Alice Bliss - Laura Harrington [24]
“Gram’s taking you two for haircuts after school today.”
“Finally!” Ellie says.
Alice closes the paper, folds it in half.
“She’ll pick you up here at four thirty.”
“I have practice.”
“I know exactly what I want. I have a picture,” Ellie announces.
“You’ll just have to get out of practice a little early, Alice.”
“You’re gonna be surprised, Mom,” Ellie sings.
“I don’t need a haircut.”
“Just a trim.”
“I don’t need a trim.”
“Do you know how long it took me to get the two of you an appointment when Gram was available?”
“Ellie could still go.”
“You’re both going. End of discussion.”
“But, Mom—”
Henry arrives, shouting, “Good morning, Mrs. Bliss!” As they head out the door, Alice grabs the front section of the paper. She passes up Henry’s invitation to come to the auditorium while he plays piano and instead sits on the front steps and watches all the students and teachers arriving at school. Does everyone have a secret life, she wonders? Is everyone carrying an impossible, unbearable secret?
Students stream up the steps and into the building past the army recruiter’s table, the baseball bake sale table, and the lone ninth-grade girl passing out fliers for the pep rally. When the stream becomes a trickle she gets up, dusts off the back of her pants, and heads into school, down the hall, past the principal’s office, on her way to the stairs to her homeroom. She suddenly notices that everything is worn: the linoleum, the paint on the edges of the doors, the ceiling is cracked and veined. When she glances into the principal’s office she can see Mrs. Bradley; even Mrs. Bradley looks worn as she pulls her sky blue sweater over her soft stomach and then leans over to search for a file in the file cabinet. Alice is trying to remember—didn’t somebody tell her that one of Mrs. Bradley’s kids died of cancer when they were little? Yet here she is every day.
Mr. Fisher, who actually knows every single kid in all four grades in the high school by name, steps out from his office to ask Mrs. Bradley for something and before he speaks, his forehead is creased in a frown. He is pinching the bridge of his nose, as though to relieve pressure or pain. Both of them look pale and drained. And there it is again: worn.
Mr. Fisher straightens his slumped shoulders, leans both fists on Mrs. Bradley’s desk, and says something that makes her laugh. You can tell he used to be a football player; he’s got that low to the ground swagger to his walk even though he’s now too chubby and about fifteen years too old to pull that off particularly well.
Alice’s legs are feeling so heavy she’s not sure she’ll be able to walk up the flight of stairs to her homeroom. Maybe she could just head on down the first floor hall to the nurse’s office and ask to lie down. Or back out the door and down the street to Gram’s apartment, or all the way home. Suddenly she just wants to lie down on the floor. She crosses to the wall and leans against a locker. She manages to slide along the wall to a seated position before she falls down. She’s thinking she should bend her knees; she should fold herself up so no one will notice her, but her legs are ignoring her. She grabs fistfuls of her dad’s shirt as she wraps her arms around herself, trying to hold on to something solid. She’s having trouble breathing. She thinks she might scream or throw up or pass out. She thinks that not one of these options is a good one.
The National Guard and marine recruiters are folding up their tables, packing their brochures into boxes, chatting and laughing and greeting students they seem to already know by name. Their uniforms, their boots, their bearing, everything about them seems to be shouting at her to pull herself together.
Bells start ringing; she’s missed homeroom entirely. How did that happen? Doors are being flung open and she can hear hundreds of feet coming down the hallways above her and all around her. She brings her hands up to her ears to drown out the sound.
A crowd eddies around her, edging closer. No one approaches her, no one kneels down to ask if she’s okay. Some