Alice Bliss - Laura Harrington [85]
“When you wake up, get up. Come in for breakfast. No lollygagging in the damn sleeping bag.”
“Okay.”
“Eight o’clock. I want you in the house.”
“Okay.”
“Do you have a watch?”
“I can see the clock.”
“One minute past eight I’ll be out to check on you.”
“Okay.”
Henry attempts a reassuring smile.
“You’re way too young to be sleeping with my daughter. No matter what she’s going through. Do we understand each other?”
He nods.
“This is special dispensation for one night and one night only.”
Another nod.
“You do understand that now I will not be able to sleep for the rest of the night?”
“Why not?”
“Because . . . oh my God . . . do I really have to explain this to you?”
“Shhhh . . . shhhh . . . we don’t want to wake her up.”
“Maybe I should just stay out here with you.”
“Mrs. Bliss . . .”
“What?”
“You can trust me.”
“Henry, you’re an adolescent boy.”
“So?”
“There are forces at work here that are bigger than both of us and both of you.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“You will,” Angie says, as she turns and leaves her daughter in the arms of this boy, in the safe haven of her father’s workshop, in a world turned upside down and inside out, as she turns to go back to . . . what? Her empty bed? A stiff drink? To crawl into bed with Ellie, to steal comfort from her eight year old? None of these choices were even a remote part of her life when Matt was alive. Stop thinking, she admonishes herself, just make some tea and curl up on the couch with a blanket to wait for eight a.m. Matt would be beside himself if he knew she was letting Alice sleep with Henry. In the same bed, in a separate building, with no supervision. She can hear Matt hollering, What are you thinking?! But Matt hasn’t met this moment, Matt hasn’t met these nights and these days with this pain and dislocation and the sense that they will, all of them, have to find their comforts and their safe places and their moments of peace and rest and respite wherever and whenever they can.
Henry wakes to find the sun up and Alice gone. It is 7:27, he notes, according to the clock over Matt’s workbench, so at least he hasn’t broken any promises to her mother yet. The pillow is squashed from Alice’s head, the sleeping bag is still warm from her body, but where is she? His mouth feels like sandpaper, which probably means he was snuffling and making strange noises all night long. He would like about a quart of orange juice and a salad bowl full of Cheerios, but what is he supposed to do now? Look for her? Go into the house and have breakfast? Disappear down the street to his own house as though he was never here in the first place?
He throws off the sleeping bag, gets up, and crosses to the window overlooking the garden and what do you know, there she is, in her pajamas and his sweatshirt and a pair of too-big rubber boots, hoeing away. What does she think she is, some kind of farmer? She has braided her hair to keep it out of her face. She is hoeing very carefully, turning over the soil, loosening the clods.
Every row is planted now, except for the tomatoes, which have to wait for Memorial Day, or so he has been told on innumerable occasions. Soon there will be a pale green fuzz to the garden, a green, hopeful, babyish fuzz of barely born, half-baked plantlets all in straight rows. Alice finishes hoeing and heads back to the workshop. She opens the door, hangs the hoe on its hook, and asks:
“Want some breakfast?”
And that seems to be that. Like last night never happened. Like he hasn’t been holding her in his arms for hours, watching her and listening to her breathe. He had been determined to stay awake all night, but something, who knows what, happiness maybe, stole him away and took him off to dreamland.
“You coming?”
“Maybe I should go home.”
She considers this.
“Okay. If you want.”
“Your mom came out here last night.”
“She did? Was she mad?”
“Yes and no.”
“Did you talk to her?”
“Well, yeah. Sort of.”
“And she let you stay?”
“Yeah. Kind of.”
“What do you mean, kind of?”
“She established some ground rules.”
“Like