Alice Fantastic (18 page)

“Are you sure?” I inexplicably asked.

“Yes, Mom.” She gave me a dirty look.

“Um, but haven't you been with a … uh … woman?”

“Yes. But before Ava I was with Billy Rotten. Well, for exactly one night.”

“You got pregnant from a one-night stand?” I asked, aghast. “You made love with a stranger without a condom?”

“Mom.”

“I'm sorry, Elo, I'm just … well, I'm happy. Of course. Um … You are … you are going to keep the baby?”

“Yes, Mom. With Ava.”

“You're going to be lesbian parents? Jesus.” I closed the toilet seat and sat down on the lid.

“Mom, are you okay?”

“Well,” I said carefully, “I've taken three pain pills so my head is swimming. My previously heterosexual daughter is suddenly a lesbian but having a baby by a one-night stand. And I'm going to be a grandmother. Except I'll be dead by the time the baby is born, so technically I will not have been a grandmother to anything more than a fetus.”

“Mom, please don't say that.”

Eloise knelt before me and made the kinds of cooing sounds I hadn't heard from her since she was a baby.

“But Eloise, I told you. I have maybe a month left. Any day now I won't be able to get out of bed. I'm not going to see my grandchild. But the notion that you are having a baby is a very beautiful one.”

I cupped my daughter's face in my hands. She was crying. I didn't want to start. It would make my face hurt and would tire me even more.

“Come on,” I said, standing up, “let's try to walk some dogs.”

I draped my arm around Eloise's shoulders. She went into the guest room to find her sneakers and I headed into the bedroom to put on baggy shorts.

I let Alice drive the van. I sat in the passenger seat and Eloise was in the back, tending to the dogs. We had brought all but the infirm ones for a total of eleven. They were a little boisterous.

I had asked Eloise if she wanted to stop by her girlfriend's on the way, see if Ava wanted to join us.

“No, Mom, you're not turning this into a social occasion, this is a family walk and though I hope Ava is becoming family, she isn't yet. So thank you, but no.”

I was pleased. I wanted my girls and my dogs to myself but hadn't wanted Eloise to think I was shutting Ava out, particularly when we were passing right by her house.

As Alice piloted the van into the dirt lot at the Rabbit Hole trailhead, I felt a wave of nausea. I tried to will it away but I must have looked awful.

“Mom, what's wrong?” Alice asked.

“Just a little nauseous, it'll pass,” I said.

Alice looked at me levelly for a moment. “Between you and Eloise, we need a vomitorium.”

It made me laugh and gave me energy. I got out of the van. I wobbled a little, then took the leashes off Ira, Harvey, and Carlos, as my daughters wrangled the rest of the pack and we walked onto the rocky trail.

There had been rain the night before and the dense foliage and tall trees were bursting green. The stones of the rocky path were still wet and, between their slickness and the fuzziness from the pain pills, I had to think about where I put my feet.

We were silent until we reached the first creek crossing. There, we liberated all the dogs except Rosemary and Lucy, the Ibizan hound.

As I picked my way from rock to rock through the creek, the dogs ran and splashed and Harvey, in his exuberance, knocked Carlos into the water. The Chihuahua scrabbled then clung to a rock until Alice reached down and scooped him out, depositing him on the other side of the creek. Harvey, who seemed to actually realize what he'd done, stood by looking concerned, then licked the beleaguered Carlos once he was back on terra firma.

“So,” I asked, as we walked up a slight incline, the dogs bounding and foraging for frogs and chipmunks, “what about these dogs?”

“What?” said Alice.

“They won't all have homes before I'm dead.”

“Oh, Mom, please stop talking like that,” Alice said.

“No, Al,” Eloise came to my defense, “she's right. Denial is not helpful. Mom is going to die. These dogs need a caretaker. Ava and I can take three or four, but not all.”

“You can?” I asked Eloise.

“Yes. Ava and I talked about it. The dog we rescued, Ron, is lonely. I'll be hanging around the house being pregnant and making stuffed animals. I may as well try to find homes for some of the dogs.”

“So that's it?” You and Ava are just going to shack up and be domestic and have babies?” Alice said.

“One baby,” Eloise replied. “Just one. No one has knocked Ava up yet. But yes. We're going to shack up and be domestic, Alice.”

Alice actually stopped walking and stared at her sister. I could see how incomprehensible this was to my untamable eldest.

“Wow,” said Alice.

It was possible there was a hint of envy in her voice. But it was likely just wishful thinking on my part. I didn't want my daughter to end up alone against her wishes. She liked being alone now, while she was still vibrant and could pick and choose bed mates as the urge struck her, but I wasn't sure how she'd feel twenty years down the line when her habitual solitude might become crippling and hard to shake.

“I want to help with the dogs too,” Alice said after she'd paused long enough to process the concept of her little sister settling down.

“Thank you, Alice,” I said, “maybe you could take Timber and Lucy—or whoever you think you might be able to find a home for.”

“Whoever Eloise doesn't take.”

“It'll be quite a crowd in your apartment,” I said.

“I was hoping to stay at your place until all the dogs are sorted out.”

“You? In the country for what could be months?”

“Is that really so shocking?”

“Yes,” I said.

Eloise echoed the sentiment.

Alice shrugged. “I like it up here.”

“But what about the track?”

“I can get by with computer and TV for a while. Plenty of handicappers never even go to the track.”

“Well,” I said slowly, “you girls are getting the house anyway, it would make me happy if one of you lived in it, at least for a little while. I've loved that house.”

Both my daughters nodded but neither one said anything. As if by silent agreement, we all three seemed to focus entirely on the dogs, on their grace and energy, on Harvey's caramel coat gleaming under the bits of sun that reached through the trees, on Lucy's beautiful, loping gait, on their willingness to be happy and uncomplicated.

We reached the place where the trail narrows and dips down into a little ravine choked with tree roots. Just as I put my right foot down to purchase, Harvey knocked into me and I tripped and went down into the ravine.

Everything turned black.

11. ALICE

M
y mother had fallen into the ravine and was lying on her side, unconscious. I felt my mouth hanging open but the rest of me was frozen.

I finally registered that my sister was screaming at me. My eyes came into focus and I saw that Eloise was squatting down by our mother, whose face was turned toward the dirt. There was a gash on Mom's temple where she must have hit a rock as she fell.

“Is she … is she … ?”

“No, she's not dead,” my sister said impatiently, “but she's unconscious. I don't know what to do.”

Eloise looked up at me with huge, scared eyes. I was the big sister. I was supposed to be capable. But I was frozen.

The dogs were milling around and several had come over to sniff at our felled mother, forcing Eloise to shoo them away.

“Alice, help me.” There were tears in her eyes.

I reached for the phone in the pocket of my pants.

“You won't get a signal here,” Eloise said impatiently.

“So what do we do?”

“I think we should carry her back to the van and then take her to Ava's.”

“Carry her? But you're not supposed to move someone who has fallen.”

“She hasn't broken her neck, Alice.”

“Do we know that for a fact? When jockeys fall on the track, they put them on a stretcher just in case.”

“Can you refrain from comparing everything to horse racing? Our mother is dying.”

“Okay, we'll carry her.”

Our mother, who'd never weighed more than 110 pounds, weighed even less now. I lifted her upper body, cradling her head in the crook of my elbow, while my diminutive sister carried her inert legs. The dogs were confused and concerned; Harvey licked Mom's face, upsetting Eloise.

“No, Harvey, no!” she said.

The caramel-colored dog looked sheepish and put his head down.

We made very slow progress like that, hauling our mother along the narrow, rocky trail while trying to wrangle the dogs, all of whom we'd had to unleash. I kept imagining Rosemary taking off into the woods and Mom coming back to consciousness to find we'd lost her. But the dogs, their supremely honed instinct alerting them that all was not well with the humans, stayed close.

Eloise and I had to stop four times to rearrange Mom's weight. Around us, the woods seemed to have grown darker, the beautiful trail now ominous, as if harboring dangerous forest beasts who could smell our mother's weakness.

We had a particularly perilous creek crossing where I was sure we were going to drop our dying, unconscious mother into the rushing water. I almost told Elo about this nearly comical image I kept having, but she would not have gotten it, has never understood my macabre sense of humor and how holding onto a mental image of dropping my dying mother into a creek was somehow making it all slightly bearable.

We finally reached the trailhead parking lot and had to put Mom down on the ground while opening up the back of the van. Again, the dogs swarmed and busied themselves, trying to figure out how they could help with this unusual and worrisome procedure.

When we reached Ava's driveway, Eloise hopped out and unlatched the gate. Mom had told me that before in stalling the gate, Ava had all sorts of unwelcome drop-bys from the many locals who knew she lived there.

Eloise got back in and we drove up, got Mom out, and carried her to the front door where Ava, who must have heard us pull up, came out of the house.

“What happened?” was all she could manage as she froze there in the doorway.

Eloise and I carried our mother in, and just as we were lowering her onto the living room rug, she made a startled sound and her eyes focused on me.

“Oh?” she said.

“Are you okay, Mom?” I asked.

She suddenly sat bolt upright and I saw Eloise wince.

“Mom, careful, you fell on the trail, you hit your head,” Eloise said. “Ava, call an ambulance.”

“No!” our mother actually screamed. “Please, no. I'm fine.”

My sister and I stared at her. There was blood crusted on the side of her face and she looked tinier than ever.

“Mom, please.” Eloise was squatting down at her side. “You were unconscious, that means concussion, you need to be seen by someone.”

“Eloise, I'm dying,” Mom sounded exasperated, “what does a knock on the head matter?”

“I have a friend,” Ava inserted, “Paul, he's a physician, lives nearby. I'm sure he'd come.”

I looked over at the tall, pretty woman. I imagined she was the type who could get any man to go anywhere anytime. It wasn't till about age thirty that I discovered I could too, that this magical power isn't the exclusive domain of the achingly beautiful.

“How about that, Mom?” I said. “Can you at least let Ava's doctor friend look at you?”

She rolled her eyes, then gave a little shrug. “Okay.”

Ava picked up a cordless phone off an end table and dialed from memory. There was a brief conversation and, after hanging up, Ava told us her friend would be over soon.

“He lives in Hurley,” she said apologetically, “it's going to take him a few minutes to get here.”

“Thank you, Ava,” Mom said.

Eloise was still squatting by Mom's side. The dogs were milling all around and, I was sure, were about to break all sorts of valuable baubles, though to her credit, Ava didn't seem to have any ostentatious displays of wealth and fame lying around.

A few minutes passed with Mom growing increasingly coherent. Eloise had called Joe and he was on his way.

“By the way,” Ava said, looking over at me from where she'd perched on the arm of a beautiful, deep-red couch, “it's nice to see you again, Alice.”

“Likewise,” I smiled at her. She really seemed all right. Like someone I could approve of for my baby sister. Though I was still thoroughly flabbergasted by Eloise suddenly turning gay and having a baby, I suppose I was glad she was doing these things with a ravishing movie star.

Eloise looked from me to Ava and glowered, like we were having social hour while Mom was sitting on a rug bleeding and, ultimately, dying.

At the risk of invoking Eloise's wrath, I suggested making tea and Ava and I went into her lovely kitchen to put the kettle on. I didn't know what to say to her and she seemed stumped about making conversation with me too.

“So,” I finally said, “how did you and Eloise meet?” I knew the answer but didn't know how else to make small talk with the woman since I didn't feel like discussing my mother bleeding on her rug in the other room.

Ava told me, in lavish prose, about meeting my mother on the Rabbit Hole trail and then meeting Eloise shortly thereafter and how my sister took her breath away.

“I'm not fond of clichés but it truly was love at first sight,” said the movie star.

“Yeah,” I shrugged, “I've had that. I mean, maybe not love, but an instant and deep attraction.”

“With your jailbird lover?” Ava said with a sly smile.

“Oh, you know about that, huh?”

“Yeah. I hope that's okay.” She suddenly looked worried.

“It's fine. I'm not guarded about my personal life. But Eloise might make me sound like more of a harlot than I am.”

Ava laughed, showing a row of beautiful, pearly teeth.

“But yes. I did have an instant attraction with my jailbird. I thought it would evaporate approximately thirty minutes after it first manifested, but there's something about him that gets to me.”

“Oh?” Ava said, looking genuinely interested.

“It's disarming when people are simple. And I don't mean dumb. But he's a simple man with simple desires.”

“I've had some of those.”

For a minute, I glimpsed the true heartbreaking she-beast Ava must be, the beast that was in abeyance now that she was in love with my sister.

“What about the asshole?” Ava asked then.

“The asshole? You mean Billy Rotten, the baby father?” Ava nodded.

“What about him?” I knew that Eloise had decided to give up trying to contact the jerk. Eloise hadn't asked me if I'd heard from him but I suppose her girlfriend wanted to know.

“What's your status with him?” she asked.

“There isn't any status. I haven't heard from him and I certainly don't intend to sleep with the guy who knocked up my sister, if that's what you're asking.”

“It was.”

I liked her forthrightness. She was, in the parlance of some of my racetrack acquaintances, a brassy broad.

The tea water was boiling and Ava had gotten four cups out.

“Should your mother drink tea?”

The question made me think of my mother in the dotage she would never have, as an octogenarian Eloise and I would have had to make basic decisions for, such as whether or not she should drink tea, when she should be bathed, what specialists she should see. I had never really thought about these things, particularly in light of the fact that Mom and I are so close in age. But for the first time, I realized that it would never come to that. My mother would not need her diaper changed, would not need me to oversee a retinue of doctors or consider nursing homes.

Having no idea if tea was recommended under the circumstances, I shrugged at Ava, who took it upon herself to brew a cup for Mom.

We'd all, including Mom, who had progressed to sitting on the couch now, started sipping our tea when Paul, the doctor, arrived.

He was of medium height and medium build, balding but pleasant looking with little round glasses and an old-fashioned doctor's bag. Ava engulfed him in a hug and we all thanked him for coming. Mom, who stared at him menacingly for a few seconds, warmed to him quickly. He took her into the guest room to examine her. Eloise and Ava and I tried to make small talk; I asked them about Ron, their recently adopted dog. Ava got Ron to come over and demonstrate his new trick of rolling over on his back and exposing himself. It made me think of all the times I had questioned the canine species' eagerness to do even the most absurd things we humans dreamt up to ask of them. I would have made a terrible dog.

Most of Mom's dogs had finished their explorations of Ava's house and had come back to the living room and we were all waiting there, quiet and vaguely desperate, when Mom and Paul emerged from the guest room.

“She'll be all right,” Paul announced. “Under normal circumstances I'd want her admitted into the hospital. But I understand her reticence. Just please call me if anything strange happens over the next twelve hours.”

“Strange?” said my mother. “Strange things always happen to me. In fact, I can promise you something strange will happen to me in the next twelve hours,” she added with pride.

Paul smiled and Eloise looked aghast once more. My poor sister, who has never been as emotionally shut down as me, was having a very hard time with everything and obviously thought we were all being way too lighthearted.

Ava accompanied Paul to the door, looping her arm through his and speaking to him softly. I saw Eloise shoot her a look. I entertained the idea of having a talk with my sister, of explaining to her that this would all be easier if she weren't so emotionally visceral about everything. But I realized Eloise would just accuse me of being a Neanderthal.

Mom's paramour pulled up just as Paul was getting into his car. I saw Ava introduce the two men, saw them speaking there under the glorious huge willow tree in front of Ava's house.

After Paul had gotten into his car and driven away, Joe came inside. He looked hollow and sad and I felt for him. He seemed to want and need to hover over Mom, so I told him he ought to take her home to his place and I would wrangle all the dogs back to Mom's. Both Joe and Mom looked at me gratefully and I felt strange in my unaccustomed role as dutiful, helpful daughter.

Ava and Eloise helped me usher all the animals back into the van.

“I'll be back at Mom's in a half hour or so,” Eloise told me. I hadn't wanted to ask. Had wanted to leave her the option of staying behind with her girlfriend, but I was glad she was coming back to Mom's. I realized, for one of the first times in my life, that I didn't want to be alone.

As I got into the van and started the engine, I looked out at my little sister standing next to her ravishing girlfriend and felt a pang of envy. Eloise, in surrendering to loving Ava, was experiencing something foreign to me.

I pointed the van toward the road.

I needed to get groceries so I drove through town rather than taking the shorter way back to Mom's.

Town was packed, car traffic crawling along and the peculiar breed of dowdy white tourists that Woodstock attracts overflowing from the narrow sidewalks as they ambled past candle shops and dusty hippie stores whose survival is a mystery. Just past the village green, traffic was at a standstill as dozens of pedestrians slowly crossed the street. I looked around, trying to fathom what these people were doing here, and was startled by a familiar male figure. At first, it didn't quite register. The guy was holding hands with a woman in a green sundress who in turn was holding the hand of a little boy.

“Fuck,” I said aloud when it sank in that it was William. Billy Rotten.

My first instinct was to jump out of the van, run up to him, and punch him in the mouth. A horn honked behind me and I drove forward, pulling off Tinker Street into the parking lot behind the hardware store. I shoved the van into a narrow space and got out of the vehicle as the dogs looked on expectantly.

“Stay,” I said, “all of you stay.”

I strode onto Tinker Street and literally came face to face with Billy and his wife and child.

His jaw went slack and his body stiffened visibly.

“Alice, hi.”

“Hello,” I snarled. I looked meaningfully at the woman at his side, then at the child. I didn't want to scar the child for life so I wasn't going to get too carried away. At least, I hoped I wasn't.