Patiently Alice Read Free

said Sylvia. “Nancy’s already chosen the one she likes best, but I’m not going to tell you which it is. You should have the gown you like best. I’m not one of those people who believes bridesmaids should look like identical twins.”
    “I like the one with the spaghetti straps,” I said.
    “That’s exactly the one Nancy chose,” she said, and hugged me. “Excellent taste, Alice. As soon as we have dinner, I’ll take your measurements.”
    “Oh, her measurements are simple,” Les said from the doorway. “Thirty… thirty… thirty.”
    “ Lester!” I said.
    Sylvia just laughed. “Don’t you believe it, Alice. You’ve got a great figure.”
    Sylvia Summers is the only one who could ever lie and get away with it. I’m more like thirty-two, twenty-five, thirty-four, but what I was really wondering right then was if my bra and underpants had holes in them and whether I’d have to take off everything to be measured.
    At the table Lester asked Sylvia, “Do you actually enjoy this? The photographer, the cake, the flowers, the rings, the candles, the music, the…”
    “I love it,” said Sylvia.
    “Actually,” said Dad, “we’ve sort of divided up the work. She’s taking care of the wedding details, and I’m arranging the honeymoon.”
    “Sounds fair,” said Les.
    I was able to slip away before dinner was over and change my bra, which had old elastic in back, and by the time Sylvia came upstairs with the measuring tape, I was in my robe.
    She’s very efficient and acted as though this were what she did every day of her life: measured girls in their underwear. I knew I shouldn’t have minded—she was almost my stepmother—but I was glad when I could put on my robe again.
    “Well, someday, Alice, it will probably be you and me in a room together taking measurements for your wedding dress,” she said, smiling.
    I smiled back and said flippantly, “And havingthat intimate conversation for the bride-to-be.”
    She laughed and I laughed, and then, because my joke had gone over so well, I took it a step further: “But now you’re the bride, so if there’s anything you need to know, Sylvia, just ask me.”
    “Well,” she said, “nothing I can think of at the moment. Is there anything you would like to ask me ?”
    I could feel myself blushing. Had I been that obvious? Had she seen right through me? What I really wanted to know, of course, was whether she and Dad had already made love, but it was none of my business and I wouldn’t ask it in a zillion years.
    “No,” I said, “but if I think of something, I will.”
    “Good,” said Sylvia. “I want to keep things open and honest between us. I know we won’t get along perfectly all the time—no one does, not even Ben and me. But I’d like it if we could promise each other that when something upsets us, we’ll talk it out. There’s nothing worse than people going around holding grudges and never talking about them and nobody quite knowing who’s mad about what. Agree?”
    “Yeah, that’s pretty awful,” I said, thinking of the time Elizabeth and Pamela had turned against me for a while and nobody would come right out and say what was wrong.
    “Is that the way you and Dad solve problems? Talk them out?”
    “We’re working on it,” she said.
    I got one more call before I went to bed that night. It was Gwen.
    “You all packed, girl?” she asked.
    “All except the small stuff,” I said. “You know what I wish? I wish we were going to a camp where we wouldn’t need a hair dryer, conditioner, nail file, lip gloss.…”
    “It’s called Girl Scout Camp,” she told me. “We’ve been there, done that. Those kinds of camps, I mean.”
    “So it’s all about guys, isn’t it? Who we might meet?” I said.
    “You could say that,” said Gwen. I thought of her perfect eyebrows, her short but shapely legs, her skin the color of cocoa. I’ll bet she’s had a different boyfriend for every year of her life, though she and