The Evolution of Alice (3 page)

The day before it happened, well, Alice told me it was just like any other day. Had she known, maybe she would’ve taken more time to savour things, like you do with a good bite of food or a nice cold beer on a hot day. You let it sit there in your mouth for as long as you can to try and remember the taste, the texture, the temperature. I’m guessing she would’ve stayed a bit longer at the table during breakfast, watching her girls eat the food she’d made, them savouring the bacon as she savoured them, taking snapshots of their faces with her mind, ones that never faded, just got a little frayed at the edges with time, like a wallet photograph. They all smiled like she did, big and unabashed. Alice knew their smiles well. Those things, they weren’t hard to remember. But sometimes the joy they gave to her in those moments, well, that was what she wanted to keep forever, locked away somewhere deep inside her chest. They smiled more than she did. But kids, they didn’t worry like adults did. I’m guessing she would have talked a bit longer to them, too. Because the girls had some good things to say about life, she could’ve stood to hear a bit longer, so it really sunk in. Well they say hindsight’s 20/20, and all that means is you shoulda known then what you know now. It’s a real piss-off, that’s about it.

She got up before the girls, just like she always did, and cooked them up their bacon and over-easy eggs. Typically, the smell woke those girls up, and the sounds, too. The pop and crackle of the cooking bacon was like an alarm clock. They came out of the bedroom rubbing their eyes, their pyjamas still on, their hair all nappy, their little bare feet making soft kissing sounds as they walked across the linoleum floor. One by one they plunked down at the table, and one by one they said good morning to their mommy.

“Good morning, my darlings,” she said back.

When Alice put their plates out in front of them, their talking stopped for a little while. The only sound in the house was their mouths chewing up their breakfast—tiny lips smacking and tiny teeth grinding—and the news report from the television set, which Alice usually had on in the morning while she made their meal. During breakfast, she’d alternate between watching her girls eat and watching what was going on in that big world outside the rez. Sometimes it seemed like another world altogether. Sometimes it just made her feel small. The girls took peeks at the television, too, even though Alice didn’t like them to, not to watch the news anyway. She thought there were always too many bad things going on and they didn’t need to bother themselves with it because they grew up seeing enough bad things. Kathy, the oldest one, glanced over at the
TV
just in time to see the end of one particular news story about a robbery gone wrong, and to an adult it was a bit funny to see the storekeeper jump over the counter and lay a beating on the would-be thief. To a kid, it was one guy hitting another, and to most kids, seeing something like that wasn’t too familiar. To Kathy, though, seeing something like that was all too real, on account of their family history, on account of what she’d already been through right there at home. She jerked her head back quick, and Alice noticed, too, because she flicked off that program as fast as you could imagine, like an old west gunslinger in a high-noon standoff.

“You okay, Kathy?” she said.

Kathy didn’t say anything at first. Instead, she looked right down at her plate and made a picture out of the spilled egg yolks. Alice didn’t want to push, so she sat there and waited. The other girls kept on eating, oblivious that something was going on with their sister, enjoying their protein. When Alice watched Grace pick up her little pink plate and lick the yolk off, she only chuckled. Usually, Grace’s antics brought something a bit heartier out of her. But the other girls, they didn’t remember much from before. Not even Jayne, who was around four or five back then. They were lucky that way. Kathy, she was a fun girl, a happy one too, but every once in a while you’d catch her looking off at empty spaces, her eyes big and sad. Finally, Kathy placed her fork down, rested her cheek against her hand, and took a long, deep breath.

“Is Daddy ever coming back?”

Alice stopped eating too. It wasn’t something they’d ever talked about. It wasn’t something Kathy had ever asked before. She knew where her ex was, about two hours away at Stony Mountain Penitentiary, and chances were, he wasn’t coming back from there for a while yet. He wasn’t one to get time off for good behaviour is what I’m trying to say. But it didn’t seem as simple as that, either. He’d get out some day. He’d probably try to shoulder his way back into their lives in some way, but not by being with Alice again. No. I think that sweet talk had worked too many times. She’d taken him back, he’d promised not to hit her any more, and then pretty soon he’d be laying hands on her again, bruising her up real good, like a cut apple left out on a countertop. If he did show up, though, just what would she do? What would he do? Alice told me thoughts like that were the ones she kept way down inside, deep enough to ignore, deep enough that she could pretend they didn’t exist. She said that sometimes she went all day without thinking of him. But when she did think of him, those were hard times. When she did, it was usually at night, alone in her bed, and she’d steal off into the dark and find her way into her girls’ bedroom, lying down beside one of them and spooning them real tight. A girl Kathy’s age didn’t need those kinds of questions, and she didn’t need to worry about the
whens
and
what ifs.
In the end, Alice decided on a simple answer, for the time being at least. There’d come a day where the girl might want to go visit her old man, if even just to yell at him or ask him why. That’d be a hard day, and those would bring the hard questions, the hard answers.

“No, Kathy, he ain’t coming back,” she said.

Kathy kept her head pushed right up against her fist for a good long while, and then finally lifted it back up and brought her dishes to the sink. She was good like that, always helping out around the house without being asked. She’d done that lots of times when Alice was in her bedroom curled up into a ball, shaking and scared, and that asshole had stormed off to get some air. She’d tidy up the living room or put away the toys, something to help her mom out. Jayne, she’d follow suit. She always did. She looked up to Kathy quite a bit. Grace, well, she was too young to remember anything. Alice liked to think she was the pure one, the baby who’d never be able to recall the anger and violence. Alice loved that about her. Her joy was real joy, untouched, without reservation or pretension. In that moment, Alice wanted to make Kathy feel good. She didn’t do that enough. There were never enough I love yous, never enough hugs or kisses.

“You were always such a brave girl,” Alice said as Kathy went to grab Grace’s plate.

Jayne picked up her own plate to bring it over to the sink.

“What do you mean?” Kathy said.

“You know, when Daddy got angry. You were always so smart, taking your little sisters and locking yourselves up in the bathroom. You’re a good girl.”

Kathy stopped in the middle of the kitchen, Grace’s plate still in her hands. She looked confused. Her head even tilted like a little puppy dog, and it would’ve been cute if it wasn’t such a sad topic.

“But, Mommy, I didn’t go there by myself. That man took me.”

“What man?” Alice said.

“Your friend,” she said.

It all seemed so matter-of-fact to Kathy. She didn’t understand why her mom was acting so odd, why her skin turned pale, why she looked like she was about to faint. Jayne knew it, too. She was standing beside Kathy at this point, nodding her head up and down. Grace was nodding, too, because she copied everything the others did, said whatever they said, went wherever they went. Most of the time, this was a good thing. She already knew her alphabet and could sing “You Are My Sunshine,” in key even. But then, she also went off outside without telling her mom sometimes, just like the older ones did. Alice had to watch herself, too, because if she ever let a profanity slip by her lips, there was Grace saying that same word about twenty times in a row just like she was reciting her
ABCs
.

“What friend are you talking about?” Alice said.

“Wha fend?” Grace said.

“The big man with the blond hair,” Kathy said, shaking her head in disbelief that her mom could forget such a thing. She continued, “He took us to the bathroom. He’d come hold our hands and bring us there, and then he’d lock the door.”

“Lock tha doh!” Grace said.

“Yeah, Mommy,” Jayne said.

“Yeah, whenever Daddy started shouting, every time,” Kathy said, “and then you’d come get us after, remember?”

“And just where exactly did my friend go?” Alice said with a tone that challenged her little ones, but Kathy and Jayne, they were sure that that man was with them just as sure as they were that they’d eaten breakfast. They looked at each other and exchanged shrugs.

“I don’t know. I guess he just left,” Kathy said.

The girls stood there as Alice sat quietly in her seat, letting it sink in, processing what the girls had said and wondering if their imaginations had run wild. She asked them about her friend, what he looked like, and it was all general stuff. He was a big man, broad shoulders and jaw, short blond hair, and wore regular clothing—blue jeans and T-shirt kind of outfit. That was an eyebrow-raiser for Alice, because if the man was what she thought he was, he’d be wearing a white robe and wings. Then again, maybe that’d be too scary for a child. Maybe he had to fit in.

She told me it reminded her of a car ride she had taken with her mother years before, when she was a teenager—before her kids, before the beatings. It was late and they were heading back home from town. The sky was perfectly clear and the stars were bright and countless, twinkling like snow did in the sun. On the horizon, they could see the northern lights, that familiar glow, the waves of colour shimmying across the sky like flowing ribbons. Then those ribbons started collapsing to the middle of the sky, right at the end of the highway, until they formed what looked like a face. Alice thought she had to be seeing things, so she asked her mother about it, but she saw it too. They pulled over and watched it until the ribbons spread out again and it was like the face was never there. She’d always thought it’d been an angel. Had that angel come back to help protect her most precious things?

She took another long look at her girls. They’d lied to her before. Daily, in fact. Kids lied all the time. Did you climb up onto the counter and eat the sugar? No. Did you pull your sister’s hair? No. Did you take Mommy’s makeup? No. But with one look from Alice, the noes always became meek, guilty yeses. Always. But she knew the noes were lies before the girls admitted it. She could tell by their faces. And the girls didn’t have those faces on that morning, standing there innocently, wondering why their mommy didn’t seem to know her own friend was helping them. It was too much to think about. Her mother had raised Alice in the church, but none of that really stuck. Alice, she was never sure if there was a God or not but usually decided that there wasn’t. Figured if there were a God, she wouldn’t have the life she did. I mean, she was happy about her girls, I already said that, but not all the other shit—growing up without a dad, losing her mom like she did, gettin’ beat on by Ryan. Yeah, Alice was always pretty sure there was no God, but now maybe not, maybe He’d been there all along.

She had the girls get dressed and followed them out to the back yard, where they went off to play, and she climbed up onto her tire and began to swing as high as she could. That’s when I came by. I always checked the back yard first, because more often than not, that’s exactly where they were. I saw the girls way out in the field, playing tag or hide-and-seek or some game like that, and walked up to Alice, and we exchanged greetings bit by bit each time she swung by me. That’s how I found out about what happened that morning, in bits and pieces, each time she passed by.

“You believe in God, Gideon?”

“Why?”

Then she’d be gone, up in the air. On her way down, there was another exchange.

“My girls saw an angel, you know.”

“What? When?”

Up, then down.

“When Ryan was beating on me.”

“How?”

Up again, then back down, and all I pretty much did was recite “when, what, why, and how” as she said all she wanted to say.

It was a long conversation to have that way, but as I heard more and more I wasn’t about to ask her to come down from the tire swing. Up there, she was safe, and the girls were safe and that was that. After she told me everything, she stopped pumping her legs, and after a few minutes her swinging settled into a light rocking. Made our visit a lot easier. I saw her struggling with it a bit, her brain that is. So I decided to say something all Elder-like to her. I pointed to an old dirt road just about 20 yards to our right. It was pretty much grown over with grass, you could hardly see it, but it was still a road. It went right through the field, right up to the distant tree line, and got tinier and tinier on its way.

“You know, my grandpa used to tell me that all the roads around here just lead us right back home,” I said.

I wasn’t even sure what the connection was, and after I’d said it I kind of felt dumb about it. I tried to figure what I was getting at, for Alice and for me, so I added, “But, I don’t know, maybe he was wrong, maybe roads take us to where we’re s’posed to be.”

Alice crunched her eyebrows up and looked at me funny. “Are we talking about real roads, or pretend ones? Like … figurative roads?” she said.

She knew those big words from all the reading she did. Lots of books, she read. I didn’t read much, me, but I knew that word from my grandpa, so I said, “Figurative ones. Like, the paths we take in life.”

“I don’t know. I think your grandpa was right.” She paused, then added, “Anyway, just because they saw a man doesn’t mean they weren’t imagining it. You know? They don’t have to lie about that if they thought they saw somebody. You ever had an imaginary friend?”

“Not one that locked me in a bathroom away from that jerk-off boyfriend of yours,” I said. I meant it, too. I knew her ex, and he was a piece of work. The day he got hauled away was a good day, and I wasn’t the only one who thought that. “But, if they’ve got an angel lookin’ over their shoulders, it’s not anything to worry about, is it?”