Intensely Alice

by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor

  “Oh, no!” Carol cried, but I think she’d been expecting it, whatever the list was.

  We had to crowd closer to Charlie to hear, because it was so loud in the dance club. “Do you, Carol, solemnly swear that you will fulfill the Eight Obligations of a Bride-to-Be, as listed on this sheet of paper?” Charlie intoned.

  “Do I have a choice?” Carol said, to laughter, knowing the three other girls had written the list themselves.

  Charlie read number one: “Collect four business cards from four men.”

  While we followed gaily behind, Carol went from one small table to the next, looking for good candidates for businessmen, apologizing for the intrusion, and asking if anyone had a business card. All of the men were amused. Some of their dates looked annoyed at first, but when they noticed the veil and the gaggle of girls following along behind, they laughed too. It took seven tries to collect four cards, but Carol carried them triumphantly back to Charlie.

  We were distracted momentarily by the sight of a half dozen men hastily pulling out dollar bills from their wallets and lining up in front of another bride-to-be, this one red-faced, who was wearing a T-shirt with Life Savers taped all over her chest. Printed on the T-shirt were the words SUCK FOR A BUCK, and each man paid to bite or lick off one of the candies.

  “Not to worry,” Anne said when she saw the surprise on my face. “We’re a bit more refined than that.”

  “Task number two!” read Charlie. “Get a man to sign your T-shirt.”

  Carol looked relieved that it was no more raunchy than that. She took the Sharpie pen Charlie handed to her and walked over to a short, smiling man at the bar. Of course, he wanted to know if he could choose the spot where he would sign, but Carol laughingly offered her shoulder. He obliged, then gave her a pat on the fanny.

  We danced some more, and the other bridesmaids sang along to ancient songs I didn’t know—“Our Lips Are Sealed” and “Should I Stay or Should I Go?” After Carol completed the next three tasks on the list—kiss a bald man on top of his head; ask a man to buy you a drink; and persuade a man to give you his right sock— Charlie told us it was time to move on, and we went to another dance club called Gossip.

  “The men sure were obliging,” I said, still wondering about the guy who would be half sockless the rest of the evening.

  “Ha! You should see what she has to do next!” said Heather, and Carol made a dramatic little whimper.

  It must have been Girls’ Night Out all over Chicago, because we saw three or four more bachelorette parties going on at Gossip. There was a line outside, but Charlie must have pulled some strings because he got us in right away and brought more beers and my third Sprite of the evening. I was getting a little tired of trips to the women’s room and was about to go another time when Charlie read task number six: “Use the men’s room and scold the guys for leaving the seat up.” It was such a good one that we couldn’t wait to see Carol do it.

  With my cousin gamely in the lead, we followed her into the men’s room, where the two men at the urinals quickly zipped up, staring at us in disbelief, then amusement. A man coming out of a stall took two steps forward and stopped, but the toilet seat behind him was already down, so Carol had to give a sort of general admonition, and when all three men backed out of the room as fast as they could reasonably go, I begged her to stand guard while I used the john, and then we went back out to dance.

  Two more tasks to go. It was almost midnight when Charlie read number seven: “Sit on the lap of a man named Steve.”

  When Carol approached the men at this bar and explained that she had to find a man named Steve, every Tom, Dick, and Harry in the place seemed to be named Steve, and they were all laughing and offering themselves to the bride-to-be.

  “Over here, darlin’,” said an older man, waving his driver’s license to prove he really was a Steve, and Carol sat on his lap for about ten seconds and gave him a hug.

  The band at Gossip was really good, and we even had Charlie dancing with us. But finally it was time to wrap things up, so he gathered us one more time and read off task number eight: “Coax a man into giving you a condom.”

  “Omigod!” said Carol. “You guys! Have a heart!” I laughed along with the others, but no one would let her wriggle out of it.

  “And we get to choose which guy,” Anne insisted. As we followed along behind her, she chose a plump, straight-faced man sitting at the end of the bar talking politics to the man beside him. The object, I figured, was to make Carol have to ask as many guys as possible before she found one with a condom.

  “I’m sorry to interrupt,” Carol said, and somehow her headband had slipped to one side, giving her veil, and Carol herself, a slightly tipsy look, “but I’m sort of on a mission, and I’ve got to collect a condom. Could you possibly … ?” She winced to show her discomfort.

  The sober-faced man stared at her for a moment, then at us, and slowly, beginning to grin, he reached in his back pocket, pulled out his wallet, and handed her a little foil packet with the words TROJAN.

  We cheered, and Carol thanked him with a peck on the cheek. As we headed back to Uncle Milt’s in the SUV, I was glad I didn’t have to relate the evening to Aunt Sally.

  7

  Mr. and Mrs. Lawrence Swenson

  My bag was there when we got back. It was in the hallway, the luggage tag in place—a new routing slip taped to the top.

  My eye went immediately to the small zipped pocket on one side of the suitcase. It was closed. As I reached for the handle, I let my fingers slide over the pocket. I could feel the outline of the box of condoms, the soft thickness where my black pants would be. All was well.

  If God or Fate or Destiny had intended for me not to have sex with Patrick, that would have been the perfect time to intervene and have that pocket robbed. If everything in my suitcase was in order except the underwear and the condoms, I could take it as a sign that this was a bad idea, but now that they were here …

  It was pretty stupid reasoning, and I knew it even as I began to lug the suitcase up the first flight of stairs to the landing.

  “Let me help,” Carol said, coming up the stairs behind me. She lifted the other end and we took it to the spare bedroom. The full set of table linens we were giving Carol and Larry was what made it so heavy. “Mom’s going to let you sleep in here till Ben and Sylvia come, and then you’ll sleep in my room. I’ll pull out the trundle bed for you. Les gets the basement.”

  I was a little disappointed that I wouldn’t have three nights of girl talk with Carol before she married, but I should have been glad she was staying here at her parents’ in the first place. After she pointed out my towel and drinking cup on the bed, she motioned toward her room. “Want to see my gown?”

  “Of course!” I followed her down the hall, past Aunt Sally and Uncle Milt’s bedroom, to the room at the end, still decorated with Carol’s high school and college stuff. She switched on a lamp. Her closet door was open, and a great bulge of tulle and satin poked out.

  She reached for the padded hanger and lifted the gown. It was more frilly than I’d expected of Carol, but absolutely gorgeous. The top was ivory-colored lace, and strapless. It had a long torso dipping to a point, both front and back, and the tulle seemed to spring up and out from the bodice like a filmy cloud covering the slim satin skirt, so that you’d be able to detect the outline of Carol’s figure beneath.

  “Wow!” I said. “It’s beautiful!”

  “I was going to go for a sleeker look, but … I don’t know. I put this on at the store, and Mom almost cried, she loved it so much. I like it too. It’s just fairy-tale enough to please Mom and fashionable enough to please me.” Carol looked at it a bit wistfully. “Mom and Dad didn’t get a chance to celebrate my first marriage with me, so this much is for Mom.”

  As she hung it back up, Carol said mischievously, “Of course, Mom wondered about the propriety of my wearing white, but I told her that ivory doesn’t count, and she’s happy.” She yawned. “I’ve go
t to get to bed, Alice. I’m pooped. Got everything you need?”

  I told her I did and said I’d see her at breakfast. Lunch, anyway. There was a lot we could have talked about, but I was sleepy too, and when I woke in the morning, I discovered I’d slipped into bed in my pants—hadn’t even bothered to put on my pajamas.

  We were so busy on Thursday, I felt as though I were back in that Hecht’s department store where I’d worked last summer. People kept coming in and out; packages were arriving; phone calls being made and received… . Carol seemed to be on her cell much of the time. I decided that I could be most helpful by staying out of the way, yet on the edge of activity so that I could help when needed.

  Carol went to Anne’s Thursday evening, where their hairdresser was going to propose some styles for the wedding party. I figured this was Carol’s last chance for a night with her closest friends as a single woman, so I ate a semi-quiet supper with Uncle Milt and Aunt Sally, glad to keep them company. I told Carol they could fix my hair any way they liked.

  “I’ve dreamed about this wedding for years and years,” Aunt Sally told me. “I guess every mother dreams about her daughter’s wedding, and maybe it’s a good thing her first marriage didn’t last, or this Saturday wouldn’t be happening at all.”

  I’m not sure that Aunt Sally’s reasoning was any better than my thinking about God and Fate and Destiny and sex. If Carol’s first marriage had worked out and she was still happily married to that sailor, there could be little grandchildren eating dinner with Aunt Sally right now.

  But I just said, “She told me last night that she wanted a wedding dress you’d love too, and that’s how she chose the one she did.”

  Aunt Sally’s eyes glistened. “Really? She told you that?”

  I nodded. I knew that even if I didn’t say another word the whole time I was in Chicago, that one little sentence was what Aunt Sally needed most to hear.

  Dad and Sylvia arrived on Friday, and Les was to fly in a few hours before the rehearsal dinner. I had to go to the church with Carol and other members of the wedding party, and Dad said he’d pick up Les at the airport in the rental car. We all met at the restaurant where the dinner would be held. Any family member from out of town was invited also.

  Carol had arranged it so that everyone under the age of thirty was seated with her at our two long tables, the older adults at the others. Larry was sitting on one side of her, Les on the other, and we were telling the guys about the bachelorette party, making up stuff and exaggerating, of course.

  “Naturally, we can’t tell you everything, Larry, because after we locked Carol in the coat check room with a salesman from Detroit, we have no idea what happened,” Anne said.

  “Whoa! Whoa!” Larry said, and laughed.

  “And then, when we made her practice throwing her bouquet, she, of course, didn’t have one, so she took off her bra … ,” continued Heather, and everyone laughed some more.

  It seemed to me that Larry Swenson was always smiling. I don’t know that he ever played football, but he looked like a halfback—big and boxy—and his hair was the color of honey. Every time Carol introduced him to somebody else, he gave that person his full attention. No wonder he was doing so well in hotel management.

  I turned my attention to Lester. “Were you ever at a dance club when a bachelorette party was going on?” I asked him.

  “Not if I could help it,” he said. “But I remember one time …”

  “Yeah? Yeah?” we coaxed, urging him on, and Larry rested his arms on the table, eager to hear Lester’s story.

  “A gal came up to me and said she had to get the tag off a guy’s underwear, could I possibly help?” Les began.

  We were cheering already.

  “What did you do?” I asked.

  “What could I do? I turned to the guy beside me and asked if I could yank the tag off his Jockeys for this nice young lady. He said no.” The waiter who was bringing our coffee stopped to listen when we hooted some more.

  “And … ?” Carol said.

  “Well, I didn’t want to make her cry, so I stood up, lowered my jeans enough to pull up the top of my boxers in back, and told her to go for it. She tried, but she couldn’t get the label off. So I told her to wait, went to the men’s room, and took off my jeans. Took off my boxers. I couldn’t get the damn thing off either, so I did the only thing left to do. Pulled on my jeans, went back out, and handed her my shorts, label intact.”

  The girls screamed and pounded the table.

  “I just knew I’d like this guy!” Becky said, leaning over toward Lester and giving his arm a squeeze.

  Carol’s wedding day was cloudy and a bit cooler, but after Aunt Sally checked the forecast on The Weather Channel, she said that her second prayer had been answered. Not only was Carol marrying a nice young man, but there would be no rain on her wedding day. I imagined God sitting up there in the clouds, pondering whether he should pay attention to fighting in the Middle East or the weather in Chicago.

  I wasn’t as nervous a bridesmaid this time as I’d been at Crystal Harkins’s wedding. Or even at Dad and Sylvia’s. In a way, I suppose, because I was a bridesmaid by default, just taking the place of someone else, I wouldn’t be expected to do as good a job as she might do, I reasoned. But then, it had been sort of by default that I’d stood up for Sylvia, too, because her sister was supposed to have been her maid of honor, but she’d fallen seriously ill. And though Crystal always liked me, I had the feeling she’d asked me to be a bridesmaid to rub it in Lester’s face that she was marrying someone else, since Les hadn’t asked her.

  Oh well. There were probably 250 people at the church; Carol and Larry had lots of friends. Some were neighbors of Milt and Sally’s, and not all were coming to the reception, but everyone wanted to see Sally’s daughter “married at last.”

  I stood solemnly beside Becky, who stood next to Heather, who stood next to Anne, who took Carol’s bouquet when it came time for the exchange of rings. I almost started giggling when I thought how these women who looked so serious now were the same women who had been holding paper penises in their hands a few nights before.

  Carol, though, looked as lovely and thoughtful as I’d ever seen her. This was the same Carol who had sent me clothes she’d outgrown all these years and helped give me a sense of style. The same Carol who eloped with a sailor, her parents not finding out till they got a postcard from her on her honeymoon in Mexico. The same Carol who had patiently answered my questions about … well … just about everything.

  The night before, when I slept on Carol’s trundle bed after Sylvia and Dad took over the guest room, we’d talked a little before we fell asleep. But I didn’t ask her opinion of whether or not I should sleep with Patrick. I didn’t ask if she thought it was right. Carol was tired and needed to be fresh and rested for her wedding day, for one thing. But also, I knew it was my decision alone to make, and maybe I didn’t want to analyze it too much. Maybe I wanted to keep it spontaneous. Maybe I felt that this was perhaps my only chance to be alone with Patrick for a whole night, far away from his parents and mine, and I didn’t want anyone, including my conscience, saying no.

  I blinked and brought my mind back to the wedding.

  “… Then by the authority vested in me,” the minister was saying, “I now pronounce you husband and wife. Larry, you may kiss your bride.”

  If you could hear smiles, you would have heard a happy buzz filling the sanctuary as Larry and Carol turned toward each other. He seemed to pause a moment, just drinking in the sight of her, then drew her to him, wrapped her in his arms, and … Well, that was the longest kiss I’d witnessed at a wedding. I even heard Aunt Sally whisper, “Oh my!” It was probably no more than six or seven seconds, but if you took the time to count one one thousand, two one thousand … , you’d see how long a seven-second kiss seems in church.

  At last they drew apart and the organ pealed out the familiar “you can go now” music for bride and groom, and everyone was smiling—w
ide, happy smiles. Anne handed Carol her bouquet, we paired up just as we’d rehearsed, and I put my hand on the arm of a stocky groomsman in a black tux. We all went back up the aisle, through the foyer, out the door of the church and around the side, away from the crowd. Then Larry and Carol kissed again, and we broke into happy, relaxed chatter, glad it was over and that no one had tripped or sneezed. When the guests had departed for the reception at a nearby hotel, we dutifully went back inside to pose for wedding pictures, and I felt very beautiful and feminine in my wispy dress, which was now my very own.

  Aunt Sally is one of those people who should never drink. In public, I mean. At her only daughter’s wedding, in particular. It’s not that she drinks too much. It’s that she drinks so little, so rarely, that when she does drink—even half a glass of wine—she’s not quite as reserved as she should be.

  Dad gave a wonderful toast, and Uncle Milt brought tears to the eyes of everyone as he talked about the mixture of sadness and admiration he felt for his daughter when he first took her to college and said good-bye. That there was some of that same feeling now, but she couldn’t be marrying a finer man.

  If Aunt Sally had just left it there. If she had just understood that a father’s toast represents both parents. But Aunt Sally finished her glass of wine, then dinged her fork against her empty goblet, and as everyone turned to see who was speaking next, she got to her feet, bracing one hand on Uncle Milt’s shoulder.

  I saw him give her an anxious look. He covered her hand with his own, a way of cautioning her, perhaps. But Aunt Sally just smiled around the room and cleared her throat.

  “Milt loves … our daughter … as much as I do,” she began, “but I didn’t just miss Carol the day she went to college. A mother starts missing her daughter as soon as she goes to kindergarten, so I’ve been all through the ‘missing’ part.” She stopped and dabbed at her eyes with a corner of her napkin, then placed it back on the table. “I even missed Carol when she went on her first sleepover, and that was back when sleepovers were just with girls.”