“Pamela and Elizabeth, too!” I squealed, and all three of us yelped. “You’ll love it,” I promised, thinking how we could spend some time with my cousin Carol, who has her own apartment, and was even married once to a sailor.
The only thing missing from my celebration was Lester. He didn’t come until the very end, when we were having a second piece of cake. The minute he walked in, I could tell by the way his mouth fell open that he had forgotten all about my birthday, but he tried to fake it.
“Don’t tell me the party’s already begun!” he said, and glanced at his watch. “Holy moly, not seven fifteen! You mean you’re celebrating without me?”
“I believe you know what time we generally eat dinner, Les,” Dad told him.
“He forgot my birthday, as usual,” I said.
“Forget? Me?” Lester pretended to look shocked. “How could I forget your big day?”
“Easy.”
“You think just because I’m not carrying a present I didn’t come prepared?” he went on, as full of baloney as a submarine sandwich. “I’m carrying your present in my head, Al. We’ve got a date, you and I. Your choice. You choose the time and place. Bowling? Movie? McDonald’s? A whole evening just with you.”
I looked at Pamela and Elizabeth. They knew he was full of baloney too, but we weren’t about to let him off the hook.
“I want to go to a play at the Kennedy Center,” I said.
I saw Lester swallow. “You got it,” he said.
“And I hear that the Watergate has some great restaurants,” said Elizabeth.
Lester stared at Elizabeth, then at me.
“That’s it!” I told him. “First dinner at one of the Watergate restaurants, then a play at the Kennedy Center.”
“And then he’s got to take you dancing,” said Pamela.
“Now wait a minute,” said Les.
“That’s it, Lester! That’s my choice, my big night out, my evening just with you! Dinner at the Watergate, a play at the Kennedy Center, and then dancing. It’s wonderful! Thank you so much. One of the nicest presents I ever had,” I told him.
Lester looked at Dad, as though he might get him out of it, but Dad just smiled. “Enjoy,” he said.
“Okay,” said Lester. “When will it be?”
“A week from tonight, or whenever you can get tickets,” I said.
“Wearing your best suit and tie,” added Elizabeth.
“Happy birthday, Alice,” said Pamela. “This could be the start of something big.”
2
IN THE FAST LANE WITH LESTER
IT WAS AFTER I WENT TO BED THAT NIGHT that I began to worry about Miss Summers and my dad.
Elizabeth and Pamela had stayed till late, and we all sat around our oversized coffee table in the living room, talking about whether we wanted to fly to Chicago that summer or take the train. Lester went to bed early with a headache, and after the girls had gone I lay in bed smelling the scent of sweet May flowers through my window, and I suddenly wondered why Miss Summers hadn’t been invited to dinner.
Maybe she didn’t see herself as part of our family yet. Maybe she didn’t see herself as part of our family at all.
Maybe Dad didn’t see her that way, either. Perhaps she felt that if she celebrated one of my birthdays she’d have to celebrate them all, whether she was going with Dad or not. And then, the worst thought of all: Maybe she wanted Dad for a husband—a boyfriend, at least—but didn’t want a daughter in the bargain.
Finally I couldn’t stand it any longer. I got up in my green pajamas and went down the hall to Dad’s room and walked back and forth a few times. I didn’t think he’d been in bed very long, and sometimes all I have to do is make the floor squeak a lot and he calls out, “Anything wrong, Al?”
But tonight nothing creaked, so finally I tapped lightly on his door. There wasn’t any answer at first, and I was afraid he’d been asleep. Then I heard a sleepy voice say, “Al?”
I went in and walked over to his bed.
“Anything wrong, Al?” he said, and lurched up on one elbow.
“I know I’m thirteen, and I …”
“Not yet you’re not,” said Dad.
“What?”
He scooted over so I could sit down on the edge of the bed. “You were born at eleven forty-six on a beautiful May night, so you still have a half hour yet to go,” he said.
“Well, I’m almost thirteen, then,” I corrected, “and I suppose things like this shouldn’t bother me, but I guess I would have liked Miss Summers at my party.”
“She and I talked about it, Al, but were afraid that with Pamela and Elizabeth there, it might create talk around school that we’d just prefer didn’t happen.”
“Dad, people already know you’re dating her,” I said. “They’ve seen you out together. They’re already talking.”
“I suppose, but there’s something a bit more intimate when a woman is invited to family celebrations, don’t you think?”
I didn’t know how to tell him that people are wondering if he and Miss Summers are sleeping together, and he’s only worried about what they would think if she came to my birthday party.
“I’m thinking it would have been fine with me,” I said.
“Well, sweetheart, we’re just not ready for that, I guess.”
I tried to see his face in the moonlight. “Dad, tell me just one thing: Do you want to marry her or not? I don’t mean tomorrow, I mean someday, maybe?”
“It’s a nice daydream, Al, but there are too many things to consider right now, and I don’t see that it’s necessary to go over them all with you.”
I gave a deep sigh. “May I ask you one more question?”
“Watch it, Al.”
“Do you love her?”
This time there was a pause so long I thought maybe he’d gone to sleep. “I am very, very fond of Sylvia, let’s put it that way. And I think … I hope … she’s fond of me too.”
I wonder who invented the word fond. It must be a cross between like and love, and I wasn’t much for in-between stuff these days, seeing as how I was so in-between myself.
“Well, good night then,” I said, leaning over to give him a kiss on the forehead. “Like me?”
“Rivers,” he said, playing our little game.
“Love me?”
“Oceans.”
As I started back across the floor, I said, “Was I born in a hospital?”
“Just barely,” said Dad. “I thought for a while you were going to be born in our car, but I finally got your mother to the hospital, and you were born about ten minutes later.”
“Did she … Was it painful?”
“Well, let’s put it this way: She said she’d had worse days at the dentist’s.”
And just before I closed his door, he said, “Al?”
“Yeah?”
“You’re thirteen now. On the dot. Happy birthday, honey.”
The thing is, Miss Summers did remember my birthday. She sent me a card. HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO A VERY SPECIAL GIRL, it said. And on the inside she had written, “I enjoy having you in my class, Alice. Sylvia Summers.”
Was I special to her? I wondered. Did she really think of me—of Dad—as a big new part of her life, or only as friends in passing? I would have given up my big date with Lester just to be invisible for one evening to see what goes on between Dad and Miss Summers when they’re alone. To hear what they talk about and see how they act toward each other. My friends had seen them holding hands in a restaurant. I hadn’t even seen that!
About my date with Lester, though, Pamela and Elizabeth were more excited than I was. Probably because they’ve both had crushes on him for a long time.
“We are going to knock his socks off!” Pamela announced. “I’ve got this dress you’re going to wear, Alice. It’s black with this short, flouncy skirt and has big white polka dots all over. Mom got it for me to wear to my uncle’s black-and-white wedding. You’ve got to wear it with black panty hose and tiny heels.”
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“I think we should fix her hair up with one of those big white ribbon barrettes—sort of sweep it up in back, with curls hanging down at the sides,” said Elizabeth.
“And you’ve got to wear Obsession,” said Pamela.
“What?”
“Calvin Klein’s perfume. It makes men go wild.”
“Pamela, I’m going out with my brother!”
“Well, other men around you will go wild,” she said.
I wondered how a perfume did that, sorted out brothers from all the other men around you.
On Thursday of the following week, Lester told me he had tickets for a revival of Porgy and Bess at the Kennedy Center, and reservations at the Jean Louis (which is pronounced “Zhawn Looie,” he said) before the show.
“You’ve got to dress up now,” he warned me.
“I’m prepared,” I told him.
On Saturday he went to his part-time job selling washing machines, and I put in my three hours at the Melody Inn music store, where Dad is manager. On the first floor are pianos and other instruments, with a big sheet-music department, run by Janice Sherman, the assistant manager, and the Gift Shoppe, run by Loretta Jenkins. Up on the mezzanine are little glass soundproofed cubicles where instructors give music lessons. My job is to do whatever Dad or Janice Sherman asks me to do, from washing the windows on the display cases to putting price stickers on sheet music.
Dad set me to work cleaning the glass on the revolving gift wheel in the Gift Shoppe, my favorite job. When you press a button, the wheel revolves and you get to see all the earrings and pins go around, all in the shape of instruments or musical notes.
“I wish I could find some really smashing earrings to wear tonight,” I said.
“Big date, huh?” asked Loretta of the Wild Hair. Loretta is a year or so younger than Lester, and looks like an Aztec sun goddess, with her hair going every which way.
“With my brother,” I told her, and explained how Lester had forgotten my birthday and was trying to make it up to me. Loretta, who’s also had a crush on Lester from day one—unrequited love, as Aunt Sally would call it—really gets into the mood of things.
“These!” she said, choosing a pair of earrings that looked like dice, except that instead of little black dots, they had little black notes. The kind of earrings a woman would probably wear to a casino.
At four that afternoon, Pamela and Elizabeth came over to help me get ready. Pamela was carrying her bouffant black-and-white dress, which looked like a skinny tube from the waist up, with a puffy skirt with a red flouncy pettiskirt beneath it, the kind of dress you might wear if you were doing the cancan on a stage in Paris.
Elizabeth had brought bubble bath, and after I’d bathed, they dabbed Obsession in my navel and between my breasts. (My “cleavage,” as Pamela called it, except that it’s hard to see a valley when there aren’t any hills to speak of.)
Pamela did the makeup, because Elizabeth only wears lip gloss. She put on a moisturizer, foundation, cream rouge, then powder, eye shadow, eyeliner, mascara, lip liner and lip gloss. I hardly even recognized myself.
We heard Lester come home about 5:15.
“You through in the bathroom, Al?” he called through my door.
“Yeah, you can have it,” I told him.
The hardest part was the panty hose. Elizabeth rubbed lotion all over my hands and heels so I couldn’t snag them putting them on, but I had to take my hose off and put them on again three times before they felt right. I managed to make a small run near the top, but Pamela put fingernail polish on it to keep it from spreading.
When the stockings and heels were on, Elizabeth gave me a tissue to hold between my lips so we could slip the dress over my head. I couldn’t even see myself in the mirror because Pamela and Elizabeth were hovering around me, pulling and twisting and flouncing and straightening, until at last the various layers of the dress fell into place.
“There!” said Pamela.
I stared. There stood a slim young woman in a puffy black-and-white dress, with sleek black legs.
They worked on my hair next, and by the time the big dangly earrings were swinging from my ears and my nails were painted bright red to match my heart-shaped lips, all I could do was stare.
“I don’t believe this!” I breathed.
“I don’t either,” said Elizabeth. “The real you! Isn’t it amazing?”
You know what I wished right then? That Mom could see me. That I had a mother who would stand back and smile at me and say it was okay to look this good, this grown-up. I wouldn’t even have cared if she’d said, “Our little moth has become a butterfly!” or something corny like that, because I actually felt like a butterfly.
Dad doesn’t usually get home until after six on Saturdays, but I heard the door close downstairs and knew he’d come early to see us off.
“You ready, Al?” came Lester’s voice from the hallway. “Soon as I put on a tie, I’m set.”
“Almost,” I said.
Pamela had brought over a small black purse for me to use, with Kleenex, comb, lip gloss, and stuff.
I turned around once more in front of the mirror, noticing how my legs glistened in the silky black hose, and then Lester tapped on my door.
“Let’s go, babe,” he said.
I opened the door. Lester gaped. I mean, he gaped and gasped, both. Like people look on TV when they’ve just been shot in the heart.
“Wow!” he managed at last, and gave a low whistle.
Dad came to the foot of the stairs. “Everything okay up there?”
“I’m not sure,” said Lester.
While Pamela and Elizabeth watched from my bedroom, I put one hand over Lester’s arm and moved out into the hallway and over to the stairs.
A second gasp from below. Dad, at least, smiled as I came down, but Les was still in shock.
“Promise me just one thing, Al,” Lester said. “Don’t embarrass me, okay? Don’t try anything big.”
“I promise,” I said.
I knew that Lester had thought the evening would be a big-brother-takes-little-sister-on-a-date kind of thing, when actually I didn’t look very young.
“What I mean is,” said Lester, “don’t try to order in French or ask for wine or something.”
“I don’t drink,” I said coolly.
“Right!” said Lester.
I saw him give Dad a helpless glance as we went out the door, but what really helped was Dad saying, “Al, you look beautiful!”
And I went grandly down the steps and waited for Lester to open the car door.
There was something about being with my twenty-year-old brother at the Jean Louis that was a lot different from eating dinner with Patrick at his parents’ country club: At least one of us knew what we were doing. Lester translated the menu for me (pâté de foie de volaille was chicken liver pâté and flambé means that something arrives at your table on fire). He said it’s considered sophisticated to order an appetizer whether you want one or not, but you can skip dessert as long as you have coffee. I would have liked to skip the appetizer and gone straight for the dessert, but I was glad Lester was teaching me things like that. So I ordered chilled avocado soup, which was gross, but Lester said I only had to take a few bites of everything.
“Are you finished?” the waiter asked me.
“Yes, thank you,” I said.
“Very good, mademoiselle,” he said, as though I had just finished all my peas and carrots, and he whisked my bowl away. I decided I liked eating in a place where no matter what you liked or didn’t like or did or didn’t eat was “very good” with the waiters.
It wasn’t until dessert that I realized Lester was beginning to enjoy himself. Up until then he acted as though any moment I might pull the cloth off the table or trip one of the waiters or do something incredibly embarrassing. He was feeling so good, in fact, that he forgot how the evening was going to cost him an entire week’s paycheck, and ordered us bananas foster, which is sauteed bananas over van
illa ice cream, covered with hot rum sauce.
We had parked at the Kennedy Center, so all we had to do was walk back across the street. But it was during the performance of Porgy and Bess that I blew it. I guess it was the woman singing “Summertime” in that clear, high voice that made me realize how much I was missing in not being able to carry a tune. I kept trying to tell myself that even if I could carry one, I still wouldn’t be standing on a stage at the Kennedy Center singing, but that wasn’t what was really the matter. I just felt weepy inside. Then Porgy sang, “Bess, You Is My Woman Now,” and somehow I thought of Dad, finding Miss Summers to brighten things up, and at the end, when Bess goes off to the city with Sporting Life, I didn’t think I could stand it. I used up two of the three tissues Pamela had put in my purse, and I could tell Lester was watching me warily out of the corner of his eye.
“Need another one?” he whispered.
“I dode theeg so,” I replied.
By the time it was over and I had gone to the restroom and fixed up my face again, I looked okay. I took Lester’s arm as we left the theater, and was the only one who remembered where we’d parked down in the garage, which got me extra points with Les.
I think he hoped I’d forget all about the dancing part. And I suppose, in a way, I should have, because I knew he’d spent a lot of money on me. But I also knew if I let Lester off the hook so easily this time, he’d probably forget my birthday again next year, and besides, I wanted the experience of knowing what to do in every possible situation. So when he said, “Well, Al, did you enjoy the evening?” I said, “So far, yes,” and I heard him sigh.
“You don’t really want to go dancing, do you?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“In that dress? In those shoes?”
“In this dress, and in these shoes,” I said.
So he took me to this hotel nightclub, where we sat at a little round table over by the wall and drank ginger ale. Finally he took me out on the dance floor during one of the slow numbers, me with my flouncy red petticoat peeking out from under my dress and my tiny black heels. We’d just taken a turn around the floor and were dancing back toward our table again, when we found ourselves looking right into the eyes of Crystal Harkins, one of Lester’s old flames, who was dancing with a man of her own.