Alice Fantastic

by Maggie Estep

  “I dunno. I thought I’d spend the night here. Be close to Mom in case anything comes up.”

  “Oh.”

  “Alice?” Eloise said then, which was weird, her using my name like that, making sure I paid close attention even though, obviously, I had to since I was standing right there.

  “Yeah?” I was nervous, wondering if she somehow knew I had seen Billy.

  “When are you going to see Clayton?” my sister asked.

  “Clayton?” I was confused. “I don’t know, why?”

  “I think you should go see Clayton.”

  I tilted my head. “Why?”

  “You just should.” She didn’t seem to want to elaborate.

  I frowned at her for a few seconds, then started unpacking the groceries.

  I showed the guard my driver’s license and expected some sort of grief or request for more identification. I’d come armed with four pieces of ID, and had stripped my person of all metal objects, including my watch and any change in my pockets, doing whatever I could think to not set off any alarms or be forbidden from seeing Clayton after schlepping on the Rikers bus and waiting in a cold, fluorescent-lit room packed with broken, desperate people. My license was evidently enough and I was permitted to remove my shoes and go through the metal detector. I didn’t set it off but was patted down anyway. Then sent to another room to wait. This second room was a bit smaller and brighter but not exactly cheerful. People, mostly black and Latina women with children, sat in molded plastic chairs, some striking up conversations with each other, some keeping to themselves. There was one other white person in the waiting room, a thin old man with a scar on his face who looked like he’d done time. A lot of time.

  I’d wanted to come see Clayton without any fanfare, to just drop by unannounced, but discovered that not only did he have to put my name on a list of visitors he’d accept, but I had to figure out the visiting schedule that went according to the first letter of the inmate’s last name. The M day was Thursday, so here I was. In a molded plastic chair. Feeling incredibly conspicuous with my straw-colored hair and the elegant blue pantsuit I’d donned for the occasion. Other women were looking at me resentfully, like I was some sort of slumming princess, which admittedly was how I felt even though it was probably the first time in my life I’d felt like anything resembling a princess.

  My ass was beginning to throb from the chair’s hardness when Clayton’s name was finally called and I was permitted to walk through yet another door and into a big, cavernous room filled with little tables with more molded plastic chairs. It wasn’t hard to pick Clayton out, between the bright orange jumpsuit and his whiteness. There was only one other white guy and he was short and squat with no hair.

  My stomach churned when I first laid eyes on my big, jumpsuited oaf. Not in apprehension or revulsion. I was excited, almost exhilarated to see him. He looked beautiful to me and this was so startling that I stopped short before reaching the table he was sitting in front of.

  He was looking up at me with no expression at all. He’d cut his hair into a crew cut about an inch long. It suited his big features. His dark eyes, which were so good at looking hurt, were immense and, in that moment, incredibly inviting. Except he wasn’t looking at me invitingly. He was just staring, barely seeming to register that I was there.

  I felt like I was walking in slow motion, every step taking several minutes. My chest constricted. The poor bastard, I thought. He’s in prison. It hadn’t really registered till this moment, just as Mom’s rapidly approaching death hadn’t fully registered until I realized I’d never watch her get old.

  “Hi,” I said, taking the chair opposite his at the table.

  “Hi, Alice,” he responded in that low, sad voice of his.

  “You okay?” I asked, peering at him as if I’d never studied his face before, which, in fact, I probably hadn’t. He’d always been a vague impression, an indistinct blur of man.

  “I’m in prison, Alice,” he said softly.

  He looked at me for a second then looked back down at the table.

  “I’m sorry about all this, Clayton.”

  “I got off pretty easy in the grand scheme of things.”

  “What’s it like?” I asked, motioning around me.

  “It’s prison, Alice, what do you think it’s like?”

  “Oh,” I said, sheepish. “What can I do?”

  “What do you mean, what can you do?”

  “To make the next ten months a bit more bearable.”

  “Nothing,” he said with a shrug.

  “Are you pissed at me, Clayton?”

  “No.” He still wouldn’t look at me. “You’re not really talking to me.”

  “What do you want to talk about, Alice?” Now he was looking at me. “You’ve jerked my chain for months and I wouldn’t be in prison if it weren’t for you. I don’t want to talk. In fact, I almost didn’t put your name on the visitor’s list.”

  I stared at him. “I’m sorry, Clayton, I’m fucked up. But I’m trying not to be.”

  “That’s supposed to make it okay? You’re sorry? I’m in prison and you’re sorry?”

  I said nothing and looked down at my lap. At the cool cotton of my dark-blue suit pants. I thought of the nice cream lace panties I was wearing. Not that I’d thought there’d be a chance to show them to Clayton, just that I wanted to feel like a woman wearing nice underwear. From the looks of it, Clayton had no interest in ever seeing my underwear again. As I realized this, I felt my stomach knot up. I love this guy, I thought. And there wasn’t a second thought, a second voice inside me kicking in to volubly ridicule this notion.

  I sat absorbing the shock of it. Then I looked up at Clayton with his head hanging down toward his chest, his stubble of brown hair, his big shoulders hunched in the prison-issue orange jumpsuit.

  “I love you, Clayton,” I said.

  His head snapped up and he narrowed his eyes. He didn’t say anything for a few seconds. Then: “What was it you said when I told you I loved you? Something like Shut up or What the fuck are you saying?”

  “I was wrong. I was reacting to you as if you were all the ones who came before you,” I said quietly.

  At the table next to us, a woman was reaching across to touch her orange-jumpsuited man. She started putting her fingers in his mouth. A guard came over. “No touching,” he said. The woman sat back a few inches.

  “I don’t know why you’re saying these things now, Alice, but it’s no use. You killed whatever was there. Killed it dead.” He shrugged again, then looked back down at his hands. “Anyway,” he added, “I’m getting back with Becky. She’s been coming to see me.”

  “Who?”

  “My ex-wife. Becky. When I get out of here I’m moving in with her.”

  “The one who ran off with a plumber?”

  “Yeah,” Clayton lifted his chin a little, “I made her do it.”

  “You made your ex-wife run off with a plumber?”

  “I kept going camping.”

  “Come again?”

  “I kept going camping. Every weekend I’d go camping. Becky hated camping.”

  “Ah,” I said. I’d never known camping to be a relationship crime.

  “Now she says she doesn’t mind. Whatever I need to do to keep my head on straight. She doesn’t mind.”

  “Well, that’s big of her.”

  “Don’t be a fucking smart-ass.”

  “What do you want me to be?”

  “Nothing.”

  “I guess that says it all.” I went to push my molded plastic chair back. Then realized it was bolted to the floor. I stood up. I waited for Clayton to protest.

  “Alice,” he said in a quiet but firm voice. “Sit down.”

  I sat.

  “Don’t walk out of here hating me. I don’t need that. I don’t deserve it. I tried with you.”

  I looked at him. Waited for more. But that was it.

  He was so handsome.

  I stood up again. I walked
away without turning back.

  “What, you wanted to wait around for the inevitable bitterness and disappointment to set in? I expect better of you.” Arthur hadn’t deigned to look up from his notes when I’d told him that I’d seen, and been blown off by, my jailbird paramour the day before.

  We were at Belmont, in box seats Arthur had inherited for the afternoon. I’d called him up the day before, after getting off the Rikers bus. I’d planned to spend one night at home in Queens then head back up to Woodstock the next morning. But the whole Clayton episode had flattened me so much that I had to do something to feel like myself again—as opposed to some trampled, dejected thing. On the phone, Arthur hadn’t asked how I was or what I was doing, had just told me what box he’d be in at Belmont the next day and that he expected to see me there around noon.

  “I’m not myself, Arthur,” I said now.

  “You don’t want me to actually believe you cared about this lumberjack, do you?”

  “I liked him, Arthur.”

  “Oh, come on.” Arthur rolled his eyes. “You couldn’t have cared less until he got tired of being abused and took the unprecedented step of dumping you before you dumped him.”

  “That’s actually not true,” I said in a small, tired voice that didn’t sound like me.

  “Al, are you serious? Were you in love with this guy?” Arthur, for the first time in the long and brutal history of our friendship, was being sincere.

  “I guess I was. Or something like that.”

  “Exactly,” Arthur said victoriously, “something like that. You’ll be fine in fifteen minutes. I’m proud of you for trying to show genuine feeling. It’s kind of sexy. But you can stop now.”

  I smiled. But it wasn’t fine. I had felt for Clayton. And for that awful William too. Maybe I was becoming one of those women I have long despised who goes through whorls of emotion each time she so much as kisses a guy. Maybe I was getting old and sensitive.

  I shook the thought off and took out the red felt marker given me a few years earlier by the racing writer Steven Crist, whose box I’d once sat in at Saratoga. I’m not particularly superstitious, but it can’t hurt to handicap with a pen given me by a man known as King of the Pick 6. I reviewed the bets I’d mapped out for the coming races and, for a little while, felt better.

  But the racing gods weren’t having it. I was off my game. I was emotional, and even though I’d never in my life let feelings leak into my handicapping, today I was doing exactly that.

  I tried to pull myself together by taking a stroll out to the paddock. It was a beautiful, warm day, the sky an explosive blue. Even the grooms and assistant trainers leading the horses to the saddling stalls looked relaxed, nearly glad to be alive. I leaned over the railing at the front of the viewing area and stared ahead.

  “What is wrong with you, Alice Hunter?” It was just after the fifth race. Arthur had gotten through the first two legs of the Pick 6 with a 12–1 shot followed by a 5-1. He was feeling magnanimous, deigning to notice my unfit condition and the fact that I had not cashed a single ticket.

  “I told you, Arthur,” I made a hopeless shrugging gesture, “I’m a mess.”

  Arthur actually looked at me, right at me.

  “Don’t for a minute try to convince yourself that it’s the lumberjack you’re upset about. Your mother is dying.”

  “Like I needed you to remind me.”

  “It’s just helpful to face facts sometimes.”

  “Since when do you ever face a fact?”

  To my surprise, Arthur’s face clouded over and he looked away and, I could have sworn, his eyes were bright and wet.

  “My father’s very sick, Alice.”

  That silenced me. I felt like a heel. Arthur had mentioned his father’s illness months earlier. He’d mentioned it in passing, just letting the announcement dangle there between bits of verbal race analysis, and I’d never pressed him for details. Even when I’d told him about Mom, he hadn’t brought it up and, I had to admit, I’d forgotten.

  “What’s the situation?” I asked in a hushed voice.

  “Hanging on by a thread. A month or two.”

  “Oh,” I said, barely more than a whisper.

  “So we’re in the same boat.”

  “Yeah.”

  “And you do realize it’s your mother you’re upset about, right? Please tell me you do.”

  “Yeah,” I acknowledged.

  “Okay. Now do some fucking sensible wagering, would you?”

  I smiled.

  But I didn’t have it in me.

  I cashed a little exacta on the sixth race and called it a day.

  “When will I see you again?” Arthur asked as I stood up to go.

  “I don’t know. Soon.”

  “Okay,” he shrugged. “Take care of yourself, Alice.”

  It sounded strange to me. Like he never planned to see me again. Like we’d taken our relationship a little further than ever before by briefly alluding to our dying parents and now had to go our separate ways. We had sullied what had been a perfectly functional superficial liaison. I hesitated, looking down at Arthur, who was busy with his notebook.

  “What?” He looked up.

  “Nothing.”

  “I know. I love you too. Now beat it, punk.”

  It was dark by the time I pulled Mom’s tired Honda into her driveway. I was exhausted, my back was stiff, and I desperately needed a cigarette.

  I extracted myself from the car, slowly, like an ancient, crippled person, fished my cigarettes out of my bag, and fired one up. I hadn’t wanted to stink up Mom’s car and now the reward came in the form of long-craved nicotine. I leaned back against the vehicle and closed my eyes for all of two seconds before Eloise opened Mom’s front door and Candy came racing out to greet me. She was squeaking and leaping into the air. I scooped her into my arms and let her lick my ears and chin. She nearly choked she was so excited.

  “Hi, Elo,” I said to my sister, who was leaning in the doorway, preventing the other dogs from bounding out.

  “Hey,” she replied. “How was Clayton?”

  “Wants nothing to do with me.”

  “What?” Eloise tilted her head. At that moment, a dog I’d never seen before stuck his head between her knees and gazed out at me. He was white with a tan spot over his left eye. His enormous ears stood straight up like a rabbit’s.

  “Clayton gave me my walking papers,” I said with ambivalence. I didn’t want to go through the whole thing right this minute. “What’s that?” I asked, indicating the big white dog head.

  “Mickey. He was about to be put to sleep. Some friend of Mom’s was frantically on the horn to all the crazy dog people in the state and Mom agreed to take him even though she can barely speak. I suppose this means, by extension, that you’ve agreed to take him. Ava and I have already picked out the ones we’re taking.”

  “Oh.” I stubbed out my cigarette, put Candy down, and walked up to the door. Eloise moved aside to let me in but Mickey just stood there, slowly wagging his very long tail.

  “Hey, buddy,” I said, squatting down next to the beast.

  The skinny spotted pit bull didn’t look me in the eyes, didn’t even sniff me. Just stood there wagging and looking slightly past me, as I petted his broad but fleshless shoulders. His spine and ribs were sticking out and there were yellow stains all over his mostly white coat. After I’d been petting him for several minutes, he carefully reached his muzzle toward my face and licked my ear.

  All the while, both Candy and Eloise were staring at me.

  “What’s his story?” I asked my sister. “Where’d he come from?”

  “A cop found him in the Bronx. Brought him to the pound. He was in there two weeks and had one day to go before the gas chamber. Some pit bull rescue lady Mom knows had seen him and knew how sweet he was, so when his number came up on the euthanization list, she got on the phone. Mom was too weak to talk so I spoke to the lady, and then Ava and I met her halfway down the thruway and
got the dog.”

  “I really like him,” I announced. I was still squatting down next to him, and by now he’d ventured a few attempts at eye contact, discovered I wasn’t taking it as a challenge, and had moved a step closer to me.

  “That’s good since you’re going to have to find him a home. Come on, you’re letting the bugs in.” She ushered me inside.

  Eloise and I sat down at the kitchen table. Candy jumped up onto me, and when Mickey came over to try putting his head in my lap, she growled at him. He looked apologetic and took a few steps back.

  “I really like that dog,” I repeated, staring at the skinny beast. The big tan spots over his hips made him look like a cow. A skinny cow with an enormous pit bull head.

  “What’s wrong with you, Alice?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You just keep saying that you like that dog.”

  “What’s wrong with that? Look at this dog.” I reached for Mickey’s enormous head. He looked me directly in the eyes this time as he gently wagged his tail.

  “Tell me what happened with Clayton.”

  “He said he’d had enough of me. He’s getting back with his ex-wife.”

  “I didn’t know he had an ex-wife.”

  “Yeah. He does. But I really don’t want to talk about him. Tell me about Mom.”

  “Still dying,” Eloise said, surprising me with what could only be construed as an attempt at levity. “It might just be days now,” she added.

  “Should I go over and see her?”

  “Not now. I was there right before you got back. She’s sleeping. In the morning we’ll go.”

  I nodded.

  “How’s Ava?” I asked.

  “Fine,” Eloise shrugged, “she was supposed to go to Paris to do some print ad for a perfume company but she canceled in light of Mom’s condition.”

  “That was sweet of her.”

  “I know. It’s weird.”

  “Yeah.” I nodded, understanding all too well. It was discomforting when lovers behaved like people who actually cared.

  Eloise and I spent a companionable sisterly evening together. She cooked couscous for us and helped me with evening dog chores before heading off to Ava’s. After she left, as the dogs started settling in on various surfaces throughout the house, I went into the living room and lay down on the couch. Candy curled up in a ball at my feet. Mickey, who hadn’t let me out of his sight, wedged his body next to mine, put his head on my shoulder, and, within a few seconds, started snoring. I crooked my neck in order to stare at him. He was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen.