A Map of the World - Jane Hamilton [141]
After a while I helped her up. It was starting to rain again. She lifted her face to the sky for a minute and opened her mouth. We walked across the parking lot to the street. She carried Claire in her left arm and held Emma by the hand. As we passed the Presbyterian Church the carillons began to chime, a warped rendition of “For the Beauty of the Earth.” Each note was in tune as it was played and then went flat as the next one rang out. There were people in their Sunday best waiting in lines on the steps. Emma announced that it was a wedding. Somehow she knew, without being told. “The bride is going to come so everyone can see her dress,” she said, in awed tones. We kept walking. Emma pulled at Alice’s hand to slow her down. I wanted to leave Racine. I wouldn’t have stopped for anything. When they caught up with me on Grand Street Alice spoke at last. “The bride had some teeth missing,” she said. “Maybe she’ll be covered by her new husband’s dental plan. Maybe she’ll be able to get them fixed.”
She seemed happy at the prospect of the strange girl getting a bridge and a few crowns. I guess I laughed in disbelief at her pleasure. “Maybe she will, Alice,” I said.
The sky opened then and rain began to pour down, fresh cool rain falling in sheets. We walked on without worrying. The girls danced at our sides. We didn’t quicken our pace or try to cover up. The water struck our heads and flattened our hair and poured down our necks. When we got to the car we were drenched and cold. I turned on the heater full blast. There was a fire engine parked up the block, its revolving light showing red through the rain. It pulled out into traffic right before we did. Emma and Claire didn’t seem to notice or care about the general splendor of the equipment. It was in front of us until we reached the outskirts of Racine.
The fire trucks used to drive through the streets after a fire when I was a kid, ringing their bells to let everyone know that all was well. It was too bad they didn’t do that anymore. There used to be a collective sigh of relief when those trucks came past our houses, on the way to the station. I wondered if the firemen in front of us were history buffs, like me. Maybe they kept a metal bell in the truck, a relic from the old days, now with a few cracks along the side, and a broken clapper. I turned around to look at Alice. She was holding both girls in her lap in the back seat. She was resting her head against them, breathing heavily, as if their dirty hair and clothes, and the forced air of the heater, was fresh. Claire was sucking her own thumb and Emma was running her finger along the frayed edge of Alice’s shorts. I could almost hear the ring of celebration and homecoming from the fire engine in front of us, the ring of that bell’s damaged clang.
Alice
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Chapter Seventeen
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WHEN I WAS OUT on bail, Theresa, in her eternal optimism and breathless wonder, pronounced that I had learned to embrace fear. “Embrace?” I asked, laughing. “No, I don’t think so,” I said, “not embrace, nothing nearly as active as embrace. No,” I said again, “not embrace.”
But while I was away I did learn again to be quiet and wait. There were days when I felt little different in jail than I had when I was nine years old, up in my bedroom at home, with the tray of colored pencils and the sheaf of papers at my side, at work on my map of the world. All those years ago I used to curl up, secure in my own country, an old stoic in a young body, sure that if I feigned indifference out beyond my bedroom door, I would not be hurt. How many times had I advised Emma to ignore a taunt