The Cape

The mole on the end of her nose worried Alice. And because she'd
broken her nose when little, the mole made her nose look more crooked,
as if she were constantly turning away. Nothing hid the mole; it stayed
right where it had shown up sometime in her early teens.

Another worry was her winter cape, which opened on one side once the
buttons were undone. Releasing the buttons allowed the cape to slip off
easily, pulled over the shoulder in one dramatic sweep that left it
draped across an arm. But despite practicing, Alice often found herself
with the cape wound tightly around her head, or lying at her feet among
dirty shoes and forgotten umbrellas.

The cape did keep out the cold. Alice and her husband had no car, and
their budget meant no taxi. The budget, another worry, fed a savings
account. Alice hoped the growing account would get them out of this
neighborhood with its smelly puddles and plastic garbage bags that
looked like dead horses. She glanced at her husband, who loved it here
anyway. He stepped lightly through the puddles, his shoes forever damp
and smelling like the sewer. Alice found this comforting when she lay
sleepless on the sofa, the television's muted sound mixing with the
smell of her husband's rotting shoes.

They were going to an anniversary party for her supervisor. Alice
carried a bottle of wine under her cape, hidden from the hooded
strangers they passed. Her supervisor lived only blocks away in an
entirely different neighborhood, with clean streets and shiny new cars.
Alice pictured his apartment: high ceilings, wood floors, marble. A
maid would open the door. What else to bring but wine?

The building was like all the others except for its red canopy and
matching doorman. It had one elevator and thin hallways, and no maid
came to the door. Instead, a man wearing a vest and tight blue jeans
opened it, yelled "Surprise!" and then stared as Alice and her husband
squeezed into the foyer. The man shouted, "It's not him! As you were!"
and made his way back into the crowd.

Alice knelt to put the wine bottle down. It hit the floor with a loud
smack and rolled out from under her, stopping against the boot of a man
from her office who made crude jokes and was always asked out to lunch.
He smirked, picked up the wine, and disappeared with it.

Falling against another couple, Alice managed the cape. In the foyer
mirror, the mole on her nose was like a beacon, even in the low light.
She turned to find her husband.

"It's a surprise party," he said. Alice hadn't known.

He pulled her into a room with huge windows; Alice saw herself
reflected darkly in the glass. They continued walking under the high
ceilings and past other rooms filled with people. The apartment, as
large as an entire floor of Alice's building, irritated her. She saw
herself at work, in line at the copy machine or eating her lunch out of
a paper sack while her supervisor laughed into his office phone. Why
was she here, in this huge place?

Somewhere, a woman yelled, "Glorious!"

Alice passed a couple arguing, their voices competing with the loud
hum. She ducked her head as she was bumped along, glad when her husband
found a room where she could put down her cape. She tried sending him
for drinks so she could stay and avoid the crowd. He refused, taking
her arm and heading into a room where Alice watched a young man scream
into a telephone.

"Glorious!" the woman yelled again.

Alice turned to a table of old photographs. The gray, sullen men and
women stared back at her. A baby in one photograph wore more lace than
Alice had sewn onto her own cheap wedding dress. Someone once told her
that people in old photographs never smiled because the film took so
long to expose; she wished these people had made the effort.

"Glorious! Absolutely glorious!"

This time Alice spun around, trying to spot the yelling woman. She
looked for a beaded, shimmering dress under dyed blond hair, a long
cigarette waving dangerously close to the other guests. Certainly the
yelling woman was older, a tacky socialite who would use a word like
glorious. But Alice saw nothing.

"Okay?" her husband asked, giving her a plastic wineglass. She smiled
weakly and sipped the tart wine. The plastic glass was the same kind
she'd had at her wedding. It came in a long, clear package, the tops
and the stems detached. She was deciding not to hold the cheapness of
the plastic against her supervisor when she saw the crystal glasses in
the hands of the other guests, including her husband's.

She moved away from him. A group of men looked right through her, one
even turning his back to her. Alice told herself she didn't want to
talk to these strangers, and feigned interest in a painting over the
mantelpiece.

"Glorious! It's glorious!"

The woman's voice broadcast across the room, but still Alice couldn't
see her. No one else seemed to hear it; Alice's husband continued
speaking to a man next to him, the other guests kept laughing. Alice
walked toward the hallway. She wanted to see this woman, to see what
was so glorious, but her husband tapped her shoulder.

"Let's go," he said. Alice nodded before she thought to say no. The
yelling woman could be near, ready to pick Alice up in her wake. She'd
forgotten entirely about her supervisor.

Her husband put her cape on her, forgetting the buttons, and took her
outside. They walked slowly through the quiet streets.

At home, Alice heard her husband ask if she'd had a good time. Her face
wet from the sink, she put her head outside the bathroom door.

"Oh, yes, it was glorious," she said. But her husband, snoring softly,
didn't hear her, nor would he hear her strange, tinny laughter as she
finished getting ready for bed.