After Alice

by Karen Hofmann

Justin’s eyes widen; an only child, he has not experienced sibling hostility, she thinks. Sibling rivalry. The unconscious urge to destroy the nest-mate.

  Once, she remembers, as a child made to pick up stones in the garden, she had lobbed a fist-sized rock backward, underhand, meaning to hit the clothes-line post, but instead clipping her sister Alice squarely on the chin. She’d stood up straight, then, gaping. Couldn’t have done that again if she’d tried; she’d laughed out loud at the absurdity of it. Then Alice was on her, kneeling on her back, seizing her two braids like reins in one hand and whacking her face up and down into the mud. Alice, five years older than her, and much larger — there was no resisting Alice.

  Alice’d had three stitches, Dr. Knox driving out from town to do the job. A little white scar, ever after, in the von Täler chin-dimple.

  The appalling feeling of the grit in her teeth, of the clay-slime on her lips. Though when she was younger still, she had cheerfully eaten dirt, according to Alice.

  She thinks that Justin feels rather afraid of his older cousin, Alex, who has a beefy body, bushy hair and beard.

  Alex says, “I actually have a temporary job at the city recycling yard.” His voice is oddly high; he coughs and it drops an octave. “I work the chipper. Chip up the Christmas trees and prunings.”

  Again, the guarded eyes, the impression of withholding, of caution. Wary, like his sister.

  Debbie and Steve smile, stiffly. She realizes then that this is one of those social occasions — she has experienced them with her staff — in which the shy parents display the children as currency. Transactional.

  Perhaps not wariness, then, but ambivalence. As if their real lives might be going on elsewhere. As if they’re waiting for something worth their real attention.

  Or perhaps they’re just embarrassed.

  “Is it dangerous?” Justin asks, of the chipper, and then flushes, but Alex grins.

  “If you’re stupid, it is,” he says.

  That comment seems to finish the conversation. What is wrong with these children — these not-really-children-anymore? They seem disconnected from something. Dependent, perhaps, and resenting the cage of their dependence.

  At the girl’s age, she had already been in university for a couple of years. By the time she was Alex’s age, she had finished her first degree, was married, working at her doctoral studies. Had settled to the business of life. It makes her anxious, this disconnection. This indirection.

  They move from the library into a roomful of strangers: just the sort of thing she likes to avoid. Stephen and Debbie hover near her a little nervously. Are they afraid of what she will say? She has nothing to say. The conversation is about cooking and house decorating, as it would be (to be fair) at a party given by one of her younger colleagues back in Montreal. Or rather, the conversation is about television shows about cooking and house decorating. The first names of celebrity decorators and builders and chefs are invoked. Someone tells an incident involving a friend who had her house revamped as part of a television series. There is much interest in this anecdote, as if this television personality were an important political or religious figure. (She remembers the Anglican Archbishop visiting Marshall’s Landing in the 50s. The general mood of self-improvement that had preceded, and succeeded, the visit. There is something of that in the tone of this conversation.)

  The new religion of the middle classes, she thinks. Consumerism dressed up in a deceptive new costume of aesthetics, even environmentalism. More than one of her colleagues has carted off a whole kitchen’s worth of appliances and cabinets to the landfill to make room for new, environmentally-friendly fittings.

  Stephen’s new house is quite grand; inside all is light and gloss: the ceilings high, the walls painted deep serious shades, the mouldings wide and elaborate, the dark hardwood floors glistening. The furniture and cabinetry, the fixtures and collections all oversized and authoritative, public, almost. Nineteen-forties mobster, her husband Adam would have said.

  She has seen this style before in the homes of colleagues. New money. She is surprised and perhaps a little disappointed at the normalcy of the house. But what had she expected: something like the shack Stephen and Cynthia’s parents, Alice and Buck, had lived in, in Horsefly? They have moved forward, Stephen and Debbie. There is nothing in this house to betray the past, or Stephen’s family history. They have worked hard; they have achieved things.

  There is no sign of the type of talk she remembers from her childhood, of local politics, fruit yields, machinery on the part of the men, gossip and disapprobation of the neighbours, by the women. But neither has anyone become drunk, and nobody has shouted or swung at anyone else.

  What had she expected?

  She drifts back into the library. An odd room. What she had taken for floor-to-ceiling bookshelves are actually repositories for row on row of VHS and DVD cases. There must be thousands of titles. A set of cabinets houses several electronic machines with winking blue lights. A semicircle of high-backed, overstuffed leather chairs — rather Star Trek — with cup-holders in the arms, confronts the cabinets. No doubt a large screen lurks somewhere, for the viewing of these various media. Yes, there, at the juncture of the wall and ceiling, an aperture.

  The library, a sort of combination of chapel and command station, is oddly purposeful and decadent, simultaneously. What can be its purpose? Surely they do not have a room dedicated just to watching movies?

  No evidence of any of the Kleinholzes, Stephen’s and Cynthia’s family on their father’s side, at the gathering.

  She asks Cynthia, “Do you ever see your aunt Lottie? Your uncles?”

  Cynthia gives her a glittering, far-away sort of smile. “Have you tried the food? Go eat something.”

  She is hungry: there are only hors d’oeuvres in the buffet, not a meal. She should have eaten before she came. She marches over to the long table upon which food has been spread. It is all, at first glance, alarming: more like an art installation or lab experiment than food. On oblong ceramic platters rest deep-bowled ceramic spoons holding viscous coils of material: black, coral, acid green. Is this meant to be eaten? Does one insert that entire, rather large spoon into the mouth? Or slurp the substance from it? A phalanx of small square glass vessels like votive holders contains matchstick-like stalks of what she realizes are vegetables — unfamiliar, raw, vegetables — propped in a glob of what might be purple mayonnaise.

  She looks around wildly, sees, at last, little crusts of bread, heaped with something she can recognize as a sort of tomato purée, though it has been adulterated with unidentifiable green and black fragments. She bites in, hungrily. Onion and olive and garlic: it is good. But the brittle crust shatters at the onslaught of her teeth, and a large fragment of bread and tomato sauce leaps to the tablecloth.

  She dabs and dabs, but Debbie is suddenly there, moving a plate smoothly to hide the stain. “Never mind,” she says, kindly.

  She must eat, especially now with Debbie at her elbow. She looks around again: there is a basket of crackers — small brown crackers, innocuous, recognizably food. She picks one up, bites gingerly. Her mouth fills gratefully with saliva. Wheat, the comfort of wheat. She picks up a couple more crackers. Debbie hands her a little glass plate. “Pâté?” she asks. But no. Sidonie does not want the pâté, which seems to be liverwurst with pimentos. She only wants to eat the good brown crackers.

  They are both rescued by Stephen making his way purposefully toward them through the crowd, like a police boat in a shoal of drifting yawls.

  Stephen fetches her a glass, says, “So you’ve retired from psychiatry.”

  “I have never been a psychiatrist. I design experiments for psychological research.”

  Stephen’s face falls, as if he has suddenly been presented with a difficult task. But then Debbie is at his elbow, staying his flagging arm, Sidonie thinks.

  Debbie says, “But you’re retired from your profession now?”

  “Officially,” she says. “But I hope to c
ontinue writing in my field for some time.” This is true. She is connected to her institution, still. She has the internet; she lives close to the airport. She intends to continue her work. She has only let go of the extraneous bits, the tediousness of administrative work. She feels, now, the surge of pleasure, of warmth, at the thought of the projects she has still going.

  The girl, who has been lurking behind her parents, says, “You design experiments? What does that mean? Like, with rabbits and monkeys?” Her brows are drawn together, her voice is accusing. A typical teenager, fired up with some idea she knows little about. Sidonie could take her on. But it’s a fool’s errand, arguing with the impassioned young. And she is a guest.

  She says, “Not really. Most of my design work is in meta-statistics. I work with computer-generated mathematical models.”

  Then she has the pleasure of seeing their faces — Stephen’s and Debbie’s — freeze over, go blank, like stone.

  She notices now that the Gothic lettering on Stephen’s shirt reads Styx. Styx, she seems to remember, was the name of an American rock band from the later 1970s, or perhaps the 1980s. That makes sense. A band of Stephen’s generation. As well as being, of course, the name of the river into which Achilles was dipped, imparting him invincibility. Near-invincibility, to be precise. And the river of the Underworld. Coincidentally, she has been listening, today, to her very good Deutsche Grammophon recording of Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo.

  Stephen excuses himself to take a phone call.

  “That was from Kev,” he says, when he returns. “He couldn’t book off work this weekend.” He says it significantly, as if Kevin’s non-visit, his phone call, were greatly important.

  Cynthia says, “I know; he told me he was really disappointed that he couldn’t make it.”

  So Cynthia is in touch with her brother Kevin, too. Sidonie had not known that. But why should she? She stands outside this family group, for all that she half-raised Cynthia. And now, of course, Cynthia and Justin have a separate house, their own house, in the city. (She should perhaps have bought a place closer to them, downtown, rather than on the outskirts. It had been cheaper to buy, on the outskirts, and was closer to the airport. But it is not very close to Cynthia’s house. And she had not thought that it was so close to the village where she had grown up.)

  Stephen and Cynthia’s brother Kevin, she seems to remember, is working as a cook in a restaurant franchise in Vancouver. He has some sort of family; he had married a woman with children of her own. She has not kept in touch.

  There is no mention of Paul. Paul is lost, Paul, their other brother. He, of course, would not be expected to call or to arrive.

  She remembers, now, Stephen and Kevin loitering aimlessly, as children, at a buffet. Was it after a funeral? Her father’s, she thinks; they hadn’t had a reception after her mother’s funeral. Nor after Alice’s.

  Alice had called them the savages. The boys were wild, her mother had said. Stephen eleven or twelve, suddenly plump (when was a von Täler ever plump?), anxious, clinging. Intent on getting Alice’s approval and attention. Kevin, at nine or ten, chattering ceaselessly, teasing, picking fights, running around aimlessly, careening off walls. And Paul, who was a couple of years younger yet, seven or eight, who had looked exactly like Alice, a young Alice: he had an angelic face, a perfect oval, with delicate beige brows, large, long-lashed blue eyes, a sweet mouth. His fair hair curling below his ears. And he had gone upstairs, at his grandparents’ house, during the funeral reception, and opened Sidonie’s suitcases, and taken out her things. Had come downstairs with some of her underwear on, over his clothes. And, she’d discovered later, after she’d returned home, had scribbled through all of her books.

  How angry Buck had been, when Paul had appeared in his costume — shaking to punish the child. I’ll kick the shit out of you, he’d said. Alice’s tight smile: see what you’ve done now. Her eyes, turned to Sidonie for a split second: murderous. See what you’ve brought on us.

  Of course, they must have all been reacting to the shock of her father’s death. He’d been close to his grandsons, especially Paul. Had taken a great deal of time with them. They must have been shaken when their grandfather had died so suddenly. She hadn’t been able to see that, hadn’t thought of that at the time. She had not liked the children, had not attempted to engage with them, to talk to them in an auntie-ish (what is the feminine form of avuncular?) way, as she did her husband Adam’s nieces, Clara’s little girls. Had she been afraid? She had certainly not felt that Alice would have welcomed any interaction; she can say that in her own defense.

  Then there had been Cynthia, the baby. Who had not really been a baby, but perhaps two years old. “I’m not sure that there isn’t something wrong with her,” Mother had said, without explanation. But Sidonie could see that, anyway; Cynthia didn’t appear to talk at all, but made odd grunting noises. Didn’t respond to Alice calling her until Alice walked over to her, turned Cynthia’s face toward her (a little roughly, Sidonie thought) and spoke directly to her. She had an odd little face; not really appealing. A troll’s face, with tufty beige hair, red-rimmed eyes, pouchy lower lids, a broad, squat nose, a wide, narrow-lipped mouth. A troll baby.

  But she had seemed to like the gift Sidonie had brought her, a set of nesting wooden Russian dolls, brightly painted. She had turned the big outer doll over and over in her hands, not shaking it as most children would have, but running her fingertips over the painted flowers, returning to the seam between the head and the body.

  Stephen had tried to take the doll away, to show Cynthia how it worked, and she set at him with her fists, keening in a high-pitched, anguished voice that was almost unbearable to hear. And Alice’s face: a grimace of dislike.

  A far cry now, of course. Look at Cynthia now. She is, in her late thirties, quite a pretty woman, wearing a little wrap dress of some silvery jersey and very high silver sandals. She is laughing, her eyes sparkling, talking to one of Stephen’s friends, animatedly, using a combination of sign language and speech. She looks down at her pendant, the translucent white stone pendant, holds it up. She says something. Sidonie can read her lips across the room. Moonstone, she says.

  That’s something. She has given Cynthia a decent chance at life. Whatever she has neglected, she has done that. There is Cynthia, interacting with guests, enjoying herself, almost normal.

  The man Cynthia has been talking to leans in closer; suddenly, his wife appears at his side, her hand on his arm, smiling proprietarily. Cynthia’s face, like a young girl’s. Defenseless.

  It is perhaps a shame that Cynthia has not married. It had not seemed a good idea. What sort of man could be expected to take her on? She is managing fine now, with Justin nearly grown. But Justin will need to leave one day, will need to break those ties. And Cynthia needs someone to look after her. Sidonie can’t be there for her forever.

  She had taken early retirement to follow Cynthia out here to the valley, when her niece had taken it into her head to move back. It had been unthinkable that Cynthia should do it on her own, and she’d been resistant to reason. It would have been better for Justin, for example, to have the choice of universities back East. But Cynthia had kept repeating only that she wanted, above anything, to go back to her roots. Cynthia had found herself a job, had started packing.

  Sidonie had sold the house in Montreal — it had been a good time; she’d gotten a good price for it — and made the move, too. She couldn’t really let the two of them move across the country alone.

  Cynthia and Justin together, now. You would think them brother and sister. (But who did Justin resemble, besides Cynthia?)

  She is hungry still, and the crackers are all gone. But here is her grandniece, tipping a fresh heap of the little brown crackers into the basket. The girl meets her eye, almost; makes an invitational movement with her chin. Sidonie pinches up several crackers, puts one into her mouth. There. There. The enticing salt, sweet taste.

  The girl winks, and is suddenly subversive, s
elf-possessed. Sidonie warms to her. She asks, “What do you call these, these little bread crusts, with the tomato? I’ve had them before.”

  The girl tells her. She elaborates: she names all of the dishes. She reveals that the food (this bizarre, sculptural collection of hors d’oeuvres she had assumed had been catered) has been in fact prepared by Stephen and Debbie. The little delicacies — all made here. All made by Stephen and Debbie, with the help of this girl, Tasha. Short for Natasha, she remembers now. She had received birth announcements when Stephen’s children had come along.

  All made by hand, and with such skill. She sees then that she has missed the whole point: how has she not known this beforehand? For here is something admirable, something clear and interesting about her nephew and his wife. That they have cooked all this! And she has been oblivious. (But how to make conversation on this topic, anyway? How can it be a point of connection? She does not, herself, cook.)

  “Your grandmother, my sister Alice,” she says, “was good at this sort of thing. Fancy cooking. Sewing. She won prizes.”

  The girl nods, is possibly, though not likely, interested.

  Tasha has Alice’s eyes, she sees now: or not quite. The irises too pale, the epicanthic fold not pronounced enough. But there is something about the shape of the eyes, something about the lift of the eyebrow. Alice in a certain mood. Alice detached, or assuming detachment, over some impressive accomplishment: that air of self-mockery that mocked others by extension.

  She’s taken by an impulse to somehow recreate Alice in the girl’s imagination. To lure, make an offer, to claim. Not a sensible impulse. Item: it has been on the tip of her tongue to mention the boxes, to intrigue the girl with the mention of Alice’s boxes. Foolish, foolish. The girl is not likely to be interested, and Sidonie herself has reasons for avoiding opening the boxes in company. Not to mention that Cynthia has been asking about them for several months now.

  What is she doing? What has gotten into her? She does not want to raise the ghost of Alice to impress this girl. She will not raise Alice’s memory in this cheap way.