Alice Bliss

by Laura Harrington

  She climbs two more rungs.

  “Daddy—”

  She can’t move. Her legs are now shaking so badly she can’t trust them to hold her up. Matt puts his palm against her lower back.

  “Just breathe. You’re okay.”

  She tries that. Her hands are starting to go numb because she’s holding the ladder so tightly. She makes the mistake of looking down.

  “Dad! I need to go down. I can’t do this.”

  “Yes, you can.”

  “No, I can’t!” I will not cry, I will not cry, she says inside her head.

  “You’re safe. I won’t let you fall.”

  “I’m so—”

  “I know you’re scared. It’s okay to be scared. You just don’t want to give in to it. Don’t let it get bigger than you, Alice. It’s just a feeling.”

  She starts to sniffle. She can’t help it.

  “Crying is not going to help here.”

  “I know.”

  “Look up. Four more steps and we’re there. You can do it, Alice, I know you can.”

  She takes another step.

  “It’s really beautiful up there, Alice. You can see all the way to the lake.”

  “Really?”

  “You’re gonna love it.”

  And another step and another and now there’s a new problem, how do you step out onto the roof? That is the scariest step of all.

  “Don’t think about it. Just reach for the scaffolding and hold on to that.”

  She closes her eyes.

  “You can do it, Alice.”

  “Are you sure?” she says in a very small voice.

  His lips are right next to her ear so she can feel the warmth of his breath as he says: “I’m totally sure. I’m so sure I’ll bet you a dollar.”

  “Dad?”

  “Don’t think. Just go.”

  She reaches one hand out and grabs the scaffolding and steps off the top rung of the ladder and onto the roof.

  “Now what?” She can feel the breath catch in her throat.

  “You see where it looks like a bench? Just step on the braces—there are two—that’s all you need to do—and sit right there on the bench.”

  Her hands are hot and sweaty and slippery and she thinks that sharp tang in the air is her own scared sweat.

  “You can do it.”

  She wants to close her eyes. She wants to be back on the ground. She wants to be home alone. She wants to be anywhere rather than here.

  “Two steps. That’s all.”

  She puts her left hand against the roof shingles, as if that could help.

  “You’ve got it.”

  And she does have it. Two steps and she reaches the bench built into the scaffolding. She sits and grips the edge with both hands. Her stomach is roiling but she is determined not to throw up. When she finally looks up after what feels like a hundred years, her father is grinning at her. He’s looking at her like she just hit a home run, which she has never done in her life.

  “Way to go, champ.”

  She tries to smile and feels the bile rise in her throat again. She closes her eyes, her knuckles white.

  “Look around,” he tells her.

  She can’t take her eyes off his face. Keeping her eyes glued to her father is what will keep her from falling off this roof.

  “I can’t.”

  “Okay. But you’re missing the best part.”

  She closes her eyes, and she can feel her heart pounding and hear her breath rasping in her ears.

  “Breathe, Alice. . . . Breathe deep. And then open your eyes and look. Just do it.”

  They’re above the trees; they’re above the power lines; they’re above everything. She can see the sun shining on the lake and big, puffy cumulus clouds hanging in the sky. She can see more blue sky than she can see from her house or her yard or her street. She can see the curve of the beach at Loudon Pond Park and the old-fashioned bathhouses still closed up for the winter. She lets out a breath and realizes she’s been holding her breath for what seems like forever. She dares to turn her head to see where her dad is and Matt Bliss is walking all over the roof like it is a flat surface just above the ground. He looks like he’s walking around his own kitchen. She watches him, amazed.

  “You’ll get the hang of it.”

  I don’t think so, she wants to tell him, but still isn’t sure she can safely open her mouth.

  “When you’re ready, you can start handing me shingles. You see the box? To your left?”

  She nods.

  “Just one at a time, kiddo.”

  “If I were a boy, would I be better at this?”

  “How many boys do you know who are brave enough to climb up here?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Henry?”

  “He’s afraid of heights.”

  “See?”

  “Do you wish you’d had a boy instead of me?”

  “Never.”

  “Do you wish I was good at baseball?”

  “Yes!”

  “Me, too!”

  “Okay. You can start with the shingles.”

  “Now?”

  “Yes.”

  “Already?”

  “Now’s a good time.”

  She cautiously reaches for the shingles and just as cautiously reaches out and hands them, one at a time, as he needs them, to her father. At first this takes every ounce of concentration she has, all she can do is look at the roof, and the box and the shingles and his reaching hand. Just as she starts to get used to it, Matt finishes a section. And then he wants her to move to another section of scaffolding and another makeshift bench and another box of shingles. At first these moves reignite the terror inside of her, but by the fourth or fifth time, she’s found her roof legs and she is—cautiously—moving a little more freely. And she’s able to look up every now and then and take in the new view from a new section of the roof.

  “You hungry?”

  “We’re having lunch up here?”

  “You want to go down and come back up?”

  “No!”

  “Okay, then.”

  He sits beside her and pulls out the lunch they packed together. Pita pockets and carrot and celery sticks and apples and brownies.

  “What if you have to pee?”

  He looks at her and raises an eyebrow.

  “You do not!”

  He shrugs.

  “In broad daylight?”

  “I face away from the street.”

  “What about the neighbors?”

  Another shrug.

  “What am I supposed to do?” Alice asks.

  “Skip the apple juice would be my advice.”

  He lies back against the roof, stretches out like he’s at the beach, and closes his eyes.

  “You’re napping?!”

  He hands her his watch.

  “Wake me up in ten minutes.”

  “You have to be kidding me. You could—”

  “But I won’t. Try it. Just lie back.”

  “Dad—”

  “Try it.”

  She lies back against the shingles, bracing her hands flat against the roof, her fingernails digging into the asphalt, her feet positioned solidly on the scaffolding. She takes a shaky breath. After the first disorienting moment, it’s pretty nice actually. She looks over at her father and he’s grinning at her again.

  “You’re showing off, aren’t you, Dad?”

  “I might be showing off a little.”

  “You always tell me not to show off.”

  “Sometimes I guess it’s irresistible.”

  “You really like it up here.”

  “I love it up here.”

  He closes his eyes.

  “Ten minutes, okay?”

  Alice carefully takes one hand away from where it is trying to grip the roof beside her and brings her arm up to where she can see her dad’s watch hanging loosely on her wrist. She notes the time: 12:01. At exactly 12:11 she will wake him up. If he’s really a
sleep. If he’s not just faking it. She likes it that he’s trying to impress her. She likes it that he cares about her opinion. And now that she’s not absolutely slick with fear, she’s almost glad he got her up here. On top of the world.

  The girls come downstairs slowly, not knowing what to expect. Angie is still at the front door looking out at the street. She wants to get on a plane; she wants to call her senator, her state representative, and her congressman; she wants to call her mother. She wants to fall apart and have someone else take care of things. But that would not be the way Matt would handle this. He would take steps. He would hold it together.

  Before he left she was under the illusion that they had talked about everything, every possible scenario; if he were wounded or killed. But this . . . this was never part of the picture. They didn’t plan for this.

  She can feel the girls waiting behind her, waiting for her to turn around, waiting for her to know what to do, waiting for her to come up with a plan.

  “Mom . . . ?” Ellie ventures.

  Angie turns away from the street and looks at her girls. When she sees how frightened they are, her own fear threatens to rise up out of her in a howl.

  One step at a time, Angie. Don’t think about tomorrow. Don’t project into the future. Take care of today. Take care of the here and now. Take care of the girls.

  “Okay. Here’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to ask ourselves what Daddy would want us to do. And then we’re going to do it.”

  “Will he be all right?” Ellie asks.

  “If anybody can come through this, Daddy can.”

  “Do you believe that?” Alice asks.

  “Yes,” Angie answers. “Yes, I do.”

  “I want to help him,” Ellie says.

  “How? I don’t see how,” Alice says.

  “We can imagine our way to being near him,” Angie says. “We can imagine healing him, comforting him. Think about him. Believe in him.”

  A flash of anger sears through Alice. Does her mother actually believe this crap? And then she looks at Ellie. Ellie is soaking this up. Suddenly Alice’s anger deflates and she wishes she could be eight again.

  “I need something to do,” Ellie says.

  “Go to school. Help at home. Make Daddy proud.”

  “I don’t see how going to school will . . .” Alice trails off, uncertain.

  Ellie closes her eyes.

  “I’m thinking about Daddy right now.”

  “Good.”

  “Mom—”

  “I’ll make dinner,” Angie says. “You girls can do your homework.”

  “You’re making dinner?”

  “Don’t look so surprised.”

  “And you expect us to do homework?”

  “Yes.”

  “Are you serious? It’s Friday night.”

  “Homework tonight and work and school on Monday.”

  Ellie obediently gets her backpack and sits at the dining room table. Alice joins her reluctantly, pulls out her planner, opens it, but when she tries to look up today’s assignments she has trouble focusing. She finds a pen and opens a notebook so she’ll look busy and then just sits there as Ellie actually completes her grammar worksheets and moves on to writing a story about honeybees.

  “You’re ploitering,” Ellie announces.

  “I’m what?”

  “Ploitering. ‘Working to little purpose.’ ”

  “Loiter with a p in front of it?”

  “Yup.”

  “You made that up.”

  “Nope.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Honeybees never ploiter.”

  “Are you working that into your story?”

  “Extra credit vocabulary words.”

  “What do you need extra credit for? You already get all A’s.”

  “A plus is possible. A plus is within my reach.”

  “Are you illustrating your story?”

  “Of course.”

  “Hey, maybe you could have one honeybee who ploiters. A renegade. It could add to the drama.”

  “I’ll think about it.”

  Ellie never incorporates Alice’s suggestions into her stories. Ever.

  Alice shifts her chair so she can watch her mom in the kitchen, an apron over her dress, going through the motions of making dinner. Shortly afterward, they all go through the motions of eating dinner, washing dishes, giving Ellie her bath, and finally going to bed.

  After tossing and turning for what feels like forever, Alice gets up to go downstairs. She wishes she could go for a run. She wishes it were Monday so she could go to the computer lab at school to Google Earth Falluja’s streets and houses and, hopefully, find aerial views of rooftops.

  She’s surprised to find her mom in the kitchen making tea with honey and rum. Angie looks up.

  “I couldn’t sleep,” Angie says.

  “Me neither.”

  “You want some?”

  “You’re offering me rum?”

  “A teaspoon in some tea.”

  “Sure.”

  “It’ll help you sleep.”

  Angie gets another mug from the cupboard, pours a second cup of tea.

  “Have you told Gram?”

  “Tomorrow. Let her have one more good night’s sleep.”

  “And Uncle Eddie?”

  “Same.”

  She adds honey and a small splash of rum.

  “I think if I talk about it, if I tell people, that will make it real,” Alice says. “Right now, my mind knows it’s real, but no other part of me can really . . .”

  “That’s shock, honey. That’s how the body protects us. We can only take it in a little at a time.”

  “I don’t want to take it in.”

  “I know.”

  Angie hands Alice her tea.

  “Careful—it’s hot.”

  “I need more honey.”

  “Help yourself.”

  Alice adds a lot more honey.

  “It’s pretty good.”

  “Gram used to make this for me when I had a cold.”

  “When you were little?”

  “Not that little.”

  Alice gathers her courage.

  “Mom . . .”

  Angie doesn’t answer. She looks away.

  “I need to know.”

  “Let’s just drink our tea and slow our minds way, way down so we can get some sleep. We’ll talk tomorrow. Okay, Alice? Tomorrow.”

  And Alice thinks wounded and Alice thinks captured and Alice thinks torture. She sips her tea and feels the slow seep of warmth spreading through her limbs. She feels her body slowing down even while her mind is still racing.

  Angie looks at Alice, watches her get lost in her thoughts, sees her chapped lips and her tangled hair and the ancient Grateful Dead T-shirt of Matt’s that she wears to bed. It’s so old the jersey is disintegrating away from the seams.

  “C’mon, honey. Let’s go to bed.”

  Angie puts her arm around Alice’s waist. She can feel ribs under her fingers and Alice’s cool, smooth skin. Alice lets herself be held, almost, for a brief second, before pulling away.

  They walk upstairs, one behind the other now, each carrying her mug of tea like a lantern in the dark.

  April 24th

  Alice sits in school on Monday and closes her eyes and tries to feel whether her father is still alive. Does the body know before the mind does? Can she feel the connection she has always felt or has it snapped? She wants to know where he was wounded, how badly, could he still walk and talk? What the hell was he wearing all that protective gear for if it couldn’t really protect him? And what if his gear did protect him—and he was just stunned, not wounded—does that increase his chances of surviving? What if he was hit in one of the few exquisitely vulnerable places that the gear can’t cover? Like his neck or his face and now she imagines a bullet ripping through an artery in his wrist or his thigh.

  While waiting in the band room for chorus rehearsal to begin, Alice o
verhears Jennifer White and Melissa Johnson talking. She’s trying to ignore them, but they’re loud like they always are, and words and phrases keep hitting her like a punch to the gut.

  “How could he do that?”

  “I hate my father. I really hate him.”

  “I can’t believe he did that to you.”

  “He’s such an asshole.”

  “Grounding you for two weeks . . .”

  “I wish he’d go away, I wish he’d die, I wish . . .”

  Before she can think, Alice shoves Jennifer White. She meant to just give her a little push, but it’s like she’s so upset she’s got this superhuman strength, and that little push hits Jennifer White so hard she stumbles, loses her balance, and falls to the ground. And gets a bloody nose and starts wailing. Alice looks up in time to see Stephie glance at her and then look away, shaking her head. No sympathy from that corner. Melissa Johnson is about to retaliate when Mr. Brooks, the music teacher, pushes his way through the crowd with his immense bulk. And even though Jennifer White gets a bloody nose if you just say boo to her, this looks really bad.

  Next thing you know Alice is in the principal’s office. Mr. Fisher wants to know what happened, he wants to talk about it; but Alice can’t talk about it, she can’t answer his questions, she can’t tell him her side of the story. She just sits there staring at her hands or out the window. And while the principal is trying to be understanding, the longer she stays silent, the more wound up he gets until he’s forgotten all about her father and has convinced himself she’s being disrespectful and obstreperous and that she needs a nice little suspension to get her attitude in order.

  When he picks up the phone to call her mother at work, Alice gets up to leave the room. He angrily waves her back to her seat just as the lunch bell rings. She knows he will not make himself ridiculous by actually chasing her, so she makes her escape in the general lunchtime melee and walks out the back door of the school and heads for home. Henry follows her for a ways but she can’t talk to Henry right now, she can’t talk to anybody.

  Halfway down Highland Drive, where is she going anyway?, B.D. pulls up beside her in his old Chevy. The backseat is filled with orange plastic cones for practice, out-of-date running magazines, and empty coffee cups.

  “Alice, where are you going? We’ve got practice this afternoon.”

  “I can’t come today.”