Alice by Heart

by Steven Sater

  And with those pages, all the gorgeous, cloudless hours; all the notions, all the playtimes; all the impish daydreams Alice still retrieved; the memories still triggered by revisiting those pages, all those long-familiar phrases, each like another golden key upon another three-legged table, another way out of the “dark-hall” self (namely, that feeling of being too big or too small for every door to the world) into that welcoming, word-lovely garden—with all its gossiping flowers and crisp sapphire fountains.

  She lunged. But the Nurse grabbed hold—tearing the distraught girl from herself, and him. Imprisoning her within steely, practiced arms, dragging what was left of Alice, those few meters back—to her four-foot cell, her sad, constricting cot.

  All the while, the dogged Dr. Butridge clumped doggedly on—further away from the still-stricken Alfred. Disdaining (it seemed) to help in any way, to offer even a jittery hand. No, nothing to be done—only more clipboards to clank, more Latin to spout. (Were we supposed to feel somehow grander, hearing ourselves diagnosed in Latin?)

  The while, Dodgy jeered about Alice: “Clinging to some kiddy book?”

  “Appalling,” mocked Nigel.

  “Duck!” cried Harold, with a sudden duck. “London Bridge is falling!”

  “Falling sickness,” Butridge expatiated. “Disequilibrium, due to Narcoleptic Cataplexy—i.e., fitful sleep paralysis—”

  “Dr. Butridge!” wailed that Nurse.

  “Whaaaaaaat?”

  And—as ever—from nowhere, Harold Pudding leapt to claim the air, bounding like some fraught gazelle (who’d smelled the cheetah near) from Mamie’s to Dodgy’s, and then back to Mamie’s, to Alice’s (hello!), to Angus’s cot. And with every mad leap was chaos come again. “More tea?”

  Prompting Dodgy, who could not not: “Shut up!”

  “Pay up,” Angus demanded, “the boy is dead.”

  “Almost dead,” Dr. Butridge coldly corrected.

  “Don’t you dare!” Alice cried. Spinning about, she started toward Alfred. Only to meet that Fury of a Nurse, that brutal Red Cross Queen, bulldozing toward her:

  “Off! Of! That! Bed!”

  “No!” Alice cried, pinning that Curse of a Nurse, making that bloated butterfly squirm, with every last word from their book: “Off with your head!”

  “Braaaaa!” the Nurse bawled, extending those ravaging arms, grappling for Alice.

  Stopstop it!—Stop! Alice ducked. Skittering over the grime, breathing hard, down the platform she ran. Clamping her hands, clap clap, over her ears: “Stop! Stop! You—and you—and you!”

  Now now. Alice pivoted, her forefinger extended. Marking those cots and those cowards, one after the other: “I’ll show you.”

  Round she spun, and caught Alfred’s trademark question mark look, her words extending toward him like pincers. “Come. I’ll bring you. I know it all by heart.”

  His hollowed eyes stared back, from that paleportrait face. Inscrutable. On, Alice urged herself. On, from the book: “And so with nothing to do, Alice was considering what to do, on this golden afternoon, when . . .”

  Those words, so familiar. Like a summons. Like a sound repeated in a summer without end. Their daily incantation to Wonderland: “Suddenly . . . a White Rabbit ran close by . . .”

  Not a flicker from those eyelids. Come, Alfred. Not a breath. Her urgent look solicited his.

  Slowly, measuredly from under his blanket, the boy pulled forth—on a slant, like a rabbit from a hat—an antique . . . fan? Mamie’s fan! He dangled it. Faintly, frantically fanning himself, mustering a wry smile.

  A sigh so profound issued from Alice: Thank you, yes. I’ll bring you. Done.

  For, she knew, she knew well, exactly what she believed; all she had to do was to hold on to that. To stay in that. To be there, with him again.

  She shut her eyes, completely shut. And—down, down all at once, she found herself . . . falling down suddenly down doooooowwnnnnn the hole to Wonderland. (Some voice somewhere within her, echoing through her, those fateful words from her book: “Never once considering how in the world she was to get out again . . .”)

  But what hole, in what world, exactly? And where was Alfred? Had she succeeded in bringing him? Open your eyes, she told herself. No, no! that self said back. Not yet.

  Reciting, contriving, to keep herself tumbling. Down as she tumbled, on on she went: “‘Well, after such a fall as this, I shall think nothing of tumbling down-stairs.’”

  Try now, she told herself. Open them. She did. But there she saw not Wonderland at all. Only through some widening skirt of light, a darkness beyond darkness.

  And, there, from somewhere, she seemed to see again those fat tin cans—cllllllllllllinng clllluuuummmph—careening past. She must be under the tracks?! What with those ageless dust-whiskered rats tumbling past—suspended, as she was, between future and past.

  She shuddered, doubting herself. A shudder between worlds. In the midst of all the Underground gloom, could it help him? she wondered. Would it? To go there, to their world again? To run through that mystical garden again? To “manage” their Flamingos in a game of Royal Croquet? To imagine? It had to. Otherwise, they both would die of too much concrete. Yes. But was there time enough?

  Stop, stop, she told herself (snapping at herself as if she were someone else). All the doubt, it was locking her out. On. She recited, determined to find it, though struggling to summon the passage exactly: “Alice tried . . . she tried to look down and make out what she was coming to, but it was too dark to see anything.”

  Down down down. Like in her book. Though nothing in her book had ever been like this! See, a soldier there, in roomy combat uniform, seated on a heap of broken images. Unstooped, and proud, as perhaps Harold Pudding once had sat, not daring to disturb the universe, taking his tea on a mound of home blown to bits. But no, Alice thought—this was all too odd. Something was off. She couldn’t be falling into and out of the same somewhere. Couldn’t be falling down into London, not with that same London above her.

  Into that world tumbling by, Alice peered again. And there she made out, just like in her storybook—yes, it was!—that tyrant Queen of Hearts, surrounded by a cowering crowd; full-grown Playing Cards throwing themselves down, muffling their coated-cardboard faces, before her. “Idiots!” the dire Queen cried, staring down a quivering Seven and a Five. (But no White Rabbit, alas, behind or beside.)

  Too painful to watch! Alice let her eyes scan the violet horizon. There, her milkman, was it? Her own jolly James, with his familiar craft of bottles, who stopped at her house every morning on his rounds? But it couldn’t be James—not at her house. There was no house!

  She looked again. No, it was not James. Only that dapper Mad Hatter, swanning his way through the ruins, claiming his place at the head of a table—the longest of Churchill-like war room tables (collywobbling as that was). But there too sat that imperturbable March Hare, with the heavy-lidded Dormouse cushioned beneath his elbow. All wry and ready for their Mad Tea Party. (Still no Alfred-Rabbit to be found there. Rather, the lawn and rough hedges beyond seemed to nod and agree: “Haven’t seen him, darling.”)

  But there, look—just there, on a towering (three-inch-high) mushroom, rising beyond all the smoking ruin; surrounded by only the loveliest blue cloud, that languid Cater- pillar sat, puffing on his hookah. There, beyond him, on a desolate mountain ledge, lolled that fantastical Gryphon, that mournful Mock Turtle beside him, bewailing what his mock-life had done to him . . .

  And there, to the west, it was: that loveliest of passages to that loveliest of gardens. There, where the White Rabbit would run. When he was there to run. (“Sorry,” those footprint-like shadows called back, “no Rabbit, not today.”) Still. Just beyond must be those stately rose trees—and those broad, enormous lawns, like so many aching thoughts just about to be thought. And there, through the sun-burnished clouds, the most wondrou
s of jackdaws, sinking and circling and sinking, on their dark extended wings. Cawing, and calling her to herself. (Just as she’d dreamed, one day they would.) All those dawdling streams below them, murmuring. There.

  But where was here or there? All she’d known, all she knew, was falling. But where were those fabled cupboards past which her Story Alice fell and fell? Where, those shelves with no marmalade? Where the mythic maps of mythic somewheres? Had Wonderland too been altered? Had it too felt the wounding of London?

  Down down, regardless, down she fell. Unknowing, still not knowing, where she was—or what she was—down the hole.

  And there—with a skid, with a thump, with a someringsault into nothingness and some strange sound of sawing in the air still above—Alice landed. Looked about, blinking, watching herself look.

  Here. Wherever here was.

  CHAPTER IX:

  —

  GETTING BIGGER

  EYES shut, still shut, Alice saw nothing. Alice knew nothing. And yet, displaced as she was (wherever now she was), she couldn’t have been there long. For, she was only just reaching, only just reciting, the very next sentence, from where she’d left off, in her book.

  “Alice was not a bit hurt,” she resumed, praying she did know the whole book by heart. No, not hurt—not a bit. “She jumped up on to her feet in a moment; and up up she looked—but all was dark overhead. Before her lay another long passage, and the White Rabbit was still in sight, hurrying down it.”

  As she invoked those long-familiar words, in this senseless new world, it struck her that she’d closed her eyes to see. Open them. Warily she steeled herself and did. But there was nowhere there. She peered about—all about. Nowhere could she spy that familiar “Drink Me” bottle, or that “long, low hall,” or that “row of lamps hanging from the roof”—nor could she catch sight of any White Rabbit. Which was strange enough. But stranger still, she could discern no trace of the Tube station, either. None of it? Had she made everything vanish? To what end? And if so, where was she now? In some Realm of the Lost? In some Twilight Kingdom of the Unloved? This wasn’t good. This was not good. Hmmm.

  She skipped ahead—leapfrogging past all these compound-complex sentences. Otherwise, utterly motionless she remained. Fearful that if she took a single step, everything might crumble beneath her and another whole house come tumbling down. With a quick breath, on she went: “The Rabbit was no longer to be seen”—Exactly. “There were doors all round the hall”—Not so much. “All locked”—Not. “She came upon a little three-legged table”—None of the above? “Nothing on it but . . .”

  The tiny golden key!—Yes. Just the thing to let her out of this stealthy shade and admit her once again to Wonderland. (When they’d play this scene at Alfred’s, they’d had the tiniest antiquegolden cupboard key. Not so much, here. But all right, she could mime.) Gamely, into the waste-black space (a space it seemed her memory could not contain), Alice stretched her hand. (Her hand, which, on the old church piano, never could quite reach a full octave. But . . . so much for that.) Pretending to lift that missing key, she clinked, or pretend-clinked, and unlatched some transparent door of the air. So far, so good.

  One, two, three, Alice breathed. She opened her eyes—hoping, at least, to renew her former acquaintance with her mind.

  But alas, no table appeared. No key, no doors, no locks of any kind. Nor that loveliest of passageways to the loveliest of gardens, where the White Rabbit and she could wander among those beds of fairest flowers and those cooling silver fountains.

  None of it, there. None. Nothing appeared. Only one blankgolden afternoon. Only a sort of shadowless lawn, golden as the clouds and sky beyond. A golden hue so radiant and vast, it was as if it suffused every atom of the land. Just there, Alice stood, without her usual shadow following behind her, or like most mornings, rising to greet her.

  But still, she felt very much herself. Even at this new meeting-point with herself. Same (unlikely) hands, same (stumpy, beside-the-point) wrists, same (lonesome) forearms but . . . bare? Not a scar from those corrosive fires, not a bruise from the rubble, or other stigmata upon them. As though some merciful sponge had wiped all the ruin from them.

  And look, a puffed blue sleeve—two sleeves! And a pinafore?! Over a pleated . . . something or other—the most unfussed, if flounced, Victorian dress. Just like her Story Alice’s dress—but fitted so precisely to her. What—what was happening to her? Had she unwittingly summoned some Looking-Glass Godmother? Some fairy-tale someone to dress and adorn her, so she’d be proper for Wonderland?

  Hard to say. And not a soul to ask. Nowhere to go, really. Alone, she stood. In some straw-colored light, in which everything that was, was meant for her. And nothing, nothing had to be explained.

  And, look! There he was—Alfred. Or, rather, her White Rabbit Alfred. The boy she so well knew—the boy with whom she’d played this scene so many times before—but now transformed, as never before, into his storybook self. His very Character in the Tale. In his fine plaid waistcoat, his elegant whiskers just grazing the collar. So officially his White Rabbit self, she could barely suppress a smile.

  And look, that tattered fan. Mamie’s fan. He’d brought it! But, how had he brought it? It was almost as if she’d transported them both, body and soul, from that noxious Tube station into their storybook. And where once they’d performed their first classic bit, now they were going to be living it?

  Meanwhile, that fan? How anxiously he fingered it, careful as ever to tap the exact same taps, same number of taps, on each palm, on each finger, on each hand. (Surrendering himself to that dread cosmic law of Even-Steven taps.)

  She caught his eye: Ready? He pulled himself up, his shoulders drawn back, so proper. Readier than ready to begin their scene. With a storysmile, she began: “So, there you are.”

  He, in his finest, most distinguished Rabbit timbre: “And there you are.”

  “I’m just so . . . pleased to see you,” said Alice politely. “Here, that is.”

  “So pleased to see you, too.”

  And there, he drew it forth, his war-scored pocket watch. That, too! His silver apple of the Wonderland moon. He tapped it, tap tap—he couldn’t not. (What was the wizard without his wand?) “In brief, I’m late, you know?”

  “Oh. I know,” she replied. “Sorry. Sorry.”

  But what to say—to keep him? If only for a moment. Just to linger in this moment. Come, Alice—do say something. She, always so thick with words—forever in conversation with so many selves, each self so full of so many polysyllables—and now? Not a “the,” not an “of.” Flustered, she stammer-started: “It’s, well, it’s all—just been ssso . . .”

  Tap.

  “Of course. Of course,” he insisted, growing fidgety. “Oh my ears and whiskers! I must go!”

  “Nooooooooo!” Alice yelped. Couldn’t help it.

  “What?” He stiffened, tight-lipped. Tap tap.

  Yeeks. Now, what had she done? Why couldn’t she ever just look at him without wanting something more from him? See—before she knew what, she’d cried out. Had crossed some line—like some wretched, rash, intruding fool! Had broken character, if you will. She could see it in his startled eyes—gone rabbit-pink and all bugged out.”

  “I don’t know,” she offered. “Honestly. It’s just . . .”

  “What? It’s time,” he chided, “it’s well past time—you know.”

  “But . . . here we are.”

  “Yes—what? How long can we spend on this same page?”

  This page? Forever and a day. Couldn’t they just stay, on this ever-vibrant page, where both text and illustration would say: “We’ve just begun, in Wonderland.” Just here, forever here, they would remain. No earth revolving below them; no cloud, drifting from or above them. As if there existed, for them, neither future nor past.

  Say that, then. But all she managed was: “One moment,
please.”

  “And then?” He blinked, a White Rabbit blink, so puzzlingly: “We stop when it’s the end. In the beginning, we begin.”

  “But surely,” Alice grinned, “books are made to linger in.”

  Tap.

  Now what had she done? (For whatever was said was already done. Already dead within the heart. And no matter how many times she’d warn herself, no matter how many nights she’d lie awake, regretting every syllable she’d spent, she just couldn’t stop herself saying the most shameless things.)

  Tap tap, the White Rabbit tapped his watch. And Alice? Virtually tap-dancing she stood, shifting her weight one foot to the other. Time-stepping within. Thinking again on those classic illustrations in their book, wondering: Do we, too, look like that? Are we, too, being looked at like that? With someone else forever flipping through, turning us always wayawayaway . . .

  “Alice?” he exhorted. Taptapping once again each palm, each untapped waiting waiting so impatient finger.

  But how could she speak it, really, the anxiety of feeling? Of all she wanted from him. It was like she was forever listening for some key in the door, for some way out of the sensation of herself, that she might touch what was him. Some stupid kiss: was it only that? But was a kiss ever just that? Not that she knew, really. But maybe it would be like not disappearing. Like tasting yourself on the lips of someone else.

  Tap. Tap.

  “I only mean . . .” muttered she. But already she could see the refusal, guttering in the pale flame of his eyes. If only she could speak the half of what she felt without becoming so ashamed of herself. “But why not?” she pressed him. “It’s still the story. We’re still here in the story.”

  “No,” he rebutted, with a barely tolerant twitch. “If we’re here in the story, we must be in the story. And so . . . if so, I’d better go. I mean, that is the story.”

  “Is it?”

  Ah. See. Again, she’d done it. Had said so much. Had said too much. Had stammered and stewed, had interrupted. And that, after pleading with him to come down here! After turning the poor boy into a Rabbit! Now, she’d stopped him cold—just as they’d begun performing their first chapter. She’d gone off script and left him stranded—and all he had were storywords to try to understand her. Stupididiotly, she’d pulled the storyrug from under them, and put him on the spot—setting them both up for such ghost-responses.