35. Alice Vengeance
Alice Vengeance
We all left that morning without speaking. That was a first, and I didn’t like it, but I couldn’t face everyone. I knew from experience that wasn’t a good strategy. What if it was the last time I ever saw them? But I was embarrassed about my behavior. Why, why, why did I let my sister get to me like that? And, furthermore, why had I come so unglued at the idea of Julie leaving? If I had just told them the truth about Elliott right away, this all would have been better. We were house hunting, for heaven’s sake. We had already looked at a cedar shake house three doors down from my current one, right on the beach, that was much smaller but perfectly appointed. I was obsessed. But Elliott had fallen in love with a sound-front white clapboard historic home with a slip for his beloved boat. We would probably choose one of them because they were both so great. Either way, Julie moving out was a solution to a problem for me.
I think I knew—but didn’t want to admit—that it upset me so much because Julie was choosing Delia over me. Which was childish: Delia was Julie’s mother . But there was no doubt that, of the five of us, Delia had been Daddy’s favorite, which as a child I always felt really deeply. I was always trying to be the best for him, have his beer for him when he got home and his slippers by the door, so he would love me too. But he was always Delia’s. Sure, as a forty-five-year-old woman, I could see that being the favorite of an abusive alcoholic was no great shakes. But that latent trauma is hard to overcome. And it had made me act ridiculous last night.
I sighed as I walked through the door of the church that always felt like it saved me from myself, and picked up the morning prayer bulletin that listed the relevant prayer book pages and provided the readings for the day.
Morning prayer was usually attended by maybe five or six parishioners—so few, in fact, that I always wondered how Father Matthew could justify it. But there was something soothing about the emptiness too. It was the exact opposite of the jubilant Sunday mornings where I got to sing and feel wrapped in the loving embrace of promises I couldn’t see but believed all the same. Even after what I had been through, I believed them.
I sat down in my usual pew, the front row of the back section of the church. It was far away from the priest in these smaller services, but I liked it here, the sun streaming through the stained glass windows all around me. I felt safe here. I couldn’t say that about many places.
Bonnie slid in beside me and patted my knee. “How you doing, sweetie?”
I scrunched my nose. “Honestly… I let my sister get to me last night, and I was not my best self,” I whispered.
“We can’t always be,” she whispered back. “We’re all just doing the best we can.”
Leslie slid in beside Bonnie, looking flushed. As Father Matthew emerged from the side door and approached the sanctuary, she grinned at him like he held the key to her salvation. To my shock, he smiled back at her.
“Leslie, you dog!” I whispered. “Is your little plan working?”
She winked at me and pretended to shine her nails on the lapel of her jacket. Bonnie, Leslie, and I laughed quietly.
My phone buzzed in my purse; ordinarily I wouldn’t have looked at it in church, but I was hoping it was something from Julie or Charlotte or Grace. Something that would build a bridge for us to walk over. Because I didn’t know how to recover from last night. I clicked the text message notification and then the link inside it. The header on the webpage said: The Capstone Fund. Underneath were pictures and descriptions. I was confused.
I switched back to the text message box, where I saw this was from someone named Bradley. His message said: This is the fund I was telling you about. Thoughts?
It hit me that this wasn’t my phone. It was Charlotte’s. Shoot. I needed to get this to her. I knew I shouldn’t, but I opened that webpage again; this must be where Charlotte was going to be working.
The top picture was a man who looked vaguely familiar. I spotted his name: Daniel Isaacs . I gasped and clicked the phone screen off as if he were going to come through it and get me.
“What’s wrong?” Bonnie asked.
As if scolding us, Father Matthew cleared his throat and said, “Let us begin on page seventy-five in the Book of Common Prayer.”
I opened my book, but I wasn’t listening. I was thinking about that man’s face. His name. Why someone was sending his information to Charlotte. My face felt hot. I couldn’t quite put two and two together, but I knew that something was wrong here. I wanted to leave, but I didn’t know what my next move would be. I was going to have to admit to Charlotte that I had looked at this. I needed answers.
But didn’t Charlotte need them too? I thought about the ways in which I had lied to her, at least by omission. It wasn’t right, and I knew I needed absolution. I knew I needed to tell her the truth. And I needed to apologize to Julie for questioning her decisions, which she, as a grown woman, had absolute authority over. I was only trying to help them, all of them. Could they see that? Would Charlotte see that? And, really, didn’t I have some forgiving of my own to do? Weren’t there a number of things—one in particular—that I was holding in my heart that weren’t serving me?
I knew that holding grudges was like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die. I didn’t want to drink poison, but I wanted what was right.
My mind shifted back to the present as the priest said, “Vengeance is mine.”
I looked down at the bulletin. Had he really just said that? I scanned the reading. Yes, it appeared that he had.
Vengeance . I didn’t think of myself as a vindictive person, but as I read ahead of Father Matthew, I felt antsy. I rolled the bulletin and put it in my purse, already imagining where I would hang this quote on my mirror. A lesson, a reminder when things got rough.
I felt rude leaving in the middle of the service, but I needed to be outside. I needed to talk to Charlotte. I needed to talk to Iris. I needed to get to the bottom of what I had just seen on that phone screen. I tapped Bonnie’s arm and gestured to the door, mouthing, I have to run.
She looked concerned as I slid out. I took a deep breath as I stepped outside onto the brick walk, surrounded by azalea bushes, oak trees, and a weeping willow that had to be hundreds of years old. The way the light filtered through the canopy of old branches above me was one of my favorite things about this church. It felt like God was everywhere here, like you could smell him, see him, reach out and touch him.
I stood for a minute or so, savoring the warmth of the sun on my face and body, thinking about where I went next. Home. And then where? I had so many scores to settle today. What would I choose first? Worry welled in my chest. Was Charlotte hiding something from me? Was she in cahoots with a man who was the most painful part of an undeniably painful past?
As I walked to the car, I had the most uncomfortable feeling that someone was following me. The town streets were busy and crowded, so what made me think that? This was the price I paid for a life of trauma, of loneliness, of being left. Anxiety crept up on me at the oddest moments.
I tried to shake off the feeling. This was part of why I loved having a full house so much. I felt safe. Then again, more people came with more baggage, more scars, more risk. Maybe more than I had even considered. Yet as I drove through town, I felt like if I could just get home, all of these bad feelings would go away. If I had learned anything from years of living by the ocean, it was that even my biggest problems could—eventually—be washed away by the tide.