Alice Bliss (22 page)

What if, starts to fill her mind. What if I flooded the bathroom and the hallway and it leaked downstairs and flooded the kitchen and the living room and even the porch. What if, what if, what if . . .

She falls asleep. Gram’s urgent knocking wakes her up. She actually fell asleep in the bathtub! How weird is that?

“I’m okay, Gram!”

But is she? Her arms and legs feel like lead. Sitting up, her ears are buzzing and she feels dizzy. Maybe she needs something to eat.

“Alice . . . ?”

“I’m coming, Gram.”

When she steps out of the tub she feels like she’s a hundred years old. Everything hurts and every bit of her, everywhere, inside and out, is tired. Her nose and her eyes and her shins and the backs of her hands. She unlocks the door and can hear Gram’s sigh of relief. Stepping out of the bathroom she steps into Gram’s waiting arms.

“It’s okay, honey.. . . It’s gonna be all right.”

Just that, her grandmother standing there with her arms open to her. Not asking her anything, not yelling at her, not pushing, pushing, pushing.

“We waited to punch the dough down until you . . .”

“Ellie can do it.”

“We need to make three loaves. You can both do it.”

“Okay.”

“Honey?”

“Yeah.”

“Look at me.”

She takes Alice’s chin in her hands.

“We’re gonna be okay.”

“Okay, Gram.”

“I mean it.”

 

In the kitchen Ellie is standing on a chair with a huge mound of dough in front of her.

“That’s our dough?!”

“See what yeast can do?”

“Wow!”

Ellie is dancing on the chair; Ellie is deciding to be magnanimous.

“You can take the first punch, Alice.”

“Okay. Stand back!”

Alice lets one fly and then Ellie is pummeling away like a fiftypound fury. Flour is flying, the dough is elastic and warm in their hands. Ellie starts to laugh. Alice closes her eyes and takes a deep breath. Yeast and molasses and flour and the hot stove and her grandmother’s perfume and Ellie’s fresh little kid smell. Don’t think about anything else. Just this. Right here. Right now.

Gram shows them how to form the dough into loaves. They plop their babies into bread pans and brush them with butter, and put them to rest and rise one more time on the back of the stove. Cookies next. Gram leaves them to it and never once tells them to quit eating the dough while she starts dinner.

Alice knows that Gram is just as scared as she is—well, maybe not just as scared—and that cookies and toast and honey and molasses are not really going to make things right. But they’re all we’ve got. Just the everyday things: the forks and the spoons and the plates and breakfast and lunch and dinner and homework and playing Scrabble with your sister. That’s all anybody’s got when you get right down to it. Some people not as much, some people lots more. But this is what is right in front of her; this is what she’s got right now.

Gram sets out a plate of cookies and two tall glasses of milk. Then she pours herself a nice stiff scotch on the rocks and sits down with her girls. She and Ellie talk about Easter and shopping and will Gram teach her how to play Mah-Jongg after dinner? Gram is saying yes and yes and it’s cozy in this corner with the light hanging over the table, the kitchen full of the smell of baking bread, the emptiness and the darkness pushed back, pushed aside. Alice puts her head down on the table and studies Gram’s hands. Her rings, the pale skin, nearly translucent. She closes her eyes and she’s gone. Gone away, Gram’s voice and Ellie’s voice fading out like a radio from the house next door. For a moment the tick of the kitchen clock is filling her head and she feels Gram’s hand stroking her hair. Another breath and she is fast asleep, blessedly asleep.

 

Hours later, Alice wakes up, surprised to find herself in bed, stripped down to her underwear. Gram or Mom must have done it. She looks at her dad’s watch: almost midnight. She grabs a sweatshirt and pads down the hall to the kitchen to get something to eat. She’s slicing a big hunk of bread when she hears voices and realizes Gram hasn’t gone home. She slathers the bread with butter and jam and walks back upstairs to her mom’s room. The lights are on, the door is closed. She stands there, eating bread and licking jam from her fingers.

“It’s not forever,” Gram says.

“I know.”

“We don’t know when Matt . . .”

“I
know
.”

“I’m not here to make comments. I’m just here to help.”

“You can’t help yourself, Mom.”

“I’ll tone it down.”

“Sure you will.”

“My comments are the least of your worries!”

“We’re doing fine.”

“Angie . . .”

“We
are
. I get to work every day, the kids get to school, we eat.”

“I’m just saying I could do the marketing and cook ahead so all you have to do on weeknights is reheat. I could teach the girls a few things.”

“They love it when you cook with them.”

“Sometimes these things skip a generation.”

“I can cook!”

“I know.”

“I don’t want you to move in, Mom.”

“For the girls, then—”

“You’re just down the street! If I need you I can practically holler out the front door!”

“But—”

“We don’t do too well living together, remember?”

“It could be different.”

“It won’t be different.”

Alice slides down the wall into a sitting position.

“You can stay tonight.”

“But not on a schedule? Something regular for your girls?”

“We can’t need you, Mom; we can’t be falling to pieces, because Matt can’t be missing.”

“That’s wishful thinking, honey.”

“I don’t care! Bring on the magic, bring on the shamans, the charlatans, I can’t—”

“I know.”

“You don’t know!”

“Matt Bliss comes through. He always comes through.”

“If one more person says that to me . . .”

“Don’t give up on him, Angie.”

“Oh, Mom . . .” Angie blows her nose. “Nothing makes sense anymore. Nobody’s telling us the truth, there is no way to find out where he is or how hurt he is or what the odds are or if it’s even possible to survive.”

Alice realizes she’s stopped breathing. How do the grown-ups keep taking in this information and walk and talk and act normal? Is she the only one who feels like her skin is going to split apart, her head is going to crack open?

“Sergeant Ames called me at work. They found Matt’s ID.
Recovered
is the word they use. Is that good news? Bad news? What does it mean?”

“It means they’re looking for him. They’re actively looking for him.”

Alice curls up on the hallway floor, her toast forgotten. The voices in her mother’s room are softer now. She puts her hand into the sliver of light spilling from under the door as if the light could warm her. She closes her eyes and imagines that the murmur of voices is her mom and dad, and Ellie is three and she is ten and none of this has happened, none of it is going to happen. And then she sees him. Clear as day. Sees him traversing a hillside, wearing fatigues, carrying a gun, his boots gray with dust; his face filthy, his hair matted. He looks thin and tired. He is smoking a cigarette and there are soldiers in front of and behind him. It is early dawn and they are moving quickly, or as quickly as they can given the rocky footing. She wants to yell at him to put his helmet on. Is it a vision? A memory? A dream? Is he alive? Is that what this means? If only he would turn and speak to her, if only . . .

The door opens and Angie nearly falls right over her.

“Alice!? What the hell? What are you doing here?”

“I heard you talking and—”

“There’s toast and jam all over the carpet! Could you be any more—?!”

Gram pulls Alice to her feet and heads down the hall hand in hand with her.

“I’ve won the skirmish but not the battle. I can stay the night. Maybe that will give me a little toehold. Think about what you’d like me to make for dinner tomorrow night. Something your mom and Ellie really love, okay?”

Alice slides into her sleeping bag on the floor as Gram climbs into Alice’s bed.

“You okay on the floor?”

“Yup.”

“This is cozy.”

“Yup.”

“Ellie can sleep through anything.”

“Just about.”

“Good night, Alice.”

“ ‘night, Gram.”

Alice stares up into the dark.

“Gram . . . ?”

“What, honey?”

“I saw him.”

“Where?”

“In my mind, I think.. . . He was walking across a hillside, smoking a cigarette, other men spread out on the hill around him. How could I see that?”

“I don’t know, Alice. You’re very connected to your dad.”

“That’s not rational, Gram.”

“Love isn’t rational.”

“Was it a dream?”

“What do you think?”

“It was so real and so strange. Not like anyplace I’ve ever seen before. And Dad was different, too. Dirty and thin and . . .”

“He’s probably thinking of you just as hard as you’re thinking of him.”

“But—”

“The mind, Alice, there’s still so much we don’t know. Think about that. All that mystery, all that unknown territory right between your ears.”

“You’re funny, Gram.”

“He loves you, wherever he is.”

Alice finally lets herself cry, the stupid tears falling right into her ears. Gram doesn’t say anything, just reaches out and takes her hand. Then Ellie rolls over on her back and starts to snore and they both laugh. Five minutes later—or so it seems—the alarm is ringing.

Alice has the woodstove in Matt’s workshop going full blast. She’s wearing his work jacket and a fleece vest and a hat and a scarf. It’s sunny but unseasonably cold with a watery blue sky and a wind fierce enough to rattle the panes of the windows. Will spring never ever come?

First she built a fire, then she refilled the kindling pile and the stack of firewood, and then she hauled her stuff out of the house in two old duffel bags and a milk crate she found in the basement. She blows the air mattress up and hangs her sleeping bag on the clothesline to air out, which shouldn’t take long in this wind. She unpacks the milk carton full of books and photographs and sets the crate next to her bed with a small reading lamp on top.

The photographs go on one side of the workbench, so she can see them from her bed. She has collected her favorite framed photos of her dad from all over the house, rearranging desktops and bureaus so her mother won’t notice which ones are missing. She adds votive candles in old jelly jars. Three doesn’t seem like enough. She’ll have to get more.

She lights the candles. They look nice, she thinks, but there should be twelve at least. Maybe dozens and dozens; maybe she should light a new candle for every day that Matt is missing.

The books, which are Matt’s books, from his “favorite books” shelf, get stacked neatly inside the milk crate:
The Art of the Stone Wall
, E. B. White’s
The Points of My Compass,
Wendell Berry’s
A Place on Earth
. These are the books Alice is planning to read every night, if she gets scared staying alone out here. If she can’t sleep. If she can’t stop thinking about her dad.

Her plan was to get everything set up before Mom gets home from work. A done deal. Not worth arguing about. What she hadn’t planned on was Ellie.

Who is now standing in the doorway, her knitting in one hand, her other hand bleeding and held away from her like an accusation, like whatever happened to Ellie, alone in the house, is definitely Alice’s fault.

“What happened?”

“Splinter. A big one.”

“The kitchen bench again?”

“Yup.”

“It’s huge.”

“It
hurts
, Alice.”

“Let’s see if I can get it out. Come over to the window where I can see better.”

Alice leads Ellie over to the window.

“How can you knit and get splinters at the same time?”

“
Hurry up!
”

She finds her dad’s finest pair of needle-nosed pliers.

“You ready? Hold still.”

Alice pulls out the splinter.

“There you go.”

Ellie, with her finger in her mouth, takes a moment to survey the workshop.

“What are you doing?”

“I’m moving in.”

“You’re gonna stay out here?”

“Yeah.”

“Alone?”

“Yeah.”

“All the time?”

“No, I’ll shower and eat and change inside.”

“You’re gonna
sleep
out here?”

“I was thinking—”

“Every night?”

“Well—”

“You’re
leaving
me?”

“No, Ellie—”

“How can you do that?”

“You could stay out here with me sometimes.”

“No, I couldn’t.”

“It’ll be fun.”

“No, it won’t.”

“It’ll be like camping.”

“You and Daddy are the only ones who like camping. I
hate
camping.”

Ellie looks at Alice for a long moment.

“What about Mom?”

“What about her?”

“Who’s gonna stay with Mom?”

“Ellie, it’s just the backyard.”

Ellie starts to cry. Alice sits down on the air mattress, pulls Ellie down beside her, and puts her arm around her shoulder.

“Ellie . . . I—”

Ellie cries harder.

“It’s one hundred feet away. It’s—”

Ellie looks at Alice. Stares at her. Waits.

“Okay, so maybe I could just be out here sometimes.”

“Like when?”

“Like in the middle of the night when I can’t sleep. Or after school. When you’re at Janna’s.”