Alice on Her Way

by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor

  “Take it back in,” said the policeman.

  “In?” I asked.

  “Back to the station,” he said.

  I felt as though there were a cement block in my stomach. I could see Dad peering through the chain-link fence as I pulled the car into the driveway at the station. I couldn’t even look at him. We went inside, and I followed the officer over to the desk.

  He took my application and stamped FAILED on it.

  “Better luck next time,” he said.

  I cried all the way home.

  “It’s the worst parking I ever did!” I wept. “Even when I was first learning, I never did that bad!”

  Dad reached over and patted my knee. “At least you know that you can fail the test and the earth won’t swallow you up. You’ll do better next time.”

  I didn’t think so. And now I had to tell my friends.

  “You blew it?” Pamela said when she heard. “Poor Alice!” Pamela, who passed the first time.

  “Totally,” I said. Pamela had her license, Brian had his, Sam, Justin, Karen, Molly….

  Gwen’s old enough, but she hasn’t even applied for one yet. Too busy with school, she said, to take the driver’s ed course. Elizabeth and Patrick and Mark are all younger than I, and Pamela’s dad won’t let her drive his car even though she could. But we’re on the fringe. Everyone else is driving.

  “Oh, Alice, I was a slow learner too,” Sylvia told me. “It just took me a long time to get the hang of it. I know how you feel.”

  Nobody knows exactly how you feel. I’d pictured myself driving to the Melody Inn sometimes when Sylvia didn’t need her car. Pictured myself picking up Liz and Pamela and driving to the mall. Driving over to Lester’s with a plate of brownies. It seemed to me right then as though the whole world was divided between those who could drive and those who had to be driven. Why was I always on the losing end of things? When the world was divided between those who had perfect teeth and those who didn’t, those who had mothers and those who didn’t, I was always in the “didn’t” camp there too. I was so down, I even started feeling sorry for myself because I didn’t have Sam’s shoulder to cry on.

  Except that, one thing you learn as you grow up is that—surprise!—you’re not the center of the universe. I realized that while failing my road test was a tragedy to me, it was hardly a blip on Dad’s radar screen. He was far more concerned about hiring a new trombone instructor at work. Sylvia was involved in end-of-the-year tests in her English class, and Lester had just started his master’s thesis.

  “The title is what?” I said, when he told me.

  “‘In Defense of Partiality and Friendship: A Critique of Utilitarianism and Kantianism,’” said Lester.

  “Oh,” I said.

  Even my closest friends probably didn’t spend more than five minutes a day feeling sorry for me. Pamela, of course, was working on a shaky peace with her mom; Liz was depressed because Ross had decided not to go to Camp Overlook again as a counselor; Gwen had applied for a student internship at the National Institutes of Health.

  Get a life, I told myself. Think global warming. Think world peace.

  What I decided was that I would practice parallel parking every chance I got, but I wouldn’t even think about going back for a road test until after Marilyn Rawley’s wedding. Since she couldn’t be my sister-in-law—something I’d always wanted—at least I could be there to support her when she married someone who wasn’t my brother.

  I wondered how Lester would take it. When Crystal Harkins married—another old girlfriend of his—I was a bridesmaid at her wedding, and Lester wasn’t even invited. I’d seen him come in at the back of the church just long enough to hear her take her vows. Now here was another one who got away. This time, though, Les was bringing his new girlfriend with him.

  Lester was sitting on our couch checking dates on his Palm Pilot.

  “Les,” I said, “do you still have feelings for Marilyn?”

  He didn’t even look up. “Define ‘have feelings,’” he said.

  “You know perfectly well what I mean. Do you still think about her or even wish that she was marrying you instead of Jack?”

  “Jack’s a lucky fellow,” he said.

  “You didn’t answer the question.”

  “As I remember, it wasn’t Marilyn who objected to getting married,” said Lester. “So why should I be upset that she’s not marrying me?”

  “I know. Both Crystal and Marilyn were wild about you and would have married you in a heartbeat. I’m only asking if you’re sorry now.”

  “It was the wrong time to even think about marrying,” he said, and punched in another date.

  I sat down across from him and rested my hands on my stomach. “Isn’t it weird, Les, how you can love a person for all the wrong reasons and not love a person for all the right ones?”

  “Come again?”

  “I mean, sometimes people fall in love with some really awful person and other people fall out of love with someone who’s really nice.”

  “It happens,” said Lester, and concentrated again on the Palm Pilot.

  “Wouldn’t it be great, Les, if there was a little chime inside you that only you could hear whenever you were with someone who was just right for you, and if you were with someone who would make your life miserable, you’d hear a buzzer instead?”

  “You know, Al, I keep getting this little buzzing sound inside my head, sort of behind my eyeballs,” Lester said. “Why don’t you try going upstairs, and I’ll see if it stops?”

  On Marilyn’s wedding day that Saturday, the music instructors manned the store while the rest of us went to the wedding. I’d invited Liz. It was a beautiful afternoon, and I was glad for Marilyn and glad for Pamela, too. Hiking with her mom in the rain could be a real disaster. It was going to be difficult enough as it was.

  Marilyn and Jack were getting married at a nature center near Seven Locks Road in Bethesda. It was a place she and Jack liked to hike, she’d told me. It would be a simple ceremony beneath a sycamore tree in a meadow. Everyone was invited for refreshments afterward at the little house she and Jack were renting in Rockville.

  Dad was wearing a suit, and Sylvia was going in a dress and heels. So I decided to wear the dress with the spaghetti straps I’d worn for their wedding and a pair of beige pumps with a small heel. The panty hose I’d worn to the dance, though, had a hole in one toe, I discovered when I pulled them on. I rummaged around in my drawer until I found the pair I’d worn for Crystal’s wedding two years ago and pulled them on just as Elizabeth rang the doorbell, and a couple of minutes later we all climbed in Dad’s car.

  “Perfect day for a wedding,” said Dad.

  “Almost as beautiful as ours,” said Sylvia, and they smiled at each other. In the backseat Liz and I smiled too. Who could have known three years ago, when I’d invited my English teacher to a Messiah Sing-Along without telling Dad, that they would fall in love and marry? That sometimes fairy tales do come true?

  We took East-West Highway to Bethesda, then drove down Democracy Boulevard, its center strip lined with pear trees, to the little nature center in the woods behind the tennis courts. A handmade sign with a white satin ribbon on it directed us to a wooden footbridge, which guests were crossing, and into the woods, where every so often another white ribbon marked the way. Some people, like us, had dressed up. Some came in jeans, some in cotton dresses, and a few even arrived in tuxedos and bright red sneakers. A riot. It was all so… so Marilyn. No rules at all about silly things like clothes.

  There were backless wooden benches for about fifty people beneath the tree where a park ranger gave lectures in summer. The only decorations were streamers of blue and white ribbons looped around in the lower branches. A woman in a pale blue dress was playing a dulcimer, soft and airy.

  We sat down in the third row and waved to Les and Tracy, who were already there. Tracy was wearing a black and white dress, her hair brushed back from her face. Lester, in the same suit he h
ad worn for Dad’s wedding, looked so grown up. For the first time, really, I felt I was looking at a grown man who just happened to be my brother. It was the strangest feeling. Every so often it just hits you—that the guy you used to yell at and tease is a man. You know how he looks in his Mickey Mouse shorts and you remember the smell of his socks and sneakers, yet here he is—transformed. I noticed that he and Tracy were holding hands.

  Marilyn and Jack were nowhere in sight, so Liz and I looked over the crowd to see who was hot.

  “I’ll take the guy in the blue shirt and yellow tie,” I whispered to Liz.

  “What about the guy with the wavy hair?” she said, and we giggled when the guys caught us looking at them and one of them winked at us.

  After a while all the guests seemed to be there, and two fiddle players in black pants, white shirts, and red bow ties stood up. They glanced up the hill toward the nature center, then nodded to each other and struck up a stately rendition of “Here Comes the Bride.”

  We looked around. Jack was coming down a path on one side of the meadow, Marilyn and her father were coming down a path on the other side. They managed to arrive at the tree at about the same time, where a smiling young minister was waiting for them.

  Marilyn’s shoulder-length brown hair was swept up on her head and fastened with a wreath of blue and white flowers. Her white dress—cotton, of course, as I’d thought it would be—ended at the ankles and had small white flowers embroidered around the scoop neck.

  My eyes traveled back and forth between Marilyn and Jack and Lester and Tracy, with detours now and then to Dad and Sylvia. I listened to the music, the poem, the minister’s remarks, and the vows, simple and sincere. Finally:

  “…and now, by the power vested in me, I pronounce you, Jack and Marilyn, husband and wife,” the young minister said.

  Jack pulled Marilyn to him and kissed her lightly on the lips, and on cue, the two fiddle players struck up a lively tune that sent some birds flying straight up out of the tree. As the rest of us clapped, Jack and Marilyn joined hands and, followed by the fiddlers, began dancing their way back up the main path to the parking lot, the guests getting to their feet and following along behind, some of them dancing too.

  As I stood up I felt that something was wrong under my dress, and I couldn’t figure out what it was. I took a step and realized that the waistband of my panty hose was halfway down my hips, and the crotch was inching its way down toward my knees. They hadn’t felt quite right when I’d pulled them on—as though the waistband’s elastic had lost its spring—but they were staying up, I’d been in a hurry, and they were the only other pair I’d had. But now…

  “What’s the matter?” Elizabeth asked, turning around.

  Dad and Sylvia had already gone up the path behind Jack and Marilyn, but every time I took a step, I felt the panty hose slide down a little farther. Like I was trying to walk with my pants pulled down, which was exactly what I was trying to do.

  “Help!” I said. “My panty hose are slipping.”

  Elizabeth gave an amused shriek. “What?”

  “Something’s wrong with my panty hose! I think the elastic’s stretched, and they’re almost down to my knees!” I grabbed hold of her shoulder to steady myself.

  The two guys we’d been watching during the ceremony came over, smiling. I think they thought I’d lost a heel on my shoe or something.

  “Problems?” one asked.

  Liz and I stared at them and then at each other and started giggling.

  “We’re okay, really,” Liz said. “My friend here just needs to… uh… go off in the bushes or something.”

  “Liz!” I said.

  “Oh,” said the guy in the blue shirt. “I think there’s a restroom up in the nature center.”

  “She can’t make it that far,” Elizabeth told them.

  “It’s not that!” I said quickly. “I just have to take something off.”

  “Well, hey! All riiiiight!” the first guy said.

  “Not everything!” Liz said, making it worse.

  Liz and I collapsed in laughter, and the guys went on. When they were gone and the other guests were up the hill, I reached under my dress and pulled off the panty hose. I put my shoes back on, then tried to stuff the hose in the beaded purse Sylvia had given me for my birthday, but they wouldn’t fit, and I could never wear them again anyway.

  “Give them to me,” Liz said. She strung them like a banner between the tree branches, the toe of one here, the toe of the other there. The panty part flapped gently in the breeze like a flag.

  Liz grinned. “So everyone will know: Alice was here!” she said.

  25

  On My Way

  I don’t know how many people showed up at Jack and Marilyn’s. Marilyn didn’t care and it didn’t matter. She and Jack were renting a little two-bedroom house with a big backyard. There was a keg of beer on the patio, a table of cheese and crackers and fruit, and several cakes, which Marilyn had baked herself. Two of her friends moved around the crowd with trays of small sandwiches, and on one side of the yard seven or eight musicians took turns entertaining us.

  There were guitars and fiddles and dulcimers. There was an accordion and a recorder and a vocalist who sang old songs from the 1960s, so there was music for people of all ages. When the two fiddlers teamed up with the accordion player for a polka, almost everyone was dancing on the grass, including Liz and me and the two guys we’d seen at the ceremony. Everyone’s wedding should be so joyful!

  “You two related?” the wavy-haired guy asked Liz.

  “Just longtime friends,” she said.

  “So… are you friends of the bride or groom?” asked the guy in the blue shirt.

  “Marilyn works for my dad,” I explained. “How about you?”

  “Friends of the groom,” he answered. “And Marilyn couldn’t be marrying a nicer guy.”

  Yes, she could, I thought wistfully. She could be marrying my brother. But I was happy that she was marrying someone who would be good to her. She had once been so in love with Lester, but now she had eyes only for Jack. Les seemed to feel the same way about Tracy. When Lester introduced Tracy to Marilyn, I didn’t see any regret or bitterness in Marilyn’s face. She clung to Jack’s arm and paraded him about the yard as though she had been looking for him all her life.

  Tracy was just as friendly in return. With heels, she was an inch taller than Lester and, all dressed up, looked slightly older. What really captured my attention right then was a couple who had arrived late. The woman had red hair that almost reached her shoulders. She wore it tucked behind her ears, and she reached up now and then to prop it back where it belonged. The most striking thing about her figure was her breast size, which was probably a 38-D. She was holding a little boy, maybe eighteen months old, and her husband was carrying a diaper bag on a strap over his shoulder.

  “Elizabeth!” I said suddenly. “That’s Crystal and her husband, Peter. I didn’t recognize the longer hair!”

  “Who?”

  “Lester’s number two girlfriend, Crystal Harkins. She was insanely jealous of Marilyn, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen the two of them together.”

  “You think she’s here to cause trouble?” Liz asked.

  “Not the way they’re getting along. Look at them! Like they’re old buddies!”

  “Of course!” said Liz. “Now that Marilyn didn’t land him either, Crystal can afford to be generous.” We laughed.

  I felt like a camcorder, taking in the scene around me, my head turning slowly this way and that, my eyes the lens, my ears the recorder. Jack and Marilyn moved about the yard together, but I couldn’t say the same for Crystal and Peter. As soon as Crystal saw Lester, she handed her little boy to Peter and went over to grab Les by the arm.

  “Hi, stranger,” she said, smiling up at him.

  Les had a beer in one hand and turned to stare at Crystal, maybe not recognizing her for a moment either.

  “Well, for… Crystal!” he said, t
aking a step backward. He looked at Peter trailing along behind, then at their little boy. “So this is the kiddo, huh? Hey, Peter, good to see you!” He reached out and shook Peter’s hand, despite the fact that Crystal still had hold of that arm. I wondered if she was trying to get Les to kiss her.

  “You still in school?” Peter asked.

  “Just starting my master’s thesis, so we’ll see how that goes,” Les said.

  “Isn’t Jeremy a darling?” Crystal said, reaching for the little boy now, who had stretched out his arms toward her. “We had to miss the ceremony because of him, but don’t you think he looks like me, Les?”

  “He looks like both of you. Has his daddy’s eyes,” Lester said diplomatically.

  At that moment Tracy came back from the refreshment table holding a plate of small sandwiches for Lester and herself. As she moved up between Crystal and Lester, Crystal gave her a quick glance and said, “No, thanks,” and started to talk to Les again.

  Had that really happened? I wondered, staring. Could Crystal really be so nonobservant? How would Tracy…? How would Lester…?

  But Tracy had class. Boy, did she have class!

  “Oh, I’m sorry. I brought these for Lester and myself, but I’d be glad to get you something from the refreshment table,” she said.

  Crystal did a double take and her face flushed. “Oh… Oh, no, thanks! I’m fine!” she said.

  “Tracy,” Lester said quickly, “I’d like you to meet Crystal Carey. Crystal, this is my friend Tracy Freeman.”

  “Very nice to meet you,” said Tracy.

  “You too!” Crystal said, and quickly pretended to wipe something off Jeremy’s face.

  “Wow!” Liz whispered to me. “Now, that was good!”

  “Terrific, isn’t she?” I said. “Come on, let’s dance.”

  We went back out on the grass, twirling and hopping to the polka music—galloping, really—all over the yard. The guy with the wavy hair and the one in the blue shirt had found some girls their own age, but we didn’t care. I knew I’d have perspiration stains and would have to have my dress dry-cleaned, but we were having a ball. I only hoped that Pamela could say the same when her day was over.