A. Homes - The End of Alice

In the morning I pack. If nothing else, they will want me gone. If I’m lucky, they will simply send someone to say that given the circumstances I should leave. I take my boxes from the storage shed and fill them carelessly with the exception of the gifted butterfly collection, which I wrap carefully, using my summer clothes as padding.

I hate this place. This damned lake.

Before dawn, I have filled the trunk with all but the essentials. And then I begin to wait. I cannot leave before I’ve been given the signal, before someone says go. If I jump the gun, it will seem as though I’m running, as though I have something to hide.

For four days I sit in the house waiting for word. No one comes. House arrest. I sit, I stand, I walk from bed to chair, to table, to desk, imploding, exploding, going entirely insane.

Finally, there’s a knock on the door.

“Yes,” I call from inside the house. The moment has come, and although I’ve been waiting, suddenly it’s unexpected.

“It’s Gwen,” a voice says through the door. “Sorry to interrupt.”

I open the door. “How is she?” I ask, fearing that I seem all a fraud.

“It’s Gram,” she says. “Gram’s not well. The doctor thinks she’s had a stroke. We’re flying her to New York. They’re taking her to the airport in an ambulance, but our car’s not starting and, well, could you give us a lift?”

“Of course. Right now?”

“Yes.”

“Let me just get my wallet.”

At the house they’re already loading the beloved Gram. She’s propped up on a stretcher, a green plastic oxygen mask over her mouth, well tended, tucked in with many blankets, her gray hair wrapped like a crown around her head.

“They’re taking her to Columbia Presbyterian,” Gwen says, jumping out of the car, running to help Penelope with the bags.

I get out and open the back doors, nodding in the direction of the mother, who’s talking with the attendants. She ignores me.

“The trunk is full,” I tell the girls, who then pile their bags into the back. I look around for my beloved, but she’s nowhere to be seen, there’s not even a hint of her. And then finally she comes out the back door, overnight bag in hand, restrained, even sheepish. I’m flooded with a rush of affection. My blood swirls, races to hot spots.

“I did it,” she whispers as she’s getting in the car. “I told her about you and it killed her. Now, I’m a murderer, too.”

Fear that she’s really spoken such grips my chest, grabs my heart, nearly stopping it. My knees buckle. I lean against the car.

“Alice dear,” her mother says, “don’t cause trouble.”

We follow the ambulance out.

“Sorry you weren’t able to meet Gram,” Gwendolyn says to me.

“She’s not dead yet,” Penelope adds.

“Well, she can’t last forever,” Gwen says.

“If you don’t mind,” the mother adds. “She is, after all, my mother.”

“Sorry.”

They are quiet. The mother turns to Alice. “While we’re in New York, maybe we’ll have you checked. Make sure there’s no real damage.”

“My head still hurts,” Alice says.

“They said it would for at least ten days.”

In my rearview mirror Alice seems small again, a girl, not a monster. She clutches the overnight bag on her lap as if it holds something precious.

At the airport, the plane is waiting. The grandmother’s stretcher is carried up the steps. The two older girls and the mother follow. Alice refuses to go.

“I can’t,” she screams, suddenly stricken. “Just go without me.”

“There isn’t time for this,” the mother says, coming back down the steps, taking Alice’s hand. “Get on the plane.”

“No,” Alice shouts, pulling away, throwing herself down on the tarmac and having a tantrum befitting a two-year-old.

“Watch your head,” her mother says. “Don’t bang your head again.”

Alice kicks and screams most embarrassingly — not only for herself but for all of us.

“I’m going to have to call a psychiatrist,” the mother says. “But I can’t right now, so just pick yourself up and get on that plane. Gram’s inside and we have to go.”

The engine starts. The propeller spins. There’s wind in the air. Gwen and Penelope stand at the top of the steps. The mother starts to cry.

“Would you like me to carry her up?” I ask.

“Is that what you want?” her mother says. “To be carried like an infant?”

Alice weeps and shakes her head.

“Ridiculous,” the mother shouts. She pulls at Alice, who’s made herself into cement.

“I can’t fly,” Alice howls. “I can’t fly.”

Although I’m trying to stay out of it, I feel responsible. “I could drive her to New York,” I say. “We could leave immediately and meet you there this evening.”

A man from the airport comes and speaks to the mother. “We have to go,” the mother says to Alice. “Are you coming with us?”

Alice shakes her head. “No.” Snot is running down her face, her hair hangs down past her chin.

“Then will you go with him in the car to New York?” the mother asks, gesturing toward me suspiciously.

Alice nods. I’m surprised, but secretly pleased.

“No shenanigans?” the mother says.

Alice nods again.

“I trust you to behave.” The mother says to me, “Columbia Presbyterian. And if you’re not there by ten o’clock, I’ll call the police.” She is up the steps, the door is sealed. Alice stands aside and the plane pulls away.

We’re alone on the tarmac.

“Well, it’s good to see you,” I say.

She doesn’t speak, but climbs into the car, claiming the backseat for her own. I’m her chauffeur, servant, slave. I drive her away.

“I lost the ring,” she says after a while. “In the lake. It must have fallen off.” She stops. “Does that mean we’re divorced?”

I shake my head.

“You must hate me.”

“No.”

“Well, I hate you.” And then she is silent. Hours pass. I stop for coffee, she declines to get out. I stop and buy myself a fresh shirt, a new toothbrush. I ask her if there’s anything she needs. She pats her case. “I have everything.” Every time I leave the car, I watch her out of the corner of my eye, afraid she will bolt, run away, and leave me in deeper trouble.

Near North Chelmsford, we stop at a roadside stand. “What’ll it be?”

“I’m not hungry.” She’s in the backseat, doing her nails. The sedan stinks of polish.

“Yes, but you should have something anyway.”

“Then just bring me the usual. And a vanilla milk shake.”

“We’re a little south for clam rolls.”

“Hot dogs then. With relish.”

I’m so glad to see her, so terrified and terrorized.

“Don’t ever leave me again,” she says when I get back in the car.

“Why?” I ask, meaning Why did you jump in the lake, why did you try to leave me, why can’t I leave you? Why? “I have no one else.”

“Your mother, the sisters, Gram.”

“It’s not the same.”

At every turn, every cash register we pass, I buy her something: postcards, comic books, candy. All the while she stays in the car, except twice to pee, asking me then to take her to the ladies’ room, to wait just outside.

“My head,” she says. “It’s not all right.”

“You seem more or less like yourself.”

“Less,” she says. “Less all the time. Everything is changing. I’m changing. It’s awful, disgusting, and I can’t make it stop.”

Despite the fact that visiting hours are over when we arrive at the hospital, they let us go up. The pale hues of the walls, the silence, cling like a death mask. The grandmother is tucked in, the girls and the mother are saying good-night. The stepfather from Scarsdale stands in the corner.