A. Homes - The End of Alice

Am I being too presumptuous, claiming to know who you are, when just as easily you could be someone else, a bum, or someone surprisingly like me?

Clayton bunches up my pillow and fits it under his head. As the World Turns is spinning as Evan finds out that James never had a vasectomy, which means that Edwina has been lying. Shocking! I forbid myself to gaze at this radiant tube during daylight hours — it is the cheapest drug, the lazy man’s way out. And when I do watch, I have rules for my viewing: a firm avoidance of the networks, and never, ever, do I turn to the local channels during the news hour. Nothing is more tortuous than the stilted elocutions of a half-brained, half-baked, ugly Rather be Brokaw attempting to bring me the goings-on beyond these — be they ever so — humble gates.

Unforgivable.

I can’t allow myself to think that daylilies are blooming not a quarter mile from my cage. People at this very moment or the next are deciding what to have for dinner, whether or not to mix a second drink, open another can of smoked almonds; perhaps they’re deciding to skip the meal altogether and take the wife upstairs, fuck her until she’s blue, humping to the slap, slapping sound of Johnny in the driveway bouncing his ball, grinding to the dry hum of Sally downstairs playing with her toy vacuum cleaner.

I don’t want Wendel the Weatherman to tell me what time the sun will rise and set on these near hills because, here, on this side of the wall, the weather is different, it’s a whole other front, time passes on its own schedule. The clock is broken, has only one hand, and an hour can be a year, a minute, or a month, and the little square of daylight that drifts across the yard, over the floor, can come and go in a second.

It’s not the world I live in, it’s not mine.

I collect the headlines, keep them in my various files. What one might find in this tiny town, this near city, frightens me. The untamed environs, the suburban subdivisions, the hazards of the garbage disposal, trash compactor, and radar range are much more violent, more dangerous, than what you imagine happens in these hallowed halls. Your capitol dome and bureaucratic bulges, gubernatorial pitches for reform, coupled with the grisly grit of who was killed, who was maimed, and what twelve-year-old child was mowed down on his way home from school, stun and stone me. I am here. The criminal element is contained — held under lock and key — and still it happens. How could it go on without me (us) — is that too narcissistic a mind? What I’m getting at is that, with so many of us locked up, you’d think it would stop. That it continues means that it is you and not me. Tell me about your day, your routine, and what you did at the drugstore when the dumb little girl charged you five cents instead of five dollars. Did you speak up? Are you all so lily-white? The harder it gets to be safe and secure, to trust, to find love and understanding — the more you feel entitled, allowed, even encouraged, to cheat, to lie, to steal, and then later, even to kill. That you are just beginning to feel it now only means you have been lucky for too long.

And while you might think I’d find it heartening that such accidents do happen to others, that in all this random senselessness we are all of us caught in a kind of forced criminality — you are in error. You are breaking your promise, the very terms of our agreement — the one that puts me in here and lets you stay out there — if I commit the crimes for you, you must be good for me. You and I, we’re in this together, best not to forget.

Clayton is on the bed, he has kicked off his shoes. The perfume of his nether digits, his toe jam, permeates the room. I breathe deeply, the damn sock and sweaty sneaker have the hint, the vague reminiscence, of popcorn, buttered. As the World Turns has turned into The Guiding Light; Bridget gives birth to a boy. David, who assisted, agrees to keep quiet about the whole thing. Clayton could lie here all day. I hate him for his ability to do nothing, to be unoccupied. I turn off the tube and plant myself in front of him, wiggling my hips in his face, slipping my fingers through my belt loops, hiking my pants higher, highlighting the bulge.

I could stand to have my cock sucked, but Clayton does not think it is his job; as far as he’s concerned, it is a favor, a rare treat reserved for birthdays and similarly special occasions. He ignores my crotch and looks beyond me out the window. “Sun’s out,” he says. I nod.

Out of my room we go, descending the narrow back staircase, the dark pit that leads to the tunnel, past the laundry, the boiler room and morgue, and into the chute. There are only certain paths available. In steel cages mounted in the ceiling there are cameras (circa 1978) with bulletproof lens caps. They are watching, recording every move. Were we to do something strange, something unexpected, they would be upon us, would appear from out of nowhere and remind us that we are not alone.

“Chartres. I’m thinking of Chartres,” Clayton says. “I’ve been pretending I’m there.” He pauses. There is always the problem of having an Ivy League boyfriend — in truth no one else wants him, no one knows what the hell he’s talking about, they think he’s crazy. “The Virgin Mary’s robe is buried beneath the apse.”

I say nothing.

I wonder if Clayton should be taking antidepressants, an official prescription instead of smoking and sniffing Henry’s concoctions. He is ahead of me, opening the door to the yard. The opening, the letting in of light, the letting out of oneself, is a great release.

Out. The screen door slams. Flowers, red, orange, purple, circle the house. “Boy,” my grandmother calls. “Boy.” I run into the light. I hide behind the sheets hanging off the clothesline. “Boy,” she calls again. A bee, a butterfly, a bird in the distance. The air is warm and thick. I sit on the grass, splitting blades of greenery. Brighter than bright. Blue sky, cloudless. I lie back and fall asleep with the laundry — sheets, shirts, and my grandmother’s housedresses and underpants — billowing above me.

“Fool,” my grandmother says when she finds me, bee-bitten, sunburned, smiling. “You and your mama. One and the same.”

I miss Mama and am glad to hear her name. “When’s Mama coming home?”

“I told you before, she got to collect her marbles before she can come back.”

“Good,” I say, thinking that can’t take long.

I’m going back,” Clayton says. “I’m going to Chartres and hang myself from the high North Spire.”

Again I don’t speak. There is nothing to say.

Clayton walks adjusting and readjusting his crotch. I think of the popcorn scent of his feet and imagine the heady, perfumy, pissy flavor at the front of his underwear. I think of him in his Jockeys and am reminded of the thick cotton of kiddie panties, the ultra-absorbent weave that holds the scents, the drippings, that slowly steams the full flavors until they reach a nearly toxic, almost lethal fruition.

The prison yard is a square, fenced kennel, human doggie run, a playpen for criminals bounded by stone walls and reams of razor wire. Around the inside perimeter, there is a well-worn footpath, a kind of ring around the collar for men who go round and round as though eventually at some surprising moment the circle itself will split open, unfold into a long flat line, an open road, and they’ll just walk straight on out of here.

There are days when one should avoid going out, when it does no good, when it only makes matters worse. On such occasions, one should feel free — perhaps a poor word choice — to hide in or under the bed until the feeling passes, until things have the potential to seem good again, until something can be gotten from lying on the ground, staring up at the sky, knowing that at least the clouds are unfettered, free, and you can be in them if you choose.