Alice Bliss - Laura Harrington [23]
Tell Ellie I saw a blue and green parrot when we were outside the wire yesterday. Perched on a toppled date palm. Where the heck did he come from? Later that day, a dirty, dusty old tabby cat walked out of a building we’d just dropped twenty shells on. Each one big enough to end the world. Tail in the air. Unbelievable.
Tell Alice she will not believe what I have to do to get some coffee when we’re out on patrol. There’s no electricity and no more water than what we’re carrying on our backs. After two hours of sleeping on a cement floor, coffee becomes very important. I collect packets of Taster’s Choice instant coffee from the kids who are too young to be hooked on the stuff. And then I beg the powdered-cream and sugar packets we all get in our prefab rations. You open your mouth, pour in all three, toss in some water, and shake your head violently. Instant coffee. Outside the wire. Good morning, sunshine!
The part of the letter Angie won’t read, or can’t read, or can’t trust herself to give voice to, says:
Angie, sweetheart,
I miss you more than I could have ever believed. I knew I was going to miss you but I had no idea how much. And it doesn’t go away, it doesn’t calm down, it doesn’t fit inside my pocket with your letters. It’s like an ache, Angie, a constant ache for you.
I can’t imagine all the weeks and months ahead of missing you.
I miss our girls, I miss work, the house, the garden. Nothing like being out here to make you appreciate home.
You’ll laugh at me, but I love thinking about closing up the house every night. Walking downstairs barefoot, turning out lights, locking the back door. Just that sense of easy quiet, knowing the girls are safe in bed, and that you’re in our bed waiting for me. Home. I dream of home, Angie, and you know I dream of you.
Matt
Later, when Alice slips the letter out of the envelope and reads it as fast as she can, the words, no, the feelings, the impossibly intense feelings burn into her. It’s like opening a bedroom door.
April 5th
Three weeks after Matt ships out Ellie gets the stool so she can reach Matt’s shelf of favorite books. First up: his leather-bound college dictionary.
She brings this to the breakfast table and announces she’s going to read the dictionary while Daddy is gone. Alice is thinking, yeah, right, as Ellie opens Webster’s Dictionary, Second Edition, reads the inscription from Dad’s mom wishing him good luck in college, and begins at the beginning, right there on page one. While eating Cheerios. Ellie gets up and digs a pink notebook out of her school backpack and begins noting down superfascinating words.
Ellie’s current teacher is a dictionary nut. She purportedly has hundreds of dictionaries, though this does not sound remotely credible to Alice. Where do you put them? What do you do with them? What, exactly, is the point? She tries to imagine perky Mrs. Baker, who is not even five feet tall, saying to her husband, “I’m just going to curl up with a good dictionary.”
But none of this matters to Ellie, the annoying little autodidact. She is eating up the A’s like they are the elixir of knowledge, like this is a book with a plot, an action adventure, mystery, crime thriller, page turner, can’t-put-it-down-exciting read.
“Ellie,” Alice can’t resist saying, “Dad used the dictionary, he didn’t read it.”
“How do you know what Daddy did or didn’t do in college?”
“If she wants to read the dictionary, let her read the dictionary,” Angie chimes in.
“You don’t think it’s a little—”
“Mrs. Baker says there can be ineffable joy in pursuing the absurd.”
Both Alice and Angie turn to stare at Ellie and think, simultaneously—if that’s possible—where does she come up with this stuff? and, Ellie and Mrs. Baker were made for each other.
“You want to know my new favorite word?” Ellie asks.
As if they could say no.
“Sesquipedalian, which means ‘long word.’ I’m collecting them: long, rare words.”
Angie is making sandwiches for a change, Alice notices, as she opens the paper to international news. It’s just PB & J, but still. And then she sees the headline.