Vincent and Alice and Alice

by Shane Jones

  “Do you ever think of painting again?” she asks as we ascend the thick gravel path. An older couple to the side of us is really struggling. They move as if walking through a pool of oil. Then the man throws his hands up and heads carefully back down the hill, arms extended like he’s touching walls, saying, “I can’t do this anymore… with you.”

  Maybe those who like to sit have the right idea.

  “Not really,” I say shrugging. “I’m not sure I was ever good at it. I’m okay with it.”

  “You sap.”

  “It’s true,” I say, letting her shove me. “I’m happy at my day job and living with you. I don’t need much.”

  “Holy shit this place is making you sentimental. What happened?”

  “Nothing. What happened to you?”

  She stops abruptly and I think maybe she’ll disappear, that I’ve accidently challenged the gate. But her stopping is her way to convey shock at me implying something had happened to her. I apologize. I don’t do a thing to mess my gate up, no way, uh-uh. She starts walking again.

  Inside the castle we escape the tour. Holding hands, we walk the narrow staircases. When Church designed the interior he hand-painted and stenciled everything in middle east décor, Persian style, the pamphlet said, so there’s lots of brushed gold and faded emerald. Yellow poppies decorate doorways. The money flowing into this place – the admission and parking fee, the gift shop – goes to the State. Historical preservation is the explanation, but it’s just straight cash flowing into the “General fund” which my office uses to print signs and banners for one time use.

  On the top floor, Alice steps over a thick rope leading to Church’s bedroom. She stands on a rug weaved in blood-orange and elephant hide colors. “Don’t do it,” I whisper.

  “Come on,” she replies. “Who cares?”

  Alice has always been into adventure. During one of our first dates she jumped the bar to pour a drink because the bartender was in the bathroom taking a shit. She served beers on tap to strangers and accepted tips. Early Alice caused spontaneous scenes, later Alice drank half-beers and became so fearful she couldn’t drive more than forty miles per hour. I don’t blame her, it’s one of my holes too, driving on a highway is taking a chance on a metal coffin, it’s why we took the train to the castle.

  “No way,” I say to Alice tip-toeing around Church’s bedroom.

  “Get in here,” she whispers.

  Walking away would equal escaping the gate, so I follow into Church’s ornate bedroom that minus cleaning staff probably hasn’t had two people in it for a hundred plus years.

  “We’re going to get arrested,” I tell Alice.

  “Just two minutes,” she says.

  For a guy who was into painting landscapes he sure liked peacocks. They are everywhere. As painted statues six feet tall, framed illustrations hung on the walls, and stenciled on each tile leading into bathroom. Church’s bed, which Alice swan dives onto, is domed by peacock colored netting. The windows are amber colored and honeycombed with black lines. How all of this was not burned to the ground by the workers in the back quarters, I don’t know.

  She swings her legs off the side of the bed and inspects a brass bowl on a wooden nightstand. Every piece of furniture has knotted lace-like carvings running the edges, more peacock paintings on the front and sides, dog-pawed feet. Nothing is simple here. Even the lamp on the dresser appears to be constructed from ten different parts, more flower than utility piece. Alice walks to the dresser and begins opening every drawer. They have gold hinges shaped like dragonflies with red screws for eyes. Most are empty except random papers and cleaning supplies, but inside one drawer is a notebook, leather-bound and badly worn.

  “Open it,” says Alice, who tries handing me the book by waving it near my face.

  “You open it.”

  “Ugh,” she grunts. “Fine.”

  I step closer. “But I want to see.”

  “Who wouldn’t?”

  Inside are women’s names and their daily tasks to complete inside and outside the home, written by Church himself, his initials on each corner, his handwriting a flowing but severely slanted longhand, two columns of names and tasks separated by a black line. I turn the pages with endless names. In the final pages are the household rules. Alice points to a single sentence on a page otherwise blank: “Clean all horse stalls of all blood.”

  The bathroom is wallpapered with wreaths of cherries against a desert dune background. Alice steps into the bathtub with a peacock faucet. She lays with her arms crossed over her chest, eyes closed. There are no windows in here. I look in the bathroom mirror above the sink and flick my nose.

  “Were you ever inspired by this place?” she asks, sitting up in the tub. “Did you really sit on the lawn and paint the river?”

  “I did,” I confess. “You really shouldn’t be in there.”

  I panic because what I just said could be challenging my gate. But Alice nods. She doesn’t disappear. I stare, breathing deeply, convinced that at any minute we will be caught and charged with numerous trespassing accusations, then I’ll be fired from my job. I was so close to the ten year mark.

  “You’re right,” she says, now standing. She straddles the side of the tub, carefully steps out, then sits on the toilet.

  Do whatever you want.

  I won’t stop you, Alice.

  Let Alice be Alice.

  “Don’t tell Mr. Church,” she says, shifting her pants down to her knees. The sound of piss on porcelain is incredibly loud.

  Early years Alice forever.

  Leaving the bedroom, she takes a silver paintbrush from the windowsill vase and slips it inside the waist of her jeans, and when I glare in judgement, in amazement, she shrugs.

  As the tour continues up the stairs, we walk down the back stairs to the dining hall, a massive room with no windows and a cement colored banquet table set ornately for fifty. The main vibe in the castle is Church and his wife were lonely, constantly adding décor to the walls, fixtures and trinkets to whatever space, no matter how small, not yet touched. A crowded atmosphere – I overhear the tour guide say “Artful clutter” – with little natural light.

  We walk through the dining hall. Alice checks the hallway for anyone, and when it’s clear, we go further down into what is the basement.

  Even here everything is ornately decorated, but this is a different style room, renovated and added recently to display the worker’s portraits, the names from the book. It’s an afterthought, a pandering political move by Leader Dubben (first name Reuben, which is the best rhyming name ever) representing the district, and it’s the saddest of the rooms. Because Church didn’t design it, it feels out of place. One picture shows a woman frowning next to the horse stalls.

  “Unbelievable,” says Alice, touching everything she can, running her hand over the portraits, stepping over the roped off areas with more furniture and arranged vases. She sits down in a queenlike chair. “I love you,” she says.

  There’s an hour before the train leaves so we’re at the lake, sitting on the sand with our knees pulled to our chests, me lovingly mocking how Alice is sitting. She rests her head against my shoulder. The world is silent and the wind white-tops the waves. It’s much cooler here because of the elevation, I think, a hint of fall in summer or another storm coming, but the cloudless sky is aggressively blue.

  The lake Church painted and made a fortune off glimmers like a metal roof. That lake deserves to be paid. You can rent a rowboat for two dollars but we won’t. The man playing the violent video game is out there, his mother struggling to row in the wind.

  I put my arm around Alice and my arm doesn’t pass through her.

  I put my mouth on her head.

  Shifting backward, she comes to a kneeling position. Above her is the castle and the white outline of the moon. A mist of sand blows through the air and into us and her hair wraps around her face. She asks if I just kissed her.

  I’m enamored with all things Alice, this
very real version I want to consistently touch confirming this is happening. I need to ask Dorian how long the gate will last. Does it close-up or stay this way forever? I didn’t think a person could be the focal point of an ideal gate. Will I be retired with Alice? And if I go first will she have access to my pension? I know the answer to the last question – it’s yes, because she’s listed as the beneficiary. In the future my retirement transfers to Alice so she can have a comfortable life after I’m dead.

  “You did this.” She palms my head and pushes it downward. “Like, you put your mouth on my head,” she mumbles into my hair, “but you didn’t actually do a kiss.” I’m looking into the sand. Everything is slightly darker in here. Alice presses her lips hard against my hair for a dramatically long time making a sucking noise then kneels backward again.

  “Thank you,” I say to the sand.

  On the train ride back she falls asleep with her head on my lap. She drools. The guy still playing the violent video game is across the aisle from me, also in the aisle seat, and asks if – he points at Alice – is a video game. His chin is touching his chest but his eyes are fixated on me.

  “It’s my wife,” I whisper. “It’s a person.”

  “But.”

  “My wife,” I say, leaning over slightly so he can hear me.

  “But.”

  “Shhhhhhhh she’s sleeping.”

  “But.”

  The man twitches and his legs that don’t reach the floor spasm. His head moves in a circle. “But,” he says, “But but but,” louder and louder until people are turning around, until his mother is glaring at me from the window seat, cradling his vibrating head in a soothing rocking motion. With my hands cupping her ears, Alice doesn’t move.

  I decide to no longer be a people watcher.

  The train rocks along toward A-ville as Alice sleeps. Two teenage girls keep going to the bathroom and each time they come out they have more make-up on. Some people have laptops open, there’s a woman sitting two rows up with some kind of wrap or shawl around her head, typing away. I’m not sure these people are interesting, but I can’t stop being a people watcher. A small man in a big suit is watching Pineapple Express but isn’t laughing. Most sleep on the train like Alice, heads wobbling against the seat or window. I think these people are fake sleeping. I won’t wake Alice until the train conductor tells me it is time to go. The sky is getting dark.

  Driving home from the train station she asks what happened to the back window. I tell her I bought a dog named Rudy who was sick, who I left in the car, and someone broke the window because they thought he was too hot. Alice doesn’t take her eyes off me. I tell her Rudy is dead, if he wasn’t given medication. I describe his blood-tongue, greasy fur, and how he ran at the park, so thrilled. I tell her about the vet. She sits sideways in the passenger seat but doesn’t respond. She’s just looking at me, her blank expression never changes, she doesn’t find the vet funny at all. With her window down we drive in the rain and she doesn’t say a word about getting wet, an entire side of her body becoming soaked.

  Alice has strict rituals around bedtime. Now that she’s back, I’m sure not to disrupt them.

  What I would do – flossing my teeth while walking into every room, breathing too loud, eating cereal while standing in the living room, entering a room only to ask what she’s doing – are details she had mentioned to the therapist. But now I give her plenty of space, admiring her from a distance as she: makes tea, slices an apple on a cutting board, blows out the candle in the bathroom, grinds coffee for the morning, folds the sheets down on our bed with the headboard she has recently strung with white lights.

  Next to her, I can’t sleep. I don’t want time to move forward. Everything is thrown into the past too quickly. The castle is already gone. And if this Alice is somewhere in the middle of our marriage, she only has one place to go. I want my gate tomorrow to repeat today. I need everything to slow down.

  Years ago I was really into reading about black holes. I had learned everything I could about stars. I found a video online where a professor at MIT said that any object approaching a black hole slows down, and once inside, freezes. So hypothetically speaking, Alice could walk into a black hole to preserve herself. But from her perspective, if she stood waving from inside the black hole for me to enter and be with her, I would be speeding up. She’d see me accelerating into the future, stars smeared to the sides as she remained in a forever second. So for us to stop the gate we would need to walk together, hand-in-hand, leg-to-leg, hip-to-hip, into the black hole.

  JUNE 26

  Someone is knocking on my door with their fist. The reason why I can’t hear my doorbell is because the doorbell is too loud, an old firehouse design in the kitchen that I have dulled by wadding-up a paper towel and jamming it between the little metal arm and the little metal bell. If you walk directly beneath it you can hear a slight buzzing sound like bees trapped in a glass.

  People like to lock their doors, they value their space and silence, and doorbells they love. In ten years I’ve probably locked my door twice. Same with my car. One time I found Elderly sleeping across the back seat and when I touched his shoulder he was still dreaming. He slapped my hand away and said to hold his goblet of fire.

  I kiss sleeping Alice on her forehead, put my sweatpants on, and walk through my apartment, the knocking continuing.

  At the door is a man with a blonde brush cut, muscular build, and a white polo shirt tucked into pleated khakis. On his hip hanging from a thin black belt is a gun. After I say hello he opens a manila folder. It’s cool out, low-level fog clinging to the street, but quickly burning off with the coming heat.

  Cops make some people nervous, but not me. Dad was a cop so I know how to talk to them. I’m not sure why he became a cop besides there wasn’t anything else to do. The pay and retirement were good, but his personality didn’t fit the role. Be a big phony with small talk and cops are on your side. This one just stands here, shaven face all sweaty, gazing into the folder like an abyss.

  “Can I help you, officer?” I ask thoughtfully.

  Racing down the street on bikes come boys in white thobes and blue prayer caps. Because my street declines, they coast. One is shirtless and riding with no hands, leaning back, his arms stretched outward with his bike invisible in the fog.

  Clearing his throat, the cop introduces himself as Sergeant Bell. He’s probably here because of Dorian, an obvious illegal activity the State has been irresponsible enough to support, but I’m wrong, because what he does next is hold up a photo of Elderly. It’s from fifteen or twenty years ago, maybe from his Tehran days.

  “Yes,” I say, even though I’m not asked a question. “That’s him.”

  After Elderly’s car was towed and never claimed at the garage a missing person claim was filed. Bell talks cop style – with force and no eye contact. My name was written in a journal, in the car’s user manual, and on napkins, all in the glove box along with two thousand dollars.

  I say, “That’s a lot of money for a guy who lives in his car.”

  Bell acts surprised. He says Elderly owns four homes. One, says Bell, has no electricity, the copper wires have been stripped from the walls. Another is infested with mice and teenage squatters. The exception is where his wife lives. He points up the street as I look like I’m part of a massive practical joke. He says they don’t have much of a relationship, she doesn’t even seem too concerned about his recent disappearance, although she did file the missing person claim. “You didn’t know any of this?”

  “No.”

  If learning this isn’t surprising enough, two of the homes are on my block, slightly down and across the street. The same homes he would weedwack and then go sleep in his Pontiac parked directly in front. Why he never tried to live in the homes, fix them up, Bell says is above his paygrade, a saying often repeated by my coworkers whenever they are asked to work. I can’t imagine owning one home. No house left behind where strangers can walk through pointing at furniture
they want for a cheap price, trying on my shoes and dress shirts.

  Bell says to contact me if I hear anything regarding Elderly’s whereabouts, flipping me his business card between his fingertips. The back of the card is autographed with a smiley face in the bottom right corner and has a greasy sheen. A cell phone number is handwritten above the station number.

  “I will,” I lie.

  I watch Bell from my windows. After knocking on my neighbor’s door, who doesn’t answer, he drives away in a white Dodge Charger, turning his sirens on to pass through a red light at the end of the block.

  I’m still in sweatpants and a white t-shirt with yellow pit stains, but I do a quick walk around the block for Elderly, wondering where his wife lives, and if she too has ever lived in a car. I move quickly. Besides a rotting raccoon on the sidewalk no one is around; it’s already too hot out. I need to be inside with Alice.

  Alice is on the couch reading a book so I’m going to ask her to be Leg Wobble Man with me. If I can get her on my side forever, she has to be Leg Wobble Man with me now. Early year’s Alice would do it, but divorcer Alice will refuse.

  I’m standing in the room like an idiot, trying to find the right approach and failing. Coming into the apartment every time and seeing her is shocking. But before I ask her, on TV, which she has muted, the local news shows a collaged photo of men who appreciate the Neo-Nazi look – shaved head, blotchy, ugly, white t-shirt – with a list of charges pertaining to the gas station arson. For such an important development it’s a quick story, seconds long before a slanted caption – FOURTH OF JULY FAMILY FUN SPECTACULAR – spins on the screen followed by an ad for mouthwash with a girl spooning a frog into her mouth.

  “They won’t serve a day in jail,” says Alice, book raised in front of her face. “Boner is the judge.”

  I tell her I was there. The book drops an inch.

  “When it was on fire?”

  “Yeah, I walked in and told them.”

  “But you didn’t do anything?”

  “I didn’t do anything to a fire?”