The Evolution of Alice (5 page)

“You’ll see her again,” I said eventually, because with the talk recently about the angel her girls saw, and what Alice saw as a teenager, it seemed like there could’ve been something out there, even though it had just screwed up pretty royally. (I say could’ve been because I still wasn’t sure myself. To me, you never really know about something unless you put your own eyes on it). She motioned out toward the field and shook her head. She looked defeated, empty.

“I can’t see her now,” she said. “That’s what matters.”

“Well,” I said, “she’s just a little thing, you know. Just keep looking if you have to.”

“Would you do me a favour, Gideon?” she said all blankly, like she was talking to me in her head, like I wasn’t really there.

“Of course I would,” I said.

“Could you come by tomorrow morning to make the girls some breakfast? They need to have their breakfast. Olive can’t cook. She burns the bacon and she makes the yolks hard. Can you do that?”

“Yeah, Al, I can do that.”

She thanked me then turned away, back toward her girls, towards the field that seemed bigger and emptier now, and started to pump her legs again to get up as high as she could go. And me, she left me behind, way back down there on earth, watching her soar just like the eagle on the blanket in her bedroom, the one she made into a curtain. From where I was, I could pretend she was carefree like that, when her face was out of view, anyway. And that made me feel good, too, for the times she was close to heaven. I didn’t think there was anything more I could do right then, didn’t have any deep thoughts about roads or any shit like that. And Alice, she probably didn’t want to talk any more anyway. Sometimes people just want to be sad and alone. So I left her like that, pumping her legs, swinging up high in her tire swing, her girls bouncing up and down in the field, and Grace hiding somewhere nobody could find her, somewhere safe.

Kathy was missing. Gideon had been driving for more than an hour looking for her, scanning the forested areas on either side of the highway for her, getting out and checking for footprints, shouting her name as loud as he could, both while driving and when stopped. But he was yet to see anything. He could still hear Alice’s voice when he’d arrived that morning for breakfast. Desperate. Terrified.

“Find her, Gideon! You have to find her!” she’d cried.

He said that he would, but as each minute passed with no sign of Kathy, the grip on his steering wheel had grown tighter. He’d seen the news about Aboriginal girls who had gone missing. It wouldn’t take much for somebody to pick her up, take her away. And then she’d be gone forever, like Grace.

It was on his third pass on a stretch of highway that Gideon noticed a turtle in the middle of the road. He passed it at first, thinking, rightly, that there were more important things to do. But even so, against his better judgment, he glanced into his rear-view mirror at the turtle he’d passed and imagined a vehicle running over the poor thing. He couldn’t stand the thought of it. He stopped the truck, got out, and walked over to the small, dark green mound. He watched as it crept along its way, oblivious to the danger it was in, then leaned over and picked it up.

It felt strange in his hands, hard like plastic but warm and smooth, and he marvelled at its design, how the different-sized shapes, squares, and hexagons fit together like a completed jigsaw puzzle. It was far too beautiful to be destroyed. Gideon brought it to the side of the highway with its head tucked inside its shell, and looked around for a good place to let it go. There was a stream alongside the road, and it seemed as good a spot as any. He navigated his way down the embankment; then, careful not to fall into the running water, he reached forward, submerged it beneath the surface, and let it go.

The turtle darted off with all the agility of a fish, sharply moving from left to right on the way as though dancing in its freedom. He never thought a turtle capable of that. He laughed, and watched the thing swim all the way downstream until it was out of sight.

D
OWN HIGHWAY
57, and with nothing to worry about aside from the slight curves and undulations along the neglected road ahead, Edward pressed down on the gas pedal and watched as the speedometer’s red needle crept past 160 km/h. He made sure to keep an eye out for the
RCMP
, as well as oncoming motorists, but the few times he had been down the same road had yielded little, if any, traffic, so this was a small concern. The bulk of his attention thus rested on the area directly in front of him. He curled his hands around the steering wheel and felt the soft material compress under his fingers. Occasionally he snapped his head left or right and then back to the front again, and when he did this he thought the sight of landscape rushing past his vehicle was pretty, like a pastel painting of the actual scenery. He wished, in certain moments, he could somehow freeze time and better appreciate the view rather than glimpse it in such short bursts.

His was a two-and-a-half-hour trip and didn’t require too much “luggage.” That is to say, he didn’t have much more with him other than the shirt on his back, a few road snacks—including a ham sandwich he was reticent about eating—and, on the passenger seat, being treated very much like precious cargo, a Nikon camera. The Nikon D600, to be exact, which held a prominent place in their family, particularly adored by Nicky, who cherished it on the level of a well-behaved dog. Edward had seriously considered strapping it in with the seatbelt. Besides that, he’d brought his iPhone, which was currently hooked up to the car’s stereo via an auxiliary cable and playing all the songs he normally couldn’t play when Nicky was in the vehicle (rock music with what she called
whiney
lead singers).

It was at this point that the phone rang, cutting out the music and replacing it with the ringtone selected for Nicky’s calls: “piano riff.” He rolled his eyes, not so much at the fact that it was Nicky calling, but more so that he had been enjoying the music—Thom Yorke was whining away on “Reckoner”—and hated to have it interrupted.

“Hey,” he said.

“Hi. Where are you?” she said.

“Honestly, I don’t even know where I am. I’m officially nowhere.”

“How long until you get there?”

“About thirty miles,” he said.

Nicole paused, and Edward wasn’t sure why until she said, “Just how fast have you been driving, Edward?”

He realized that during the brief silence she’d calculated his speed based on when he’d left and how far he had to go. She was good.

“There’s nobody around, hon. I figured I could cut time off the trip,” he said, then added, melodically, “so I could get home to you sooner.”

A pronounced sigh was followed by Nicole saying, “Just be careful, you don’t have to go exactly the speed limit, just not, you know, a million kilometres …”

Abruptly, he heard a familiar two beeps through the speakers, which meant the call had been dropped. Thom Yorke cut back in, and Edward was thrilled to hear him. He glanced down at the iPhone, saw there were no bars, and realized he was on a stretch of road where the cell phone connection was tenuous at best. He remembered the area and figured the reception would remain like this. Why would there be good reception in the first place? Who even drove in this area? He’d asked similar questions the last time he’d been through these parts with Nicole, when they were on their way to Jeff’s funeral. Edward had wondered why Jeff wanted to get buried in such a secluded area. To Edward, people who got buried in places like that either didn’t like anybody or thought nobody liked them, plain and simple. Nicole had rolled her eyes. “Or you just like the quiet,” she’d said. That could’ve been it, too. Lord knows, there was nothing but quiet out there.

He settled into the comforts of the road: the long stretch of highway with its languid curves, the white-noise lullaby of the rubber tires against asphalt and the accompanying, pleasantly soothing vibrations, and the promise of the horizon, how it appeared close enough to catch but never got closer. It made Edward feel as though the trip could be infinite. Then, suddenly, his iPhone notified him of two missed calls and a voice-mail message. The voice mail played back as follows: “Ed, it’s me, I know you probably lost service, but you also could’ve run off the road or something, which I shouldn’t be telling you, of course, considering your tendency to … well, never mind … crap … could you just call me as soon as you can?” He dialled Nicky and, as the phone rang, slowed to a compromising speed of 110 km/h.

“Hello?” she said upon answering the phone.

“Considering my what, exactly?” he said, but knew damn well she was about to talk about his “problem.”

“All I meant was that I didn’t
intend
to give you anything more to worry about, because …”

“Because I worry about everything.”

“Well, you do. You
know
you do.”

“I do not worry about
everything,”
he said. He did worry about many things, but certainly not every single thing he could potentially worry about.

“Okay, Ed, have you finished your ham sandwich yet?”

“My ham … no, but it’s not even lunch.”

“It’s five after one.”

He checked his clock, and mouthed “damn it” when he saw that she was correct, to the minute even: 1:05
PM.

“You know lunch isn’t
only
at noon. People do eat at different times.”

“Oh, God. It’s so
insanely
difficult to prove the smallest point with you, even when you
know
I’m right.”

“Hon, you know luncheon meat is good for like, 93 seconds after you buy it, right? You know how my stomach’s been.”

“Yes, I know how your stomach’s been, and I know, also, the specialist said he thought your stomach was fine aside from needing Tums once in a while.”

“Zantac, actually.”

“Ed,
fuck.
Ever since Jeff died. No. Ever since Jeff got sick, this has been a
thing.
You are like a damn illness chameleon. Somebody’s got a brain tumour and you’ve all of a sudden got a massive headache. You are an
illness chameleon.
You have to be cognizant of …”

And then, as though he was owed some cosmic favour, the cell service cut out again, and he was reintroduced to his music playlist. The red needle slowly began to creep back up, but not a shade past 110 km/h. Sometimes, Edward thought, he didn’t want to talk to Nicole at all. For a moment, he wished the highway went on forever and he could just drive and drive farther and farther out so there’d never be reception. But this thought was gone as quickly as it arrived. He tried to imagine what it would be like to talk to Nicole for the last time, and hoped it wasn’t the talk he’d just had with her, because he was, admittedly, now a little worried about going off the road just like she had mentioned. What would he say to her? What profound things would they discuss? How would they say goodbye?

It made Edward think about the last time he’d talked to Jeff. It was near autumn, and he and Nicole had just sat down for supper when the phone rang.

“How are you doing?” Edward had said, and cringed at the words. But what do you say to somebody who is dying?

“I’m okay,” Jeff said in a shaky, weak voice that sounded nothing like the Jeff Edward knew.

“I’m sorry about what’s happened,” Edward said, and noticed Nicky point at herself, so he added, “Nicky is too. What a thing, you know.”

“Thanks,” Jeff said, his voice nearly a whisper, “but I’m okay, really. I’m at peace with it.”

Edward wanted to ask how the hell he could have been at peace with it, seeing as how every health care practitioner he’d seen—naturopaths, homeopaths, gastroenterologists, and so on—had clearly screwed up. Edward never did understand how they all could’ve missed a tumour the size of a baseball growing in Jeff’s stomach.

“Well, you’re a better man than I am,” Edward said.

“No, I’m not. I just have something you don’t.”

“Even now, you’re trying to get me to believe in God,” Edward laughed. “Come on. I mean,
come on
.”

Edward thought back on how he and Jeff had become close in the first place, because they weren’t at first, he being Nicole’s uncle, and a bit of an odd bird, wearing train conductor caps for no reason and doing other inexplicable things. Jeff had dragged Edward to a church men’s retreat one year, and, after Edward surprised himself by having a good time with Jeff, he’d agreed to go back subsequent years. He was certain that he came to know Jeff much better during the retreats but was far less certain he’d come to know God.

“Everybody needs something to keep them safe and secure,” Jeff said. “What do you have to lose?”

“Nothing, Jeff.”

Nothing.
That’s what was out there with Jeff. Could God be bothered to be somewhere so damn boring? As Edward rounded a gentle curve, he glanced over at the Nikon camera, ensuring that it remained in place, and repeated the one task he had been given before setting out on his journey. He was supposed to take a lot of good pictures. Nicole and Grandma wanted to see how the trees were growing. Trees. They were saplings. But he supposed that he’d misspoken, even if it had been just to himself. There was nothing
and
a pair of saplings. That was far more accurate, and God probably still didn’t give a shit.

Then his thoughts were interrupted as “piano riff” played from his phone. He answered, and Nicky continued with their conversation as though there had been no interruption.

“You’re aware of it, aren’t you? That you take on other people’s illnesses and, like, create the symptoms? Before Jeff got sick it was your head, and before your head it was your heart. People are actually sick, Ed. You know that, don’t you?”

“I still have my headache, actually.”

“And do tumours last seven years?”

“I don’t actually know the answer to that. Maybe benign ones do.”

“Edward, you only have one common symptom, and that’s
worry.
You’re at least aware of
that
, aren’t you?”