Alice Bliss - Laura Harrington [11]
Alice doesn’t realize how fast she’s eating until she looks up and catches Mrs. Piantowski grinning.
“Good?” she asks.
“The best ever,” Alice replies, before she gulps down her milk and slides off the stool to head out the door into the predawn darkness on her way to deliver bread to The Bird Sisters.
March 13th
“Mom? Mom! Are you up? Get a move on!”
The Monday following Angie’s surprise birthday party, which Matt and the girls had carefully pre-planned and executed with help from Gram and Uncle Eddie, Angie does not feel like getting up or going to work. When Alice calls up to her, she’s still in bed, still feeling devastated and idiotic that the promised phone call with Matt never came through, even though she waited up almost all night, just in case. And it’s ridiculous, really. How many times does she have to be reminded that his time is not his own anymore?
The girls, with Gram’s help, gave her a silk scarf to replace the one she tossed out the window. They made her favorite cake, angel food stuffed with strawberries and whipped cream, Gram cooked Angie’s favorite dinner, even Uncle Eddie came through with a basket of spring bulbs. Matt had wrapped up the far too expensive French perfume she loves and left it with Alice for safekeeping. Why did it all make her feel so sad and so incredibly angry and so stupidly childish all at the same time? Angie feels like a yo-yo; the simplest things set her off. It’s exhausting. And she doesn’t even like birthdays.
“Five more minutes!”
Downstairs Ellie is half asleep in her cereal, her braids dragging in the milk. Alice is trying to find her sneakers, air out the armpits of her dad’s button-down blue shirt, which she has worn for three solid weeks now and refuses to wash, and scavenging for enough change so Ellie can buy milk at lunch. Oh yes, and packing the sandwiches: sliced bananas on graham crackers.
“Mom, we’re out of bread!” Alice shouts up the stairs. “And peanut butter. And jam! Again,” she mutters under her breath as she returns to the kitchen.
“Get creative,” Angie shouts from the bedroom.
The bananas keep sliding off the graham crackers when Alice tries to fit them into the sandwich bags.
“Don’t put that crap in my lunch box.”
“You can’t say crap.”
“It’s like big tall letters flashing over my head when I open my lunch box: fucked up family!”
“Ellie!”
“What? You say it!”
“Not when I was in second grade!”
“I want lunch money. Not this stupid excuse for a sandwich!”
“I’ll ask Gram.”
“Yeah. She could set up a lunch fund. And a clothing fund and she could drive us to the supermarket to stock up on food and—”
“Okay, you ready?” Alice asks, handing Ellie her lunch box.
“You can’t go to school in that,” Ellie says.
“Let’s get a move on.”
“Dad’s shirt? Again? Does Mom know?”
“What do you care?”
“It doesn’t fit.”
“So?”
“Aside from the fact you’re not cool, I think you’re starting to smell, Alice. You could at least wash that stupid shirt.”
“I aired it out last night.”
“That’s not enough.”
“It’ll be fine.”
“You need to burn it.”
“Henry’s gonna be here any minute.”
“Maybe Gram would take you shopping. New jeans, new . . .”
“I’m all set. C’mon.”
“Okay, but I’m not walking next to you and I’m definitely not holding hands with you. Not even at the crosswalk.”
“Whatever.”
“I’m reaching my limit with you, Alice. Just so you know.”
God, she sounds just like Angie, Alice thinks.
Matt’s been gone almost six weeks. He’s in the last days of training at the mobilization center with his army reserve unit. The reservists have been kept pretty much in lockdown conditions at Fort Dix: no time off, no time off the base, and very little contact with home. Supposedly this is all preparation for being deployed. It’s very strange for Angie and Alice and Ellie. He’s gone but not gone; and there’s no coming home at this point, not until his one-year tour of duty is done.
Everything is different with Matt gone. Same house, different air, different space inside the rooms. Angie is impatient and irritable; she’s working at