Alice Bliss - Laura Harrington [104]
She’s twisting the ring again.
“We couldn’t afford an engagement ring. Did I ever tell you that? And we saved up for months to buy our wedding rings.”
She pulls the ring off her finger.
“Here. Try it on.”
“Mom, no,” Alice says, as she tries to hand it back.
“Go ahead. I could never wear any of Gram’s rings. Her fingers are so tiny.”
Alice slips the ring on. It feels strange. Alice can see where the ring has made a ridge on Angie’s finger. She wonders if that’s permanent.
“I was wondering if I’m still married.”
“Mom!”
Alice tries to give the ring back.
“Keep it for me. Just for a few days. I’ll ask for it when I’m ready.”
Angie stands, smoothes her hair and her skirt, and heads down the stairs.
“Wait!” Alice says, a note of panic in her voice.
“Just for a few days,” Angie says, before turning toward the kitchen and the backdoor.
“Mom! . . . Mom!” Alice follows Angie down the stairs, reaches out to her, the ring in her palm. “Please put your ring back on.”
Angie hesitates. She seems a little dazed.
“Okay, okay, let’s not make a federal case out of it,” Angie says, slipping the ring on her finger. “I just thought . . . Oh, I don’t know what I was thinking.”
Alice watches her mother head back out to their friends and neighbors, to the voices and the sympathy and the dozens of reminders that life goes on in its brutal and sometimes beautiful way, whether you want it to or not.
Not knowing what else to do, Alice heads outside to the workshop. Uncle Eddie has rolled up her sleeping bag and stood the pallets up against the side wall to make room for the bar. Easily done. One plank on two sawhorses and two coolers full of ice and beer underneath. All the “good stuff” is here; whatever you might want to pour into a glass in honor of Matt Bliss, Eddie’s got.
She wants to keep on going. Or find her sneaks and start running and maybe never stop.
She walks past the workshop and up the little rise to the garden, which is hoed and weeded, just the way her dad likes it. Filled with promise. Everything at the beginning, just getting started.
She continues past the end of the garden and through the new neighbors’ yard. She can’t remember their names. She is not worried about trespassing or upsetting anyone; she doesn’t care if someone comes out and yells at her to stay off the new grass. At Baird Road she decides to go left heading out toward the old Barnes estate where maybe she can get lost for five minutes in what’s left of the old apple orchard, or maybe she’ll find that their old fort inside the lilacs is still there, and she can crawl inside and lie down and disappear for a little while.
The apple trees are in bloom and humming with bees. No one has pruned these trees in a long time, but here they are, still blooming and bearing. She heads past the barn where they used to have two Percheron draft horses and a pair of Chincoteague ponies. Old man Barnes hated tractors and loved horses, even after he got too old to work them. They were a kid magnet for the whole neighborhood and also contributed to the most beautiful roses in all of Belknap.
Alice walks between the curved rose beds to the circle of lilacs. The “entrance” is on the far side. Half a dozen lilacs have grown together, forming a dense wall of foliage, with a circular open space in the center. No one can see you in there. She hesitates and then pushes sideways through two slender trunks and she is inside.
It doesn’t look as though other kids have found this spot. There are no beer bottles or cigarette butts, no mangy blankets or milk crates. It was Alice and Henry’s secret fort through much of grade school. Alice wonders if her parents knew about it. It would be just like her dad to let her go and explore, even if it made her mom kind of crazy.
When did they stop coming here? Was it a decision? Or did they just stop? She thinks she might remember waiting for Henry in here one day, but he never came. Did that happen to Henry, too? Waiting once more and then once more for Alice to come and play.
The branches stir