The Evolution of Alice

by David Alexander Robertson

  The next morning, Alice woke up on the couch alone, and, to her surprise, didn’t like the feeling. She never would’ve admitted it to Gideon, but she had liked having him there with her last night. She was sure that he’d saved her. There wasn’t any way she was going to tell him this, however. She wasn’t ready to. She didn’t need to seem vulnerable. She hated the thought of pity, the thought of people looking at her with sad eyes, thinking how bad they felt for her but how lucky they were that what happened to her hadn’t happened to them. Gideon never treated her like that yet, but if she got soft around him he surely would, and then she wouldn’t want him around. It was odd; she wanted to be alone but hated to be lonely. As her eyes adjusted to the light, and her mind adjusted to wakefulness, she heard voices from the kitchen table: the laughter of her girls and Gideon’s voice telling jokes. She was glad to hear him and wondered if he’d left at all.

  “Look,” she heard Gideon say, “your mommy’s awake, how about that?”

  Alice sat up on the couch and looked over to the kitchen table. Her daughters waved. She waved back.

  “Morning, Mommy!” Kathy and Jayne said in unison.

  “Good morning, darlings,” she said.

  Gideon met eyes with Alice and pushed a small bowl of cereal across the table in her direction, an offering for her. She shook her head but thanked him. She ate when she had to, but never felt like it, and it usually wasn’t until noon that she ended up putting some food into her mouth: crackers and cheese or a few chips. Gideon shrugged and pulled the bowl back toward him, then sat down and started eating the cereal.

  “More for me,” he said. “Gonna get soggy otherwise. Right, girls?”

  They nodded. Alice did, however, get up from the couch and join them at the table, and this was a rare occurrence, and in some ways more surprising than if she’d taken a bite of cereal. She pushed some hair away from her face and took a sip of Gideon’s coffee. He offered her the whole cup, so she continued to sip it as she watched her girls eat. She used to enjoy that, watching them busily eat their breakfasts, scraping every last bit into their mouths, hearing them chew with their mouths open. She never much cared to teach them table manners, always thought it was more important for them to just be kids. But watching them now, as much as she loved them, didn’t give her the same amount of joy, because her eyes would always trail over to where Grace used to sit, and she would be reminded of how there was one less mouth chewing. And Grace, well, she was the most fun to watch eating. Half of the food would get on her face, shirt, or table, and she’d play this game where she dropped her utensil and made one of the girls pick it up for her. They always did, too. Nobody sat in her chair. Nobody could anyway; Alice had never taken the booster seat off.

  “Hey, Al,” Gideon said, “I told the girls maybe they could play in the snow out back after breakfast. Whaddya think?”

  Alice shook her head. “No, I don’t want them playing back there today, Gideon.”

  The girls let out a collective, disappointed sigh. Gideon did too. It was strange to Alice, before and after Grace died, to see such a rough-looking man acting so often like a little girl, but he played with them at their level whatever they were doing. He was one of them, and they loved that about him.

  “Come on, Al, they’re cooped up, these girls. They’re goin’ stir crazy is what they’re goin’. How about just for a little bit?”

  “Gideon,” Alice pleaded.

  Letting the girls go outside gave her anxiety. She didn’t like the thought of them being anywhere they could get hurt, and so them being inside was about the safest place they could be. As one month bled into the next, she had let them go outside less and less, and, when they were outside, she was out there with them.

  “Please, Mommy!” the girls said.

  Alice turned to Gideon with a disapproving look and whispered, “Not really giving me much of a choice, are you, asking right in front of them.”

  “Grandpa used to …,” Gideon started but was interrupted quicker than lightning with a stern don’t from Alice. He raised both his hands in surrender.

  “Just sayin’,” he said.

  “I guess you can go,” she said to the girls, then to Gideon added, “I’m coming too.”

  The girls shrieked happily and ran off to their bedroom to get changed. Kathy even left her plate out on the kitchen table, which she never did. It had been well over a week since they stepped out the front door of Alice’s trailer, other than when they had to use the outhouse.

  “Great,” Gideon said. “Make sure you wear a jacket this time, though.”

  “Fuck off,” she said.

  It wasn’t long before the four of them were out behind Alice’s trailer. The girls were trudging through the field’s deep snow with great difficulty and, it should be said, great joy, and Alice and Gideon were at the tire swing. Alice was sitting in it and Gideon was standing at her side. It was a touch milder than last night, but only a touch. Alice could see that Gideon was already cold; his shoulders were hunched up to try and keep warm and he was dancing around in one spot like he had to pee.

  “You know, next time you’re in the city, you should get a damn parka. You’ve had that windbreaker for years,” Alice said, at which Gideon nodded, perhaps too cold to say anything.

  The girls were warm. They were bundled up in thick snowsuits, unable to move their limbs very much, navigating the deep snow with stiff arms and legs. They looked like starfish might look, if starfish could walk. Gideon chuckled every now and then at their awkward movements. Even Alice did.

  After they were out there for a little while, the two girls fell flat on their backs for no apparent reason. Out where they were, the snow had drifted so high that the two of them nearly disappeared from sight. They didn’t get up, either. Alice and Gideon looked at each other, sharing confusion, and were curious enough that they moved from their spots to get a closer look. They walked slowly so as not to disturb the girls. As they drew nearer, it was still hard to make out what the girls were doing, both of them flat on their backs and just below the surface in an untouched area of snow. It looked as though they were in convulsions; wafts of snow were kicking up into the air as though from tiny snow blowers as their arms and legs moved rapidly back and forth. They were laughing so uncontrollably they could hardly breathe.

  When Alice and Gideon got right up to the girls, they saw that they’d been making perfectly shaped snow angels. Gideon laughed at the sight. He gave Alice a touch on the arm as though she hadn’t noticed. Alice wasn’t laughing, but all the same, she was enamoured with the girls’ creations. She stared at the angels with the same look as when she’d been staring out into the orange-tinged field last night.

  “He’s here,” Alice said breathlessly.

  “Who’s here?” Gideon said.

  “He’s right here.”

  She fell backwards. The sensation reminded her of being on the tire swing after she’d gone as high as she could—that moment before coming down to the earth. There was a freedom to it; how her stomach dropped, how her heart began to race, and, most of all, the weightlessness. When her body sank into the snow, it felt as though she were submerging herself in water, the flakes so deep and thick and soft. It felt as though she had never landed, that she never would land. She looked up to the sky, a perfect blue, and began to desperately move her arms and legs up and down and side to side. Her eyes welled up with tears that quickly froze against her skin. She didn’t stop for a long time.

  SIX

  There’d been another baby before Kathy was born. Back then, Alice’s mother was still alive but suffering badly from diabetes. Her mother was sad all the time. She knew what was happening to her and that she didn’t have much time left. But when Alice told her about the baby the sadness went away. She took Alice into the city and they shopped for baby things together—clothes, a high chair, toys. During that trip, her mother didn’t seem all that sick.

  Then, one night, Alice felt cramps in her belly, and when sh
e turned on the lights, she saw blood between her legs. Olive rushed her to the hospital in Innis, but to Alice there was no need for the hurry. She knew what had happened. And as crushed as she felt, because she’d always wanted a baby, she felt worse for her mother. The sadness would be worse than ever.

  A few months later, Alice got pregnant again. She spent the first three months praying like she’d never prayed before, even though she wasn’t sure anybody was listening, and was nervous right up until Kathy was born. Kathy got all the things that Alice and her mother had bought for the unborn baby. By that time, Alice’s mother had lost her legs and was fading fast at a hospital in the city. Alice didn’t want to bring Kathy on a trip to the city when she was so young, so Alice had Olive bring her mother a picture of Kathy. Days after the picture’s arrival, her mother passed away. Olive said that the picture had been placed at her mother’s bedside and she’d stared at it for hours on end.

  SWEET TOOTH

  NEVER BEEN IN JAIL BEFORE, ME. Never really been in trouble about anything, except getting in shit from my grandpa and all that, when I was younger. But, you know, your grandpa ain’t gonna throw you in jail. So there’s a difference there, too. And people always say good things about me. I mean, people don’t go around talking about me all the time, but I think, mostly, folks around here would tell you that ol’ Gideon wasn’t any sort of a troublemaker. Anyway, the fact of the matter is that my sweet tooth got me thrown in jail, and that’s screwed up if you don’t know the whole story. I shoulda damn well known better, and that’s that. Call it a, whaddya say, cautionary tale, I guess.

  It was just heading into spring and most of the snow was gone. There were spots here and there of the stuff where it drifted the highest over the winter, but most of it had melted and made its way into the lake. Everybody was worried about flooding, of course. Every spring it flooded around where we lived. Anyway, I was at home picking over a microwave TV dinner. Hungry Man’s meal, they call it. One of my favourites, you know. That’s about when I started to have a pretty bad craving. See, just a few hours before that, I’d been at Alice’s house spending time with Kathy, Jayne, and … shit … almost always say Grace, me. Getting better at that, though. Not forgetting her, mind you, just remembering that she isn’t around anymore. So, I was with the girls in their bedroom playing tea party. I don’t really care what you think about that neither. I’d pretty much do anything for those girls. If they wanna play tea party, then Uncle Gideon’s gonna play tea party.

  We did that for most of the afternoon. “Course, we didn’t have real tea or anything like that. We drank out of pretend teacups that were really Dixie cups filled with sterilized lake water, ate pretend cupcakes that were really ripped up pieces of stale bannock, and pretend liquorice that was really red pipe cleaners. Got all dressed up, too. Yeah, the girls got all done up in princess dresses and good ol’ Uncle Gideon went and snuck one of the only dresses Alice had and put it on. Like I said: anything for those girls. That afternoon was different, though. It got difficult for me; it was one of those times that Grace’s absence seemed bigger than normal. Wasn’t any good reason for it, neither. I just noticed her bed, which was still made up perfect like it always was; her stuffed animals huddled up around her pillow; and her empty spot at the tea table. She used to play with us when she was around, but now Jayne and Kathy put her favourite stuffy there, a big Dora the Explorer thing. After all that playing, Alice asked me to stay for supper, but I told her I didn’t feel like eating anything, which was true. I really didn’t. My stomach felt all in knots and sore.

  I ended up going home, and that’s how I got to picking at that Hungry Man dinner. Like I said, that’s my favourite thing to eat almost, besides Alice’s bacon and eggs. But I wouldn’t’ve felt like eating that neither if she’d offered it to me. Guess I wasn’t much of a hungry man right then. What I did feel like eating was some real treats, not fake cupcakes or fake liquorice. I wanted to eat treats real bad. Problem was, diabetes kinda runs in my family. I don’t have it yet, but I still gotta watch what I eat pretty close. I’d always been pretty good about that, too—I hadn’t ate junk in a long time. Still, there I was getting that craving, for liquorice and a bag of peanut M&Ms to be exact. I knew it wasn’t a good idea, of course. But, before I knew it, I was putting on my boots, my windbreaker, and heading out the door on my way to the grocery store.

  The grocery store was pretty close to my place, and I decided to walk it rather than take my truck. I figured that, on account of the round trip, about four miles altogether, I’d get enough exercise that the junk I was planning to buy wasn’t gonna bother me much. I was, like, bargaining with myself about it. To give myself an even better excuse to go and buy that stuff, I thought I’d get something for Kathy and Jayne, too, while I was at it. You know, since Grace died, the girls hadn’t been given much of anything. I thought they’d really like some jujubes or something like that. I’d even pick out the yellow and the black ones for them, because nobody liked those ones anyway.

  Most of the walk over to the grocery store was a stroll through a bunch of nothing after nothing, especially if you’d walked that way thousands of times like me. If there was something to see, though, it wouldn’t have mattered anyways, because all I could think about was the liquorice and peanut M&Ms. After about 15 minutes I got to the centre of the rez. “Downtown,” as I like to call it. I walked by the Adult Ed building, by the Elders’ home, and, finally, made my way by the community hall, which was a stone’s throw from the mall and doubled as the gaming centre. I never spent much time over there at the hall. Never played bingo, which was mostly what went on there, and I was never much of a gambler neither, so never had a reason to go into the gaming centre. Yeah, I wouldn’t’ve given that place a second thought, woulda been happy to pass by it and be even closer to the mall, because the grocery store was in the mall, and my liquorice and peanut M&Ms was in the grocery store. So, you could just imagine how annoyed I was when I heard an old familiar voice call at me.

  “Hey-uh, Gideon,” said the voice. It sounded almost exactly like Baby Huey from those old cartoons.

  I stopped right there in my tracks, closed my eyes, and cursed. I didn’t turn around at first, kinda wished I was imagining that I heard what I did. But pretty soon there were big, heavy footsteps coming toward me, then little bits of gravel sliding as feet skidded to a stop right behind me. I turned around and came face to face with Gunner, a big-chested, bigheaded, pencil-legged piece of work I’d sworn off as a friend over a decade ago. Tell you the truth, I was surprised he stopped me at all because we hadn’t spoken for God knows how long. I usually avoided being around anyplace he was at. Whenever I saw that stupid Sunfire of his, I just turned and went the other way. I didn’t see it anywhere in the parking lot this time, though, so he got one over on me there.

  “Hey,” he said, “what’ve you been up to?”

  “Nothin’ much,” I said.

  “Oh, yeah?” he said.

  “That’s what I said isn’t it?” I said.

  “Geeeeez-us,” he said, taking a long time to spit out the word, like he was trying to sound as offended as possible.

  I turned away, started walking toward the mall. I hoped he wouldn’t follow me. Stupid me. He didn’t take the hint, followed me right when I started to walk away, caught up to me quick, and started walking with me step for step like we were soldiers.

  “You comin’ from the health centre?” he said.

  I didn’t answer.

  “Man, I got one chick over there at the health centre, Roxie. You know her?”

  I stuck my hands into my windbreaker, kept walking in my own silence.

  “She’s a chubby little bitch, but man she can screw. I’m screwing her all the time, just got to call her. She’s my booty call.”

  “I’m not coming from there,” I said.

  When I got inside the mall, I passed by the lottery booth and made a beeline for the grocery store, sharp and quick, like I could lose him or
something. Shoulda known by then that he wasn’t goin’ nowhere though, for whatever the hell reason. He was like one of them damn rez dogs begging for food. Probably woulda rolled over if I asked him to. I stopped right in front of the grocery store, and he stopped beside me.

  “Yeah? Where’re you coming from then? Alice’s place? You two are close aren’t you? What’s she like these days?” he said.

  “She’s fine,” I said.

  I looked out across the store and tried to recall what aisle I needed. I generally ignored the junk aisle, like I said before, but it wasn’t that hard to figure it out, because there was only four aisles in total. Aisle two was the one I wanted. I walked down that way, passed by soda pop, chips, and then got to the candy and chocolate bars. Bunch of vitamin water around that way too, all in rows one over top the other, and all different colours. Shit, all those bottles looked just like a rainbow. Anyway, that’s where I landed up, and that’s where Gunner followed me to, picking up and opening a bag of ketchup chips on the way.

  “Aren’t you and Alice screwing or something? I swear I heard you’re screwing,” he said in a muffled voice, his mouth full of chips.

  “What the hell are you talkin’ about? God, you’re a real shit,” I said.