by Chuck Kinder
I hope I’ve made Ralph happy one last time, Alice Ann said, her voice no more than a whisper. —I hope I’ve finally given him everything he needs.
Don’t talk, sweetie, Jim said. —Ralph is grief-stricken.
Tell Ralph I did it all for him, Alice Ann whispered.
Don’t, hon, Jim said. —Help is on its way.
I wonder how even Ralph will make something timeless out of this tawdry business, Alice Ann said. —I wonder if he can make even this shit sublime. Oh well, my work is done now. I give up. I’ve lost. I’m throwing in the towel. Now I simply want to rest in peace, Alice Ann said, and she shut her eyes.
Hold on, hon, Jim said, and pressed the towel even more tightly against the cut. —Help will be here any minute.
My only real regret, Alice Ann whispered, as she settled her head against Jim’s chest and sighed, is that I didn’t stab myself in the heart when I had that knife. That would at least have given my story a happy ending.
Bathed in the flashing red lights of the ambulance, Jim and Lindsay silently watched the paramedics quickly administer to Alice Ann and then strap her onto a stretcher and roll her to the ambulance, where they maneuvered her into its back. Jim and Lindsay decided that she would follow the ambulance to the hospital and Jim would stay with Ralph, who, Lindsay had reported, was in pretty bad shape himself back in the kitchen. Without another word, Lindsay headed up the hill to where her car was parked. As Jim turned back toward the house, he caught a glimpse of their little Chinese landlady peeking from behind the curtains of her living-room window, and Jim smiled weakly and waved at her.
Rock Bottom
1
Jim found Ralph sitting at the table in darkness save for the flickering light from the little black-and-white television set. Ralph was fumbling with something on the table, and from their glowing embers in the ashtray Jim could see that Ralph had a couple of cigarettes going. Jim clicked on the overhead light and Ralph nearly fell over backward in his chair. Ralph dropped whatever he had been fooling with onto the floor. His eyes were wild-looking and his big frame was trembling. The floor was covered with broken glass, which glinted green in the bright light and crunched under Jim’s boots.
Jesus, old Ralph, Jim said, and walked over and put his hands on Ralph’s shaking shoulders. —Settle down, old dog. Everything is going to be all right, boy, Jim said, and rubbed Ralph’s shoulders for a few moments. Jim bent down to pick up the can of Campbell’s soup .Ralph had dropped and placed it on the table.
A little soup, Ralph said, and patted the can. —I thought a little soup would be a good thing. You’re out of chicken-and-noodles. But I like tomato soup, too, Ralph said, and began fumbling with the can opener. His hands were shaking.
Here you go, boy, Jim said, and opened the can for Ralph. —Zip, zip. Just call me the chef-of-the-future. Do you want me to heat this up for you, old dog?
No, that’s okay, old Jim, Ralph said. —I’ve kinda got used to eating my soup this way. Right out of the old can. I can’t tell you all the times in my life I’ve had to sort of eat on the run. Jim, just tell me right out, is Alice Ann going to die or something? Tell me the truth, old Jim.
Jesus, Ralph, no. No way. Calm down, boy. Just cool it, old dog. Alice Ann’s going to be all right. She will.
Will they be coming for me?
What, Ralph?
Will they, you know, the authorities, be coming for me? Am I going to be put under arrest, Jim? Tell me the truth, Jim.
No, Ralph. Not unless I make a citizen’s arrest, which ain’t out of the question.
Nobody is coming for me, really?
No, Ralph, nobody. Jesus. Calm down, old dog. We told them it was some sort of dumb, freak accident. They were too busy trying to save Alice Ann’s life to be much concerned about how it happened, anyway. Lindsay is at the hospital. She’ll handle any questions.
I thought you said Alice Ann was going to be all right. You said that.
She is. She is. For somebody who lost about all the blood in her body, anyway.
Is she really going to be all right? Is she? Really? What did they say?
They said she had lost a lot of blood but that she was going to pull through all right. Except maybe for some serious brain damage due to loss of blood.
Oh, Jesus! Did they say that? Did they?
No, Ralph. No. I’m just jerking your string. I’m sorry, old dog.
Whew, Ralph said, —Whew. Jim, you don’t happen to have any crackers around, do you? I like crackers with my soup. Especially some of those little, you know, animal crackers.
Animal crackers? Jesus, Ralph, you gotta be kidding, Jim said.
Jim took a broom from behind the kitchen door and began to sweep the kitchen floor. He swept the broken green glass into little separate piles all around the floor, and then swept the piles one by one into a dustpan, which he emptied into the trashcan under the kitchen sink. Jim dampened a fistful of paper towels and ran them over the grit of glass flakes on the kitchen counters. On top of the canisters next to the television set Jim came across the bottom of the wine bottle, like a large, smooth green coin of glass. If it had flown a mere inch to the left, the television screen would have been smashed to smithereens and Jim would have had to kill Ralph.
Old Jim, Ralph said, do you think it really happened?
What, old dog?
That business with Bill. What Alice Ann said.
You mean about her giving Bill a world-class blowjob until his fat, old cheeks near caved in?
Yes.
Nope.
Really, you think, old Jim?
Yeah, really. I, for one, didn’t believe it for a second, old Ralph. And neither should you. Alice Ann was just pissed off and trying to drive you crazy as a bat, Ralph.
But why? I didn’t do anything to her. Not recently, anyway. I’ve been trying to mind my p’s and q’s with her lately. A big flareup was the last thing in the world I wanted to happen on this trip. Maybe I should just turn myself in. Old Jim, who in the world am I, anyway? Who did that terrible thing here tonight? Who was that person going around doing terrible things and calling himself by my name? Is this it, then, Jim? Is this what it all comes down to, then? Is this that tomorrow I’ve been clinging to life to reach? Ralph said, and turned to look at the television screen as the station switched to commercials and the sound rose abruptly to a blare.
2
Lindsay did not return from the hospital until nearly nine o’clock. She found Jim sound asleep, with his head on the kitchen table, and Ralph staring wide-eyed at the television. Alice Ann is going to be okay, Ralph, Lindsay said to him, and Ralph merely looked at her and nodded. Do you have any cigarettes? Ralph said. —I smoked all mine up. Lindsay took a pack out of her purse and tossed them on the table before Ralph.
Lindsay took Alice Ann’s blood-soaked dress out of the plastic bag a nurse had given her, and she put it in the kitchen sink to soak. Lindsay flopped down at the kitchen table, blind with fatigue, as heavy-hearted as she had ever been in her life. She took a cigarette from the pack in front of Ralph and lit it. Alice Ann, Lindsay told Ralph, who smoked and stared at the television, was going to be all right, but she had lost a lot of blood and the doctors wanted to hold her for observation for a day or so. As soon as she took a long, hot bath and napped, Lindsay planned to return to the hospital with Alice Ann’s things. Alice Ann, Lindsay told Ralph, preferred that Ralph not visit her or call her right now. Ralph smoked and watched the television. I hadn’t planned on it, Ralph said.
Later that morning, when Jim left the flat to go to the corner market, he found a sealed envelope slipped under the front door. He read the enclosed note as he walked down the hill. When he returned to the flat with a bag of booze and groceries, he found that Lindsay was up again and drinking coffee at the kitchen table with Ralph, who was sipping his third or fourth bourbon-and- water breakfast of the morning. When Jim placed the litde box of animal crackers in front of Ralph, Ralph looked up at Jim with an
expression of utter astonishment. Ralph immediately tore the little box open and plucked a cracker giraffe from it. Jim placed the note in front of Lindsay, who simply gazed at it for a time through the curling smoke of the cigarette dangling from her lips, before finally picking it up to read, and then read again, that eviction notice.
After work that Tuesday evening Lindsay went to pick up Alice Ann at the hospital, in order to drive her down to the little tract house she had rented in Cupertino after selling their home in Menlo Park to save Ralph’s bacon. Alice Ann had looked somehow both awful and beautifully tragic to Lindsay, thinner and pale and yet dramatic for it, and Alice Ann (or somebody) had chopped off her long, lovely, blond hair. Because of the short, severe haircut, the bandage on the left side of Alice Ann’s face looked like some fat, mushroomy growth. Lindsay had felt horribly sad and nervous and resisted an amazing urge to weep. Alice Ann was also nervous and edgy, with virtually nothing to say, and she chain-smoked incessantly as they drove down Route 280 south, while Lindsay chattered away a mile a minute. Out of the corner of her eye Lindsay kept glancing at Alice Ann’s shaking hands. Lindsay told Alice Ann that she had soaked and bleached and washed the white dress several times, but that it was still somewhat discolored and would obviously need professional cleaning. Lindsay told Alice Ann that she had pressed the dress, or tried to, including its elaborately pleated front. Lindsay told Alice Ann the dress was in a box in the backseat. Lindsay chattered on about the various cleaning remedies she had tried as Alice Ann turned to retrieve the box. Alice Ann took the dress from the box and held it out in front of her to examine. Alice Ann crumpled the dress into her lap and lit a cigarette. When Lindsay glanced at Alice Ann she saw that although she was not making any sounds at all, tears were running down her face. After a time Alice Ann rolled down her window and flipped the stub of her cigarette into the wind. And then, without comment, Alice Ann tossed the dress out the window.
The little house Alice Ann had rented looked like a turd with windows, a squat brown stucco affair with a dirt yard in some subdivision of similar sad abodes. Several Mexican women were sitting in metal lawn chairs on the concrete porch of the house next door, and a group of plump brown-faced children ran about the yard. Lindsay declined Alice Ann’s invitation to come in for a drink, saying she was dead tired and the traffic back up to the city would be bumper to bumper. They sat parked in front of the little brown house and listened to the car tick.
Alice Ann sat there and cried. Alice Ann’s heaving, narrow shoulders felt amazingly frail to Lindsay, brittle, birdlike, as Lindsay held her and began to weep, too. God knows how long they blubbered like that, before Lindsay began to hiccup, and Alice Ann drew back to look at Lindsay through streaming tears. Both of their noses were running, and when one of Lindsay’s hiccups came out more like a burp with a juicy bubble on the end of it, they both started to laugh, and they laughed until they almost started to cry again. They sat there then, dabbing at each other’s noses and faces with tissues Lindsay found in her purse, laughing again at intervals, until they both slumped back on the seat exhausted. Alice Ann lit a cigarette, and so did Lindsay. When they finished those cigarettes, they both lit another and smoked those, too, without much comment. The Mexican children were standing in a line along their front-yard fence watching wide- eyed, and the women on the porch kept giving Lindsay and Alice Ann furtive glances.
Presently Alice Ann reached up and turned the rearview mirror toward her. She tore the bandage off the side of her face with a single jerk. Squinting her eyes in the smoky air, Alice Ann gazed in the mirror, studying her face.
That fucker tried to launch my face like a ship, Alice Ann said, and laughed, as she ran her fingers lightly along the stitched wound high on her left jaw. —The face that launched a thousand fucking bottles, she said. She lit another cigarette, as did Lindsay.
When Lindsay finally said that she really should be heading back, that she would call Alice Ann in a couple of days and things would proceed from there, Alice Ann clutched both of Lindsay’s hands in her own, and squeezed them tightly, almost painfully. Against all odds, Alice Ann told Lindsay, she and Lindsay had found one another in this lifetime. And as soon as she was rested enough and back on her feet, she and Lindsay would set forth again, launch their lives together again as sisters. Let Ralph enjoy his ill-gotten fame alone, let your own so-called husband have his little boner-breath slut, who was not fit to lick Lindsay’s boots, for Alice Ann and Lindsay had each other now, and their sister hearts beat as one. They would make up the stories of their own lives from here on out, and live them purely for themselves. All their tomorrows were their own from here on out. They would find happiness, goddamn it, if it killed them, Alice Ann said, and laughed. Alice Ann’s thin, pale face was radiant. Alice Ann kissed the backs of both of Lindsay’s hands, and then she got out of the car. Alice Ann took her suitcase from the backseat and walked up the crumbly walk toward the little brown house, where her daughter appeared in the open doorway. Alice Ann’s daughter pushed open the screen door and stood there puffing furiously on a cigarette. Hey, Mom, Alice Ann’s daughter said, what in the fuck happened now, huh?
Alice Ann turned when she reached the door to smile and give Lindsay a little wave. Behind Alice Ann her daughter gave Lindsay the finger. Alice Ann blew Lindsay a little kiss and then disappeared inside the house, and that was the last time Lindsay would ever see Alice Ann. Lindsay and Jim would call Alice Ann for months, letting the phone ring off the wall, or leaving messages with one of the kids, which remained unanswered, until finally they let it go.
3
When Lindsay arrived back at the flat, she found the place ablaze with lights. She found Ralph sitting at the kitchen table as usual watching television, while he smoked and munched on hard spaghetti noodles he took from a box two at a time.
Ralph, Lindsay said, all you have to do is drop those noodles in boiling water. That’s all there is to cooking spaghetti, you know, dear. You can boil water, can’t you, Ralph?
Sure I can, Ralph said. —But this is the way I happen to like my spaghetti, real, what do you call it? Al dente. This is the way my old mom would serve up spaghetti when she was in a big hurry. Right out of the box, with maybe a jar of good old Chef Boyardee spaghetti sauce on the side to dip the noodles in, if she was feeling fancy.
Who turned every light in the house on? Lindsay said. —Where’s Jim?
I did I guess, Ralph said. —I was getting a bad case of the willies. I heard some things, you know, noises. Strange noises. And the wind was blowing up outside. Those chimes drive me nuts, by the way. Binging and banging around. Jim’s making a grocery-and-booze bolt. He’s going to stir up some supper, he said. It’s the last booze run I’ll ever chip in on, by the way. I know I’ve said that before, but I mean it this time. I do. I’ve hit that rock bottom they tell you about, and I know it. I called Duffy’s, that place, you know, north of town, where a drinking fellow can get on his feet. They give you hummers up at Duffy’s, which is a little drink every so often, so a fellow can withdraw without going into convulsions and lapsing into a coma and dying from the DTs, if he’s lucky. I’m going up there tomorrow, bright and early, if I can get a ride from somebody.
Here, hon, Lindsay said, and placed a set of car keys on the table before Ralph. —Alice Ann said you could keep the heap. Her word.
Well, Ralph said, and cupped the keys, I guess this is my fair share of our community property after eight thousand or so years of matrimony. Well, I’m not complaining. Water over the dam and all that. All’s well that ends well, you know. Don’t tell me anything about Alice Ann right now. Please don’t, please.
She still loves you very much, Ralph. And you still love her. You know you do.
I can’t not love her on some level, can I? Ralph said. —How could I not always love Alice Ann on some level? After all these centuries, these countless lifetimes. But I don’t love her the way I love you now. And I won’t ever be able to again. Not like I did.
