Alice Bliss - Laura Harrington [44]
She peeks into the rec room and there’s Ellie, sitting in a circle with four other girls. No boys of course. The teacher is this comfy-looking woman with long, scraggly hair, a patchwork skirt, Birkenstocks, and an obviously homemade sweater. She patiently moves from kid to kid, helping them work their big wooden needles, helping them find dropped or lost stitches. Ellie is chatting away like she’s found her niche.
Alice closes the door quietly and heads outside. The YMCA is a relatively new building, built on the outskirts of Belknap’s Four Corners. Not that there’s much left to the Four Corners since they built the stupid mall three miles down Belknap Road. There’s just the library, two churches, a gas station, a bar, an upholstery store that always looks like it’s on the verge of going out of business, The Bird Sisters, Jansen’s Hardware, and the local pharmacy. Ricci’s little grocery/ deli is still trying to hang on. It is the dimmest, dustiest store on the block. A 25-watt bulb would be bright in there. Maybe they don’t want anybody reading the expiration dates on the canned goods. They’ve recently updated their penny candy aisle, even though penny candy doesn’t cost a penny anymore.
Alice sits on the bench by the bus stop. She’d like to walk the few blocks to the library, but then no one would know where she is. She’d like to be sitting next to Stephie in the library doing their homework just like they used to do, passing notes and sharing M&Ms and giggling and making the librarian come over to tell them to be quiet. Again. She’d like to walk the half-mile home. Somehow this stupid trip to the Y is a family outing in her mom’s mind. Even though Alice hates it, even though they are all in different parts of the Y. Maybe the family part is when they go out to Don & Bob’s afterward for hamburgers and onion rings. Alice is counting on frozen custard for dessert.
She’s trying not to think about what happened with Henry yesterday, when she sees Mrs. Minty struggling to get her rolling cart out the door of Ricci’s grocery. Alice starts to cross the street to help her when John Kimball maneuvers his way past Mrs. Minty and then not only holds the door for her but picks up her cart and carries it to the sidewalk. He’s holding a soda and a package of Devil Dogs in one hand and doing all this maneuvering for Mrs. Minty with his other hand.
She thanks him. She knows his name. He offers to walk her home and help unload her groceries. She declines, says the exercise is good for her heart and her bones. And then she asks him about baseball. Mrs. Minty follows high school baseball? She tells him he’s a great shortstop. Mrs. Minty goes to games? Curiouser and curiouser, as another Alice would say.
Alice quickly retreats to the farthest corner of her bench and pulls out Othello so that John Kimball won’t know she’s been eavesdropping and, hopefully, won’t even notice her at all. Which is when she hears Mrs. Minty say:
“You remind me of my boy. All you boys do. He was just your age.”
“What happened to him?”
“Meningitis. The local doctor didn’t realize how serious it was.”
“When was this, Mrs. Minty?”
“1963.”
“What was his name?”
“His friends called him Pete. We called him Peter. After my father.”
“Did he play baseball?”
“Shortstop. Just like you.”
“Any good?”
“We thought he was marvelous. So fast.”
“Did you have any other—”
“No, no. Just the one.”
“And your husband?”
“That was the beginning of a terrible decade. Not the sort of times you can live through with a broken heart.”
“You mean the war?”
“And the assassinations. And everything else. Jared found he couldn’t keep getting up in the morning.. . . The doctors say he died of heart disease. But I know better.”
“I’m so sorry, Mrs. Minty.”
“It was his time.”
That’s what grown-ups always say, Alice thinks. But what does it mean? That every person gets allotted a certain number of days?
“Now how in the world did we get on this topic?” Mrs. Minty continues.
“Baseball.”
“Very diverting, baseball.”
“I have to be careful it doesn’t divert me right into