The Evolution of Alice (17 page)

“They got there without much trouble, even though the wind was kicking up something fierce. They were experienced on the water. So, they went and found shelter under the biggest tree they could find. Under that tree, they could hardly feel the storm at all. And you know what they did? They went and fell asleep. I’m not
kidding, Grandson. They were out there in the storm, under that tree, sleeping like babies. But all around them the storm got worse, and pretty soon there was thunder and lightning, and one of those bolts of lightning hit the tree they were sleeping under. Your mom, she got thrown almost to the water, like the island was spitting her out. Your dad, well, he took the brunt of that lightning strike.

“You know how I always told you that your dad died in an accident? Well, that right there was the accident. People’ve died worse, Grandson, but they’ve died better, too, and I know it’s hard to hear. I guess if there was anything good about it, it was that your daddy died instantly. Didn’t suffer, not even for a second. Your mom stayed with him. Said she lay down right beside him so they were face to face, and talked to him all through the night like he was still with her, like he was just sleeping. You know how we go to visit your daddy every now and then, and you sit there and tell him all about what you’ve been up to and how much you miss him? Well, he can hear you, Grandson. I’ll tell you that much. Don’t ever think he can’t. And your daddy heard everything your mom told him that night, too.

“Well, that’s how Bald Head got renamed Widow’s Island. But you know what? That’s not the end of the story. Pretty soon after that, after your mom was rescued and brought back to the mainland, she found out she was pregnant, and that was a miracle. She and your daddy had been trying to have a baby for years but they were never able to conceive one. Nine months later, out you popped. And Grandson, I know you might be wondering why I’m telling you this, today of all days. I guess I just want you to know that, sometimes, good things come from bad things.”

H
ENRY STUMBLED DOWN THE STAIRS
to the first floor, trying to rush but encumbered by a straight leg that made him feel like a pirate. The reason Henry had a straight leg was due to the stolen change in his pocket, otherwise known as his booty. You see, his wife had lowered an embargo on frivolous expenditures, and, unfortunately, Henry’s craving for a grande double chocolate-chip frappuccino fell under the category of frivolity. For him, this simply wouldn’t do, and since he was forbidden to spend his own money on frappuccinos he’d resorted to thieving from his son’s piggybank. He figured he could sneak out of the house without getting caught by his wife (who had superhuman senses) by preventing the change in his pocket from rattling. And he would’ve made it without seeing his wife at all, if not for the mirror by the front door. He stopped there after retrieving his coat and made the mistake of gazing at himself, admiring the hold of the new pomade he’d bought. He was pleased with the results, delighted to find that, even though he’d put the stuff in his hair hours ago, it didn’t need fixing.

“Henry.”

“Shit,” he whispered under his breath as Bev appeared from the kitchen.

“What did you say?” she said.

“Nothing. What’s up?” he said.

“What are you getting at the store again?” she said.

She wasn’t asking him because she’d forgotten, but rather testing him to ensure he’d remembered. If he failed to remember one item on the mental grocery list, he would get a handwritten grocery list. And, if Bev wrote out a list, there would inevitably be 10 to 15 more items on it, and that simply would not do. He’d have to spend more time at the grocery store and wait longer to get his drink.

“A loaf of bread, milk, and a fruit tray,” he said confidently.

Bev stood there with her head tilted to one side, one eyebrow slightly raised, her arms crossed in front of her chest. For a moment, Henry became distracted. Her arms were too close to her breasts, perky and supple behind her delicately patterned floral apron. He looked her up and down after that, from her loose ponytail, where a few strands of hair had escaped and seductively fallen over the right side of her face, to her bare feet, which always drove him crazy. He’d had a thing for feet since the fourth grade, when he’d seen Stacey Snowden trace her naked foot with a red crayon. He saw Bev’s foot tapping. She was waiting. He snapped out of it. What had he forgotten? Ah yes, clarification.

“A nice loaf of bread and homo milk,” he said, which made him laugh. The word
homo
always made him laugh regardless of context.

“Okay,” she said, suitably impressed, “but don’t get the bread that you get, the sourdough kind. Nobody likes it but you. Get something delicious, but nothing with cheese in it, and no sourdough.”

He nodded, leaned forward, and gave her a kiss.

“And please be on time. I need to start supper by …”

“Five, I know, hon,” he said.

He turned away, all the while wondering how a loaf of bread that wasn’t sourdough and didn’t have cheese in it could be delicious at all. By then, he’d stopped worrying about the forbidden change. It was behaving in his pocket and he was sure Bev didn’t suspect anything. And, at that point, if she did hear anything that might arouse suspicion, he would simply to tell her that she’d heard his car keys. He opened the front door and walked outside, feeling devious, brilliant, and happy to be met with a rush of crisp air. Travelling along the breeze, Henry swore he could smell a faint hint of double chocolate chip.

He made his way up the front walk toward his car. As he opened the gate, he noticed that the boy across the street—Juniper or Journey or some other kind of hippy name—was in the midst of doing what he always did: running along the top of his rickety fence, the top boards perilously shifting from one side to the other, the width of which couldn’t have been more than that of a gymnastics beam. Juniper (or whatever) was as lithe as a gymnast, too. He ran from one end of the fence to the other, hopping over the gate in the middle of his little course without breaking stride. Henry stood there for a moment watching the boy and, like always, did so with a mix of awe and bewilderment. The boy was good, there was no question, but why the hell would he do such a thing, and how could he be so pleased doing it?

Henry didn’t dwell on it long. After all, there were more important things on his mind. He walked across the boulevard, around the hood of his car, and into the driver’s seat. He drove away from his house untroubled and determined to enjoy the drive just as much as he would his drink, even though the scenery wasn’t all that pretty. It was, after all, spring, and that meant the snow had melted away and all the garbage it hid—the cigarette butts, the Slurpee cups, the beer cans, the dog shit, the McDonald’s wrappers, and so on—was uncovered. Winter hid the secrets of the city. Spring was confession time.

He hadn’t gone far when the phone rang. Before looking at the call display, he knew it was Bev. She’d forgotten something. The benefit of her remembering now as opposed to before he left, however, was that she couldn’t write down a list for him. So, he answered the phone happily.

“Hey there,” he said as he looked into the rear-view mirror to check his hair, which in itself was a useless exercise, done more by rote than by necessity; the current length of his hair coupled with the super-powered pomade he’d used made any follicle of hair moving even a fraction an impossibility.

“I have something to add,” she said. “Are you going to remember?”

“I can remember five things, yes,” he said.

“Can you get some pineapple, please?” she said.

“Aren’t I already getting a fruit tray?” he said.

“I like to have my own pineapple,” she said.

“Yeah, but the fruit tray comes with a compartment for pineapple, and me and the boy won’t eat it. You can have it.”

“Would you mind? Call it a quirk, but it’s like you and your frappuccino drinks, only my quirk doesn’t cost five dollars.”

“Actually, they pretty much do cost five dollars,” he said.

Henry could almost hear Bev roll her eyes.

“Pretty please?” she said.

“Fine. Okay,” he said.

He wanted to ask why he couldn’t get a frappuccino if she was getting pineapple but decided against it. He never really won an argument, and he was getting a drink anyway, albeit through underhanded means.

“So,” she said, “what are you getting?”

“What I said before plus pineapple,” he said.

“I’ll text you a list,” she said and hung up.

It wasn’t until just before he reached the Salter Bridge that he received a text notification but decided to ignore it until he arrived at the grocery store at the very earliest, and possibly even later than that, if at all.

Traffic was slow; it took an eternity to get to the bridge’s apex, and it was there, as he looked this way and that out of sheer boredom, that he noticed an Aboriginal woman standing on the walkway. He thought she was Aboriginal anyway, judging by her black hair, brown skin, and the distinctive features that were familiar to him from the news. He chuckled at the description he would have given of her if he were a reporter: Aboriginal in appearance. Those were common words to hear. She was of medium height, with blue jeans, Converse sneakers, and a hooded sweatshirt. He noticed these things only because, for one reason or another, the slow traffic had now stopped entirely. What caught his attention most was the young woman’s eyes: big and brown, almost cartoonish, but striking all the same, and sad, most of all. It seemed that wherever she looked she was searching for something that was far out of reach. And, when she looked over at him and their eyes met, it was as though he had caught the sadness, as people catch each other’s yawns, because he instantly felt a slight ache in his heart.

His windows were rolled down slightly, not because it was a particularly beautiful day out, but rather because he liked that others could hear the music he was playing. It made him feel relevant (he was listening to a hip, alt-rock band called The National). But the fact that his windows were rolled down gave him a passing thought that he should say something to the woman, and his lips even moved, but there wasn’t anything he could think of saying. He was never good with strangers. His inability to say anything to the woman only solidified his feelings in that regard. Still, the sadness in her eyes was hard to ignore, and it was hard to look away from him. It was strange, too, that she was just standing there, as though caught in her own little traffic jam. He thought of Jasper (or whatever) on his fence, never ceasing to move, and compared that to the woman, who was stationary, and Henry could understand neither of them. What could she be doing? When the car in front began to inch forward, and Henry did in turn, he felt an impulse to ask her just that before it was too late. And why
was
she looking at him, out of everybody else? But he asked no such thing, and, as he gathered momentum, images of his grande double chocolate-chip frappuccino supplanted thoughts of the woman standing sadly at the side of the road.

Not that he had to, because there were only a handful of things in his basket and he was sure he’d got everything he was required to buy, but for his sanity’s sake—because when he failed to do something just as Bev asked, there were subtle repercussions—he proudly looked over the groceries he had been sent for and was certain he’d not missed one thing. He made his way to the self-checkout aisle and fumbled to get the bar codes scanned. The fumbling was due to the proximity of the Starbucks and the rush to get there, but also the fruit tray, which was the most awkward thing to scan. He eventually paid for the groceries and excitedly walked up to the Starbucks counter with an abnormally large smile. The cashier, a pretty little thing with light-brown hair tied back into a loose ponytail, crystal-blue eyes, and a noticeable bounce in her step, as if to illustrate just how much she loved her job, greeted him at the counter.

“Hey there, what can I get for you?” she said.

It took a sizable amount of restraint not to make a flirtatious comment about what he really wanted. He was very much relieved that he’d spent so much time ensuring his hair was perfect, and was certain, as she smiled at him, that she thought he was as cute as he thought she was. He imagined for a moment that she had said to herself (in a kind of
of-all-the-Starbucks-in-the-city,-you-walked-into-mine
moment), “What a handsome man, his jet-black hair coiffed just so, his blue eyes like a reflection of the clearest sky.”

“I’ll have a grande double chocolate-chip frappuccino, skinny, no drizzle,” he said about as smooth as a baby’s skin, adding in the “skinny” and “drizzle” parts only because he thought it sounded refined, and he was out to impress her.

“Sure thing,” she said, then turned away and began expertly constructing his drink.

He watched as she tapped her feet to some imaginary music while she blended the ingredients together. She was unfettered by the weight of life, young and carefree, and her body told this tale; her tight black pants accentuated slight but playful curves, and just visible above the collar of her shirt was a Dumbo tattoo—original and cute. He’d always hated oglers, yet there he was, subtly scanning her over from top to bottom. When his drink was ready, he sighed in disappointment. Getting the frappuccino should have been a triumphant moment; it should have gleamed in the grocery store lighting. But to Henry it paled in comparison to the girl—whom he knew now as Alexis based on her nametag—and he was upset that the experience was nearly over. She reached forward and handed him his cup.

“Grande double chocolate-chip, skinny, no drizzle,” she said, and he noticed that each time she pronounced a word with the letter
l
in it a shiver rushed through his body.

When he accepted the drink from her he made sure to brush his fingers against hers, and even allowed this contact to linger a moment as he thanked her altogether too profusely. He left with every intention to return as soon as possible, and not so much for the drink. He would even be willing to “borrow” more money from his son to do so.