The Fall of Alice K. (17 page)

Nothing seemed to be bothering Aldah when Alice put her to bed, but her mother was waiting in the living room. The tight skin on her hard cheekbones glowed like linoleum.

“We need to talk.” Her words relieved her body into its familiar sag from the shoulders down. From totem pole to willow branch in seconds. Alice braced herself for worse news about Aldah.

“I'm right here.”

“I knew those people would be trouble.” She sounded disheartened more than angry. She sighed pathetically. “Things can only get worse. And they will. But we have a role in this, in this downward direction. We bring much of it upon ourselves.”

“I assume you're talking about the Vangs.”

“You know who I'm talking about.”

“They're good people, Mother. They go to our church.”

“I know why the sheriff was talking to you.”

The Perfect Pizza scene had not been a topic of conversation in the Krayenbraak house, though Alice knew from others that her mother had been talking about it. Her mother had in fact doctored up the story by telling a neighbor that Alice had not slapped anyone. Only the Hmong girl did that. The Hmong girl was beside herself. No one had ever seen anything like it. She had gone wild until people in the restaurant stopped her. Her mother the guardian angel, lying to protect her reputation.

Alice didn't know how her mother had heard about the visit from the sheriff and his deputy.

“I guess people finally have something to talk about. May I go now?”

“I'm not through,” she said. “Why did you snoop through my things in the bedroom?”

“I wasn't snooping, I was cleaning up.”

“Right. Right. You have hands of mischief. Hands of mischief can work as much ill in the world as tongues of deception.”

“Somebody's got to do some cleaning around here.”

Her mother put her hand to her pointed chin; she cocked her head and raised her eyebrows quizzically. “I've been suspecting you for a long time,” she said. “You're a snoop. You are developing the profile of an untrustworthy person. A little deception here, a little deception there—eventually, you will become a polished master of deception. The body is the Temple of the Holy Spirit. What you do with your hands can defile or purify that temple. I don't know that I can trust you anymore.”

“I don't have time for this, Mother. I need to leave for a few hours.”

“Leave? Really? You have to leave? On a school night?”

“I need to work on debate.”

“And why, pray tell, can't you work on debate at home? Especially since we've gone through the trouble of making such a good work space for you in your room.”

“I have to meet with my debate partner.”

“Your debate partner. And who might that be?”

“Nickson.”

“Did I hear you right ? That Hmong boy is your debate partner? After all this trouble, he's your debate partner?”

“Yes. He's really smart.”

Her mother moved her lips as if there were something lodged behind them. “I am hearing more than you are saying,” she said, “and I don't like what I'm hearing.”

“What?”

“I am detecting something,” she said. “That young man is a trouble magnet.”

“We're a debate team, Mother. We have to get started.”

“Get started,” she said. “Get started?”

“He joined the debate team and we have to get started.”

“Sit down.”

Alice sat. Her mother nodded her head knowingly. “Aldah is on to
you too,” she said. “You should know that. You think you're such a good influence on her? Well, she's getting onto you too.”

“Onto what?”

“Your lies, your wayward snooping hands. She told me how you stood outside the porch listening to her and Roger.”

“I needed some air that night.”

“You need more than air,” she said. “And you're not going to drive into town tonight. You think we don't know what the sheriff told you? You think we don't know that we should be locking our doors from now on? We need motion detectors.”

“We need the National Guard.”

“Sooner or later you'll have to get serious about
something,
young lady.”

Alice picked up the phone and left the room to call the Vangs. Mai answered. Nickson was studying. “Don't bother him,” said Alice. “Tell him that I can't make it tonight to work on debate. I'll talk to him tomorrow. And Mai? Tell him I'm sorry. Tell him my mom needs me to stay home.”

“All right,” said Mai. “He'll be really disappointed.”

When Alice got to her room, her first feeling was anger toward her mother, but then she had a surge of disappointment, an aching disappointment that she didn't know how to interpret, and didn't want to.

She lay down on her bed to work on
Macbeth.
Miss Den Harmsel's study guide showed exactly what would happen in each act, so she knew the story before she started reading.

“I don't want you reading Shakespeare's plays as if they were whodunit thrillers. I want you to know the story in advance so that you can appreciate the beauty of the language.”

Alice did read to appreciate the language. She didn't check the footnotes to understand the strange Elizabethan words, but she read aloud in her mind to hear the wonderful sounds and to get a sense of the characters. Lady Macbeth quickly became one of her favorites. How could such an evil person be adorned in such lovely language? She underlined “screw your courage to the sticking place, / And we'll not fail.” She wouldn't seek courage to hurt someone the way Lady Macbeth was doing, but she would seek courage to deal with whatever the year might
challenge her with. And she would enjoy Shakespeare, both to please herself and to please Miss Den Harmsel. And Lydia! She thought of a Nancy Swifty when she got to the witches' brew passage: “‘Double, double, toil and trouble,' Nancy bubbled.”

If she had nothing else left of her friendship with Lydia, at least they might be able to come together around Nancy Swifties.

That night Alice heard her mother move through the house. It was 2:00 a.m. When the floor squeaked, the movements stopped for several seconds. She was listening to hear if she had awakened anyone. Alice heard her leave the house and then a sound that might have been the opening of the trunk on the Taurus. Minutes later the front door opened slowly, stopping when the hinges squeaked. A few minutes later a muffled thunk came all the way from the basement. The next morning when her father went out to feed the hogs and before her mother got out of bed, Alice went to the basement. The storage room had empty boxes, but when Alice pulled one back, she found that the box behind it was not empty. Inside the box she found ten large bars of chocolate and a half dozen cans of Spam. Her mother's idea of survival food. It looked as good as the stuff she served for supper.

18

Lydia was wearing a rather silly outfit to school the next day, a multicolored plaid skirt and knee-length yellow socks. What was this look? Something that her supercool friends in Canada had sent her? When Alice asked her about her clothing, she said she was just getting into the comic spirit of Shakespeare's play. Then she landed a Nancy Swifty: “‘I Bottomed out on
A Midsummer Night's Dream,
' Nancy said Puckishly.”

When Lydia was on, she was hard to beat, but Alice reminded her that they were reading
Macbeth
now.

“So give me a
Macbeth
Nancy Swifty,” said Lydia.

Alice was ready: “‘Is this a dagger which I see before me?' Nancy asked with a cutting edge to her voice.”

Ah, but Lydia was ready too: “‘Out, out brief candle,' Nancy said flickeringly.”

“How about this?” said Alice: “‘It is full o' the milk of human kindness,' Nancy uddered.”

“Good one, farm girl. “‘Double, double, toil and trouble,' Nancy bubbled.”

“Hey! That's mine! I thought that one up last night.”

“Sure you did.”

“I honest to God did. I'm not kidding, Lydia, I thought up that exact same one last night right before I went to sleep.”

“In your dreams.”

It was an unkind remark, and Lydia knew it. “Sorry,” she said. “Let's have lunch today.”

“I'm sorry but I'll be working on debate. And why are you wearing an Al Gore button? The election's not until next year and Bill Bradley will probably beat him out anyhow.”

“What's going on between you and Nickson?”

“Why are you changing the subject? Don't you get a lot of flack wearing a Gore button?”

“Wouldn't know why. Once people's minds can separate him from Bill Clinton, they'll see that what Gore says about the environment is what we all should be thinking about.”

“People are more concerned about character after Bill Clinton,” said Alice, “and that's why I think Gary Bauer has a chance.”

“Get real,” said Lydia.

“I don't think who's president makes any difference,” said Alice.

“So what's going on between you and Nickson?”

Hearing the question come back a second time sent that familiar flush of shame across Alice's face.

“Why did you ask that?”

“People are talking.”

“People are talking? People are talking? I'm helping him with debate.”

“And driving him home from school, and hanging out with his sister, and slapping those creeps who jumped him, and locking yourselves in Miss Den Harmsel's room during noon hour.”

“It's about debate,” said Alice. “Plain and simple. Debate.”

“So you and Nickson are having private little debate ceremonies in Miss Den Harmsel's room?”

“We don't lock the door,” Alice said quickly, but her voice sounded frantic and she knew it. “I'm trying to help him.”

Lydia reached and took Alice's wrist. The grip felt like her mother's. Alice's pulse throbbed in her ears, and now she felt the way she had when she was eleven years old and accidentally discovered the pleasure of touching herself and did not stop after the first good sensation and continued until her mother walked into the room and looked at her with that look of horror. Found out about a truth she hadn't begun to admit to herself. Found out at doing something that could only lead to humiliation.

Lydia had been cruel, but the glaring truth had a cruel sting to it: what if people were so dense that they simply couldn't understand how perfectly good her friendship with Nickson was? They won't understand, and then they'll talk behind our backs, and then they'll start making
jokes about us, and then they'll mock us to our faces, and then they'll pick on Nickson. The little fears were dominoes clattering through her mind. I don't care if they pick on me, she thought, but why couldn't they, including Lydia, understand that her friendship with Nickson was the most interesting thing—no, it was the best thing—that was happening in her life? It had such an innocent beauty to it. It felt so pure. It felt so beautiful. The only person who could understand the innocence and beauty of this friendship was Nickson himself, and if that's the way things were, so be it.

“I can see on your face that I'm right,” said Lydia.

“Whatever look you see on my face is telling you how nuts you are.”

“Remember when we first saw his head bobbing along at about shoulder level with the other students? Remember? We called him ‘the Little Bobber.'”

“Right. The Little Bobber. How could you be so stupid as to think anything was going on between us?”

“You're jealous that I have a boyfriend and you're trying to make up for it with the Little Bobber.”

“You call him that again and I'm going to haul back and smack you Lydia, I really am.”

“Whoa. Sorry to touch a nerve.”

“You have the nerve to insult both of us. He's my debate partner.”

“Careful.
Partner
's a pretty big word.”

“You're the one who's shacking up.”

“Oh, sorry Rev. Krayenbraak. We used to say we wouldn't judge each other.”

“You could use some judging, judging by your bad judgment.”

“At least he can see over most people's heads. Good grief, Alice, Nickson is eight inches shorter than you are!”

“Do you actually love that creep you're with, Lydia? Is he going to follow you off to college? Maybe fix lawn mowers for the college where you go to school?”

“I'm not going to listen to these insults.”

“Insults? Insults? Who's been hurling the insults?”

“I'm not going to stand for this!”

“Neither am I!”

“That's it then.”

“That's it.

“I've had enough!”

“You've had enough? I've had enough!”

Everything that Alice admired about Lydia dissolved. Lydia was more than confident, she was a spoiled and arrogant brat. And those stupid Canadian pronunciations she could give to some words! Pronouncing
been
so that it rhymed with
seen?
Was that supposed to sound sophisticated? Was that supposed to make her sound just a tad bit English? And the way she could pronounce
house
to sound like
hoose!

Alice stomped down the hallways, stewing about that person who posed as her best friend.

It took no more than ten minutes of good stewing for Alice to realize that the trouble with ending a friendship in a small town and in a small school was that there was nowhere to hide from each other. And when the sky cleared, the truth was that Lydia—and maybe now Nickson—was the only person she could really talk to.