Emancipating Alice (18 page)

PART THREE: ALICE

Excerpt from Journal #24—09/12/1992:

Weird factoid: Frogs can actually change the color of parrots! I learned that secretions from a type of toxic frog, when applied over the spot of a plucked feather of a parrot will cause the new feather to grow back in a different color. It’s called tapirage.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

Friday, June 9th 2006

Bloomington, Illinois

Alice couldn’t concentrate. She’d had an unsettling feeling ever since the silver Mercedes the colored man had exited pulled up to the house, but George seemed to have it under control.

She continued working on her plants—plucking at unwanted ones, pruning the wanted ones—but her actions bordered on feverish. She was nervous, and she couldn’t understand why.

Once the stranger left, smiling and waving at her as she came to the front when she heard the car start, she knew she could do no more gardening until she knew what the visit had been about.

She looked over and saw George standing in the doorway of the front door, watching the car drive away with what looked like tears in his eyes and a slight smile. This was very strange to her to say the least; the visit had been significant.

She threw down the tools in her hands and started pulling off her gloves as she walked toward George.

“George, what was that about?”

He kept staring behind the car although it was no longer in sight, his smile slowly disappearing. Then he turned toward her. He blinked.

“Alice, you’d better come inside.”

His tone made Alice feel like she’d been summoned to the principal’s office.

Once they got into the house he said:

“Let’s sit down—you want some water? You were out there a while. It’s pretty warm outside; gotta hydrate.”

She refused to sit.

“George, just tell me what’s going on; I really don’t have a good feeling about this.”

His chuckle was almost sardonic.

“And with good reason,” he said.

Alice’s heart pounded.

“George, you’re gonna give me a heart attack here!”

He reached out and took her hand, sandwiching it in both of his as he liked to do so much.

“Alice, there’s no easy way to say this. That boy you saw there—he’s my son.”

Alice’s mind blanked out for a moment. She blinked.

“What do you mean ‘son’?”

She couldn’t comprehend it; he couldn’t have possibly meant biologically.

“His name’s Frederick—although he likes to be called Rick—and well, he should be about thirty-one now.”

Alice tried to jump-start her brain to do the math. Then she realized that Drew was the same age.

“George, are you trying to tell me...” she began as soon as her voice returned, “that you...”

“I’m sorry, Alice.” He tightened his grip on her hand. “It was a long time ago. I promise you, I did not know about him the entire time…”

Alice pulled her hand away.

“But you knew about me the whole time didn’t you? We were married you son-of-a-bitch!” She felt her chest heaving. “When did this happen? How?”

George looked away and appeared to be occupied by intense thoughts. He seemed to be filtering information, as if trying to decide how much to say. She shoved his shoulder to bring his attention back to her and resisted shoving it again.

“You tell me, George, tell me why you cheated on me! Wasn’t I everything for you, everything you wanted? Why did you do it? I gave up everything for you!”

George inhaled deeply.

His eyes looked so tortured that in any other circumstance Alice would have wanted to rest his head on her shoulder and comfort him; her heart would have bled for him. But right now, she wanted to make him bleed.

“Alice, I’m sorry—I can’t tell you the whole story...”

Alice almost choked on a laugh.

“Are you serious? You really don’t think you owe me the whole story? You better cough it up right now you asshole—you tell me what the hell happened.”

George seemed surprised at her and Alice wondered at his surprise. How could he possibly be shocked at anything she said or did at that moment? He had just sprung an illicit affair on her, topped off by a bastard child from the trysts—irrefutable proof of his infidelity. She felt mortified, betrayed, disgusted, angry.
Chagrined.

“Alice...” He still appeared to be fighting with himself. “Alice, it just happened.”

“Oh, it just happened? You two tripped onto each other, naked, and got stuck?”

“Alice, we weren’t having an affair. It was one time, and it wasn’t planned—I...I had feelings for her; she was a friend.”

Alice slapped him hard then, the force of it taking his face in the opposite direction of hers briefly, and she had to do everything in her power to stop herself from slapping his face to the other side, back and forth, over and over. She had to restrain herself from picking up the nearest object and hitting him with it. Had there been a deadly weapon around, she had no doubt she would have used it.

She could see the blur of her own eyelashes as her eyes narrowed. “Now why the hell am I not
surprised?”

Alice knew she had two options then: to give in to the emotions that would lead her to act like a crazed animal, or to stay as calm as possible, keep her hands and feet to herself, and figure out how to deal with this later.

She breathed deep then started pacing, no longer looking at him.

“Who is she, George?” she asked in a voice that sounded surprisingly soft to her own ears.

He shook his head.

“You don’t know her.”

“Did you work with her? Go to school with her? Please don’t tell me she was someone I met.”

“Alice, you’ve never seen her. I met her by chance.”

“Where?”

“In the city—in Chicago.”

Alice stopped pacing. And then it hit her like an anvil. Her mouth dropped.

“All those times you were working over the weekend...”

George seemed to sink into himself.

“Yes, sometimes I was visiting her,” he said quietly.

“So then what the hell is this bullshit about it just happening? About it not being an affair? You knew exactly what you were doing! Don’t you dare insult my intelligence you fucking jackass!”

George’s eyes rounded, no doubt once again surprised by her language.

“Alice, it was all in friendship—I didn’t realize my feelings for her had moved to the next level until it was too late!”

“Oh, you expect me to believe anything that comes out of your lying mouth now don’t you? I can’t believe you did this to me. You don’t know what I gave up! My whole life…just you…just you…”

She was assaulted by the loneliness and pain of her past, the entrapment and suffocation she’d felt. She thought of the others she’d wanted but denied herself in order to settle for George. The dreams she’d thrown away, despair and worthlessness her constant companions. The desecration of her spirit.

She died so that he could have life, and now, he left her no choice.

That night, as she lay in bed while George was on the couch in the family room it returned—the dream where she was running through a forest with someone on her tail. She could hear the shadowed entity breathing hard behind her as she ran, but for the first time, she rounded a tree and turned to face her pursuer. She realized she had an axe in her hand. But instead of attacking her pursuer, she turned away and started to cut down the trees. She chopped and chopped until trees were felled all over the forest, until the forest was no longer a forest but a field of felled trees. With each fallen tree the shadow-pursuer got lighter and lighter, but not to the point where she could make out who it was—it got to the point where the figure was so light and cloudy, it was hardly a human figure anymore. Lighter and cloudier it got until at last it disappeared. There were no vines this time, and even the felled trees disappeared until she was alone in the clearing with the axe.

***

Sometime in college, George had said to her: “If you ever leave me, I’d have to kill you.” He’d said it with a smile, as if he were joking, laughing at his own exaggeration of feeling and the extremity of decided action as a result of it, but it didn’t strike her as a joke at all. He might as well have added:
if I can’t have you nobody will
. That’s how the usual obsessive psychos felt wasn’t it? She was his property, free to do with or dispose of as he pleased.

Now, she was fifty six—and what did she have to show for it? Two kids with families of their own, no longer dependent on her. A beautiful garden full of home-grown flowers, vegetables, and spices—but of what worth was it really? Sure, folks appreciated the flowers, asked for a tomato or some basil every now and then but it wasn’t like she was selling it on a large or even a small scale. Sure it brought her joy to nurture…and perhaps that was enough—for that particular hobby at least. But whose point in life was to grow and personally enjoy a garden? Who would even remember her besides her immediate family? Who would have nice things to say about her after she was gone besides the husband who had feasted on her and the son she had pampered out of guilt?

She thought about what a most fitting epitaph for her would be: “Wife and mother (barely).”

Her story was unremarkable, her roles taken reluctantly, her happiness nonexistent. What was the point of it all?

As far as she saw it, the reason for all of her troubles was sitting quite happily in the living room, reading a newspaper. Of course he was happy. He had lived all of his dreams and then some. He had two family units—a legal one and an illegitimate one. He had a child with the woman he clearly had always loved. He had gone to see his mistress’s mother in the hospital and probably had a quickie with the mistress somewhere along the way. The four of them had probably taken family photos together, laughed at her together.

George had made the most of his own life and hers; she had given him everything. But now it was time to switch roles. She needed her life back, even if it meant taking his.

She had thought about killing him several times throughout their marriage—but for different reasons. Suspicion, however, would undoubtedly fall on her; she had opened up her mouth one too many times and made her discontent known. And she knew for a fact no one would try to cover for her; no one would give her the benefit of the doubt.

She couldn’t do it, couldn’t take the risk. If she was found out, he would have won in a way she could never forgive herself for: he would have made her imprisonment literal. That’s if she was lucky and didn’t get the death penalty. In any case, she would be put behind tangible bars. But even then she wondered if that would be preferable; she would at least be released from his presence.

If it wasn’t for Elaine and Drew, she might have carried out her desire but she didn’t want to crush her children—they were both so attached to him. Every time she thought seriously about it—saw herself with a pillow raised over his head in her mind’s eye, or slipping something into a drink, she found herself thinking about those bars, her children. The consequences. She had always been afraid of consequences.

The consequences no longer mattered. She had waited it out long enough, and now all she could think about was eliminating him from her life, the weed that had overrun her garden, killed all the plants that could have benefited her. George was a parasite she was tired of harboring.

She remembered what she had learned about sea slugs and how they defended themselves: some sea slugs used camouflage, blending into the background for defense, while others used aposematism, announcing their danger—their poisonous nature or bad taste—through vibrant colors. But the ones she found fascinating were the ones that used the defenses of others, usually animals they preyed on. Like the stinging cells of sea anemones and hydroids—the sea slug would store them in their own bodies and use them as if they were their own, like they’d been born with them.

Alice planned to use the defenses of another living organism as her own. Sure, she had many other options but it seemed most natural to utilize what was at her fingertips every day, being pruned, loved, admired. Her green thumb decided for her.

***

Tuesday, June 27th 2006

In honor of trying to get past his indiscretion and as a symbol of her promise to keep aloft their years and life together, Alice made George a special lunch; a meal more adventurous than usual, inspired by South Asia. One with lots of flavor and spice.

When Alice briefly excused herself to go upstairs, she knocked their room telephone off of its hook and moved it from its usual place so that if George were to try to make a call from downstairs, he would not be able to dial out.

Should he manage to make it upstairs, he would spend precious moments looking for it.

After the meal, she cleared off the dishes.

She was satisfied that George had eaten most of what she’d laid down in front of him—enough for her purposes anyway.

As she poured him another glass of water, he asked her to bring the latest newspaper to him—he liked reading at the table in the dining room.

She brought him the newspaper, and for good measure, the most recent political book he’d been reading; he would probably sit in that spot for a long time.

She placed the glass of water near him, then told him her plans—she just needed to make a quick stop at the market to pick up groceries for the evening and the next day. And she might stop to talk to Emily from her photography class, and who knew how long that would take.

“Don’t forget to bring my ice cream,” he had said. “The butterscotch one. Or the one with the hazelnut.”

She nodded.

“Is there anything else you can think of that we need?”

“Maybe some laundry detergent,” he said, but she knew he was wrong. They were well-stocked.

“Okay, dear,” she said.

She looked at him again, differently, when she saw him smiling at her warmly, seeing their past, her future. She saw him as he was back in the days when she thought he loved her, when she was convinced—and still was—that he did. She remembered the jealous looks, the possessive embraces, the loving eyes.

She remembered him as he was with Elaine, with Drew; a wonderful father. The best father she could have found.

Looking at him, she saw the eyes of her daughter, the face of her son.

She also saw the face of his other son. She saw the lies etched in his wrinkles, the deception in his pupils. She saw the weed that had been choking her gardens, killing her fruits and flowers, ineradicable until now.