Alice Bliss - Laura Harrington [76]
“What?”
“I’ve been talking to the recruiters at school. I want marines, I think.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I’ll get all this training. They’ll pay for college. And it’s really great experience. Plus, with my dad on his own, we can’t really afford—”
“What about baseball?”
“That’s a one in a million chance, Alice. You know that.”
“But you’re really good.”
“Thanks, but—”
“I don’t know what to say.”
“I turn eighteen next month. I can enlist on my birthday. And head off to basic training right after I graduate.”
“Does your dad know?”
“Yeah.”
“I can’t believe you’re doing this. They’ll send you overseas.”
“Probably.”
“Oh, God . . .”
“I thought . . .”
“Isn’t there any other way—?”
“It’s an incredible opportunity.”
“You can’t be all you can be if you’re dead,” she blurts out and can’t believe how much she sounds like her mother.
Mrs. Minty and Mr. Kimball both glance over.
“I thought you’d understand,” he says.
“I understand that there are a million things that could happen to you, a million things that could go wrong.”
“C’mon, the war could be over by the time I’m done with my training.”
“You don’t actually believe that, do you?”
He focuses on the game again.
“Don’t do it. Don’t sign your life away. Don’t go,” she says, suddenly afraid he’s going to laugh at her intensity.
“Are you saying we could start something?”
“What? What do you mean? No—”
“And I could stay in Belknap and live at home and work in a garage, learn how to be a mechanic, or work at Gleason’s like my grandfather did, or get my electrician’s license and go into business with my dad.”
“No, I—”
“Marry my high school sweetheart and have three kids before I’m twenty-five, divorced by thirty.”
“That’s not what I’m saying.”
“I want to get out, Alice. I want something more.”
“You sound like my dad.”
She has to let go of his hand to steady herself. She’s holding on to the bleachers with both hands and looking down trying to quiet the tumult inside of her when Benny Benjamin hits a home run and the hometown crowd is on its feet yelling and cheering.
A home run on opening day, she can hear her dad saying, that’s a good omen, sweetheart. That’s a good omen for the season to come.
April 30th
All day long Alice has been trying to get out to the garden to start planting. In the morning they had a dusting of snow, which melted when the temperature soared to fifty-five and the sun came out. Now it’s drizzling.
Her mother keeps piling on the chores and she’s suddenly obsessively interested in Alice’s homework and is demanding to see her planner. Only Alice’s planner is pretty blank because Alice doesn’t have many plans when it comes to schoolwork. Somehow her mother wheedled some information out of Henry’s mother. Alice can just picture poor Mrs. Grover standing there asking Henry if they do, in fact, have a research paper due tomorrow? Three pages on the Continental Congress. So then it’s off to the library. Why is the library even open on Sunday, Alice wants to know, doesn’t anybody ever get a day of rest anymore?
Now she’s got three books to skim through and three pages to write. She calls Henry.
“I need a topic sentence.”
“That’s cheating, Alice.”
“Give me one of your discarded ones. I know you have at least five topic sentences up your sleeve.”
Henry considers.
“Okay.”
She can hear him take a piece of paper out of his wastebasket and uncrumple it.
“Was Jefferson the sole author of the Declaration of Independence?”
“That’s a question.”
“It’s a teaser. Here’s the rest: While we often think of Jefferson as the sole author of the Declaration of Independence, John Adams edited it, and he defended it to the rest of the Congress and helped get it passed.”
“This is a reject for you? Geez!”
“I got interested in the role that Franklin played.”
“You should quit worrying about math, Henry. You’re a genius. Thanks a lot. ’Bye.”
“Wait, Alice—”
“Gotta go, Henry.”
“Did you—?”
“—What?”
“I heard—”
“—What?”
“John Kimball.”
There’s an uncomfortable silence.
“I need to write