The Rope Walk

by Carrie Brown

  When she rounded the corner, she nearly collided with Miss Fitzgerald. For a moment Miss Fitzgerald was so close that Alice could smell her, the stale odor of the airless rooms of the Fitzgeralds’ house. Alice gasped and drew back instinctively.

  Miss Fitzgerald recoiled, too, as if Alice, though clearly in retreat, had threatened to strike her. Then, casting a quick look around, as if to make sure no one would overhear her, she said, “Don't you ever go creeping about in my house again, Alice MacCauley,” she said. “Bad little girl.”

  Alice, wide-eyed, took another step backward. How did Miss Fitzgerald even know they'd been there? That had been weeks ago, anyway. Heat flooded her face and neck. In her ears, the throb of her own heartbeat was deafening. Standing before Miss Fitzgerald, Alice felt as if she was burning up, that a fire inside her was squeezing the breath out of her. Yet as she looked up fearfully at Miss Fitzgerald in the midst of that conflagration of shame and anger and fear, she thought something clearly and slowly; she thought how unfair it was that Kenneth had been so handsome, was still handsome, even though he was sick, when Miss Fitzgerald herself, with her terra-cotta face like the pinch pots they made at school in art, was so ugly. But as soon as Alice thought this—or, she didn't even think it; she felt it, including her sense that this unequal distribution of physical wealth between the Fitzgerald siblings was a cruelty—it was as if Miss Fitzgerald read her mind and was forced, by necessity, to defend herself against the devastation of Alice's sympathy.

  Miss Fitzgerald's expression was suddenly wild with injury and disbelief. “There is nothing wrong with us,” she said. Trembling, she looked at the flowers in Alice's arms and then back to Alice herself. “I am fine,” she said, but it came out on a moan that made the hair rise on Alice's arms. “We'refine! Your father does not need to help us.”

  Alice, terrified, stared up at Miss Fitzgerald. It must have been awful, she thought, looking up into Miss Fitzgerald's face, and it was as if she were telling herself a story, then, reminding herself of familiar details: Miss Fitzgerald being alone all those years when she hadn't wanted to be, never getting married or having children, turning out to be such an ugly woman after having been a promising-looking girl, never playing the piano well enough to really teach anyone anything.

  And then her brother coming at last to live with her but being so terribly sick.

  There was a Tightness to these conclusions, Alice knew; she struggled to hang on to the truth of them, because part of her did not want to feel sorry for Miss Fitzgerald. She did not want to know anything about Miss Fitzgerald's terrible life; she hadn't asked for any of this. Yet though she could easily hate Miss Fitzgerald for being mean and creepy and annoying, that hate would provide only a bleak ending, Alice sensed, bleak and incomplete.

  At that moment, the doors of the elevator opened. Archie, who had dropped off Alice and Theo and gone to park the car, stepped into the hallway. The sight of him in his rumpled jacket, with his glasses perched crookedly on the top of his head and a book under his arm, struck Alice with a powerful wave of relief.

  She did something she hadn't done in a long time. She ran toward him and jumped into his arms, hooking her legs around his waist and burying her face in his neck.

  Alice could feel his surprise, but he put his arms around her. “Everything all right?” he said. “Hope? Everything all right here?”

  • • •

  Archie, with Alice beside him hanging on tightly to his arm, made his way to the nurses’ station, where he borrowed a vase for the now-crumpled lilies. Miss Fitzgerald, apparently humiliated at Archie's arrival, had excused herself at the elevators; she'd forgotten the newspapers for Kenneth in the car, she said, hurrying away.

  “She found out we were in the house,” Alice told her father. “She's really mad.”

  “Yes,” Archie said. “I know. I called her. And the word is angry,” he added automatically. “She's angry, not mad …” He trailed off.

  “You called her?” Alice was amazed. She had thought Archie wouldn't do anything.

  “Just to see if I could help.” He tilted the vase under the spigot of the water fountain at the end of the hall and began filling it. Then he said, “You understand why she's upset, Alice?”

  “I think so.”

  “I'm afraid my phone call was one of those kindnesses that looks like cruelty,” Archie said. “Or perhaps it was only a cruelty. I don't know. She must have known that the boys would come back after that first trip over there and tell me what they'd seen. Maybe she thought I was punishing her when I called, rubbing it in.” He straightened up, and Alice handed him the lilies. “She's been living like that for years, obviously. It's not very nice, I grant you, but maybe it's really none of our business.”

  He was speaking to her candidly, Alice thought, just as if she were a grown-up like him. She felt a rush of affection and gratitude for Archie, as well as guilt that once she had thought him feeble and incapable of action. “What did you say to her?” she asked.

  “Not very much. I just told her I'd been in the house, and that I was sorry for the circumstances, and was there anything I could do. For her or for Kenneth. She thanked me for the boys’ help.”

  Alice reached out and touched the flowers in the vase. “Isn't it so sad, Archie, that her name is Hope?” she said.

  Alice saw immediately that Archie was upset by Kenneth's appearance. The uncomfortable surprise that crossed his face when they stepped into Kenneth's room was enough to revive the lurching, sick sensation in her stomach. Theo sat at the end of the bed with the hospital tray pulled up before him, drawing away.

  “How are you?” Archie said to Kenneth. He approached the bed and gave Kenneth his hand. “Or are you very tired of hearing that question?”

  “Never. Of course not.” Kenneth said.

  “Can we bring you anything?” Archie pulled a chair closer to the bed. He sat down, still holding Kenneth's hand. “I saw Hope at the elevator,” he said. “She was just going back down. Left the newspaper for you in the car, she said.”

  “They're sending me home tomorrow or the next day. I don't seem to be ready to diejust yet, and they need the bed,” Kenneth said. He smiled.

  Archie smiled back automatically, but Alice saw that it was a pained smile. He made an indefinite noise of protest or apology. Then, abruptly, as if he was finding speech difficult, he bowed his head.

  Kenneth watched Archie. “I've known your father since he was a little, little boy, Alice,” he said, not looking away from Archie's bowed head. Silence filled the room. “Archie?” Kenneth said at last, and his tone was inquiring, like a child's. Alice felt the hair rise on her arms. “Archie? What's the line? I am so out of love with life…”

  At the end of the bed, Theo lifted his head, suddenly alert. He met Alice's gaze, and Alice knew that he had been listening, too.

  “Come, come,” Kenneth said awkwardly after a minute, letting go of Archie's hand and pushing himself up in the bed to sit straighter. “I haven't stumped you!”

  “Measure for Measure,” Archie said quietly.

  “Terrible words. Godforsaken.” Kenneth looked vaguely around the room as if trying to remember where he was. “Well, I made my bed, didn't I?” he said at last, as if there had been another conversation going on, one Alice had missed. “That's what they'll say, Archie. I know that. And, strictly speaking He gave a short laugh. “I'mjust full of aphorisms.”

  Alice did not understand the conversation between her father and Kenneth, but she felt that she had been excluded from it suddenly. She wanted to go home. She moved over to Theo, who leaned back from his paper so that she could see what he'd been drawing. He'd sketched a huge catapult on the bank of a river.

  “With every problem comes opportunity,” Kenneth said. “That is the lesson young Theo is learning, Alice.” Then he stopped. “I'm getting more unoriginal by the moment.”

  Archie looked at the children. “I need to take them home, Ken. I didn't realize it had gotten so
late.” He got to his feet. “I'm sorry. Alice? Theo?”

  “Coming.” Theo gathered up his drawings and slid off the bed.

  Alice did not want to look at Kenneth. All her comfort with him, the ease he had inspired in her, the way he had enchanted them—the whole summer and the surprise of their long, happy afternoons together, she and Theo and Kenneth—was gone. Had it only been a trick? This was a sad thought, a wearying thought. How were you really to know anything, or anybody, she wondered? She felt as though a light had been extinguished, and she was in the room with a stranger to whom something very, very bad was happening.

  “Word of the day, kiddos,” Kenneth said then from his place against the pillows, surprising her. “It's a pretty one. Bagatelle.” His voice suddenly had become very kind and familiar, as if he knew exactly what Alice was feeling and wanted to comfort her, reassure her. He reached out and turned off the sunlamp, and the room sank immediately into a gentle, elegant dusk, its surfaces— polished sheets, enamel sink, IV pole with its bag of bright liquid—shone like silver. In his bed, Kenneth looked like an old portrait of himself, all cracked surfaces and planes and angles and chiaroscuro shadows, one black and blazing eye addressing the world out of the grime of centuries. Alice blinked.

  “What's it mean?” Theo said.

  “Nothing,” said Kenneth. “A petty trifle. Nothing to worry your heads about.”

  “What is?” Theo looked confused.

  Kenneth waved, his hand swinging in the dark. “Whatever weighs on you, whatever you're worried about, the woe of the world. I take it away. Poof. It's nothing but a bagatelle.”

  Theo smiled. “Thanks!”

  “You're welcome,” Kenneth said, but he was looking at Alice. “Thank you.”

  One by one, a few days before the traditional end-of-summer dance at the hall in Grange, the MacCauley boys came home. They brought with them: the three-legged dog Sweetums Lucille; a loud motorcycle Tad and Harry had traded for their car and whose appearance sent Archie into a disbelieving rage; several six-packs of beer; a buxom, raven-haired girl whom James introduced as “Katya, the love of my life,” who had a serious manner and a violin; four tennis racquets, one of which had its strings broken as though it had been used to volley bricks; a plastic sandwich baggie of pot that Theo found in the bathroom medicine cabinet and identified correctly for Alice; a bong, also identified by Theo; heaps and heaps and heaps of dirty laundry.

  All of a sudden, the house got very noisy, very messy. Wally played the cello on the porch, the twins blared music from the stereo in their bedroom, Katya wandered around outside in bare feet and gauzy peasant dresses playing the violin. Lorenzo, in a kind of psychic dog pain, stood baying on the lawn, and Sweetums Lucille answered from her tether at the side of the barn. Elizabeth shouted at the boys, the telephone rang, tempers flared. The boys’ bathroom smelled ferocious. Archie was hardly speaking to Tad and Harry, because of the business with the motorcycle. The septic tank backed up, and the lawn had to be excavated.

  Alice and Theo tried to stay out of the way, but it seemed that there was nowhere to go, nowhere to hide.

  “You still here?” Tad said to Theo.

  The dance was held in the old high-ceilinged hall in Grange on the last Saturday night in August. Alice and Theo hung around watching the band, a group of expressionless older men playing swing. They also watched the couples moving around the dance floor. Some of the older people danced so comically, especially the older men, and with such foolish expressions on their faces, that Alice and Theo enjoyed making fun of them for a while. They sat on the dusty open staircase that led up to the loft and looked down over the heads of the couples moving below them. Tall standing fans had been set up by the open front doors to direct the cooling night air into the room, but heat still rose from the dance floor to Alice and Theo, perched on the steps. Leaning over the stair rail, Alice surreptitiously made her imaginary camera and took a picture, a kaleidoscopic image of the dancers twirling beneath her.

  Alice followed James and Katya with her eyes. James wore a tuxedo jacket and khaki shorts and a white tuxedo shirt open at the neck. He was easily the most handsome man in the room, Alice saw. He looked like an old-fashioned movie star, with his shiny black hair slicked back, his high cheekbones and straight nose. Katya was barefoot in a strapless silver sheath of a dress. She was drawing looks from everyone in the room.

  “Don't have a heart attack, Archie,” Wally had said when Archie had come into the kitchen earlier that evening a few minutes after James and Katya had left to walk over to the hall. “But Katya's wearing a surgical glove to the dance. I just wanted to warn you.”

  On the dance floor, James pressed Katya to him with one hand on her lower back, looking down into her upturned face. Katya's slim, pale hand rested delicately on the back of James's neck, her hair flung over her shoulders.

  “Whoa,” Theo mumbled, round-eyed. “Look at Katya.”

  On the steps, Alice crossed her arms over her knees and rested her chin on her forearms. On the step below her, Theo kept jabbing her leg with his elbow and saying, “Look at that old guy,” or, “Look at that lady with the turban.”

  But Alice could not take her eyes away from James and Katya.

  “I'm bored,” she said after a while. “Let's go.”

  From the step below her, Theo looked up in surprise. “Okay,” he said.

  Alice stalked off past him down the stairs. After a minute, Theo scrambled after her.

  He caught up with her on the dark street that led back to the MacCauleys’. Here and there a few lights were on in the houses they passed, but most people were at the dance, and only their porch lights had been left on. The porches looked like a series of small empty stages floating in the darkness up and down the street.

  “What's the matter?” Theo said.

  “Nothing.” Alice took deep breaths of the mild night air, which smelled sweet and yeasty. Her flip-flops made little slapping sounds against the sidewalk.

  “Something,” he said. “Are you mad?”

  “No!” But she knew she sounded mad. She felt mad, though she could not have said precisely why. It had something to do with James and Katya, and herself and Theo. She was embarrassed, too, about how she had felt, watching James, watching Katya tilt back her head and expose her long, lovely neck to James, who bent forward, Katya draped in his arms, and brushed her throat with his lips.

  The air felt good now against Alice's hot cheeks.

  “Hey, Alice,” Theo said awkwardly after a moment. “You want to go home and make popcorn?”

  Alice stopped and turned to look at him. They stood under a tree, its branches inclined over the sidewalk, enfolding them in a fragrant darkness. She couldn't see Theo's face clearly, but she could still hear the music spilling out of the open doors of the hall into the street behind them.

  She sighed. “Okay.”

  She turned away from him and started to walk again. There were things inside her that she did not know how to say, things that both excited her and embarrassed her, that filled her with vague longing and also with fury. Theo caught up and fell quietly into step beside her. Then he brushed her shoulder with his own, bumping her gently. She shrugged him off, but he came back again, leaning into her, insistent. And then she felt his hand find hers in the dark, and he held on.

  His hand was warm and dry and small.

  Alice's heart flew up into her throat, fluttering wildly inside her. Her pulse sounded in her ears like a deep bell, ringing and ringing into the dark street around them. A deep, sweet happiness spread over her, making her shiver.

  He didn't look at her, but he swung her hand a little when she stole a glance at him, as if to say, Yeah, that's my hand, holding yours.

  Alice woke up sometime in the middle of the night. She and Theo had slept outside, side by side in sleeping bags on the lawn in the front yard. It should have been dark—she knew it was night, because out beyond the strange light that seemed to surround her, it was utterly
dark and still and quiet—but she could see Theo's face beside her as clearly as though it were daylight. She rolled over in her sleeping bag to crane her neck and look back at the house. Nearly every window was lit with a hectic light. Alice blinked, puzzled. And then she heard voices.

  “Don't fucking wake them up! God, Archie. Don't wake them up!” It was Wally's voice. “Archie?” He was pleading.

  Alice sat up in her sleeping bag. Wake up who?

  Archie said something undistinguishable. Then she heard the sound of the screen door to the porch opening. Archie and Wally stepped outside. “I need to ask them about it,” Archie said. “Tonight. Now. I need to be able to go and speak to Hope. If it's true, then I'm at fault, too.”

  Alice lay frozen in her sleeping bag. She saw Wally sit down on the porch steps and put his head in his hands. Tad came out onto the porch, and then Eli, but they didn't go any farther, lurking by the front door. From inside, she thought she could hear Harry's voice, and then Katya's. Was someone crying?

  Beside her, there was a sudden alarmed whirring and clicking in the grass, the angry sound of an insect disturbed, one of the beetles that buzzed furiously when flipped onto its hard, shiny green back. She drew away sharply from the sound as if whatever it was might sting her or bite her.

  Archie came across the grass toward her. Suddenly she felt trapped inside the sleeping bag, as if she wanted to get up and run but couldn't.

  He stopped before her and stared down at her for a minute, his expression unreadable. “You're awake,” he said.

  Alice, bewildered by his tone, which was cold and sad and distant, looked into his face and then past him to the house. On the porch, under the yellow light, Wally sat motionless on the steps, his head resting in his hands. Tad leaned up against the wall of the house, his arms folded, staring down at his feet. Next to him, Eli turned in the light from the door and looked inside, his hands in his pockets, as if watching something in the hall.