Alice Fantastic

by Maggie Estep

  “You know,” Ava said, “you can always come up here if you need a peaceful place to work. My house is your house. When I’m out of town or even when I’m here. There’s plenty of room. I have four guest bedrooms. You could have a whole suite.”

  “That’s very generous of you.”

  “Not entirely. I would harbor a slight hope of getting an animal out of it.”

  “Sure,” I said, and I felt my mind instantly grappling with notions of a new and thoroughly unique animal for Ava Larkin.

  “Girls?” I heard my mother calling from downstairs. “Anybody home?”

  “We’re upstairs, coming down,” Ava called.

  Several of the dogs started bounding up the stairs to look for us. Chico, the pit bull, found us first and immediately went to stand by Ava, pressing his body into her leg, asking her to pet him.

  “I know I should take one of these dogs, it’s just that my schedule and traveling wouldn’t be fair to a companion animal. That’s why I only have chickens.”

  “You could do like Oprah and have your own private jet so the dog could travel in the cabin with you.”

  “How rich do you think I am?” Ava asked, arching one of her delicate blond eyebrows. “Personal jets are still a ways off for me.”

  I liked how she said “a ways off,” like she did plan to eventually rule the world, or at least be one of the rich and powerful people who can do things like buy airplanes. I’d only known her for about an hour but already had the sense that she’d do a far better job of being über-powerful than most über-powerful people.

  “You have a talented daughter,” Ava told my mother as we came back downstairs to convene in the kitchen.

  “Yes,” my mother agreed. “But did she tell you about the coma and the shattered pelvis?”

  I thought about kicking my mother or punching her in the face. She was invariably embarrassing me in front of people by bringing up the manhole accident, like my nearly dying was the most interesting thing about me. Even though I do frequently trot this story out, I hate when my mother does it first. I know her bringing it up probably has something to do with what she went through—watching me for weeks struggling to stay alive. But still, it’s embarrassing and I’ve asked her not to do it. I suppose she so wanted to impress her new boss the movie star that she couldn’t control herself.

  “Mom,” I hissed at her.

  “Coma?” Ava asked.

  “I fell in a manhole. My pelvis was crushed and I was in a coma for weeks,” I recited dutifully. “Then my ambulance-chaser lawyer sued the city and I got a million dollars. I still have a hitch in my step and some serious scarring.”

  “One point two million,” my mother corrected.

  “Wow,” said Ava Larkin. “You’re a girl of many gifts.”

  “Yeah, for tripping, falling, and getting hit in the head with foreign objects.” I briefly mentioned the recent incident where a jug of maple syrup had landed on my head. Ava Larkin seemed impressed by this too. Her blue eyes were literally sparkling and there were two cherries of color on her cheeks. Why, I wondered, is this movie star apparently so enthralled by everything about me? Doesn’t she ever leave the house?

  Ava made us tea and gave us slices of the zucchini bread she had baked that morning. It tasted funny and this was a relief. If she’d been a good cook on top of everything else, I would have had to kill her on principle.

  As Ava moved about in the kitchen, as she sat with us at the table, slouching a little, her large breasts prominent under a skimpy white tank top, I found I couldn’t take my eyes off her. She was gorgeous but it was more than that. She was fascinating. Her face was expressive; showing joy one minute, worry the next. Her mouth always pouted slightly, and her pale hands moved around like nervous birds. She caught me looking at her several times and I turned away, embarrassed, even though she had to be used to being stared at.

  My mother needed to get back home to tend to the rest of her dogs. As we headed to the door, Ava gave me a scrap of paper with all her phone numbers on it.

  “Oh,” I said, “thanks.”

  “Call me anytime.”

  “I will,” I said, though this was a complete lie. I seldom call anyone and I certainly wasn’t about to call Ava Larkin. What the hell would I say? She’d already heard my best stories.

  My mother had gone ahead outside and was loading the dogs into the van when Ava asked if I would give her my phone number too.

  “Oh,” I said, taken aback, “sure.”

  She pulled her cell phone from a pocket in her cargo pants.

  I recited my mobile and home numbers and watched as she entered them into her phone, squinting cutely as she did.

  “Thanks,” she said, then gave me a significant-seeming look.

  I smiled. Felt myself blushing.

  As I lay on the hard bed in Mom’s guest room, Chico the pit bull on one side, Slim the whippet on the other, I realized that Ava was very possibly interested in me. And it seemed preposterous. I’m cute, even modestly successful, but I’m a girl and Ava Larkin, as far as I know, doesn’t bat for the other team. Even if she does, it seems she’d want to hit up some fellow movie star, maybe some kittenish ingénue or a fellow lanky blonde with a ranch in Malibu. Power attracts power. And I don’t have any.

  Still, it was flattering. It’s not every day a beautiful movie star hits on me.

  I was about to get my phone out to call Amy Ross to tell her Ava Larkin had asked for my number when the phone rang. I looked at the caller ID. Alice.

  “Hey,” I said.

  “You at Mom’s?”

  “Yeah.”

  “How is it?”

  “Okay,” I said. “She broke up with the German.” I filled her in on Mom’s emotional drama. “You know Ava Larkin?”

  “Who?”

  “The movie star? Ava Larkin?”

  “Oh, right, yeah, what about her?”

  “Mom’s working for her.”

  “Come again?”

  I told Alice the whole story, omitting the part about Ava Larkin asking for my phone number. My sister would have laughed at me, told me I was an idiot to think Ava was interested in me sexually. I am an idiot, but I’m not stupid.

  “That sounds like Mom,” Alice said when I’d finished with the story. “That kind of stuff always happens to her. She leads an enchanted life.”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “And how is your rotten guy?” Alice asked dutifully.

  “Still rotten. I mean, I guess he’s still rotten. I don’t know. I haven’t talked to him, and as of last night, I’m over him.”

  “That’s good to hear. Now it’s my turn.”

  “Your turn what?”

  “I met a guy.”

  “You mean other than your homicidal oaf?”

  “Yeah.” She told me about the guy. He sounded smart. She sounded smitten.

  I had a pang of jealousy over it then remembered that Ava was possibly smitten with me and there was enough smitteness to go around.

  “And what about Clayton’s homicide rap?” I asked, feeling strange about uttering the phrase “homicide rap” like we were a family of felon-harborers and this sort of thing was commonplace.

  “We’re working to get it knocked down to man-slaughter.”

  “But he’s at your house? I mean, he’s not in jail?”

  “He’s out on bail, yeah.”

  “So how are you seeing this other guy if Clayton’s at your house?”

  “Clayton and I broke up.”

  “And he still lives with you?”

  “Where else is he going to go?”

  “His own apartment maybe?”

  “You know he doesn’t have one.”

  “Make him get one.”

  “I can’t make anyone do anything.”

  “Let’s not get philosophical.”

  “What?” Alice snapped.

  “I was trying to be funny.”

  “Oh.”

  “You don’t sou
nd so good, Alice.”

  “I’m struggling.”

  “You doing okay at the track?”

  “It’s been a bad week. But that’s not the struggle.”

  “What’s the struggle then?”

  “I wish I knew. I’m fighting, but I don’t know what I’m fighting.”

  “Oh.” I made sympathetic noises and listened to my sister until she was done talking. I doubted I’d made her feel any better, but since I’ve dumped on her several thousand times, making her listen to a long litany of complaints when she really has better things to do, I tried to be helpful.

  “Thank you, El,” she said a few minutes later, “you’re a good listener sometimes.”

  I felt slightly virtuous when we hung up.

  The phone rang again. The incoming number was blocked but I instinctively knew it wasn’t a telemarketer.

  “Hello?”

  “Eloise, hello, this is Ava.”

  “Hi, Ava,” I said brightly, though what I felt was confused and stupid. And terribly flattered.

  There was a tiny pause, a small intake of breath on Ava’s part, then I could almost hear her deciding to plow ahead.

  “What are you doing later?” she asked.

  “Absolutely nothing.”

  “Will you be hungry?”

  “Always,” I said. My heart rate accelerated.

  “Dinner?”

  “Yes. Let’s.” I tried to sound calm.

  “Do you have any preferences?” Men, I thought.

  “No. Me and Mom always eat at home so I don’t know the local places.”

  “Maybe The Bear Café then,” Ava said.

  “Sounds ominous.”

  She laughed. “It’s in Bearsville. A whole town of ominous. The food is good. Shall I pick you up? Maybe 7?”

  “Sure, that’d be great.” My stomach was knotted and I was surprised I could actually speak.

  I explained how to find my mother’s house and told Ava I was looking forward to seeing her later. I thought I might have even sounded coherent, collected.

  I closed my phone and stared at it. I was amazed. Confused. Incredibly excited.

  I got up from the hard bed and upended my backpack hoping that by some chance I’d brought decent clothes. I had not. I was used to wearing jeans and sweatshirts when visiting Woodstock. It’s not exactly a formal place and it was unlikely my jeans would be snubbed at this ominous-sounding Bear Café, but still. I was having dinner with Ava Larkin. I didn’t want to look like shit.

  “Mom!” I raced out of the guest room.

  “What?” she called up from somewhere downstairs.

  “I need to go clothes shopping. Now.”

  I started down the stairs and saw my mother sitting in the middle of the living room floor, brushing Timber while half a dozen other dogs lay nearby, studying the grooming process.

  My mother frowned at me and it was hard to tell if she was frowning at my disruption of a tender moment with the mutts or the notion that I suddenly required clothes shopping.

  I was prepared to explain myself, to tell her that I was considering a lesbian liaison with her new employer, to get it all out in the open and wait for that knowing look that old lesbians give straight girls when they confess to finding another woman attractive. Except, of course, as of last night, my mother was no longer a card-carrying lesbian in the strict definition of things.

  “You can take the Honda,” my mother said, as if my sudden need to go shopping was completely normal.

  “You mean drive?” I asked, aghast. I detest driving. I got a license a few years ago at Alice’s urging after I’d had about my sixtieth bicycle accident riding my 1984 Peugeot ten-speed around Manhattan. I learned to drive and passed my test and have driven exactly twice since.

  “Eloise, you are a licensed driver. You’re almost thirty years old. Town is two miles away. You can do it.”

  “But Byrdcliffe Road is so twisty,” I whined.

  “You can walk. Or take my bike. Though please don’t have an accident.”

  “Who are you and what have you done with my mother?” I asked, indignant.

  She smiled. “I have things to do, Elo. Go on. Take the Honda. You’ll be fine.”

  “Aren’t you going to ask why I need to go shopping?”

  “You’re a beautiful young woman with a good career and more than a million dollars in the bank. As such, a sudden desire to go shopping is natural and probably even healthy. Buy me something.”

  I could see that my mother had no interest in extracting details from me, didn’t, in fact, think there were any details, any secret Sapphic reasons for my shopping spree. I begrudgingly took the keys to the Honda from the wall hook near the kitchen door and, with much trepidation, got into the car.

  I was pretty sure I was going to die or plow into one of the expensive houses dotting the sides of Upper Byrdcliffe Road and I did very nearly take out a rogue squirrel. I made it to town though, even found a parking spot that didn’t require parallel parking.

  Woodstock isn’t exactly a hotbed of fashion but neither am I. I went into the lone decent clothing store, where a young girl with dyed black hair helped me find a slinky dark-red top and some form-fitting black jeans with skinny legs. I was in the dressing room, staring at myself and wondering if I was attractive enough, when it occurred to me to look at the price tags. The jeans were $220 and the top was nearly $300. Apparently, Ava Larkin isn’t the only rich woman in Woodstock. I was about to take the clothes off and go look for a thrift store when I remembered that I am, by my standards at least, rich. Even though I love saying “I’m rich,” I haven’t had money long enough to not flinch at price tags.

  “Where can I get shoes?” I asked the shopgirl as I handed her my credit card.

  She made a sad face. “The city,” she said. “But you can try the hippie shoe store across the street. They occasionally have something that isn’t hideous. Or there’s that sort of matronly women’s clothing store down the block, they have decent shoes sometimes.”

  I did as the shopgirl suggested. The hippie shoe store was chock full of Birkenstocks, Keens, and other utilitarian and less-than-attractive footwear that was not suitable for a date with a movie star; and the salespeople were churlish. I had expected gregarious, eager hippies selling hippie shoes, but these people seemed to avidly hate customers and I was relieved I didn’t have to validate their existence by buying ugly footwear from them.

  The matronly women’s clothing store had a few pair of vaguely sexy open-toed sandals, but it wasn’t a warm day and the night would probably be downright cold. I decided my silver Camper sneakers would work fine, even give a nice tomboyish contrast to the sexy, femme outfit I was going to wear.

  I got back in the car and found myself pulling down the sun visor to inspect myself, making sure my skin looked all right, that my hair didn’t need trimming. After I’d flipped the sun visor back up, I realized I was going insane. Or at the very least, putting an awful lot of thought and worry into a date with a girl. It was weird. Disquieting. I half wanted to call Amy Ross to get girl-on-girl tips. I’d had little flings with girls, but those were in the distant past and had been fueled by booze. I wasn’t sure I would know what to do. I wasn’t sure I wanted to know what to do.

  Fuck, I thought, what am I doing?

  I drove back up to my mother’s without taking out any trees, pedestrians, or small animals. I walked into the house just in time to say goodbye to my mother, who was heading out to a Narcotics Anonymous meeting. “I might not be here when you get back,” I told her in a nearly threatening voice. I really wanted her to ask where I was going and with whom.

  “Okay, you have fun,” my mother said breezily, leaving me standing there with my shopping bags and only the dogs to tell my troubles to.

  Harvey, the pit bull, blinked at me. The one-eyed Chihuahua, Carlos, wagged his stubby tail.

  At precisely 7 p.m., a white Volvo 240 wagon pulled into the driveway. The fact that Ava Larkin was
driving an old beat-up Volvo, when she could have driven any car she desired, made my chest constrict with fondness.

  “Nice car,” I said, coming out the door.

  “Thanks,” she beamed through the open driver’s side window.

  Her long blond hair was down and a little messed up from the wind. She was wearing a white sweater. I could feel its softness from five feet away.

  “Get in,” she said.

  I did as I was told.

  “Hi,” she said as I slid into the passenger seat.

  “Hi,” I said, feeling like a thirteen-year-old girl.

  We chatted throughout the short drive to the Bear Café. She wanted to know more about Mom’s dogs. I told her how Mom periodically shows up on my doorstep, uninvited and unannounced, toting some mutt she needs me to give a foster home to.

  “My mother is always sitting on top of mountains somewhere,” Ava said a bit wistfully. “Her Buddhist stuff.”

  “My mom’s girlfriend just left her for a monastery,” I explained. “So my mom went and had sex with the next-door neighbor. A man.” Seconds after the words left my mouth, I felt like an indiscreet dunderhead for spilling my mother’s private life out to this woman who was, after all, her new employer.

  But Ava didn’t seem to give it much thought. She had pulled into the vast parking lot of the Bear Café, wedging the Volvo between a Land Rover and a BMW.

  As we walked over to the restaurant, housed in a one-story wooden building perched over a creek, I wondered if people were going to recognize Ava, hound her for autographs, stare.

  “Nice to see you, Ava,” the hostess greeted her like any regular customer. Warm but not fawning.

  We were shown to a table overlooking the creek. Ava moved gracefully, her long form flowing from standing to sitting. The creek roiled outside the window, pushing, forcing its way mightily along. My stomach was coiled and my palms were moist.

  “I’m vegan most of the time,” Ava announced after the waiter, a ridiculously beautiful young blond boy, brought us menus. “Once in a while I eat dairy.”

  I’d been vegetarian so long I never even thought about it anymore. Mom had been vegetarian since before I was born and even though she told me to go out and gorge on burgers if I so chose, I only did it once. It was gross. Neither my mother nor Alice nor I seem to require meat. Mom once theorized that the lack of meat in our childhood diet might be partially responsible for our rapaciousness where men are concerned. But I was feeling rapacious about Ava Larkin too. And she’s no man.