Alice Bliss - Laura Harrington [27]
“Love it, love it, love it,” she says, giving Patty a hug.
And then, turning to Gram, “Can we go to the glasses store?”
“Glasses? What kind of glasses?”
“I need glasses, Gram. I told you in the car.”
“Well, we probably need to ask your mom.”
“Can we just look? I like these,” Ellie says, handing Gram a magazine.
At the eyeglass place Ellie is not happy with the selection they have for kids. She pulls out her picture and gives it to the guy behind the counter. He’s incredulous, but goes to the locked cabinet with the designer frames and hands her a pair. She tries them on. The lenses are elongated rectangles and the frames are dark green plastic.
“Too big,” Gram says, thinking that will be that.
But Ellie studies her reflection in the mirror, turning this way and that, trying to keep the glasses from sliding off her face and not having much luck. Alice suddenly has this stab of fear for Ellie. With this haircut and these glasses she will be teased mercilessly; Alice has already swallowed several choice phrases rather then throw them at Ellie. But now that she’s actually looking at her she can see that Ellie is really skinny, maybe even skinnier than usual, and pale, superpale, like maybe she’s coming down with the flu or something, or maybe she’s not sleeping well or eating well and Alice thinks maybe she hasn’t been paying attention to the right things and maybe she should be paying more attention to her sister, and how is she ever going to manage with one more thing to worry about?
“Can you order these in a smaller size?” Ellie asks the clerk.
“Sure. We can have them for you in a week.”
“How much are they?” Gram asks.
“Three fifty.”
“Three hundred and fifty?” Ellie asks.
A tight-lipped smile from the clerk.
“Thanks so much,” Gram says, ushering them out the door.
In the car, holding the envelope with her braids in it, Ellie is unusually quiet. Even when Gram gets to talking about the chickens she’s thinking about getting and the chicken coop Uncle Eddie has promised to build for her, even though knowing Uncle Eddie, that could take another year, and how Ellie is going to be her right-hand girl in the chicken-and-egg business. Ellie and Gram love chickens. Alice does not really find chickens remotely appealing, let alone lovable, but Gram keeps telling her: “You just wait and see. When we get our first baby chicks . . .”
“eBay,” Ellie says out of the blue. “Second-hand stores. We have some options.”
“What are you talking about?” Alice asks.
“I’m not giving up on those glasses.”
At home, Ellie drops her coat on the floor and twirls her dress and her new haircut for Angie. When Ellie hands her the envelope with her braids inside, Angie sits in the nearest chair and bursts into tears.
“What’s the matter, Mom? Don’t you like it?” Ellie asks.
“Sure I like it. It’s just . . . It’s just . . .”
“Don’t you think it’s pretty?” Ellie asks.
“It’s really pretty,” Angie says. “And really different.”
“Nobody else is gonna have a haircut anything like this. Not in my school. Not even in your school, Alice. It’s unique. Unparalleled. Radically distinctive and without equal! Can we take a picture so Daddy can see?”
And Ellie does a wacky herky-jerky dance, her skinny arms pumping up and down over her head, her elbows jutting out; her feet flying. Ellie is taking interpretive dance to new heights, Alice thinks, as she tries to swallow the ache she feels looking at her sister’s braids in her mother’s lap.
April 8th
“What are you doing?”
Alice is in the front hall closet, surrounded by photo albums and photo boxes, when her mother, wearing one of her dad’s old sweatshirts, interrupts.
“And are you ever going to take that shirt off?”
Alice considers which question to answer.
“I’m looking for that picture of me and Dad with the shovel and the pitchfork. The one Uncle Eddie took last October.”
“What do you want that for?”
“I’m gonna send it to Dad in the care package.”
“What