Charles Bock - Alice & Oliver

Jefferson Market was acceptable enough, she guessed. Probably too in love with its pedigree for her tastes, and with prices that should have landed them in prison. Katherine loaded up, anyway. The store’s color-coded grid of neighborhoods didn’t include her daughter’s, which meant they wouldn’t deliver; but no matter, Alice’s mother dutifully loaded her grocery bags into a wire rolling cart. Empty cabs zipped past her, and when one finally stopped, the driver asked if she was going uptown, then explained in broken English, Shift over, have to get cab back, sorry. No matter. She continued with the loaded cart, and for a time admired the city’s hugeness, its teeming streets, even as she disliked and feared all… this. It took her some time. The pads of her feet got sore. Her right knee and hip ached. She stopped for bottled water.

Back at home, she turned stove burners on low and searched through cupboards for the right pans, until she remembered they were hanging above the nook. All the while she kept murmuring, continuing her indecipherable running monologue.

You are everything, I love you so much was what she used to tell her daughter when Alice was young.

—

Mouth accepted spoonful. The fluid, runny substance mashed between molars, onto her tongue, against her cheek’s inner cavity.

Without any visual prompts to guide her, without expectations or ideas, she tasted what immediately became apparent as liquid, not water, almost viscous. Light enough, though, with a tang. It was hot. Alice savored a mouthful. Another.

“Sends me right back to being a little girl and coming home from school.” She cooed. “Momma, I love your tomato soup.”

During his evolution toward Buddhaness, Alice knew, the Buddha went through an ascetic phase, one in which he denied himself, each day, all food save one grain of rice and one drop of water. By this train of thinking, suffering could provide. Perhaps it did not provide enlightenment, but instead a means toward enlightenment. Alice figured she had this suffering thing down pat. Perhaps, she reasoned, the narrowing funnel of her visual capabilities could provide her with direction. By narrowing her own focus, maybe she could widen her capabilities, deepen and enrich every remaining sensory experience.

She slowed her thoughts, concentrated, focusing on the smallish grains resting in her soup. Oblong. Thick in texture.

“I get couscous,” she said.

Another sip, a round solid substance, fibrous, with a give, her teeth sinking in. “And carrots. Mmm. Is that cumin?”

“A dash of harissa, too,” her mother answered.

Alice nodded, the name providing access.

Her mother handed her what she said was challah bread. Mom stumbled over the rough ch, her effort game and respectful and a bit comic.

Alice dipped the spongy slice, soaking it; she took a bite, let out a groan of appreciation.

“The world can open in new ways.”

“Sweetheart?”

Alice felt for and gripped and squeezed her mother’s hands, enveloping their bony strength. She took a breath and exhaled.

“I can exist like this.”

—

That afternoon, when Oliver came back from the other office, and entered the darkened bedroom, she was beneath Gramma’s patchwork quilt, in a fetal curl.

“Get out while you can,” she moaned.

Without delay he was on the move, heading right for the walk-in closet, in short order emerging with a sealed plastic bin. “I’m an idiot. Why I didn’t think of this sooner?” Overturning the container, dumping out small black objects shaped like bats. “All these just stored away,” Oliver said. He picked up a pair, checked the lenses. “How do you tell if one has lots of protection?”

She settled on a pair of oval couture Versaces that looked superpunkish, their arms crafted to look like steel safety pins. Today their appeal lay in their streamlined dark lenses, curving around the ridges of the eye like swimming goggles, sealing off all angles of light. Alice remembered them as a score, the primo takeaway item from a goodie bag given to her by a friend of a friend — a model turned trophy wife who’d decided to launch her own line during Fashion Week, hold her own, guerrilla-style show right on the sidewalk outside Bryant Park’s tents. Alice had pulled an all-nighter, alternately sewing and fixing like a banshee, holding the hand of this coked-up madwoman. Somehow, they’d managed to get the cocktail dresses close to wearable. The goodie bag had been Alice’s payment, the sunglasses worn five times then lost in the bowels of her closet.

An aftershave she’d given Oliver for the holidays had a subtle combination — cloves and cinnamon and pepper. It reminded her of the pleasure of snuggling into his chest late at night. The connection between her senses and memories provided a small charge. A belief in her own abilities.

She could open her eyes, Oliver promised, it would be fine.

She ran her hand down the side of his face, appreciating the sandpapery feel of fledgling facial hair, as well as the lightly oiled flesh beneath. Bracing, she creaked her eyes a sliver.

The lenses did their job, layering the room in brown film. And it was indeed a pleasure to recognize features she well knew, the patient concern in his brow, his widening smile.

He’d shaved recently, she noticed, which charmed her no end.

“Let me take you to the care center,” he pleaded again.

“All I need is fresh air. Maybe we could take a little walk?”

Just around the block? A walk would give her some exercise. So her legs didn’t atrophy? And it would give her mom a chance to change the sheets and air things out — this room was so claustrophobic. Alice’s pulse raced through each spoken phrase: she had the perfect floppy straw hat, the hugest brim. She’d put on a thick medical mask. Alice knew her blood levels were still low, she promised Oliver she didn’t want to make anything worse. It would be so good for her.

The ringing intruded, always at the worst moment. She could tell from Oliver’s shift, his low Jesus, this could be a problem.

But no. She would not let it. Jeans that once had formed a second skin now were comically baggy, and Alice played this up, taking a while to belt them a second time. Though her feet had inflated into small rafting devices, a pair of running sneakers could fit as long as she didn’t wear socks. She completed the ensemble with a knee-length coat of distressed denim, its neckline fringed, white cotton shredded to look like feathers. “After all these years”—Alice laughed—“I’ve become Little Edie. Finally. ”

She felt immediately ashamed, wallowing like that; nonetheless, momentum was flowing, the evening under way. “A respite from my own private Grey Gardens.”

Oliver pressed on her shoulder, and joined in with the fun, kissing her cheek, throwing his own idea into the soup.

Now Doe saw Daddy taking the harness from off the closet door. Recognizing that she, too, was going on an adventure, the baby drooled, spat with glee, little limbs flailing.

Alice reminded: Doe should face inward, toward him.

“Way ahead of you.”

Out of the elevator, into the short hallway, overhead halogen sending crackles of fear through her ears, Alice tightly closed her eyes, said “Oliver.” Her cornstalk legs trembled and her balance was unsteady, those ridiculous clown feet like sponges. Yet again, there he was: his arm a solid brick anchor around her waist, his prompts deliberate, his words soothing, his manner careful. “Small steps, all right, that’s it, doing great.” He propped open the front door, his body providing leverage, his hand guiding her forward. “In three steps, you will have the first stair, we need to go down it to get to the street. Okay, one step and now, step. Now, again, step. ”