Alice, I Think

by Susan Juby

  I replaced it. This time the hand stayed where I put it, although it seemed sort of uncertain about what to do. First it didn’t move. Then it kind of wandered back and forth and up and down, just sliding around without any master plan. Even though the hand seemed somewhat clueless about feeling me up, it had the effect of making me feel even squishier, and the pain of the cloakroom couch receded a bit.

  So far Goose wasn’t showing much natural talent in the intimacy arena, but maybe with practice he could improve. I decided to make a definitive move. I took the hand from where it was doing laps and, perhaps a bit unceremoniously, stuck it, well, farther south. The hand froze.

  All the while, we continued to kiss.

  My mother’s sex education books hadn’t really covered much except for my growing woman’s body and what was supposed to feel good for me. I didn’t have a clue what I was supposed to do with him and his body.

  The hand remained immobilized where I had placed it. It tried sneaking down towards my knee. I knew that was the wrong direction, so I gave it a bit of a push, like you would push a kid on a swing, back and forth and back again as it retreated. The hand obeyed, although reluctantly, it seemed to me. Gradually the hand didn’t need to be pushed and the pain of the couch was forgotten.

  All-consuming squishiness.

  At least until my mother, somewhat predictably, burst through the door and threw on the lights. She was followed by Pete’s wife, who looked relieved to get away from the fish, even for such a sordid encounter as this.

  Gooseboy shot up as though electrified, knocking me to the floor. Then, realizing what he had done, he abruptly stooped down to help me up, but I was already on my way up and our heads knocked together, making a sound that signaled thick, sickening pain to come. I dropped back to my hands and knees, and Gooseboy reeled off to one side of the cloakroom.

  My mother and Pete’s increasingly happy-looking wife stood there staring as I tried to focus on the floor and ignore my overwhelming desire to throw up. Gooseboy grabbed at his head and adjusted his twisted-up flood pants at the same time. Finally I sat back on my heels, holding on to my head with both hands. I looked up at the crowd of spectators and wondered what Frank would have said. I came up with: “What are you staring at?”

  It was not a statement calculated to calm my mother, who was obviously deciding whether she was going to be hysterically angry or just hysterical.

  “What am I looking at?” she asked in a voice tight enough to choke. “What the hell am I looking at? What the hell do you think I’m looking at!”

  She turned and faced Goose.

  “Who are you?”

  And to me: “Who is he? Where did you get him?”

  Then she really got going.

  “Do you really think this is appropriate? Huh? How could you do this to me after all I went through with Frank? What possessed you to think this is an appropriate place for a …” She faltered, looking for the right word. “First date?” she finished.

  Pete’s wife stood beside her, thrilled and beaming but trying to look supportively disapproving.

  Gooseboy, having gathered up his manners, stuck out his hand to my mother, his head retreating so far into his shoulders that his neck was only a theory, and said, “Oh. Hi. I’m Daniel Feckworth. My brother’s with the fish show.”

  Mom stared at him blankly for a second.

  “Who?”

  “Oh, my brother, Colin, he’s with the fish show. You know, he sort of put it on. And I was waiting for him. Well, actually I was sort of running, and then I met …”

  His voice trailed off when he realized he didn’t know my name.

  “Alice,” I prompted sullenly from the floor.

  “Right. Alice. And we were just kind of talking, you know. About you know, um, things. And then we decided to …”

  She cut him off.

  “I can see what you decided. My God, Alice. Are you trying to kill me?”

  I didn’t think that deserved an answer.

  “Well, the auction is supposed to start soon,” my mother huffed. She looked at Gooseboy.

  “I’m sure you have something to do.” And to me: “And you, come with me.”

  I didn’t look up and continued to train my scowl at the floor.

  Pete’s wife commented that I really had an “attitude problem,” and I could tell that Mom was torn between defending me to the outsider and killing me. Finally Mom pointed down at me with a shaking index finger. “I am going back to get MacGregor, and you had better meet us in that gym in five minutes.”

  Then she turned, banging into a child-size plastic picnic table. She reluctantly accepted steadying by Pete’s wife and slammed out the door.

  We stayed rooted in our spots until long after my mother left, echoes of her trailing down the hall and disappearing into the gym. I finally moved so I was sitting with my back against the couch, keeping my eyes on the floor in front of me. Daniel/Gooseboy shuffled around and continued to rub his head.

  “So,” he said, “I’m really, um, sorry about this.”

  I, sickened by the thought of discussing what had just happened, got even more involved in my study of the floor.

  He continued. “It was really nice to meet you.”

  Silence rang around the cloakroom.

  “So. Do you think I could call you or something? You know, if it’s okay,” he finished.

  I muttered, “Yeah, I guess.”

  I continued to sit there while he fidgeted around, until, obviously afraid of another invasion by my killer hippie mother, he said, “I guess we should get back.”

  As I slowly got to my feet and picked up my Walkman and book, he watched, waiting. It struck me that Gooseboy had very good manners, or at least a lot of courage, if he was waiting to walk me back to the gym and risk seeing my mother.

  He held open the day-care door for me as I walked out into the hallway. Even with my massive headache, the squishiness was not gone. Together, but not talking, we made our way back to the gym. He wrote my phone number on his hand with a pen he produced from somewhere in his pants pocket. As I went to go inside, he held out his hand to shake mine. I fumbled my stuff into my other hand and shook.

  The little bit of the auction I saw was interesting, even though my mind was on other things. Colin was the auctioneer, and he was really good. He would hold up a bag or a bowl of fish and people would bid on it. He tried to get the crowd to bid higher, the owner shouted out the merits of the particular fish, and the people laughed heartily and made a big show of enjoying themselves. Maybe they actually were. It’s possible. I couldn’t really tell.

  MacGregor bid on a few things, and my mother tried to help him in between keeping her beady eye trained on me.

  Mother, being Mother, didn’t tell Geraldine and Pit about my little indiscretion. When we left the community center, I saw Gooseboy sitting under a tree in the picnic area next to the parking lot. He waved as I was getting in the car. I waved back. I then developed a bad case of goofy grin that I couldn’t get rid of all the way home. It was very embarrassing.

  Geraldine drove on the return trip, and for a hygiene-impaired person she actually didn’t drive too badly.

  I spent the time lost in Dirty Dancing–finale mode. Visions of our big number, Gooseboy in his boots, me in my stretch pants and headphones, wowing them senseless with our derring-do moves at the Alternative school dance flashed through my head. I could see my mother and father nodding approvingly, Death Lord breathing a big codependent caretaker sigh of relief, Aubrey falling in a heartbroken heap in some dismally lit corner, and Linda backing off in respect for Gooseboy’s lack of grooming. It was a pretty good fantasy, and before I knew it, we were home.

  I’m sure the fallout is coming. There is no way my mother will just let the little incident pass. Maybe if I tell her I’ve decided to become a sex educator, she’ll attribute it all to some kind of work experience. I could say I want to be a sort of teenage Dr. Ruth, and the cloakroom thing was a kind o
f internship.

  Later

  Upon serious consideration, I have decided that this journal must be destroyed before I lose it or something. It would be just like me to forget it somewhere and make my life even worse than it already is. Well, actually, my life isn’t really that bad at the moment.

  Gooseboy called this afternoon. He tried writing some poetry and showed it to his mother, who was encouraging but suggested that maybe that wasn’t where his talents lie either. He asked if I thought he would be a good boyfriend. I asked him if he knew what a taxidermist was. I don’t know. I think this relationship might be going somewhere. It turns out we are both interested in ranching. He has an aunt and uncle who live in the Kispiox Valley. He feels like he might be good at rounding up cattle and rodeos and stuff like that. So far they’ve only let him help with the haying, or at least they did until he was bitten by a field mouse hiding under one of the bales and had to be rushed to the nearest nurse’s station for a rabies shot.

  Maybe besides being a Buffy-watching, Lord of the Rings–reading cultural critic, I should make some future plans that will entail me getting my GED at age forty in the Kispiox, which is real ranch country. Perhaps I will be a cow milker for a living. Maybe we could live in the Kispiox and I could design gingham dresses and leather chaps—it would be a career choice that would make sense based on my careertesting diagnostic results.

  I know I would want my profession to be separate from Gooseboy’s ranching and rodeo pursuits. Particularly since, given his track record, his career might be quite short. I want to be an independent woman.

  I wonder if he’ll be threatened by the popularity and success of my gingham dresses and chaps business? I wonder what exactly gingham dresses are? They sound like they would be popular with the Kispiox set. I wonder if there are enough people up there to set up my own sweatshop? I’ve discussed it with George, and she’s willing to be a supervisor. We will need to get an employee somewhere. Maybe when Goose is on long-term disability from his rodeo riding, he could help. Us career girls have so many hard decisions to make. Bob is going to be so proud.

  P.S. Ideas, interviews & features *

  About the author

  Author Biography

  About the book

  An Interview with Susan Juby

  Alice, Immature Adult: A Page from Alice’s Diary at Age Twenty-five, by Susan Juby

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  Recommended Reading

  Web Detective

  About the Author

  Author Biography

  I suppose I should tell you all about where I grew up and how my family warped me into the person I am today and all that sort of crap, but frankly that stuff bores me. I mean, it doesn’t bore me so much that I ever stop writing about it—at least indirectly—but it does bore me. What I’d really like to do is tell you about where I should have grown up, what my family should have been like. Who I should have been, if there were any justice in this world. Oh, and I guess I may mention some stuff about my actual life, just to illustrate how unfair life can be.

  I had the distinction of being born in Ponoka, Alberta, which is famed for being a very small town with a very large mental institution. Not that there’s anything wrong with mental institutions. I’ve often felt like I could use one and perhaps one day I will. But that’s another story. The thing is, I had delicate self-esteem when I was younger. I really did. And when you have delicate self-esteem, it can be disappointing to discover that you’re from a place that sounds a lot like the name of the most famous liar in all of children’s fiction and that the place is also famous for being associated with mental disorders.

  We moved to Smithers, B.C., when I was still a small child. When I got a little older, I learned that the main topic of conversation among other kids and teachers was: “where were you born?” Due to the fragile self-esteem issue, I started telling people that I wasn’t sure. And pretty soon, I forgot. I guess you could say that early on I showed signs of talent in the purposeful forgetting/lying department (with apologies to Ponoka), which may lead me one day to a successful career as a memoirist.

  After I learned to read (which I did early), I developed the habit of reading the same books over and over, like someone doing a long stretch in a prison with a limited library. The Catcher in the Rye became an obsession of mine. I felt Holden Caulfield and I were spiritual, if not actual, fraternal twins. We had so much in common: he lived in Manhattan and was kicked out of a variety of prep schools. I lived in Smithers, B.C., and went to school. I once transferred into Catholic school because I wanted to become Catholic, but I changed my mind and transferred out once I realized that being Catholic meant I was expected to go to church.

  Holden spent some time wandering around New York, drunk and heartsick over all the phonies in the world and the loss of his own innocence. I spent quite a bit of time wandering around gravel-pit parties drunk and heartsick over different guys who owned trucks. Holden hired a prostitute to keep him company and got beaten up by her pimp. I read everything I could find about prostitutes, and once, when I went to visit my mom’s friends in Edmonton, they drove me through the red-light district so I could see an actual prostitute. Then we went out for dinner.

  Holden ended up in a mental institution. I was born in a town with a mental institution. I have a degree in English literature. Holden spoke English. Holden became a writer when he was in the asylum. I became a writer while I was working in a publishing company, which is not that different from an asylum if you look at it closely. In fact, every job I have ever had bore more than a passing resemblance to working in an asylum, including my stint as a liquor-store clerk and as a housekeeper at a fly-fishing lodge. Other people, at least in large doses, make me feel nervous and uncertain. It was the same for Holden. And the way we both deal with our disappointment and concern about the rest of humanity is to write about it.

  Holden’s story ended when he was still young. I am still very young, or at least I was, especially compared to people who are very old. As noted before, both Holden and I became writers. I think if Holden’s story had continued, he might have taken a very similar path to mine. Like maybe he would have taken a master’s degree in publishing and gotten himself a dog and moved to Vancouver Island with his spouse, where he would have spent a lot of time avoiding people and hiding away in his studio. That has worked well for me. Any way you look at it, the parallels between us are too strong to ignore! So even more than my family, who are nice and all, if you really want to know more about me and what my lousy childhood was like and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, please read The Catcher in the Rye and make a few allowances for context, add in some university years, a master’s degree in publishing and a PhD in indecisiveness, and you’ve basically got it.

  Visit Susan Juby at www.susanjuby.com

  About the book

  An Interview with Susan Juby

  How closely does Alice’s experience mirror your own experience of growing up?

  Alice and I had very different coming-of-age experiences. That’s why I’m always so startled when people come up to me at readings and say things like: “Remember that time your mom got in a fight after you got that bad haircut?” It feels churlish to mention that, in fact, my name is Susan, not Alice, and that my mother has never gotten in a fight on my behalf. I longed for my mother to fight my battles, but she never came through in that department.

  On some level, I can understand people mistaking me for Alice. My skin is quite dewy and youthful, similar to a fifteen/sixteen-year-old’s, but with more “character,” also known as wrinkles. The character comes from the fact that I was less well adjusted than Alice when I was growing up. Alice is eccentric but oddly sure of herself and her own worth. I was sure of nothing other than that Nick Rhodes was the best-looking member of Duran Duran, and that all those John Taylor and Simon Le Bon lovers were deluded. Also, my family was not vegetarian. Not even close. Sometimes there was actual blood in our yard from the animals we slaughtered t
o eat. This would not have happened in the MacLeod family unless someone genetically modified a soy bean to produce hemoglobin.

  Alice’s world is very rooted in small-town life, but if Alice had grown up in a city, do you think she would be that much different? After all, there are eccentric kids in cities, too. And why did you set this in Smithers, B.C., rather than in a fictional place?

  I suspect that if Alice had grown up in a city, she’d be obsessed with farming and rural life. She’d probably walk around in overalls and chew pieces of straw (purchased at the local pet store) to the dismay of her urban classmates who would be decked out in skater gear. As a city girl, she’d probably read a lot of books about the prairies, particularly the works of Laura Ingalls Wilder, and would keep her hair long and wear it in two earnest braids. She might cultivate a small potato patch in the front yard of her Toronto brownstone and perhaps surreptitiously keep a goat or chicken or two in the backyard.

  The point is Alice is busy defining herself in opposition to her parents and her surroundings. Because she comes from such a close family, she has to be a bit ruthless about her process of separation. This would be true no matter where she lived.

  As for the setting of the book, I chose Smithers because I envisioned the setting as Smithers. When it came time to publish the book, my editor asked if I was going to change the name. I thought about it and decided not to. For one thing, I’d have loved to read about Smithers when I lived there. I was under the impression that book-worthy things only happened in London, New York and in the vicinity of Charlotte’s web. I was also under the impression that writers only sprouted in large urban areas. We lived right off the highway in Smithers, and I used to watch tourists drive by in their motorhomes. They never stopped. It was like we were invisible to the outside world. I had a teenaged, small-town case of Western alienation. So I decided to use the actual name of the town.