The Summer We Lost Alice (13 page)

She gave him a stern look
, but Matt didn't notice. He sat engrossed in the images on the screen, animated figures in gaudy costumes firing bolts of energy from their hands and laser beams from their eyes. Cat couldn't tell the good guys from the bad guys, but Matt, who could not have named three presidents of the United States, could rattle off each character's origin and super powers and history in excruciating detail. Cat wondered if that should worry her.

She glanced into her mother's room as she passed. Her mother lay in bed, carefully posed, wide awake but pretending to be asleep. Cat played along with the deception. It was easier for everyone that way.

She carried the cereal bowl into the kitchen and set it in the sink. She threw out the old coffee grounds. Then she discovered that they were out of filters. She added filters to the grocery list. She wrote down "notebook" and searched her memory for other needed items. They'd needed a new answering machine for a month, too, but she'd put off buying one because there were too many choices. The phone company offered something but that was its own level of hell, drilling through the automated system to reach a human being. Why was everything so complicated? She dug yesterday's coffee filter out of the trash. She was rinsing it off when Brittany walked in.

"Morning, sweetie," Cat said.

Without a word to her mother, Brittany strode with hard, little steps to the back door. She opened it and stared into the backyard as if under a hypnotic spell.

"Close the door,
Brit," Cat said. "You'll catch cold."

"
There's scratches on the screen," Brittany said.

"There'd better not be. That screen's brand new."

Cat walked over and saw that, sure enough, long river-like marks ran down the new screen. The screen, bowed and marred, would have been ripped through entirely if the wooden door hadn't been closed. That door, also, sported scratch marks where the claws of some animal had bitten deep into the wood. At their uppermost point they were as high as Cat's shoulders, which meant that whatever made them, when it stood on its hind legs, was nearly as tall as Cat herself.

"It was the wolf," Brittany said.

"I told you, we don't have wolves. We have coyotes, but they aren't this big. Most likely it was the Clements' dog, scared of the storm." Despite herself, she scanned the backyard quickly, searching for—what? Wolves?

Cat shut the door and instructed Brittany to have a seat at the kitchen table. Cat poured her a bowl of psychedelically colored cereal. She studied Brittany's face as she ate. Her hair hung down and threatened to dip itself in the cereal bowl, but the face behind the hair was pretty like her mother's.
She's perfect,
Cat thought,
a perfect little girl.

"My Barbie died," Brittany announced between
spoonfuls.

"Oh?" Cat said. "What happened?"

"She drank bad milk."

Cat closed her eyes. There it
was, the old lie. A little girl asks why Mommy is sick and her father says, "She drank bad milk." Way to put the kid off milk for the rest of her life, Dad. Marginally better than the truth, that Mommy had decided that the days that lay ahead were bleak and utterly pointless and not worth hanging around for. Now here was the lie, bubbling up after all these years, manifested in Barbie Theater, art in imitation of life.

Cat had known for a fact that her marriage was in trouble when, during one episode of Barbie Theater, performed by Brittany in a barracks living room dotted with Cat's fellow Army wives, Barbie began arguing with Ken over the time he spent away from his family, hanging with his Army buddies. Ken had argued back that Barbie spent
too much money, and besides, he'd be going overseas soon and why shouldn't he spend time with the pals he might never see again, at least they didn't bust his balls over every little thing.

Cat had leaped to her feet and scurried Brittany off to her room while her friends exchanged knowing looks. "Mouths of babes," one of them said. By the time Cat returned, a flask had materialized from someone's purse.

"Why did Barbie drink bad milk?" Cat said, fearing the answer.

Brittany shrugged.

That was a break. At least Barbie hadn't come home early from work to find Ken in bed with Skipper. So there was still some part of Cat's own history that hadn't been assimilated.

On the kitchen counter the coffee maker spit and sizzled. The coffee was ready and Cat was ready for it. She considered spiking it with Bailey's Irish Cream but reminded herself of the five o'clock rule—no liquor until five except on weekends when drinking could commence at noon, but beer only.

Cat rubbed her temples.

"Maybe Barbie got better," she offered. "Maybe they took her to the hospital and the doctors made her well."

"No, she died," Brittany said. "I'm going to bury her in the garden if–" She fell silent.

"If what, sweetie?"

Brittany's voice was so quiet when she answered, Cat could barely make out the words.

"If it's safe," Brittany said.

Cat put her arms around her girl and leaned in to kiss the top of her head.

"Of course it's safe," she said. "Now brush your teeth and wash your face and get dressed. I have to go to the store, and this afternoon we'll have a beautiful service for Barbie."

Brittany said, "Okay," and slid off the chair and ran upstairs.

Cat stared at her coffee cup, a souvenir mug, slightly chipped, from their only family trip before the divorce. "Royal Gorge, Bridge & Park" it
said, an old voice from far away and long ago. She got up and opened the cupboard door that hid the liquor and doctored her coffee with a splash of Bailey's. She carried it to the back door and gazed out.

The yard was bathed in yellow light, the sky was a bright, cloudless blue,
the air was warming quickly. What was there to worry about on such a day? Little girls had imaginations and Brittany's was especially active, but that was a good thing, wasn't it?

Cat took a sip of coffee, breathed in the steam rising from the cup. She closed her eyes and savored the hot, sweet bite of the whiskey as it rolled over her tongue.

It was a lovely day for a funeral.

* * *

Flo had lain in bed and listened to the house coming to life around her. She had heard Matt's feet on the stairs, the kitchen door swing open, bang and swing back and forth until it settled in. She heard the boy rummage around in the kitchen cupboards. The refrigerator door had opened and shut once, just once because he always left the milk out. She'd heard his steps in the hallway and the television had come on.

It was too early for television. Catherine should put her foot down and set some limits. An electronic babysitter, that's all it was. If her daughter didn't want to deal with her children, why didn't she just shoot them full of heroin? Television was as bad and maybe worse. Just when she thought the programs couldn't get any worse, along came the games, more violent and even more
plotless than the shows.

She did like her own stories, but what else was an old woman to do? She was just biding her time now, gardening, waiting to join Bill in
heaven. Kids should have something to live for. They should be outside playing with their friends, getting into mischief, not glued to the idiot box like zombies.

She'd heard Catherine rise. She'd closed her eyes and turned her head to the side, feigning sleep as Catherine passed her bedroom. Brittany had gotten up. Voices had sounded in the kitchen. The smell
of fresh coffee reached her room. Finally, after an hour of staring at the ceiling, she had some reason to move her bones.

She straightened her flannel nightgown and pulled on her quilted robe. Already the stitching on the robe was coming loose and it was hardly a year old. Everything was made so cheaply today, in China, throwing good hardworking Americans out of their jobs. A good robe that lasted would be worth paying for.

Flo looked in the mirror and wanted to cry. It wasn't what was there that depressed her so, the wrinkles and the sallow eyes, but what was gone. Where was the light and the joy? How had all the promise managed to disappear from her life, so that one day you woke up and everything you'd thought you might be, you'd resigned yourself to never being? All you would have, you had, all you would do, you'd done. Gone were the fantasies that sustained you, gone the dreams. They'd disappeared and you hadn't even noticed them slipping away, and your face had become as empty as an old sack.

It would have been different if Alice were still alive. Alice brought life to everything. Alice had had a magic about her. She had a way of seeing things that was surprising and funny.
Gone now, all gone.

Thank God she still had Catherine and her kids. Flo would have given up and died years ago if not for them. But Matt was worrisome, and Brittany—what
was
Brittany? Prone to fantasy, like Alice, but she had a dark and morbid nature that was the polar opposite of Alice's. Matt's influence didn't help. Brittany would do great things with her life, or horrible ones.

Flo fussed a little with her hair, slipped into the
Isotoner slippers the kids always gave her for Christmas, then headed upstairs to pay her respects. As always, she paused at Alice's room. The door was closed, as it was supposed to be.

She ran her fingers gently down the wood as if stroking a child's cheek. 

"Another day, peanut," she said. Then she headed downstairs to endure until bedtime.

* * *

"Sheriff!"

Sammy Morse ignored the deputy's cry. The sun felt good on his back, like his father's hand on his shoulder when he was small. The air was crisp, the coffee was hot. The lake and the woods were a pleasant place to be on a bright autumn day, as long as he could forget his reason for being there.

Turnout at the volunteer station was low today. Sammy had called the search for a survivor to a halt, dealing a final blow to most people's hopes. Tillie, who ran the catering truck, told him she had to get back to her regular rounds or declare bankruptcy, and the department's emergency budget was tapped out. Estherjane Proost was in the hospital, which was a shame, but her absence was a relief. They'd started dragging the lake that morning.

But the sky was brilliant and the earth smelled fresh and it was a good day to be alive. Maybe Sammy would call up his dad and ask for advice. His father had led his share of search parties when he was sheriff. Maybe Sammy would even get the old man out of the house and they'd go for a walk in the woods and call it "investigation." They would pass his dad's flask back and forth and complain about women, the government, and the raw life of a law enforcement officer.

Reverie came easy on a day like this, a day pretty and new.

"Sheriff!"
The deputy ran up beside him. He held something blue and wet in his fingers, a backpack with one of those ambiguous Japanese cartoon characters, bland as a happy-face, on the front.

"They just fished this out of the lake," the deputy said. He held the pack toward Sammy delicately. Sammy traded his coffee for the backpack and opened it. The deputy winced.

"Sheriff, shouldn't you ... I mean ... there might be forensic evidence—"

"Yep, might be," Sammy said. The fabric wouldn't yield a decent fingerprint, not after three days' submersion in the lake. He fished around inside the pack
. He carefully eased out a wet piece of notebook paper. A column of words printed in a childish hand ran down one side of the paper. There was a name printed at the top and a teacher's grade in blurred red ink. Willy Proost had received a B+ on his spelling test.

"Where'd they find it?" Sammy asked.

"The lake."

"So you said.
Whereabouts? Near which shore?"

His
deputy looked toward the lake. "About in the middle, I guess," he said.

Sammy handed the pack to the deputy. "Bag it," he said. The deputy turned to go. Sammy called after him, "Coffee!"

The deputy handed back the paper cup. "Go," Sammy said.

His deputy was a nice enough fellow
, but Sammy had discovered early that, as with a dog, the more direct the command the better.

He sipped his coffee and made a face. It had cooled enough to let the taste through,
which wasn't good. He tossed the bitter liquid on the ground and squinted into the sun.

At this point in time, on this beautiful autumn day under this stinging, brilliant sun, Sammy Morse put his mind to the question of the backpack and what its discovery in the middle of the lake meant. He created one unlikely scenario after another without discovering one that he could believe. If the pack had been left on the shore, maybe Willy
Proost had walked off and left it there. In the water near the shore, maybe it was tossed in by a cruel classmate. But in the middle of the lake, chances were good that Willy's body would be the next thing to turn up on the end of the dredging hook. And if it didn't, then they were talking about abduction, and that made Sammy's stomach turn.

He'd almost rather find the boy dead.