Alma Underwood Is Not A Kleptomaniac

by Lacey Dailey

  “That’s it. I’m pulling over.” Foregoing her blinker, she yanks the steering wheel and whips into a Dollar General parking lot. Her haphazard job of parking between the lines doesn’t faze her in the least as she flips off the ignition and turns completely in her seat. “Say that again?”

  “Her full name is Allison Copeland.” I press my tongue to my cheek, looking up at the cloth ceiling, shadows cast on my face from the sunlight streaming through the window. “And she’s Reggie’s daughter.”

  All hell breaks loose. A slew of curse words and questions leave her lips, and I answer what I can, explaining that moment in the library and confessing my confrontation with Reggie.

  “So what is going to happen? Is Reggie going to call her? Did you get her address? Oh my God! Did you meet her? Is she pretty? What did Rumor say?” She backhands my chest. “Why did you wait eight days to tell me?”

  My face scrunches, my only defense against the burn that hasn’t truly gone away since I found out the truth. It vanishes for a moment, long enough to keep me functional for a conversation, but then returns with a vengeance at the mere thought of Allison’s son. “Google her name.”

  She teeters on her seat, fighting with the vinyl still across her body. She frees herself. “Huh?”

  “Type her name into Google.” I wrap my hand around my scratchy throat. “Type her name next to Flat Rock. Tell me what comes up.”

  Clearly perplexed, she fumbles to pull her phone from her purse in the console. The tap tap of her fingers against the digital keyboard haunt me, and I hold my breath while the search engine loads.

  I know the moment she understands. The air in the car becomes too hot to handle, and I open my mouth, unable to catch my breath. What she’s looking at is tattooed in my memory. I can’t seem to unsee the words. Every time I close my eyes, they are right behind my eyelids.

  Allison (Alise) Copeland (30) is survived by her mother, father, and older brother...

  Her jaw hits her lap. “This an obituary.”

  “Yes.”

  “No.” Holding her phone closer to her face, her pointer fingers sails across the screen, scrolling through the paragraph like she’s hoping the word ‘Gotcha!’ will start flashing across the screen. “But––"

  The effervescent light that was in her eyes when she woke up this morning dims considerably. She places a hand on her chest, and I know just what she’s feeling.

  Curveball.

  “That’s just––" Her lips can’t form the words.

  “Devastating,” I say. “It’s devastating, Len.”

  Her eyes are captivated with the words in front of them. They reveal so little, yet so much at the same time. “This says it was an accident. What kind of an accident?”

  “She drowned in the lake at Huroc Park.”

  As I repeat Reggie’s words, and Allison’s fate, I’m struck with disbelief that manifests as a numbness. I feel nothing and everything at the same time. Things have just stopped making sense.

  “A park ranger found her a few weeks after Rumor was born.”

  The color drains from Lenox’s body, leaving her gray and dreary looking. “That’s tragic. I don’t… I can’t comprehend how that happens.”

  “She was drunk.” Reggie’s admission about his daughter exits my throat. I’m a robot, reciting the truth, devoid of emotion––basking in the insensibility I never wanted to feel but am grateful for in this moment. “She was drinking and alone and Reggie doesn’t believe it was an accident.”

  “He thinks someone did this to her?” The wetness in her eyes is enough to lure me back into all she’s feeling. I struggle against the curveball and weaken with the blow to my chest.

  “No, Len.” I catch her gaze. “He thinks she did it to herself.”

  Silence.

  The occasional beep of a horn, faint conversation of those walking past us, the clank of shoppers returning their carts–– it all fades away as Lenox takes in my words and their underlying meaning.

  My tears fall now, trailing slowly down my cheeks, splashing the cotton dress covering my thighs. And like everything else lately, they make little sense.

  Allison was not my daughter.

  She wasn’t my mother.

  I’d never even met her.

  But the idea of her was meaningful to me. I basked in the hope she represented for the person I’ve come to care most about. She was Rumor’s comfort when he needed it most, his luminescence in the shadow of his grief. It was her, and the thought of seeing her again, that taught him how to smile again after losing his father.

  “I wanted to give him this treasure so bad, Len.” I catch a tear on the tip of my finger. “I don’t think I’m capable of taking it away. Every time I try to say something, the words get stuck in my throat.”

  I tried for four days straight. I’d call his name, he’d look at me, tears would claw their way to the surface and I’d fall mute. When he asked what was wrong, I’d lie. Because how do I take away something he never even had in the first place?

  “Rumor knows something is up,” I say. “It’s starting to scare me how easy lying is becoming.”

  “Of course he knows something is wrong, A. You have a severe degree of compassion for other people. So much so that it can’t be hidden. You’re upset because you know what this news is going to do to him but––”

  “Exactly!” I sniff. “How do I tell him something I know will completely destroy him? There is no instruction manual for breaking someone’s heart. No damn guidebook that lays out the perfect way to tell your best friend that his mother submerged herself in a lake with no intention of ever coming back up!”

  I can’t breathe.

  I scramble for my seatbelt, tugging at the belt desperately and taking oxygen in big gulps. Lenox’s fingers replace mine and the belt comes loose, freeing my chest of the weight.

  The rumble of the engine can barely be heard over the ringing in my ears. The blast of the air conditioner cools the tears on my face, and I lean toward it. “I can’t keep this secret and I can’t tell him.”

  Her hand hits my lower back, rubbing the way our mom used to when we were kids. “This is an impossible situation.”

  I angle my face, seeking her. Unshed tears are balancing cautiously on her eyelashes. “I don’t want to tell him, Len.”

  She nibbles on her quivering lips. “I’m trying to comprehend the best way to do this and I’m coming up short.”

  “Because there is no good way to do this.”

  “But that doesn’t mean you keep this from him. He is bound to figure it out eventually. What if he googles his dad the same way you, Arthur, and Echo did? What happens when he finds out you already knew? He’s going to think you––"

  “Betrayed him.”

  “Exactly.” The pressure on my back increases. “What about Reggie? Is he going to say anything?”

  “I begged him not to say anything yet. He told me he’d be there when I was ready to tell Rumor.”

  I am not ready.

  “Did Reggie say anything else about Allison and––”

  “The way she might have died? No. Mom came into the lobby to talk to Reggie about a schedule change, and I escaped to Room Two and cried into a towel.”

  “Have you talked to him since then?”

  “Reggie? No. I can’t bring myself to ask any more questions. Rumor is the one who deserves these answers, not me. The more I know, the harder it will be for him.

  “But you can’t tell him?”

  “Not yet.”

  “You have to.”

  I sigh. “I know.”

  We fall silent. I sit there, an ache in my head that could be due to it ricocheting off my kneecap, or it could be just my brain on overload, begging for a break.

  I’m speechless for so long, Lenox puts the car in reverse and pulls from the parking lot. When she turns left, heading in the direction of our house, I know she’s abandoning the Target run we were supposed to go on.

  The
brakes squeal when she comes to a stop in our driveway and pulls the key from the ignition.

  “You can come hang in my room for a while.”

  I know what she’s offering. It isn’t necessary but I appreciate it nonetheless. “Rumor’s at the motel painting trim.”

  Stumbling from the car, I walk through the house, succumbing to dread and worry. Lenox’s footsteps are behind me, her words patronizing me with each step I climb.

  You have to tell him.

  I make it to my bedroom, Lenox by my side, unwilling to leave me by myself. Pushing open my door, my heart sinks. My mom is sitting on the edge of my bed, staring down at the pool float like she isn’t quite sure what to make of it. Clutched in my dad’s fist is Rumor’s duffle bag.

  “Oh shit.” Lenox’s outburst announces our presence

  I slam my eyes shut, count to ten, and reopen them. My parents are still here.

  I brace myself for the blow.

  “Alma.” My mom rises from my bed, her expression unreadable. “We need to talk.”

  The curveball hits.

  22

  Crisis Of Love

  Rumor

  Staring down at the sticky note positioned beneath my pen, I recoil at the strokes I left behind.

  A heart.

  I doodled a damn heart complete with the letter A inside.

  I’ve got it so bad.

  With the old phone wedged between my ear and my shoulder, I pull the sticky note off the pad in front of me and wad it up. As quickly as I crumple it, I smooth it back out nicely. Not a cell in my body can handle squashing Alma, or a mere representation of her.

  Christ.

  “Hey, brother.”

  “Dude. What the hell?” I drop the pen. It rolls across Reggie’s desk and falls over the edge with a faint clink. “That was like nine rings. What took you so long to pick up?”

  “I was taking a piss. Damn. Let a man put his dick back in his pants.”

  “I couldn't care less about your dick right now, Josh. I have a crisis.”

  “A crisis?” The sound of a sink running greets me through the speaker. “Rumor, the last time you called and told me you had a crisis, I got so worked up thinking you were back living in Dumpster Alley and what did you tell me?”

  “That was a crisis, man. Jackson made me a Slytherin.”

  “Jackson’s inability to correctly assign a Hogwarts House is not a catastrophe, and I’m willing to bet whatever you’re calling about right now isn’t either.”

  I pinch my drawing between my thumb and my forefinger, lifting it so it’s the only object in my line of vision. Staring at my light sketch, my first thought is that I should put it in my wallet and keep it forever, maybe display it at our wedding or something.

  And yeeeaaahh. Crisis.

  Slipping the doodle into my back pocket, my eyes find Reggie in my peripheral. At first glance, he appears like any other old man sitting on a couch in the motel’s lobby, reading today’s paper. But I’ve memorized his mannerisms and the subtle tilt of his head by now.

  The old bastard is trying to eavesdrop.

  “Does this crisis have to do with Alma and those… what did you call them? Tiny––"

  “Violins.”

  I professed the rest of my truth to Josh weeks ago. The first time I spoke of Alma, he knew. He knew she wasn’t just some girl offering me a place to stay as a way to clear her conscious or gain good karma.

  He knew.

  “Ah, yes. Tiny violins.” His soft chuckle is a familiar, nostalgic sound. An image of him lingers on the edges of my mind. I can almost make out his exact features––the shaggy blonde hair he never combs, the crooked slope of his nose from that time I kicked him in the face with a soccer ball, and the crinkle around his dark eyes that typically goes hand in hand with a laugh so boisterous, he possesses the ability to shoot chocolate milk from his nostrils across his kitchen.

  A wave of longing has me feeling unbalanced but the sensation isn’t painful like it used to be. It’s simply a drumming in my chest—a reminder that he isn’t gone the same way my father is.

  “Let me guess, you kissed her, sucked at it, and you’re calling me for advice.”

  “Piss off.”

  He cackles, and the picture of him is vivid now. I can see him right in front of me, his hair flopping on the sides of his head when he directs his laugh to the ceiling. “I’m kidding. What happened?”

  “I did kiss her but that’s not wh––"

  “Back the hell up. You kissed her?”

  “Yeah, I kissed her on the forehead but that––"

  “The forehead? Dude, that’s how I kiss my gran. No wonder she has no idea you’re head over ass for her.”

  “It was not a granny kiss, J. It was a million times more intimate than that, okay?”

  “Did you just say intimate?”

  Oh for the love of… “Are you going to shut up and let me talk?”

  “Right. Sorry. Lips are sealed.”

  I doubt that. “Anyway, like I was saying, I kissed her forehead. Yes. But it was after I called her baby and basically admitted that I equate her as the illumination that scared away the shadows surrounding my life. And now I’m thinking about us in nursing homes, planning our wedding, and doodling hearts with her initial in them.”

  “Ah.” Now he gets it. “Crisis, I see.”

  “Told you it was a real one.”

  “Rum, are you… in love with her?”

  I close my eyes, and like always, she’s right there waiting for me. Her hand is outstretched, fingers wiggling and urging me to grab hold. I do, and I pull her to me, tilting her chin. She reveals her smile.

  It totally wrecks me.

  “Yeah,” I say into the phone, body going lax against the desk. “I’m totally gone for her.”

  “Tell me about her.”

  “What do you mean? I’ve told you all about her.”

  “Uhm, not really. You told me about her treasure obsession, the pizza slice bed, and her habit of eating hot dogs named after sex positions. You haven’t told me how she makes you feel.”

  “Do you care about those details?”

  “Rumor, come on.” He clicks his tongue, and I know he’s scratching the top of his head. “My brother is telling me he’s in love with some girl I’ve never met. I mean, sure, she sounds great but I need some confirmation this isn’t a heavy dose of infatuation or an odd case of Stockholm syndrome.”

  Stockholm syndrome?!

  “What the hell, Josh?” Dropping to my elbows, the wood clunks beneath my movement. I catch the phone with my hook and hold it so it doesn’t slide away. “Are you serious right now? Alma didn’t actually kidnap me. She isn’t holding me captive. I can leave as soon as I find my mom. Hell. I could leave right now.”

  “Okay, so maybe not Stockholm syndrome. But what about some sort of hero worship?”

  “Hero worship?”

  “Yeah, like, have you considered the only reason you think you love her is because she saved you?”

  I frown.

  “I’m just wondering if after you find your mom and get your feet back on the ground, will you still love her?”

  Flipping my palm over, I spot the butterfly she drew there this morning, lines representing their kisses wrapped loosely around my fingers and wound around my wrist. “With everything I’ve got.”

  “That’s a hefty admission.”

  “I didn’t fall in love with her based on what she did, J. I fell in love with her because of who she is.” Now that I’m able to recognize this weightless, breathless, all-consuming feeling for what it is, I’ll say it over and over again. “Alma is remarkable, man. She excites me, inspires me, makes me want to improve in whatever way I can so I can be at least one percent of what she is. Everything I’m afraid of is minuscule in the face of the strength she shares with me. I’m just sort of awestruck when I look at her.”

  My best friend is mute. The quietness and lack of snark have me chewing on my tongue
nervously and winding my whole hand in the phone cord.

  “In this unstructured world of cruelty and unfairness, nothing ever makes sense. After dad died on me, I was convinced nothing would ever make sense again. But Alma? Alma makes sense, Josh. She. Makes. Sense.”

  “Wow.” He lets out a low whistle, and that’s how I know he gets it. “I’m happy for you, Rumor. Truly. I don’t like that you’re stuck in limbo with a list of sixteen women named Alice you don’t know what to do with, but if you’re happy, so am I.”

  I’m happy.

  At times, I’m also unsure, pessimistic, irritated, resentful, overwhelmed, wary, withdrawn, and achy. But when all that passes, the guilt subsides and the tears dry up, I’m not left feeling bitter.

  I’m content.

  I let the phone cord drop to my side before I lose feeling in my only hand. “Jackson actually narrowed it down to nine Alices that still live in Flat Rock.”

  “How do you know your mother didn’t move?”

  “I don’t. But it’s a good starting point. Sixteen is less intimidating than nine. Alma’s still trying to narrow it down from there. The idea of approaching one of them and laying all my cards out on the table has me in hives.”

  “I don’t blame you.”

  A rush of water has my ears perking up. “Are you still in the bathroom? It sounded like you just turned on the shower.”

  “I did. My mom is walking up the stairs, and I’m trying to drone out our conversation so she doesn’t knock on the door and ask me who I’m talking to. I wouldn’t have to, but you’re a shitface and won’t let me tell her you’re alive.”

  The guilt starts to nibble at me, inch by inch, taking over my body until I feel it snaking up my spine.

  “Josh, come on. You know if you told them, they’d make me come back.”

  “Not if you told them that group home was the seventh layer of hell.”

  “Dude.” A beat goes by. Then another. And one more before I slump over the desk, pressing my forehead to the wood, muffling my next words with the desk calendar. “You know as well as I do they wouldn’t approve of my living arrangements. And what happens when the state shows up looking for me?”