Alice Bliss - Laura Harrington [29]
“Yeah. I gotta go.”
“Post office! High noon!” He shouts after her.
At home, Ellie and Angie have the box all ready. Alice tucks the photos into an envelope and slips in the letter she’s been writing her dad all week during boring classes at school. It’s a dumb letter, she knows that, a rambling, dull letter. She read the guidelines from the army: your soldier wants to hear the news from home. But there is no news in Belknap, there’s just the weather and school and Mom and Ellie and Gram and Uncle Eddie and running and not being able to sleep and missing him and wishing . . . But you are strongly advised to keep any and all worries to yourself. All the sleepless nights, and, let’s face it, the fights with Mom, all the real stuff, you’re supposed to leave that out.
Ellie hugs the box after they seal it up and plants a big kiss right on Dad’s name.
They rush into jackets and boots and head to the post office. As if what they’re all feeling right now will reach him, as if the hustle and the bustle will somehow cross the miles.
They stop at Gram’s, where she has very carefully packed up a loaf of Matt’s favorite harvest bread made with pumpkin and walnuts. She has followed the army guidelines to the letter and has real hopes this bread will make it and still taste good by the time it gets there.
Slipping inside the post office at a whisper before twelve, they’re giddy because they’ve made it in time. The two boxes go on the scale: they fill out the customs forms and pay the postman. But then there’s the walk from the counter to the door, with the postman following behind to lock up. Just those few yards and the air starts to go out of the balloon. Outside, Angie pulls her coat around her as though she could hug away the loneliness, and reaches out to take Ellie’s hand.
“Let’s go to Gram’s for lunch.”
“I meant to ask if I could go to Gram’s with Henry.”
“That’s fine. Ellie and I can have a booth all to ourselves, right sweetheart?”
Alice takes a look at her mother standing on the steps of the post office squinting into the rain. She wants to say, I see it; I notice all the things we are not saying, all the moments we are silently agreeing to ignore. It’s like a shadow that follows them and falls between them; this other life full of other feelings, this yawning emptiness where her father belongs.
And then Henry is there, materializing out of thin air, twirling Ellie off her feet and singing something right into her ear that makes her laugh out loud.
“Don’t tell,” he whispers.
“I won’t,” she grins back at him.
They walk to Gram’s and for some strange reason it’s pretty quiet. The line out the door is gone. Ellie and Angie sit at a booth while Henry and Alice settle in at the counter.
Sally, who is trying yet another shade of strawberry blonde, comes over to pour coffee as Gram sticks her head out from the kitchen to say hi.
“Hi, Gram!”
Ellie rushes her for a hug.
“I’ll join you for a cup of coffee as soon as I can.”
Gram gives Alice a kiss and says to both of them: “If you want to help me clean up, breakfast’s on me.”
“But I wanted to . . .” Henry begins.
He gets off the stool and whispers to Gram: “I invited Alice, Mrs. Bird.”
“Really.”
“I’ve got snow shoveling money.”
“You’re too young to date.”
“This is not a date. And her mother’s right there.”
“Don’t go getting any ideas.”
“I wouldn’t.”
“Yes, you would.”
“Not in front of you and Sally and Ellie and her mother I wouldn’t.”
“I could still use your help with sweeping and washing the floors and the final round of pots and pans. For that you get the employee discount.”
“Deal.”
“This is not a date, Henry.”
“Absolutely not, Mrs. Bird.”
Henry slides back onto his stool next to Alice.
“I hope you’re hungry,” he says. “I’m having the lumberjack special.”
“You are not! You can’t possibly eat all that.”
“Wanna bet? Are you actually drinking coffee?”
“With a lot of milk and sugar. Wanna try it?”
She pushes the mug toward him. He sips. Considers. Hates it.
Sally sits down next to them to take their orders,