The Fall of Alice K. (37 page)

“Not worth it,” her father said. He rubbed his lips together and looked at the soiled engine as if he were making a practical calculation. “What do I owe you?”

“Not a cent, Albert. Not a cent.” Rodney walked to his own Ford 150 with its bright yellow John Deere decal on the door. “Want me to keep an eye out for another good used one?”

“Thanks, but we'll be all right.”

Alice's father had another tractor that he had bought at another farm sale in the eighties during the first big round of farm sales, a John Deere 4440, but he had been protecting it, not wanting to start it up just to do chores.

Alice helped her father unhitch the mixer-grinder. He walked to the chewers' pen and retrieved the log chain. He hosed it clean while Alice walked to the machine shed and started the spare tractor, the big 4440. The power of the diesel engine rumbled through her. When she revved it up, the vibrations tingled through her shoulders, relaxing them more deeply. For a moment, she thought of herself as an early woman settler, helping with the work that needed doing even when she was pregnant. She thought of the hard expressions on the faces of the women pictured in her father's old
Atlas.
She could match them in strength and
determination. She eased the clutch out, and the tractor stepped forward, slow but confident like an old and stubborn workhorse. Slowly, Alice directed the 4440 to drag its dead brother toward the grove. When they got close to what would be the disabled tractor's final resting-place, her father insisted that he do the driving. In a few minutes she saw why: he was determined to align it with the other machinery so that it would not declare its uselessness.

As they walked toward the house together, Alice opened the conversation that would test his need for alignments. If anything was going to disrupt his notion of clarity and order, what she had to tell him would.

“Dad, I've got something important to tell you.”

He still smelled of disinfectant from his work at the dairy. He was stooped and slow. Each foot landed as if it had its own tired life. “What's wrong?”

She could read his hopeless expression: he assumed something was wrong on the farm. First his tractor, and now what—the steers?

“I need to talk to you about what's happening in my life.”

He quickly read the seriousness of her statement. “All right, let's go down to my office,” he said, “so we won't disturb your mother.”

They went to his office, and he closed the door. The old
Atlas
was lying open on his desk. He closed it and sat down. Already he looked like a man of sorrow acquainted with grief.

“What is it?”

Alice stood directly before him, her arms at her side. “I'm going to have a baby.”

He pulled his elbows back on the armrests of his chair. “Don't say things like that.”

“I'm pregnant.”

“Don't tell me that,” he said. “That's not possible.”

“I'm afraid it is.”

He studied her. He looked bewildered. “Are you telling me that you have been having sex?”

“Yes.”

He leaned against the back of his chair and shook his head. “I don't believe it,” he said. “When would you have time for that kind of foolishness?”

Her mother evidently had told him nothing about what she had witnessed in the haymow. In his bewilderment he looked innocent. And pathetic. Her wise father was blind to who she was.

“Please. I don't want to go into details. It just happened, but I love him.”

“Who do you love? Who did it?”

“Nickson. Dad, I really do love him. Don't think of me as a bad person.”

“That Hmong boy? You're joking.”

“No. I love him.”

“You what?” He leaned forward but did not get up.

“I love him. I'm going to have his baby.”

“No you're not.”

“Yes I am.”

“I can't believe this.”

“It's true.”

“When? When? When could something like this happen?”

“Now and then. Dad, don't ask me that. We have to look to the future. We have to make plans.”

Alice was prepared for his anger, but not his bewilderment. She imagined that he would be shocked and disappointed, then angry, but that he'd quickly become the problem solver. He'd help her figure out how to finish high school and get ready for college as a young married woman. He looked at the floor, then stood up and walked to look out the small basement window that gave a ground-level view toward the barn. He let out a sigh that sounded as if it had a sob behind it.

If her father was hoping that she might become everything that David might have been, that hope had just dissipated forever. For her father, the news of her pregnancy was the last straw: he was ready to collapse like the rest of the farm.

“I'm so sorry, Dad,” she said. “I am so sorry about everything. You don't deserve this. I'm sorry I failed you. I couldn't
not
tell you. I had to tell you. I'm so sorry I have disappointed you.”

Alice sniffed back the tears.

He turned and stared at her. The glare in his eyes was something Alice did not recognize. She thought it must be his anger, waiting to
break loose from its chains. Alice prepared for the explosion when he walked toward her, but he stopped and stood in front of her, his whole body stiff and erect. His ability to stay in control was giving way as his eyes glossed over and the tension in his shoulders gave way. A vibrating inhalation of air, and his shoulders shook. He put his chin down and turned his head to the side, and wept.

“Why you?” he sobbed. “Why you?”

“I'm sorry, Dad. I was irresponsible.”

He paused and swallowed. “We all are,” he said.

“Dad?”

“We're all sinners. I was too. Your mother and I were too. Your mother and I were thirty-seven years old,” he said. “Do you know what I'm saying? We were thirty-seven years old. We weren't kids. But we weren't married and should have known better. Your mother believes that losing David was our punishment.”

Alice understood what he was telling her, and she couldn't repress the fact that some pleasure was warring with her pain. Maybe her parents' first lovemaking was out in pastures and haymows too. Maybe her mother came to catch her and Nickson in the haymow so that she could replay her own good old days.

“I love you, Dad.”

“I shouldn't have told you,” he said. His composure was coming back. He looked squarely at Alice. “Your mother would kill me.”

“I won't say anything,” said Alice.

She reached out her arms, but he did not reach out his. She flung her arms around his waist anyhow, and he put his hands on her back and patted her as together they wept with the sorrowful joy of a father and daughter accepting the mutual distress of their lives.

Slowly, he released her and wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. “Does your mother know ?”

Alice shook her head. “She knows I've been seeing Nickson. She doesn't know that I'm pregnant.”

“Do you want me to tell her?”

Alice shook her head again. “I need to do it,” she said. “Please don't listen in.”

“I won't.”

Alice laid her hand on her father's shoulder before turning to go upstairs. Her mother sat in the living room with a magazine on her lap. She looked up, saw Alice's face, and must have spotted an imminent crisis.

“Sit down,” she said calmly.

Alice sat. She looked directly at her mother. “I am going to have a baby.”

Her mother nodded her head. Not one startled movement.

“Not surprised,” she said. “That's what happens. You might have talked to me about it.” She laid her magazine down and put the tips of her fingers together so that she looked as if she was holding an invisible cantaloupe.

“I am,” she said. “I'm talking to you now.”

Her mother dropped the invisible cantaloupe and folded her hands. “You might have talked to me about how to keep this from happening.”

“Right. You would have put me on the pill?”

She looked at Alice quickly. “Of course,” she said. “When it was obvious you weren't going to listen to me about not getting involved with him. And I warned you about
them.
They're notorious for having big families.”

“You don't know anything.”

“I know more than you think I do,” she said. “I'm a realist. I look at the facts and figure out what's behind them.”

“Please.” Now it was Alice who looked away. She was looking out the window when she said, “I love Nickson. His family are wonderful Christian people.”

“You have blinders on. Don't you see how it's all coming together? Don't you see how it's all adding up?”

“Mother, I don't need this. I need your support.”

“You had my support when I told you not to get involved. Remember?” She stood up and walked toward the kitchen. “Where is your father?”

“In his office.”

“You told him?”

“Yes. Mother, why didn't you tell him that I was seeing Nickson?”

“He has enough pain in his life. Now you've really done it. All the
bad news at one time. Get out of the house. Just go do your chores. I'm going to talk to your father.”

Alice did do her chores and thought of her parents as she worked. She tried to think of moments of affection between them and couldn't think of any: no little hugs, no hand-holding, no kisses on the lips or cheeks. But they had something. They listened to each other and didn't argue. They weren't like hot coals to each other, but they weren't cold ashes either. Even in her mother's darkest moods, her father accepted her, and they were probably having a sane and quiet discussion about her at that very moment. They must have talked to each other when Alice was not around. They might be praying together at that very moment, praying for the future for her and the whole family.

Even if her parents had found a path toward harmony with each other, Alice could not think of one moment when her mother showed pride in her. If she was acting on some notion of child rearing, it was the idea that you'd help your child by holding up so many “nos” that she'd have no choice but to find the “yeses.” The only “yeses” Alice ever found by following her mother was the “Yes, you are wrong; yes, you are worse than you think you are.” The only thing that made sense was to conclude that her mother was jealous. She didn't want Alice to become something bigger, happier, or more accomplished than she was. If Alice could have been sure that it was simply jealousy that made her mother attack her at every corner, that would have helped. Jealousy would have shown that she was actually proud of Alice, even if it was a warped pride. Now that Alice had been brought down, perhaps her mother would be satisfied.

Alice tried to remember one moment when her mother was in a good mood. She did remember some, but they dated back to when Alice was in grade school. She had good moods back then, so good that the color black looked bright on her and shone like the fur of a happy dark cat basking by a windowpane at noon. When she was in one of those good moods, Alice could see why her father fell in love with her. But then the cloudy years had come. No matter what she wore, it looked like a shroud, and when she spoke, her words did not so much sound as if they were coming from the tomb as from the cold lips of an executioner. When she
was in her dark, scathing moods, Alice always felt her own blood fire up and the words that came to her mind were knives that were ready to slash back at the verbal thrusts her mother made.

Before going back to the house, Alice needed a plan that built on her initial resolve that she felt when she was ready to make her announcements. She needed to declare what she wanted and not let them try to define her life the way her parents had defined Aldah's. The plan was sketchy but clear: she would marry Nickson and finish high school. She'd do all the schoolwork and when she was obviously pregnant and not allowed to attend classes at Midwest, she'd have Mai or Nickson deliver her completed assignments to school. She and Nickson could live in the Krayenbraak house: it had plenty of room, and even had a spare room where Nickson could study. If the farm operation collapsed completely, she and Nickson could live in a small apartment. Maybe somebody's basement.

If it was a baby girl, they would name her Aldah. If it was a baby boy, they would name him Albert after her father. If that was all right with Nickson.

38

“Sit,” said Alice's father. “Your mother and I have been talking.”

Alice sat down.

“You can keep going to school until we see if we can get financial assistance for you to live in a home for unwed mothers.”

“You're joking. I'm not a runaway. Knock it off.”

“Listen to your father.”

This is how a young calf must feel when it's surrounded by farmhands that are determined to lasso it, hold it down, and administer some kind of medicine that is supposed to protect it from the dangers of the environment. They're cornering me, Alice realized. I will not be cornered. I will not.

“I am going to finish high school,” she said in a sharp but restrained voice. “I won't have to quit until after the first semester, and then I can do it by correspondence. By e-mail. I'll get the assignments and have somebody take them to school. I'm not dropping out of school.”

“You're both children,” said her mother. “You will not be going off at night to see him anymore.”

“That's right,” said her father.

Alice knew this was no time to argue about seeing Nickson. That would only encourage them to build a higher fence to keep her in. She already had extra sets of keys for the 150 and Taurus, but they could get the locks changed—if they could afford it.