Saving Alice (4 page)

Uglyville?

“It’s a rental. Already put a deposit on it. What do you think?”

I couldn’t breathe. Mom was speechless. The rancher had been painted white once, perhaps sixty years ago. The clapboards were chipped and crooked, and the roof was a confusing mixture of wood and gray shingles. The yard contained approximately three green blades of grass, with the rest covered in dandelions and weeds. The crumbling cement sidewalk had experienced something akin to an earthquake.
Even the earth is ashamed,
I thought.

“It’s just for a while,” he added.

Later I would learn the truth: We’d lost the trailer.
How on earth do you lose a trailer?

My mother found her voice. “Well … it needs a paint job.”

It needs a bulldozer
.

My father turned to me in the backseat. “Stephen’s good at painting, aren’t ya?”

I didn’t reply. I felt my eyes watering but refused to sniffle. I was numb when we got out of the car, my legs tingly and weak, but Mom marched right up to the house and tested the screen door. Even from the street, I could see the torn screen mesh flapping in the breeze. She went inside anyway. I leaned against the car, crossed my arms across my chest.

“Wanna see your new room?” my father asked.

I wanna go home,
I thought, recalling with a new fondness our sheet-metal trailer just a few blocks away—on the right side of the tracks.

Mom emerged from the shack and said, “Wonderful possibilities. Let’s go meet the neighbors.”

My father chuckled. “Now you’re talking.”

Later that night, my mother tiptoed into my room, her face shadowed in the dark. She sat at the edge of the bed. “Won’t be for long,” she whispered.

“That’s what he always says.”

She stroked my hair. “As soon as we can scrape up a down payment, we’ll buy our own house.”

How?
I thought.
We can’t even afford a trailer!

“Let’s pray about it,” she said, leaning over and kissing my nose. She was putting on a brave face, but in the darkness I felt a tear on my cheek that wasn’t mine.

“Sorry,” she whispered and gently dried my face with her fingertips.

When she left, I censured myself for my foolish self-pity. My father had finally reduced my mother. That settled it for me. Poor or not, I was going to go to college, and someday I’d be rich enough to rescue my mother from her dismal life.

I knelt beside my bed. I whispered Scripture verses, reminding God of His promises:
All things are possible to him who believes
. And then I struck a deal with the Almighty.
Get me out of here and I’ll help everyone I know….

The next day, I went to Larry and offered to take over his paper route. According to plan, the route would stay in his name, but since I’d be doing the work, I would keep the collection money. I didn’t tell him that I’d already talked Kevin into his route just to the west of the trailer route. In order to complete two routes every afternoon, I’d have to be Super Boy.

No problem.

A few weeks later, Mom and I headed to the First National Bank and opened a bank account in my name. Since I was a minor, I needed her signature. My plan was to sock half my loot into the bank and give the other half to Mom.

She refused. “That’s yours,” she said firmly. “I won’t steal my son’s future.”

Reluctantly, I agreed, but sometimes I would slip extra bucks into her purse when she wasn’t looking—not so much that she could tell, but not so little that it wouldn’t make a difference.

Not content with two paper routes, I made up flyers and passed them around the neighborhood, selling my services as a handy-boy. I offered to do anything: wash windows, mow lawns, rake leaves, shovel snow, detail cars—you name it, and before long I was busy from dawn until dusk. After sneaking a few bucks to Mom, and giving God ten percent, I put everything I made into that bank account.

By now, proving Jim wrong had become the obsession of my life, and I was determined to succeed in precisely the way my father had failed. When not working or studying, I read his stock-trading books, the ones he kept buying but didn’t have the inclination to read. By the time I was fifteen, I’d already decided to make my millions as a world-class trader. The deck was stacked against me, but I had God on my side.

Convinced I had no time for dating, I never attended another dance. I could not imagine, not in my wildest fantasy, bringing a girl home to Uglyville, much less to meet my father.

As it was, I came home after dark and left before sunup, and
never
gave out our address. If asked, I gave out the area of town instead. “The northeast,” I would say, which was bad enough, then quickly change the subject.

During this time, I read
God’s Smuggler
by Brother Andrew and was impressed, not only with the amazing stories of missionary work in Russia, but with how God miraculously provided financial assistance for Brother Andrew during his schooling.

By now, I was praying nightly in the empty rabbit field behind our house, and despite those occasional glorious experiences of God’s presence, I felt lonely in my quest to succeed. One night I remembered how God had led Brother Andrew to his future wife and with this anecdote in mind, and feeling rather bold, I unabashedly whispered my last rabbit-field request to the stars, as if God were my own private Celestial Dating Service.
She’s out there somewhere,
I whispered.

By the time I graduated, I’d managed to capture good enough grades and scrape together enough cash for one year’s worth of tuition, excluding room and board, to a good college in the East—far, far away from Uglyville and the Dakotas.

It was time for bed. Alycia frowned. “So when did Grandma and Grandpa finally move?”

I gave her the shortened version. Years ago, my financially disorganized father discovered that he’d purchased five hundred shares of Cisco at a rock-bottom price and promptly forgotten about it. Upon discovery, he subsequently sold the stock too soon but cleared enough to retire. He then bought my mother a house in Frederick, where few people knew him, and where, in effect, my father’s haven became my mother’s exile.

Alycia kissed me on the cheek. “Thanks for the stories, Dad. Keep ’em coming.”

Just before heading off to the bathroom to brush her teeth, she gave me a sly look. “So … am I getting closer?”

“Cold as ice.”

“Will you tell me when I’m getting warm?”

“Nope.”

“So how will I know, then?”

“Listen to your inner Shrek.”

“Dad…”

“Sorry.”

She blew out an exasperated breath, then brightened. “I can’t believe you prayed to meet Mom. That’s so cool.”

I smiled but didn’t have the heart to correct her.

C
HAPTER
F
OUR

A
year later, the summer after Alycia turned twelve, the jig was up. Alycia’s relentless questions were finally breaching my feeble security system. She fixed me with a knowing grin, placed her elbows on the table, clasped her hands, then opened Pandora’s box with delicious triumph. “So Dad … tell me about…”

She paused for effect and dropped the bomb:
“Alice.”

“Alice who?”

“Nice try. She’s the one in the picture—you know? In Mom’s old albums?”

“Oh,” I said. “
That
Alice.”

Alycia gave me her patented
spare me
eye roll. Apparently she’d already interrogated her mother, after which Donna had referred her to me. The two of us were sitting in the Ice Cream Shoppe—which seemed an entirely appropriate venue for the forthcoming story. Surrounded by the buzz of a dozen excited conversations and the squeals of young children, I took my time. It wasn’t a story that came easily and I’d hoped to have years, if not decades, to prepare.

Alycia prodded me. “Mom says you were going to marry Alice.”

My stomach tensed. “Actually … she was your mother’s best friend.”

Alycia’s eyes widened.
“Mom’s?”

I smiled. I’d opened with the clincher, and Alycia’s impatient expression implored me to
Get on with it!!

I relished my new power and wielded it with abandon. I started, then stopped, cleared my throat, and started again. “Well … uh … hmm … come on, you don’t really want to hear this stuff, do you?”

“No fair!” Alycia’s fingers darted out and pinched my arm.

“Ouch!”

Her expression promised further dire consequences. “I was named after her! Don’t I have a right to know everything?”

We stared each other down, her militant sweetness against my good-natured frown, and then she giggled. “C’mon, Dad. Spill. If you don’t, I’ll just ask Mom again, and … and her stories are more juicy!”

I gave her my own skeptical eye—one eye half mast, the other cold and steely—and in the glare of my truth-gaze, she back-pedaled. “Okay, okay. Mom’s stories are truly and dreadfully boring. But … c’mon, I’m dying here. I could always count on you before!”

The guilt trip coupled with an immediate threat: She poised her pinchers again and raised her eyebrows as fair warning.

“Fine,” I replied. I took a deep breath and started at the very beginning, but I only told her a fraction of the story—the juvenile face-saving version. Nothing juicy. In spite of this, I should have known better. Although she’d finally worn me down, telling my daughter about Alice was not going to be a good idea.

I should have let her pinch me black and blue.

I was twenty when I met Alice. She was only eighteen, although she seemed older than her years. Her silky brunette hair was closely cropped around her face, and other than a slight dusting of powder, she used little makeup. Born into the upper crust of New England society, she wore fashionable clothes and displayed a fondness for expensive, but delicate, jewelry.

I eventually learned she had begun piano at age four, singing lessons at age five, and dance classes at age six. Later, her wealthy parents sent her to a finishing school and, to the disappointment of teen boys, forbade her to date until she was sixteen. I’m convinced she would have been plucked for a brilliant childhood career on stage or screen if a talent agent had been resourceful enough to discover her and if her parents had been foolish enough to consent.

If I were a poet, I would have described Alice as a wide-eyed, exuberant child seamlessly merged within the quiet soul of a confident woman, a woman utterly convinced of the inevitability of her dreams. And it was this—her magnetic aura of success—that mesmerized me from the moment I first glimpsed her “across that crowded room.”

“You make her sound like a saint,” Paul said when I first described her. But according to Larry, and before his enlightenment (divorce), women were necessary evils—practical bedroom accouterments at best, and at worst, glorified maids. If your woman liked football, well … you had yourself a live one. “She’s only a dame,” he once told me when I was back home during a rare visit and extolling Alice’s gifts. “A garden-variety dame, like a fancy new Chevy truck, with a few bells and whistles thrown in. Don’t lose your perspective.”

I ignored him and returned to college and Alice. The romantic poets tell us that when you meet “the one,” you’ll know immediately. Well, I did. I knew from our very first date. And more important, I’d prayed—and God had answered.

But it was a May twelfth day that is emblazoned in my brain— the day I waited for her in our booth at the Soda Straw, our college hangout, with a diamond ring in my pocket and a proposal in my heart. While we hadn’t talked about marriage specifically, we had talked of being together forever, and to me, that’s the same thing.

I’d arrived an hour early to sip black coffee and gather my wits. We’d come a long way since a rather disastrous first date—saved only by her sense of humor—followed by a year of insufferably platonic friendship that included a threesome with Donna before Alice reached over the table, squeezed my hand, and said, “Stephen, I think I’m falling in love with you. Is that okay?”

Thinking back to that moment, I remember grinning like the village idiot. I’d actually done it. I’d shot for the moon and actually
reached
the moon—not just that proverbial lamppost. Successfully navigating an ivy-league college and the girl of my dreams—my prayers—across the table from me.

As far as school, the truth was that without Alice I would have dropped out before my junior year. Unable to qualify for a loan due to my father’s poor credit, the school bills accelerated. Attending classes in the morning, working six hours in the afternoon, studying in the evening, sleeping two or three hours a night, my grades were falling precipitously.

Alice came to my rescue. “Hitch your wagon to my star.”

I didn’t understand.

“I’ll lend you the money.”

Dismayed, I shook my head, but she punched my shoulder playfully. “Snap out of your ego!”

“Alice—”

“I
believe
in you, Stephen. I’m making an investment in your future, nothing more. Pay me back later.”

Reluctantly, I agreed, but only if we drew up loan papers. She chuckled at my silliness, but three days later, I quit my job. Two years later, I graduated with a cumulative GPA of 3.78, with a double major in Accounting and Finance, mere weeks after having received a lucrative offer with a Wall Street firm.

I was no longer the eleven-year-old boy who walked three miles downtown to buy his used comic books because his parents couldn’t afford a bike. The days of macaroni and cheese for breakfast, lunch, and supper were a distant memory.

Waiting now for Alice to arrive for what I believed to be our most significant date yet, I bowed my head, oblivious to the noisy diner, and whispered my gratitude to the Almighty. In the end, my mother was right: With God all things
were
possible. Even for a kid from Uglyville.

Every detail of that day is etched on my brain—the stiff, lumpy feel of the red vinyl booth, initially cold to the touch, then growing warm and comfortable, the feel of my elbows resting on the sterile paint-flecked Formica table, the sound of oldies in the background— “Don’t Be Cruel,” “Time in a Bottle,” and “Right Back Where We Started From.”

I chain-sipped coffee and stared at the ring—soon to be hers— twirling the open box around in my fingers. Shafts of sunlight illuminated the afternoon dust through the slats of the window blinds. The walls echoed with the excited buzz of a roomful of college students. Most of all, I remember the smells: fragrant vanilla, grilled hamburger, and baked pizza.

Nina, our red-haired, jean-skirted waitress, sneaked up behind me. “Wow … nice rock!!”

Startled, I reflexively covered the box, but she was already stretching out her hand and wiggling her fingers invitingly. “Now that’s gonna look good on my finger! It’s my birthstone, Stephen! How did you know?”

I gave her a tense smile.

“C’mon. Let’s see it again!”

I moved my hand from the white box, revealing the gold ring cushioned in purple velvet. The brilliance of the single diamond under the fluorescent lighting broadcast its authenticity, and the elegance of the setting, I felt, fit the recipient perfectly.

Nina whistled like a teakettle.

“I think your boyfriend might object,” I joked.

After another quick glance about the room, she hurriedly sat across from me, placing her elbows on the table, and leaned over like a co-conspirator. “So am I right?”

I nodded, and Nina raised her eyebrows.

“What?” I asked.

“Who
is
it?” she asked, her eyes still darting about the room, alert for the next big tip to walk through the door.

“Who is who?”

“You know …” Nina replied with a leading tone and shaking her head. “Donna or Alice?”

“Oh,” I said, hiding my annoyance. “Alice.” Nina’s eyes widened. “Does she suspect?”

I assured her that she didn’t.

“Good luck.” Nina finally stood up, taking the hint. “I’ll give you plenty of space. But you better leave a good tip.” She looked back at me on her way to greet another table and whispered loudly, “Hide that box before she gets here!”

I glanced at my watch for the hundredth time.

It was 4:05. Alice was late.

“She was late?” Alycia exclaimed.

“Alice was
never
late,” I added. “For her, punctuality was an obsession.”

Alycia frowned. “Back up a sec … why didn’t Nina know who you were dating?”

I shrugged. “The three of us were very close.”

Alycia twisted her lips in concentration, then squinted. I knew what was coming next. “You left out some parts, Dad. I can tell, you know.”

In response to this most grievous accusation, I delivered an eloquent and persuasive rebuttal: “Uh-uh.”

“Yeah
huh
.”

“No sirree.”

Alycia held out her pinky finger like a dare. “On your honor?”

I blew out an exasperated breath. “Okay, okay. But only the grown-up parts.”

Alycia came uncorked. “Those are the very parts I want to hear! Now you have to start from the very beginning.”

“Alycia—”

“Besides, I want to hear more about Mom!”

Feeling as if a dump truck had unloaded a ton of sand over my head, I started over, but with renewed determination to be even craftier in my elimination of those details Alycia would think juicy but I would label “too painful.”

Alycia gave me another good-natured squint and flexed her pinchers. I proceeded to describe the day I’d first glimpsed Alice, at the beginning of my junior year.

Alice was on stage performing a solo vocal recital, ranging from highbrow Schubert and Mozart to the show tunes of Andrew Lloyd Webber, and Rodgers and Hammerstein. She projected an amazing command of the stage, dancing and gesturing like a professional, acting out the themes from the musicals.

I happened to be sitting next to fellow classmate Donna, a pretty, blond literature major I’d met in “American Novels of the Twentieth Century,” which was a casual humanities elective for me but a required course for her. Without Donna I would have failed the course. We’d become friends three months earlier and had even gone on a few casual dates, though as busy as we both were, I can’t imagine where we’d found the time.

Alycia interrupted me. “You’re talking Mom, right?”

“How many Donnas do you know?”

“Just checking.”

Halfway through the first song, Donna leaned over. “That’s my roommate I was telling you about.”

I nearly fell off my seat. “That’s your roommate?”

Afterward, as Alice signed programs, Donna pulled me through the crowd, introduced us, and I proceeded to lose my voice.

Later, this would become a never-ending source of amusement for Alice. “You literally squeaked,” she would giggle, squeezing my hand with reassurance while I blushed, taking her word for it, because to this day I can’t remember what I’d actually said.

Of course, I adored her New England accent, which seemed exotic to me. And yet, strangely enough, during our first date, Alice interrupted one of my nervous ramblings. “Stephen … where you from?” Which, to me, sounded like,
Wahuh yohuh frawm?