Alice Fantastic (15 page)

“Gumdrop?” She looked like she was going to pass out.

“What?” I asked. “What's wrong?”

“His name is William? As in Billy?”

“Not Billy. Just William.”

“Sometimes he calls himself Billy. Must just depend which sister he's fucking.”

“What?”

“Billy Rotten is an architect. I gave him Turbo, the brown pit bull. He called me not long ago, after not making contact for weeks, to tell me how well the dog was doing. He had changed her name to Gumdrop.”

We had both stopped walking.

I felt the blood draining from my extremities. Eloise was no longer that peaceful-seeming being of a few minutes ago. Her face was twisted up and her eyes looked black.

“William is Billy Rotten?” I said dumbly.

“Evidently.” Eloise looked furious.

“You know that I had no idea, right? He was just some guy I met in the park.”

“He was just some guy I met in the park too. I guess that's his M.O.,” Eloise said bitterly.

“But, Elo, you're with Ava now, do you really care?”

“Of course I care. He broke my heart and fucked my sister.”

“I don't think he knows I'm your sister.” I said it soothingly even though I was beginning to get angry with her. After all, I was the one actively sleeping with the guy. I was the one who had to put everything about William into a new context, a context that included his being intimate with my baby sister. I felt betrayed. By William but, somehow, by Eloise too. I knew this wasn't logical and was probably also exactly what she was feeling. But there it was.

We had started moving again though it wasn't the companionable walk we'd embarked on a few minutes earlier. The woods seemed darker, the dogs did not look quite as carefree, and Eloise wasn't walking as lightly on her bare feet. Her limp was pronounced now.

She cursed when she stepped on something sharp, then, just as we came to the second creek crossing, announced she was turning back.

“You're not actually angry with me, Eloise, are you?” She was. But by asking, I thought maybe I could point to the ridiculousness of such a stance.

She didn't even dignify me with an answer. She shrugged and started walking the other way.

“Elo, come on, what about Mom? We have to talk,” I called after her.

She turned back around. “Talk to someone else, I'm sick of your shit.”

I stood there, stunned under a canopy of beautiful trees.

I'd walked all the dogs and given medicine to the ones that needed it. I had tried calling Eloise's cell phone but it went straight to voicemail. I considered calling William but didn't even know where to begin. What would I ask? Why did you leave? Why did you fuck my sister and leave her too?

I toyed with the idea of taking some of Mom's pills. Knocking myself out for a day or two until I could forget that this day had ever happened. But there were the dogs to deal with. And I don't like losing time the way drug addicts do. I don't mind a buzz sometimes, but total annihilation? I never really did understand that.

I was at a loss. I skulked into the living room, turned on the TV and found TVG, the racing channel, among the hundreds of channels Mom gets through her satellite dish. I hadn't even planned on wagering, had expected to spend the day with William, but with the afternoon's jaws yawning wide, the only sensible thing to was throw myself head-first into horses. I put my laptop on the coffee table and pulled up one of my online wagering accounts; in a matter of moments, I was getting lost in the numbers. There was horseflesh on the TV, live odds and past performances from the Daily Racing Form on my computer screen. I was at peace. Or, at least, I was doing what usually puts me at peace. After hitting two lucrative trifectas, I signed onto my Gmail account. Nothing good. Nothing from William. Nothing from Eloise, and, of course, nothing from Clayton. I didn't know what the Rikers Island e-mail policy might be but Clayton had never been interested in computers, email, or any form of non-tactile communication anyway.

I went back to wagering, managing to hit the $1,265 late Pick 4 at Belmont. I hadn't really done my homework so it was mostly dumb luck. I hate dumb luck. It never makes me feel better.

I walked the dogs again. Four at a time, in shifts, along Upper Byrdcliffe Road and part of the way up the Mt. Guardian trail. By the time I'd walked and fed all fifteen dogs, it was dark out and I felt somberness creeping up on me. They say old people and crazy people get disjointed when darkness falls. I am probably both at this point.

I wanted to call someone, but who? Arthur was one of the few people I knew who was both in the country and speaking to me. But I didn't feel like talking about Todd Pletcher—trained horses or teenage girls. So I didn't call him.

I pictured my mother. Tried to put myself inside her head, to figure out what exactly she was up to with the pills, the man, the vacation. I remembered Eloise and I meeting her outside a church down on Route 212 where she attended Narcotics Anonymous. I glanced up at the clock on the wall. It was close to 8 p.m. I could go loiter outside the church where I might recognize some of Mom's NA friends as they drifted out of the meeting. I could accost one of them, see if they knew what my mother was up to. It was probably some sort of infraction of their traditions to tell an outsider what was going on with one of their members, but it's not like I was a law enforcement officer. I had a right to know.

I arranged Mom's dogs in various rooms throughout the house then leashed Candy and put her in the backseat of my mother's Honda. My little mutt sat down and regally lifted her muzzle in the air.

As I pulled into the church parking lot, people were emerging. Most of the men had strange facial hair and the women looked like biker chicks. They were congregating in little groups, some smoking, some standing near motorcycles. They looked like a bunch of thugs. Mom always says the people in AA are more upstanding but proportionally duller. So she goes to NA.

I noticed a familiar-looking girl who was wearing sunglasses even though the sun was almost gone. I remembered Mom talking to her though her name wasn't coming to me. As I got out of the car, telling Candy to stay put, the tall, willowy girl detached herself from the people she'd been chatting with and started heading toward a gold-colored Subaru.

“Hey,” I said, feeling like some sort of weirdo.

The girl frowned and stopped in her tracks.

“I'm Kim Hunter's daughter. Alice. I think I met you once.”

“Oh,” the girl said. “Right.” She was very pretty with sharp cheekbones and fawn-colored hair. She was wearing a printed dress and ballet slippers.

“Could I talk to you for a second? I just want to ask you something about my mother.”

The girl removed her sunglasses and leveled her gaze at me. Her eyes were a piercing blue.

“What's up?” she asked.

“I found pills in my mom's medicine chest.” I decided it was probably best to get straight to the point.

“Oh?” she said cautiously.

“Painkillers. A lot of them.”

“And?”

“And I'm wondering if my mom is on a relapse. She's been behaving erratically. My sister and I are worried.”

Bringing Eloise into it seemed to legitimize the whole thing somehow.

“What are you doing right now?” the tall girl asked. “Doing?”

“I mean, do you want to go to town and grab a coffee? We can talk.”

My heart sank since surely her wanting to talk to me over coffee signaled something significant to talk
about
.

“Sure, okay.”

“I'm Ida,” she said, extending a hand to shake.
Ida
? I thought. I would have imagined her to be an Isabelle or at the very least a Julia, but never an Ida.

We agreed to meet at Joshua's, a café in town, and I got back into the Honda where Candy greeted me as if I'd been gone for weeks. I returned the effusive greetings then put the car in drive.

Town was packed even though it was a weekday. It was June now and all the city people had opened up their summer houses and were swelling the tiny local economy with their needs for lawn-care products, organic foods, and ice cream. The municipal parking lot was full but I crammed the Honda into a dubious spot near a fire lane. I found some dog treats in my pocket, cracked the windows, and told Candy I'd be back soon.

Ida was already there in the café, standing at the counter ordering a coffee. I ordered one too and we made our way to a table.

“I'm up here watching my mom's dogs while she's on vacation,” I explained.

“I know, it's a small town.”

“Oh,” I said, wondering what else she knew.

“Yes, I know about your sister and Ava Larkin too.”

“You do?” I felt myself screwing my face up and immediately tried to stop. Ida had an unlined, untroubled face, the kind that made someone like me self-conscious.

“Yes. Well, for one, your mom and I are friends. But I'd probably know anyway. Not that many of the locals ever actually see Ava Larkin, but her landscaper apparently saw her making out with Eloise, who he'd met once through your mom. As a result, the entire town knows.” Ida smiled a little wistfully. “I never thought I'd like this kind of thing, this small-town thing. But I do. I love it.”

“You came from the city?”

She nodded and took a huge, unladylike gulp of her coffee. There's nothing more wonderful than an elegant woman slugging a beverage back like a redneck.

“I'm from the South but I started modeling when I was fifteen so I moved to Manhattan. I had a good run and a severe heroin problem … I know. Heroin-addict model. Boring.”

I laughed.

“I lost most of my teeth by age twenty-eight and by thirty I was living on people's couches with all my possessions in a black garbage bag. But I still wore cute little Prada dresses. Well,
one
cute little Prada dress. It probably didn't smell very good.”

She flashed a smile. She had plenty of teeth.

“Fake,” she said, flicking a fingernail against a front tooth. “Somewhere in there I managed to fall in love. In spite of the drugs and the insanity. I married my husband five years ago and went into NA. We bought a house up here and never looked back. Now I'm forty and I garden and work at the Historical Society and fuck my husband and like it.” She grinned.

She started asking me about myself. I wanted to know about my mother but didn't want to be rude, and anyway, it seemed like Ida was warming herself up for it, evaluating me, deciding whether or not she could trust me. I told her about my life. She cocked an eyebrow at my occupation as most people in twelve-step programs do. I told her about Clayton and even about William and the fact that he'd slept with both Eloise and me.

“Shit,” Ida whistled through her teeth. “That's messy.”

“Yeah,” I shrugged, “it is.”

“But you want to know what's up with your mom.”

“Yes. It really freaked me out finding all those pain pills.”

“The only reason I'm going to tell you this is that I've actually seriously considered tracking down your number and calling you to tell you,” Ida said.

I braced myself for the details. How Mom had been popping pills for the last three years but none of us had noticed.

“When you showed up outside the meeting, it seemed like a sign I should tell you. Even though I don't believe in signs.”

I nodded, waiting for her to get on with it.

“Your mom has cancer.”

9. ELOISE

I
was sitting on a tree stump, guzzling Pepsi from a plastic quart bottle as I watched Ava wielding a chainsaw. She was wearing cut-offs, a white tank top, work gloves, and protective goggles. It was possibly the sexiest sight I'd ever seen in my life. Sexy enough to momentarily take my mind off my wretched sister Alice who I'd been mentally cursing for thirty-six straight hours since running into her on the trail and finding out that she was sleeping with Billy Rotten. I wasn't sure who I felt more vehemently toward, Billy or my sister, who'd had the audacity to leave me seven phone messages since, all of which I'd deleted immediately.

“What are you looking at?” Ava had stopped chainsawing and noticed that I was staring at her.

“You,” I said. “Want some?” I proffered the Pepsi.

“Get that vile swill away from me. Why are you putting that stuff in your beautiful body?”

“I turn to it when life throws me a curve ball.”

“What curve ball?” She'd pulled the goggles up onto her forehead and was squinting at me. Her long skinny arms were shiny with sweat, strands of blond hair were glued to her cheeks.

“My sister,” I said. I had mentioned running into and arguing with Alice but I hadn't told Ava what we'd had words about.

“What did your sister do?”

“She's seeing that guy I was with right before I met you.”

“The late trapeze instructor?”

“No, Billy Rotten.”

“Who is Billy Rotten?”

“I had a one-night stand with him. But a significant one-night stand.”

Ava cocked an eyebrow.

“I really liked him but I couldn't bring myself to follow through with him. It was too soon after Indio's death. Or something. Yet Billy haunted me. Until I met you and forgot all about him. Still, it's not like I welcome the news of my sister sleeping with him.”

“You introduced them to each other? And then Alice stole him?”

“No.” I shook my head and explained the situation. How it was entirely possible that Billy didn't even know Alice was my sister and that it was extremely unlikely Alice realized that her William was my Billy.

“So why are you mad at her?” Ava frowned.

“I'm not sure,” I admitted. “I don't even know why I got so bent out of shape about Billy in the first place.”

“Are you in love with him?” Ava put a hand on her hip. She didn't have much in the way of hips, had the classic fashion-model figure of a twelve-year-old boy, but even so, she looked stern with that hand on that hip.

“Of course not.”

“So why exactly are you mad at your sister?”

“She's always doing the same things I do, only better. Plus, Mom asked her to dog sit, not me. Alice is just better at everything.”

Ava had both hands on her hips now and was frowning.

“Eloise,” she said, “your mother couldn't ask you to dog sit because you were in Canada with me. Also, I don't really understand the nature of big sister/little sister competitiveness since I only have a little brother, but from what you've told me in the past, your sister loves you. Maybe it's best to remember that.”

I looked at my girlfriend, at her lovely, smooth, earnest face. I felt like a jackass.

“Would you stop being so magnanimous? Stop giving me hope for the human race.”

Ava laughed then pulled her goggles back over her eyes and picked up the chainsaw.

“And my mom,” I added, before she turned the machine back on, “Alice thinks she's fallen off the wagon. Alice found pills.”

Ava put the chainsaw down and pulled the goggles back up.

“When were you going to tell me this?”

“I had to mull it over awhile first.”

Ava sighed, took off her work gloves, came over, and put an arm around me.

“Darling, you have to learn to tell me everything or I will fear for the longevity of our love.”

“Okay,” I nodded dumbly.

I told her about the pills and some of the details of mom's druggie past. Details I had glossed over in light of the fact that my mother is now Ava's employee.

After I'd gone on for several minutes, Ava cut in: “Your mom is innocent until proven guilty of all this. What's more, she may have a legitimate need for the pain pills. I would suggest talking it over with her and not jumping to horrific conclusions.”

“Stop being so clear-headed,” I said.

“Go call your sister and make nice and let me get this wood cut.” She pulled the goggles down once more.

I kissed her before she picked the chainsaw back up. Her goggles bumped my forehead.

“Go on,” she said, reaching around to pat me on the ass, “I've got to get this done.”

I started to walk away then paused, looking back at her. She'd turned the chainsaw on and was grimacing as she attacked an oversized log. She had, she'd told me, learned to use a chainsaw for some movie she'd been in ten years earlier. It was amazing to me that actors learned useful life skills for the sake of make-believe.

I headed into the house where I was effusively greeted by Ron, the shepherd mix Ava and I had adopted in Toronto.

“Shhhh,” I said, turning my back to him so he couldn't jump on me. He was an intelligent and willing dog but he hadn't mastered house manners just yet. Ava and I had found him in a parking lot behind the fancy hotel where we'd been staying during her shoot. Without too much coaxing, he followed us back inside the hotel and the elevator operator said not one word as we ascended to the penthouse.

Later on, after getting a production assistant to go out and find a leash and collar for the dog, who Ava promptly named Ron after a screenwriter friend of hers, Ava agreed to let me call up various local shelters and rescue organizations to alert them about the found blond shepherd mix. Since Ron was vastly underweight and hadn't had a nail trim or a brushing in many months, it seemed unlikely he was someone's beloved lost pet. Twenty-four hours later, when no one came looking for him, Ava declared that we would take him home to Woodstock where he would become our dog.

Ron was still trying to jump up on me.

“Shhhh,” I said again, standing with my arms loose at my sides, not looking him in the eyes.

He circled me a few times and then, since that wasn't yielding any results, sat and looked at me expectantly.

“Good boy.” I patted the top of his silky head. The dog had been starved and abandoned but he wasn't stupid.

Ron followed as I went into the kitchen where I'd left my cell phone. I opened it up and saw that Alice had called twice more. I dialed Mom's number. The machine came on telling me my mother was away for another five days.

“Alice,” I spoke into the machine, “this is Eloise.”

“Finally,” she said, picking up.

I toyed with the idea of hanging up. What kind of greeting was that? Why was she always so abrupt?

“Why are you always so abrupt?” I asked. “Mom has cancer.”

“That's not funny, Alice, don't joke about things like that.”

“I'm not. I talked to one of Mom's NA friends. Ida, the friend, told me. She didn't think it was right that Mom wasn't telling anyone.”

“You're not serious.”

“Eloise, I may be fucked up but I'm not
that
fucked up. Our mother has cancer of the esophagus. Late-stage cancer. She's going to die. Soon.”

“No,” I said.

“Yes.”

“No,” I said again.

“Yes, Eloise, yes.”

I tried to absorb the information. My head was spinning and I felt nauseous. I found myself digging my hand into the fur on Ron's back. “We have to call her,” I said.

“No. Ida made me promise not to talk to her about this until she'd come back from the vacation.”

“That's ridiculous. Why?”

“It's probably the last vacation she'll take. She doesn't need her daughters calling her in hysterics.”

“Alice, she failed to tell us she's dying, surely that merits a phone call.”

“No, Eloise. It's fucked up that she didn't tell us, but it's even more fucked up that she's dying. I can't even imagine what she's gone through so I definitely cannot imagine how she'd have reached a decision not to tell us. But we're not calling her. Let her be.”

I said nothing. I smoothed Ron's fur. Still holding the phone, I got down off the couch where I'd been sitting and moved closer to Ron, who was on the floor. He licked my nose.

“Are you there, Elo?”

“I am.”

“Why don't I come by?”

“Come by?”

“Come by and see you. Or you come here. We're sisters. We should be together. I wouldn't have told you this over the phone if I thought you'd agree to see me without hearing it first.”

“I'm sorry I've been an ass,” I said. “Yes, come by. Or do you want me to come there?”

“I have to get some dogs out anyway. I'll take them down the trail by Ava's then stop by.”

“I can walk with you, if you don't mind.”

“That would be nice,” said Alice. “I'll come pick you up? Twenty minutes?”

“Yes.” I hung the phone up gingerly, as if putting it down with any force might drive nails into my mother's coffin.

I have known since I first started knowing things that there was a good chance I would one day see my mother die, but considering that she's only twenty-four years my senior, I didn't think it would happen until I was verging on old myself.

I wanted to get up off the floor but I couldn't. Ron sat at my side, still, contented. I don't know if he sensed my heartbreak the way certain service dogs sense an oncoming epileptic fit. Maybe he did. Whatever the case, having his fur-covered body next to me was soothing.

I'm not sure how long I was there, on the floor, next to the dog, lost in terrible thoughts, but I was snapped out of when Ron started barking and ran to the door.

Alice had arrived. She looked thin and had enormous dark circles under her eyes.

“Hi,” she said. For a moment she stood there, almost appearing to weave in the doorway, then took a step closer and threw her arms around me.

For once, I didn't stiffen. We're not a family of huggers. Well, Mom has always been a hugger, became even more of one once she went into Narcotics Anonymous, but Alice and I have always been awkward about physical displays of affection—with each other and most everyone else except people we're sleeping with. Mom has never understood it. Not only did she provide the world with two
black-hearted harlots,
as she calls us, but physically undemonstrative ones at that.

Alice and I were still hugging when Ava came striding toward the house. I pulled back from my sister's embrace.

Ava still had the goggles on top of her head and the work gloves on.

“This is my sister Alice,” I said, looking at my girlfriend over Alice's shoulder.

Alice turned around. “Hello,” she said, automatically extending her hand.

“So nice to finally meet you.” Ava threw her arms around her.

Ava is very much a hugger.

I could feel my sister's stiffness from where I was standing.

“Alice is here because our mother is sick,” I said robotically while Ava was still hugging my sister.

“Sick? What's wrong?” Ava finally let my sister go and frowned, looking from me to Alice.

“Cancer,” Alice said. “She's dying.”

“What?” Ava's face fell.

Alice told her. I heard the facts rattled off like a series of small blows. I sat down on the nearest chair. Put my head in my hands.

“Oh my god, baby,” I heard Ava say, and then she was kneeling down in front of me, putting her hands on my shoulders. She pulled me up off the chair and into an embrace. I let myself melt into her arms. I felt safer there. Momentarily forgot my sister. Then remembered, pulled back.

I told Ava that Alice and I were going for a walk down the trail. I saw questions forming in my girlfriend's mind but she thought better of asking them right then.

“Yes,” she nodded, “do.”

I brought Ron along. In spite of having only known the dog for two weeks, I already depended on his dogness. His solidness. I needed him.

Alice got Mom's dogs out of the van. Ron stood stoically letting the pit bull, the Lab mix, the Newfoundland, and the Ibizan hound sniff him, then he sniffed each of them in return.

As the dogs went through these formalities, Alice and I just stood there, mute and wounded.

We walked. Down Ava's long, snaking driveway, down the lovely magical Rabbit Hole trail. Neither of us said much. We were, for the first time in a long while, having a companionable, sisterly silence.

“Oh, Eloise.” Ava was cradling my face in her hands, looking at me with so much tenderness I thought I might fall over.

By the time Alice and I had come back from our walk, Ava had made sandwiches, but neither Alice nor I could eat. We sat, all three around the kitchen table, Alice and I watching Ava eat. Eventually, Alice had gone back to Mom's house, back to the dogs. The dogs. Alice and I hadn't even talked about what would happen to them.

“The dogs,” I heard myself murmuring, as Ava continued looking at me.

“The dogs?”

“I don't know what we'll do about them. If Mom only has months or maybe even weeks to live. Neither Alice nor I can accommodate so many dogs.”

“I'll take them in here.”

“What do you mean?”

“We'll take care of them. You and I.”

“But Ava,” I said, “you have another movie in three weeks.”

“I'll cancel it.”

“That's not necessary,” I said, though I was moved. “Let's talk about something else.” I pulled back and Ava's hands dropped away from my face.

“What?” Ava knitted her pretty eyebrows. “What do you mean?”

“My mother is dying. We've spent the afternoon talking about it. Let's not talk about it anymore. I can't.”