After Alice

by Karen Hofmann

“Was that my car?”

  And, astonishingly, everyone laughs.

  Kevin says, “I’m forty-five years old, and I’ m still cooking for a franchise, and I don’t own my own home. And you may not know this, but I’m also supporting a couple of kids. Frankly, if I don’t get a bit of cash, I’m going to be pretty well destitute in ten or fifteen years.”

  Cynthia says, “I do have a pension plan, and I own my own house, or part of it, such as it is. But I’d like to be able to pay for Justin’s schooling, help him buy a first house when he’s older.”

  She could sell Beauvoir. The orchard would not bring in a huge amount, but with the wood lot subdivided, there would be enough for all of them. She could make all of their lives a little more secure. She is tempted. But it is not required of her; she has taken care of Alice’s children. And Alice had received her share.

  BABYLON

  In the fall, she books flights and hotels, restaurants and symphony tickets over the internet, consults with Clara and Anita by telephone and email. She is accomplishing things, moving forward. She is planning her escape. She prepares for a long absence: she stops her mail, throws out perishable groceries. She does not give a key to her neighbour. She washes her windows, which have been blasted, it seems, with dust. She stretches an old sock over a broom and winkles cobwebs from the high corners of her vaulted ceilings, from the upper cornices of window frames, from the hidden recesses above her pink kitchen cabinets.

  More sorting of the boxes. (Paradoxically, she has energy to do this, now that she has all of these other activities on her agenda.) She sets up her low stool next to an opened carton, and dives in.

  A shoebox of letters from Sidonie herself; when she opens the box, realizes what she is seeing, she feels instant shame that there are not more. Fifteen years’ worth, but not so many from a child who has fled to the other end of the country.

  Leaf through them quickly. She will not read them now. She is a little short of time; she’s leaving for Montreal in a few days, and still needs to check a couple of references for her paper. She will keep these letters for later; only skim them now.

  Dear Mother and Father, How are you all? I have started all of my classes. It takes me twelve minutes to walk from my calculus class to my physics class, but we have only a ten-minute break. . .

  Dear Mother and Father, I hope you are well. I have been to the swimming pool three times this week. . .

  Dear Mother and Father, Thank you for your care package. It has been twenty below for the past ten days. . .

  Once-a-week letters for the first year. Than more infrequent.

  Dear Mother and Father, I have met a girl called Clara who is in one of my classes. She has invited me to hear some jazz music this weekend. . . Dear Mother and Father, You will be surprised to hear that I have become engaged. . .

  Dear Mother and Father, Adam and I will be arriving by train in Kamloops on August 11. . .

  Sidonie has told Adam that Alice is considered a beauty, and for the first few minutes after Alice enters the parlour, Sidonie is able to see her with unaccustomed eyes, and sees that she is beautiful, still, at twenty-four. Alice has a classic, oval face, fine, translucent skin; large clear eyes, lake-blue; a small, slender nose; a full-lipped, symmetrical mouth. She is slender, though her face is a little fuller.

  She’d be considered a beauty in Montreal, too. But she looks unkempt, somehow: her hair is darker, pulled back into a ponytail; she is wearing a pair of faded cotton pedal-pushers and a loose plaid shirt, which might belong to Buck. What has happened to Alice? Of course, she has three small children, and lives in what Mother has described as a very backward place.

  Then the new Alice subsides into the old, and is just Alice, and Sidonie can’t see her objectively any more.

  Alice is not talkative. She asks no questions of Sidonie, or of Adam, volunteers no information. Adam asks her some questions about the baby, Paul — how old is he? Does he sleep through the night? And Mother asks some other questions: did Alice get the box of cherries and apricots Mother sent up to her? Did she can them?

  Silence falls.

  Mother says, “Alice was Lady of the Lake a few years ago. She and some of the other girls were presented to Princess Margaret, when she came to open the bridge.”

  Adam, who has fortunately been illuminated by Sidonie, nods and widens his eyes a little, to show that he is impressed, but at the same time, Sidonie sees it occur to Mother that Adam might not understand.

  “It’s a beauty pageant,” Mother says.

  “A local custom,” Alice says now. “Like the agricultural fair. Only girls in swimsuits instead of pumpkins.”

  Sidonie can hear the smile in Alice’s voice, but Alice hides her smile behind her hand.

  “Alice made a very good speech about — what was it about, Alice?”

  “Tea cosies,” says Alice.

  “About the importance of the domestic arts. And Mr. Buckley praised it.”

  Mr. Buckley is the local MLA and the premier.

  Another silence falls, and Sidonie wonders why Alice hides her mouth, and doesn’t open her lips very wide.

  Mother says, “Sidonie, I’m sure Alice would like to see your wedding album.”

  Sidonie is about to say that she hasn’t brought it, but Adam jumps up. “I’ll get it for you, darling,” he says, and is off up the stairs before Sidonie can speak.

  Mother takes Paul, who protests, and passes him to Father, who says, “Let’s go outside and see the chook-chooks” in a voice Sidonie doesn’t remember having heard before. Then Mother puts Sidonie on the sofa beside Alice, and the album on Alice’s lap, and sits on Alice’s other side.

  Alice doesn’t touch the album; it is Mother who opens it up. Sidonie feels her cheeks grow hot, and glances at Adam, but he is leaning back slightly, his legs crossed, his hands behind his head.

  Clara has put the album together for them, with Anita’s photographs arranged on heavy cream-coloured paper, little black gummed triangles at the corners holding the photos in place. Clara’s fine script describes what the photographs show. The first photo is of Sidonie in the park, in the fall. She doesn’t remember it being taken, but she remembers the day: a Sunday walk with Adam’s family. There are leaves on the ground, and her face, under her little rolled felt hat, is in profile, a little blurred, as if she had been turning her head, and the straight horizontal lines of her eyebrows and lips are emphasized. Sidonie likes this photo: she is in motion in it, and Anita has seen what Sidonie sees in her own face: the horizontal planes.

  “It’s too bad about the blur there,” Mother says. “They should have taken another photo, and got one that was still. But I guess it’s hard to get Sidonie to hold still. Oh, and look; there’s a shadow too. What a shame. It’s a funny photo to choose, isn’t it?”

  The shadow is of Adam’s father’s wheelchair; it makes an interesting shape across Sidonie’s coat, like a design in darker fabric.

  Alice doesn’t say anything; Mother turns the page quickly. On the next page is another candid, but oddly revealing photo of Adam with his violin. Sidonie likes this one too. Adam is not looking at the camera, and his gaze seems focused on something not seen. Sidonie realizes that she can tell what he was playing from the angle of his body, the expression on his face: Stravinsky’s Concerto in D for strings, obviously. She can almost hear it, to look at him.

  “Here’s a funny one of Adam,” Mother says. “He looks completely lost in his music.”

  There are a few more snapshots of Sidonie and of Adam. Alice doesn’t comment. Mother’s voice becomes furry, but with an edge, and Sidonie decides this is what people mean by arch. Mother says to Adam, “I suppose your sisters took all of these photos and put them in the album to bring you down a notch. Little sisters won’t let big brother have dignity, even on his wedding day.”

  Sidonie squeezes her eyes tight for a second, then glances at Adam, but he is still sitting in that relaxed way, a slight, not unfriendly smile on his lips.
He is sending her signals, audible only to her. She can’t interpret them, but they are calming, invisible fingers pressing gently on her shoulders.

  Here are Sidonie and Adam at Christmas, in the posed photo that they used for the engagement announcement. Adam is seated in an armchair, Sidonie perched on the arm, leaning into him just slightly. And then the one Anita took right after, when Adam pulled Sidonie playfully into his lap. Her knees are up, and a lot of leg is showing, but what feels more exposed is that her hair has fallen over Adam’s arm, and he’s bent over her, laughing, and she’s looking — uncharacteristically — right into his eyes. Adam’s gaze, too, is entirely on hers, and somehow, perhaps because of the light, or that they’re both in semi-profile, they look connected. She sees that they look similar, even, in the curves of their lips, the angles of their jaws, the shapes of their noses. But it’s not just that; there is some energy between them, some almost-visible conduit, taut, between their glances. She wishes that her mother and Alice had not seen that picture.

  Then the photos of the wedding day. These are photos everyone will expect to see, Anita had said: Sidonie getting dressed, getting out of the car, going into the church, coming out of the church on Adam’s arm, posed in family groups in the park, dancing and having toasts at the reception, and then sitting in the back of Adam’s Uncle Lou’s open Cadillac, with the “Just Married” sign on the back. In all of these photos, Sidonie thinks that she looks like someone else. She had been someone else all that day. Adam’s mother had said, Just be yourself, dear, but Clara had said, No, that doesn’t work for Sidonie. She needs to be inside someone else. You’re a bride, Sidonie: a glamorous girl from the West, bringing her new blood and nerve to an old East Coast family. This bride, she can pickle cabbage or shoot a varmint, but she’s also the top of her class and the toast of the city. Like Carolyn Jones in How the West Was Won. Can you do that, Sid?

  So Sidonie had; all day she had been that other bride, that character from a movie. She can see it in the photographs. She doesn’t look much like herself, she thinks. Her back is very straight, and her head balanced just so on her neck, which looks longer than usual, and she has a little pout on her lips, and her eyelashes lowered, except when she is looking at Anita and smiling. And then the smile is not hers, but the smile of the bride. She looks at the photos and feels cold: someone else is gazing out. Someone other than her carried those flowers, got married to Adam.

  “My, you look graceful and elegant,” Mother says. “Quite different! Fine feathers, I guess. But I told Alice that you made a beautiful bride.” Mother is very interested in describing all of the clothes to Alice — the wedding dress, the dresses worn by Anita and Clara and Adam’s mother and all of the aunts and friends. Sidonie is amazed that Mother noticed so much, that she can remember so much detail. “The centrepieces are burgundy roses and stephanotis — you can see what a deep colour the roses are! Brought in from Georgia, I believe. And your going-away outfit is merino crepe — a sort of orange, wasn’t it, Sidonie? Not a colour most people would wear, but I guess you need to stand out, in fashionable society.”

  Mother also identifies all of the people in the photos, and explains who they are to Alice, not in terms of their relationships to Adam or to Sidonie, but rather in terms of their professions, or their husband’s or father’s professions. “This woman in the blonde mink — isn’t she the wife of Adam’s dad’s business partner, Sidonie? I think she was a Fitzgerald? We had cocktails at their house up the mountain. Such a beautiful house, though I myself dislike a steep driveway.”

  Alice yawns widely, but behind her outstretched fingers.

  “You look like a mannequin,” Alice says.

  Sidonie knows that Alice doesn’t mean this as a compliment, but she is pleased, because that is what she thinks too. “Yes, I do!” she says. “I’m all posed. It doesn’t look like me at all.” She has expected Alice to say that this fancy wedding and the nice clothes are wasted on Sidonie, and though Alice has not, Sidonie feels the old tight clench of anxiety paralyzing half her brain. She thinks of Alice’s borrowed wedding dress, the shack at Horsefly, and feels shame for her own finery. It’s all wrong: this should belong to Alice, not to her. And she waits for Alice to turn on her, for Alice’s explosion of bitterness, braces against the cutting voice which is always much crueler than she can prepare herself for.

  But there is no reaction from Alice, and Sidonie can’t even feel a heat, a resentment, emanating from Alice’s person, so close to her on the sofa. Something is turned off, locked away. And that is more alarming than anything. Alice murmurs “Oh?” and “Yes” to Mother’s comments, and doesn’t even joke.

  Alice and Buck and the babies are going to spend the night; Mother has made up a bed for them in Father’s office. There is a new sofa in the room which, after much tugging and wrestling, converts to a double bed. Sidonie says “Oh!” because Alice might want her old room; she must usually have it, but Alice mumbles “I’m hardly ever here.” Buck is supposed to come back for supper (roast duck, with new potatoes and snap beans, beet salad and thick, rich gravy), but doesn’t. Nobody says anything. Adam compliments Mother’s cooking fervently and has third helpings, and then two slices of peach pie, as well.

  Alice picks at her food. Father says “Eat more; you’re feeding a baby,” and Mother says “Shhh,” and glares at him for mentioning it at the table, and in front of Adam. Mother disapproves of Alice breastfeeding; Sidonie has heard them talking. “You’ll ruin your figure,” Mother says. But Alice says “I have no way of sterilizing bottles or keeping milk fresh up there. What am I supposed to do?” There is something in the way the words “up there” sound that makes it Mother’s or maybe somebody else’s fault that Alice can’t clean the bottles. Sidonie can tell they’ve had the argument before.

  Painful, even now, to relive the agony of that afternoon. She hadn’t possessed a good deal of empathy then, but had intuited Alice’s deep rage, Mother’s grief.

  What it must have cost Mother to be near Alice, to see her, to stand — as much as she could — at arm’s length from Alice. She must have given Alice a great deal of room, for Alice wouldn’t have put up with anything else — any interference, suggestion, remonstration. And yet, she wouldn’t have been able to resist the little ambushes, the low strikes from the underbrush.

  She hadn’t understood, until Cynthia was a young adult, that frustration: to see one’s child’s life change for the worse, and to not be able to do anything.

  Sidonie has not kept the letters her mother wrote her. She has not thought about it since, but during those years, throwing away the letters, scarcely read, was a gesture, a claim staked on behalf of her own independence, her new identity. But she can remember the mention of Alice in each letter, growing more overtly concerned. “Alice is pregnant again — I do hope she’ll take better care of herself this time.” “Alice dropped in yesterday. Those boys sure outgrow their clothes and shoes fast!” “Alice should can more — I think she’s not getting enough vegetables in the winter.” “I wish you would invite Alice for a visit — she could use a real break.”

  Never a direct mention of Buck: only news of their moves necessitated by his unemployment and failed ventures. Scarcely a mention of the children, except to say that Father had taken Stephen on a fishing trip or that the older ones were running wild: every time they visited, they broke something or hurt themselves.

  Kevin cut his lip open on one of Father’s chisels. Stephen fell off the shed roof. Paul fell off the shed roof. Kevin tried to climb down the chimney and got stuck in a flue. Paul got a rock in his eye.

  On that visit, that Saturday night, Buck didn’t come back till past midnight. Sidonie woke to hear shouting, a crash that might not have been the first one, Father getting out of bed and going heavily down the stairs, remonstrations, more shouting. In the morning, Buck, unshaven, undershirted in the kitchen. Alice scrubbing at his shirt in the sink. Buck tossing tiny Paul up in the air, heart-stoppingly high. Alice’s sh
arp rebuke, Buck’s surly grin.

  Alice and Sidonie and the little boys going to church with Mother; when they got back, Buck honking the truck horn impatiently, rudely, for Alice, while she changed Paul’s diaper.

  The calm after Alice left, which at least partly answered the question: why did Mother and Father allow it? Why didn’t they tell Alice to leave Buck, come back home?

  But there are other answers to that question.

  On the Saturday evening, after supper, before Buck had come back, Sidonie and Alice had gone up to their old bedroom, sat on their old beds.

  “So,” Alice said, surprisingly, “you didn’t get to have this room to yourself for very long.”

  It is so exactly what Sidonie had thought that she is shocked, though not so shocked that she doesn’t hear the mockery in Alice’s voice.

  “Is it strange to have sex in your old room?” Alice asks. Then says, “I always found it quite exciting when Buck and I did it in here.”

  This turn of the conversation is more than shocking: it is aggressively coarse. Sidonie feels her lips purse. Of course she has had much more frank discussions of a sexual nature in her psych classes, and with Clara and with Adam, but it is Alice — Alice, who has always been reserved, prim — who is speaking like this.

  “Or do you fuck?” Alice continues. “No offense, but it’s hard to imagine you getting into bed with anyone without putting their eyes out with your elbow. And your bridegroom” — she stretches out the word, so that it sounds both pompous and lewd — “looks like he’s used to women more sophisticated than you. But maybe you two just like to cuddle and read all night?”

  Sidonie says at last, “You know nothing about my life. Why don’t you mind your own business? Why do you have to be so mean?”

  She hates that she sounds childish, but she has no defense against Alice.

  Alice raises her eyebrows. “Mean? No; you know what, Sidonie? I’m actually concerned about you. I think maybe you’re being taken advantage of, and don’t even realize it. Who are these people? They’ve rather taken over your life, haven’t they?”