Alice Bliss (23 page)

“Alice, if you’re not in our room at night—”

“I know.”

“Right where you always are—”

“I wasn’t thinking, Ellie. I’m sorry.”

Ellie blows her nose.

“You want to help me set it up? I’m open to suggestions.”

“If you make it all wonderful you’re gonna want to be here all the time. Besides, it’s
Dad’s
workshop. I don’t think you’re supposed to, like, mess it up or make it all yours and stuff. Like, exclusively. Yours.”

“You can come out here anytime.”

“You’re just saying that.”

“No, I’m not. I mean it.”

Ellie wipes her eyes with the back of her hand.

“Mom’s not gonna like it.”

“I know.”

“Is it secret?”

“It doesn’t need to be secret. It’s just an air mattress and a sleeping bag and some books.”

Ellie gets up and heads for the door.

“Where are you going?”

“I’m not going to help you leave me.”

“Ellie—Ellie—! Wait—!”

Which is when Mom drives up from work and Alice thinks, oh, no, here we go, this is all going to fall apart. What a mess. Of course Ellie tells her all about it; Alice can see her making her case right there in the driveway. And then, yup, here comes Mom. Alice braces herself for a shouting match, but Angie steps into the workshop, looks around, and in a normal tone of voice, says:

“I don’t really want you sleeping out here.”

“But, Mom . . .”

“And no boys, Alice.”

“Mom!”

“The deal is, you keep your grades up . . .”

“The whole point of this—”

“Is what, exactly?”

“You know what, Mom.”

“No, I don’t, Alice.”

“The whole point is . . .”

Angie waits.

“I feel like I can . . .” Alice begins.

“What?”

“Hold on to him here.”

“That’s . . .”

“Or that I can still find him here.”

“Oh, honey,” Angie softens.

“Do you know what I mean?” Alice pulls Matt’s jacket closer around her.

“Yes. I think I do.”

“I want it to be perfect when he gets home. I got a book out of the library so I can learn how to clean and oil all his power tools. I mean, I know it’s already totally organized, but I thought . . .”

Angie looks at Alice: Her cheeks are flushed and the tip of her nose is bright red. She is swamped in Matt’s jacket, it nearly reaches her knees. She looks like a kid again, a little kid.

Angie wishes she could reach out and touch Alice, but with just that thought, just that impulse, she can feel Alice pulling away.

“I didn’t think about Ellie. I should have thought about Ellie, but—”

“She needs you.”

“I know.”

“More than ever.”

“What about what I need, Mom?”

“We’ll work it out, okay?”

“I don’t see how.”

“Have a little faith.”

“I just want—”

“She’ll be at Janna’s, there will be sleepovers, there’s a week of Nature’s Classroom coming up in May.”

Alice crosses to her dad’s workbench.

“You’re not mad that I brought some pictures out here?”

“I’m not mad.”

“I want to light a candle for every day he’s missing.”

“Good idea with the jelly jars.”

“Yeah. I don’t want to burn the place down or anything.”

Angie looks around the workshop again: the clean floor, the sparkling windows, Matt’s orderliness echoed in Alice’s neat stack of books, clothes hung on pegs, the wood basket, the kindling.

“You cleaned up in here. It looks nice.”

“You know how Daddy had plans to put those windows in the west wall? I’m gonna figure out how to do that before he gets back. I’ll ask Uncle Eddie to help me.”

“Matt was so excited the day he found those windows.”

“It’ll open things up. More light.”

“And a view of his apple trees.”

Angie reaches out and straightens Alice’s collar.

“You’re wearing his jacket.”

“It was cold. I—”

“It’s okay, Alice.”

Angie sits down in the lawn chair near the woodstove. Alice stands nearby, uncertain what to do or say.

“Can I have it?” Angie asks.

“What?”

“The jacket. Just for a bit.”

Alice unbuttons the jacket, hands it to her mom. Angie hugs it to her, inhaling its scent.

“Mom . . .?”

“Throw another log on the fire, would you?”

The fire is blazing, but Alice adds another log anyway.

“Can you open the doors so I can watch it?”

Alice opens the doors of the woodstove, props up the temporary screen.

“That’s what Dad likes to do.”

She hears her mom take in a quick breath.

“I’d like to stay out here for a little while by myself, if that’s okay with you.”

“Yeah. Sure.”

Alice starts backing toward the door.

“I’ll be in soon.”

Alice hesitates.

“Don’t forget to close up the stove, Mom.”

“I won’t.”

Alice closes the door behind her and wishes she could look through the door to see her mom. Maybe she could replace the solid wood door with a glass one or put windows in on the sides. She’s thinking about windows because it is frankly too strange to think about her mom in her dad’s space like this, in
her
space, everything turned upside down, Alice outside in the chill wind, her mom by the fire. How did this happen?

But as of right now, right this instant, Alice has a new plan. She has decided to only think positive thoughts, to stop dwelling on all the terrifying
what ifs
that haunt her. She will keep those thoughts to herself and instead prepare for her dad’s return. His certain return. She will be the one to believe in him, believe in his strength and his ingenuity, his ability to talk to, to persuade anyone about anything, anywhere, anytime. She thinks about the way he can coach you so you don’t even realize he’s doing it, whether it’s how to throw a better pitch or how to strike a cleaner, stronger hammer blow.

When he comes home, if he’s still recovering from his wounds, or so badly hurt that it will take months to recover, then she will be the one to do things for him. She’ll drive him to the doctor’s because she’ll have her permit by then. When he’s ready to go back to work she’ll be his assistant, handling the things he’s not quite ready for, or the things that are too tough by the end of the day when he gets tired. She’ll fill his Thermos and pack his lunch. She’ll load the tool chest and the truck. She knows how to do these things, she’s been watching him and getting in the way her whole life.

It occurs to her that if, no, when, they find him, they’ll probably send him home as soon as they can debrief him and stabilize him at the hospital. So the garden has to be perfect. There will not be a weed anywhere, the successive plantings of red and green lettuce will be beautiful, the corn will be knee high, the tomatoes will be staked; she will pick and make him his favorite chopped salad every night. Beets. She should plant some beets.

And if he’s too tired to talk about what happened, she promises herself she’ll wait until he’s ready to tell her the story, the true story that she can hold on to instead of the horror story she plays in her head every night.

Will she tell him about Henry? There’s nothing to tell. Or John Kimball? Really nothing to tell. Or Stephie or what it was like to feel so alone the whole time he was gone, the way nobody knew how to talk to her, or how to talk about the war or her father, and it seemed like people just wanted to avoid her. The part about not getting along that great with Mom she can keep secret. Running, she can tell him about running, and B.D. and the way he’s fair with everybody, just the way Matt is, and Ginger and her long legs, and how it’s looking like Alice might really be a long-distance runner, might have some actual talent in that department. Can she tell him about the miles and miles she runs in practice and learning to believe you’ve got something left for the end of the race, that believing it is just as important as running it? Will it still be okay to run like that if Matt’s legs have been shattered? If only she knew where he’d been wounded, but she’s promised herself not to think about that. Just think about him getting out and getting home and being here and being Dad, that’s all, just being Dad.

 

Alice heads inside to see what she can do to start dinner only to discover that her quarterly report card has arrived. Along with a letter from Matt, addressed to Ellie. A letter sent ten days ago. Maybe it’s a sign. Maybe it’s a good sign.

She hesitates for a nanosecond and then rips open her report card, even though it’s not addressed to her, but to her parents. It’s bad. No, it’s really bad. Every single subject is in the low seventies, having fallen from the nineties. It’s not failing. Not yet. But it will be. Each and every teacher makes a note of missing tests and missing assignments and how this just isn’t like Alice. There’s a special blue slip requesting a conference.

What is she going to do with this? Hide it? Put it in the trash? Hope that Angie is too distracted to notice that it never arrived?

Once again, Alice forgot the Ellie factor, because here’s Ellie, having padded into the hall on her little stealth feet to read along right beside her.

“You’re in trouble,” Ellie says, with a certain gleeful satisfaction. “You’re in
big
trouble.”

“Want to pretend like this never arrived?”

“Fat chance, Alice.”

“Ellie—”

“What are you doing in school? Aren’t you even trying?”

“Hey, I don’t need you to—”

“What would Daddy say?”

“Listen—”

“You can’t just move out of the house and let every single thing go, Alice. That’s not what Daddy would do.”

“Okay, okay! You can just back off, Ellie!”

Mom walks in the door and takes the report card and strangely, oddly, says nothing. Not now at least. She picks up Ellie’s letter and looks at the postmark.

“Oh, this is so strange.”

“Maybe it’s a good omen,” Alice says.

“This was mailed ten days ago.”

“There could be more on the way,” Ellie says. “Lots more.”

Angie holds the letter against her chest for a moment and closes her eyes. A silent wish, or a prayer, Alice thinks, as Angie hands the letter to Ellie.

Ellie rips open the envelope right there in the hallway.

“Wait,” Alice says, an edge of panic in her voice. “Let’s do it the same way we always do.”

So they gather on the couch, where Ellie climbs into Angie’s lap and reads her letter to herself, Angie and Alice both pretending they are not trying to read over her shoulder.

“Read it,” Alice begs.

Ellie pushes her glasses into place and begins:

 

 

Ellie, of course, begins to cry as she reads the letter, and when she finishes, she curls into Angie’s arms, as though she could burrow inside of her mother, and sobs. Alice can see Angie start to lose it and then pull herself back from the edge so she can take care of Ellie.

“Ellie,” Angie says, “Daddy’s gonna be okay. He’s missing you and loving you—and all of us—right now.”

“You promise?” Ellie asks.

Angie meets Alice’s glance over Ellie’s head.

“I promise.”

After practice, a long run at Mendon Pond Park, where Alice actually kept up with Ginger for the 3.5 mile course and almost caught her as she made her move up the last hill, Alice helps Uncle Eddie unload the rototiller from the really cool old Ford truck he’s driving with wooden running boards and side panels. Red, of course. Eddie muscles the rototiller through the yard, out past her dad’s workshop and up the small rise to the garden.

“You sure you want to do all of it?”

“Yup.”

“It’s pretty big, Alice.”

“That’s okay. We do corn, remember?”

“What’s that smell?”

“Bailey’s delivered a load of horse manure.”