In Love With Alice: A Thirtover Novel

by Alon Preiss

  Eden hopped into the car, smiled at Alice, thanked her too politely for the invitation, and cranked up the radio volume. Alice paused. She wanted to kiss Eden hello, as though Eden were her boyfriend. But Eden wasn’t even looking her way. She was listening to the music, singing along a little bit, excited about the trip. Alice turned away, shifted into drive, and eased her way into traffic.

  Alice had trouble getting out of the Manhattan streets and onto the West Side Highway, and after that she missed a turnoff and she had to backtrack. Eden was sitting there in the passenger seat, close enough to reach out and touch. Alice wondered whether the other night would remain unspoken between them, something they would now pretend had never happened. Had they never slept together, she might easily have invited Eden out to the beach as her friend, but that had not been her intention today; and now she was filled up with unrequited longing. You should see this place, it’s really nice, she said, and it’s got a pool, and it’s really close to the beach, and stuff like that, for hours, all the while yearning to stop the car on the shoulder, to grab Eden, to kiss her and hug her and stare straight into her startled eyes and demand that she whisper sweet nothings into her ear.

  Alice suddenly had a strange thought. She wanted to mention something about their love affair of two days before. But she suddenly worried that if she mentioned it, Eden would say, What are you talking about? Are you crazy? Let me out, I’ll hitch a ride home! She worried that Eden would be so insistent that nothing had ever happened between them that Alice would begin to doubt her own memory. Because how likely was it that any of that stuff had happened? Not very likely, as far as Alice was concerned. A rather unusual turn of events, as a matter-of-fact, when she thought about it rationally.

  Alice turned off the main street that ran through the little town, coasted slowly for a while through woods that grew denser the further she went, finally making a sharp left up a long driveway. Eden whistled when she had a clear view of the house. “Lookit this,” she whispered. The house spread out before them, three stories of windows glinting in the fading sunlight, with a large front lawn bordered by a tidy flower bed, and a view of the ocean out back beyond the forest. “He is pretty rich, this guy.”

  Alice squinted, pumping the brake to slow down. “Nice, right? When we were dating, I think I decided to sleep with Blake so that he would take me out here with him sometime. So we wouldn’t be married if it wasn’t for this place. I think he wants to sell it. Not because it’s the reason we’re married. Other reasons, I guess. Because he could make a big profit on it now. He’s still waiting, though. I think Blake thinks the capital gains tax will go away eventually.”

  Inside the house, Alice gave Eden the tour, pausing by each room and at every corner to sink into a circumstantial memory. When they walked out back, across the lawn and through the gate that led to the pool, the sun had settled beneath the trees, and Alice flipped on the outside light. She kicked off one shoe and stuck a toe in the water. “Everything about this house is set up to have big parties,” she said. “He’s had some big parties here, too. Sets up a bar by the pool, everyone lingers on the deck. A band over there,” she said, pointing, “people dancing over there. Rich people in nice clothes, and stuff. Blake doesn’t seem to like doing it. He procrastinated about this year.” Alice shook her head. “But most of the time, it’s really just big.” She sat down by the edge of the pool, dangled her legs into the water. “Blake has someone come by to keep the pool ready for us,” she said, changing the subject. “Some guy pops by — I don’t know — every week, or twice a week, or whatever it takes. Just in case. I guess someone must come by and clean the whole house, too. It’s always clean. And I guess someone gardens.” She stared down into the water, watching the ripples on the surface. “Everyone loves being around him. Everyone wants to get to know him better. He could enjoy his life, a life filled with people.” She shrugged. Her face remained impassive, but Eden noticed that Alice’s shrug was very sad.

  Eden looked around at the trees shrouding the pool from outside view. She thought about the sadness of Alice’s shrug. “Shut up about your husband,” she said, and sat down beside Alice, wrapping her arms around her. “Ever skinny-dip in this pool with another girl?” Eden asked, and her friend smiled.

  Alice wondered, in the warmth of the night, which started out back of the house in the bluish darkness, and ended in the bedroom she had shared on occasion with her husband — during all of that, Alice wondered how Eden was different, from Blake, from Mark, from a guy she’d met in New York one night back in the mid-1980s when she was rich (and whose face always — and inexplicably — appeared in her mind’s eye whenever she thought back over past romances), from the guy on the running path with the calf muscles that belonged on a statue in a museum. She felt Eden’s hands on her body, her senses filled up with soft skin that smelled like Eden’s soft skin and like nothing else in the world. This secret from Blake was innocent, almost comical, like a pleasant gust of wind that might painlessly change you and then leave forever, without you really knowing how or why.

  She memorized Eden, the dimple on the left side of her face, but not the right; the way her hip bone jutted out on the right side of her body, but not the left, when she stretched out naked on the bed; the way that bone felt rubbing against her when they were together. The unsteadiness of their embrace, the taste of Eden, the feel of her lips and her tongue and the occasional roughness of her teeth. This act, hugging and kissing and rolling about with another girl, was not expected of her by society, nor had she ever expected it of herself; it was an experience for which she had never felt deep yearnings. Because of all this, it was purely voluntary and completely personal, the most voluntary and personal act of love she’d ever taken. Eden’s strong legs were wrapped around Alice’s waist, then around her head. Eden was on her knees on the bed, and Alice held Eden’s ass; Eden bent over and bit down on Alice’s ear, then her shoulder, then pushed Alice back on the bed. Wrapped together, Eden’s feet moved up and down over Alice’s bare body; improvising, no script, no logical start-stop, something like the Mezz Mezzrow tune from Eden’s scratchy cassette that was playing in the corner of the room, a careless, sensual and addled message drifting across a half dozen decades and hundreds of miles.

  A few hours later, Eden crouched naked beside the stereo, balanced steadily on her strong, thin legs. She flipped through the albums, squinting in the dim light. “Have any Jabbo Smith stuff?” she asked, and flashed Alice a bright smile. “I wouldn’t think so. Luckily, I’ve brought some.” She pulled a cassette case out of her overnight bag, clicked it open and stuck it into the player. “This is taped off a really rare, old record,” she explained. “It doesn’t sound too good.” As she climbed back into bed, a trumpet roared into the silence of the bedroom, a distant backup band almost snowed under by the static, pops and hisses of half-a-century of oblivion. Eden rolled over and put her arms around Alice.

  Sleepily, Eden started telling a story. Jabbo Smith, back in 1925, was a better jazz trumpet player than Louis Armstrong. But he made bad decisions, trusted the wrong people, joined unsuccessful bands. He was irresponsible, almost got kicked out of the union, stopped getting hired for gigs. In 1938, at the age of 30, he tried for a comeback and cut a few sides for some little record company, but his sound was too dated in the era of swing. So he vanished into obscurity for decades. “But see,” Eden said, “I remember him, the great unfinished story of his life. I remember who he is. And now you do too.” She shut her eyes and sank into the faded music, a little smile of affection on her face.

  “Boy, Eden,” Alice said drowsily. “You know a lot of stuff.” But it was important stuff, Alice knew, so she didn’t kid Eden, not even a little bit. To know Eden, Alice realized, she would have to know Jabbo Smith, and Mezz Mezzrow, and all the others, and their lost moment, and the memory of the greatness denied them, and understand why Eden mourned them all as bygone friends.

  Maurow ran along the beach, huffing and puffing
in the island sun, still strong in the late afternoon, took a cold bath, then sat in his robe in the back room of the main house, cranked on the radio and checked his messages with his service in California — a legal yet seedy operation through which Maurow could pretend for the sake of his wife and his office to be in a hotel in California — then radioed the operator on the mainland and put in a hurried call to Alice, who wasn’t home. He left her a steady and relatively affectionate message. He then put on a casual suit and arrived early at the outdoor café on the small beach-front terrace. He opened up a parasol over the table, slipped on a pair of sunglasses and a wide-brimmed white hat. Old price lists still hung beside the empty building, hammered into the outside wall, protected by a plastic coating but faded in the sun. Everything looked as Maurow had described it to Harriet in his last e-mail to her — the white sand, the empty ocean, the sad romance of a lost and abandoned island, the air thick with hazy memories of everyone who had ever spent a happy evening here over the last three decades, dancing drunkenly in the sunset, multitudes of slightly sweaty bodies huddled close. He could almost hear the music of those years, hear the laughter, taste the kisses, feel the emotions flooding through his body, just sitting in the air that had once throbbed and pounded and vibrated with all those strong, momentary, mostly real and only slightly false passions. Some of them had washed out to sea and were now at the white foaming crest of the waves, poised to crash back onto the shore. Others remained, forgotten happy moments whistling along in the wind.

  After a while, he heard the distant motor of Carlo’s boat, saw it skimming through the waves off on the horizon. In and out of view. A moment later, he relived the sight in his mind. Had he seen Harriet in the boat? Had she been smiling? Had she seen him sitting on the shore, in his wide-brimmed white hat, in an otherwise deserted café, and had that made her smile?

  Suddenly from out of the darkness and around a bend in the island shore came Harriet, looking like herself but not like herself, in a pair of shorts and a white t-shirt, not the confident professional he had recently known, nor the pretty young girl he’d been in love with so long ago, but the most awkward of tourists. Her awkwardness made him happy. He stood up to greet her and waved, and she started running along the beach, and when she reached his table, he held out his arms and kissed her quickly on the cheek, and she whispered, “You must be my date.”

  “I’m nervous,” she said, the two of them sitting on the sand and staring out into the ocean. Looking over at Maurow: “Don’t you mind getting sand on your suit?”

  “No,” he said. “It’s a suit made for sitting on the sand.” Then he added, “Don’t be nervous.”

  “But I don’t know what I’m doing here,” she said. “Why don’t you mind all the sand on your suit?”

  “I just don’t,” he said.

  “Is it uncomfortable?”

  “No. Maybe. I guess a little. I don’t care.”

  “Why did you call me?”

  “I don’t know,” he said, matter-of-factly. “It was an impulsive moment. I don’t get many of those, so I decided to go with it.” A moment later, he asked, “Why did you come?”

  “You asked. I don’t know. You asked, and I said yes. I don’t know. I thought for a long time that you were a bad guy. But when I saw you again, you were nice. Then I remembered that you were nice. That’s been clunking around in my head. So when you called, I came.” She laughed. “Like ‘Jeanie.’ Didn’t we watch ‘Jeanie’ together?”

  After a few moments of silence, she poured herself another drink.

  “Well,” Maurow said, “plenty of time now to reminisce. And Carlo will bring us dinner each night and check on us. Lunch and breakfast are minimal, but dinner will be like a fancy restaurant. We can hop over to the mainland whenever we want. Go shopping. We can go snorkeling. We used to do that.”

  “Okay,” Harriet said. “Okay. Snorkeling. And we can reminisce.”

  “Yes,” Maurow said. “Reminisce. Probably my memories are different from your memories. We can reminisce and sort it out. Remember things we haven’t thought of in a long time.”

  “Okay.”

  “And we can catch up. You can tell me all about Mr. Pointer. Like that.”

  “We can catch up. And reminisce. And snorkel.”

  He nodded.

  They reminisced, as planned, about their meeting, their blissful first date, about their wedding, about some funny things that had happened at their wedding, about the silly photographer and the songs the band played, and about people they had once known. They wondered what had ever happened to those people. Neither one of them really cared. Harriet told him all about how she had wound up settling down with Mr. Pointer, and it seemed to Maurow that she was, perhaps unconsciously, suppressing a smile for his benefit. It was a very romantic story, filled with misunderstandings and lost opportunities and a happy ending, like a Doris Day movie. “That’s a great story,” Maurow said, momentarily swept away. “A really great story.” He told her how he’d met Alice during intermission of a concert at Lincoln Center. He told her all about the Schubert music he’d heard that night. He omitted reference to Alice’s sudden inspired kiss and to his own subsequent period of antipathy.

  After a while, they were both quietly drunk. Maurow was more drunk than he had been in years — certainly since his marriage to Alice. It just sneaked up on both of them. They’d always liked being drunk together, and they both remembered this at the same time.

  “Alice says,” Maurow remarked, “that you can only really know someone by asking about the unimportant things. That the unimportant things are the most important. Do you know what this means?”

  “I guess. Like what’s your favorite color?”

  “Maybe. Or who’s your favorite writer. Favorite movie is the one Alice always uses. You know, what a person does for a living, he just stumbles into that, maybe. Same thing with how many brothers and sisters he has, where he went to college, where he grew up. But a person’s favorite movie — that’s really you. That’s something you choose from somewhere inside of you. So Alice thinks it’s pivotal. Her favorite song used to be Frank Mills, from Hair. Now it’s a Billie Holiday song.”

  “Billie Holiday,” Harriet said. “The kids like Billie Holiday, all of a sudden.”

  Maurow thought. “What’s your favorite song?”

  “Don’t have one.”

  “I don’t either.”

  “Not so important, I guess.”

  “So who’s your favorite politician,” he said, “since our marriage?”

  “Jimmy Carter,” she said. “And yours?”

  “Gerald Ford.”

  “Why?”

  “I felt sorry for him,” Maurow explained. “Your favorite TV show?”

  “This thing I watched with my kids. Land of the Lost. Family stuck in a land with dinosaurs, but also these other strange creatures. Everything sometimes converges and a doorway opens and you can go in and out of other places and times. They eventually learn how to use these things. I thought in some symbolic way, that was a good thing for a kid to see. Teaches them that life is just a series of doors always opening and closing and creating great life- and world-changing opportunities that are only available to you for just a brief moment. I don’t love the show so much. But I loved watching it with my kids. So it’s my favorite show.”

  “What do you want to know about me?”

  “I never thought those little things were the most important question you could ask a person,” Harriet said.

  “No?”

  Without thinking, Harriet said, “‘What’s the saddest thing that ever happened to you?’ That’s the most important question.”

  Maurow nodded. “I think you’re right.” This realization itself made him very sad. “Anyway,” he added. “You know the answer to that question.”

  “Okay,” Harriet said quickly. “In one sentence, describe Alice.”

  Maurow didn’t hesitate. “She started a million-dollar company in her t
wenties, but she never has an umbrella when she needs one.”

  “As though you’ve been waiting for the question.”

  He agreed. “She’s perplexing. I don’t really understand her.”

  “Maybe,” Harriet suggested, “you should try harder.”

  “I think I try hard enough.” And with that, the subject was closed.

  Suddenly remembering, Harriet asked, “How is your brother?”

  Maurow shook his head. “I heard from him just before I got married.”

  “Did he come to the wedding?”

  “No.”

  “I always liked your brother.”

  “He liked you.”

  “Has Alice ever met him?”

  “No. I sometimes think maybe he’ll turn up at my home, pretending to be me. Sleep with my wife, you know. Make a mess of things.”

  “Alice would know it’s your twin.”

  “No,” he replied. “She doesn’t know about him. She’s a twin too. She’s also the twin of a....” He stopped, searching for the right words. “Well, she also has an unusual twin. I thought my situation would upset her. So she doesn’t know about him.”

  “Why are you so protective?”

  “I think,” Maurow explained, “that Alice wants to be protected by me. I don’t know why. She wants it from no one else. In all other ways, in all other contexts, she finds even the hint of condescension a capital offense. But from me....” He shrugged, and he took a gulp of his drink.