Chapter Twenty
Twenty
Alice spends Christmas Day at Isabella’s house.
Taking the earliest morning bus from the Altmans was a pretty depressing experience—anyone on a bus at six in the morning on Christmas Sunday is not having a great day—but Isabella’s house is a riot of color and squealing children and wrapping paper and good food and sugar crashes.
Being there eases the pinch in her chest; it doesn’t erase the way Van’s eyes had looked, the way she’d slid out from under Alice like she never wanted to touch her again, but it makes that all easier to live with.
Here, in this warm house, filled with a family she isn’t lying to, a family she belongs with, a family she loves in a not-totally-fucked way, she can breathe a little better.
She hasn’t forgotten how she hurt Van—she’ll never forget that.
She’ll regret that and be responsible for it forever, but being with Isabella, Henry, and the kids helps her remember that there’s some stuff in the world that’s okay too.
Hazel dances like a toddler Beyoncé when Henry plays ukulele, Alice and Sebastian make the tallest Lego tower in history, Bella loans Alice the softest sweater in the world, Henry makes a sizzling Korean tofu soup for dinner that’s full of mushrooms he foraged himself and he swears won’t kill them. Things worth living for.
Alice texts Marie and Babs a thank-you for having her yesterday, makes up some lie about needing to get to Isabella’s early. She’s tempted to say she’ll see them in a few days, but she doesn’t.
She’s done.
Nolan’s rampant disinterest means that Alice can’t keep being the embodiment of Babs’s hopes for him; he’s alive now, walking and talking, so it’s okay if Babs goes back to hating his taste in women.
Alice’s part in this charade is well and truly finished.
And of course, much more important, Van was right.
It’s not fair for Alice to still be coming around, making everything confusing and gray, pitting Van against her recently comatose brother.
Even if Alice isn’t kissing him or fake-dating him—and certainly not having his babies, fucking gross—Van’s right that Alice can’t flirt with her.
Can’t lead her on if she’s not willing to be with Van, and she’s not.
As her text whooshes out her phone and into theirs, it feels like part of her heart is being twisted and pulled until it rips out. She silently says goodbye to Babs, to Aunt Sheila, to sweet, perfect Marie.
To Van.
It hurts like hell, but it’s finally over.
—
Daycare and preschool are closed between Christmas and New Year’s, and Isabella and Henry are going crazy with the kids in the house all day, so on December 30, they pack up the double stroller and enough luggage to travel to France, and prepare to venture to the big park a few blocks away even though it’s as cold and rainy as ever.
“If they’re going to be true Portlanders, they need to become amphibious,” Isabella says, shoving Hazel’s fat little arm into her puffy waterproof coat. “Like we were.”
Alice nods. “Gotta purge that weak Texan blood right out of ’em,” she says, and Isabella laughs.
“Exactly.”
Isabella’s right—when they were kids, recess always took place outside in the rain, and they spent a lot of time at the park, learning how to navigate wet, slippery monkey bars and wearing rain pants so they could go down the slide without looking like they peed themselves.
“Where are we going?” Sebastian asks as Alice pulls the Velcro on his little boots as tightly as she can.
“To play outside,” Isabella says.
“Why?”
Alice looks down at him, putting on a purposely goofy look.
“How old are you now? Three?” He nods, quite proudly.
“Well, then,” she says, rubbing her hands together to warm them before she plunges them, without warning, under his jacket to tickle his belly.
“It’s time to harden you up! Go play out in the rain where you belong! ”
He screams and squeals, and Alice gets kicked very hard in the stomach, but it’s worth it.
The park is huge, grassy and dotted with big trees that have lost their leaves.
There’s a tennis court and baseball diamonds, and even a pool that’s closed for the winter, but they head directly to the playground tucked into the corner.
Hazel is too young to do much other than toddle around and have Henry hold her up to the monkey bars so she can feel like she’s doing something, but Sebastian is big enough to run amok, to shout for them to watch him every five seconds as he climbs, balances, and slides.
Alice wishes she were as proud of anything as Sebastian is of his ability to let gravity pull him down a smooth piece of plastic.
After an hour or so, though, Alice wishes he were a little less enthusiastic.
“Nice one, buddy!” she calls for the fifty millionth time.
Turns out there’s a reason adults like to stay inside in the winter; her hands are freezing inside her gloves, her butt is numb, and her ears may have fallen off.
Hazel has crashed out and is napping in her stroller under twelve thousand blankets and her parents seem to have nodded off on the bench next to her, but Sebastian is still fired up.
Alice has pushed him on the swings until her arms almost fell off, and then spotted him as he climbed some very tall, very slippery things, her heart in her mouth the whole time.
Now he’s going down the slide over and over, which is nice because Alice doesn’t have to do as much, but if she doesn’t stand there and compliment him each time, he gets adorably mad about it, and she’s still trying to earn her Auntie Points.
So there she stands, doling out compliments and letting Isabella and Henry get some much needed rest. Being a parent seems hard.
Alice is glad that at the end of the day, she’ll go home to her quiet apartment and do only what she personally wants to do, not responsible for any living thing except herself and that succulent she keeps almost killing.
Although of course, when she’s home alone, there will be nothing to distract her from the unread texts from Marie that are piling up, the six missed calls from Babs and two from Aunt Sheila.
When she’s fully immersed in the kids, the hot, anxious feeling in her stomach that urges her to respond to them is less noticeable, but whenever she takes her focus off Sebastian, it overwhelms her and makes her feel nauseous.
They don’t deserve to be ghosted, not any of them, but Alice can’t respond.
What would she say? She’s pretty sure texting, Sorry, I lied to you, and it turns out I’m very much into your unfortunately disabled daughter, not your son, and your daughter hates me now!
Happy New Year! wouldn’t go over great. Ghosting seems to be the kindest thing she can do, but that logic doesn’t have any impact on the constant guilty twisting in her gut.
Deciding to refocus on Sebastian to drag her thoughts out of the Altman house, Alice puts on her fake-excited voice. “You going up again?”
“Yeah!” Sebastian cries. “Watch me!”
“I’m watching,” she says, like she has the last trillion times. “I’m watching!”
But right then, a blur of white and green bounds into her peripheral vision, and Alice barely has time to register it as a dog before it’s jumping up on her, muddy paws landing with a thud on the top of her chest.
She doesn’t need the tongue deep inside her ear canal to know it’s Frank. She’d recognize that enormous, perfect, pointy face anywhere, those long legs, that skinny body high above the ground like a graceless giraffe. He’s wearing a green vest she hasn’t seen before, and he’s ecstatic.
“Hi, Frankie! Hi, buddy!”
Frank is wiggling all over her, trying to lick her entire face and hug her entire body. His tail is going like a propeller, hitting the side of the slide with a dull thunk on every rotation.
Sebastian starts wailing, and Alice isn’t sure if it’s because Frank is so big or because she’s stopped watching his impressive slide performance.
“Oh, buddy,” she says, Frank’s tongue on her eyeballs keeping her from looking over at Sebastian. “It’s okay.” She has to close her mouth for a second, lest she and Frank accidentally French kiss. “This is—oof, down, boy, get off, that’s a good boy—this is Frank the dog.”
Sebastian, safe on the top of the slide, looks at Frank, considering, his little lip still trembling.
“You’re okay, Sebby,” Isabella says from behind Alice, clearly woken up by all of the commotion. “He can’t get to you all the way up there.”
Frank has all four feet on the ground now, wriggling around in joy, and Alice scratches his face with one hand and his butt with the other. She’s missed him so much. Missed his bony ass and his dopey smile, the warmth of him tucked up next to her on the couch, his hugs and easy affection.
No one else—not even Sebastian and Hazel—gets as excited to see her as Frank does. It’s not that she hadn’t known she missed him, but seeing him again makes her realize just how much, what a big role he played in her life for those beautiful few weeks when she was around him so often.
“Hi, sweet boy,” she whispers to him. “Hi, my love.”
“Frank! Come!”
Oh shit.
Right.
Where there’s Frank, there’s going to be…
“Frank! Come! Come he—Oh.”
Van is striding toward them, a leash in her hand, her face sliding from frustrated to shocked as she sees who exactly is holding on to her dog’s collar.
“Alice.”
Alice swallows, her throat suddenly rough and scratchy like she’s on day five of a nasty cold. Van is so fucking beautiful. She’s bundled up, like they all are, hair wet and cheeks pink, and she looks so damned good that Alice’s body feels like it’s suddenly vibrating.
Alice wants to kiss her. She wants to duck behind the slide and pretend she’s not here. She wants to sink into Van’s arms and be held for the next seven to ten business days. She wants to apologize. She wants to throw up.
“Hey, Van,” Isabella says, way too loudly, from behind Alice. “Wow, long time no see! I forgot you live right around here.” She’s overly cheery, and also walking over to the slide and plucking Sebastian off the top of it and into her arms. “Sebastian, do you remember Van?”
“No,” he says, still sniffling, mostly preoccupied with making sure his little legs aren’t anywhere near Frank’s mouth.
Alice wants to tell him that the worst thing Frank would do to his legs is lick them until they were gummed up and sticky, but she can’t quite find a single word right now, so she doesn’t.
“That’s okay,” Van says, resolutely looking at the kid and not at Alice. “We only met one time. You showed me your trucks.”
Sebastian blinks at her. “I have lots of trucks.”
“You sure do,” Isabella says, hauling him away. “Let’s tell Daddy about them.”
And then it’s Alice and Van, standing alone together in the middle of an empty playground.
It’s not actively raining at the moment, but the air is so wet it sort of doesn’t matter if it’s drizzling or not.
Alice’s face is damp and she hasn’t even started crying yet.
She has the absurd thought that it’s probably great weather for Henry’s mushrooms.
“Hi,” she finally manages to say. “Uh, how’s…” She trails off, not sure what she wants to ask. How are you? Stupid question. How have you been since I obliquely agreed to have your brother’s baby and broke your heart? Yeah, no.
“Fine,” Van says, which is simultaneously vague, unhelpful, and probably untrue. “Nolan’s remembering more. He’s gotten another year or two back.”
“Great,” Alice lies faintly. Nolan’s memories are like a doomsday clock, counting down the seconds until her lie is laid bare. Until Van hates her even more than she does now.
Van clears her throat. “Sorry about Frank.”
“Oh no,” Alice says, petting his head again. “Always happy to see Frank.”
“No,” Van says, something strangled in her tone now. “I mean…” She gestures to her chest, and it takes Alice quite a long time to drag her eyes away from Van’s body, but when she finally does and looks down at her own chest, it looks like she was mauled by a mud monster.
“Oh boy,” Alice says, and out of the corner of her eye she sees Van’s mouth twitch.
“Sorry,” Van says again, but Alice shakes her head.
“It’s only dirt; it’ll come out,” she says.
“Besides…” She scratches behind Frank’s ears, knowing this is maybe the last time.
The silky feeling of his big, floppy ears trailing through her fingers makes a sob catch in her throat.
She doesn’t want to think about a life that he’s not in, about going through every fucking day and night without him.
About never getting to hold his big, dumb face in her hands, rub his soft coat, get slapped by his happy tail and licked by his enormous tongue ever again. “I missed him.”
It’s quiet for a moment, so Alice can hear Sebastian say to Isabella, “But I wanna slide again!” and Isabella’s very unsubtle shushing.
“Looks like he missed you too,” Van says, but she’s still not meeting Alice’s gaze.
Van has bags under her eyes, and she’s opening and closing her hands like they’re bothering her. She hasn’t been sleeping well.
Standing here, talking to Alice—maybe it’s hurting Van just as much as it’s hurting Alice.
And Alice can’t do that to her. Not anymore.
She lets go of Frank, and he prances over to Van, who clips the leash onto his collar without a word.
She finally looks up at Alice, and she opens her mouth like she’s going to say something, but then she closes it again.
She turns, and something in Alice’s chest is screaming and crying and shouting for her to move, to throw herself at Van, to beg for mercy and forgiveness and for that blinky thingy from Men in Black to erase the last month of their lives and start over.
Maybe Babs has a working model in her costume closet they could use?
Two queers meeting in a park because of a dog—what a cute rom-com that would be!
If only that could be their story, instead of this fucking mess Alice made.
“I’m sorry,” Alice chokes out. Van is already a few steps away, but she pauses and then, very slowly, turns back.
“For what?” She sounds hoarse, and Alice wonders if she’s as close to crying as Alice is.
Alice almost shrugs, almost smiles. “For everything,” she says, quiet as the rain starts to fall in earnest again. It’s not the apology Van deserves, not even close, but it’s honest and Van clearly wants to go, and Alice can give her that. Alice will let her go.
Van nods. Not like she forgives Alice, but like she heard her. Like she accepts that Alice apologized, not like she accepts her apology.
Van doesn’t say anything else as she turns and walks across the muddy grass. Frank is the only one who looks back, his eyes a little sad, his tongue lolling out of his mouth.