Alice Fantastic

by Maggie Estep

  I looked at my girlfriend, at her lovely, smooth, earnest face. I felt like a jackass.

  “Would you stop being so magnanimous? Stop giving me hope for the human race.”

  Ava laughed then pulled her goggles back over her eyes and picked up the chainsaw.

  “And my mom,” I added, before she turned the machine back on, “Alice thinks she’s fallen off the wagon. Alice found pills.”

  Ava put the chainsaw down and pulled the goggles back up.

  “When were you going to tell me this?”

  “I had to mull it over awhile first.”

  Ava sighed, took off her work gloves, came over, and put an arm around me.

  “Darling, you have to learn to tell me everything or I will fear for the longevity of our love.”

  “Okay,” I nodded dumbly.

  I told her about the pills and some of the details of mom’s druggie past. Details I had glossed over in light of the fact that my mother is now Ava’s employee.

  After I’d gone on for several minutes, Ava cut in: “Your mom is innocent until proven guilty of all this. What’s more, she may have a legitimate need for the pain pills. I would suggest talking it over with her and not jumping to horrific conclusions.”

  “Stop being so clear-headed,” I said.

  “Go call your sister and make nice and let me get this wood cut.” She pulled the goggles down once more.

  I kissed her before she picked the chainsaw back up. Her goggles bumped my forehead.

  “Go on,” she said, reaching around to pat me on the ass, “I’ve got to get this done.”

  I started to walk away then paused, looking back at her. She’d turned the chainsaw on and was grimacing as she attacked an oversized log. She had, she’d told me, learned to use a chainsaw for some movie she’d been in ten years earlier. It was amazing to me that actors learned useful life skills for the sake of make-believe.

  I headed into the house where I was effusively greeted by Ron, the shepherd mix Ava and I had adopted in Toronto.

  “Shhhh,” I said, turning my back to him so he couldn’t jump on me. He was an intelligent and willing dog but he hadn’t mastered house manners just yet. Ava and I had found him in a parking lot behind the fancy hotel where we’d been staying during her shoot. Without too much coaxing, he followed us back inside the hotel and the elevator operator said not one word as we ascended to the penthouse.

  Later on, after getting a production assistant to go out and find a leash and collar for the dog, who Ava promptly named Ron after a screenwriter friend of hers, Ava agreed to let me call up various local shelters and rescue organizations to alert them about the found blond shepherd mix. Since Ron was vastly underweight and hadn’t had a nail trim or a brushing in many months, it seemed unlikely he was someone’s beloved lost pet. Twenty-four hours later, when no one came looking for him, Ava declared that we would take him home to Woodstock where he would become our dog.

  Ron was still trying to jump up on me.

  “Shhhh,” I said again, standing with my arms loose at my sides, not looking him in the eyes.

  He circled me a few times and then, since that wasn’t yielding any results, sat and looked at me expectantly.

  “Good boy.” I patted the top of his silky head. The dog had been starved and abandoned but he wasn’t stupid.

  Ron followed as I went into the kitchen where I’d left my cell phone. I opened it up and saw that Alice had called twice more. I dialed Mom’s number. The machine came on telling me my mother was away for another five days.

  “Alice,” I spoke into the machine, “this is Eloise.”

  “Finally,” she said, picking up.

  I toyed with the idea of hanging up. What kind of greeting was that? Why was she always so abrupt?

  “Why are you always so abrupt?” I asked. “Mom has cancer.”

  “That’s not funny, Alice, don’t joke about things like that.”

  “I’m not. I talked to one of Mom’s NA friends. Ida, the friend, told me. She didn’t think it was right that Mom wasn’t telling anyone.”

  “You’re not serious.”

  “Eloise, I may be fucked up but I’m not that fucked up. Our mother has cancer of the esophagus. Late-stage cancer. She’s going to die. Soon.”

  “No,” I said.

  “Yes.”

  “No,” I said again.

  “Yes, Eloise, yes.”

  I tried to absorb the information. My head was spinning and I felt nauseous. I found myself digging my hand into the fur on Ron’s back. “We have to call her,” I said.

  “No. Ida made me promise not to talk to her about this until she’d come back from the vacation.”

  “That’s ridiculous. Why?”

  “It’s probably the last vacation she’ll take. She doesn’t need her daughters calling her in hysterics.”

  “Alice, she failed to tell us she’s dying, surely that merits a phone call.”

  “No, Eloise. It’s fucked up that she didn’t tell us, but it’s even more fucked up that she’s dying. I can’t even imagine what she’s gone through so I definitely cannot imagine how she’d have reached a decision not to tell us. But we’re not calling her. Let her be.”

  I said nothing. I smoothed Ron’s fur. Still holding the phone, I got down off the couch where I’d been sitting and moved closer to Ron, who was on the floor. He licked my nose.

  “Are you there, Elo?”

  “I am.”

  “Why don’t I come by?”

  “Come by?”

  “Come by and see you. Or you come here. We’re sisters. We should be together. I wouldn’t have told you this over the phone if I thought you’d agree to see me without hearing it first.”

  “I’m sorry I’ve been an ass,” I said. “Yes, come by. Or do you want me to come there?”

  “I have to get some dogs out anyway. I’ll take them down the trail by Ava’s then stop by.”

  “I can walk with you, if you don’t mind.”

  “That would be nice,” said Alice. “I’ll come pick you up? Twenty minutes?”

  “Yes.” I hung the phone up gingerly, as if putting it down with any force might drive nails into my mother’s coffin.

  I have known since I first started knowing things that there was a good chance I would one day see my mother die, but considering that she’s only twenty-four years my senior, I didn’t think it would happen until I was verging on old myself.

  I wanted to get up off the floor but I couldn’t. Ron sat at my side, still, contented. I don’t know if he sensed my heartbreak the way certain service dogs sense an oncoming epileptic fit. Maybe he did. Whatever the case, having his fur-covered body next to me was soothing.

  I’m not sure how long I was there, on the floor, next to the dog, lost in terrible thoughts, but I was snapped out of when Ron started barking and ran to the door.

  Alice had arrived. She looked thin and had enormous dark circles under her eyes.

  “Hi,” she said. For a moment she stood there, almost appearing to weave in the doorway, then took a step closer and threw her arms around me.

  For once, I didn’t stiffen. We’re not a family of huggers. Well, Mom has always been a hugger, became even more of one once she went into Narcotics Anonymous, but Alice and I have always been awkward about physical displays of affection—with each other and most everyone else except people we’re sleeping with. Mom has never understood it. Not only did she provide the world with two black-hearted harlots, as she calls us, but physically undemonstrative ones at that.

  Alice and I were still hugging when Ava came striding toward the house. I pulled back from my sister’s embrace.

  Ava still had the goggles on top of her head and the work gloves on.

  “This is my sister Alice,” I said, looking at my girlfriend over Alice’s shoulder.

  Alice turned around. “Hello,” she said, automatically extending her hand.

  “So nice to finally meet you.” Ava threw her arms around he
r.

  Ava is very much a hugger.

  I could feel my sister’s stiffness from where I was standing.

  “Alice is here because our mother is sick,” I said robotically while Ava was still hugging my sister.

  “Sick? What’s wrong?” Ava finally let my sister go and frowned, looking from me to Alice.

  “Cancer,” Alice said. “She’s dying.”

  “What?” Ava’s face fell.

  Alice told her. I heard the facts rattled off like a series of small blows. I sat down on the nearest chair. Put my head in my hands.

  “Oh my god, baby,” I heard Ava say, and then she was kneeling down in front of me, putting her hands on my shoulders. She pulled me up off the chair and into an embrace. I let myself melt into her arms. I felt safer there. Momentarily forgot my sister. Then remembered, pulled back.

  I told Ava that Alice and I were going for a walk down the trail. I saw questions forming in my girlfriend’s mind but she thought better of asking them right then.

  “Yes,” she nodded, “do.”

  I brought Ron along. In spite of having only known the dog for two weeks, I already depended on his dogness. His solidness. I needed him.

  Alice got Mom’s dogs out of the van. Ron stood stoically letting the pit bull, the Lab mix, the Newfoundland, and the Ibizan hound sniff him, then he sniffed each of them in return.

  As the dogs went through these formalities, Alice and I just stood there, mute and wounded.

  We walked. Down Ava’s long, snaking driveway, down the lovely magical Rabbit Hole trail. Neither of us said much. We were, for the first time in a long while, having a companionable, sisterly silence.

  “Oh, Eloise.” Ava was cradling my face in her hands, looking at me with so much tenderness I thought I might fall over.

  By the time Alice and I had come back from our walk, Ava had made sandwiches, but neither Alice nor I could eat. We sat, all three around the kitchen table, Alice and I watching Ava eat. Eventually, Alice had gone back to Mom’s house, back to the dogs. The dogs. Alice and I hadn’t even talked about what would happen to them.

  “The dogs,” I heard myself murmuring, as Ava continued looking at me.

  “The dogs?”

  “I don’t know what we’ll do about them. If Mom only has months or maybe even weeks to live. Neither Alice nor I can accommodate so many dogs.”

  “I’ll take them in here.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “We’ll take care of them. You and I.”

  “But Ava,” I said, “you have another movie in three weeks.”

  “I’ll cancel it.”

  “That’s not necessary,” I said, though I was moved. “Let’s talk about something else.” I pulled back and Ava’s hands dropped away from my face.

  “What?” Ava knitted her pretty eyebrows. “What do you mean?”

  “My mother is dying. We’ve spent the afternoon talking about it. Let’s not talk about it anymore. I can’t.”

  “Oh.”

  “I don’t want to dwell. It won’t help. She’s not dead yet anyway.”

  Ava’s pretty mouth was forming an “o” of surprise.

  “Don’t look at me like that. Please.”

  She said nothing. But she kept looking.

  “I want to go to the movies,” I said. I did. I desperately wanted to go to the movies. I wanted to be lost.

  “Okay,” she replied carefully, “we can do that.”

  She started speaking to me very softly after that. As we went onto her computer to look up what was playing. As we sent Ron outside to pee. As Ava searched for her eyeglasses.

  I didn’t know if I could take Ava’s level of empathy much longer. I started feeling claustrophobic. We were almost ready to go, Ava was just stuffing her wallet into her tote bag, when I felt my mouth opening and unpleasant words coming out.

  “I need to go back to the city. I need to be alone.”

  “What?” Ava looked like I’d slapped her.

  I felt like I’d slapped her. I didn’t know where it was coming from. I needed to hurt her. And to get away from her.

  Ava sank onto the living room couch. She was very pale.

  “I didn’t say I don’t love you … And don’t look at me like that.”

  I saw her wince. I wanted to go home. Back to my hole.

  “But what about Ron?” Ava was saying.

  I had packed up two bags. I had looked up the bus schedule online and gotten Ava to agree to drive me to Kingston to catch a late bus into Port Authority. She had stopped talking at a certain point. Had, in fact, disappeared to some other part of the house. But now, as I stood near the door, wondering if I had everything, Ava was playing the Ron card, as if he were our child, as if we’d had a long marriage and I was uprooting myself from a family. It was ridiculous and tragic.

  “He likes you better anyway,” I shrugged. “And I didn’t say I’m not coming back.” I was being cold. Cruel even.

  Ava stood gazing down toward the floor. I didn’t even look at Ron as I walked out the door.

  I had been holed up for three days, alternately working on a new batch of stuffed animals and laying sprawled on the floor, listening to Lyle Lovett, crying over Indio, and vomiting. I had known for a while that I was pregnant. And, just as my mother had failed to tell people she was dying, so had I failed to tell anyone I’d been knocked up by Billy Rotten. The whole time I’d been with Ava, I’d been pregnant. She had once commented on how full my breasts were looking. I had just shrugged. I kept thinking I’d know what to do but that hadn’t happened yet. I’d had an abortion when I was nineteen. The father was a creep, I was broke, I hadn’t dwelled on it too long. Now, ten years later, I wasn’t broke. The father was still a creep but so it goes. I’d figured I’d wake up one morning feeling ready to embrace motherhood. That hadn’t happened either.

  Ava hadn’t called and I hadn’t called her. It seemed like she’d been a dream, an invention, not a flesh-and-blood woman I had shared everything with for eight and a half weeks. A few times a day, I’d pick up my phone and start dialing her number. Then I’d slam it down. Every time it rang, I wondered if it would be her. Invariably, though, it was just Alice.

  I had just brushed my teeth after vomiting when the phone rang.

  “Are you coming or what? Mom will be back in four hours,” Alice said into my ear.

  “Yes,” I heard myself answering, “I’m coming.”

  “There’s a 2:30 bus that gets in at 5. I can pick you up and have you at the house when Mom walks in. I don’t want to do this alone, Eloise.”

  “Two-thirty? What time is it now?”

  “One forty-five. Hurry.” She hung up in my ear.

  I did as I was told.

  I threw some things into an overnight bag then brought Hammie, my cat, downstairs to my neighbor Jeff who’d looked after her so much these last weeks; I was pretty sure Hammie actually preferred him to me. The cat didn’t even give me a second glance, just rubbed against Jeff’s calves and gazed up at him like he was a can of tuna.

  I caught a cab and the young Puerto Rican driver was thrilled that I was in a hurry. He drove like a stock car driver all the way down. I gave him a huge tip and rushed into the station where I found an incredibly long line snaking up to the bus I needed.

  I found a spot in the rear, with the smell of toilet seeping out from the little bathroom cubicle. I put on my iPod and took out a new pit-mouse I was working on. I saw the boisterous student-type girl sitting next to me stare at what I was doing. I reflected on the time, shortly after the settlement, when I was newly rich and had hired a limo to take me up to Mom’s. It hadn’t cost that much in the grand scheme of things, but I’d felt that if I kept spending that way, the money gods would be angry and some child would choke on one of my stuffed animals, the parents would sue me, and all my manhole money would be gone. So I’ve taken the bus ever since.

  I had Prokofiev violin sonatas playing on my iPod, not the quietest music in th
e world, but it wasn’t doing much to drown out the student next to me who was talking loudly to another girl sitting across the aisle.

  I wanted to stab the girl for ruining my Prokofiev. Instead, I thought of Ava. I tried to picture what she’d do in this situation, how she might manage it with equanimity. Then I realized Ava wouldn’t be on a packed bus, as her presence on Pine Hill Trailways would create hysteria once someone recognized her. I mused over the particulars of Ava’s movie star life and wondered if she would be as easy-going and kind as she is if she did things like take crowded busses.

  As the vehicle emerged from the Lincoln Tunnel and out into the grim, stumpy wilds of New Jersey, it occurred to me that Ava was infecting almost all my thoughts. Even in the days I’d been holed up in my apartment, deliberately not thinking of her, I had still carried her with me, was still strongly affected by her. I wondered if this is why I had left unceremoniously. Since love, to me, is parasitic and horrifying.

  As the students kept on braying, I put the pit-mouse away and drifted off, coming to moments before the bus pulled into Woodstock. I rubbed my eyes, pulled my bags down from the overhead baggage holder, and stumbled down the narrow aisle and out of the bus. I saw Alice sitting at the far end of a bench, on the little triangle known as the green. The other end of the bench was occupied by a baby-faced skateboarder who was talking to two other baby-faced skateboarders in ill-fitting pants. Alice’s little white spotted dog was at her feet and Alice was hunched, with her hair in her face. She didn’t look up until I was standing right in front of her and Candy started making a fuss, pulling on the end of her leash in order to put her front paws on my legs and scratch at my jeans.

  “Hi, Elo,” Alice said lifelessly. “Mom just called. Fifteen minutes ago. She’s extending her trip by three days.”

  My first instinct was to be angry with Alice for dragging me up there. Fortunately, I bit my tongue since, obviously, it wasn’t Alice’s fault, and a dying mother extending what was probably her last vacation was not someone I could be angry with either.

  “I’m pregnant,” I announced.

  One of the skateboard kids looked over at me, grinned, made a thumbs-up, and said, “Right on, man.”