Alice Bliss - Laura Harrington [15]
Suddenly she’s angry; she’s so angry so quickly she feels like her head could come off. Why is he doing this? Is there something wrong with her? If she were different, if she were better, smarter, prettier, then would he stay? Why isn’t Mom enough? And Ellie and Gram and the garden and his baseball team? Why isn’t any one of those things enough anymore?
The phone rings. It’s exactly five, she notices, as she picks up the receiver. Mom must be stuck in traffic.
“Dad,” she says, and her voice sounds dead.
“Honey? Alice? How are you?”
“Fine.”
“Where are you?”
“The kitchen.”
“Doing homework?”
“Sort of.”
“Where’s Mom?”
“Not home yet.”
“And Ellie?”
“Upstairs playing dress up with Janna.”
“We don’t have a lot of time. You want to call Ellie to the phone?”
“No.”
“What?”
“I want . . .”
“Alice?”
“Don’t go,” she manages to choke out.
“Alice, honey, listen—”
She hears Mom’s car in the driveway.
“Mom’s home.”
“Okay.”
“I’ll call Ellie.”
“Wait!—Alice, are you still there?”
“Yeah.”
“We said our good-byes, remember? Let’s just have this be a regular call, like hi, how are you?”
“You want to pretend?”
“What?”
“You want me to pretend?”
And then Mom is through the door and standing beside her.
“I just want to hear your voice, honey. To take that with me. Maybe hear you laugh. I don’t know.”
“Keep talking.”
“Is Mom there?”
“Yes. But—”
“You can stay on. Or you could get on the extension.”
“That’s okay. Here’s Mom.”
“Sweetheart?” Angie says into the phone.
“Angie. . . ”
Even Alice can hear the longing in his voice when he says Angie like that. She knows she should leave the room; she should give them their moment, but she can hear his voice faintly, and she can’t walk away from that any more than she could talk when she was on the phone.
“Are you okay?” Angie asks.
“Yeah. Fine. We’re in good shape.”
“Did you get the package we sent?”
“Tell Alice and Ellie I loved the cookies. And your mom.”
“I know we don’t have much time—”
“What are you wearing?”
“Matt!”
“I want to picture you.”
“I’m wearing that navy dress you like. With the belt.”
“And heels.”
“Yes. Heels.”
“What’s Alice wearing?”
Mom holds out the phone to Alice.
“You want to tell him?”
Alice takes the phone.
“Jeans, high tops, and your blue shirt.”
“You’re wearing my clothes?”
“Just your shirt.”
“Send me pictures. Okay, Alice? Send me pictures.”
He sounds so young. It’s hard to think of her dad as young, but his voice, there’s another note in it now. That upper layer of control that’s always there is suddenly gone and he sounds like he feels, she thinks. The realization, he is scared, suddenly shoots through her like an adrenaline rush.
“Go get Ellie,” Angie says, reaching for the phone.
But Alice won’t give up the phone. Now she’s ready to pretend, she’s ready to do whatever it takes to get her dad’s voice back to normal.
“Dad,” she says, “Dad—?”
“I’m right here, sweetheart.”
Angie shakes her head and walks through the dining room to the stairs where she calls up to Ellie to come to the phone.
“Uncle Eddie is taking us to the movies, and it’s only three more weeks until the equinox and the Red Wings home opener, and Henry might flunk math this term even though I keep trying to help him, and ever since you left, it’s hard to concentrate, and Mrs. Piantowski might be having another baby or maybe she’s just getting fatter, and Gram says . . .”
“It’s Ellie’s turn,” Angie says, taking the phone from Alice.
Alice sinks into a kitchen chair and pretends to listen to her sister chatter on about Janna and Janna’s new bunk bed with a desk built right into the side of it, and how Ellie thinks she wants to write and draw pictures for a book about a sleepover where the bunk beds are stacked ten high and go right through the ceiling and reach up to the sky with magic ladders.
“Draw me pictures,” she hears her dad say. “Draw me lots of pictures.”
Her mom takes the phone and shoos both girls out of the kitchen so she can have a minute