Alice Bliss - Laura Harrington [88]
Henry and Mrs. Grover are out the door and Angie has said yes, it doesn’t matter, yes, it’s all right, and now Alice is slipping into the dress and lifting her hair off her neck and twisting it and using too many bobby pins to try to hold it up. Maybe a ponytail would be easier. And stepping into her pointy-toed flat shoes and asking her mom if she can borrow a sweater and yes, she’ll be warm enough.
Angie turns and looks at Alice. And finds herself looking straight into Matt’s blue eyes.
There’s a pause while Angie tries to get her voice under control.
“Daddy would like that dress.”
“Really?”
“Absolutely.”
Matt should be here, she is thinking, Matt should see this, Matt would . . . Oh, when did she get to be so lovely?
“I tried to put my hair up, but . . .”
“Let me help.”
Angie deftly pins up Alice’s hair.
“Ask Mrs. Grover to take some pictures.”
“We won’t stay too long.”
“Who’s driving?”
“We wanted to walk.”
“Call Uncle Eddie if you want a ride home.”
“Mom, we don’t have to go, I’m not even sure I really want to go.. . . I could stay here with you, I could . . .”
“Go.”
Angie kisses Alice.
“Go.”
Gram and Ellie make Henry come inside when he knocks on the door, Henry who has opted to wear a T-shirt with the tuxedo pants and jacket, Henry who has showered in under five minutes, and slicked back his hair, who is looking older and cooler and somehow also even dorkier than he ever has in his life, Henry who, among other things in the last half hour, has learned how to spit polish his shoes to a mirror shine.
Henry stands just inside the door ready to cut and run at the slightest sign of a critical glance. He is feeling hot and nervous until Alice comes down the stairs in that dress and an entirely new mash-up of feelings starts to slosh around inside his stomach. Alice smiles at him, or at least her mouth smiles at him. Her eyes are still wary and desperate. Henry would like to kiss her eyes, but at the same time wonders just what kind of an idiot goes around wanting to kiss other people’s eyes?
Which is when he notices that Ellie is staring at him.
“If you must osculate,” she says, “please refrain from cataglottism.”
“What?”
“Leave Henry alone, Ellie.”
“But what did you just say?”
“If you must kiss, please refrain from kissing with the tongue.”
“Ellie!”
Gram makes Ellie find the camera, in spite of Alice’s protests. After a significant spell of photographic torture by the front door, Gram lets them go and Alice and Henry find themselves walking down the sidewalk in the near dark of late twilight.
“You sure you’re okay with this?”
Alice doesn’t say anything in response, she just reaches out and takes his hand. Henry thinks if she keeps doing things like this, which make him feel as if his stomach and his heart have changed places, all of his internal organs are likely to get completely mixed up and rearranged.
Lights are starting to come on in the houses they pass. It’s the afterdinner pause and the streets are unusually quiet. The breeze kicks up and stirs the new leaves in the trees arching over their heads.
They are going the long way to school, down Baird Road to Martin Street instead of cutting through the playing fields; they are passing Mrs. Minty’s house and Mrs. Piantowski’s house and The Bird Sisters and the Four Corners. Henry is worried that his hand is probably all sweaty and slick and gross, but if it is, Alice doesn’t seem to notice. Alice has closed her eyes against the well of sorrow that is always there, rising and falling like a tide, but with her eyes closed she is suddenly hearing and smelling the world around her; hearing the leaves rustle and the branches scraping against each other, hearing their footsteps on the cement sidewalk, the scuffing sound Henry makes in his unaccustomed fancy tie shoes, the click, click of her little flats, and then there it is, yes, there it is, the spring smells layered one by one, of new grass and clean dirt and somewhere in the twilight there are narcissus spilling their perfume into the night.
“Alice?”
“Yeah?”
“I’d really