Epilogue
One hand interlaced with the other, Alice thumps down rhythmically on the middle of the chest, chanting out loud. “Stayin’ alive, stayin’ alive—god, I should work out more, why are my arms so weak—stayin’ alive.”
There’s a muffled laugh that sounds suspiciously like her girlfriend, and the CPR teacher calls out, “Try to focus, everyone.”
Oops. Alice concentrates on the dummy in front of her.
Van and Stephanie are hosting a free CPR training for their clients, staff, and the local community, and while Alice is ostensibly the poster child for needing to know how to do CPR, she’s mostly just embarrassing herself because apparently she has the worst technique in the entire class.
Van and Stephanie were due to be recertified, and it had been Van’s idea to drum up business for the practice by making it a public event.
“You’re doing great, babe,” Van says, supportive as always, and Alice almost laughs. She’s not, but it’s okay. The dummy doesn’t seem to know the difference.
“When do I breathe into his mouth?” Alice asks the instructor. She’s named her dummy Bradley, and decided he’s been injured in a devastating water balloon fight.
“We don’t recommend performing rescue breathing unless you’re trained to do so,” the instructor says. “Just keep going with the compressions.”
Well, shit. Alice will take “Information That Would Have Been Useful Eighteen Months Ago” for five hundred dollars, Alex.
“Oh no,” Van says, using the dry tone of voice that everyone thinks is serious but Alice knows is a joke, always accompanied by that quiet twinkle in her eye. “But you were so looking forward to playing tonsil hockey with Bradley.”
The instructor frowns down at Alice before kneeling next to Van and readjusting Van’s hands on her dummy’s chest. She does not seem to enjoy Alice’s jokes, and is apparently fixated on the nuances of Van’s form, clearly having pegged her as the person with the best chance of actually saving someone if push came to… well. Not breath, apparently.
“Like this,” the instructor says. “Harder.”
Van’s ears turn pink, and Alice somehow resists the urge to mount her then and there. “Yeah, Vanessa,” Alice says, forgetting to thump on Bradley’s chest at all, letting him go gently into the good night. “Give it to him harder. He needs it harder, baby.”
The instructor shoots Alice a deeply disappointed look. “This is very serious,” she chastises. “This is life or death.”
Yeah, Alice knows that, actually.
The instructor is saved from Alice putting her in a life-or-death situation by Frank bounding up to the class and proceeding to lick every dummy in the face. “Frank!” Alice calls, hauling him off Bradley. “She said not to do rescue breathing unless you’re trained for it.”
Frank seems unperturbed, and Van quickly stands up and tugs him across the open space filled with exam tables and exercise mats, back into her small private office tucked next to the bathroom.
“Sorry,” one of the kids in the circle says to Alice, looking embarrassed. “I went into the office to say hi to the dog, but he slipped out.”
“That’s okay,” Alice says quickly. “It’s fine.”
The instructor, wiping dog saliva off her thousand-dollar dummy, looks like she might not think it’s very fine.
Alice would apologize to her if she hadn’t spent the last hour glowering at Alice’s jokes and only helping Van with her form.
Yes, Alice is being stupid and Van is talented and strong and very likely to save a human life and is also super hot—which the instructor definitely has noticed—but, like…
lady. Try to triage, damn! There is a teenager across the circle who had his dummy face down for the first twenty minutes.
Not sure if she knows it or not, but this is, like, life or death?
Before Van is back in the circle, the front door to the clinic opens and twin tornados sweep into the building. “Minivan!” Hazel shrieks as Sebastian skids up to Bradley, kicks him hard in the groin with one light-up sneaker, and announces, “I have to pee!”
“My children, everybody,” Isabella deadpans from the door, holding out an arm to hug Van.
“They certainly know how to make an entrance,” Van says, hugging her tightly. The CPR lady looks like she might have a conniption, and Alice takes pity on her, scooping Hazel up into her arms and pointing Sebastian toward the bathroom.
“Hey, nugget,” she says. “You ready to have a sleepover with Cousin Frankie tonight?”
Hazel nods. “He donna teep in my ded,” she says. She’s three now, and while her sentence structure is advanced, her pronunciation is still garbled enough that half the time Sebastian has to translate for Alice. She got this one herself, though.
“He’s gonna sleep in your bed? That’s so fun.”
“Yeah,” Hazel says.
“Yeah,” Van says, coming up behind Alice and grabbing Hazel out of her arms, flipping her upside down, and making her shriek with laughter. The kids really like Alice, but they don’t love anyone—not even their parents, Alice admits ruefully—the way they love Van.
Alice gets it. Van is the fucking best.
The instructor quickly wraps up the class.
Alice spends a relatively chaotic twenty minutes helping both kids pee, saying goodbye to all of the existing clients, booking two new-patient appointments, and high-fiving Stephanie about said new patients.
Alice steps out into the parking lot to load all of Frank’s supplies into Isabella’s car, but she gets distracted by drooling at the way Van manhandles the dummies into the back of the joyless instructor’s truck.
God, Alice’s girlfriend really is devastatingly sexy, isn’t she.
Alice finally wrenches her gaze away from Van’s muscles. Or, more honestly, Van finishes loading the dummies, so it’s easier for Alice to shift her attention back to the car. “We’ll pick Frank up Sunday morning,” Alice says to Isabella, helping strap a very wiggly Hazel into her car seat.
“I CAN DO IT,” Hazel yells, which is untrue.
“Perfect,” Bella says. “Just text me when you’re leaving Corvallis.”
Alice nods.
“Remind me, what’s the play?”
“A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” Alice says. “But set underwater? Marie’s playing the donkey, but it’s a seahorse? I don’t know.”
“Gonna be a loooong couple of hours,” Bella cackles, and Alice swats at her.
Bella laughs so loudly that Van looks over from where she seems to be trapped in conversation with the CPR instructor. “I have to say goodbye to my family,” Van says, way too loudly. “If you’ll excuse me.”
She stomps over to Alice and Bella, giving Alice a kiss that’s significantly too long and wet for her work parking lot in front of two preschoolers and her business partner, but Alice certainly isn’t complaining.
Anytime Van wants to shove her tongue inside Alice’s mouth, wants to hold her hips in a deathly tight grip, wants to make Alice remember why last night she’d panted and moaned loudly enough that the upstairs tenants gave her dirty looks this morning—that works for Alice.
When Van finally lets go, the instructor is already inside her truck, pulling out of the parking lot with what looks like a lot of pent-up aggression at the mistreatment of her dummies by the devastating combination of Hazel and Sebastian, Frank’s enthusiasm, and Alice’s general ineptitude. And also maybe the kiss.
Alice drops her head onto Van’s collarbone, laughing, as Bella waves goodbye, closing the car doors on Frank and her spawn and taking all of them home with her.
Alice locks the front door of North Portland PT, they say goodbye to Stephanie, and then she and Van climb into the station wagon for the trip down to Oregon State.
Van drives and Alice puts on a podcast about the sinking of the Titanic. They hold hands the whole drive.
There’s an accident outside Salem that almost doubles the two-hour drive to Corvallis.
Alice learns more about the Titanic than she’d ever wanted to.
They meant to have drinks with the family beforehand, but they barely have time to slide into their seats in the theater before the lights go down and a bunch of college students do their best to bring Shakespeare to life.
Underwater.
Alice hasn’t seen much theater, but she and Van read the play out loud in preparation for this, and boy. As Alice’s dad always said about a truly terrible school performance: It’s really something.
At intermission, Aunt Sheila grabs Alice into a hug and yells, “How are you liking it so far?” Van keeps trying to make her an audiologist appointment, but Alice is convinced her volume has nothing to do with hearing loss and everything to do with enthusiasm.
“It’s…really something,” Alice says. “Very creative. Not…um, what I’d pictured.”
“No,” Aunt Sheila agrees, positively shouting now. “But Marina is radiant!”
Now that, Alice can agree with.
“Hello, dear,” Babs says, and Alice slips out from Aunt Sheila’s clutches long enough to give Babs a hug.
Things haven’t been entirely smooth since Alice came clean, since she and Van decided to make a real go of it.
The shock of Alice’s lie hit Babs hard, which of course Alice doesn’t blame her for, and the reality of Van actually being a gay adult who is planning to marry a woman seems to have only recently sunk in.
Steve and Uncle Joe seem to be in a similar boat—while all three of them are nothing but polite and welcoming to Alice, it lacks some of the effusive love from before—but Aunt Sheila has been on board since that first morning at Isabella’s house.
Alice wouldn’t be surprised if she and Marie had matching Team Vanalice T-shirts.
It’s more than Alice deserves, an aunt and a little sister, and Van is convinced Babs will come around. “We just need to be patient,” she says, and Alice can do that.
Alice can be patient.