Alice Bliss - Laura Harrington [77]
“Alice—”
“We just went to a baseball game. With Mrs. Minty. And his father. And his brother.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“There’s nothing to tell.”
“Do you like him?”
“I don’t know.”
“You do like him.”
“I don’t even know him.”
“Did he kiss you?”
“No!”
“He did, didn’t he?”
“No!”
“He already has a girlfriend.”
“I know that!”
“Can I come over?”
“No. I have to write this paper.”
“I’m coming over.”
“Don’t. I’m having a terrible day.”
“I need to talk to you.”
“I will be horrible to you if you come over here.”
“Alice—”
“Everything is going wrong today, Henry. I don’t want to have a fight with you, too.”
“Could you just tell me—”
“What?”
“Never mind.”
“Henry, you’re my best friend.”
“Okay.”
“See you tomorrow?”
“See you tomorrow.”
She hangs up and finds that she is actually grateful to get lost for a few hours in the prickly lifelong relationship between Jefferson and Adams, which turned into this amazing friendship in the last years of their lives with hundreds of letters written back and forth. And then they died on the same day: July 4, 1826. You can’t make stuff like that up.
She finishes her paper and looks up to see the rain still falling. Is it ever going to stop?
She heads downstairs only to get roped into helping her mother make dinner. Her mother hasn’t cooked in weeks, and today she’s making pot roast? So Alice is at the sink peeling carrots to throw in with the roast that is already bubbling away inside the stove, and potatoes for mashed potatoes. Her mom is making a pie. A pie! What is going on? Okay, so it’s the Pillsbury roll-out crust, but it’s also cherries, real cherries that they freeze every year from their own trees.
“It’s Sunday,” her mom offers, by way of explanation.
“So . . .?”
“Uncle Eddie is coming over and so is Gram.”
“I need to get out in the garden, Mom.”
“I thought it would be nice to have a family dinner. Gram is bringing her green bean casserole.”
“It’s not like it’s Thanksgiving.”
“Just some family time.”
“Dad and I always plant on this Sunday. Some people go by the equinox, we go by the Red Wings opening game. The Sunday after. It’s always the Sunday after the home opener.”
Angie carefully unrolls the crust from the package.
“Mom?”
The squeak of the rolling pin.
“Mom? Are you trying to keep me from planting the garden?”
“No.”
“Well, good. Because you can’t.”
“I just thought—”
Angie stops rolling out the crust for a minute and puts the heels of her hands over her eyes. She’s wearing Dad’s apron, Alice notices. Everybody’s wearing Dad’s apron lately.
“This is your dad’s grandmother’s pot roast recipe. And cherry pie is—”
“Daddy’s favorite.”
“Exactly.”
“So?”
“I just want my family here with me.”
Okay, Alice can understand all of this and she can even like it that her mom is cooking dinner for a change and that Uncle Eddie and Gram are coming over, but why did this have to happen today?
“Will you set the table when you’re finished there? With the good china?”
“Couldn’t Ellie do it? And I could at least stake out the first half dozen rows—”
“—Alice—”
She can’t exactly slam down the good china plates, though she would like to drop them in a big heap. Her mother pokes her head in the door.
“Not that tablecloth.”
“Why not?”
“The other white one.”
“What difference does it make? They’re both white.”
“Thanks, honey. And cloth napkins, please. Can you fold them?”
This is like torture, Alice thinks. Drip, drip, drip. All day long. And there goes the sun, a tiny sliver managing to peek out from the rain clouds, there goes the sun disappearing from the sky. Along with Alice’s plans. This is not how today was supposed to go. Dad would not have let this day get away from him, no matter what Angie had planned. He would have known how to work around her or ignore her or tease her into going along with him. Grown-ups have more options in that department, Alice thinks. She would like to just say no to her mother; in fact, she has been trying to do that all day.
“Mom!” she shouts. “I need to plant the garden!”
“That’s just going to