This makes me laugh, and before I know it we're off.
Here's the thing about shopping in heaven. Duh, it's a delight. I told Alice I needed some more wifebeaters. There's a store that just sells wifebeaters, only they're not called wifebeaters here. I'm not kidding you. There's an actual store called Ha-Ha Now You're In Hell Beaters. There are wife . . . er, ha-ha -now-you're-in-hell-beaters in every size and shape: racer back, plain old tankâlike thousands of them.
“Hi, Alex,” the saleslady says, giving me an air kiss. “I was waiting to meet you. We just weren't sure if you wanted formfitting or loose.”
“I'll take them both,” I laugh with Alice.
“That's what we figured,” the saleslady says, putting ten of each into a bag.
“I love your all-black look,” Alice tells me as we head into Sleek and Chic. “I'm still used to wearing all white from my guardian angel days.”
Everything, as you can imagine, in Sleek and Chic, is black.
“Welcome, Alice, to Sleek and Chic, where black is always the new black.”
I try on a pair of black oversize trousers with one of my new ha-ha-now-you're-in-hell-beaters. Alice puts on a Jean Paul Gaultier military peacoat with gold buttons, from the 1980s.
“It's fantastic!” I shriek.
“Fabulous,” the salesperson says.
“You think?” Alice asks me.
“If you don't get it, I will,” I tell her.
She really does look adorable in it, but, as you know by now, whatever you put on up here looks amazing.
I'm starting to have fun with Alice. Maybe I was wrong to judge her so harshly. She is just a kid after all.
We decide on matching four-carat diamond studs at Four Carats and Up because, if you had the choice, would you ever go under four carats?
We take in Dolce & Gabbana's new fall collection at the Skinny Mini Store (where a size two fits everyone). I buy (or take) the lower-cut numbers, and Alice takes the more subdued items. I'm so not into puffed three-quarter sleeves now that my saggy arms are gone, but Alice is.
“I'll just never get used to the way you younger women dress,” Alice says, suddenly sounding older than her sixteen-going -on-thirty persona.
I'm trying on a silver bustier with cropped pants when I realize how much fun I'm really having. In the last two hours, I haven't thought about the essay or fourth heaven or any of it. My mom would be having such a field day up here.
“Hey, Alice,” I ask her as she tries on some Cole Haan moccasin flats and I strap into some Louboutin six-inch black spikes, “what's the deal with getting into my parents' dreams? I just want them to know I'm all right.”
“Well, you know, it takes a lot of practice,” she tells me, checking out her shoes in the mirror. “It's the kind of thing that has to come from within you. You just concentrate and balance your mind and spirit and suddenly you're there.”
“So, how do you practice?”
“Well, it's not exactly practicing. It's really hard to explain. You know how you can ride a bike one day and you don't know how you do it? It's like that.”
“Okay, so it's like riding a bike,” I say.
“Once you get good at it, though, the big thing is actually going down to earth and being among everyone else.”
“What do you mean? Like in the movies where a person walks around and no one sees him?”
“Yes!” she exclaimed. “It's so much fun! When you first learn how to do it, you want to spend weeks on earth, just hanging out. I once caught my parents having sex though; ugh, that was awful. I got right out of there. Let me tell you something, you know all those times you thought you were completely alone, sitting on the couch, picking your nose, and wiping it on the other side of the cushion?”
“No, I can't say that I ever did that.”
“Yeah, sure you didn't,” she deadpans. “Well, let's just say that maybe someone was watching.”
“Oh, how awful,” I wince.
“Trust me, when you're able to go back down to earth, stick to the big things: weddings, bar mitzvahs, presidential inaugurations, ” she says as she turns to the saleswoman. “I'll take nine pairs of these shoes, all in purple.”
“Because, why not?” the salesperson says as she hands her the bag full of shoes and we all laugh.
“I'll take these,” I say to the saleswoman, pointing to my Louboutin spike heels. “In fact, I think I'll wear them out.”
“They feel like sneakers, don't they?” the saleswoman asks.
“They do. They're so comfortable!” I smile, jumping up and down in them.
I get home that night and throw my new stuff into my closet. Peaches is back from a long day of fetch, and we're lying on my bed under the window. You can see every star from my bedroom window.
Just then, my phone rings. Let it be Adam.
“Hi, sweetheart,” Grandmom says. “How was lunch with Alice today?”
“Oh, it was fun. She's nice. A little strange. She says hi, by the way.”
“She's a sweet girl. A little odd, if I remember. I'm glad you got out today, Al. It was good for you.”
“Yeah,” I say, lying back in bed. “How was your day?”
“Oh, it was great. I called 411 and got so many numbers. It's the most incredible thing. Who knew?”
“She's been on that phone all day!” Grandpop shouts to me.
“Oh, Harry, go listen to one of your baseball games. Your grandfather is getting on my last nerve, Alex. I'll be glad to see you tomorrow so we can gang up on him. I just conjured up your favorite kasha varnishkas.”
“I can't wait. I'll talk to you tomorrow. Love you.”
“Okay, darling. Grandpop sends love, too.”
“What?” I hear him ask.
“You send love to Alex,” she tells him.
“I send her all the love in heaven,” he says.
I hang up, but then pick the phone back up and dial another number.
“Hi, Alice. I just wanted to say thanks for today.”
“No problem,” she says. “It was fun. I was actually going to call and see how you're feeling.
“I'm good. I'm feeling a lot better.”
“Oh good. You know, I know what it's like to die so young. It can be very lonely and confusing, and especially with everything that's going on with you right now. Call if you ever just want to talk, okay?”
“I will,” I tell her. “By the way, if you're not busy tomorrow night, I'm going to my grandparents' house. I'm sure they'd love to see you.”
“Sure!” she says. “I'd love to. That'll be fun.”
“Sounds great. See you tomorrow.”
I'm trying to rest my eyes and concentrate, like Alice told me to, but other thoughts crowd into my head
“Should have gotten five more racer-back tanks,” I think to myself.
No, concentrate, concentrate on Mom and Dad.
I keep picturing my parents over and over in my head.
“Are those spike heels too slutty?” I think to myself.
Concentrate.
Concentrate.
Mom.
Dad.
Concentrate.
“Peaches!” I shout angrily, giving her a little shove. “You're snoring.”
Concentrate.
Concentrate.
In my mind, I'm outside of my parents' room. They're sleeping. I see their feet at the bottom of the bed. I try to get into the room, but I can't seem to break through.
Concentrate.
I'm trying with all my mind. I see my mom's foot sort of twitch.
Ugh, I can't get in there.
I'm back in heaven. Peaches has shifted over to the other side of the bed.
I try it again.
Concentrate.
Concentrate.
It's no use. I'll try it again tomorrow, I think to myself as I roll over to try and get some sleep.
I lie there for a good half hour. My mind is still racing.
Darn it.
I'm sure I must have done something to change the world.
4
When I was fifteen, I asked my dad, "How do you know when you're in love?”
He said, real angry too, "Is someone pressuring you to do something you don't want to?”
“In what way?” I asked him.
“You tell me if some boy is bothering you,” he instructed sternly.
Truth was, I only wished some boy was bothering me.
See, when I was a teenager, I couldn't get a guy if I drugged him (not that I would have, mind you, but I'm sure if I'd slipped a guy a roofie he still would have found the strength to kick me off of him).
Penelope got her first boyfriend when we were fifteen. She was still heavy, but she'd grown these enormous breasts and loved her body even more as a result of it. Every guy took notice. She ditched her wire frames for contacts. Her hair, usually stringy and unkempt, was still stringy and unkempt, but now that it was the eighties it somehow looked cool teased out with the strands she dyed pink and purple. For all the curves and cuteness that Pen gained from puberty, I lost both. Cookies and Pop-Tarts somehow found their way to my thighs. French fry grease seeped from my pores, creating a lunar landscape of zits and blackheads on my face. I made the tremendous mistake of getting a perm. Dana Stanbury and I both went to get perms together and hers was fantastic. I think the hairdresser kept my tonic in too long or something because the lustrous curls I'd begged for turned into nothing less than an Afro. While the other girls were out with their boyfriends, I was busy pouring conditioner into my hair or popping and mopping up zits (okay, mopping is an exaggeration, but it's darn near the truth). In other words, puberty had turned me into a genuine American tragedy.
So when my father asked me if some boy was bothering me, I chose not to tell him that the only way they were bothering me was when they called me “pizza face.”
The girls felt sad for me, especially Pen.
“You don't look that bad,” she lied as she helped me comb mayonnaise into my hair, a tip we'd picked up from some magazine. It was supposed to soften and define curls, but all it did was make me crave an egg salad sandwich.
“It's kind of cool in a way,” Kerry Collins said, looking at my hair up close.
“You're just not used to the look,” Olivia Wilson added. “Maybe you don't look as bad as you think you do.”
“You know I do,” I cried.
“Okay, you do,” Pen said, “but you're still my best friend no matter how bad you look.”
That's Pen. She was always the best at giving backhanded compliments.
Somehow my mother couldn't see it. “You're gorgeous,” she told me. “You're the prettiest girl I've ever seen.”
But Dad saw me clearly. “She's beginning to look like one of those sumo wrestlers, Maxine,” he said right in front of me one night as I grabbed a tub of chocolate ice cream out of the freezer.
That pissed me off. My father has never been a svelte man. He actually has the body for it though. My dad has the kind of body that looks like it's built to be thin, but he's had too many big lunches, so his stomach protrudes over his belt. Everything else is kind of thin, though, you know how that is? Anyway, I just looked fat. I took the ice cream and ate half the tub. That would show him.
Now, in addition to my body being bent out of shape, so were my hormones.
I would have gone out with any boy who asked me. I had this urge to make out and be kissed and hugged and be felt up and get to third base like you would not believe. I had never even touched a penis. The closest I'd come to seeing one was the pictures in my health class book all with herpes lesions on them. I had reached the stage parents call “boy crazy.” Unfortunately, there was not a boy in that world who wanted to be Alex crazy.
Now, as I said, along with the other girls, Pen got her first boyfriend, Andrew McAuliffe, when we were in the ninth grade. Andrew didn't go to our school. He went to the Haverford School, an all-boys school (dream come true). He was about a foot shorter and about fifty pounds lighter than Pen, but that didn't stop either one of them from falling in love. By the way she'd drag her arm over his shoulder and he'd set his hand on her large derriere, you could tell they didn't care about their physical differences.
Still, Pen and Andrew were in love and their destiny seemed eternal. Andrew knew, though, that if he were dating Pen, he would have to deal with the fat, pimply third wheel that insisted on rolling behind them wherever they went. He was actually okay about it; sweet in fact. He might have felt sorry for me though; I don't know. Either that or Pen might have really given it to him and told him that wherever she went, I went too.
I tagged along with them a lot on the weekends. Andrew was two years older, so he had a car. Hours were spent in the back of his Volkswagen Rabbit watching them hold hands in the front seat as Andrew drove. There was always some Saturday-night kegger, some kid on the Main Line who was throwing a party while his parents were out of town.
I hated keg parties. Everyone was crazy drunk, and since every kid was rich, these huge mansions were always trashed. Some ass kid would say in a grumbly cartoon voice, “Hey hey hey, it's Fat Alex,” alluding to my new and what seemed permanent weight gain.
Still, there was nothing else to do on the weekends except go to these parties. To tell you the truth, I would have rather been at home, but I couldn't shake that carpe-diem feeling that maybe this would be the night I'd get felt up, or at least kissed. It never was. Pen and Andrew and myself had the same MO every time. They would find some vacant bedroom and have sex, and I'd drift around the house, rolling from couple to couple, leaving a trail of mayo hair in my wake. Olivia Wilson, Dana Stanbury, and Kerry Collins (who all of course developed perfect postpubescent figures) were usually there, and I checked out who they were dating or trying to date at the time. The twins, Seth and Tom Rosso, and Greg Rice, in their Friends School varsity soccer jackets, would be doing bong hits in some corner of the house. Zach Mason and Joshua Roberts and Joshua's little brother, Mike, sat playing quarters and drinking themselves into stupors until one of them finally threw up or passed out. And then there was fat, pimply, Afroed me who would end up (and very uncomfortably I might add, as that's when I started wearing girdles) watching it all and hoping that some guy (not from my school, of course) would take me to one of the vacant rooms. I wasn't ready for sex yet, but I wouldn't have said no to third base.