The Evolution of Alice

by David Alexander Robertson

  After a short while, the classical music was interrupted by the sound of footsteps approaching. Gideon turned to see a native man emerge from the hallway. He was clean-cut, dressed in a sky-blue dress shirt and pleated black pants with fancy black sneakers, comfortable but stylish, and had long hair tied into a perfect braid. He met Gideon with an outstretched hand and a smile.

  “Gideon?” the man said as he shook Gideon’s hand.

  “Yeah, that’s me,” Gideon said. “How’re you doing?”

  “I’m great, never been better,” the man said.

  He followed the man out of the lobby and down a warmly lit hallway that was decorated with oil paintings of red flowers and orange fish.

  “So, I’m glad you got here on time. Must’ve been a pretty long drive,” the man said as they walked.

  “Oh, I came out yesterday. Gonna live out here for a bit,” Gideon said.

  “Oh?” the man said. “Why’s that?”

  “Just needed a change, I guess,” Gideon said.

  “That’s fantastic,” said the man. “How are you finding your stay so far?”

  They stopped at a door. The man opened it, and Gideon walked inside with him.

  “Not sure yet,” Gideon said. “The city wasn’t this big, lookin’ at it from the perimeter. It kinda makes me feel small, you know.”

  “You’ll get used to it,” the man said. “You’ll grow.”

  They sat down across from each other, a coffee table between them. Gideon surveyed the office. There was a tiny potted plant on a bookshelf behind the man—a bonsai tree, Gideon thought. Beside the plant, there was a smattering of neatly placed book—titles like Mindfulness and Acceptance, Book of Anxiety, Things Might Go Terribly, Horribly Wrong, I’m Okay You’re Okay, and EMDR. There was also a small throw rug with a soaring eagle stitched into it, a desk with nothing on it except a pen holder, and a portable air purifier.

  “Well, let’s get to it,” the man said. “My name is Don, by the way.”

  Don opened a folder. He read through a few notes scrawled onto a leaf of yellow paper, said hmm a few times, and closed the folder again. He placed the folder on the coffee table. Gideon watched the folder as he would a television set, wondering what was written down on the yellow paper, what things it said about him.

  “Gideon,” Don said.

  Gideon looked up. He already liked Don. There was something comforting about him. When he had been referred to see a therapist he was hesitant. He equated therapy with craziness, figured most people did. But Don made him feel a bit more at ease about the whole thing.

  “The paper talks about what happened to you, but I’d rather hear it from you,” Don said.

  “What does it say happened to me?” Gideon said.

  “That you had a panic attack,” Don said.

  “Yeah, I heard them call it that, too,” Gideon said. “That all that’s in there?”

  “I think you’ll explain things much better than a piece of paper could,” Don said. “Do you want to tell me about the day you had the panic attack?”

  “I guess so,” Gideon said. He paused for a moment. He wasn’t used to opening up about much of anything. But, when he met eyes with Don, who sat patiently and calmly, he felt encouraged to speak. Yes, he sure did like Don. He would be easy to talk to. There were only two people who he ever felt he could talk to before meeting Don. But his grandpa had passed on, and since Grace’s death Alice hadn’t cared much to hear Gideon say anything. He told Don about what had happened the day he went to Alice’s house during his grandpa’s wake. He described the feeling in his chest, the heaviness, and the pounding heart. He described how his entire body felt like it was in chaos.

  “You thought you were going to die,” Don said.

  “Yeah, like I was having a heart attack or something,” Gideon said.

  “That’s normal for what you experienced,” Don said. “Yeah?” Gideon said.

  “Oh, yes,” Don said. “It’s very common to fear death when you’re having a panic attack. Especially if you haven’t experienced one before.”

  For the rest of the session, Don continued to delve into Gideon’s history, about his family, his grandfather’s death, his relationship with Alice and her two girls, and Grace’s death and how it seemed to change just about everything. Gideon answered each question dutifully. At the end of the session, Don walked Gideon to the front door, where beyond lay the enormity of the city, and the expanse made Gideon feel uneasy once more. He turned to Don with a bit of desperation.

  “So,” said Gideon, “you think you can cure me?”

  “I think I can help,” Don said as he gave Gideon a warm pat on the shoulder, “there are things we can do.”

  “Like what kind of things? You gonna shock me or something?”

  “Oh, dear, no. Not at all,” Don said. “Why don’t you let me worry about all that for now. Come back in two days. In the meantime, if you feel an attack coming on, take some deep breaths, in through your nose, out through your mouth. Exhale longer than you inhale. That will help calm you.”

  Gideon nodded, and with one of those deep breaths, as though he was about to jump into the deep end of a pool, he walked outside.

  Walking home from his appointment, Gideon took a wrong turn and ended up finding refuge in a department store. The sense of relief didn’t last long. The store was like a microcosm of the city, the twists and turns, the size of it, the noise. He wandered around the first floor for a long while and passed by the same section a few times. One of those sections was the perfume area. The smell made him want to vomit. He would have given anything, at that point, to be in Alice’s trailer, sitting beside her, breathing in whiffs of her menthol cigarette smoke. Even that smell was much easier to take. Eventually he made his way up an escalator to the second floor. It was just as confusing there, but there were areas he was interested in—a sports section and a men’s clothing section. He spent most of his time in the clothing section, daydreaming about the pants or shirts he would buy if he could afford it. It was hard to afford anything on $750 per month.

  After the first few minutes in the menswear section, Gideon noticed a nice-looking woman going wherever he went. He began to glance at her as much as he glanced at the clothing. She had brown, shoulder-length hair, milky white skin, and was wearing a sleek black business suit. It was strange to see her there. Not that you never see a woman in a menswear section, because she certainly could have been looking at clothes for a father or a husband, but she didn’t seem to be looking at clothing at all. Instead, she was looking at Gideon, glancing at him as much as he was glancing at her. When he stopped to look at a jacket that he particularly liked, a black leather jacket with a built-in hooded sweatshirt, she got even closer, and he could see a gold nametag that read Susan. She ended up standing in front of him, only the jacket between the two of them.

  “Hey,” Gideon said.

  “Hi there,” Susan said.

  She didn’t say anything immediately afterward, and it made Gideon feel a little uneasy. He tried to ignore her, to keep inspecting the jacket, but found it next to impossible. In an attempt to ease the awkwardness, he lifted the jacket up to show Susan and nodded at her with a smile.

  “Nice jacket,” he said.

  She nodded, but without a smile.

  “Sir, do you think that might be a bit out of your price range?” she said.

  “Oh, I don’t know,” Gideon said. “I didn’t even look at the price tag.”

  She took the jacket from him, which caught him a bit off guard. He watched as she placed the jacket back on the rack, then stood there silently, her hands crossed in front of her. He reached for the jacket again, but she stepped in his way.

  “Can I look at it please?” Gideon said.

  Susan shook her head.

  “I think you should leave unless you plan on buying something,” she said.

  Gideon looked her over, from her shiny black shoes with the slightest hint of toe cleavage, her shiny wh
ite skin, her perfectly ironed pants and blazer, all the way to her smug smile, which was all the more pronounced by her bright pink lipstick. He wanted to say something, to defend himself, but the words wouldn’t come. Then he felt his chest begin to get heavy, and he reached out and braced himself against a rack of windbreakers.

  “Do I have to call security?” she said.

  Gideon shook his head. He turned away and walked quickly toward the escalator. The farther he got away from Susan the better he began to feel, which was a good thing, too, because it took him just about forever to find his way out of the store and he didn’t want to have a panic attack inside a building like that. When he got outside, he took two long breaths of air exactly as Don had instructed and managed to gather himself. There was a Tim Horton’s across the street, and he could’ve really used a coffee, but he knew expenditures like that weren’t the smartest thing. There wouldn’t have been a point to buy something he could get back at his place anyway. He’d bought a package of cheap instant coffee from Walmart on his way into the city. No, if he was going to spend money on anything, he would’ve much rather gone back and bought that jacket just to show Susan a thing or two. But with the money it probably cost, he thought for sure he would end up living on the street. So there was no point doing that either. In fact, quite the opposite of showing her anything, he would’ve ended up right where she expected him to be already. He could picture her passing by him on the street and giving him the same smile she gave him inside the department store.

  That night, an unexpected vibration from his cell phone interrupted Gideon’s last bite of canned spaghetti. He hadn’t received a text or phone call in quite some time because the only person who ever bothered to get a hold of him was Alice, and she’d vanished without so much as a goodbye. When he checked his phone, then, he was surprised to see a short text from Alice that read, “You wanna see me an grls?” After reading it, he snapped the phone shut, opened it, and shut it again. He thought, once more, about why he had moved to the city. Had it really been to get away from the bad things, or was it because he knew Alice was here? And if it was, why was his chest getting heavy, his heart starting to race? She’d just invited him over, for God’s sake. Wasn’t that what he wanted if he’d followed her here? He breathed in through his nose and out through his mouth. He did this five times until his body calmed.

  He read the text over again as he chewed on his last bite of dinner. He chewed for much longer than he needed to, until the food felt more like tomato soup in his mouth than spaghetti. Where were they staying? Were they close? He read the text over as he rinsed out his dishes. Why would she leave without saying anything, and then ask to see him now? Did she think he was just here at her beck and call? He recited the text aloud as he stood on the balcony overlooking Central Park. He thought about the girls. They must’ve asked Alice about him. Their Uncle Gideon. He imagined the park was the field behind Alice’s house, and he pictured Kathy and Jayne running through the long grass, their laughter replacing the angry downtown traffic. Why did she wait so long to text him? He walked back inside his apartment and plunked down on the futon. He opened his phone, began to write a text back, then closed the phone sharply. No, he couldn’t see her or, as much as it pained him, the girls. Not now, not yet. He tossed his cell phone onto the floor and lay down and tried to go to sleep.

  He was dreaming. He was out in the big field behind Alice’s trailer. He was standing beside the tire swing and Alice was pumping her legs, swinging back and forth joyously and high. He could hear the girls laughing with staccato delight, their unabashed happiness carried to his ears through a gentle breeze. It was exactly the kind of moment that was too perfect to be real. As the warm breeze enveloped his body like another layer of clothing, he felt the dichotomy of a chill across his body. Against his will, he was pulled out of the dream and began to hazily open his eyes. He was stuck in the void between sleep and consciousness, not sure if he was in the midst of a dream or reintroducing himself to reality, when Gideon saw the figure of a woman standing in the middle of the room. She was facing him.

  “Alice?”

  He lifted his head up slowly, still transitioning into consciousness. When he did, the figure broke into a quick but graceful walk. She walked out of the room and toward the entryway. The woman’s sudden movement jolted Gideon awake. He jumped off the futon and chased after her, but just as quickly as she was there, she was gone. He opened the door and ran out into the hallway. It was empty. He stood there for a moment, bathed in silence, hoping to see her, or, at the very least, hear a door shut, or the elevator ding. Nothing. He walked back into his apartment and checked the clock: 9:30 AM. His appointment with Don was in an hour, and there was just enough time to get there on foot. He grabbed his coat and walked out the door.

  “What do you think is causing the panic attacks?” Don said.

  “Alice,” Gideon said. “You know, I’m not the smartest man you ever met, but I can connect the dots. I know my grandpa died and all, but I knew he’d go sometime. Alice, I didn’t ever expect she’d be gone like that. It has to be her, somehow.”

  “What do you think it is about her?” Don said.

  “I don’t know,” Gideon said. He paused for a moment, then added, “You know, she texted me last night.”

  “Really. Has she contacted you before? I mean, since she left like she did?” Don said.

  “Nope, not a word,” Gideon said.

  “That’s interesting,” Don said.

  Gideon thought it was funny Don said that. Before meeting Don he had a notion of what he thought a shrink would look like, would talk like, the things they would say. Don didn’t really fit into any of that until just now. He’d always thought a shrink would say things like “that’s interesting.” Television was right sometimes.

  “And did you text her back?”

  “No,” Gideon said. “I didn’t want her to think I was gonna be there for her no matter what, you know? I’m not some house pet.”

  “But aren’t you going to be there for her?” Don said.

  Gideon shook his head, but thought the exact opposite. Of course, if she needed him, he’d be there for her. It didn’t matter how mad he was at her. She was family.

  “Here’s what I want you to do,” Don said. “Consider getting in touch with her. It might just help you start to get over this.”

  “Then I’ll be cured?”

  Don hesitated for a short while.

  “A lot has happened to you, Gideon. You’ve let things build up, and your body is rebelling. It’s trying to tell you that. What we’re going to do is help you deal with things better. And, if we do that, yes, you might start to feel better.”

  That was enough for Gideon to consider texting Alice back, and it was all he needed to hear that day. Before the appointment, he had a mind to tell Don about the woman he’d seen in his apartment, but decided against it. For all he knew, it could’ve been somebody who’d broken into his apartment, and that was hardly a therapy thing. And, if it was something else, well, he didn’t want Don to think he was nuts.

  That night, Gideon had another dream. He was running down a driveway back at the rez. He could see a house at the end of the driveway, but no matter how far he ran he never got closer. There was a car outside the house. A sedan. The engine was on. He could see clouds of black smoke escape from the exhaust. He ran faster. Faster. The car peeled out of the driveway, kicking up dust in its wake. Gideon could see a figure sitting on the step behind the dust cloud. It was holding something. Faster. Faster. When the cloud settled, the house was closer. Gideon saw his grandpa, and sitting on his lap was Grace.

  Gideon woke up with a start, gasping for breath. He wiped some sweat away from his brow and rolled over onto his side with the intention of getting up and heading to the bathroom to splash cold water on his face. That’s when he saw the same woman from yesterday morning, lying in the middle of the floor. She had beautiful dark skin and ebony strands of hair. Her big, bold eyes we
re open and staring upward. He followed her gaze to the ceiling, on which there was nothing to see. He got up from the futon as quietly as he could. She didn’t seem to notice him, kept staring at the ceiling. When he stepped forward, however, her eyes snapped away from the ceiling to look directly at him. It caught Gideon off guard. He stumbled back onto the futon. When he stood up, the woman was gone again. He ran to the entryway. The door was closed.

  Without changing from the clothes he’d fallen asleep in, Gideon stormed down to the main office. The landlord greeted him with a middling little grin.

  “Good morning,” the man said. “How can I help you? Uhh, Gideon, right?”

  “I think somebody has a key to my room,” Gideon said.

  The man looked at him curiously. He raised his eyebrows, and his entire head of hair moved unnaturally. Gideon had never seen a toupee before.

  “There’s only one key,” the landlord said.

  “What about whoever stayed in the room before me?” Gideon said.

  “Oh,” the landlord said. He looked as though he was going to say more, then stopped himself and said, quietly, “That’s not possible.”

  Gideon stood there and tried to look as annoyed as he could. He wanted something more. He wanted anything.

  “So you’re sayin’ you’re not gonna do anything then?” he said.

  “I’m saying there’s nothing to do.”

  Gideon went for a long walk that afternoon. With each walk he’d become more familiar with the area. The city became less frightening to him. He found himself, for some reason, looking for Alice, scanning each passing stranger’s face as though he might happen upon her. He knew he wouldn’t see her, of course. He wasn’t so naïve. Rather, the act of looking for her was more a distraction from the perplexity that was the woman in his apartment. He took in information as he scanned faces, glancing observations, and then casually let that information fall away: a man with a beige windbreaker carrying a yellow shopping bag and walking a dirty poodle—gone; a woman with inch-thick glasses, a tattered purple overcoat and a beret asking people for two dollars and crying horrendously, like a spoiled toddler, when coming up empty-handed—gone; a group of perfectly groomed men laughing perfectly groomed laughs walking out of an adult toy and clothing store—gone; a lanky olive-skinned thirty-something woman listening to an iPod walking onto Ellice Avenue without looking and almost getting hit by a Lincoln Navigator—gone; a woman pushing a baby grasping a bottle filled with cola in an umbrella stroller—gone. None of the faces, none of the people he saw, matched Alice’s in the least. He decided he would text her later, invite her over anytime she could come. He spent the rest of his walk thinking of the best words to use.