Alice Bliss

“You want to be on the team, you come every day.”

  “I’ll make it up. Tomorrow. I can make it up tomorrow.”

  B.D. doesn’t say anything. He’s just looking at her.

  “And I can run tonight. From home. Give me the workout.”

  “You want to be on this team, or what?”

  How can he ask her this? How can he not know?

  “Yes!” she says too loudly.

  “Did something happen, Alice?”

  She can’t answer.

  “You okay, kid?”

  Alice is clenching and unclenching her hands. Her legs are so tense that her right knee is vibrating.

  “You need somebody to talk to?”

  “No.”

  “You sure?”

  “I’ll be okay.”

  “You need a lift somewhere?”

  “No, thank you.”

  “Where are you going? Aren’t you supposed to be in school?”

  “I couldn’t . . . I can’t . . .”

  He rolls his window all the way down, leans out.

  “I’ll let it slide this time, Alice. But come and talk to me, okay?”

  “Are you gonna give me the workout?”

  “Kid, you hardly look like you can stand up, let alone run.”

  “I can run!” bursts out of her with more vehemence than she intended.

  B.D. reaches out to touch Alice, her hand or her shoulder, and then thinks better of it. Nothing is simple anymore, he thinks, not even reaching out to a girl who is falling apart in front of your eyes.

  “You need me to call somebody? A teacher? Your mom?”

  “No!”

  He thinks about his own kids, lost to him following his divorce, the look they get in their eyes, the faraway look, the fear, the anger, the tough protective layers they build up around their hopes and their losses.

  “Alice—”

  She looks at him.

  “I’m not the enemy, okay?”

  She hesitates, then nods and turns away.

  B.D. grinds the Chevy into gear.

  “Come and see me tomorrow, okay? Alice?”

  “Okay.”

  “I mean it.”

  B.D. lurches away, tailpipe rattling, looking at Alice in his rearview mirror.

  She breaks into a run, and even though she has no idea where to go, she’s suddenly like some sort of homing pigeon, and in short order she finds herself at Uncle Eddie’s garage. He slides out from underneath the 1979 BMW he’s working on.

  “Hey, Alice, what are you doing here?”

  She looks at her feet. She didn’t think she’d have to explain to Uncle Eddie.

  He looks at his watch.

  “Aren’t you supposed to be in school?”

  “I . . . It’s just . . .”

  He grabs a set of keys.

  “You want to drive? Take your mind off things?”

  “Okay.”

  “We could head out to the lake. Back roads. Nice and slow.”

  She nods, uncertain of her voice.

  “I’ll drive us out to the golf course, then you can take over.”

  Eddie leads her around back to the little parking lot behind the garage and opens the passenger door of a restored 1966 Mustang. In the back corner of the lot, Matt’s truck sits up on blocks, covered with a tarp. Alice hesitates. The tarp looks like a shroud. Don’t think like that, runs through her mind. It’s just a truck; it’s just a tarp.

  “C’mon, Alice, let’s go.”

  She turns back to Uncle Eddie and the Mustang.

  “Uncle Eddie, I can’t drive this car.”

  “Why not?”

  “It’s . . . it’s . . .”

  “Spectacular, isn’t it? Hop in.”

  The seats are deep, buttery leather.

  “Don’t you feel cool just sitting in this car?”

  Alice smiles, she almost laughs.

  “If I could afford it . . . man, I’d love to have a car like this.”

  “Who owns it?”

  “Some Kodak CEO. Nice guy. For a CEO. He’s got good taste in cars, at least.”

  “How much longer do you get to play with it?”

  “We’re done. He’s picking it up tomorrow. Lucky us he’s busy in Washington right now. This is my good-bye drive. And I’m sharing it with you, you lucky girl.”

  Uncle Eddie rolls down his window and cranks up the radio.

  “Put your window down,” he shouts.

  She rolls her window down, sticks her arm out, flaps her hand in the wind. Uncle Eddie fiddles with the dial until he finds the classic oldies station and the Rolling Stones: “Satisfaction.” Perfect. He turns the volume up so loud the floorboards are vibrating under their feet. Uncle Eddie shouts along with the music.

  But I try, and I try and I try and I try-y-y . . .

  He drums on the steering wheel.

  I can’t get no!

  More drumming.

  No satisfaction!

  He looks at her and grins. What can she do? She grins right back.

  They change places and moderate the volume just a bit in the parking lot of Silver Lake Golf Course. Alice adjusts the seat and the mirrors under Uncle Eddie’s watchful eye.

  “You ready?” he asks.

  She nods.

  “I figure we’ve had enough practice in parking lots.”

  “Only three—!”

  “That’s plenty. You’re a natural.”

  “I am?”

  “Time for the open road, girl.”

  As she eases the Mustang out onto Blossom Road, she thinks, thank God there’s no traffic because it sure feels like she is driving down the center of the street.

  “A little to the right,” Eddie suggests.

  She oversteers onto the verge, and then overcorrects, and finally gets the car centered in the lane. It’s harder than it looks.

  “There you go. You’re getting it.”

  Alice makes it through six miles of open road, she manages the four-way stop at Lakeshore Boulevard, and Uncle Eddie talks her through the tricky intersection right before they get to the lake.

  “Hang a left on Seabreeze. Let’s get some ice cream.”

  This is easy, she thinks, until she almost clips the guardrail making her turn into the frozen custard place.

  “That was a little close.”

  And then she hits the brakes too hard as she pulls into a parking spot.

  “Sorry! Sorry!”

  “You’re doing fine. What flavor do you want?”

  “Chocolate almond.”

  “Keep count of how many boys try to pick you up while I’m inside.”

  “Uncle Eddie!”

  “Just keep count. I’m telling you.”

  “I’m fifteen!”

  “You’re in a Mustang, baby. Count the boys.”

  Instead she cranks up the radio again and closes her eyes. Driving is almost as good as running, she thinks. Maybe she could just get in a car and drive forever. She could drive from park to park and run at every lake and beach and woods from here to . . . Maine, she thinks. From here to Maine.

  She remembers how she would stay awake to keep her dad company on the drive to the campground at Small Point, along the two-lane road that bisects the Phippsburg peninsula, the woods reaching to the sky, the moon shining like a flirtatious girl running in and out of the trees, in and out of sight, making stripes of white on the road ahead of them. She remembers opening the windows, gulping the piney air, breathing in the first hint of salt water. You can almost taste it: the salt and the pine and the cold air exhaling from the woods. She doesn’t look behind. There is no need, yet, to look behind, to watch over her shoulder, to shore up moments and memories against future loss. There is only her dad and the car and the road and the turn off to Small Point at the far end of the peninsula. Here it is, the narrow bit of sand that passes for a road at low tide. Mom and Ellie asleep in the back. Alice and Matt awake, the first ones to see the Kelp Shed, the first ones to see the new spe
ed bump, to take the sharp left turning up to the dirt roads and the campsites. Ocean side. They are ocean side, not bay side campers. Number 39. On the bluffs. Over the rocks. Set apart, but not too far to the showers.

  There’s a knock on her window and Alice nearly jumps out of her skin. There are four teenage boys and two older guys clustered around the Mustang. Wanting to touch it, to run their hands over the bright red curves, pushing each other and their bodies closer and closer. This one guy leans right in her window after she opens her eyes.

  “Hey, beautiful.”

  They jostle each other to get close to the window.

  “Goin’ my way, honey?”

  “Where’d you get this gorgeous car?”

  “What’s your name, baby?”

  Uncle Eddie appears with an ice cream cone in each hand.

  “Back off, boys. She’s my niece. She’s fifteen.”

  “Just admiring your car.”

  “No harm meant.”

  “She’s a beauty.”

  The men and boys disperse as Uncle Eddie hands her the ice cream.

  “Six,” he says, “I counted six.”

  “It’s the car.”

  “Of course it’s the car. It’s also, I’m telling you, every man’s fantasy: a beautiful girl in a beautiful car.”

  They change places so Uncle Eddie can drive them out to the lake. Driving plus eating ice cream is a lesson for another day, apparently, or another car. He parks where they can watch the water and the birds.

  “You want to talk?” he asks.

  The cooling engine ticks away like a clock running down.

  “I don’t know.”

  “How’s your mom doing?”

  “She’s kind of wrapped in cellophane or something.”

  “What about Ellie?”

  “I’m not sure she gets how serious it is.”

  “Maybe that’s good.”

  “Maybe it is. But she wet the bed last night. And she’s sucking her thumb again.”

  “Wouldn’t it be nice if we could press rewind and go backward a couple of years. What about you?”

  “I might be suspended.”

  “Really?”

  “I shoved some dimwit girl and she fell over like a . . . she fell over and got a bloody nose.”

  The ice cream is freezing inside her chest.

  “Why’d you hit her?”

  “She was talking some dumb shit about hating her father and wishing he were dead. Because he grounded her.”

  “Wow.”

  “And then the principal was trying to be decent and wanted to give me a chance, wanted to hear my side of the story, only I couldn’t talk, so he just sat there getting madder and madder, because it probably seemed like I was doing it on purpose, and then he got so mad he decided to call Mom and suspend me. Which is when I walked out.”

  “You walked out?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Go, Alice!”

  “Probably not an appropriate response for a grown-up, Uncle Eddie.”

  “Who cares? That takes guts.”

  “You’re crazy.”

  “Besides, who says I’m a grown-up?”

  Alice looks away.

  “It’s just . . .” She can’t continue.

  Eddie waits. He’s thinking that ice cream was probably a dumb idea, but what else can you do for a kid?

  “The odds aren’t good, are they?” she asks.

  He looks out at the lake, considers.

  “Probably not for most people. But for your dad . . .”

  She tries to hold her voice steady.

  “Thanks for not lying to me.”

  Alice shivers as a bank of clouds obscures the sun. Uncle Eddie reaches out and puts his hand on the back of her head. Leaves it there for a moment. And finds himself thinking about his father, so much like Matt in so many ways. The way he could be quiet with you, the way it seemed like nothing frightened him, that he knew his measure as a man, as a husband, as a father, the way some men are just solid, without making a big show of it. All the things I’ve been running from, Eddie thinks, like it’s possible to take a pass on facing up to who or what you want to be, or who you are.

  “What do you say we take Lakeshore Boulevard all the way to Sodus Point and then head home? You find some mellow tunes. We’ll cruise.”

  She turns the radio on; there’s Van Morrison again: “Brown Eyed Girl.”

  Do you remember when we used to sing?

  “Some smart boy is gonna woo you with that song.”

  Sha la la la la la la la la la la te da.

  “I doubt it, Uncle Eddie.”

  “You wait and see, girl. It’s classic.”

  “The song or the tactic?” She wants to know.

  “Both.”

  Alice pushes open the door of her dad’s workshop. It used to be the garage until Matt went into business for himself. Back then the plan had been to put an addition onto the garage for Matt’s workshop, but he was always too busy to work on his own house. So her mom’s car sits outside in the driveway. A bone of contention with Angie all winter long; but it’s an old bone now so mostly nobody notices it anymore. Except Angie when she’s scraping ice off her windshield.

  The garage sits directly behind the house on the skinny part of their oddly shaped lot. Beyond the garage the lot opens up to the garden, the three apple trees, two cherry trees, and Matt’s grape arbor. Matt installed windows along the back and side walls that look out on the garden. He had plans to put in more windows, too. Capture the view! The second-hand woodstove went in his first winter. A necessity. Can’t do much with mittens on, he’d say.

  It’s four o’clock. Mom’s still at work. Ellie’s on a play date at Janna’s house. It took Alice an hour to decide to come out here, after Uncle Eddie dropped her off, and another ten minutes outside the door gathering the courage to open it. Now she has to walk in.

  The late afternoon sun breaks through the thickening clouds to shine through the back windows; dust motes dance in the weak shafts of light. She breathes in. It smells like wood and turpentine and linseed oil. The workshop is cool and a bit damp; it feels as though the room exhales when she opens the door. She closes her eyes; she can almost picture her dad standing at his workbench, sanding the curve on a new piece of wood to make it look old; she can almost hear the rasp of the sandpaper.

  She stands in the middle of the space. Her eyes adjust to the dim light. Aside from the dust, the place is as neat as a pin. Every tool has its place to hang, every kind of nail and screw and fastener has its own jar. She crosses to his big wooden tool chest and opens it. This is the chest he built for the tools that never leave the workshop. His father’s hammer, his grandfather’s awl and plane and C-clamps. The chest is full of ingenious cubbies and sliding doors and drawers opening beneath other drawers. On the inside of the lid there are five photos. Front and center is the four of them the day they brought Ellie home from the hospital. Matt is holding the baby and Mom and Alice are holding on to Matt. The grin on his face is so big it looks like it could lift him off his feet. Then there’s Ellie on her trike, Alice on horseback, a romantic picture from their wedding where Matt has lifted Angie off the ground and you can tell he is kissing her like crazy, and an old photograph of Matt’s parents.

  It starts to rain and the wind kicks up, blowing rain through the open door. She grabs her dad’s work jacket, which hangs on a peg behind the door, along with a few baseball caps, overalls, and work boots. Shrugging into his jacket she almost loses it. Listening to the rain tapping out some sort of code on the roof, she closes her eyes and tries to see him. But what she sees is either the family photo in his tool chest or an image of a soldier lying face down in blood-spattered dust. The two impossibilities flash one after the other across her inner eye.

  She opens her eyes as the storm begins its crescendo. The rain on the roof has grown loud and the wind is thrashing the lilac bushes outside the so
uth window. She shoves her hands into the pockets of the jacket and finds a stub of pencil and a folded square of paper in the right-hand pocket, a level, a receipt from the paint store, and a pair of keys in the left-hand pocket. She lays them all out on the workbench.

  She unfolds the square of paper. It’s a note and a drawing from Ellie, maybe from kindergarten when she was first learning to make her letters. It’s a series of colorful squiggles. And on the bottom in block letters, some of them backward:

  “ELLIE LOVES DADDY”

  She smoothes out the creases with her palm and props the note up on the windowsill where he’ll be able to see it when he gets home.

  Even with the jacket on she’s shivering, and she’s not really sure if it’s shivering or shaking or all the tears she’s trying not to cry; so she gets up, grabs a broom, and begins sweeping. The sweeping and the rain and the distant rumble of thunder and the wind sending sheets of rain through the door all feel like they are happening inside of her. Ellie loves Daddy, she thinks. Ellie loves Daddy. And wonders if that will make a difference. If love and caring and needing enter into the equation of what will happen to her father and her family at all.

  As she sweeps, she hatches a plan. She’ll get one of the air mattresses from the basement and the old Coleman lantern. And she’ll bring out her books and her sleeping bag and some old pillows and she’ll do her homework out here. Maybe a candle and some CDs, and the rocking chair from her room, and before you know it, Alice is imagining living in the garage and getting some books out of the library so she can learn how to put the windows in that Matt always wanted. She’s pretty sure Uncle Eddie would help her. Matt already has the windows, stacked neatly against the far wall. All the windows for the workshop are castoffs he finds in the street. Old windows with lots of panes. The windows for the west wall are long and thin. There is a pair of them, and Matt wanted to install them horizontally. He just thought it would be cool. Alice wonders if there will be instructions for that in a library book; she hopes so.

  She knows this is a good plan. She knows her dad would like it. She also knows that her mom won’t like it. Especially when Alice starts sleeping out here. Or maybe she’ll keep being so busy she won’t even notice.

  Inside the house she grabs dust cloths, the bucket, the mop, and Mr. Clean. Half an hour later, Alice finishes mopping the workshop floor. She’s not sure this floor has ever been mopped before. She had to change the water in the bucket three times, and it was obvious the rafters had never been dusted. She tackles the windows next. Inside first. The outside will have to wait until it stops raining. The stepladder is just tall enough. She starts to imagine what it’s going to look like when they install those two long, skinny windows.