Alice Fantastic

by Maggie Estep

  I scrubbed my teeth and ran a hand through my hair that had gotten lank over the last few months. I knew I looked awful so I didn’t glance into the mirror.

  “Okay,” I said, coming out of the bathroom, “I’m all cleaned up.”

  Joe was sitting at the edge of the bed. He was wearing red boxer shorts. His graying brown hair was falling in his face. He looked sweet and sad.

  “I don’t mean to be cruel,” I said, kneeling down in front of him and putting my hands on his knees.

  “You’re not cruel, Kim, I suppose you’re just honest.”

  “I don’t trust myself. I thought I loved Betina. And Claire before her. In retrospect, it was something else, a compulsion, but not love. So I’m hesitant.”

  Joe looked at me from under the fringe of his hair.

  “Anyway, don’t you think you’re going to start longing for the young blondes you’ve favored the whole time I’ve known you?”

  “How could you possibly be insecure?”

  “That’s not insecurity talking. I’m being pragmatic.”

  “No,” Joe shook his head, “I like you better than them all.”

  “Oh, Joe.”

  “Let’s take a vacation together.”

  “Vacation? I don’t take vacations. I have seventeen dogs.”

  “Get your daughters to take care of them.”

  “Ha. Eloise has flitted off to Toronto to visit her movie star lesbian lover and there’s no chance that Alice will do anything for anyone.”

  “How can you know that until you ask?”

  “I know my daughters. I gave birth to them.”

  “Just ask. Ask Alice.”

  “Maybe,” I said. I glanced at the clock on the bedside table and saw it was nearly 6 p.m. I had more dogs to exercise before nightfall.

  “I know,” Joe said, “you have to feed those beasts now. And I have work to do too. Can I come over later?”

  I looked at him. At his sweet, handsome face. I couldn’t believe I was here. Having a heterosexual relationship with an attractive, sane, solvent man who, by all indications, was taken with me.

  “Sure,” I said, “come over later.”

  I touched his face.

  The dogs twirled and barked and jumped. Chico got down on his back and exposed his belly, Carlos yapped, Ira stood off to the side looking at me with those huge, mournful brown eyes. I took a step toward Ira, but Jimmy, the nearly brainless Newfoundland, came crashing between us. Lucy growled at Jimmy, Chico jumped onto the couch, and all hell broke loose. I stood still and relaxed, took a deep breath, then let out a “Shhhh” and, to my amazement, the chaos stopped and all eyes turned to me.

  If only my daughters had ever listened to me this way.

  For the next two hours I fed and walked the dogs. When night fell, I turned on the backyard lights and took most of the animals out to play ball. I launched one ball after another till the huge yard was filled with flying dogs and tennis balls. At one point, I darted off to the edge of the yard to vomit. Then had to sit down on a rock for a minute until a spell of weakness passed. The dogs looked at me, some with concern, some with annoyance as my bout of unease had gotten in the way of ball-throwing.

  At 8 p.m. the phone rang. A potential adopter for Lucy, the Ibizan hound who’d been abandoned at a veterinarian’s office in Kingston.

  “I love Ibizan hounds,” the woman said.

  “Do you have experience with the breed?”

  “No, I just love them.”

  “They’re high-energy dogs. They need to run, yet can’t be let offleash in an unfenced area as they have a keen prey drive.”

  “Oh, that’s okay,” said the woman.

  “Which part is okay?”

  “All of it.”

  “Do you plan to spend two hours a day walking the dog?”

  “Two hours?”

  “Minimum. Almost all dogs need that much. With some, you can let them run offleash in the woods and they can burn off enough steam in an hour of running. With dogs like Lucy, you have to do a lot of walking. In addition to play time in a fenced yard, of course.”

  “Oh.” The woman sounded deflated. They often do. They see pictures of these orphaned dogs on Petfinder, fall in love with a face without consideration for the needs that might accompany it.

  “Why do you want to get a dog?” I asked.

  “I grew up with dogs. I miss that dog energy.”

  “What kind did you grow up with?”

  “Beagles.”

  “I have a beagle mix. Minnie. She will still need exercise but not as much as Lucy.”

  “I was hoping for something bigger. Could I at least meet Lucy?”

  I agreed that she could come meet Lucy even though I had no intention of letting her have that particular dog. I would hope to match her up with one of the mellower beasts. Maybe Herman, a very shy sheepdog who just wanted to love somebody and detested excessive exercise. Or Simba, an aging black Lab who had lived his seven years with an elderly gentleman who thought that letting him out in the yard once a day was enough exercise. Simba had started enjoying our long daily walks but would never have rigorous exercise requirements like some of the others.

  The woman, a bank teller named Sue who lived in nearby West Saugerties, was intent on coming by that evening. Since I’d already done my chores over at Ava’s farm and taken care of most everything else I had on my plate for the day, I agreed.

  When Joe came over two hours later, he found me on the couch, benevolently watching Sue, a thirtyish woman with frizzy red hair, as she sat on the floor, surrounded by dogs. I had given the woman my standard lecture on the true needs of dogs, that a dog, any dog, even a tiny lapdog, is an animal first and foremost and, as such, should not be left confined somewhere for hours at a time and then merely sent out to a small yard by way of exercise. Sue swore up and down that she knew a good dog walker who she’d hire to take the new pet out in the middle of the day and that she’d personally give it long walks both before and after work.

  She seemed sincere enough and didn’t balk when I told her I’d be checking up on the dog for the rest of its life. I had steered her toward Simba and Herman but it was Chico, the tan pit bull, who seemed to have stolen her heart. Chico had his big head in her lap and was looking up at her like she was a hunk of ham.

  “Do you want me to come back later?” Joe had asked when I let him in.

  “No, no, it’s fine, you should see how this adoption process works.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Ah, okay then.” He came in, shook Sue’s hand, and sank into the couch. It was late now but Sue showed no sign of wanting to leave.

  “Sue,” I said gently, “I have to go to bed.”

  “Can I have Chico?”

  “We can talk about it. You should go home and sleep on it. He’s a wonderful dog but you will encounter pit bull prejudices, neighbors may make a fuss, home insurance will be hard to find.”

  “But he’s a wonderful dog.”

  “Yes. But while it’s perfectly legal for lunatics to purchase firearms, pit bulls have been banned in entire cities.” I felt a rage coming on so I decided to nip it in the bud. I told Sue I’d call her in the morning. Chico and I walked her to the door. After I watched her get in her car and pull away, I turned to Joe.

  “You know, I think we should take that vacation,” I said.

  Joe smiled.

  * * *

  The next morning, after Joe had left and I had vomited then gotten through the first round of dog chores, I obsessed over the idea of a vacation. I hadn’t gone on one since 1989, when Anne, my second lesbian lover and first long-term girlfriend, inherited money from her grandmother and sprang for an extravagant trip to Nevis, a tiny lush Caribbean island where we plucked mangoes from trees and made love on the beach. As much as I had adored Anne, who had dumped me very suddenly after seven years, I wanted to take a vacation with Joe even more.

  I was going into the city l
ate that morning to drop off Arturo the Italian greyhound with a nice-sounding man who Eloise had approved as an adopter. The man owned a toy store where Arturo would spend his days at the man’s side. I decided I would stop in on Alice and try to convince her to come care for the dogs so I could take this infamous vacation. It was important enough to warrant my calling her to make sure she’d be home.

  “Hi, Mom,” she said, sounding less than lively.

  “What’s wrong, Alice?”

  “Clayton is going to prison. He pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter.”

  “Oh.” I didn’t know what to make of this. Alice hadn’t seemed to think highly of her lover until he’d been arrested. I didn’t like the idea of my daughter being so emotionally screwy that she only cared about someone who would soon be unavailable by reason of prison sentence. What’s more, I’d heard from Eloise that Alice was seeing someone else.

  “I’m sorry to hear that, Alice,” I said, for lack of anything else to say.

  “Yeah, thanks. What’s up?”

  “I was going to drop by and see you later.”

  “And you’re calling first?”

  “Yes. I’m turning over a new leaf. I also wanted to make sure you weren’t going to be at the track.”

  “Mom, it’s Tuesday.”

  “And?”

  “Tuesday is a dark day.”

  “Right,” I said, as if I had any idea what that meant. “So you’ll be home?”

  “What time?”

  “Maybe 1 p.m. or so?”

  “That’s fine, Mom,” she said in a defeated voice.

  “Alice, are you all right?”

  “No, Mom, I thought I made that clear. But I’ll see you around 1.”

  I hung up and took a moment to torment myself over my poor parenting of Alice. I was so young when I had her. Seventeen. And her father, Sam, was just twenty. We moved in with his parents and tried to be a family, but Sam and I never really got along and the more he annoyed me and failed to understand me, the more I disliked him. We split up when Alice was four. Alice and I went to live with my folks for a while and then I left Alice there, with them, in what I thought would be a more stable environment, as I went off to San Francisco. I had told my parents I was going to nursing school but the truth was, I had met Jeff, Eloise’s father, a guitar player in a psychedelic band. As Alice attended a rural elementary school in Pennsylvania, I gave birth to Eloise in Oakland, California. For a little while, Jeff and Eloise and I were a happy little family. But Jeff was a junkie and soon I became a junkie too. Eloise’s formative years were spent watching her parents shoot up. Jeff died of an overdose when she was three.

  I eventually pulled myself together. Eloise and I went back to Pennsylvania where we shared a room with Alice in my parents’ house. But Alice was a stranger to us and she and I never developed the bond Eloise and I have. I eventually got clean in Narcotics Anonymous, became employable and trustworthy and even capable of parenting. But it was a little too late for Alice. Though she isn’t an out right sociopath, I worry about her coldness and its counterpoint, the sudden flare-ups of emotion.

  The dogs started milling around and barking and there was a knock at the door. I looked up at the kitchen clock and saw it was already 9 a.m. I opened the door for Gina, one of my pet supply store coworkers who was going to walk and tend to the dogs for me while I spent the day in the city.

  “Gina, hi,” I said, ushering my tiny friend into the kitchen. I am not a large woman, but Gina, who looks like a prepubescent Russian gymnast, makes me feel like a giantess.

  “Hi, Kim.” She barely moved her mouth when she spoke and her eyes were downcast.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked, immediately pouring her a cup of coffee. Gina fuels her tiny body with gallons of coffee each day. To better maintain her habit, she purchased an elaborate and exorbitant cappuccino machine for the pet store.

  “Nothing.” She sagged down onto one of the kitchen chairs and put her tiny hands around the coffee cup as if to heat them up, in spite of it being quite warm out. “I’m just low.”

  “Oh.” I sat down opposite her. I was itching to get on the road, to drop Arturo off with his adopter and go see my errant daughter and then, very possibly, do something luxurious like get a pedicure from the cruel Korean women who have a shop near Alice’s. But I could see that Gina needed me to extract information from her. Namely, what was making her low.

  “Why are you low?” I pressed.

  “I’m short,” Gina said.

  “What?”

  “I’m short. I’ll never get ahead in the world due to my diminutive size.”

  “Gina, that’s ridiculous.”

  “No. It was cute when I was a teenager. Other kids called me Tiny Girl, like the Iggy Pop song “Tiny Girls,” even though that song has little, if anything, to do with the actual size of the girls in question. As I got older, I started noticing that people would completely ignore me in social situations. Because they literally can’t see me. I am so far below eye level.”

  “But you’re very pretty. You’re a head-turner. People notice you.”

  “Not unless they’re short.”

  I really wasn’t sure what to say. Gina is in fact extremely short. There’s no denying it.

  “What about jockeys?” I said, remembering what Alice had once told me about the athletic power of those small people.

  “You’re comparing me to a jockey?”

  “No, Gina, I just mean that they are short yet very powerful.”

  “And unless they’re on top of a horse, no one will even see them,” Gina replied, disconsolate.

  “What brought this on?” I asked, striving to sound patient and solicitous though I could feel the clock ticking and my pack of dogs eagerly waiting for something, anything, to happen.

  “I’m interested in a tall guy.”

  “Well, I would hazard a guess he’ll be interested in you too.”

  “No,” she shook her head, “he doesn’t even see me. I mean literally. I’m too short. He’s too tall.” She stared into space as she took several sips of her coffee. “Shit,” she said then, “I’m sorry I’m so self-involved. How are you, Kim?” She looked at me then screwed up her forehead. “You don’t look that good. Have you lost a lot of weight?”

  “I’ve had some kind of flu but I’m fine.”

  “You still sleeping with a man?”

  “Apparently, yes.” I smiled.

  “You don’t seem to mind.”

  “No. You know, it’s surprisingly nice. More than nice.”

  Gina smiled, showing her tiny, perfect teeth.

  After giving her elaborate instructions on what to do with the dog pack in my absence, I put Arturo in the car and got on the road. I’d only gone one exit down the thruway when my cell phone rang. I wasn’t going to answer it as I loathe people who talk on their phones while driving, but I glanced down and saw the incoming number. It was Sue, the accountant who was interested in Chico. I’d forgotten to call her.

  There was a rest stop a few miles later and I pulled in, let Arturo out in case the excitement of the car ride had made him need to pee, and called Sue back. She said she had slept on it and called her mother and sister and ex-boyfriend and discussed it and, yes, she wanted the dog. I told her I’d send her the formal application that night. She sounded enthralled. I was glad for her. And for Chico.

  The Toy Box was a small but lavish shop on Greenwich Avenue in the West Village. It was packed to the rafters with bright and beautiful toys, the sorts of things I would have liked to buy my girls when they were little but of course could not as I was destitute. I saw several of Eloise’s animals prominently displayed and remembered that this was how Jerry, the toy store owner, had come to be interested in Arturo. He’d commented on so many of Elo’s animals being dogs and they’d gotten to talking about my rescue work.

  Jerry had a round but attractive face and bright blue eyes that smiled. When he saw Arturo, he looked as excited as Sue had
sounded on the phone.

  “Oh my god, he’s even more magnificent in person. Or in dogdom,” Jerry said, getting down on his haunches and putting his hand out, waiting for the delicate Italian greyhound to approach him.

  Within seconds, Arturo was licking Jerry’s hands and accepting the treats he had in his pockets.

  “Oh, Kimberly,” he said a few minutes later, as he sat behind the counter, Arturo perched in his lap, “you’ve made me a proud and happy man.” He went on to extol Eloise’s virtues. We exchanged some pleasantries and then, without turning back to look at Arturo, I left the toy store. I think people assume that animal rescuers become inured to feelings of loss after finding an animal a home, but it’s a heartbreak each time, a small earthquake inside.

  I had parked the Honda in an illegal spot on Christopher Street and was surprised to discover I had neither been towed nor ticketed. I got in and pointed the car east, toward Alice’s in Queens.

  There was traffic. Traffic heading east, traffic heading north, traffic getting onto the 59th Street Bridge. As I turned right off the bridge, into Long Island City, the mess thinned out. Now there were just occasional trucks, a few passenger cars, more sky. I found a parking spot across the street from Alice’s, locked the Honda, and crossed over to the small, wood-sided house my first late husband left my daughter. I was glad for it. Glad that, after his many years of ne’er-do-wellism, Sam had at least managed to own a little property and see to it that his only daughter had a place to hang her hat and could even draw a steady income from the garden apartment rental. Though Alice never admits it, I suspect that the $1,400 a month the apartment brings in makes it possible for her to earn a living as a gambler, to endure long dry spells and still be able to pay her basic bills. But we never discuss this. Alice isn’t a prideful sort of woman, at least not about most things, but she does feel superior to the vast majority of the population by virtue of being able to identify herself as a professional gambler on her tax returns. I suppose it is the quintessential act of getting over, and if she were an addict like me, it might be dangerous. But she’s not. She’s incredibly logical and levelheaded. Except where men are concerned.