Alice on Her Way

by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor

  At the NYU stop we got off and, after a couple of blocks, turned onto a street alive with students. Some were sitting at outdoor tables eating, talking, kissing, collars turned up. Others were waiting in lines to get in a movie or a club, and still others were sitting on the stone steps of buildings, chatting, smoking….

  I don’t know why this always happens to me, but I realized I had to pee. Bad. If I’d known we were going to be out with the guys, I would have gone before we left, but now there was a sense of urgency that told me every step I took was a potential disaster.

  “Hey,” I said. “Anybody else need a restroom?”

  Hugh, walking up ahead with Pamela and Tony, turned around. “We’ve only got about six more blocks. Can you wait?”

  I gave him an agonized look. “Maybe not. I didn’t know I’d be going anywhere tonight.”

  We all stopped, and Hugh glanced about. “Most places won’t let you use the restroom unless you’re a paying customer, but if you’re cute and threaten to pee on their floor…” He nodded toward a club just ahead of us. “Go throw yourself on the mercy of the bouncer,” he said.

  “I’ll go with you,” said Elizabeth.

  We stepped inside, and there were about a dozen people waiting for tables.

  “Excuse me,” I said, gently pushing past them. “Excuse me… excuse me…”

  They gave us cold stares, and one man wasn’t going to move till Liz said, “This is an emergency. She means it.”

  It was dark inside, the music loud and the floor plan confusing. I looked around to see if I could spot any door that looked like a restroom.

  Suddenly a man stepped out of the shadows and confronted us. “Reservation?” he said.

  I winced. “I’m not trying to get in your club. I just really, really have to use the restroom,” I said.

  “Sorry. Customers only.”

  “It’s an emergency,” I said.

  “She means it too!” said Elizabeth again. “She’ll do it right here on the floor.”

  The man gave us a disgusted look, but he didn’t want to take the chance. He nodded toward the back of the room.

  Elizabeth and I zigzagged our way through the tables till we got to the restroom door. Inside were two tiny stalls. I took one, Liz the other.

  “Oh, man, what a relief!” I said.

  “You sound like a cloudburst,” said Liz on the other side of the partition.

  I was about to flush when I heard someone come in. A man was humming to himself—humming and singing the words to a song.

  “Oh, great!” I heard Liz say.

  It was a unisex bathroom, but there was no lock on the door, only the stalls. The man seemed to be waiting there at the sink, singing to himself. Liz flushed, I flushed, and we both stepped out at the same time to see a tall woman in a black low-cut dress, fooling with her hair at the mirror. She looked at us and smiled. No, she looked at us and laughed at the way we were staring at her, and then she went in one of the stalls. We realized then that she was a he.

  Wordlessly, we washed our hands and walked back through the club, past the bar, and on outside, where Pamela was tap-dancing on the sidewalk and Gwen was waiting, hands in her pockets, talking with the guys.

  Elizabeth and I both let out whoops at once, covering our mouths with our hands.

  “Okay, what did you see?” said Hugh, laughing.

  “A man in the women’s restroom. No, a unisex restroom,” Liz said. “I mean a man in a woman’s dress!”

  Hugh laughed. “That’s what that club is known for—transgendered performers. It was probably one of the singers.”

  I tried to be cool about it. About everything that was going on around me. If Carol were here, I thought, my twenty-something cousin back in Chicago, this is exactly the type of thing we’d be doing. She loves exploring too.

  Music was blaring out of another club down the street, and as we passed, Tony came up behind me, took my wrists in both hands, and, holding my arms out at the sides, danced me past the open door in time to the music. I was having a ball.

  We reached the place Hugh had in mind. It was half bar, half restaurant, and obviously a place where students hung out.

  “We’re officially here for the food, okay?” he said. “But sometimes… if we’re lucky…”

  We followed him to a counter at the back, where they were selling sandwiches and nachos and cheese fries. A group in one corner got up to leave, and Tony grabbed their table. We confiscated empty chairs here and there until we had seven crowded around it.

  “What do you want to drink?” asked Hugh.

  “We didn’t bring any money,” I said. “I’m just along for the ride.”

  He smiled. “It’s on me.”

  “Diet Pepsi,” I said.

  He took orders all around, and he and Tony and Brian went to the counter and placed our order. They came back with the sodas and huge orders of nachos and cheese fries. Hugh kept looking around the room while we ate, fingers tapping the table in time to the music, and then he said, “Hey!”

  He turned back to me again. “What would you really like to drink, if you could?”

  I tried to remember what we’d seen on those reruns of Sex and the City. “A Cosmopolitan?” I answered.

  “Yeah,” said Liz. “Me too.”

  He turned to Pamela and Gwen.

  “Mojito for me,” said Gwen, and Pamela seconded the order.

  Hugh got up and walked over to a nearby table.

  “Hey, Hugh!” an older guy said, and got up to shake his hand. “How’s it going? How’s your brother?”

  They stood there talking awhile, and the older guy glanced at our table, then talked some more. Finally he smiled and gave a little nod, and Hugh came back.

  “Just be cool,” he said.

  I didn’t know how else to be cool except to sit there and do what I was doing anyway, which was listening to a band called Two-Face Fever, which wasn’t very good. A few minutes went by. Then Hugh and Tony casually stood up and went to the friend’s table again. This time they came back with three beers and two cocktails—one pink, the other a sort of greenish white.

  “There were only five at that table, so that’s all they could order without making the bartender suspicious,” Hugh told us.

  “It’s okay,” said Liz. “We’ll share.” Half a Cosmo was better than none at all.

  Each of us—Gwen, Pamela, Liz, and I—had a couple sips of each. The Cosmo, with vodka and cranberry juice, Pamela thought, was stronger, but the Mojito was prettier, with mint leaves floating on top and a sweet sugary taste. I couldn’t believe I was sitting in a bar in New York City, drinking a Cosmo—well, part of a Cosmo, anyway—with my friends. It was sort of like I belonged here. Like I did this every week! When the guy at the other table and his friends got up to leave, they glanced our way and smiled.

  Any minute I figured somebody would come by and kick us out. They did, in a way. When Brian went back to the counter for another order of cheese fries, the bartender told him that when we finished the nachos, we had to give up our table. They don’t miss very much, I guess. You can’t try anything they haven’t seen before.

  “Go slow,” Hugh urged us. “If they’re still doing it, maybe we can stick around long enough to see some of the Friday Night Underwear Party.”

  “What?” said Liz.

  He just smiled.

  No one paid much attention to the band when the underwear party got going. We noticed that the place was getting more and more crowded, people pressing up against our chairs in back. But when the first customer stood up and slipped off his jeans, Elizabeth looked at me in horror.

  “We don’t have to do this, do we?” she asked.

  “Sure, babe. Why do you think we brought you?” said Hugh.

  “What?” said Gwen.

  They were kidding, of course. The first customer went up on the flimsy stage and paraded across, with lots of whistles and applause and a drumroll from the band.

  “Nu
mber one!” yelled the emcee, “Bill from Brooklyn!” We all cheered some more.

  There were nine contestants in all, most of them a little boozy, two of them female, which surprised us. The girls weren’t exactly like strippers, though—their underwear was more the cotton collegiate type—but they were bikini style, and the girls had nice bodies, so all the guys whistled and clapped. We didn’t get to see the last four because the bartender came over and told us we were out. We left just as “Steve from New Jersey” was going across the stage.

  “Darn!” said Elizabeth when we got outside. “Just when it was getting good!”

  It was after one o’clock, and I didn’t even want to think about trying to get back in our room. I didn’t want to think about Sam or school or exams or braces. I had a little Cosmo in me, a little Mojito, and Gwen and Liz had their arms around each other as we walked back to the subway, singing theme songs from various TV shows and making us guess what they were.

  When we got back to the hotel, Hugh made us wait outside till he saw the bellhop cross the lobby. He was doubling as clerk and bellhop this time of night. He went over to the elevator and gave us the sign when the door was open. Quiet as mice, we slipped in, jaws clenched to keep from laughing at the way Tony was imitating Mr. Corona giving instructions on the bus.

  When we got to the seventh floor, Hugh looked out and gave the all-clear sign. Then suddenly he shoved us back in the elevator again as a door opened far down the hall. We pushed the button for the eleventh floor, rode up, then back, and this time when we stepped out on our floor, the hall was empty. Silently, we moved along till we came to our room.

  Gwen slowly removed the duct tape from the door, and I slipped my key card in the slot. When I got the green light, I opened the door, and the four of us went inside, the guys acting like they were going to come in too, silently clowning around till we turned them out. I shut the door and could hear the soft swipe of a hand pressing the duct tape back on the door again. Through the peephole, I saw them disappear down the hall.

  Molly rolled over and squinted when the bathroom light came on. “You guys have a good time?” she asked sleepily.

  “It was great!” I said. “I wish you’d come with us, Molly. Brian and Tony and a senior named Hugh met us in the lobby. It was Hugh who called, and we went to a bar over near NYU. It was so much fun!”

  She smiled. “When you didn’t come back, I figured it was something like that.”

  “Did anything happen?” asked Pamela.

  “One of the parent chaperones called to ask if Jill was in our room, and I had to tell her no,” Molly said. “But no one asked about you.”

  I could hardly believe we’d gotten away with it. We had finally done something wild and crazy, and nobody got drunk, nobody got pregnant, nobody got stoned, nobody was drinking and driving.

  We fell into bed, Liz and Pamela and I squeezed in together, but if any of us turned over in the night, we didn’t know it.

  In the morning when we got up, Liz found a printed notice under our door. It said that tonight there would be a teacher or parent volunteer stationed out in the hall of the sixth and seventh floors all night and that any student caught leaving his or her room after lockup would not only be sent home, but suspended from school as well.

  “Do you think they know?” Liz asked.

  “Well, nobody called,” said Molly.

  “Maybe it was Jill they caught,” mused Gwen.

  “Or maybe somebody told on us after we got back,” said Pamela.

  We prepared ourselves for a lecture once we got downstairs.

  19

  Pamela… Again

  Liz was in the bathroom, so I decided to pull on my jeans and sweatshirt, go down to the hospitality suite, and bring our breakfasts upstairs so we could eat while we dressed and save a little time. Because of my braces, I like to be able to brush after I eat. I hate to find out three hours later that there’s a piece of lettuce caught in a wire.

  I picked up my room key and opened the door. There stood Sam, leaning against the opposite wall, waiting for me. Uh-oh, I thought. He’s heard. I hadn’t even combed my hair! I hadn’t washed my face or rinsed out my mouth.

  “Sam!” I said, embarrassed, covering my mouth with one hand.

  He grinned and came over to kiss me, but I wouldn’t let him.

  “I look horrible,” I said.

  “You’re always beautiful to me,” said Sam.

  “So what are you? A stalker?” I kidded, walking quickly on down the hall, then the stairs to the sixth floor.

  “I just wanted to say good morning,” Sam said, and tried to kiss me again in the stairwell.

  “I’m really in a hurry, Sam,” I told him. “I wanted to bring breakfast to the other girls. I’ll see you later, okay?”

  “Okay,” he said, disappointed.

  In the hospitality suite I scooped up five plastic boxes and five cartons of milk and took them back to the room. We ate sitting on the edge of our beds, telling Molly more about our adventure of the night before. She laughed about Liz and me finding a transvestite in the unisex bathroom.

  “I wish you’d come,” I told her again.

  “I would have, but I was just so tired. I’m beginning to feel I came to New York mostly to sleep,” she said. “It’s just nice to get away. What should we wear to Ellis Island, do you think? That ferry ride across the harbor could be chilly.”

  We got The Weather Channel on TV and it said breezy, so we opted for sweaters under our Windbreakers just in case.

  “I’m going to look up my great-great-great-great-grandfather,” said Molly. “When he came over from Ireland, he came through Ellis Island. You can look up a relative’s name in the library there and find the name on a ship’s passenger list. I’d like to make a copy of it and give it to Dad for his birthday.”

  That was such a wonderful idea, I wondered why I hadn’t thought of it. Except I don’t know my great-great-great-great-grandparents. In fact, I didn’t even know the grandparents on my mother’s side. They died before I was born. The only relatives I know, besides Aunt Sally and Uncle Milt and Carol, are Dad’s two brothers, Howard and Harold, down in Tennessee, along with Grandpa McKinley, who usually doesn’t remember me at all.

  Sam was waiting again when we boarded the buses. We rode to Battery Park at the tip of Manhattan, where we waited in line again to board the ferry. There was a lot of gossip about who had gone out after lockup the night before. Evidently, we hadn’t been the only ones, and if the other kids bribed the bellhop too, he must have made a mint.

  “What time did you get to bed?” Sam asked me.

  “Late,” I told him.

  And then we were on the ferry, and I was seeing the Statue of Liberty for the first time. She was so tall, I could hardly believe it. I tried to imagine what it must have been like for immigrants sailing into New York Harbor, looking at that magnificent lady lifting the torch.

  At Ellis Island we were divided into groups of twenty and taken through the exhibits on the first floor. As we stopped at each one the guide told us about the long lines of immigrants waiting for the physical exam, which would either allow them to enter the country or would turn them away. I leaned back against Sam as we listened, his arms around my waist, fingers interlocked over my stomach. Sometimes, his face nuzzling my cheek, he’d work one hand inside my jacket in front, up under my shirt, then slide a finger slowly around under the waistband of my underwear, caressing my skin. It was deliciously sexy, and I was surprised to feel a wetness in my pants. Who would have thought that here on Ellis Island…?

  Mrs. Jones was assigned to our group this time, and when I wasn’t concentrating on what the guide was telling us or what Sam’s fingers were doing under my clothes, I stole a look at Mrs. Jones and noticed how nervous she seemed. It was as though one part of her body had to be in motion all the time—her feet or her fingers…. I guess I never knew her that well before, but one thing I’d never thought about her was that she was nervous
.

  There were sack lunches to eat outdoors, but I was still haunted by some of the photographs I’d seen in the exhibits. The eyes of a mother, holding a small child in her arms—looking terrified, it seemed—as she approached a doctor. Sometimes the children passed the exam but the mother didn’t, our guide had said. Or the wife passed but not the husband. The anguish of their decision then—what to do?

  “My great-great-great-great-great-grandparents came from Russia,” Sam told some of us, sitting together on the grass. “They even changed their name so they could fit in better.”

  “Really?” Faith said. “What was it before?”

  “Mayerschoff. I was named after my great-great-great-great-great-grandfather Samuel.”

  The April sun and the April breeze together made a terrific mix. It was chilly, but the sun was warm on our arms and legs. I looked over at another group to see Pamela lying on her back, her head in Hugh’s lap. Well, that was quick! I thought. Jill was wrapped around Justin. I was leaning back against Sam, his legs on either side of me. Spring was definitely for couples, I thought, and I wondered if, back home, Patrick was going out with Marcie Bernardo this weekend. Wondered about Dad and Sylvia having the house to themselves for a change. About Les and Tracy and how their romance was going.

  We toured the second floor after we ate, looking at the possessions immigrants brought with them: a trunk, a bowl, a doll, a comb, medicine bottles, shoes…. I thought of the ones who went to tenements—whole families squeezing into two or three rooms. Sam told me about his great-great-great-great-great-grandmother Sophie and the locket she wore with two beautiful S’s engraved on it, for Sophie and her husband, Samuel. Maybe that’s what made him such a romantic, I thought. Most girls would die for a guy who fawned over them the way Sam did me.

  It was cloudy on the ferry going back and cold out on deck, so I sat snuggled up against him. It felt good to get back on the bus afterward. We were to eat dinner at another fast-food place, and then we had a choice between two off-Broadway productions: either a one-woman performance of Emily Dickinson or a one-man performance of George Gershwin. Sam and I signed up for Gershwin. I can’t carry a tune—I couldn’t sing a melody if I was put in front of a firing squad—but I can recognize Rhapsody in Blue when I hear it.