Alice Bliss - Laura Harrington [47]
Just then she hears the garbage truck screech to a halt at the curb. She looks out the window. There’s her mom, in her bathrobe, dragging the garbage can down to the curb. Could she be any more embarrassing?
Which is when Alice puts two and two together and speeds through the front door and down the front steps and down the driveway in her bare feet.
“Mom! Mom!”
The garbage guy has their garbage can in his hand, he’s hoisting it up and pouring it into the open maw of the truck.
“Wait! Wait! Stop!”
But it’s too late. She doesn’t actually see the blue shirt going into the grinder thing in the back of the truck. No, it’s probably buried in a bag of trash and used Kleenex and carrot tops.
Angie walks up the driveway. Alice can’t even look at her mother she’s so furious. She’s trying to control her breathing so she’ll be able to speak.
“What’s going on? . . . Alice?”
“Dad’s shirt.”
“Oh, don’t get started on that again.”
“You threw it away, didn’t you?”
“You can stand out here and catch your death in bare feet, but I’m going inside.”
Angie starts to walk past Alice, but Alice steps in front of her, blocking her way.
“If it’s not in the trash, where is it?”
“This is ridiculous. I’m going inside.”
But Alice won’t move.
“How could you do that? And how could you lie to me?”
“I haven’t lied to you.”
“You want to know why girls can’t stand their mothers? It’s shit like this, Mom!”
“Inside!”
“First you steal my clothes, then you lie to me and now you think you can order me around?!”
“Alice!”
Angie tries to walk around her again.
“Couldn’t you just ask me, Mom? How hard is that? Just ask me!”
“I am not going to argue with you in the middle of the driveway! We can continue this inside.” Angie pushes past Alice. “Or not at all.”
“Fine! How about not at all?! That would be just more of the same, wouldn’t you say, Mom?”
Alice has the satisfaction of hearing her mother slam the front door. Hard. Which is when she hears the garbage truck shift into second gear as it continues its lumbering journey down the street to Henry’s house, where no doubt Henry’s father had the trash down at the curb well before six a.m. No mothers running out to the street in bathrobes at Henry’s house.
Where is her dad’s shirt now? Part of the compost of newspapers, orange rinds, cereal boxes, last night’s take out containers.. . . Some of the fight goes out of Alice as her feet begin to ache they’re so cold. She starts up the driveway.
Okay. She’ll get another one of her dad’s shirts, and maybe she’ll take one of his jackets, too. And if she can wear both of those things, maybe, just maybe she’ll be able to hold it together and walk out the door and go to school like she’s supposed to.
As she walks through the front door, her mom pushes past with a cup of coffee.
“Alice, get ready for school. Enough of this nonsense.”
Alice does not respond.
“Alice, I mean it. Get a move on.”
Alice swallows hard and finds her voice.
“If anything happens to Dad—”
“What?”
“—it’s your fault.”
“You’re being ridiculous.”
“Am I?”
“You want to blame me. Fine. Blame me. You know who you’re really mad at?”
“I don’t want to hear this!”
“You’re mad at Dad.”
“I am not!”
“Think about it, Alice.”
“Dad did not put that shirt in the trash!”
“Dad—”
“—Don’t!”
Alice walks up the stairs and into her parents’ bedroom where she takes another shirt out of her father’s drawer. Angie follows her.
“I’d really rather you didn’t take another one of Dad’s—”
Alice’s hands are shaking as she unbuttons a crisp blue and white striped shirt. Not the same, not the same shirt at all, she thinks in a kind of wild, sad desperation. One of the buttons pops off and skitters across the floor. She looks at the shirt for a moment, the stripes, the missing button, then shoves it back in the drawer, and slams the drawer shut so hard several photos fall off the dresser.
“What are you doing?”
“I’ll never forgive you if—”
“Alice. For heaven’s sake.”
“Can you spare one of these?” Alice asks, as she opens the top drawer and grabs a white T-shirt.
“Take five!