A. Homes: The End of Alice

“Sweetie,” her mother repeated, following the still youthful one as she walked back and forth, a carnivore suddenly trapped, her mother’s heels tap-dancing behind her. “I asked you, where are you going?”

Our hero turned to her mater and bellowed, “Out,” blowing the breath of ripe desire into her mother’s face. The mother, overwhelmed, stepped back as the daughter went quickly out the door, slamming the heavy wooden bottle stop, the gate to the tomb, behind her.

Outside. The great wide Westchester open held the clarity of a late-May morning. The flowers through the earth, buds coming to bloom, the New York State sky, clear and bright, the air neither warm nor cold, but just right, and the silence of the suburban streets spread thick like a woolen blanket muffling whatever sound or impulse might lurk just beneath.

Down and around she wound, figuring to take the long way, the way that was no way at all, figuring to seem as though she had no objective. To walk directly to his home, to stand at the foot of the drive, binoculars pointed at his bedroom window, would be so painfully obvious, so pathetically boring, so terribly devoid of pathos, of anticipation, of all that creates mood and memory, that it was unthinkable. And thank God that it would not even occur to her. Thank God her mind was subtle and cunning enough to not even entertain such stupidity. Forgive me now for even having mentioned it.

Her heart is full as she rounds the corner. His father’s castle is intact. The garage door stands open, she sees the toys — bicycles, sleds, skis, a canoe — the very props of the charade, laid up against the interior wall. For each she can construct a scenario, a scene and manner in which she’d like to see them used. She sees the family station wagon at rest, its bumpers clotted from the childish — hence uneven — application of what some might consider humor. If U Can Read This Then UR 2 Close; Drummers Do It to the Beat; Honk If You Like…. In a bustle of commotion, hurr and whir, the younger brother comes speeding down the drive on his “Big Wheel” bike. Here I quote her directly, somewhat unsure of exactly what is described, but imagining something akin to a unicycle. She sees this little one but is neither amused nor interested — too wiggly. She knows from having done a semester’s work in a nursery project, having zipped and unzipped, pulled down and up so many pairs of pants, having witnessed up close the peculiarities of infantile privates in plumpest form. She would have to say that, while it is sweet, while it is tender, it is simply not enough; nothing more than the stuff of a lovely brooch, a modern sculpture to be worn by the envious have-nots. The cherubic cock and balls, like so many other miniatures, like the bony baby bird, better observed than ordered, better taken in from across the room than taken on one’s own plate. And so she stood on the sidewalk watching the small sibling until such time as he began to watch her back, and then she nodded and moved off down the street toward the school yard.

Her boy had been under observation for several years— he was of course not her first; there had been other, earlier experiments — but this was to be, she hoped, the first complete conquest. He had been discovered two years ago in the most old-fashioned way — on the playground behind the school. He was nine or ten and flanked by twin attendants, the assemblage of his ego, the entire entourage struggling to master the athletic form of the skateboard. The board was new and he on it was rather uncoordinated. All three boys were at that age of supreme softness where muscles waiting to bloom are coated in a medium-thick layer of flesh, highly squeezable. They were at the point where if someone were to take such a child, to roast or to bake him, he would be most flavorful. Our girl thought it a shame, a missed opportunity, that in the environs of Westchester and Dutchess Counties everyone not be treated to a taste of young flesh. She thought that perhaps, once or twice a year, as part of some great festival, one of each, boy and girl, should be prepared and the residents given a skewerful accompanied by lovely roasted onions, carrots, cherry tomatoes, peppers, the stuff of shish kebabs. But grudgingly she acknowledged that such a biannual event might result in a feeding frenzy, destroying the species, rendering it extinct. After all, for centuries it has been said that once certain animals taste meat, there is no going back, and for sure the pubescent boy and girl are of that most ripe, red, and succulent category that would cause such a reaction. Quite possibly just the scent of their juices spilling off the rack could start carnivores round the world salivating uncontrollably and charging the exits of national and international borders. Therefore in principle she agreed — although I am not so easily swayed — that while this massive public tasting was probably not in order, the denial of it encouraged, even begged for, a little nibbling at home.

She longs to sample him, but has waited, given him first a year and then a second summer of slow roasting, and now has returned, hoping to find him close to perfection, done. She drools.

The school yard is empty. Swings stand still. A woman with an empty stroller passes through, calling, “Jeffrey, Jeffrey, I know you’re here, come out, come out wherever you are.”

She marches on — our good soldier — quickly cutting across the painted playing surfaces, four squares and hopscotches, and crosses to the broader street leading toward town. Until now it hadn’t occurred to her that it might take hours, days, to find him, that he might have been sent off somewhere for a summer’s vacation. Panic dizzies her, blurs her vision, but the outline, the single-story skyline of town in the distance, keeps her to her goal.

If he is gone, all will be lost, all there ever was to be— after so much careful cultivation — was this one summer, this, the shining moment, the last rush of beauty and hope. By October her boy will be too bulky, brawny, full of himself. But here, now, there remains the fragile, the supple, the heat so close to the heart.

Camp. She hopes his clothing has not been anointed with iron-on identification tags, first-middle-last-name, has not been packed up in some hand-me-down canvas sack and tossed into a tall bus bound for the green hills, the blue mountains, the great glassy lakes of the upper Northeast. On a rampage, she imagines learning his exact location from the weekly required letters that the mailman unceremoniously stuffs into his parents’ mailbox.

“Dear Mom and Dad, I’m playing lots of tennis, learning riflery, arts and crafts. Accidently hit a kid from Rhode Island with a golf club, he had to get stitches, but no one likes him anyway so it’s okay. Send my goggles and some decent — not sugarless, definitely bubble — gum. Love.”

She will hunt him down, slither through the gates posing as a new member of the kitchen staff, and butcher knife in hand, will slip from cabin to cabin during the night sampling bits and pieces, a few in every bunk, until she finds him.

Camp. Evergreens. A mess hall of logs and mortar. Squat cabins dotting the acres. The air inside the cabin is dank, filled with the pungent meaty odor of boys. Not a clue that civilization is within rifle’s range. Here they train, sending arrows through the sky, rigging masts and line, studying the identification marks of both spider and snake, embarking on evening expeditions, survival nights spent deep in the wood, skin painted with insect repellent, Six-Twelve, Cutter’s, each camper equipped with a flashlight, Hershey bar, and Morse-code ring. She thinks of the five hundred boys, the excitement, the charge of their raunchy and rustic range as compared to her own memories of summers spent segregated, sent with a thousand girls to the hills of Pennsylvania. Swimming the dark and mossy lake, ankles kissed by slipper fish, feet taken by the mysterious murk at the bottom, the waterland, an unidentifiable mush forever threatening to open and swallow a plump young camper with a single gulp, a great burp bubbling to the surface. The sharp sting of the guardian’s tin whistle beckons the little ones out of the water, back onto terra firma. From here, even with my obstructed view, I feel I can see them as though in the full light of day; the water beading on their skin, the nylon, the crocheted cotton of their suits, clinging. I see the outlines of thighs, plump and perfect buttocks, hard pin-headed nipples, the sloping, small, dainty V marking the smooth slit, the path to the queen’s palace. I see them breaststroking, sidestroking, crawling their way to health and good fortune, and God, I want one, any one would do. I want not so much to see her — that would be too much, would force too many comparisons — but to blind myself, to close my eyes and simply feel her. And perhaps, as though I were some crippled old man, she would take pity on me and lie next to me on this thin, narrow cot.