“I guess,” Alice said, resolving to never see any of her Biddeford relatives again.
A few of Jake’s friends from the bank came but no family. Gina came, of course, and so did Justin, and a few other kids from high school that Alice barely knew. Justin couldn’t take his eyes off Alice during the brief, terrible reception in the church’s basement. She wondered if he was trying to figure out if her “boyfriend” was there. Would he know she’d been lying? She didn’t particularly care one way or another. She hadn’t thought she’d ever see him again after the party at his house, and she was pretty sure that now she’d never see him again after her mother’s funeral.
Everyone kept asking Alice what her plans were. Was she going away to college? Would she come back to Biddeford? She told them she didn’t know yet, but she did know. She wanted to keep living with Jake. She’d take classes at MCC, just for something to do, but now she had Jake all to herself. She pictured them trying new restaurants up and down the coast, maybe even traveling together.
After the reception, Jake drove Alice back along Route 1 from Biddeford and through Kennebunkport. “I don’t want to go back home quite yet,” he said.
“I don’t, either.”
They went to the Brasserie for an early supper. Alice was wearing a Laura Ashley dress and more makeup than she usually wore. Jake ordered a dinner for both of them and a bottle of wine. The waitress brought the bottle and two glasses and never asked Alice for ID. Alice hadn’t touched any of the deviled ham sandwiches or potato salad they’d served at the church, and she was starving. She ate all the bread herself, soaking it in the garlic butter from the escargot. She tried her steak rare, the way Jake ordered his, instead of medium, the way she usually got it, and it tasted better, much better, especially if you didn’t think about the pool of bright red juice on the plate.
They hadn’t talked about Edith’s death since the night it had happened. As soon as Alice, having watched her mother choke to death, had turned to find Jake watching her, she’d immediately said, “We need to call an ambulance,” and Jake had gone to the wall phone and dialed 911. After hanging up he rushed to Edith’s side and pressed two fingers against the side of her neck.
“She was like this . . . she was like this when I got home,” Alice said, her whole body beginning to tremble.
“When did you get here?” Jake asked.
“Just now. Just a minute ago. How long have you been down here?”
Jake took Alice by her shoulders and moved her backward away from her mother’s body. “I thought I heard something and came down the stairs. I’m so sorry, Alice. Your mother was drinking, and I shouldn’t have left her down here.”
“No, no. I shouldn’t have even left the house tonight.”
“Shhh,” Jake said, pulling Alice into his arms and holding her while her trembling turned into uncontrollable shaking.
When the EMTs arrived, one of them asked Alice if this was how she’d found her mother.
“She wasn’t moving,” Alice said. “She was just lying there.”
After dessert, Jake said, “Let’s stay here tonight. I can’t face going back home. I’ll get us two rooms.”
“Okay,” Alice said.
He left Alice alone at the table while he went to the front desk to book the rooms. She wanted to tell him that he could get just one room, but her voice had stopped working. He came back with two keys. The front desk had also sold him two toothbrushes and a tube of toothpaste.
Both of the rooms were nice, but one of them—the one that Jake insisted that Alice take—faced the ocean and had an outside deck. Jake had bought a second bottle of wine from the restaurant to take upstairs, and together they sat on the deck, the night getting cooler, and drank it. Alice took small sips, not wanting to get drunk, not wanting to be like Edith had been, but the wine tasted good, and was making all her muscles tingle and relax.
“You were brave today,” Jake said.
“Was I? I didn’t do anything.”
“No, but you were there. You came. How are you feeling?”
She thought for a moment about what to say, then decided not to lie. “I feel nothing. I feel cold.”
“Cold isn’t nothing.”
“No, I feel cold right now. It’s cold out here.” She laughed, and so did Jake.
Inside the room, he pulled her into his arms, and hugged her. His skin smelled of cologne, and he was tall enough that his chin rested above her head. She tilted her head and kissed his neck, and he brought his hand up to her chin, tilting it so that he could kiss her. He brought her to the bed, his hands sliding up her thighs to the elastic top of her stockings. She lifted her hips as he pulled them off.
Afterward, in the black darkness of the room, he said, “No one, absolutely no one, can know about this.”
“I won’t tell anyone,” Alice said. “I don’t even want to know anyone else. I just want to know you.”
“I feel the same way,” he said.
Alice woke at dawn to the sound of gulls. She was shivering. They’d left the door to the balcony cracked. She got up to close it, just as the door to the hallway opened up and Jake was coming back into the room. She startled, not aware that he had left. “Where’d you go?” she asked.
“The other room. I made it look like someone had slept there. Just in case. I didn’t want it to look . . .”
“No, I understand.”
He was staring at her, and Alice realized she was naked. She stood, letting him look, and then he came to her.
They returned to the condo that afternoon. They walked the exterior stairs up to the front door. Alice used her key, but before she could step inside, Jake said, “Wait.” Then he lifted her into his arms and carried her, like a bride, over the threshold.
Chapter 10
Now
Harry got back to Grey Lady at just past three. He had walked for miles, eventually winding up at York Hill State Park, where he’d climbed a muddy trail to reach the top of York Hill, less than seven hundred feet of elevation but enough to see the White Mountains to the west and the Atlantic to the east. The rain had stopped completely by the time he got to the summit; the sky was half clear, half darkened by clouds. He was alone, his shoes soaked through, and he felt like screaming at the top of his lungs. But he couldn’t bring himself to do it; a voice at the back of his head was laughing at how clichéd it would be. Instead he sat on a boulder, wondering what would happen if he simply lay back and didn’t move. Would he freeze to death in the middle of the night? He tried it, his shoulder landing in a shallow puddle of rainwater, then immediately sat up again. He couldn’t even fall apart properly, and he decided that he would go back to the house to hear what Alice had to say about the latest developments.
He was surprised to find her in the kitchen, ingredients spread out on the butcher-block island. “Oh, good,” she said when she saw Harry. “I’m starting to prepare dinner. You’ll be eating here, I hope?”
“Sure,” Harry said, then added, “Did you talk to a detective today?”
“I did. Did you?”
“They think it might not be an accident.”
“Well, that’s what they say. I don’t know what to think except that either way, he’s still gone, Harry.”
“I know. But if someone had something to do with it—”
“Maybe someone was just trying to mug him, and your father fought back. Maybe it was still an accident.”
“If someone was trying to mug him then it wasn’t an accident.”
“No, I know,” Alice said, beginning to slice an onion. “The police will figure it out.”
“Where did they talk with you?” Harry asked.
“Who? The police? They found me at Chrissie’s house. I think you must have told them I was there. Chrissie wasn’t surprised, either. We both thought that someone else might have been responsible.”
“But who?” Harry asked, trying to keep his rising irritation at Alice’s lackadaisical attitude from showing. “Did th
ey ask you if you had any idea who might have been involved?”
She stopped slicing and looked directly at Harry. “They did ask me. I told them I had no idea.” Her eyes held his, almost challenging him to call her a liar. He felt she was holding something back, but he didn’t say anything. “It doesn’t matter, though, Harry, does it?”
“What do you mean?”
“Your father’s dead. He’s not coming back.”
“I know that. But that doesn’t mean I don’t want to know what happened to him.” He had spoken too loudly, and Alice put her head down, staring at the perfect slivers of onion on the cutting board. When she looked up again, Harry could see bright spots of red on her cheeks.
“You’re right. I’m sorry. It was a lot to take in this morning, and right now I just want to make dinner and not think about it. It’s enough that he’s not here, and now to know that . . . that . . .” She turned away, her shoulders beginning to shake, and Harry went and gave her a hug. She sobbed into his shoulder while he stroked her back.
“I’m sorry,” Harry said. “Dinner tonight sounds great. What time?”
She pulled away from him, and with a look of almost childish joy on her face she said, “Seven o’clock? Maybe a drink at six thirty? Have you had lunch? I can make you a snack.”
Harry accepted an apple, which Alice cut into slices and put on a plate for him, then he went up to his room.
He didn’t come back down until six thirty. He unpacked some more things, looked through his father’s books, picking out an Ed McBain novel he hadn’t read before, one of the 87th Precinct books called Sadie When She Died. He didn’t think he’d be able to read, but he tried anyway. He kept thinking about how it had felt to hold Alice in his arms while she cried, the way her body had shaken, and the feel of her skin against his. He tried to stop himself from imagining the hug suddenly becoming sexual, one of her hands sliding down into his jeans, her telling him that it would be the only thing that would help her grief. He started the book, reading a page without understanding any of the words, then started again, and managed to get into it. He’d read half before he realized it was nearly six. He showered and went downstairs. There was music playing—a David Bowie album, the one with “China Girl” on it—and something was cooking in the oven.
Alice had changed her clothes. She wore a long dress, in a fabric that looked hand dyed. It was scoop necked and cinched at the waist. “What can I do to help?” Harry asked her.
She’d been assembling a salad and she jumped a little when he spoke. “Nothing, nothing,” she said. “No, actually, you can make us each a drink. Do you mind? A martini for me.”
Harry went to the side table in the dining room, where the booze was kept. It was obvious that Alice wanted some semblance of a normal evening, despite the fact that her husband was dead. Harry decided that it might be a good thing. He’d read a book this afternoon, so maybe life just needed to go on. And if Alice relaxed enough, then maybe she’d open up to him. He still thought she was holding something back.
He found a large bottle of Plymouth gin, his father’s favorite, and Harry, who’d watched his father drink his single, large martini every night at six on the dot, knew how he liked it. Shaken very cold, no vermouth, and served in a tumbler with three cocktail onions.
“How do you like your martini, Alice? Same as my father?”
“Yes, but with olives. And about half the size of the drinks your father used to make, please.”
Harry made the drink, got a beer for himself, then asked again if she needed any help and was told to take a seat on one of the stools around the island. There were snacks out—baby carrots with hummus, and crackers with port wine cheese.
“Your friend Paul is so nice,” Alice said, turning away from her salad, and sipping at her drink.
“It was great he came. He skipped graduation, you know?”
“No, I know. It’s good to have a friend like that. They’re easier to make when you’re young, you know, than in real life. Let me tell you.”
The timer made a tinny buzz, and Alice pulled a large baking dish from the oven. “It’s chicken cordon bleu casserole,” she said. “Have you had it before?”
“No, but it sounds delicious. My appetite, though—”
“Oh, I know. I haven’t been able to eat a thing.” She pinched the bridge of her nose. “Anyway, I just wanted to cook, just to have some semblance of . . . normality. Keep myself busy.”
Alice turned back to the casserole, poking at it with a fork, while Harry finished his beer. There was a silence, and Harry tried to think of something to say that didn’t revolve around his father’s death. He remembered the stranger at his father’s funeral, and said, “I saw this girl at the memorial service yesterday. She had dark hair down to her shoulders, and was wearing a grey dress. She didn’t come through the receiving line.”
Alice frowned. “Was it Ginny Wells?”
“No, I know Ginny. This girl was there alone, toward the back of the church. And she had a red purse with her. I just didn’t know who she was, and it’s strange, because I thought I actually saw her Friday when I arrived here. Out on the street.”
“Out on our street?”
“Yeah. I think I saw her from my window upstairs.”
“That’s odd.”
“That was why I was asking. I’m sure it’s just one of Dad’s customers.”
“Most of his customers were old men like he was, but I don’t know. I don’t remember seeing her. Should we eat in the dining room?”
Alice let Harry bring the hot casserole and the salad to the long dining room table, constructed from renovated barn wood. There was a trivet waiting on the table, and he put down the casserole, large enough to feed an army. Places had been laid with wineglasses and two forks—one for the salad, Harry supposed.
“White wine okay?” Alice said, entering with an unopened bottle.
“Oh, sure.”
“Can you open it up and pour us some, Harry, and then we’ll finally eat.”
Despite having lost his appetite again after that morning’s visit from the detective, the food tasted good. It was clear that Alice was not in the mood to talk about serious matters. She asked Harry rapid-fire questions about his future plans, all of which he deflected. She picked at her food and took small sips of the wine, her pale cheeks becoming flushed.
“And what about a girlfriend?” she asked, after bringing him a butterscotch sundae from the kitchen. “Anyone special you left behind?” The words sounded rehearsed.
“No. Not really.”
“Boyfriend, then?” Harry thought she was trying to sound casual, but she punctuated the question with an odd laugh, and her flushed cheeks had become almost mottled with red.
“No, I don’t have one of those, either.”
“I hope I didn’t . . . I just wondered because I thought maybe Paul—”
“Yes, Paul is gay.”
“I’m prying.”
“No. It’s fine.”
They were silent for a moment. Harry asked, “Did my father wonder?”
“Wonder what?”
“Did he wonder if I was gay? Is that why you were asking?”
“If he did wonder, he never brought it up with me. And honestly, you knew him. More interested in what was happening in one of his books than what was happening around him. And he wouldn’t have cared. You know that, too.”
Harry finished his dessert. Alice was drinking the dregs of the wine, and rubbing her finger absentmindedly on the wooden table, her eyes slightly glazed over. In the light from the flickering candle, she looked not a whole lot older than Harry. Her skin, except for around her eyes, was entirely unlined. She tapped her finger on the table and shifted her gaze, catching Harry watching her.
“You look tired,” he said. “Let me clean up, since you cooked the dinner.”
She sat up straight. “No, I’ll clean. I want to. You can help me bring the dishes into the kitchen, but that’s it. I insist.”<
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Harry did as he was told, leaving Alice cleaning dishes in the large double sink. He said good night and was turning to go when she reached out a hand. He took it and felt a slight tug, and she leaned over and kissed Harry on the cheek. Her skin was slightly damp from the steam of the hot water. “Thank God for you, Harry. I don’t know what . . .” She didn’t finish the sentence.
“Thanks again for dinner, Alice.”
“And, Harry, one more thing. I talked with John today and he really needs you to help him out in the store tomorrow. Could you . . . Do you mind?”
Harry said he didn’t mind.
Back in his room, he cracked a window and tried to get back into the Ed McBain book, but he kept thinking about Alice, her damp cheek on his as she kissed him good night. He also kept thinking about her refusal to discuss what had happened with her husband. Was it because she knew more than she was saying, or was she simply someone who didn’t want to think about anything unpleasant? He realized how little he knew about her. Was it because he’d never asked, or was it because his father had never offered? And now here he was, living for a summer with this strange woman, and she was practically all the family he had left.
He fell asleep above the covers, and woke up cold. He got up and shut the window, then got under the comforter. He listened to the house, so much quieter than his dormitory, where he could lie in bed and listen to the muffled sounds of its other inhabitants. Here, all he could hear was the occasional sound that old houses made, the almost unnoticeable ticks and sighs. He didn’t really like it, the enormity of the quiet, the way it made him feel more alone than he usually did. He felt the negative thoughts rolling toward him, and knew if he let them in he wouldn’t be able to sleep for hours. He recited the Lord’s Prayer to himself, even though the words had long been meaningless to him, but it was too late. The horrible dread—this now familiar feeling of insignificance—coursed through him. As always, it felt more like fear than sadness. He knew it would pass, and he concentrated on relaxing his body and focusing on his sensations, listening to the house.
All the Beautiful Lies Page 7