A. Homes - The End of Alice

Another time, older still, I go off into the woods with my secret stash. In broad daylight of an Independence morn, I fire my works at the rising sun, hold the Roman candle in my hand, light the line, and send off balloons of color, sour balls of light, all of it aimed toward that stronger light. There was something sad about sending up at the height of day, sadder still than in the night. I set my sno-cone in an empty field, lit the fuse, and while it rained, danced around the flames, letting them shower me, dotting my skin with bits of glittering light, stinging me like an insect’s bite.

Prison night. Elbow in my side. “You eating yours?” Frazier asks, pointing at my Cracker Jacks. I shake my head and hand him the box. It is better this way. I used to love Cracker Jacks and caramel corn, but just from having it in hand, I can feel how far gone it is, how passe. After so long an absence, so many years, nothing would be worse than eating stale candy.

Mama is home from the asylum. She takes me to the baths — you remember that — and then to a cheap motel. “Widow’s got to watch her wallet,” she says, pouring herself a glass of gin. “My medication,” she calls it. “I am a woman who needs her medication. Here”—she holds out the glass to me—“take a taste, it won’t kill you.”

I shake my head.

She lies down on the bed. “A little nap,” she says. Her head is down on the pillow and she is asleep.

I wash my hand. Soap and water. I wash my hand and arm up to the elbow. I wash my hand until it is burning red, until the skin can’t get any cleaner without being taken off, boiled, and hung out to dry. I scrub myself thoroughly.

My mother lies facedown on the white chenille bedspread, her fingers reading the braille rose, the white relief, the dit-dit-da dashing of Morse code like a somnambulist. My eyes grow heavy and I lie next to her. Her arm hooks around me. Mama and her boy in a close knot. My hand beats, pulses, throbs with the memory of her on my fist. Mama fitted around me. And me pushing hard and harder against her, into her. I reach beneath the blankets and touch myself. When I wake up, Mama is gone. The sheets are peeled back, and in the middle of the pit where Mama had lain, there is a bright blush of red, a thick red streak, blood. I scream. “Blood. There’s blood.”

She is in the bathroom, I can hear the whining of the hot and cold taps. My fault. All my fault.

“My curse,” Mama says through the bathroom door. “It’s my curse.”

And then the door opens and she is dressed, made for the day. “Did you sleep?” she asks. “Dream a pleasant dream?” She speaks as if singing, writing herself little lyrics, little lines. She is fine, like herself, like she has always been, exactly as I remember her. Were it not for my hand, my sore hand, I would think it had not happened at all. I would think it was something that had leapt out of me, a bit of my imagination. Me. It must be me. My stomach turns. It is I who’s slipped through God’s graces and done such a terrible thing. My hand beats, pulses, throbs with the terrible reminder, and yet she seems without these after-effects. I want to lift her dress, snake my fingers, my eyes, into what lies in that lost location, searching to see if beneath its protective costume, its mask, it is truly unaffected, unamused, or whether it is indeed weeping, seeping from the events.

She acts as if everything is as it has always been, as if she is still my mother and I her son.

“You look a little pale, do you need some lipstick?”

Her hand dips under her dress, her legs bow slightly, she pulls out fingers dipped in rust. She paints blood across my lips.

Strontium red stains the sky.

One if by land, two if by sea, you fuck me with your history. Thomas J. and the nation’s birthday — it’s like Marilyn singing to JFK. I come real close and whisper breathless in your ear, “Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you, you merciless fuck, on this the anniversary of your Independence Day.” Seventy-six trombones at the big parade, and the only horn we hear is the farting bleat of the tower tuba when someone tries to escape. We, the captured and convicted, are kept bound and chained so that we might not destroy the fragile foundations of this great society — there is so much subtext between the lofty lines. I have memorized the document my correspondent sent — I have gone over it replaying the words of our most independent declaration:

“When in the course of human events…”

A sick trick you play, keeping us jailed on Independence Day. Better it would be if we stayed inside and passed it oh so quietly. Better yet, let’s pretend — as we so often do — it never happened.

Revolution! Light flashes against the false horizon, the old stone walls. The ramparts are being bombed while we are held inside, a secret cache, war’s prize. Regiments of proud perverts have been rounded up, recruited from every backroom bar, brothel, and jolly house up and down your stinky streets, and they’re here now on the distant shore preparing to charge these steely gates. Inside, we rattle our chains, our holy cuffs, and pray aloud that our side wins. Dark victory.

A blue mum explodes in the sky. Clayton, in the row ahead of me, turns and winks. He looks at me and licks his lips. I curl my tongue around a haul of spit and fire it straight at him.

Amber, amber, white. Again, chrysanthemums of light.

She writes: I’m kind of a romantic, are you? Despite my weirdness, I’m pretty old-fashioned.

Alice, darling, dear one, where are you?” A woman’s voice calls through the woods.

“I’m hiding,” Alice answers.

“Where are you?”

“I’m hiding.”

“Sweetie, pumpkin, darling, where are you?”

“Hiding.”

“I’m driving into town to pick up a few things. I thought I’d buy you a little something. Do you want to pick it out yourself? Where are you?”

“Coming,” she screams, quickly gathering her quiver, her bow, and remaining supplies.

She takes off up the hill, leaving me naked, tied to the tree. “See you later,” she calls to me.

The ease with which she abandons me is thrilling. I am naked in the New Hampshire woods, tied to a tree. The rough bark rubs my buttocks raw as I wiggle trying to free myself. I have been bound and tied by a wicked wood nymph. I writhe. My tumescence rises farther still, stimulated by my situation. A breeze stirs the trees, sweeping over, tickling me. I sneeze first, then cum, shooting off aimlessly into the afternoon.

Confused. I am confusing her with another one. I am lost in time. I begged myself not to play this game, she is not that girl but some other one. Are they all the same? How many were there, can my fingers count that high? Memory is such an elusive thing. I had none until the letters arrived, and now I am like a man unleashed. Until these days, this high holy night, it was as if my history had slipped away from me. I remembered nothing — but never told them that, too embarrassing. I played along, quite ashamed at the recalcitrance of my recollection whenever official inquiries were made, a gentle tap, tapping on my mental door, “Excuse me, sir, we want to ask about one more. Did you do it, yes or no?”

“God, yes,” I’d declare, convinced that their criminal concoctions were quite conservative compared to what crimes I’d convinced myself that I’d committed. “God, yes,” I’d confess to anything, sure that in fact I’d done far worse. Far, far worse.

And now I wonder…

Am I losing my mind or just getting it back? Suddenly, I know too much, can all too well recall the details of my atrocities.

There is an elbow in my rib. “Stop mumbling,” Frazier says. “You’re talking in your sleep.”