The End of Alice

by A M Homes

  “To drink?”

  “Black coffee,” I say, and feel relaxed. I leave my jacket at the table and go to the men’s room. I splash my face and the back of my neck with cold water, blotting dry with a wad of brown paper towels.

  When I return, my food has arrived, a steaming plate is waiting on the table.

  “God, I’m starving,” she says. “I’m so hungry I could faint.” She has my silverware in hand and is digging in.

  I slip into the vacant seat.

  “You’re a liar,” she says, eating my dinner. “You promised not to leave me. Luckily, I knew you were a fake. I knew it all along.”

  “Your mother will call the police.”

  She gestures toward the food, offering me some.

  I decline. My appetite is gone. “How did you get here?”

  “In your car,” she says. “I lay in the back of the car, all day. I couldn’t let you just escape. You’re unbelievably oblivious and”—she pauses—“a speed demon.”

  She hands me a spoon. “Take it. Under the table, put it in me.”

  She spreads her legs, her knees knock against mine. A fork clatters to the floor. I bend to get it; the waitress beats me there. “I’ll get you a clean one,” she says, picking it up.

  “Come on,” Alice says.

  I shake my head. “No.”

  “Yes.”

  “No. I can’t do it. I can’t do it anymore.”

  “Yes,” she says intently.

  The spoon is old, soft around the edges, it fits in easily. “This is awful,” I say, on the verge of tears. “I feel awful.”

  “Awful is awful. I feel awful, too. Everything hurts. My head hurts, my face is covered in bumps that I’m driven to touch until they’re raw, even my tits ache.”

  The volume of her speech escalates, reaching peak when she spits the word tits across the table. “And I’m in a foul mood, always in a foul mood.”

  “How’s Gram?”

  She hands me the fork.

  “Let’s not play this game. I can’t.”

  “Of course you can. What, are you crippled?”

  The waitress interrupts. “Can I get you anything else?”

  “Pie,” Alice says. “Hot apple pie, a la mode. And a cup of tea.”

  “Nothing for me,” I say, and the waitress disappears. “Fork,” Alice says.

  “No.”

  “Where there’s a will, there’s a way.” She slips the fork into my hand.

  I pray the tablecloth is really as long as it seems.

  I did love. The details I can’t give, they only diminish it, force too many comparisons. She was the one, one in a million.

  “Go ahead,” she says.

  “I’m not your slave.”

  “Then what are you? A dirty old man? Just because no one says anything, because they’re oblivious, doesn’t mean I am. I wasn’t born yesterday.” She is pleased with her tirade. “What you’re doing is illegal.”

  “Do you plan to turn me in?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “I can’t let you get away that easily.”

  I hold the fork and imagine the four tongs poking her, each one piercing. The pie arrives. Using the fork, I take a bite. The apples are hot. I scald my tongue.

  She scrapes a dinner knife back and forth over the tablecloth. “This,” she says, tapping it. “I want you to do it with this.”

  I’m sweating, beading up. I put the fork down. I can’t eat any more. “Please,” I say, signaling for the check. “Let’s go.”

  “We can’t. I’m not done.” She drinks her tea, slaps the knife in my hand. I refuse and let it fall to the floor. Constant clattering. The other patrons must notice how clumsy we are.

  The waitress brings the check. Under the table Alice removes the spoon. She uses it to stir her tea. “Want a sip?”

  “Let’s go.”

  “I’m turning into a circus act,” she says in the car. “A regular freak show.”

  It thunders. A wide swath of lightning divides the sky. I drive back to the motel.

  “Now what?” she asks.

  I pace the room unable to rest.

  Again thunder and lightning. I close the drapes.

  She disappears into the bathroom and is gone for a long time.

  I worry what she’s doing in there, some god-awful thing, cutting herself with razor blades, eating broken glass, the mood is right for something like that.

  “Everything all right?” I ask through the door.

  The toilet flushes. She comes out, her face bleached pale white.

  “I’m bleeding.”

  “Let me see.”

  She puts her hand under her dress and then shows me her fingers, tainted red. “It’s blood. You’ve done something awful to me.”

  I shake my head. “I didn’t use the knife.”

  “I don’t feel well. I don’t feel well at all. My back hurts, my head aches, even my tits are sore.”

  Something occurs to me. I reach for her, fit my hand into her, against her will. I pull my fingers out, sniff them, bring them to my mouth. I taste the blood. I have tasted such blood only once before. The flavor is thick, metallic, stale, like something that has built up for a long time. It is missing the tang, the sweet afterbite, of fresh-flowing injury. She is no longer fresh. Her body is expelling itself. I smear the sample onto the white motel notepad.

  “A little lesson,” I say, tapping my bloody fingers on the paper. “You’re menstruating.”

  “You did this to me,” she cries.

  “Is what I’m saying so thoroughly unfamiliar? Didn’t anyone ever talk to you about it?”

  She shakes her head.

  “Penelope? Gwen? Don’t they tell you anything?”

  “You cut me with the knife.”

  “How could you not know?”

  “You cut me.”

  “I didn’t,” I say, although admittedly I’m worried. There was the spoon and of course there is always the possibility of injury, one can easily tear or puncture something.

  “You’re a disgusting and dirty old man, a horrible thing.

  Don’t even talk to me. I don’t want to hear you. Your words get in my head. I don’t want to think like you. I don’t want to be anything like you. I hate you.”

  “I can explain everything.”

  “This is Alice,” the man says.

  Eight by ten. Glossy. The photographs are presented as though they’re proof.

  In a way I saved her, I hope you can understand that. I spared her a situation that would only get worse. She was a girl, unfit to become a woman.

  “This is Alice,” the committeeman says. “Can we have your attention. Can I ask you to take a look?”

  I look. I do. I look. I close my eyes. My mind unwinds like a spool, spilling thoughts. Photographs.

  “Don’t try and humor me.” She begins to cry. “I want my… I want my….” She bellows, unable to fill in the blank. “I want my… ,” she repeats, unable to name her desire. “I need a doctor,” she concludes.

  “You don’t need a doctor.”

  “Don’t tell me what I need.”

  Her overnight bag is open, she’s rummaging through it. It’s filled with things, books, toys, parts of her tea set, the strangest assortment of stuff. Her hunting knife is in her hand. It’s out of its sheath. She’s flashing it at me, all the while holding her stomach. “I’m in pain.”

  I move toward her.

  This is Alice. The guard puts a photograph in front of my eyes.

  Images explode like fireworks. I feel the heat in my head, the rupture, the rapture, the warm rush of release.

  “He’s wet his pants.”

  “Disgusting.”

  I forgot to go. This morning I forgot to go.

  “Pissed his pants.”

  “This is Alice,” they say, and another photograph is in front of me.

  The end of Alice.

  “Don’t come near me or I’ll kill you. I
swear I will.”

  “Put it down,” I say. “It’s perfectly normal. Every month from now on, you’ll bleed like this for a few days, and then it will be over. That’s the way it goes.”

  “I don’t believe you. You’re making excuses for yourself, for what you’ve done to me. Stop. Stop lying.”

  I shake my head.

  She cries, puts her hand over the spot, clutching herself, as if she can hold it in, push it back inside her.

  “It’s perfectly normal. In your underwear you wear a napkin to catch it.” I say this realizing that she has no idea of what I’m talking about, realizing that I sound insane. How does one explain a napkin, as if to dab at one’s face, to place a heavy bandage between the legs. I can’t bring myself to say more. It doesn’t matter anyway. She is inconsolable.

  “This is Alice,” the committeeman says again and again, and each time the guard shows me another photograph.

  “Tell us what you see.”

  A Rorschach in reverse. Red, lots of red, like geraniums, dark red like autumn leaves. Red and brown and black. Trees, the leaves of trees, wind through the leaves, the texture of bark.

  “Look again, what do you see?” the black woman asks.

  “Flowers, trees, a path through the woods, a woman disappearing.” I refuse to see what they want me to see. I will see only what I want to see, my desire, my vision. I see myself as above them. The pain builds in my chest, spreads, stealing my breath. Something is happening to me. I don’t remember to forget.

  “This is Alice,” they say.

  I nod. I know Alice. I know all about Alice.

  “The end of Alice.”

  The storm. Lightning crashes. The lights go off, then on again, punctuating our dialogue.

  “You cut me,” she howls. “I’ll bleed until I’m drained. My heart will grow fainter and fainter and then it will stop. It will just stop. You’ve killed me,” she screams.

  “Shhh. The neighbors will complain.” I don’t know why, but I reach for the knife, take it away.

  “Give it back,” she says. “Give it back.” She comes toward me.

  “I didn’t touch you with it,” I say. “I didn’t touch you. This is touching you,” I say, touching her with the knife. “This is fucking touching you. I didn’t touch you here.” I poke at her skirt with the blade. “Don’t you understand? I don’t want to hurt you.”

  “Then why did you do this to me?”

  I have no answer.

  “Why did you do this?”

  “Why do you make me?” I’m crying. “Don’t make me.”

  The first time it plunges in, there is resistance, but I’m angry, full of fire. I force it into her gut. The next one goes into her neck, a bigger splash, bright spray, the hiss of an artery. A hot, sticky fountain of blood douses everything. She makes a face and falls back on the bed, gurgling like a little girl, a baby with her rattle. Again I plunge in. She looks surprised. Again and again. I can’t stop myself. I have in mind only the beginning and the end.

  She’s in pieces, splattered around the room. Rivers of blood form small tidal pools. I don’t know which blood is which, from whence it came. The scent is meaty, the putrid stink of slaughter. I’m embarrassed by the vigor, the extent of my outburst. It is as if I’ve lost myself, broken away.

  Have I made my point?

  I go outside. Blood is caked under my fingernails, leaving rust stains on my skin, dried flakes of it fall off my face. There is blood everywhere. The lights dim and stay that way. Sheets of rain move across the parking lot. A distant pop. A transformer blows and the lights go out completely. The red neon title of the place and the orange vacancy sign are gone.

  On a night like this, one gets the false feeling that the rules have been waived, certainty is suspended. I am wet, cold, soaked. My bare feet are on the cement sidewalk. There is dark blood on my instep; I stick my foot out into the rain, it washes off, runs away. My cigarette sputters, burns unevenly. I spit twigs of tobacco. Far off, lightning flashes like someone flicking a switch in a house, wanting only to check something for a second, to look in and then turn the light off again and pretend it never happened.

  It never happened.

  It is morning. I am still outside. The cleaning lady comes.

  “Can I go in?” she asks.

  I don’t answer. Her cart is filled with everything she’ll need, towels, soap, deodorizer. She’ll make everything all right again. It will be clean and neat as if it never happened. She wears a mustard uniform, white apron, and yellow rubber gloves. She looks at me. I nod. Frankly, I’m glad to see her.

  The end has arrived. I make a noise, a scream, a cry.

  There is no real word for the sound I make, but it is large and loud and from the bottom of this pit, an open throat. Startling myself, as if awakened from a nightmare, I’m back in the room, but not out of the woods.

  They are at the heart of things. The heart. A painful squeeze in my chest.

  “Are you all right?” the black woman asks.

  I remember everything.

  “We really should get on with it,” the man says, looking at me carefully. “We’re running out of time.”

  “Go on then, read the rest,” the white-haired lady says. “Cut to the quick.”

  The secretary reads aloud: August 9, 1971, Chatham, New York, twelve-and-a-half-year-old Alice Somerfield is found dead in a motel room. Cause of death: multiple stab wounds—coroner counts sixty-four. Initial five on upper torso, jagged, indicative of struggle; remaining fifty-nine, smooth cuts, most likely occurring after death. Victim decapitated, her head positioned between her legs, weapon recovered at the scene—jammed in victim’s vagina. Buck hunting knife. Fingerprints on handle match accused. Lab identifies menstrual blood and semen in vagina, anus, and mouth of deceased. Accused apparently continued relations with victim after her death. Victim’s face and body covered in kisses. Accused dipped his lips in victim’s blood and then kissed deceased repeatedly. Victim’s blood found on accused’s clothing, hair, fingernails, ears, painted over his lower torso and genitals. Photographs and samples taken. End note: Accused oddly calm at time of his arrest, expressing gratitude to arresting officers.

  It is enough now, more than enough.

  To you alone I’ve told the tale, do with it what you will. That’s all there is, there isn’t any more. I’m out of breath.

  The deal is done. I’m taken out, carried, permitted to pass. Finally free. It is summer, the end of summer now. I feel the tired heat that comes in August. There is sky and trees, a high wire fence, a long road, and at the end of it you are there, waiting for me.

  So glad to see you, I say. Missed you so much, thought about you every day.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  The author would like to thank Karl Willers, Amy Hempel, Jill Ciment, R. S. Jones, and JL—who listened so attentively from the pay phone—along with The Corporation of Yaddo and William Sofield/Thomas O’Brien and Aero Studios for the desk and title of Writer in Residence. And for their support along the way, the author thanks Sarah Chalfant, Andrew Wylie, and Nan Graham.