive, but honest, comment about the person whose name is at the top of the page. Then fold the paper up to cover what you’ve written and pass it on. Once it’s gone all the way around the room, Gayle will collect them, and we’ll give them out to you next week at our last session.”

  We began. You could always tell who had your paper because we tended to look at the person we were writing about. I told the wrestler how funny he was, how he livened up the class. I told the girl who’d wanted to climb out the window that I was glad we’d survived the class together. I told the tall guy that he had asked some of the most interesting questions, and I told his girlfriend that she had given me a lot to think about with some of her comments.

  What were they writing about me? I wondered. We weren’t supposed to give false praise. Had I spoken up enough? Had I really even let them get to know me? When my paper came back with my name at the top, all folded up like a fan, I handed it to Gayle but would have given anything to stick it in my pocket and take it home.

  “Next week’s your last class?” Liz said in disappointment when I called her later.

  “Yep.”

  “So what did you talk about today?”

  “Sexual myths and facts. Masturbation, in particular.”

  “I could never talk about that in front of a guy, Alice!” she declared. But there was only a two-second pause before she asked, “So what did they say about it?”

  “That it’s healthy and doesn’t make you crazy. And I actually met a guy who’d read the unexpurgated edition of the Arabian Nights,” I said, referring to the book Liz had smuggled out of her parents’ bedroom once. She’d read portions of it aloud to Pamela and me.

  “How did you know?” asked Liz.

  “I mentioned Yemani wriggling
s and Nubian lasciviousness,” I told her.

  “You didn’t tell him about me, did you?” Liz asked.

  “Of course not.”

  “So what else did you learn?”

  “That you can still get pregnant if you have sex standing up,” I told her.

  There was a longer pause this time. “How exactly does that work?” Liz asked.

  “I haven’t the slightest idea. But Aunt Sally told me once that if I ever had a boyfriend over, I should keep both feet on the floor. I’d better tell her to rethink that one,” I said.

  24

  Alice Was Here!

  Dad let me drive to the Maryland Motor Vehicle Administration for my driving test. I was so nervous, I was chewing my gum sixty chews per minute.

  “Don’t rush yourself,” Dad said. “Take your time answering the written quiz. Take your time on the road test. The last thing the instructor wants to see is a quick, impulsive driver.”

  How do you tell yourself not to be nervous? My palms were wet when I picked up my pencil. But I think I did okay. There were only a couple of questions I wasn’t sure of. But when I had to go out for the road test, I was so scared that I had to go to the restroom first, and I kept the officer waiting.

  I don’t need someone sitting beside me in a cop’s uniform. Why couldn’t they have put someone beside me in a nurse’s uniform holding a glass of water and an aspirin bottle? Why couldn’t it be a jolly grandmother with a plate of cookies on her lap? Did I really need a policeman watching me make a U-turn?

  His voice sounded like a robot’s, actually.

  “Take it up to the corner and make a right turn,” he said.

  That meant I had to get over into the right lane, and I looked behind me to be sure there wasn’t a car in my blind spot. I forgot to put on my blinker when I changed lanes. He made a mark on his clipboard.

  When he asked me a block farther on to stop and back up, I did it by looking in my rearview mirror instead of turning around and looking over my shoulder. Another mark.

  By the time we got to parallel parking, I was semi-hysterical inside. I tried to move the car into a space next to the curb, but I freaked out and was afraid I was going to cut it too close. I pulled out again and tried a second time. This time the front end stuck way out into the roadway and my back wheel hit the curb.