A. Homes - The End of Alice

“Defendant graduated University of Virginia, Charlottesville, May 1961. Pursued menial jobs, moving frequently. Relocated Philadelphia, PA, 1969, last employment prior to arrest, Phil’s Foot Parlor, a children’s shoe store, employed eighteen months — no difficulties.”

As they begin to tell the tale, I realize it is my story they’re telling. They’re telling my story and they’re getting it wrong. That or twisting it on purpose, forcing me to correct them, to add to their file, filling in the bits and pieces they didn’t have before. Like a fairy tale, a myth, or the game of telephone, each time it’s repeated, it changes. The exception being that I know what really happened, I was there, witness and participant. This is the story of my life.

“It belongs to me,” I shout. “Me. Mine. It’s not yours to tell. You’ve got it all wrong.”

A guard comes forward, hissing in my ear, “Didn’t you see Bambi} Don’t you remember when Thumper says: ‘If you don’t have anything nice to say, then don’t say anything at all’? It’s not necessary to comment.”

A pain cuts through my chest and into my arm. “Defendant departed Philadelphia in white Rambler station wagon, Pennsylvania plate MJB 464, proceeding to the state of New Hampshire, where through an advertisement in the New York Times he arranged to rent a cabin from the Somerfield family. Defendant took possession of the cabin on May twenty-first, 1971. A short time later defendant meets Alice Somerfield, the twelve-and-a-half-year-old granddaughter of his landlord, at a nearby lake.”

Yes. Yes, I met her at the lake. I told you this before. She appeared out of nowhere on the pebbly beach by the lake in madras shorts, cinched at the waist with a length of rope, an old hunting knife hanging off her hip, white Keds, no socks, red nail polish — half picked off — blond hair, blue eyes, like Pippi Longstocking gone awry. She tied me to a tree and then disappeared. There and gone, like a figment of my imagination.

Later, I hear a noise in the woods and am drawn to the window hoping to see her. Every day, I swim in the lake with my eyes on the shore, watching. Once, I see her high on a hill, chasing after something with her butterfly net.

June 18, I return from the lake and find at my door a dead butterfly affixed to a piece of yellow construction paper. Its name, “Hoary Elfin,” is printed neatly below. Around the border, scrawled in the waxy calligraphy of Crayola, is an invitation: Tea tomorrow, 4 p.m. The invite is accompanied by a small separate map consisting of a squiggly line — I take to be illustrative of a path through the woods — and two X marks, one labeled “you are here” and the other “I am here.”

Everything is crystal clear. The same size and shape as some missing part of me. She is the piece that completes the puzzle.

She lives alone in a small cabin that was once her grandmother’s playhouse — hardly bigger than a bread box — but with cold running water and an old camping stove. Her tea set is chipped crockery, china from England. “Gram’s,” she says. “But I’m glad she can’t make it out anymore. The chips would bother her.”

Her costume for the event is an antique lace and linen blouse — clearly a cherished thing — now several sizes too small, pulling across the chest, binding under the arms, neatly tucked into a blue and green plaid skirt like the uniform from Our Lady of Pompei.

“A girl’s got to live, doesn’t she?” she asks, banging the dishes around, setting her table. “What’s the use of having something if you can’t break it.”

My sentiments exactly.

When I am overstimulated, all of life becomes more extreme, my senses heighten, colors saturate, turning into the high hysterical hues of shock, horror, and ecstasy.

Nothing could be more perfect. She has a certain je ne sais quoi, call it a kind of charm. A lucky charm. Magically delicious.

We settle down to tea: I sit perched precariously on a three-legged stool and behave politely. She serves cookies she’s been saving since last Christmas.

“Haven’t opened the tin since December twenty-sixth. I was hoarding them for an occasion.”

“Surprisingly crisp,” I say, biting the head off a snowman.

She crosses one leg over the other and I can’t help but notice, not the skinned knee, not the bruised shin, but the writing on the bottom of her shoe, neat print.

“Tell me about your sneakers,” I say, children’s feet of course being my area of expertise.

“On the right is Emily Dickinson, 712, and on the left, the one you’re looking at, is Sylvia Plath, ‘Lady Lazarus.’ ‘Out of the ash I rise with my red hair and I eat men like air.’ ”

Disturbingly disarming. I nod appreciatively.

She smiles. “It drives Mother crazy, especially when I put Ferlinghetti on my patent leathers. She hates modern poetry.”

“And who is your favorite poet?” I ask, admittedly condescending.

“I have no favorite,” she says. “A person my age should have many poets.”

The conversation pauses. I take a sip of tea and eat the whole of an old iced Christmas stocking. The ancient icing shatters between my teeth.

“And how long have you been interested in lepidoptera?”

She jumps up and shows me her supplies, her net, killing jar, spreading board, insect pins, etc. “My sister’s boyfriend taught me everything last summer. I’ve got quite a collection.” She digs out a set of Schmitt display boxes from under the daybed. “But she’s broken up with him now, so I guess I’ll have to get a new hobby.”

“Why?”

“It’s just how it goes,” she says, shrugging and again taking her place at the tea table. She pours me a fresh cup and I eat another cookie, this time faintly detecting the air of rancidity.

“I almost had a hysterestimy this year,” she says. “But I decided against it.”

“Oh, really?”

“It seemed unnecessary. I resolved it could wait.”

“One always should get a second opinion with serious conditions.”

She nods gravely. “Let’s not discuss it anymore. Do you play jacks?”

“As often as I am asked.”

We move to the floor, taking with us our cracked teacups — she has brewed a bold Darjeeling. We work our way through twosies, threesies, and fours. I win twice and wonder if she is intentionally throwing me the games.

“In your whole life, what’s the most awful thing you ever did?”

Without knowing anything, she knows too much. On the first date she has cut to the core; I have nothing but the deepest respect for a girl like this.

“Would you mind if we switched to Parcheesi?” I ask.

She takes out the game and sets up the board.

“The worst thing you ever did to anyone?” she quizzes again.

We roll for first.

“I killed my mother,” I say — with no choice but to answer honestly.

“Really?”

“Really.” (Definitely.)

“Really?” she asks again, almost gleeful in her disbelief, as if she finds it humorous or otherwise entertaining. “Yes.”

“Are you sure?”

“That’s how I remember it.”

“Did anyone try and stop you?”

“They encouraged me, but I didn’t know it at the time.”

“Really?” She has won the roll. She shakes the dice and sends them across the board. “Five and three. Really?”

“You’re starting to sound like a stuck record.” I take my turn.

“What did your father say?”

“He died when I was five. And what about your father?” I ask, turning the table.

She shrugs. “I saw him once — well, saw a picture of him. Mother says I took it from her and tore it to pieces. Mother says that’s all there was, there isn’t any more. A short marriage.” She holds up her cup, indicating I should refill it. “Why’d you kill her?”