Alice Bliss - Laura Harrington [65]
She locks the door in the bathroom and sits on the sink, kicking one heel against the cabinet. She can sense Gram on the other side of the door.
“Alice, you don’t need to talk to me. I’ll leave you be. If you can just tell me you’re safe in there.”
“I’m okay.”
“You take your time. I’m here if you need me.”
“Okay.”
“Can you unlock the door?”
“Not yet.”
“Ellie can help me punch the bread down and form it into loaves if you don’t want to. Or we can leave it another twenty minutes so you can do it.”
“Okay.”
“Okay, leave it?”
“Yeah.”
Turning away from Alice and that locked door would be impossible if Ellie weren’t banging through the back door shouting: “Graaaammm!”
Ellie squeals when she finds out they are making two kinds of cookies. Alice can hear the fridge and freezer doors opening and closing, she can hear every cabinet door opened and then slammed shut. Ellie is hooting and hollering about how great everything looks. Ellie is little miss neat, Ellie color codes her socks, so this move toward organization is right up her alley. Then there’s quiet for a bit, and then there’s Ellie, playing her recorder. Must have been a request. Gram is nice like that.
Alice lies down in the tub and listens to Ellie squeaking away. There’s a drip coming out of the tap, a very slow drip. Using her foot, she messes with the handle until the cadence of the drip is a little faster. Then she sticks the hole in her left sneaker right under the faucet and feels the steady drip drip of the water filling up her sock and her shoe.
What if, starts to fill her mind. What if I flooded the bathroom and the hallway and it leaked downstairs and flooded the kitchen and the living room and even the porch. What if, what if, what if . . .
She falls asleep. Gram’s urgent knocking wakes her up. She actually fell asleep in the bathtub! How weird is that?
“I’m okay, Gram!”
But is she? Her arms and legs feel like lead. Sitting up, her ears are buzzing and she feels dizzy. Maybe she needs something to eat.
“Alice . . . ?”
“I’m coming, Gram.”
When she steps out of the tub she feels like she’s a hundred years old. Everything hurts and every bit of her, everywhere, inside and out, is tired. Her nose and her eyes and her shins and the backs of her hands. She unlocks the door and can hear Gram’s sigh of relief. Stepping out of the bathroom she steps into Gram’s waiting arms.
“It’s okay, honey.. . . It’s gonna be all right.”
Just that, her grandmother standing there with her arms open to her. Not asking her anything, not yelling at her, not pushing, pushing, pushing.
“We waited to punch the dough down until you . . .”
“Ellie can do it.”
“We need to make three loaves. You can both do it.”
“Okay.”
“Honey?”
“Yeah.”
“Look at me.”
She takes Alice’s chin in her hands.
“We’re gonna be okay.”
“Okay, Gram.”
“I mean it.”
In the kitchen Ellie is standing on a chair with a huge mound of dough in front of her.
“That’s our dough?!”
“See what yeast can do?”
“Wow!”
Ellie is dancing on the chair; Ellie is deciding to be magnanimous.
“You can take the first punch, Alice.”
“Okay. Stand back!”
Alice lets one fly and then Ellie is pummeling away like a fiftypound fury. Flour is flying, the dough is elastic and warm in their hands. Ellie starts to laugh. Alice closes her eyes and takes a deep breath. Yeast and molasses and flour and the hot stove and her grandmother’s perfume and Ellie’s fresh little kid smell. Don’t think about anything else. Just this. Right here. Right now.
Gram shows them how to form the dough into loaves. They plop their babies into bread pans and brush them with butter, and put them to rest and rise one more time on the back of the stove. Cookies next. Gram leaves them to it and never once tells them to quit eating the dough while she starts dinner.
Alice knows that Gram is just as scared as she is—well, maybe not just as scared—and that cookies and toast and honey and molasses are not really going to make things right. But they’re all we’ve got. Just the