Alice Bliss - Laura Harrington [50]
When she looks up they are both smiling at her.
“You need a shirt,” Roger says to Henry, and hustles off to find him one.
Henry almost can’t bear looking at Alice. There’s something happening in his stomach that could be the flu or could be just plain, pure misery and longing.
“Do you like it?”
He nods his head and closes his eyes to try to contain the intensity of what he is feeling. He closes his eyes and imagines holding Alice on the dance floor, his hands resting on the small of her back; he imagines hearing Duke Ellington and a tenor sax and knowing the tune and knowing the words and knowing the steps, and holding Alice in his arms, Alice in that dress, Alice with that music.. . .
“Henry . . . ?”
He opens his eyes to find Alice grinning at him.
“What?”
“This could be fun.”
April 21st
“There are two soldiers at the front door!” Ellie shouts.
“What? !”
“Two soldiers! Knocking on the door.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I think you should answer the door.”
“Is it Dad?”
“No! It’s not Dad!”
“Nobody comes to the front door.”
“Alice! I want you to come down here right now!”
“I’m coming!”
Alice is running down the stairs thinking, soldier at the front door, soldier at the front door. Her heart is flip-flopping in her chest, and she’s not really sure where her feet are and before she opens the door she has a chance to register Ellie. Ellie who is standing stock still in front of the living room window, a bright blue crayon in her left fist, staring out the window at the soldiers who are improbably standing on the front stoop, patiently waiting for someone to open the door.
She hesitates with her hand on the knob. He knocks again, softly. Do they get training in this? How to knock? What time of day to show up?
She opens the door to a soldier in his twenties who immediately takes off his hat, revealing an extremely new haircut. He is flanked by another soldier twice his size.
“I’m Sergeant Walker Ames. This is Army Chaplain McMurphy. May I speak to your mother?”
“She’s not home.”
“When will she be back?”
Alice glances at her dad’s watch.
“Maybe six thirty, maybe later.”
“Can you call her?”
“Is my dad all right?”
“Can you call her?”
“Can you just tell me that?”
“I’ll wait while you call her.”
He is eerily, almost creepily calm Alice thinks, as her mind races to take in all of the possibilities of what his presence on her front stoop means.
“Do you want to come inside?” Ellie asks.
“No, thank you. Please call your mother.”
Twenty minutes later Angie pulls all the way into the driveway and comes in through the kitchen door, the way they always do. As she stoops down to give Ellie a hug, Alice can see that her hands are shaking.
“I just wanted a moment with my girls,” she says, as she pulls Alice to her side.
There’s that soft knock again.
Angie stands and walks to the front door. The girls are hesitating behind her. She reaches out and opens the door.
“Mrs. Bliss? Mrs. Angie Bliss?”
“Yes.”
“Sergeant Walker Ames. May I come in?”
Missing. They have almost no information other than that Matt Bliss is officially MIA.
Here’s what they do know, or what the army will tell them, or what they have sanitized to put in the official letter, which is delivered by Sergeant Ames and the very bulky, very bald, and nearly tongue-tied army chaplain McMurphy.
Matt had been patrolling Falluja for six days with his thirteen-man infantry squad. On the day in question, Matt’s unit rushed the roof of the tallest building in the northern end of the city. With a nineteenyear-old named Travis Boyd in the lead, the soldiers ran up the building’s four flights of stairs. When they stepped out onto the roof, the enemy opened fire. Matt ran past Travis Boyd to the far side of the building where he was shot and wounded. Within seconds, everyone else on the roof was wounded.
In the