Alice Bliss - Laura Harrington [43]
“Good job. I can’t believe we need a bigger parking lot already.”
“We could go to the mall.”
“Next week the mall.”
“For real?”
“It’s a date.”
Uncle Eddie turns the radio on to golden oldies as he pulls onto Five Mile Line Road.
“Crank your window down,” he shouts over Van Morrison crooning “Tupelo Honey.”
They both start singing along really loud.
She’s as sweet as tupelo honey
She’s an angel of the first degree
Normally this would embarrass Alice, normally she would be all self-conscious about how her voice sounds while at the same time scanning the streets and the sidewalks to see if anyone is witnessing her craziness. But today, she decides, she doesn’t care. Here in the orange Dodge with fat Uncle Eddie, singing at the top of her lungs, she doesn’t have to think, she doesn’t have to worry, she doesn’t have to give a damn. The day has turned to a pink dusk, and just like Henry, she’s got music inside her head and all around her.
April 18th
Alice does not like being dragged to the pool with her mother while Ellie takes a knitting class in the Y’s paneled, stuffy rec room. After school and track she just wants to go home.
Alice sits in the bleachers. It’s hot, it’s almost dripping with humidity. She hates the bleachers, she hates the chlorine smell of the pool. Underneath all that bleach there’s this nasty, damp rot kind of smell.
This time slot is lap swim only, so it couldn’t be more boring. Just a bunch of grown-ups and old people going back and forth, never getting anywhere. How they can put their faces in that slimy water is beyond Alice.
Here comes her mother from the showers. Her Speedo bathing suit and cap on, her goggles in her hand. She stops where Alice is sitting, sweaty and miserable.
“You don’t have to sit there like a lump, you know.”
“Thanks, Mom.”
“You do have a bathing suit.”
Alice doesn’t bother to answer.
“It’s healthy.”
“Uh huh.”
“You get into a different place in your head. It’s peaceful.”
“Okay, Mom.”
“Just once. Will you try it just once?”
“Probably not.”
“You love to swim in the summertime.”
“That’s different.”
“How is that different?”
“It’s outdoors, for one.”
“I was thinking this was something we could maybe do together.”
“I’ll think about it,” Alice says.
Angie walks away, hops into an empty lane, pulls her goggles on, gives Alice a little wave, and starts swimming. As she warms up for a few hundred meters with an easy breaststroke, she’s trying not to think about Alice and how is she ever going to reach her or even just feel comfortable with her own daughter ever again? She’s trying not to think about Matt and where he is and if he’s all right; she’s trying not to think at all; she’s trying to get to that place where she’s swimming and not thinking, just moving her body, just making her turns, reaching into the backstroke now, her favorite stroke, and letting her mind slow and quiet and then quiet some more until, for a few sweet strokes or lengths or moments, she is nothing but body and breath and motion.
Only it’s not working today. She turns and attacks the crawl as though she is attacking her anger, trying to drown it in the pool. No one talks about the anger, the rage, how the love and longing are all mixed up with these other less attractive emotions. How could he leave me? How could he leave us? This was not the deal, this is not where their lives were supposed to be heading. And that shirt, that stupid blue shirt of Matt’s hanging out beneath Alice’s jacket, looking grubby, looking like hell, looking like a goddamn battle flag waving under her nose: bad mother, bad mother, bad mother.
It’s just a shirt, she tries to tell herself. Ignore it. Forget it. Distant daughter. Deployed husband. Another turn, and another turn. Backstroke again, her favorite stroke again. Just breathe, Angie. Just breathe.
Alice grabs her backpack and heads up to the lobby. She rummages in her pockets to see if she has enough change to buy a Coke or a snack from the vending machines. No