Chapter 10
as much as alice hated spring break, hated the vast expanse of time that needed to be filled, she also hated it when the sky grew dark and she was alone.
Tonight, Luna was at a friend’s house playing Catan and other board games that Alice could never wrap her head around.
Luca was at a birthday party at one of those warehouse-like movie theatres that also contained an arcade and a full food court.
Pinky was at work, on the evening shift.
It was eight o’clock, and Alice was standing alone in her own living room, a bag of salt and vinegar popcorn puffs in her hand.
She could see the crows through her wide front window, picking at chunks of her lawn and turning them over, looking for chafer beetle grubs.
She knocked her fist against the glass, but none of them looked in her direction.
“The sheer work ethic,” she muttered. She winced when she realized she had spoken out loud, and she tried to remember if this talking to herself was something new, something to do with the hangovers she could never shake.
Whatever. She would rather die with a glass of wine in her hand than live to be one hundred.
Before her, the house seemed enormous, stretching out like an endless bowling alley.
Alice turned on the old radio she kept in the kitchen, always tuned to CBC, and the classical music echoed, a lonely ghost sound in a lonely haunted house.
When Alice was little, Judy was always showing houses on weekends, and Alice would often wake up to her mother rushing through the house in her heels, file folders wedged under her arm, shouting instructions for the day.
“There is jook in the fridge, you just have to heat it up. I cut up some apples and honeydew too. Don’t answer the door for anyone! If any clients call the house, just take their names and numbers and be polite. Please and thank you and all that!”
And with that, Judy was gone in a cloud of Opium perfume, a heavy cinnamon scent that never really dissipated. Like Hot Lips candy , Alice always thought.
Alice would stay in her pyjamas, sometimes dragging her quilt from her bedroom to the living room sofa, where she would turn on the television and watch a marathon on PBS; sometimes it was The Joy of Painting , other times it was every Julia Child episode played back to back.
She never remembered the jook, only emerging from her nest for bags of chocolate chip cookies and Bugles.
If she stayed still, if the TV was loud enough, she didn’t worry about the creaks in the hardwood floor or the dripping gutter that sounded like tiny, soft knocks on the back door.
She could close the blinds and never look outside, where a movement in the bushes could cause her to jump out of her skin.
No, she was all right if she was buried under blankets, pillowed by the smell of her own unwashed hair, never knowing the time of day or how long she had been cosseted, held by her own breathing, warmed by her own body heat.
After she was married, Alice had described to Grant how it felt being alone for most of her childhood.
He had made the appropriately empathetic faces, had held her hand in his as she talked.
She hadn’t cried exactly, but the sadness was on her face, she was sure.
When she was done, he had sighed heavily.
“When I was a kid, my brothers were always following me around, asking me to throw a ball or show them how to use the computer. I wish I had had all that time by myself. Maybe you were lucky, Alice. Maybe you need to think of it that way.”
She didn’t tell him much about her past after that.
And when they had less and less to say to each other after their children were born, Alice could feel his attraction to her evaporating, blowing away every time he spoke to her, every time he had to look at her.
In the end, she left him before he had the chance to think about leaving her.
I was destined to be alone in this house , she told herself, even though the idea terrified her, even though it had never been what she wanted.
In the kitchen, Alice pulled the blinds shut, repeating the ritual she had started when she was a child.
She didn’t need to see her reflection in the dark window rummaging through the cupboards for that bottle of rum she had bought for a party last Halloween.
She could pour some into her coffee mug.
No one needed to see such a desperate act.
She hurried back into the living room, not bothering to turn on any lights.
Sometimes it was better to not light the shadows you were walking past, to not look into the corners and the spaces behind plants or chairs.
This house had been home to her grandparents, her parents, and her own stupid fucking marriage.
There was so much left behind, so much Alice knew she didn’t want to see.
She walked toward the light shining through the living room window from the street lamp outside, just dim enough to obscure, just light enough that she wouldn’t trip on a shoe.
On the couch, Alice curled into the fetal position, one pillow under her head and another between her knees.
She pulled an old fleece blanket over her head and closed her eyes, waiting for that familiar feeling of cocooning, the fall into darkness where there was nothing to touch or see, and no sound, not even the incessant pinging of her phone.
Alice was sure her younger self would never have sought this subsummation into a not-quite-conscious otherworld, but this Alice—the drunk single mom who only wanted a temporary moment of peace—could only think, What the hell, I need the rest .
She was falling. She was reaching for something to grab, but there was nothing. And the fall felt simultaneously scary and sublime, weightless, a total void of all things.
But then she felt a softness slipping through her fingers, like a long piece of satin being pulled through her hands.
Alice closed her fist and held on. Yes, it was satin, so smooth she couldn’t feel a hem or the slightest hint of a weave.
She lifted it to her nose and smelled old blood, the damp, rotting smell of mould.
She blinked and swore for a moment she could see in the dark, as if her pupils had enlarged just enough, for just a second.
The satin was green, perhaps once emerald, but now faded to something greyer, swampier.
A cramp crackled its way through her stomach, and Alice let go of the fabric to clutch at her belly.
It hurt, like a contraction, and she tried to cry out, but her voice was muffled in the dark, and she couldn’t hear the scream she was sure she was making.
And so she gave up. She beat at her stomach with her fists until she grew too tired and then stayed as still as possible, hoping the dark was soft enough to hold her.
When Luca ran into the house an hour later, Alice was still on the couch, the blanket wrapped around her shoulders, a half-eaten box of cookies on the floor beside her.
She sat up, blinking, and could feel the tangle of hair on the back of her head.
As she rubbed her eyes with the heel of her palm, they began to sting and water.
How did she get rum all over her hands like that?
“Are you okay, Mom? Are you sick?” Luca stood with his hands on his hips, his head cocked to the side in worry.
Alice groaned and blinked hard. She didn’t mean for Luca to see her like this, for him to feel that he had unwittingly opened a trunk and found her secrets inside. She struggled to untangle herself and stand up. The rum made her feel like a pile of rocks, unmovable by wind or rain or waves.
“No, no, I’m fine. Just felt like being cozy, that’s all.
” Alice held out her arms, and he walked into a hug.
The solidity of his body against hers was a relief, and her muscles relaxed.
She hadn’t realized how rigidly she must have been lying all this time.
With Luca in her arms, she looked up and the house was there, of course, surrounding them, watching them.
In that moment, she swore she could hear it breathing, feel the beat of its pulse, as if she and Luca were stuck in the belly of a giant beast that was slowly consuming them.
She closed her eyes and took in Luca’s scent, a combination of his baby self and this older, sharper boy.
Luca was the real living thing here. He was. Not the house. Not this house.
“What did you say, Mom? What about the house?”
She straightened up and reached to turn on a light switch. “Oh, nothing, honey. I was just thinking about whether we should paint the house again. You know, just thinking out loud.”
Alice could see that Luca didn’t believe her, that he knew she was trying to hide something he couldn’t guess at yet, but the longer she kept this up—the drinking, the wandering through the dark, the forgetting—the more it was only a matter of time before he would figure it out.
He was the smartest person she had ever met, after all, and she was treading water. If that.
Luca turned and began to walk toward the kitchen.
“Where are you going?” Alice called after him.
“To make you some tea. No offence, but you look like shit.”
And she didn’t reprimand him for swearing because of course he was right.
the day had been long, too long. Luna and Luca had been at home all day, caught in the spring break doldrums. Luna wandered from room to room, picking up books and putting them back down, sitting on the couch to look out the front window, only to spring up again to grab an apple from the fridge.
Alice sat at the dining room table, trying to generate invoices, but the pinging of her daughter’s body through the house was too distracting.
She had been staring at the same row of numbers for two hours and still nothing made sense.
She hadn’t seen Luca since breakfast. She assumed he was in his room, playing Fortnite or Call of Duty or Roblox , if he was desperate. Was he hungry? She had no idea.
At five, Alice heard Pinky’s steps on the walk and opened the window. “Pinky! Do you want to have dinner with us? I’m going to grill those steaks that were in the freezer.”
Pinky stopped, and Alice could see the hesitation on her face.
Ever since Alice had had to let her go, Pinky had kept her life at a distance, which Alice thought she understood, telling herself that the transition from employer and employee to friendship was too hard, and that none of it was personal.
Sometimes, though, she thought it was personal.
If she was Pinky, would she want to hang out with her former boss who was now her landlord?
A boss who had never been poor, who fussed over her figure as if it mattered?
But still, whenever her loneliness felt so rancid and sharp she could taste it, Alice invited Pinky for meals and birthdays and movie nights, even though she almost always said no, even though Alice was sure all Pinky did at night was stream Korean soap operas and Skype with her family in the Philippines.
“Come on, Pinky. I know it’s not Thursday, but you and I both need the company. The kids would love it.”
Pinky drew a ring of keys from the pocket of her jacket. “Sure, okay. I just have to change and wash up. Give me fifteen minutes.”
“Perfect! I’ll light the barbecue.”
They sat in the dining room, with the chandelier dimmed, and Alice felt like herself for the first time in weeks.
It was normal. It was easy. There was Pinky, sitting at the foot of the table like she always did, with Luna and Luca on either side, both of them telling her all the news of their lives.
“The security system is ready to be installed, Pinky! Do you want a camera by the door to your suite? I have seven, so I could totally do it.”
“And then Veronica disappeared for a really long time, and when I went to look for her, I swear I could hear her puking through the bathroom door. Do you think she’s bulimic, Pinky? Should I tell her mom?”
It might have been the wine, but Alice was feeling a warm, familial glow radiating from her core outward.
These were her people, really. Judy might yell at her over dim sum, and Jas might ask her again and again for more than she could give, and Grant could be consumed by his own political micro-world, but did any of it matter when her children were eating and laughing, when Pinky was nodding along at all of their stories, when she felt their home holding them all from the inside out?
Alice could have cried. It had been so long since she had basked in a simple joy, instead of cocooning herself with whisky and blankets, buried by fear and sadness.
Later, after the kids had cleared the table and disappeared to their rooms, Pinky and Alice sat with green tea and a plate of chocolate biscuits. The sun was beginning to set, but Alice didn’t feel like closing the curtains. The pink streaks in the sky pulled eastward, fading as they stretched.
“How’s the job, Pinky?”
“It’s pretty good,” she replied, dunking a biscuit into her tea. “I feel useful there in a way that I don’t think I ever felt before.”
Alice bristled. “I always needed your help with the kids. Your job here meant a lot to us.”
“Oh, of course. I didn’t mean that I had never done anything good.
It’s just that when you’re working with a family and living with them, you can start to feel invisible, like what you do is just expected and nothing more.
” Pinky put a hand on Alice’s arm. “And I’m not talking about you.
It was those other families I worked with before. ”
Alice put her cup down. “What do you mean? Were they abusive to you?”
Pinky flushed and shook her head. “No! I mean, it just wasn’t like this. We never talked. I was just a tool, I guess. I didn’t run away from the Philippines to be a faceless servant.”
“So why did you run away?”
Pinky laughed. “It’s an old story, Alice. No one cares. Typical sad immigrant stuff. You know.”
“Actually, I don’t. Tell me.”
The sun had disappeared over the horizon, and Alice could see her neighbour’s house like a shadow through the window.
The lines of the siding, the weathervane on the roof spinning black against a blackening sky.
It was a ghost house, but also not, because in the day, it was like every other faux Craftsman bungalow in East Vancouver—utterly safe, devoid of secrets.
But not right now. If she squinted her eyes just so, she swore she could see a shadow crossing the width of the window over and over again, spying on the real life within.
“Have you ever heard of the aswang?” Pinky asked, before taking a gulp of tea.