Alice.
Now
I woke up to blinding sunlight and the blankets pushed down around my feet. The humidity from outside filled the room. I reached for Harvey, but he wasn’t there. I blinked my eyes into focus and saw him, kneeling in front of his duffle bag.
“Good morning,” I said.
“Morning. Smells like hash browns.” We were still okay. The goodness between us hadn’t disappeared.
“I closed the door so you could sleep a little later,” he said, pointing to the door. “Bernie was in such a good mood she didn’t even notice.”
I inhaled the aroma and realized I was starving. I skipped down the ladder and grabbed a pair of denim shorts to change into.
“I put your swimsuit in the bathtub to dry,” said Harvey, his hand on the doorknob.
“Right, thanks,” I said, yawning. “Close the window, Harvey. It’s freaking hot in here.”
“Can I talk to you after breakfast?”
I shrugged. “Sure.”
He left, and I changed quickly into my shorts.
It seemed that starving was a common theme at the breakfast table. My dad made hash browns and waffles. Every crumb disappeared in minutes. The much more beach-appropriate weather had lifted everyone’s spirits. Harvey volunteered us for cleaning duty while my parents and Natalie sipped coffee.
I scooped up a handful of soapsuds and blew them into Harvey’s face. Unfortunately for him, his mouth was open, and he coughed so hard I was surprised he didn’t hack up a lung.
With Harvey still coughing and our parents deep in conversation, the doorbell rang. I ran to answer the door with a greasy iron skillet still in my hand.
“Alice! Hey, Alice, let me get that!” yelled Harvey, his voice raspy, as he chased me down the hallway with his hands covered in soapsuds.
I ignored him and swung the door open to find Debora. Debora with a small overnight bag on her shoulder. No. I held my breath, hoping that she wasn’t here to be with my Harvey, even though I knew she was.
“Alice.” I turned around to find Harvey with his eyes on Debora but my name on his lips. This was a mistake. This was a family vacation. Debora was smart, nice, and cute, but she was not family.
Natalie rushed down the hallway with my parents at her heels. “Oh, Debora! I’m so glad you were able to make it.”
I whipped back around to Debora on the doorstep, eyes wide as Natalie gave her a quick hug. Behind her, a silver Toyota Camry was parked in the driveway. Again, I turned around to face Harvey, hoping for some kind of explanation.
He stood with his mouth open.
But then it slid over me like wax. He’d invited her here. And they all knew. My mom, my dad, Natalie. All of them had known she would be here. And Harvey, he let me put myself out there last night. I pushed air in and out of my nose, forcing myself to remember to breath. I wanted to crush him.
“What. The. Hell. Harvey,” I growled, my voice low and angry.
“I tried to tell you. Last night, remember?”
In the water, before he thought he had lost the key. We were talking about today, and he wanted to talk to me about something, I remembered. This morning, in our room. “No. I don’t remember.” Each word clipped.
The narrow hallway was too small for all of us. Debora still stood at the door, unsure of what to do with herself. I wanted to rip out her goddamn hair. That’s what I wanted to do. I pushed through Harvey, Natalie, and my parents, weaseling out of each of their attempts to grab me. The iron skillet was still in my hand, swinging at my side. My mom chased after me into the living room as I walked through the sliding glass door and onto the patio.
“What the hell has gotten into you?” she demanded, sliding the door shut behind her.
“Go away.”
“Alice.” Her voice wasn’t kind or gentle. Everything in me was withering, and she chose now to yell at me. I closed my eyes and saw the pictures. The flowers. The candles. Rest in Peace. No matter how fast Harvey and Dennis had managed to take down that display, it would always exist. I would always see it. I would never forget.
“I said go the fuck away.” It wasn’t the words themselves but the way I said them that would create a big wave with my mom. Heat from my ears spread down my neck and across my chest.
She grabbed my wrist (the one not connected to the skillet) and squeezed hard. My hand began to turn white, and I could already feel her fingerprints branding my skin. “I don’t know when you turned into such a little bitch, but things are going to change in a big way.”
Most mothers don’t talk to their daughters like that, but my mom and I had never been most mothers and daughters. I remembered reading about wolf packs when I was younger. Each wolf pack could only have one alpha, one chief. This was the very unfortunate truth of my mother and me. We were two alphas who could never coexist in peace. The only time we had was when she thought I was dying.
I was angry. Boiling. Last night I chose Harvey. This morning Harvey chose Debora. And now this: my mom was finally biting back at me, like I’d been waiting for. She had changed so much when I was sick, so much to the point that I doubted she was even the same person anymore. Everything beneath my skin felt like it was on fire. I wiggled my wrist out of her grip. With the skillet still in my hand, I swung my arm. Then I let go, sending the iron skillet straight through the sliding glass door and into the living room of the beach house.
My mom’s jaw dropped. Very few things could shock my mother, but this had. Hell, it shocked me too. At the sound of shattering glass, Natalie, my dad, Harvey, and Debora all flooded the living room, the glass crunching beneath their feet.
“I saw you,” I whispered, my voice escalating with each breath. “I saw you with a man that wasn’t Dad. I waited for you to tell me.” And now I was sobbing, screaming and sobbing. “For you to be honest with me because we always tell the truth, even when we think it does more harm than good,” I said, reciting her own words back to her. “You should’ve left us then. Ripped the Band-Aid off. Because the lies are destroying us,” I said, my voice catching on every syllable. “You ruined me. You made me this way. This.” I motioned to myself, my chest heaving now. “Is your fault. And now it’s too late to fix it.”
Then I ran, as fast as I could, as far away as I could.
I couldn’t look at my dad. I couldn’t bear to see what this truth did to him. But it was out now. I didn’t know who I’d been lying for, who I’d been keeping Mom’s secrets for. But now there were no more secrets between them, and it was up to my parents to decide what they would do with that truth. As for me, I was done with it.
When the beach house was only a speck on the horizon, I collapsed on the sand. I didn’t know how long I sat there before Harvey plopped down next to me.
“Leave, Harvey.”
“Not until I explain.”
“No,” I said, “let me explain.”
“Alice, I—”
“You are in love with me, and you always have been. But this is the truth, Harvey: I don’t love you. Not at all. Not you, not anyone, not anything.” And because that wasn’t enough, because I hadn’t done enough damage, I said, “You’re sad and pathetic. You have no spine, and the fact that you think someone like me could ever love someone like you only proves my point.”
“Stop it.”
“I used you. You know it. I know it. Everyone fucking knows it.” Each word built one on top of the other like a brick wall. Harvey didn’t want me, but I couldn’t let him be the one to close this door. I couldn’t. “Everything you thought was real is a lie. Don’t pretend like you don’t know that. You were a means to an end, Harvey. There’s nothing else you can do for me, so leave. I don’t need you. I don’t want you.”
He sat there for a moment.
“Leave.”
“This is it, Alice. This is really it. When I leave, I’m not coming back to you. I’m not saving your ass. I’m not going to be your partner in crime. I’m not going to be that guy for you anymore. You ne
ver seem to be done with me, but trust me when I say, I am done with you.”
Then he left, and with him he took the sun, the moon, the stars, and anything inside of me that might have been good.
Harvey.
Now
Every little thing between us had led to this moment. I should have known Alice would tell me to leave. I think, maybe, part of me did know. Everything about it felt desperate yet inevitable, and no matter which way we went, this was the end of our story. But still, standing out there on the edge of the beach, I expected something to happen. Even though she rarely ever gave me any reason to think she might be anyone other than herself.
I was so angry. You were a means to an end, Harvey. There’s nothing else you can do for me, so leave. I don’t need you. I don’t want you. She couldn’t say those things to me. She couldn’t. I should have told her about Debora, and that was my fault. But it didn’t feel like that mattered anymore. The world around us had exploded, and there was no determining what blame belonged to whom.
I trudged back up the beach to where my mom, Bernie, Martin, and Debora all waited on the back porch. The wind whipped around me, sand burning my legs as I began to jog toward them and away from Alice.
Last night was an anomaly, one last night of good. But now that was gone, and with it so were we. I couldn’t go back to her again. Because if I did, I’d never be able to look at myself, and she would always know that when it came to us, she called all the shots. I loved her—but it didn’t make me happy anymore. Not even a little bit.
Even though I didn’t want to care, I kept hearing what she’d said to Bernie, about another man. I wanted to ignore it. My mom hadn’t seemed shocked and neither had Martin. I didn’t have the balls to ask them what was going on, not with what had happened. There was something going on, though, and maybe Alice didn’t have the whole story, but she had more than I did. I was the only kid at the kids’ table.
I popped my knuckles before shoving my fists into my pockets. Even though neither Bernie nor Martin were my parents, I couldn’t ever picture it being true—that she’d cheated on him. Marriage didn’t ever really work, but it worked for them. They’d always been the exception to the rule.
I took the steps to the beach house two by two. Bernie stood there waiting for me, still in her robe. “Where is she?”
“Is she okay?” asked Martin.
My mom stood behind them, staring over my shoulder at the little dot on the horizon that I assumed was Alice, while Debora bit her lip nervously, her eyes darting from me to the wood-planked floor.
“She wants to be alone.” Forever. “She’ll be back later.”
Martin clapped his hands together. “All right, gang, let’s enjoy our best vacation weather yet! Debora, let me help you with your bag.” He guided Bernie by the elbow with Debora at their heels. “Watch for the glass,” he said.
The three of them went inside, leaving my mom and me.
She approached me slowly, like you would a wounded animal. “You okay?”
I mashed my lips together, the way you do when you’re trying to smile but your body’s telling you to cry or scream or something.
“Hey, talk to me.”
A tear spilled from the corner of my eye, and I pushed the tips of my fingers into my tear ducts as hard as I could. When the tears came anyway, I gave up and raked my fingers through my hair. My mom stood right where she was, letting me have my moment.
When we were kids, this boy at school shoved me into the mud after I accidentally cut in line at the monkey bars. When Alice saw what he’d done, she pushed him to the ground and straddled him, getting in one good punch before the teacher supervising recess pulled her off him. Our parents were called, and my mom ended up coming to get us both and taking us to the ballet studio to get cleaned up before her next class. After she bandaged me up, I sat on the office floor reading a book while she fixed Alice’s hair into a fresh bun. She had run out of bobby pins and was crouched down in front of this box she used to keep safety pins, needle and thread, and hair stuff in. She sighed and shook her head. “She’ll break his porcelain heart.” She said it so quietly her lips barely moved. I didn’t know what it meant then. I didn’t realize loving Alice would be a curse.
My tears stopped and the salty winds dried my cheeks. Mom took a step toward me and held both my hands with hers.
“You can’t save the world.”
I nodded. “I know that, but why can’t I at least save her?”
She stepped even closer to me, so that we were nearly nose to nose. I expected her to say something, to answer my question because that’s what moms did. But she didn’t; she wrapped her arms around me, her fingertips barely touching as her arms circled my shoulders. I should have felt stupid, slipping into my mom’s arms like a little kid, but it felt okay.
“Let’s have a good day today, okay?”
I couldn’t talk, because I didn’t know what sounds might come out, so I nodded into her shoulder and agreed.
Alice.
Now
It was well past one in the morning before I got back to the beach house, and thankfully my parents had left the porch light on.
“Shh . . .” I pressed my finger to Brian’s lips after he tripped over a pile of flip-flops at the door. We’d met that afternoon on the boardwalk. “Watch your step, Brian.”
“My name’s Trevor.”
“Right, Trevor. I’ll call you Trevor and you can call me Ashley,” I said, and rolled my eyes as we stumbled through the dark living room of the beach house. A pile of a person slept on the couch, their shadow breathing in and out. The person, I assumed, was Harvey. I swallowed the lump in my throat. I thought about telling Brian to leave, but the image of Harvey’s eyes on Debora as she stood there on the doorstep wouldn’t let me.
“No, really, my name is Trevor.”
“Whatever.”
After Harvey left me on the beach, I spent the day walking around the boardwalk, which was really a sad tourist trap. Most of the stores were poorly stocked. A couple even had OUT TO LUNCH signs up for more hours than they had actually been open. The shops were half-assing it because spring break was just their warm-up for the long summer season.
That’s where I met Brian or Trevor, whatever his name was.
He was close to my height and a little muscular, but at least a year younger. Freckles sprinkled his nose and cheeks. His rusty brown hair flopped with every step. I couldn’t recall the color of his eyes. That information seemed to fall into the same abandoned mental folder as his name.
When I first saw him there on the boardwalk, he looked like a candy striper in white shorts and a red-and-white-striped polyester polo shirt. It all looked very uncomfortable. “Smile!” he said, holding up the camera around his neck.
I crossed my arms over my chest and said, “Get me out of here.”
“Did you say something?” he asked as he pulled the camera away from his face. He tore an orange ticket from a ring of tickets hanging around his wrist.
I squinted. “When’s your shift over?”
“Uh . . .” He looked at his watch. “Thirty minutes. Your picture will be ready in an hour. What’s your name?”
“Alice.” I think he was waiting for me to ask his name, but I didn’t. “Any townie stuff going on tonight?”
“Well, yeah, I guess. Nothing big, but yeah. You want to come?”
I held out my palm to him. “Address.”
He fumbled for a pen and finally found one in a cargo pocket of his hideous white shorts. He was cute in a second-string kind of way. When he finished scribbling on my palm, I pulled my hand back to study the address.
“Thanks,” I said, and began to walk in the direction of the beach house.
“I could pick you up!”
“I’d rather you didn’t,” I called, not turning around.
I walked back to the beach house. Thankfully, everyone was out for dinner. I hadn’t showered last night and still smelled like the ocean, but wo
rst of all I still wore Harvey’s sweatshirt. I was quick to shower and let my hair air-dry, which was still very short and had only recently grown into something manageable—a sort of sun-kissed, messy, golden brown coif. I’d begun to work my way back into some of my old clothes too. Over a white two-piece I wore a blue-and-white seersucker spaghetti-strap dress. I looked whole, but I didn’t feel it.
Before leaving, I left a note for my parents saying I’d be back later. When I showed up at the address (which was within walking distance from our beach house), I found mostly locals and mostly guys. The few girls present gave me dirty skank looks for intruding on their territory.
Brian/Trevor instantly attached himself to me, fetching me drinks and introducing me to anyone who would listen. Most of the guys at the party were the type of people who pronounced “bro” as “bra,” and I had the sneaking suspicion that Brian/Trevor was someone’s little brother. When the party began to disperse, I sweetly asked him if he could give me a ride home. In the driveway, I invited him inside. He hesitated for a moment, but then followed me through the front door.
We squeezed down the narrow hallway and I waved him into my bedroom.
“You have a bunk bed?” he asked.
“Come on.” I climbed the ladder to the top bunk.
“Wait, top bunk? Why don’t we use the—” He ducked down to take a look at the bottom bunk. “There’s someone down there!” he whispered, pointing frantically at the bed below me.
He continued to stare, dumbfounded, at the bottom bunk. I unzipped my dress and pulled it over my head, standing there in my white swimsuit. “Brian, are you coming or not?”
His eyes widened. He climbed up to the top bunk in two steps, skipping rungs.