Alice Bliss (27 page)

Angie realizes that she has no idea what Alice is thinking and she suddenly sees just how hard it is to know anyone, ever. But is there anything more difficult than trying to know your adolescent daughter? No one warned her that you can go from feeling like a really good mother to a really clueless and crappy mother the minute your daughter turns twelve. Or was it eleven?

Alice stands and stretches and picks up the lantern to walk the six rows, making sure everything is as it should be. Just the way her dad does it.

Alice is taller, Angie realizes, she suddenly looks more like Matt than ever; she has even started to move with Matt’s easy grace and confidence.

Angie watches her, sees her care and her competence and the threads that connect her to Matt. Each string stretched tight over each row, each careful furrow, each seed in the dark earth weaving a web of connection and memory.

Alice, satisfied, puts the hoe over one shoulder, picks up the stool and the lantern, and heads to the workshop.

Angie calls out the backdoor.

“I’m drawing you a hot bath.”

“Five minutes, Mom. I have to clean the tools.”

Just like Matt: meticulous with his tools. In the last thirty minutes Angie has suddenly found herself face-to-face with a whole slew of things Matt has taught Alice. Angie wonders what she has taught her daughter, and feels like that list is woefully short. In this moment she cannot think of one truly valuable thing to put on that list. How to do laundry? Fry an egg? Not in the same league.

How in the world is she going to fill in for Matt? Not that anyone could ever fill Matt’s shoes. But for Alice, for Alice . . . she gets a sudden and dizzying glimpse into the size of this loss. If Matt doesn’t come home . . . No, she can’t go there, she can’t think that. He will be found. He will return. She has to believe this. She has to.

Alice walks in the backdoor, soaking wet and muddy, her dark hair dripping down her back.

“C’mere.”

Alice visibly recoils.

“Mom, I’m a mess.”

“I don’t care.” And Angie opens her arms. She opens her arms to her daughter, hoping beyond hope that Alice won’t turn away.

There’s a long moment before Alice can bring herself to walk into them, and when she does she’s stiff and cold and uncertain. But for once, Angie is not worrying about getting wet or dirty or what she has to do next. For once, Angie just holds on and holds on, until she can feel Alice melt into her, until she can feel Alice’s head sink onto her shoulder, until she can feel Alice’s arms go around her.

“I’ve missed you,” she says into Alice’s damp hair.

Four days later, when Sergeant Ames, accompanied by a second soldier, appears again at their front door there is no need for Angie or Alice or Ellie to say a word. They all know why he is here; they know what the letter he holds in his hand says. They stand in the open doorway and attempt to listen as Sergeant Ames does his duty and recites his script about a grateful nation.

“On behalf of the President and the Commandant of the Army, it is my unfortunate duty to inform you . . .”

It is a beautiful, balmy May day and the air is rich with new earth smells and fresh cut grass. They can hear the Peterson twins down the street as they shoot baskets in their driveway.

How many other screen doors open when Sergeant Ames drives up the street? How many of their neighbors are looking at his brown Ford sedan and knowing exactly what it means? The distant war suddenly brought close, suddenly right here in their driveway, right here on their front stoop, right here and right now on East Oak Street.

Sergeant Ames seems hesitant to leave. There are details: the return of the body, the return of Matt’s effects. These will be handled by the military. Sergeant Ames promises to come back in the morning to guide them through the process and the decisions.

They watch him drive away and then step back inside the house and close the door. They sit on the couch, Angie in the middle, Ellie and Alice on either side of her. Angie holds the letter with the official army seal in her hand. They are not screaming, they are not wailing; they are barely breathing. It is so quiet Alice can hear her dad’s watch ticking on her wrist.

The phone starts to ring.

“We need to call Gram,” Angie says. “And Uncle Eddie.”

The ringing phone is like a crying child; but Angie does not get up to answer it. Angie seems paralyzed.

“I’ll call them,” Alice says.

Angie can’t seem to focus.

“Mom . . . ?”

“Okay.”

Alice gets up and heads for the kitchen, the ringing phone getting louder and louder. She turns to look back at her mother. Ellie has climbed into Angie’s lap and Angie is rocking her back and forth. In between “I’ll call them,” and “Okay,” Alice has crossed an invisible line. She was expecting Angie to say, “No, no, that’s all right, honey; I’ll take care of it.” She was expecting Angie to hold on to her, to hold on to both of her girls. But here she is on the outside of the circle, steeling herself to break her grandmother’s heart. What is this longing to be touched and held and six years old again, to go backward in time, to be smaller than Ellie, to be the only one, to be held by her mother and her father?

She turns to look at her mother once more, thinking:
Call me back. Call my name. Reach out to me.

But Angie is holding on to Ellie too tight, too tight. She is thinking that her heart is going to burst or stop beating. She wants to sink through the sofa and the floor and into the earth, to be with Matt, nowhere else, not to go on, not to put one foot in front of the other, not to be brave and true, but to let go, to surrender, to join him wherever he is.

The phone stops ringing. Alice picks up the receiver and punches in Gram’s number. She notices that her hand is shaking. She notices that the breakfast dishes are still in the sink. She notices that the linoleum floor could use a good scrubbing. There’s no answer at the apartment. She calls The Bird Sisters.

“Gram?”

“Alice? Are you all right?”

“It’s . . .”

And she can’t say “Dad,” she can’t say his name.

“I’ll be right there. And I’ll call Uncle Eddie. Is your mom there?”

“Yes.”

“I’m on my way.”

Alice hangs up the phone and sits in a kitchen chair.

Henry shows up at the back door and lets himself in.

“I saw the car.”

She closes her eyes.

“Alice . . . ?”

She nods her head. He pulls a chair up and sits beside her.

“Did you call your Gram?”

She nods.

“And your Uncle Eddie?”

Another nod. That’s all she can manage.

“Okay, then.”

He takes her hand.

“We’ll just wait.”

 

They wait. Wait for the news to sink in, for the tears to begin, for a telegram telling them it was all a mistake. That night Alice waits and waits for sleep to come. She finally gives up and goes downstairs. She finds the photograph album she is looking for and quietly steps outside the back door and crosses the grass to the workshop.

She climbs into her sleeping bag, turns on her flashlight, and opens the cover of the photograph album. It is the summer of 1997; she’s six years old. This is the summer she finally learns to swim on top of the water, like the big kids do. There are dozens of photos of their week’s vacation camping at Small Point. Ellie hasn’t even been born yet. Angie and Matt look so young. There are photos of a dinner—was it a birthday? An anniversary? There’s a bottle of wine and a jar full of wildflowers on their picnic table. There’s a photo of Matt, grinning at Angie as he holds two live and kicking lobsters over the pot boiling on their propane stove. In the next photo Angie has her hair up and a skirt on and Alice can see in the photo how pretty Angie is as she turns to smile at Matt taking the picture; and she can see how her father is looking at Angie and loving her; she can see right there, in this photograph, right there in that moment, that they are in love.

She turns another page and there she is, in her red and white gingham checked bathing suit. That was her favorite bathing suit of all time. She never wanted to outgrow that suit. She wonders what happened to it, if it is still in her bottom drawer. She doesn’t remember Ellie ever wearing it. She can’t imagine she would ever, ever let her mother give it away.

 

 

There’s a knock at the door, which startles her.

“Alice . . . ? It’s me. Henry.”

“It’s open,” she calls out to him.

Henry steps inside the workshop.

“I saw your light. You okay?”

It’s two o’clock in the morning and it turns out that Henry has been sitting up with her. She puts the flashlight on the floor; its beam casts a light across the workshop.

“Pull up a chair.”

Henry grabs the lawn chair, brings it near Alice, sits. He’s wearing old gray sweatpants that are too short, and an ancient sweatshirt that must have belonged to his brother. His hair is even more shaggy and rumpled than usual.

“I can’t sleep.”

“I figured.”

“I’ve been looking at pictures.”

She hands him the photo album.

“From when I was six.”

He opens it.

“That was my favorite bathing suit,” she says.

“I remember it.”

“You do?”

“You wore that in the sprinkler and when we went to the high school pool for our swim lessons.”

“I can’t believe you remember that.”

Henry wants to tell her that he remembers everything, but when he tries out the phrase inside his head he sounds like an idiot.

“Alice—”

“Henry,” she interrupts.