They are going the long way to school, down Baird Road to Martin Street instead of cutting through the playing fields; they are passing Mrs. Minty’s house and Mrs. Piantowski’s house and The Bird Sisters and the Four Corners. Henry is worried that his hand is probably all sweaty and slick and gross, but if it is, Alice doesn’t seem to notice. Alice has closed her eyes against the well of sorrow that is always there, rising and falling like a tide, but with her eyes closed she is suddenly hearing and smelling the world around her; hearing the leaves rustle and the branches scraping against each other, hearing their footsteps on the cement sidewalk, the scuffing sound Henry makes in his unaccustomed fancy tie shoes, the click, click of her little flats, and then there it is, yes, there it is, the spring smells layered one by one, of new grass and clean dirt and somewhere in the twilight there are narcissus spilling their perfume into the night.
“Alice?”
“Yeah?”
“I’d really like to dance with you.”
“Okay.”
“A slow dance.”
“Okay.”
“And then we can go home.. . . Unless you want to stay.”
Alice takes a breath.
“I sort of promised John Kimball I would dance with him.”
“What?”
“It seemed so far-fetched at the time that I never really thought—”
“He asked you—?”
“Yeah.”
“What about Melissa?”
“That’s what I said.”
“Do you want to dance with him?”
“I don’t know. I mean, no, I mean . . . Henry, it’s not like a lot of people have ever asked me to dance.”
She looks at him.
“It was nice to be asked.”
“When did this happen?”
“At the Red Wings game.”
“I figured.”
“And then it was awkward and I didn’t know how to tell you, or if there was anything to tell. Which there isn’t. Okay?”
“Okay.”
“Can we just forget it now?”
Approaching the high school they can hear the deep bass notes thumping and vibrating all the way from the gym. The principal is at the entrance to the school, his tie loosened, talking to the police officer whose cruiser is idling in the street. He looks up and sees Alice and Henry heading to the back of the building.
“You two have tickets?”
Henry sprints over and hands him their tickets.
“Come on in.”
“We were planning to just hang out on the grass for a while.”
“You’re supposed to go inside so we know who’s who, what’s what, and who’s where.”
“Mr. Fisher,” Henry starts to explain—
“Alice, I’m so sorry to hear about your dad.”
“Thank you,” Alice says to the asphalt in front of her.
“Mr. Fisher, we don’t want to go inside, we just—”
“—You just what?”
Henry steps up close and speaks quietly for a moment. Mr. Fisher considers.
“If I make an exception can you stay out of trouble?”
“Yes, sir.”
“I mean it, Henry.”
“I know you do, Mr. Fisher.”
They give the school a wide berth as they walk around to the back. Behind the school the double doors to the gym are propped open, spilling music and light onto the parking lot and the edge of the playing fields. The dance committee has hung disco balls from the basketball hoops at either end of the gym floor. There’s a DJ at one end and a table full of cookies and punch at the other.
Alice and Henry skirt the edge of the light as they make their way to the lone maple tree behind the school. There are several boys hanging out at the doors who seem to catch their scent and gather, in a body, to begin some kind of taunt. But then they recognize Alice, or one of them does, and they decide to leave them alone.
It is dark enough now to see the stars, dark enough and late enough for the DJ to start to slow things down. Alice sees John Kimball come to the doorway, talk to the boys who are still there, look her way, and head back inside. He seems so far away. It all seems so far away. The baseball game seems like it happened in another lifetime to another girl.
A slow song begins. Henry turns to Alice and puts his hands on her waist. She puts her hands on his shoulders and then he draws her close and she puts her arms around his neck and suddenly without thinking about it too much or having a chance to mess it up, they are dancing. Henry feels the music like his own heartbeat and moves Alice gently over the rough ground as though they are gliding on a polished floor. Alice had been afraid she would not know how to do this, or that she would do it badly or trip or step on his feet. But Henry relaxes into the music and Alice relaxes into Henry and it is so lovely and so unexpected that she allows herself to rest her head on his shoulder. She closes her eyes and she is floating in space, she is riding the music with Henry; she is trusting her body and her feet and she is not thinking about anything but this.
One part of Henry, the dancing part, is inside the music and wants to stay there because that’s what he knows, that’s where he can just move and hold Alice. But when she puts her head on his shoulder and he takes one hand from her waist and puts it on her head, his fingers in her soft, soft hair, it takes his breath away. He stumbles in that moment and steps on her toes, but they right themselves, they take a breath, together. Henry inhales the perfume of her skin, Alice feels the delicacy of his neck, the new strength in his shoulder; Alice feels the steps, the music, the letting go, the holding on.
The song ends and they separate. Alice does not want to come back to the world; Alice would like to stay lost in the music and the night sky and Henry’s arms for a little while longer, maybe forever.
She looks up to see John Kimball at the gym doors again. He takes a step toward her; she waves to him, and then Melissa Johnson is there to reach out and take him by the hand and pull him back inside. Stephie disentangles herself from Jeremy Baskin and comes to the door. Before she can wave, Alice and Henry retreat farther into the dark beyond the maple tree and decide to cut through the Baldwins’ driveway to Martin Street so they don’t have to see everyone coming out of the school and laughing and talking and waiting for their rides.
In the dark of Martin Street, holding Alice’s hand, Henry wants to kiss her. That rogue thought has been zinging around inside of him for weeks now, waking him at odd or inconvenient moments, startling him at breakfast or in the middle of a math test or at the piano. But this feeling in the dark of Martin Street is like a runaway car careening out of control; his blood is doing a jig in his veins, his heart is pounding, his knees feel all watery and weird, and his feet feel like they’ve grown six sizes. How in the world will he keep from tripping and falling? He is on the edge of falling every single second.
“Henry, are you okay?”
“What? Yeah. Fine. Why?”
“Well, you’re kind of breathing funny.”
Breathing, is he actually still breathing?
“Sorry. Sorry.”
And he trips. His legs are like Jell-O. This is ridiculous. He goes down on one knee and recovers, kind of bounces back up like his knee is rubber capped or something.
“Henry Grover, if I didn’t know better, I’d think you were drunk.”
I am drunk, he thinks, or this must be what being drunk is like; woozy and hyperaware and clumsy.
“Are you okay? Are you sick?”
Yes, sick, that’s it. Sick and in pain and really, do people want to feel like this? It’s kind of like torture.
“Maybe this was a mistake? And we should have stayed home?”
No, no, not a mistake, he’s thinking as he trips again and recovers, but just barely. Not a mistake to walk with you and dance with you and hold you and . . . Oh, boy, this is not getting better, he thinks, this is getting worse and worse.
“Henry, I think you might be hyperventilating.”
He trips again but Alice catches him, sort of, or at least manages to ease him down to the curb.
“Henry, it’s okay. Just try to take one deep breath.”
“Alice,” he manages to choke out—
“What ?”
“When you kissed me . . .”
She looks down at her feet. Not a good sign. He braces himself.
“When you kissed me . . . Was it . . .?”
“Was it what?”
“A mistake?” he asks.
“No, I mean—”
“—Are you sorry?”
“No. I didn’t think—”
“Because I didn’t mean—”
“I know.”
“No, you don’t know,” he says. “You startled me and—”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry. Please don’t be sorry. What I mean is—”
“What?”
“I didn’t have a chance—”
“A chance to what?”
“A chance to kiss you back . . . And last night, when I was holding you, just holding you—”
“Henry, don’t.”
“Don’t what?”
“Don’t ask me.”
“I don’t want to ask you, I want to kiss you.”
“Don’t ask me.”
“Don’t . . . ?”
And she is looking at him with her deep, newly fathomless eyes that are shining with something that is not tears and not joy, but is still urgent and unreadable, and he wants to think about what Alice is feeling but all he can think about is what he is feeling. Is this what her mother was talking about this morning, that lifetime ago? It is not careful or considerate or cautious; it is a rush that’s propelling him, terrified that he could lose her forever, terrified that this could be his only chance, terrified that whatever happens in this moment cannot be taken back or erased or made right once it happens, that if he stumbles here, somehow that is who he is and who he will be forever and ever.
He looks down at his hands dangling between his knees, and suddenly it is all quiet inside of him. Too quiet, like all the air has been squeezed out of him and he is nothing but a shell. He can hear the breeze in the trees overhead; he can hear the traffic on Baird Road.
Alice kneels in front of him. She puts her hands on either side of his face.
“I don’t want anything else to change, Henry.”
“It won’t change.”
“It will.”
“But . . .”
“I can’t lose one more thing.”
He can’t hear her, really; he can’t hear anything but this new roaring in his ears when she is so close to him, and he pulls her to him, too fiercely, they nearly collide, he pulls her to him and for a second, looks into her eyes, her unreadable eyes. He closes his own eyes and with a prayer, a wish, a pure incantation of fear and desire, he kisses her. And this time there is no mistaking it, their lips actually touch. It is equally shocking as the first time, but they do not stumble and jerk and pull away.
Instead, Alice bursts into tears. These are not girly tears pulled out and turned on for effect, not that Alice is that kind of girl; these are racking, hiccupping, blubbering sobs. Henry has one wild, terrible moment where he thinks his kiss has caused these desperate feelings, before Alice leans into him and holds on to him and sobs and sobs into his shoulder.
He manages to stand up and pull her to her feet and hand her his handkerchief, which his mother had not only thought to provide but had carefully ironed that afternoon.
“It’s not you,” she chokes out, before burying her face in his handkerchief again. “It’s everything.”
Henry knows that everything is her dad and that her dad is everything, which is not exactly the way he feels about his own dad, and if anything, if it is even possible, this fills him further to the brim with Alice feelings.
And while it is true that Henry is nothing but a gangly fifteen-year-old boy, often sloppy, occasionally rude, with marginal hygiene habits, it is also true that he is still in possession of his own heart, his own inspired, musical, untouched heart, a heart capable of taking on Alice and her sadness and her loss and her love. So, on this night, when Alice pours out her grief for her father and her love for her father, and the ending of her time on earth with her father, it is Henry she chooses, Henry she pours these feelings into, Henry she blesses and burdens with her tears, Henry who has the strength of ten men as he stands up and stands steady beneath this onslaught that has knocked lesser men and boys to their knees.
May 8th
They are waiting on the airport tarmac for Angie and the military escort and the coffin to be unloaded from the plane. There is a special place at the airport for this, away from the main terminal. Alice is sitting in the front seat next to Uncle Eddie. Gram and Ellie are in the back. The hearse from Mahoney and Sons waits behind them. No one is talking. It is gray and cool, threatening rain. Good for the garden, Alice thinks, though we could use some sun.
A uniformed soldier follows Angie down the stairs as the hold of the plane is opened from the inside. She is wearing her glasses, Alice notices, even though she’s dressed up. Maybe she wants to hide her eyes.
Six soldiers stand with the coffin on their shoulders. Alice had expected a flag, but the coffin is bare. Angie is directed to a place near the hold. The soldier following her stands nearby. The funeral director appears at Uncle Eddie’s window.
“They’re waiting for us. Just walk up and stand beside Mrs. Bliss.” They pile out of the car and cross the gritty tarmac to stand beside Angie as Matt’s coffin is carried down the stairs. The single soldier turns toward the coffin and executes a very precise, slow-motion salute. Alice steps forward. The funeral director reaches out a hand to pull her back and Alice realizes they were not supposed to stop; they were not going to wait for her to meet her father, to acknowledge his return. Their job is simply to convey the coffin across the parking lot and into the waiting hearse. But they do stop for her, each in his dress uniform, each with his eyes front.
“Are you from my father’s unit?”
“No.”
“Did any of you know him?”
“No. I’m sorry.”
Gram steps forward.
“Come on, honey.”
Alice stands her ground. She turns to the single, saluting soldier.
“Did you know my father?”
He shakes his head. She turns back to the coffin.
“Can you put the coffin down, please?”
There is hesitation all around, subtle shifts in the soldier’s bodies, as they cannot break rank and look at each other. Alice chooses one soldier to speak to.
“Can you just let him touch the ground, please?”
The wind picks up; sand and dust swirl around their feet. It is possible that the soldier could choose to let the wind blow Alice’s words away, but she is standing firm and speaking clearly and looking him in the face even though he cannot meet her eyes.
He speaks a brief command, and then, moving as one, the soldiers lower the coffin to the ground and take a step away. She kneels beside the coffin and lays one hand on the smooth wood. She wants a moment for her father to land on the ground, for his body to arrive here, at home. She does not want her father’s soul to be lost in Iraq or in a plane flying above the ocean or somewhere in an army hospital in Delaware. She wants his soul to come home, however briefly, home, before it goes on whatever journey a soul must take, and she doesn’t believe this is possible if he never actually touches the ground. If she could she would open the coffin and put his feet on the ground, but this is the best she can do.
Angie reaches out to take her hand, pulling Alice to her feet, releasing the soldiers. They lift the coffin to their shoulders, walk the last steps to the hearse, and slide the coffin into the waiting bay.
They all wait where they are until the hearse starts up. The soldiers remain at attention while the family piles back into the car and slowly drives off, following the hearse. Ellie k
neels on the seat and watches out the back window. Not one soldier moves a muscle while she can still see them. Uncle Eddie takes the turn onto Columbus Avenue too fast and Ellie slides into a seated position in between Alice and Gram. Angie puts her head back against the headrest and closes her eyes. She is as pale as the moon.
Gram reaches up and strokes Angie’s hair. Alice notices that Gram’s hand is trembling. Gram, realizing what Alice has seen, shifts to rest her hand on Angie’s shoulder.
“We’ll get through this,” Gram says.
Angie clasps Gram’s hand, and Alice sees that she is wearing Matt’s wedding ring on her second finger. When did they give that to her? In the morgue? Was it in a small plastic bag or an envelope? Did she slip it off his finger herself? Did they let her touch him? Why did Angie go alone, why didn’t she take Gram or Uncle Eddie with her, why did she refuse to let Alice come along?
Why are all of these things happening so quickly? There is too much to do, there are too many steps to take, no, no, there is not enough to do, she sees now; it will all go by too fast, it is out of her hands, it will all happen whether she wants it to or not, and he will be gone, truly gone, dead and buried, and there will not even be this, this strange hollow awkwardness, this unnatural quiet to fill up the emptiness he has left behind.
“Home?” Uncle Eddie asks.
“Mom, where are Dad’s dog tags?” Alice asks.
“Home,” Angie answers, touching her throat and the metal chain under her shirt collar.
“Can I have them?” Ellie asks. “Alice has his watch.”
“Not now, girls.”
They ride in silence, a terrible brittle silence. The air of the car is so full of unspoken feelings Alice is surprised the windows don’t blow out. She wants to shout or jump on the seat or scream; instead she opens the window to try to release the pressure. If they weren’t traveling I-90 at seventy miles an hour, she would stick her head out the window; her head, her torso, her arms, her legs, and suddenly she is fantasizing about jumping out of the car window, landing on the pavement, being hit by a car . . . Jesus! Where the hell did that come from? She can’t bear to think about the autopsy. But what about his spirit, Alice wonders? Where is it? Can she touch it, reach it, capture it like a firefly in a bottle? She doesn’t believe that. And even if she could believe it, even if his spirit is still alive and even if she could find it somehow, know where to look or what to say, if she could still talk to him; even then, it’s not enough. She wants all of him back, his face, his body, his voice, his big feet, his laugh, his patience, his impatience. She even wants him correcting her math tests, making her mad, holding her to a higher standard, holding her to seemingly impossible standards all the time. She wants him back, that’s all.