A. Homes - The End of Alice

“This is Matty’s tennis teacher,” the mother says, formally introducing the girl to the father, who takes one look at her and then excuses himself to mix another drink. “I was on the team at Penn, nationally seeded,” he calls in from the living room, before returning to the table vodka tonic in hand, but smelling of Scotch.

“Ice maker’s on the fritz,” he tells his wife as he steals ice cubes from his children’s glasses, stirring his drink with his index finger, which all too recently could have been up the bum of an office boy or sliding in and out of the slippery slit of a secretary. He pulls his finger out of his drink, licks it, then begins to pick at his dinner.

“We’re going to need a new fridge any minute now, I’ve been telling you for months,” the mother says.

“I don’t want to know about it,” the father replies, attending only to his drink. He wishes to be oblivious, wishes all parts of his spread to be wondrous and beautiful. Beyond that, he could care less, so long as it doesn’t set him back. And it is exactly that, the sensation of being set back, kept against his will, held hostage by the ice maker, the garbage disposal, the old copper pipes, his wife and children, that fouls his mood. The father is a bitter and stingy man.

“What year are you?” he asks the girl.

“Junior,” she says.

“And your field?”

“Psychology and literature.”

“Is Freud still part of the program?”

She nods.

“Ah,” the father says, excusing himself to mix another drink.

“Isn’t it enough?” the mother asks. The father doesn’t answer. He returns to the table with half a glass of vodka, this time mixing his poison with the last of the pink lemonade. He tilts his head back, closes his eyes, and sips. The burger on his plate remains untouched.

He turns to his son. “That’s my shirt isn’t it? Did I ask you that before?”

The boy shrugs.

“You know I don’t like it and still you do it,” the father says, shaking his head. “Ketchup,” he says, without pausing for breath, and the bottle of Heinz is slapped into his hand. With a farting sound a clot puffs out the top, splashing his fingers. The father, disgusted, wipes it off. “Clean napkin,” he says. And his wife slips one onto his lap.

“I’m so happy you’re giving Matt lessons,” she says, picking up the slack, keeping things moving, smacking the wrist of the youngest one, who’s playing peculiar games with his food. “Fifteen dollars an hour, that’s a deal. At our club it’s thirty, and the pros haven’t played in twenty years. And you’re on a team, that’s wonderful.” She pauses. “It’s funny. Last month I wanted to sign Matt up for group lessons and he refused. But private lessons. Fifteen dollars an hour. We feel very lucky.”

The kid is making money, fifteen from the mother, ten from the girl, pocketing twenty-five a pop, fifty to seventy-five a week — raking it in. She is pleased. He’s not as dumb as you’d think. She looks at him across the table. He’s fidgeting. She winks, but because one eye is already closed, it looks more like an extended blink. He’s rolling in dough. He’s got plans. She is all the more excited.

“What do you aspire to?” the father asks. It is clear from the tone of his question that she shouldn’t try to answer. “When I was young,” he says, “it was a certain success, a career, a wife, a child, and after that a club, a boat, a country home, a better wife.”

“Let’s leave it for now.” The mother stands and begins to clear the table even though they’re still eating.

Her eye, her swollen blindness, her sluggish, drugged state have impeded her coordination. She has dropped food on herself. By meal’s end she is dotted with samples of everything served — a piece of corn hangs in her collar. Wallace, the family dog, is working in tight circles, licking the floor beneath her, nosing into her lap, getting what he can.

“We used to play with real balls, white balls, none of this neon green, flaming magenta crap,” the father says. “It was a civilized sport, a good game.”

“My serve’s harder than yours,” Matt says to his father.

“No doubt,” the mother says, patting her son on the head, running her fingers through his hair, remembering when…

The old man opens his eyes and looks first at his son and then at the girl. “I hope you teach him good,” he says, and then turns back to his son. “I’ll play you this weekend. I’ll kill you.”

“I have balls,” the little one says, although no one (but me) is paying attention.

A pie. Mama makes a pie. Before she loses her marbles, she makes me something to eat. She goes into the kitchen, takes out her mixing bowls, and starts adding things: flour, salt, baking soda. With her bare hand she scoops Crisco out of the can.

“Peel,” she says, giving me a knife.

With her hands she mixes the things in the bowl, throwing in more flour, an extra pinch of salt. She takes my apples, chops them, sprinkles them with sugar, cinnamon, and a splash of orange juice. She moves fast, frenetically.

“Don’t you need instructions, a card with the rules written on it?”

She taps her head. “Memory,” she says, rolling out the crust.

She is baking as though it’s a game, as though everything is make-believe.

I want to tell her that in order for it to work, it has to be done a certain way. I want to say something but don’t.

The pie goes into the oven. It begins to smell, the smell of apples melting. It begins to smoke.

“Fire,” I cry. “Fire.”

“It’s just the juice,” she says, not even checking. “The juice burning off.”

The pie is gone. I make a tambourine out of the tin, punch it full of holes and hang bottle caps off it. Mama dances around the yard while I bang my tambourine.

Mother is gone — the tambourine has been sold to the Museum in Cincinnati. Burt told me as much.

Is there still a chance I could have some pie?

Back at the house, dinner has come to a standstill, a serious impasse as my characters have stopped eating and speaking and are now sitting, staring at their plates daydreaming for five minutes or more. The terrible trance is broken by the jingle of bells, distant down the block.

“Good Humor,” the littlest one shouts, slapping his hands on the table. He rushes to the door. “Good Humor,” he cries, unable to get the latch. Again there is the tinkle of the treat wagon, and Matthew and the girl are just behind him, all three quickly out the door.

A position held by many I’ve known, one I myself turned down on numerous occasions. It is, simply put, too complicated, rather hazardous, what with all the driving, the serving of the cones, the continuous and unrelenting need to pull the cord that jingles the bell, and all the while trying to do one’s own work. No doubt I would have wrecked the wagon on my very first day. But for those who are more surely coordinated, less inclined to spin the head around and crane backward while moving forward, straining to get one last glimpse, for those who can handle such, it is a wonderful job. A true calling. And there is an ease to the operation: one simply rings a bell beckoning the young ones to submit themselves for inspection. Veritable herds to choose from, and if one doesn’t like the choice, one simply drives to another hamlet, the Middlesex of one’s choice.

The jingle of bells and all the children, our girl included, are caught in a Pavlovian response. They are out of the house and down the flagstone path before the mother makes it to the doorway, shouting, “Do you need money?”

“We have money,” the kids scream back as though this is the least of their worries.

“Get me something,” she cries out. “Something good. And you better get Dad one, too, or he’ll eat yours.”