Alice Bliss - Laura Harrington [109]
Still, there is no chance that he will refuse her; that he will refuse her anything.
This is what no one tells you, Henry thinks. The nearness of her, the unguarded nearness of her, the wonder and simplicity, now, of what had seemed so complicated and impossible just moments before. He will remember everything, he tells himself, every single thing. Alice lying on the blanket and wriggling away from an ant, which is funny and he has never seen her like this and he is relaxed enough and safe enough and close enough to laugh. He helps her find her shoes; he brushes the sand from between her shoulder blades, from the backs of her thighs. This kind of easy closeness, this is what he wants for the rest of his life. Here is the surprise of it, the simple surprise of intimacy, the deep secret at the center of things, as clear as a glass of water dipped from a well.
There is grace in this, a blessing, a still, quiet pool for each of them.
Alice stands there looking at him as he straightens his clothes and brushes the sand out of his hair and finds his glasses; then she looks at the sky and the sand and the lake. Standing up she takes on the weight of knowing again, the weight of the death of her father, which has been hurtling toward them like a comet falling to earth from the day he got on the bus to go to Fort Dix.
And Alice knows, suddenly, that his death can only hurt her more, not less, as time passes. It is as if the grief is growing inside of her, larger than the shell of her fifteen-year-old self. The burden of this grief makes her feel that she is not a kid anymore; that the most essential part of growing up has happened overnight. And if she must suffer adult loss she wants her own life beyond the borders of her family, beyond the borders of her own body. This is why she is reaching for something of her own, for something as large as this pain and emptiness inside of her. This is why she is reaching for Henry.
They are in so much trouble when they get home it could almost be comic. Every single person in both their lives is angry and upset with them. From Uncle Eddie and the car: Do you have any idea what that car is worth?! To Mom and the standard: How could you?!
The general themes that are touched on, or pounded on, by anyone even tangentially aware of their multiple misdemeanors are trust, responsibility, trust, danger, stupid choices, trust, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
No one seems to have picked up on the personal part of the story, the beach and the blanket part of the story, except for maybe Uncle Eddie who is watching them with a very quizzical expression on his face. He might actually be able to follow that train of thought if he weren’t pretty drunk and pretty consumed and distracted with rage about his car.
Alice and Henry listen to the harangues as best they can, trying to remain straight-faced, trying to maintain the proper contrite demeanor, trying not to look at each other. They both feel that they are floating above this moment, deliciously immune to it. Something so much more important has happened to them today, they can’t believe that people can’t actually read about it right on their faces. But everyone seems oblivious to the warmth radiating off the two of them. This only makes Alice and Henry feel more closely aligned, as though they are, once again, coconspirators, just like when they were kids.
Gram, of course, wants to feed them. They are released to the kitchen where Gram and Mrs. Grover pile food on plates and watch them carefully, each of them beginning to sense something, they don’t know what, perhaps picking up on the fact that these two young bodies are vibrating in new and disturbing ways.
“Henry?”
“What, Mom?” he says without looking up from his food.
“Henry—?”
He looks up, startled by her tone. Mrs. Grover tilts her head, looking at her son. Alice watches as Henry meets his mother’s eyes and in the next instant blushes so furiously