A. Homes - The End of Alice

On the last verse, while I’m still riding him, I call for audience participation. “Everybody join in, sing along,” I say. “And the rockets’ red glare, the bombs bursting in air…” And then I really throw myself into it. “For the land of the free and the home of the brave.”

I let it come, copious amounts, great gallons of jizz, coursing up, out, and into him. I fill him with my most personal touch, a handy high colonic. I’ve never come so much. Finished, I retreat, zip up. My discharge glistens, an opalescence, like mother-of-pearl shining on his pure white ass. “Who wants some?” I ask, putting him up for grabs, a gracious giveaway. It’s over. It’s all over, anyone can have him now. And sure enough, a line forms. Someone steps on the back of his neck, holding him down. I leave with Clayton on the floor, broken, blubbering, finally getting what he wanted all along. I go back to my cell, so pleased, so happy, so relaxed. I go back to my room and begin to pack. After all, I’m leaving soon.

I’m nothing you can catch now. I am black powder, I am singe, I am the bomb that bursts the night.

Do all little girls have to die?

Yes.

The hiss of the aerosol can, the scent of Lemon Pledge. She is awake. Her mother is dusting her room. The Hoover stands upright, ready. “Finally,” the mother says. “You’re awake. I’ve been working around you.”

“Don’t we have a maid?” the girl asks.

“Once a week,” the mother says. “But things get dirty every day, don’t they?”

The vacuum is on, the white headlight glows against the carpet. “I worry about you,” the mother says over the din. “Aren’t you more worried about breaking a nail?”

“They’re fakes.” The mother taps her nails against the handle of the Hoover. “If one breaks, I just glue on a new one.” She stops vacuuming, picks up a piece of clothing from the floor, folds it, and puts it on top of the dresser. “Are you getting up?” she asks. “It’s a brand-new day.” The girl was awake earlier. She heard her father get up, her mother rising with him. The routine all too familiar. The men work in the city, the city is far away. They get up early, their wives get up with them. While they shower, shave, and dress, the wives make coffee, breakfast. He comes down, she feeds him, he leaves. She eats the leftovers, showers, and begins again when it is time to wake the children.

“Up and at ’em,” the mother says.

“I’m naked,” the daughter says, as though the prospect of seeing such will drive the mother out of the room.

The mother turns away. The girl dresses. The mother talks nonstop. “With a little effort you could be very attractive. If you want people to pay attention, you have to put out the signal. You have to let them know that you’re interested. Are you interested?”

In the bathroom the daughter brushes her teeth. “You got mail,” the mother says through the door. “A postcard from France and another of those letters with no return address. You know, the friends you make now will be with you for the rest of your life. Arrange to see them.” The girl comes out of the bathroom. The mother corners her. “What do you want to do with your life, that’s the question. Any ideas?”

“Where’s the letter?”

“Downstairs.”

I can tell you anything. No matter what, you listen. You don’t pass judgment and that’s a good quality.

I have no judgment — and that’s a problem.

Before I open the envelope I’m already writing you back. My mother is talking. The whole time she talks, I’m writing to you, invisibly in my head. It’s a word-for-word

exchange. I do it to drown her out. Downstairs, she has followed me downstairs. Perhaps I haven’t been entirely honest with you.

I imagine the dining room table set for breakfast. Place mats instead of a tablecloth. Breakfast dishes, yellow with flowers.

“Can I get you something?” her mother asks, having put on an apron like a waitress.

“No,” the girl says.

“Eggs, toast, cereal?”

“No.”

“Coffee, tea?”

“No.”

“Eat your grapefruit, it’s sectioned, it’s easy.”

“No,” the girl says.

The girl goes into the kitchen, boils water, makes herself a cup of cocoa. She puts a pair of Pop-Tarts into the toaster and waits. When they’re ready, she carries everything back upstairs.

“You know I don’t like food wandering around the house,” the mother says.

The girl closes her bedroom door.

I know who you are and I know what you did.

A pause. A silence. I’m not sure how to respond. I reread.

I know who you are and I know what you did.

Does this come as a big surprise? How could she have written me if she hadn’t picked me on purpose — I thought that much was implied. Still, there is something about the way she says it that frightens me.

I know who you are and I know what you did. Doesn’t my address mean anything?

Pardon?

Her street. I live on her street.

Oh, God.

How could you not have noticed?

I was never invited to the house.

Sctfrsdale, of course, it would have to be there. I could go on but don’t. If I were to continue, I’d accidentally and unintentionally reveal the degree to which I’ve so thoroughly confused the correspondent and the beloved. But now that she’s mentioned it, stepped back to say that she is in fact not Alice, clarifying that she is only some lonely neighbor girl, it is all I can do not to ask, Does she have any news, word of Alice’s family? Are they still there? The mother? The sisters? That stepfather, who knows anything about him? The one time we met, I didn’t like him, didn’t like him at all. However, I hold back, feeling that it would be impertinent, even rude, to interrupt at this moment when she is so intent, focused on herself.

Scarsdale — have you lived there long?

Forever. But don’t change the subject, I’m talking now, trying to tell you something. I’ve known about you all along. Your footsteps are deep and leave tracks like mud prints.

Hers is the false poetry of the overly undereducated, and you wonder why I haven’t quoted her more all along?

Leaden, forced, falsified. Pretentious though it may be, I remain convinced that my interpretation, my translation, is a more accurate reflection of her state of mind, far exceeding that which she is able to articulate independently. And while putting words in the mouths of others may be my specialty, my naughty narration is fast becoming a tired thing. I’m running out of steam. Perhaps in my advancing age, I have less to say, that or I’ve lost the strength it takes to wrestle with her. Whatever I suggest the reason to be, the truth is I quote her directly because it’s time she spoke for herself, she is in fact insisting on it, asserting herself over me. And without her interpreter, her translator, you— the reader — are free to make of her what you will. Or perhaps I pull back because I know what comes next. However obvious, my retreat is an attempt to extricate myself, to surrender my responsibility — after all, I know how the story ends. Or perhaps all that’s at play is the cracked logic of the old adage: If you give them enough rope, they’ll hang themselves, literally.

My reason for writing was that I thought it might make me less afraid if I could talk to you, if I could find out who you really are, what makes you tick. What does it mean for a girl like me to write to you? Do you like it? Do you like it a lot? Am I torturing you? I have to be honest with you; plus, there’s not a lot to lose. And what are you going to do anyway — come kill me?