The Fall of Alice K. (24 page)

She imagined her father's hands as she neatly put back one folder and opened another. She opened the “Hog” folder. She was a doctor studying x-rays of someone with a progressive disease. Her father had calculated that it cost him 37½ cents a pound to fatten a hog to a 250-pound market weight. He had written ninety-five dollars as the total cost of fattening a hog. When the market prices dropped to eight cents a pound in December of 1998, he was losing seventy-five dollars for every market hog he sold.

The prices had led to the shotgun blasts on Ben Van Doods's farm. Her father didn't shoot his hogs. He took his losses—and he hadn't sold the farm. He had fattened two thousand hogs in 1998. The calculations were clear. They were bold. They were shocking. While President Clinton had been diddling in the Oval Office, her father had quietly suffered the loss of $150,000 for his labor and money. He had worked with his usual diligence even though he must have seen all too clearly that the dark night was coming.

The news was not much better in the cattle folder. The columns of costs and returns for the steers had the final outcome of a $42,000 loss.

Another envelope was labeled “Medical.” Medical bills for Aldah totaled $203,000. Why hadn't the government paid for problems like Aldah's? Alice knew it was possible that her father might have avoided “handouts” on principle. It appeared that insurance had paid for some but not all of her medical expenses over the years. Her father was paying off the medical bills to a collection agency at the rate of $400 a month.

Sweat was forming under Alice's arms and breasts. She pushed her hair back and wiped her forehead. This house, this farm—everything she always counted on as a given—everything was teetering on the edge. Maybe her mother was not so crazy in stockpiling survival food.

This still wasn't the end of the story. Alice found mortgage papers on the Krayenbraak land, and her mother was a cosigner on the mortgage agreement. She had given Alice the impression that they at least owned
the land clear and free. She had said “not to worry.” Her mother probably thought that worrying made no sense because not even worrying could save them.

Alice had assumed that even through the bad years they were still rich the way big landowners were rich. They owned 320 acres of land, and with land prices at $2,500 to $3,000 an acre, they were worth practically one million dollars in land value alone. The loan was for $460,000 with annual payments of $34,000. And there was another loan application ready to go: this one for another $100,000 with annual payments of $15,000. This must have been her father's response to the hailstorm. At this point, Alice was surprised that a bank would even give them another loan. They were mortgaged to the hilt!

There was even more. In the top drawer of his desk she found his calculations on what it would have cost to take out hail insurance. Seven dollars an acre for $200 per acre coverage on corn. With their 220 acres of corn, hail insurance would have cost over $1,500. “Reasonable expectation,” he noted: “160 bu/acre @ 220 acre=35M bu @ $4.00 bu=$140,000.” The two hundred dollars per acre protection would only have guaranteed forty-four thousand dollars, which would still have left him ninety-six thousand dollars short of “reasonable expectation.” To him, hail insurance must have looked like a bad investment.

Putting it all together, Alice saw what her father was doing. He was preparing for the end, not the way her mother was preparing for The End: her father was preparing for the end of the Krayenbraak farming operation. They were going broke—if they weren't broke already. His generous payment to Alice last summer of five thousand dollars in wages plus another three thousand dollars for the computer and printer made even less sense. It looked like a death wish now. Then Alice discovered something even more astonishing. In an envelope on his desk, she saw the familiar windmill logo of their bank, Holland Savings and Loan of Dutch Center. Here she found the accounting of his and her municipal bond fund account—with some major surprises. The account was no longer joint registered in both of their names—it had only her name on it. And the accumulated amount was not the five thousand dollars or so she expected to be there. The total amount was thirty-two thousand dollars. He had attached the paperwork showing that he had paid the
Social Security taxes on this money, which he had recorded as wages. This must have been his way of protecting what was labeled as her money from creditors. He was trying to buy Alice a future at his own—or the farm's—expense. He was protecting her from what he must have feared would be the collapse of their farm.

A moment of truth: Her father's wise farming practices had not protected them. His faith had not protected them. The long Krayenbraak tradition had not protected them. With or without God, her father was no Superman. But through all of his cold calculating, he was thinking of her. She didn't feel like a spoiled daughter. She felt like a spoiled son. She was David, her parents' first child—David, “the beloved,” who died of rubella when he was three days old.

It had been last May—May, 1999—in one of those rare moments when her mother did speak openly to her. She let the conversation drift toward the past. It was a day when Alice's father was in an especially crusty mood. “He's still angry that God took David from us,” she said, “and I think he blames it on me.”

She might have been right, even though Aldah was a much greater and current emotional drain. “That was nearly twenty years ago, Mother,” Alice had reminded her.

“It doesn't matter,” she answered. “People think you can't love a baby who is only three days old. We loved that baby so much. We still do. It was just as sad as if he had lived to be a grown-up and then was taken from us. We prayed so hard for God to spare that baby.”

They no doubt had prayed hard. Alice had done her own share of praying without results.

“It's sad. I know it's sad,” Alice had said. “I wish I had an older brother, but it happened. It happened twenty years ago. It wasn't anybody's fault. It just happened.”

“Sometimes you can be so cold.”

Alice hadn't answered. She didn't know what she might have said, but she wondered if there would ever be a time when her mother opened up to her again.

Her father had responded to the divine insult of having his son snatched away by working harder to make the farming operation succeed. His expanded feeding operations became his new baby. When she,
Alice Marie Krayenbraak, was born three years later, having a girl was probably not their first choice. Her mother said they were happy that this way they wouldn't be comparing her to what they imagined David might have become. Maybe that wasn't a lie. But how many farmers with hundreds of animals to care for and 320 acres of land to till wouldn't rather have a baby boy than a baby girl? Alice grew into a tall skinny kid—Leggsy in grade school, Leggo in junior high, and, of course, “ass and a beanpole” in high school. But no one—including her father—had ever said she couldn't pull her own weight. And then some.

Now Alice was looking at a big nest egg that would help her through college, especially since she would almost certainly be offered scholarships. But had she failed her father? Would a son have been able to help save them from the disaster that was so clearly upon them?

Alice felt she had just eaten from a tree of bitter knowledge. When she turned to go quietly back to her room, her father was standing in his office door.

“What are you doing in my office?”

“Sorry,” she said.

“Sorry?” There was a sharp edge to his voice. “Sorry? Your mother is right about you. You are deceptive.”

“I'm sorry,” she said again.

“I've tried to protect you,” he said. “Just go to bed and live with what you know.”

“I can do that,” said Alice and walked quietly out of his office and up to her bedroom. When she tried to pray, she found she could not. She tried to get into a prayerful state of mind; but instead of feeling the merciful hand of God reaching down to her, she felt rigid and cold and her mind closed so tightly that no clear thoughts could either enter or leave it.

PART III

24

Whatever physical features Lydia had that were more attractive than Alice's, Lydia's complexion was not one of them. Alice's smooth skin could not be matched by anyone, including Lydia, who had, in fact, had major problems with acne in their junior year. When Alice isolated her own face in the bathroom mirror—the darker-than-blond eyelashes over the bluest of blue eyes and the perfectly sloped cheeks over prominent cheekbones like her mother's—she knew that it was her face more than her lean body that deserved admiration, whether from males or females. Lydia might have been teasing in her flattery of Alice as a potential model, but Alice knew it was her beautiful and unblemished face that was the crowning jewel of her body.

Until that morning.

Out of nowhere, red domes of pimples had burst through the polished smoothness of her cheeks, not so much like weeds on a newly plowed field, more like pocket-gopher mounds disrupting an unblemished expanse of alfalfa. When she gently rubbed the corrugated terrain of her newly sullied face, her fingers were like the tires of the 150 on the bumpy washboards of a gravel road.

Acne! she thought. Acne! Why me?

For the first time in her life she covered her cheeks and lips with makeup before going to school.

“You look fabulous!” said Lydia as they stood next to each other in front of the ladies' room mirrors.

“Thank you,” said Alice, but she wasn't sure whether Lydia had told her that because she meant it or whether she was trying to help Alice feel good about herself.

Perceptive Lydia must have read Alice's suspicion. “You do look
fabulous,” she said, “but I know what you're fighting. I had the same problem last year, remember?”

“I do,” said Alice and felt relieved that Lydia was opening the door to the kind of honesty Alice craved from her. “But you look fine now. You look great, even without makeup.”

“Thanks,” said Lydia, “but the real thanks goes to this kick-ass medication I took. I've got over a month's worth left. I'll give it to you if you'd like.”

“I'd like,” said Alice. “In the meantime, I hope I don't look too gross with all this makeup.”

“Let people's reactions be the judge of that!” said Lydia. “I suspect you'll do just fine.”

Of course, Alice thought, she was thinking of Nickson's possible reaction.

Miss Den Harmsel was especially congenial when Alice saw her in the break after chapel. Was everybody going to be friendly to her so that she would not be embarrassed by her complexion? Miss Den Harmsel had a way of giving dignity to every moment, no matter how informal, but Alice wondered if she suspected anything between her and Nickson while they were supposedly working on debate in her classroom, especially now that she had all this makeup on her face. Maybe not. Miss Den Harmsel was such a guileless person herself that she probably couldn't fathom anyone having motives other than the ones they gave.

“You're doing wonderfully well in my class,” she said.

“Thank you,” said Alice. Getting As was one thing, but having Miss Den Harmsel actually say she was doing well was rare and even better.

“When my sister and I go for a drive on weekends, it pleases me to imagine you in that big old Krayenbraak farmhouse reading Shakespeare,” said Miss Den Harmsel.

“You drive past our farm?”

The idea of Miss Den Harmsel having any interest in anyone or anything except what Alice saw of her in the classroom seemed very strange. A misplacement or something—like seeing Rev. Prunesma at a cattle auction.

“Oh yes,” she said. “Hilda drives and I just stare out the windows,
relaxing. I understand your mother was an exceptional student too. Do you read Shakespeare together?”

“My mother is too busy taking care of my sister Aldah,” said Alice. “Aldah needs special care, you know.”

“Yes, of course,” said Miss Den Harmsel. Hilda was Miss Den Harmsel's older sister, a nurse at the hospital. They were both single and lived together. Alice had always thought of these two—whom many people dared to refer to as “the old-maid sisters”—as one of the community's great gifts, as a selfless unit of service.

Hearing of a link between Lydia's mother and her own mother was bad enough, but the very idea that Miss Den Harmsel could have a good impression of her mother was surprising. It was downright shocking! At least Miss Den Harmsel was going on hearsay and didn't actually know her mother. Alice quietly congratulated herself for stopping the conversation short with that little lie about her mother caring for Aldah. Miss Den Harmsel was everything that her mother wasn't: rational, a good listener, concerned about others, and capable of praise! She did not like having them both in the same brain space.

When she met Nickson for debate, he looked at her sweetly but gave no hint in his expression that he was noticing either her makeup or her acne. To keep her focus on debate, Alice tried not to look at Nickson's eyebrows—and she didn't—but she couldn't close off the smell of him, not aftershave or some disgusting deodorant, just a pleasant human smell, like the smell of a meadow on a warm day. Before she took her sandwich out of the to-go bag, she folded her hands to say grace. When she opened her eyes, he was staring at her face. If he was reading her lips, he would know that she had used the rote words that her father often used: “Forgive us our many sins and keep us from sinning.”

As she opened her eyes to the sight of the beautiful man across from her, a small tremor moved through her chest, not unlike the tremor that would come if she forgot to lock a gate or turn off a water hydrant. It was just there: a startling disturbance beneath the calm surface, the shame of the farm's collapse. Right now, that possibility was a little secret, just barely hidden from the world, but it was evidently there, always, and at any moment could threaten to erupt and say, “Remember me?”