The End of Alice

by A M Homes

  “Eyes front,” the guard at my back says, poking me with a billy club.

  Due to renovation work, the infirmary has temporarily been relocated to the main building, the administration area, where the corridors are wide and free people, employees of the state, secretaries and civil servants, pass by. They stare. I growl. That is the voice I have left. The cool wand of the billy club taps my shoulder and then brushes against my ear. My head twitches. “Don’t push it,” the guard says.

  In pain. My gut.

  In the examination room someone screams. My keepers yank my chains. The doctor, blood-splattered, steps into the hall, followed by an inmate. The back of his head shaved. I take note of the long, thick line of stitches running across the rear of his skull.

  “Slipped in the shower,” the doctor says, chuckling. Everyone laughs.

  The inmate is led past me, shaking, drenched in his drying blood.

  My stomach, my weak stomach, my sensitive intestines, curl tighter. I am taken in. A male nurse asks my complaint, and while I’m still shackled, my shirt is unbuttoned, my pants are pulled down, trousers and boxer shorts bunched around the steel at my ankles.

  The doctor enters. He is a short, pig-faced man, pink not red, too pink like a runt still struggling to stay alive. What makes a man become a prison doctor? A sentence of his own, the payback of a certain debt? A bad loan? A good doctor does not put himself behind bars, does not give up the nice bums and pretty titties of the upper classes for the privilege of serving the poor, the pathetic, the perverted.

  I am rolled onto my side.

  “Bend your knees,” the male nurse hisses in my ear, his breath tickling the short hairs.

  I do what I can. The metal around my ankles clanks.

  “Ever had a rectal?” the doctor asks, jamming a jellied finger into my blind orifice, my toothless mouth, under my tangled tongue and up.

  I suffer the indignity of a man in chains, his pants pulled down, privates probed by a putz, while a male nurse, major homo, looks on with great approval.

  “Have you ever engaged in homosexual activity?”

  Mama pulls her blond hair back, piles it high on her head, and pins it there where it won’t get wet. Strays trail down her neck. Her neck is damp, perspiration mixed with perfume, a sweet fruit, a strong liquor, the place you want to bury yourself, to drink. I kiss her neck and, with my lips still pressed to her skin, inhale. Her neck seeps sweat. Teardrops afraid to escape her eyes sneak out the back, slipping down her spine only to find her ass and be sucked back in.

  Slowly, she descends the steps into the water. Her body, round, truly a pear, a plum and then some. The most beautiful woman, front and back. Still the Tomato Queen.

  She sighs, sweeps her arms wide, and splashes. “Heaven,” she says.

  I slip out of my underwear, leave everything folded on the chair, and sit for a minute on the cot; naked, totally naked, so naked.

  Mama smiles. “You know, this town is where I met your father. Right here in this park, at a party for the Strawberry Festival. He towered like a tree.”

  She’s back. We will go home to our house and summer will start again. In my memory it is always summer. None of this will ever have happened. The bath will wash us, will clean us, erase everything, and we will begin again.

  I plunge in and swim to my mother.

  “Your father loved it here. This was the one tub he could fit into. From the time he was ten or twelve he was just too big. He loved baths. Liked to soak.”

  She leaves the bath, pulls a bottle from her purse, and pours herself a glass. “Bathtub gin,” she says, carrying the glass back into the water.

  In the water, she turns pink, she turns red. She lies back clutching the bar that goes the whole way around, and like a ballet dancer doing her exercises, she opens and closes her legs. She teases me, making waves.

  “Did I ever show you what having you did to me?”

  I shake my head.

  She shows me her breasts. “I’m bagged out,” she says, cupping them, holding them up, pointing them, aiming them at me like missiles. “Bombs away,” she says. “You stretched me all out.”

  “Sorry,” I say, horrified.

  “Nothing to apologize for. It’s my own damn fault.”

  She reaches for the bottle she’s left by the side of the tub, refills her glass, and drinks quickly.

  “Have you ever engaged in homosexual activity?” the doctor asks.

  “Yes,” I say, naively thinking that something about the way my butt hole hangs will tell him anyway, thinking that even if I don’t say it, he’ll know.

  “Do you have a regular partner or more than one partner?”

  I don’t answer.

  “Who is your partner?” he asks, wiggling his finger high into my gut.

  Again, I don’t answer and he doesn’t ask again. He pulls his hand out, snaps the glove off, and throws it across the room toward the trash can. It lands on the floor. Who will pick it up? Surely not the doctor, not the nurse, and not me. Who then?

  “Blood in your stool?”

  “No.”

  “Pain on urination?”

  “No.”

  “Burning? Frequency?”

  “No.”

  “Impotence?”

  “I’m frightened,” she suddenly says. Her face has lost its color, she goes white, deathly white. “Give me a hug.”

  I go to her. Swim there. She pulls me against her. My cheek, my mouth, is at her breast. She flattens me against it and sees my embarrassment rise under the water.

  “Impotence?”

  I shake my head. “No.”

  Mama smiles and hugs me hard, looking down at my rise through the water.

  “Go ahead,” she says, holding my head in her hands, turning it so that my mouth is at her nipple. “If it belongs to anyone, it belongs to you.” She moves my head back and forth over it. The softest skin, not skin but a strange fabric, a rare silk. My lips are sealed.

  She rubs her finger over my mouth. “Open,” she says. “Open up. It’s only me, it’s your mama. Taste, just taste.”

  Like butter, only it doesn’t melt. A tender saucer that pulls tight under my tongue, ridges and goose bumps.

  She reaches for my hand. I try to pull away.

  “No.”

  “Yes,” she says, pulling harder on the arm, leading it toward the place between her legs.

  “No,” I say more desperately.

  My hand goes through a dark curtain, parting velvet drapes. My fingers slip between the lips of a secret mouth. My mother makes a sound, a guttural ahhh. I try to pull my hand out, but she pushes it back in. Pushes it in and then pulls it out, pushes and pulls, in and out, in, out.

  “It’s your home,” she says, one hand at the back of my neck, holding my head against her still, the other on my hand, keeping me there, her leg wrapped around my leg.

  “It’s your home,” she says again. “You lived there, before you lived anywhere else. You’re not afraid of going home, are you?”

  It grows slick, greasy with something wetter than water. My hand is inside my mother, in a place I never knew was there. Deeper. She takes three fingers and threads them into her. Perfume and juices, the cavern grows. She moves the hand in and out. My fingers are swallowed.

  She grabs my arm at the wrist. “Fist,” she says. “Make a fist, curl your paw.” It doesn’t go at first. Too large. “Push,” she says. And I do. “Harder.” My knuckles round the edge of the bone and pop in. My fist is inside her. My fist, like I’m angry. I turn it around, screwdriver, drill. I feel the walls, the meat she’s made of, dark and thick. My fist is in and almost out and then in again. Her fingers dig into my biceps, she is controlling me. “Go,” she says deeply, desperately. “Go. More.” She is pushing and pulling. I’m rocking, fighting. Buried in my mother, I’m boxing. Boxing Mama, punching her out, afraid my hand will come off, afraid the contractions of her womb will amputate me at the wrist. My shoulder is stretching, nearly popping ou
t, and I can’t stop. That much is clear. Whatever I do, I can’t stop. She is filled with fury and frustration and there is no way of saying no.

  She keeps my mouth at her breast. “Suck,” she says. “Bite it. It’s yours.” Harder and harder. Never enough.

  And then with no warning, the teeth of this strange second mouth bite my hand. Her head goes back and she bellows like I’ve killed her, and I cry out, too, because she’s hurting me and I don’t know what’s happening. I’m scared and I want my hand back and I want my mother back and I want to be out of this place.

  The anal exam is over. I am returned to my back, legs laid out straight. I give the doctor the gory details of all my comings and goings. Hesitantly, he presses my belly— they are loath to touch us, as though the criminal mind will seep out through the pores and poison them. The doctor feels his way around. What once was stiff has gone roly-poly.

  Silence. The false solemnity of the occasion eats at me.

  A long time has passed since I’ve spoken to a man without a sentence, a man without a gun.

  “So how is it?” I ask.

  He doesn’t answer. I attempt conversation. I speak as though I’ve forgotten that they are reluctant to treat our melancholia. If we’re sad and suffering, they are pleased; legally if not morally, they’re obligated by their mothers and wives, sons and daughters, to rub it in. They have done their jobs, the punishment is working.

  I mention my concern about Clayton, his poor mood.

  “I don’t do couples therapy,” the doctor says curtly.

  He picks up my chart and scribbles simultaneously with his speech. “Gas,” he says, writing it down. “You’ve got bad gas.”

  Wonder bread. The damned Wonder bread, they’ve never heard of wheat or rye.

  “At your age,” he says, and then without finishing the thought, he turns away, digs deep into a steel cabinet, and pulls out a large canister of orange-flavored Metamucil. He hands it over as though he’s making a large and luxurious gift.

  “Thanks,” I say. “Thank you very much. Thanks from the bottom of my heart, which just so happens to be located at the top of my bowels.”

  The nurse eases me down off the table, all too experienced with the range of movement, the ins and outs of men in shackles. He bends and brings up my boxers, my trousers. I am allowed to zip myself.

  As I shuffle out under heavy guard, the doctor taps the canister of Metamucil. “Two teaspoons in a glass of water every morning,” he says. “And you’ll be good as new.”

  * * *

  It’s over. As suddenly as it started, Mama holds up a hand. “Stop,” she says. “Stop,” she whispers in my ear. “It’s enough.” She puts her hand on my shoulder and tries to push me away, but my fist is still inside her. Suddenly, I am an intruder, a thief. I am doing something wrong. It takes me a minute, more than a minute. I’ve gone deaf, I don’t catch on right away, I keep pulling and pushing, boxing her insides, going the rounds, giving it my best. I’m doing my job, doing all I can.

  “Stop,” she says again loudly; the echo off the tile makes it sound like a shot.

  I stop.

  She reaches between her legs, plucks my hand out, and lets it drop like some discarded thing. I’ve failed. I turn full front toward her and begin to rub her, to poke at her with my skinny stub. She laughs and pushes me away. “Now you’re just all excited. All riled up.” She laughs as though it’s so funny. She gives me a kiss and climbs out of the tub, wrapping a towel around herself. She lies back on the cot, hand over her eyes, and sighs, breathes heavily, deeply.

  I’m staring, wondering what I’ve done wrong.

  “Don’t ogle,” she says without even looking at me. “Swim some, get your flippers wet.”

  I am still so small a boy that for me this tub is a pool. I take off, circling, turning laps and somersaults. I make myself relax, loose the cat-o’-nine-tails that stood between us.

  A knock at the door. “Hour’s up.”

  Shriveled, I climb out of the water. My mother wraps me in a towel and lets me sit on the edge of the cot, resting while she dresses. I suck water from the towel and try not to look while she loads herself back into her costume.

  “Don’t worry,” she says. “It’s not to worry about. It’s not you. It’s not new.”

  Mama is home.

  “No,” I say.

  Mama insists.

  ELEVEN

  You seem so impatient. How can someone who’s been in jail for twenty-three years be so impatient. Isn’t it bad for your blood pressure? How many girls did you go with? Was it ten, fifty, or a hundred? Were you a voracious pedophile? Do you mind when I call you that? My mother says I’m too honest, is there such a thing? Back to you — Did you always know you were like this? I guess I’m like you, but you’d never know it just looking at me, everyone thinks I’m shy, a little depressed, a late bloomer. Do you think I’m unusual?

  Today she drives me further in. She drives me to know things about myself, things I already know too well. Goddamn. Goddamn. I am wild. I am trapped. Appfelbaum knocks on my door and asks if I’d play him in checkers, if I’d crown his king. Today, I’d just as soon knock his head off with a baseball bat. I want something else—to see and to hear something entirely different. I want to escape myself.

  That she is out there, unleashed, untamed and untrained, free to wander, to feed freely, to satisfy her desire, her whim. That she can pursue her fantasy, her silly summer’s delight, infuriates me. And that I, a true connoisseur, a talent unparalleled—okay, okay, not oft paralleled, lest you think me egomaniacal—that I am kept down, restrained like this, is beyond my comprehension, my sense of justice, of all things right and wrong, good and evil. I am a good boy and she is such a bad girl.

  Alice is beside herself with glee. She has found me naked by the lake. I say something sharp like, “Quiet, you little fool.” And then follow this interdiction with, “Have you no manners? When you come upon someone in their nakedness, you should pretend you have seen no such thing. You act as if you have come upon someone dressed in white tails. And if you are compelled to comment, you address the person by saying something along the lines of, ‘My, you’re looking well today.’ ”

  “You’re my captive, my prisoner,” she says, still half-laughing. She points to a hearty oak tree. “I must tie you up,” she says. “Will you go easily?”

  “You mustn’t come so close,” I say as she steps toward me. “Perhaps on my person I have a hidden gun, you might get shot, wounded by my release.”

  “Then that’s the price I pay,” she says, yanking my arms behind my back, exposing me. She produces a coil of rope; the tickling touch of her small, clammy hands causes blood to rush from my head. My knees buckle beneath me.

  “Your totem pole rises,” she says, referring to the state of my nakedness. I am thawing from the freeze.

  She jerks my arms tighter behind my back, showing herself to be surprisingly strong and quite adept, if not practiced, at the art of knot tying.

  “Is this the way you win your friends?” I ask.

  “Yes.”

  “Well, then, I take it you’re quite popular?”

  She looks at me. “Have you anything you might buy your freedom with?”

  I shake my head. “No.”

  A letter. An interruption. She is the one who sent me into this world, this excavation of my experience, and now I resent her intrusion. I am in my thoughts with my beloved, with Alice, and she has come barging in—a poor substitute. In my less lucid moments, I might confuse them, conflate the two—maybe adding a little of this and that, dashes and hints of other, less significant girls. But in my heart of hearts I know the difference. Today, I hate her, I wish she were someone else. There is no comparison.

  She writes: His mother begged me. “ Would you, could you, just this once, please, pretty please. The regular sitter has the flu. I know you don’t like doing it, but could you make a special exception? For me? For Matt?” Can you believe? Vm sitting there,
thinking, what to do, what to do, and my mother is yakking in the background, going, “Who is it? Who is on the phone? Is the call for me?”

  * * *

  Would you, could you?” his mother asks.

  The girl pretends to ponder, to think. Time alone with the boy, her toy—her heart leaps. The girl agrees. “Sure,” she says.

  “Thank you so much. Thank you. We are so lucky. Come at six and I’ll show you everything.”

  The girl arrives and finds the mother wearing a black cocktail dress, unzipped down the back. The mother’s hair is wet. She’s in the kitchen ironing her husband’s shirt. “We’re running late,” she says, leaving half the story unsaid. They were going at it. Upstairs getting ready, she and he got carried away and now they’re late, she’s harried. Her face is flushed. She looks at the clock and sprays the husband’s shirt. “He’s very picky about wrinkles. Until this year, we had a live-in, it was a luxury. The kids are older now and we’ve got to save for the big BM.”

  “Pardon?”

  “Bar mitzvah.”

  “Oh.”

  She has a little crushlette on my girl. She kisses her for no apparent reason. Kiss hello. Kiss just because. Kiss. Kiss.

  The boy. The boy, where is the boy? The girl is distracted wondering where he roams in his father’s castle. Why didn’t he meet her at the door, greet her with a wink, a whisper, a titty tease? She hopes he has not been taken away, lured out by his friends, bribed with the promise of M&M’s and Jujubes.

  One after another, the mother opens the kitchen cabinets, showing the girl around. “Whatever you want, it’s here,” she says, gesturing at cans of Campbell’s soup mix, mandarin oranges, potato sticks, cake mix. She opens the fridge, the freezer, to show what can be defrosted, done in an oven.

  “We won’t be home before midnight,” the mother says, “but I’d like the kids to get to bed at a decent hour. The little one’s allergy medicine is here.” She points to a bottle of red syrup near the sink. “If he seems bothered, give him a spoonful, but not too early. It puts him right to sleep.”