Alice Bliss - Laura Harrington [78]
“—How many times do I have to tell you this is the day! Today, Mom! Not yesterday! Not tomorrow! Today!”
“I don’t understand what the big deal is.”
“You’re not listening to me. This is the day. Same day. Every year. Tradition. Me and Dad. Tradition.”
“I don’t see what difference one day more or less makes.”
“Mom!”
Alice is so frustrated she is almost crying, which she has vowed never to do in front of her mother ever again.
“Alice, you’re just going to have to give in on this one. Can you finish setting the table, please?”
“Why can’t Ellie help you? Why can’t—?”
“—Alice!”
Uncle Eddie appears, having let himself in the backdoor.
“Would you just lay off the poor kid?”
“Stay out of it, Eddie.”
“I’m just saying—”
“What do you know about raising kids?”
“I thought you were talking about the garden.”
“What sacrifices have you ever had to make?”
“Is this a contest? You win, Angie. You’ve made more sacrifices than I have. What does that have to do with anything?”
“This is none of your business, Eddie.”
“Angie, c’mon . . . She just wants to plant the garden.”
Alice considers stepping into the fray and then thinks better of it when Angie’s next tirade turns into tears, and Uncle Eddie takes her in his arms. Angie’s sobs are so loud and so ragged Alice would like to put her hands over her ears or turn on the radio to drown out the sounds and the feelings, but she can’t move. It’s kind of like watching a car wreck, only scarier.
When Angie finally pulls herself together, Alice turns away and very carefully, very quietly finishes setting the table.
And then it’s as though they all make a silent pact to pretend that everything is fine, everything is perfectly normal as they navigate the minefield that is dinner.
After dinner, Alice stands next to Gram at the sink drying dishes while Mom and Uncle Eddie smooth things over with a bottle of wine in the living room.
“Good pie, huh?” Gram says.
“Yeah,” Alice agrees, looking out the kitchen window through the rain, squinting to see the garden.
“Maybe a bit too much sugar.”
Alice hands the pie plate back. “You missed a spot.”
“I did not!”
“Right there.”
“You remember Grampa?” Gram asks.
“Of course!”
“From before he got sick?”
Alice thinks of the hospital and the blue-striped bathrobe he insisted on bringing from home, but then she remembers sitting on his lap on the maroon velvet couch in the big old house and Grampa reading to her, The Girl of the Limberlost, she thinks it was.
“He’d do all the voices when he read to me.”
“That’s right.”
“And he always smelled good.”
“Bay rum.”
Gram hands her a mixing bowl to dry.
“He was a good-looking man.”
“Gram!”
“What? He was.”
“Are you twinkling, Gram?”
“And lovable; he had this sweetness.”
“Sweet as pie?”
“Maybe that’s why Char always wanted more sugar. If she could’ve had Grampa, she’d have been waking up with sweetness every day of her life.”
“Wait a minute—”
“Her whole life that girl loved sugar. Spoonfuls in her coffee, on her oatmeal. It makes my teeth ache just thinking about it.”
“Maybe that’s what made her so sweet.”
“Ha! My sister was a barracuda!”
“She was not!”
“Get in between Char and what she wanted and watch out!”
“What did she want?”
“Oh, that’s ancient history.”
“C’mon, Gram.”
Gram hands Alice the roasting pan.
“Grampa. Before he was Grampa, of course.”
“What?”
“Stopped speaking to me for nearly a year when James fell in love with me.”
“You’re kidding me.”
“And then she married his brother Bobby. And never, ever stopped flirting with James.”
“But you loved her—”
“Of course I loved her. She was my little sister. Doesn’t mean we didn’t have our issues.”
Ellie walks into the kitchen and pulls her recorder out of its case.
“Check this out,” Ellie says, unfolding a list of words. ”Cabbaged and fabaceae, each eight letters long, are the longest words that can be played on a musical instrument.”
And then she plays them on her recorder.
Alice looks at Gram and bites her lip to keep from laughing.
“What does fabaceae mean?