The End of Alice

by A M Homes

  Her boy comes into the kitchen, looks at her, and without a word slinks away. By the way his shorts fit, she can tell he is pleased to see her.

  “Matt. Matthew, come here, boy,” the father bellows from the upstairs hallway. The son is taken aside. “I trust you to behave responsibly. You’ve been so peculiar lately, I wonder. You know my position on drugs—take only what the doctor prescribes.”

  The boy and girl sit in the den in front of the television making small talk while the parents finish polishing themselves up.

  “Do you have G.I. Joe?” she asks.

  “Not anymore,” he says.

  “What do you play?”

  He shrugs.

  “How’s your forehand coming?” She makes the motion of jerking off. “Have you been practicing?”

  The mother ducks her head into the den. “We’re leaving. See you later. Have a good time.”

  “Drive carefully,” the girl says.

  The mother gives the girl a quick peck on the lips. “Thanks.”

  Matt ignores it. He lies on the sofa, arm crooked behind his head. He is nothing if not casual. The band of his underwear pokes out of his shorts. She is tempted to yank it, to jerk it, to hike his BVDs high into his bum, pulling his balls tight against his torso. He scratches himself, rubs, digging in, rearranging things, seemingly surprised at her stare.

  “What?” he asks, working his hands over his body without the least awareness of what it does to others.

  She adores his absent fascination with all that can be picked, plucked, and snacked upon, cuticles, calluses, nails, and of course scabs. He pops pieces of himself into his mouth as though he wishes to eat himself alive. She imagines him twisted into a contortionist’s pose, arms and legs braided, his body bent to bring mouth to member, to sample the delicacy forbidden by anatomy’s architecture, among other things. She knows the brother of a friend who can do it, who’s down on it morning, noon, and night, sucking himself off and shooting high at an archery target mounted on the ceiling, splashing the bull’s-eye with the splatter of spunk.

  “Arf, arf.” On his hands and knees the baby brother comes to her, playing a dog.

  “Are you a dog? A pretty puppy dog?”

  He nods. “Arf, arf.”

  Matthew watches television, ignoring them.

  “Do you want me to scratch your ears, rub your belly?” She reaches down and pets the little pup.

  “Arrfff, Arrrffff,” he purrs, rubbing against her leg, arching his back, clearly confused about the difference between dog and cat.

  Wallace, the real family hound, sits in the corner watching the proceedings, brow raised, perplexed.

  “You’re a good dog, a cute doggie,” she says.

  Wallace’s tail thumps the floor.

  The dog boy wiggles his butt.

  Matthew rolls over. “I wanna be your dog,” he says to her.

  They look down at the baby brother. “Puppy want to go out?” she asks. The baby boy nods and pants. She gets the leash and collar. Wallace gets up and goes toward the door. “No,” she says firmly. “Not you.” She hooks the baby up, fitting him into the collar, attaching Wallace’s leash. She takes him out into the yard, hooking his lead to the long chain, the tie-out stake stuck deep in the dirt next to the house. Dog boy crawls around on all fours, sniffing the grass, pretending to dig holes and bury bones. “If you need anything, just bark,” she says, leaving him there.

  “Take off your clothes,” Matt says. “I need to see what you look like.” He pauses. “I promise I won’t do anything. I just want to look.”

  “You don’t have to promise anything.”

  “Take off your clothes.”

  “You.”

  “What?”

  “Take off my clothes.”

  Teaching thick fingers to be nimble is part of the education. She lies on the sofa and lets him unbutton her shirt. For purposes of early education, her bra is front closing. He lets loose the clasp; it springs open. He unzips her pants. She wiggles out, pulling down her panties. For a while, he does nothing, only looks—all the while absent-mindedly sucking his own index finger. Finally, he touches his finger to her nipple. It shrivels to a tight knot. He wiggles it back and forth. Ding, dingy. He plays with her titty. He cups a breast in each hand, holding them, molding them as if to divine all he can. He scoops them up, lifting from the sides, instinctively knowing how to get the fullest feel in hand, pushing them together so they might meet and make one, squeezing hard as though a display of strength will win the contest.

  She winces but says nothing.

  His face is against them, sniffing and licking and then sucking, pulling hard as he would on a soda straw. Nothing comes. He is disappointed, having thought there would be something, a little snack, a single squirt. Still so unfamiliar with the connect-the-dot routine—the simple switches that connect lip, tit, and pussy—he hasn’t noticed that all along her hips have been rising and falling, bucking for attention. He has missed the spectacle of her short hairs curling as the humidity increased. And when he finally gets there, when his investigation leads him south, he says, “Oooohhh, gross, it’s all wet. Did you pee in there?”

  He peels her apart, asking, “Is it supposed to be like this?”

  “Like what?”

  “I don’t know, like this?”

  “Yes.”

  Studying, staring, making what appear to be mental notes, his fingers dip in, slide down the slit and into the hole, feeling around as though by accident he’s dropped a penny or a dime and would now like it back. Wiggling fingers. Finding nothing, he pulls out.

  “Show me the clip.”

  “Clip?”

  “You know, your clip. It’s supposed to do something.”

  She reaches down, exposing the gemstone, the dancing dot of perfect pleasure. “Clitoris,” she says. “Clit, not clip.” A short course in pronunciation.

  “What’s it do?”

  He with his great erector set, his bursting birthday toy, the wondrous wand that rises and falls, launching rockets, firing jets of joy, the juiciest jizz of the jungle, he with that magnificent mechanical manhood is not impressed: hers is the wind-up model.

  “It feels good when you rub it.”

  He doesn’t answer, only stares for a moment, then picks up a Matchbox car—an ambulance—from beside the sofa and runs it over her, driving the small black wheels backward and forward over the spot. When nothing happens, he stops. “Show me,” he says. And she does, illustrating the procedure with her own hand, encouraging him to gently take her titties under tongue while she does the rest, and in seconds there is the shiver, the shudder, and she stops.

  “That’s it?” he asks.

  “Yep.”

  “I don’t get it.”

  She shrugs.

  Completely clothed, he lies down on her, rubbing her. There is a barking in the backyard. They go to the window; dog boy is outside howling, pawing at his bowl.

  “Find out what he wants for dinner,” she says. And the boy—the front of his pants stained with a weird wet mark, a secret sloppy kiss that could be either his or hers—goes into the yard and asks the pup, “Do you want your dinner?” The puppy nods. “Gaines Burgers or Alpo?”

  The pup curls his nose, sits up on his back legs, and speaks. “People food.”

  “You’re a spoiled puppy, a bratty boy,” the big brother says. Dog boy whimpers. “Do you want milk or juice with it?”

  “Apple juice,” dog boy says.

  “Be right back.”

  In the kitchen, the girl opens a can of Beefaroni and spoons the contents into a plastic bowl, adding a serious sip of allergy syrup before slipping the bowl into the microwave. When it is ready, she lays a spoon and a napkin on a tray, pours the kid a cup of apple juice, and lets her boy deliver dinner out into the yard.

  While Matt’s gone, she feeds Wallace, the real dog, and puts her clothing back on.

  I asked Matt what he wanted for dinner. “Everything,” he sai
d, and so we had it, all of it: egg rolls, cheese puffs, french fries, fried chicken, spinach souffle, macaroni and cheese, everything out of the freezer. Made pigs of ourselves. Oink, oink. Fun.

  Do you get to pick what you eat? Is it like a hospital where you circle your choices? Is the food Oedipal?—a little joke, ha, ha.

  Is it Oedipal? I could kill her. I struggle to remember what it is to choose, to decide what you want and then have it. Asparagus. I haven’t had asparagus in twenty-three years. I respond with a little history lesson. The FDA allows a higher percentage of hair, mouse shit, whatever evil and vermin you can imagine, into food intended for industrial use as compared to the single-serving cans you open at home—why is there a second standard?

  And to drink with that? Wine?

  Matt digs deep into the cabinet. “Only red. Is red okay?”

  Yeah.

  He pulls out a can of Hawaiian Punch.

  She had something else in mind, but punch drunk is punch drunk. Fine.

  Because they cannot admit it, cannot even name what it is they desire, their fearful craving encourages them to consume the contents of the cabinets, to sit at the table gorging themselves until they are in pain. And the pain comes as a relief; they push away from the table feeling sated, safely satisfied.

  Dinner done, dishes disposed of, she glances out the kitchen window. Baby brother is at the far end of his tether, his pants are down, he’s squatting, smiling, pleased with himself, shitting on the grass. He finishes, pulls his pants up, and on all fours comes back across the yard, turns in several circles like a real dog, and lies down in the grass. It is probably good that she gave him the allergy medicine; without it, he would be wheezing.

  Brightness evaporates inside the house. It is nearly night. Shadows abound, taking him and her, she and he, the kooky kidlets, down into the dark as if etherizing them, putting them in an odd and uncomfortable twilight sleep. Floorboards creak. In the living room the television talks to itself. Without warning they are two children, alone at home, afraid of the dark. Hear no evil, see no evil, do no evil. They don’t speak or move. The presence of something larger than either of them fills the room. (I’d call it guilt.)

  Light. The light, turn on the light, one wants to call to them, but they are deaf—the dulling of the senses is part of the darkness.

  Outside the yard is bright. Timers sensitive to dusk have automatically turned on the floodlights. Sprinklers kick to a start with a whispering whoosh. The two children hear the water go on, look at each other, and suddenly spared from twilight’s sleep run out of the house, pushing down the steps, into the night. The oscillator’s sweep sprays water upward against gravity. The water then drops gently down, fooling the grass, the petunias and geraniums. Phlox won’t be fooled, my grandmother used to say. Boy and girl fly through the sprinkler’s swath; water soaks their clothes. The boy takes off his shirt and throws it onto a bush. The girl slides out of her pants; her shirt is long and covers her ass. Through the water, over the water, under the water, they dash and dance. The spray turns his khaki shorts dark, and the outline of his erection is clear. He takes off his shorts, leaving them on the grass. The thick cotton weave of his BVDs binds his protuberance against his body. She slides off her shirt, stripping down to an intimate bikini, bra and panties. The insects of summer click and clack. Moths circle the floodlights. They chase each other. He plucks the back of her bra, making a melody like she’s strung with the strings of a lute. Her breasts bounce keeping time, as do her thighs and buttocks, a wiggle and jiggle that he might find attractive but which slightly rolls my stomach. His member, his aspiring manhood, stretching, growing longer, thicker each time it rises, is now frozen, stiff like something stuffed, aimed up, fixed on God.

  He runs after her. He pulls her panties down, pushing her until she falls onto the grass and is down on her hands and knees. He throws himself on her, holding her until his prize is aligned, then pokes her from the back, laying in, bending the bone, riding her as though she’s unbroken, his wild mare. He steadies himself by pulling on her bra strap, holding her elastic reins. One arm thrown high into the sky, he rides, hips humping. He slaps the side of her thigh, leaving the muddy mark of his hand—his brand. He rides his fuck until she’s bucking violently under him and it is all he can do to keep himself in.

  Her brassiere gives way, comes undone, firing him backward, sliding him out and off and into the dirt. For a second his pillar, his pole, lights up the night, red, hot, glowing like molten steel, like the rumored reindeer’s nose. But as quickly as it’s flashed, she’s upon it, bouncing up and down. Shimmy, shimmy, shake. How quickly it is done. She leaves him laid out in the grass and moves over to the sprinkler, spreading herself over it, working the water whip back and forth beneath her. With the tiny teeth, the tickle of a tongue, she water-picks her pussy, sighing under its spray. Both breasts in hand, she tilts her hips back and forth, rocking, coming not just once but in a set, a small series of cataclysmic constrictions. It is something to see, to watch, the work of an artisan. Beneath her, as her hips continue to sway, the water automatically turns itself off.

  Nearly finished, she goes to her man, stands above him, and lets go, sprinkling him with a steamy stream, pissing on his privates.

  His jaw drops. Only the slightest sound, a sort of an Oh, comes out.

  “I’ve been saving up,” she says. “All day, I’ve waited for this.”

  “Don’t ogle,” Mama says without even looking at me.

  Dabbed in dirt, dotted in mud, the boy collects the clothing like litter and they cut through the yard. On the far side of the house, dog boy is asleep in the grass. The girl stops, unchains the sleeping boy, and carefully carries him inside. Still spackled with war paint, piss, and mud, they lay the little one out in his bed. While the girl undoes the leash and collar, Matt pulls off his clothing and slides him into his pajamas. Around his neck is an indentation from the harness; not too deep, not too red, it will have faded by the time his mother comes in to check on him.

  They shower—thank God it is not a bath. Praise that she does not run the tub, get in it with him, and go rub-a-dub-dubbing, soaping his cock, sliding it up her bum, and again cumming. They shower—I shower as often as I can. And wrapped in his mother’s robe, she brings her boy to his bed, tucking him tightly between the sheets. Below the covers, it rises again. She pats it a great good-night. “Enough for one day. See you soon, my friend. Sleep tight.”

  Downstairs, she runs the washer and dryer. The parents’ car pulls into the driveway and she dashes to dress. Her clothing is hot. As his father drives her home—her pockets pulsating with pay (the cheap thrill of playing the prostitute, the whore, reverberates)—the metal underwire of her bra leaves burns, two smiling U’s etched beneath her breasts.

  Drunk. The car crosses back and forth over the yellow line like some zigzag stitch on a sewing machine. And I’m thinking I should have walked. But, it’s one a.m. and who knows what evil lurks—could he you or one of your friends. Anyway, he goes, ”Thanks. Thanks a lot for, you know, your help with the kids, Matt’s lessons and all .”

  “Mine, the pleasure is mine, ” I say.

  “Well,” he says, “I just want you to know, I appreciate it. ”

  He squeezes my knee.

  Gross, totally gross, no one ever gets enough.

  “Well,” he says, repeating himself, “I just want you to know. ”

  Impossible! This is not the way it works. And I’m not referring to the scene in the car, which quite frankly I don’t even believe, but to what went on before—oh, the tachycardia of the critical heart. Don’t you see that her approach, her manner for dealing with the boy, is far too simple, too consciously careless, as though she and he were partners in this subtle crime, when the truth of it is—as you have taken note—she and I are truly the team. Surely, I am skipping beats. How does she know these things? From where does she receive such steamy thoughts? Does she believe these activities have not heretofore been explored, th
at she has come to them on her own, that she is their inventor? Or is this just sewage spilling, the stew of some imagination—and then the question begs, Is it hers or is it mine?

  If only there were someone I could trust, could ask to take a little look-go-see. Surely, she is lying and the story more likely goes that she and he spent the evening sitting on the sofa, their only wrestling over possession of the remote control.

  All the same, fact or fiction, her hot air has landed on me like the breath of a bellows, has aroused my flame, made my embers glow. I have come back to life. One wonders exactly what her motive is with this latest move, delivering me the diary of her days. Is the telling of her tale meant to mock and tease or to tempt me with a sticky, sweet treat?

  Does she not understand that between us there is a certain agreement and that her foreplay finalis, her fucking the boy, has betrayed my trust? Our letters are our contract— clearly and conveniently she seems to have forgotten that.

  Admittedly, I found her story somewhat entertaining, and yet had I been invited in and allowed to participate, it might have had a very different end. I don’t mean to imply the worst, but all the same…

  Had I been invited to her party, how differently it would have begun. From the start she would have been bound and gagged, stripped, whipped, shaved with my sharp straight razor. Compared to this, her night with the boy is but an aperitif, whetting the appetite for what turns things take, games a true connoisseur plays.

  The examination, the little look-see, would go a little differently. I’d slip her head into a leather mask, hawk’s hood, zippers over mouth and eyes. On days such as these when I am already in such misery, it is far too much to meet eye to eye. Were we to peek, to see each other at the wrong moment, I fear what might happen, what surprise would rise, what wrong would be wrought. Be thankful that I keep her blind.

  Besides, bound and gagged, she is free to lie back, relax, and enjoy me.