“Your tenant,” Jack says. Of course Jack knows who Richard is. Jack knows everything. “How did he know to find you?”
I guess not everything.
“Fuck you,” I say.
Jack shifts his aim. The gun is now trained on Richard.
“Alice, please know I don’t want to kill him. But I will.”
Richard looks at me with frightened eyes. Not quite panicked, but fearful.
“It’s a GPS app,” I say. I’m starting to become light-headed again, my feet unsteady. Blood continues to drip from the tip of my nose. How much do I have left in me? “I suspected Brenda was a part of this from a photo on the website. I told Richard to come find me if I wasn’t home in a few hours.”
“Who else knows?”
“No one.”
Jack takes a step forward and lowers the gun even closer to Richard’s head.
“I swear,” I say. “No one.”
Jack holds something in his left hand. A small, white plastic box, and I think it’s a first-aid kit. This is what he went to the other apartment to retrieve when Richard came in.
“We need to go,” Jack says. “This isn’t how I wanted it to be. I didn’t want Brenda to actually hurt you. I didn’t want to shoot your friend. But this is where we are, and now we need to leave.”
I continue to hold the scalpel in front of me, but my arm quickly grows tired. My feet reflexively want to assume a fighting stance, but it’s all I can do just to keep my balance.
“I’m not going anywhere,” I say.
“Alice, love. Please understand you’re hurt and I need to help you.”
“He’s more hurt than I am,” I say, nodding at Richard. “Help him first.”
“He’ll get help, I promise. But you must cooperate.” He opens the kit with one hand, revealing a needle and a small glass vial of liquid. Realizing he can’t fill the plunger with just one hand, he takes a step back into the doorway, sets his gun down, then sticks the needle into the top of the vial and sucks the liquid into the plunger.
Richard shifts on the floor, but only in pain, not in an effort to attack. He’s too hurt. He’s not an option.
I could throw the scalpel at Jack, but I can’t see that working. It’s not balanced like a throwing knife, and even if the blade managed to strike him, it’d have to kill him, because I’d lose the only weapon I have. I’d put those odds at next to nothing.
But I’m not letting him near me. That needle is meant to knock me out, and then I become his. Maybe forever.
“Alice, I need to do this. So put the knife down.”
“No,” I say.
“Darling.” There’s an edge to his voice. “I’m doing this for you. You have to understand that. I’m a bit disappointed at your lack of appreciation for all I’ve done. But once we leave, once we have time together, you’ll see. You’ll see that I’m the father you always deserved.”
“I’m not going anywhere with you.”
Jack sighs, shakes his head, picks up the gun. He takes two steps back into the room, gun in his right hand, needle in his left. Once more, he aims the gun at Richard’s skull.
“I’m afraid you have no choice, darling.”
What follows is a profound moment of stillness. It’s a religious kind of moment, where the silence seems heavier than possible, the air containing so much weight that the deafening noise of an explosion seems the only possible outcome. And in this moment, in this silence, I am calm. I feel all my history wash over me, all the things that have happened, the pain I’ve allowed, the fear I’ve cultivated, the panic I’ve embraced. It’s all gone. And all that’s left remaining is me. A woman with a choice.
I put the tip of the scalpel against my throat.
“Alice, no.”
Both Jack and Richard say this.
I don’t want to die, but if I’m going to, it will be on my terms. Jack is an addict, and his drug is me. His obsession is saving me, and if I go with him, at some point, he’ll hurt me badly enough that he won’t be able to bring me back. Whether he’ll mean to or not, he’ll kill me. I’m certain of it. The only way to stop him is to take away the source of his addiction.
“Sorry, Jack. You can’t have me.”
“I’ll kill him, Alice. I promise you I will. Put the knife down.”
I look down at Richard, and his dark, fearful eyes are closed. Which is good. I don’t want him looking at me.
“I’m sorry, Richard,” I say.
Then, to Jack, I say, “If you shoot him, I’ll cut my throat. And you won’t be able to stop the bleeding. You won’t have me anymore, Jack. You won’t have anything.”
Jack keeps the gun in position. Richard keeps his eyes closed. I keep the blade against my skin.
“You won’t,” Jack says. “You’re a survivor.”
I take a deep breath. Count to four. Let it out. And then I softly nick the base of my throat with the edge of the blade, enough to start a trickle of blood. For fourteen years, I’ve gone without holding a knife in my hand, and here I am, using it to do the one thing that has haunted my nights for all that time. And there is a beautiful sense of power and control to it all. I choose to do this.
“Stop!” Jack says. “Alice, darling, please don’t.”
“Then give me the gun, Jack.”
“I love you, Alice. I’ve always loved you.” He is shaking. He is broken.
“Give me the gun.” I draw the blade just a fraction more across my throat, with little awareness how close I actually am to my artery. But that’s okay. It’s all okay.
Jack lowers the gun.
And then, rather than hand it to me, he walks out of the room. Seconds later, I hear the front door open and close.
I am motionless, and it takes a moment to realize I’m still holding the blade against my throat. As I lower it, a muffled bang jolts me.
A gunshot. Unmistakable.
I strain to listen but hear nothing else.
Jack is gone.
Fifty-Eight
“Alice.”
I look up at my father. Arlington, Massachusetts. The last time I ever saw him alive.
What is happening to me?
We’re finishing our dinner in a restaurant. He’s just called my mother a fucking devil. With one exception, we eat the rest of the meal in a thick and dreary silence.
“I wish I could live now,” he says, tossing his napkin onto his empty plate.
“What do you mean?”
“Now. Right now. Not in the past. Not thinking about anything else. Just here. You. This.” A considered pause. “Forever.”
“I don’t understand,” I say.
But I do.
He means a world without a past, the one thing I’ve always wanted. The ability to Be Here Now.
Forever.
Fifty-Nine
Jack is gone, and I feel every moment before this one slipping away, dirt crumbling from a cliff’s edge, deep into the void. No definition of past or future. It feels like a blissful injection of morphine directly into my bloodstream. This is either heaven or insanity, or perhaps the two are the same.
Moments exist in a fog.
No, not a fog.
An opening. A clearness that feels as foreign as anything I’ve ever known.
There is no fear. No sense of time.
Things are finally bright. Clear. A light shining down on a life I’m supposed to have, and the colors overwhelm me. I’ve never seen them before.
I’m vaguely aware of reaching down and cutting the tape from my ankle. I’m aware of Richard’s eyes opening, of me telling him it’s okay. I slowly walk over, feet unsteady, and pick up Richard’s phone. Hand it to him. Tell him to call for help. To get himself to the hospital. I say all these things in a voice I barely hear. It’s like hearing myself talking underwater.
Richard is beautiful. I’ve never noticed that before.
I leave the room.
He calls out, “What’s wrong with you?”
Into the kitchen. To my purse. I don’t even bother to take it with me. Just the keys inside.
I leave the house. The door to the adjacent apartment is closed. There’s no sign of Jack anywhere, but I am certain he is gone.
In this moment, a piece of time that might only last minutes, an hour at most, I have control. I choose what to do.
In the comforting darkness and silence of Manchester streets, I walk.
Sixty
Sunday, November 1
I enter the Stone Rose and flick on the lights. As I do, I see the clock on the wall.
Just after two in the morning.
November first. Day of the Dead, when all souls come back to earth.
I walk over and turn on the espresso machine, which whirs and hums in its satisfying, predictable way. As I stand layered in my blood and urine and vomit, there’s nothing so satisfyingly normal as the slow wakening of my espresso machine.
To my office, my comforting tree house with its wood paneling and tight, snug spaces. I soak in it, breathe of it. It is home. It is me. In a corner drawer, I have a pair of sweats, a T-shirt, and training shoes—gym supplies. I strip out of my stained and vile clothes and into these fresh ones. I even lace up the shoes.
Then I bring down the first-aid kit, which I think has been used perhaps twice since I opened the Rose. Grab the Band-Aids, head to the bathroom.
Turn on the light. Look in the mirror.
I am a mess.
I am beautiful.
I turn on the water and let it become comfortably warm, then lightly splash some on my face. The sink turns pink with the blood still flowing from the tip of my nose. I rinse the wound on my arm. The nick on my neck. These will all become more scars I can add to my collection. More parts of me, queen of scars. Hash marks of life. All perfect.
I bandage everything in a piecemeal fashion, layers upon layers, piecing myself back together.
I think of Sally from The Nightmare Before Christmas. The Sally who needed the Jack to love her.
Back into the shop. A cloud of steam suddenly pours from the espresso machine, and as I walk over to it, I find the valve open, which I’m certain it wasn’t just a few minutes ago. I find comfort in this. Ghost in the machine.
I pull a double shot of espresso. It comes out as always a gorgeous shade of black, topped with a silky, caramel crema. One packet of sugar. Stir. Sip. I think of rich soil from a faraway land, one I might have been told stories about when I was a little girl.
Then I move back to the front of the store, turn off the lights, sit on the floor cross-legged. I cradle the espresso with both hands—soaking in the heat of the porcelain cup—and absorb the silence around me. Wrap myself in the darkness.
I think of my father. Of all he taught me without even knowing, perhaps, what he was saying. I need to have his name again, my name. I will be Alice Hill again, leaving the Gray forever behind.
I think of Thomas, waiting for me to come home. I’m not going to be his savior, because I refuse to fall into that role after everything I’ve been through. But I will give him a chance to experience life free from medication, free from a forced and violent coddling. I can’t promise to keep him from drowning, but I won’t hold his head under the water.
I think of my mother, but not for long. Perhaps she is also somehow a victim, but I struggle to see it. I wonder if I will ever see her again.
I think of Jack, and then Maggie, and then of myself. Of our commonality. How we all sought a profession of serving drinks, of slaking particular thirsts while standing behind a counter. I glance to the Rose’s counter and wonder how much of it is just a barrier that I had hoped would separate and protect me from those who wander into my space.
My search for clarity, for sanity, for normalcy, is over. None of these things exist, at least not in a way I could ever seize and keep hold of them. There is both profound sadness and relief in knowing this. Maybe that’s true for all of us. Searching, searching. Those moments when true ugliness surrounds you, and it makes you want to burst out, search for brilliant, bright existence, run along the grasses of sweet mountains, finding God or whatever exists in His place. You say, Tomorrow I will do that, tomorrow I will do something unexpected, unpredictable, and the shell around me will crumble. I’ll be free. Fucking free. And you can imagine how you’ll smile when that happens. You see it in your visions, drink of it until it’s just enough for you to make it through the night.
But the tomorrows of your thoughts are so very different from the ones that actually come. This is what I am just now realizing.
The concept of tomorrow is an illusion, a sweeping gesture of time. Marketing.
At some point—and here I arrive in this very moment—you realize it’s about the nuances of today. Those tiny moments, some of them hardly perceptible, that define what it means to take each breath, one by one, until they are all used up. For me, for all I’ve experienced, it was never so much about finding a life unburdened by the things that have haunted me. It was about that initial, warm breeze of springtime, where you smell the sun for the first time in months. The soft resistance of your pillow after an eternal day. The touch of your father’s hand on yours, leading you forward, guiding you through a place you could never navigate on your own, even if that place is nothing more than a cheap carnival, a crowded movie theater, a playground teeming with strange children. Or the wondrous, frightening world of Chancellor’s Kingdom.
Now, in this place, my place, I know it’s about the moments, and to strive for something greater might be worthy, but for me unnecessary. I’m free now, because the scent of coffee tells me so. I breathe in, hold it four seconds, then release. Repeat.
There’s a knock on the ceiling. One knock, no more.
I smile, because this time, there’s no other excuse for it.
It’s not Simon.
It’s my dad.
He’s telling me I’ve got it all figured out.
Deep, deep in the night, sirens.
Reading Group Guide
1. Mister Tender’s Girl is inspired by the real case of two teenagers and the iconic internet monster Slender Man. After reading the book, what comparisons can you make? How do they differ, and how are they similar?
2. How does it make you feel to know there is something close to nonfiction in Mister Tender’s Girl?
3. Is there a character in Mister Tender’s Girl that resonates more strongly with you than others? If so, why?
4. What similarities did you see between Alice’s mother and Jack?
5. Alice feels a connection to her father whenever she remembers Chancellor’s Kingdom, the childhood story he used to tell her and Thomas. Do you have any special books or stories from your childhood that remind you of a special person, and how do they still influence you today?
6. Did you guess the identity of Mister Tender before the end of the book, and if so, what are the clues that led you to your conclusion? If you did not, who did you think was stalking Alice?
7. The Glassin twins were very young when they committed their crime and were heavily influenced by a dark, persuasive figure. Do you still hold them accountable for Alice’s attack? If not, who do you think is ultimately responsible, and why?
8. What did you make of Richard’s involvement in Alice’s situation? Why do you think he went out of his way to save her from Mister Tender?
9. The internet has a lot of shadows that can endanger privacy, shield abuse, and allow anonymity. Has this book made you think differently about online life? In what ways has it made you more curious or cautious to explore?
10. Without the medication, how do you feel Thomas will cope? In what ways has he shown he can thrive (or not) throughout t
he book?
11. How do you think Alice fares after the story ends? Did you interpret her triumph as strength, or something more fragile or sinister? Do you think it’s even possible to let go of something so formative—and do you think she would even want to?
A Conversation with the Author
Mister Tender’s Girl pulls from a real true crime story. When did you first hear about it, and in what way did it plant the seeds for your book?
I remember first reading about the Slender Man case online, soon after the crime took place. I was both horrified and drawn to the story. About three paragraphs in, I stopped reading because I knew that idea was going to form the basis for my next book. I didn’t want to read any more because I didn’t want to be too tainted by the actual series of events. To this day, I still haven’t read very much about the Slender Man crime or the girls involved.
How did you come up with the character of Mister Tender and his chilling means of persuasion?
He took a few different incarnations, but I knew his name was going to be Mister Tender—that name just popped in my head and felt right. And after a while, it occurred to me that Tender could mean he was a bartender. And what are bartenders good at? Listening and giving advice. So then I thought about those characteristics being attributed to someone evil, and Mister Tender eventually took shape.
What research did you do to further understand the effects of posttraumatic stress disorder and panic attacks, both of which play a large part of Alice’s development?
Fairly extensive online research, and in particular, I remember an article where sufferers of PTSD were asked to write down what a panic attack felt like to them in just a sentence or two. It was harrowing, powerful stuff and really painted a dark picture more effectively than any clinical analysis. I thought back to those images quite a bit when writing about Alice.
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