A. Homes: The End of Alice

The volume of her speech escalates, reaching peak when she spits the word tits across the table. “And I’m in a foul mood, always in a foul mood.”

“How’s Gram?”

She hands me the fork.

“Let’s not play this game. I can’t.”

“Of course you can. What, are you crippled?”

The waitress interrupts. “Can I get you anything else?”

“Pie,” Alice says. “Hot apple pie, a la mode. And a cup of tea.”

“Nothing for me,” I say, and the waitress disappears. “Fork,” Alice says.

“No.”

“Where there’s a will, there’s a way.” She slips the fork into my hand.

I pray the tablecloth is really as long as it seems.

I did love. The details I can’t give, they only diminish it, force too many comparisons. She was the one, one in a million.

“Go ahead,” she says.

“I’m not your slave.”

“Then what are you? A dirty old man? Just because no one says anything, because they’re oblivious, doesn’t mean I am. I wasn’t born yesterday.” She is pleased with her tirade. “What you’re doing is illegal.”

“Do you plan to turn me in?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“I can’t let you get away that easily.”

I hold the fork and imagine the four tongs poking her, each one piercing. The pie arrives. Using the fork, I take a bite. The apples are hot. I scald my tongue.

She scrapes a dinner knife back and forth over the tablecloth. “This,” she says, tapping it. “I want you to do it with this.”

I’m sweating, beading up. I put the fork down. I can’t eat any more. “Please,” I say, signaling for the check. “Let’s go.”

“We can’t. I’m not done.” She drinks her tea, slaps the knife in my hand. I refuse and let it fall to the floor. Constant clattering. The other patrons must notice how clumsy we are.

The waitress brings the check. Under the table Alice removes the spoon. She uses it to stir her tea. “Want a sip?”

“Let’s go.”

“I’m turning into a circus act,” she says in the car. “A regular freak show.”

It thunders. A wide swath of lightning divides the sky. I drive back to the motel.

“Now what?” she asks.

I pace the room unable to rest.

Again thunder and lightning. I close the drapes.

She disappears into the bathroom and is gone for a long time.

I worry what she’s doing in there, some god-awful thing, cutting herself with razor blades, eating broken glass, the mood is right for something like that.

“Everything all right?” I ask through the door.

The toilet flushes. She comes out, her face bleached pale white.

“I’m bleeding.”

“Let me see.”

She puts her hand under her dress and then shows me her fingers, tainted red. “It’s blood. You’ve done something awful to me.”

I shake my head. “I didn’t use the knife.”

“I don’t feel well. I don’t feel well at all. My back hurts, my head aches, even my tits are sore.”

Something occurs to me. I reach for her, fit my hand into her, against her will. I pull my fingers out, sniff them, bring them to my mouth. I taste the blood. I have tasted such blood only once before. The flavor is thick, metallic, stale, like something that has built up for a long time. It is missing the tang, the sweet afterbite, of fresh-flowing injury. She is no longer fresh. Her body is expelling itself. I smear the sample onto the white motel notepad.

“A little lesson,” I say, tapping my bloody fingers on the paper. “You’re menstruating.”

“You did this to me,” she cries.

“Is what I’m saying so thoroughly unfamiliar? Didn’t anyone ever talk to you about it?”

She shakes her head.

“Penelope? Gwen? Don’t they tell you anything?”

“You cut me with the knife.”

“How could you not know?”

“You cut me.”

“I didn’t,” I say, although admittedly I’m worried. There was the spoon and of course there is always the possibility of injury, one can easily tear or puncture something.

“You’re a disgusting and dirty old man, a horrible thing.

Don’t even talk to me. I don’t want to hear you. Your words get in my head. I don’t want to think like you. I don’t want to be anything like you. I hate you.”

“I can explain everything.”

“This is Alice,” the man says.

Eight by ten. Glossy. The photographs are presented as though they’re proof.

In a way I saved her, I hope you can understand that. I spared her a situation that would only get worse. She was a girl, unfit to become a woman.

“This is Alice,” the committeeman says. “Can we have your attention. Can I ask you to take a look?”

I look. I do. I look. I close my eyes. My mind unwinds like a spool, spilling thoughts. Photographs.

“Don’t try and humor me.” She begins to cry. “I want my… I want my….” She bellows, unable to fill in the blank. “I want my…,” she repeats, unable to name her desire. “I need a doctor,” she concludes.

“You don’t need a doctor.”

“Don’t tell me what I need.”

Her overnight bag is open, she’s rummaging through it. It’s filled with things, books, toys, parts of her tea set, the strangest assortment of stuff. Her hunting knife is in her hand. It’s out of its sheath. She’s flashing it at me, all the while holding her stomach. “I’m in pain.”

I move toward her.

This is Alice. The guard puts a photograph in front of my eyes.

Images explode like fireworks. I feel the heat in my head, the rupture, the rapture, the warm rush of release.

“He’s wet his pants.”

“Disgusting.”

I forgot to go. This morning I forgot to go.

“Pissed his pants.”

“This is Alice,” they say, and another photograph is in front of me.

The end of Alice.

“Don’t come near me or I’ll kill you. I swear I will.”

“Put it down,” I say. “It’s perfectly normal. Every month from now on, you’ll bleed like this for a few days, and then it will be over. That’s the way it goes.”

“I don’t believe you. You’re making excuses for yourself, for what you’ve done to me. Stop. Stop lying.”

I shake my head.

She cries, puts her hand over the spot, clutching herself, as if she can hold it in, push it back inside her.

“It’s perfectly normal. In your underwear you wear a napkin to catch it.” I say this realizing that she has no idea of what I’m talking about, realizing that I sound insane. How does one explain a napkin, as if to dab at one’s face, to place a heavy bandage between the legs. I can’t bring myself to say more. It doesn’t matter anyway. She is inconsolable.

“This is Alice,” the committeeman says again and again, and each time the guard shows me another photograph.

“Tell us what you see.”

A Rorschach in reverse. Red, lots of red, like geraniums, dark red like autumn leaves. Red and brown and black. Trees, the leaves of trees, wind through the leaves, the texture of bark.

“Look again, what do you see?” the black woman asks.

“Flowers, trees, a path through the woods, a woman disappearing.” I refuse to see what they want me to see. I will see only what I want to see, my desire, my vision. I see myself as above them. The pain builds in my chest, spreads, stealing my breath. Something is happening to me. I don’t remember to forget.

“This is Alice,” they say.

I nod. I know Alice. I know all about Alice.

“The end of Alice.”

The storm. Lightning crashes. The lights go off, then on again, punctuating our dialogue.

“You cut me,” she howls. “I’ll bleed until I’m drained. My heart will grow fainter and fainter and then it will stop. It will just stop. You’ve killed me,” she screams.