Chapter 24. Alice
ALICE
“I hate this place,” Alice said, pacing the small room.
By the time they’d arrived at the hospital, Finn’s memory had returned completely, but she was still terrified about the impact of the fall.
They’d found him in the trauma room with a neck collar and a shoulder wrap and a blooming black eye; the transport team had just returned him from a CAT scan.
Whether he was ashamed or worried he’d be getting into trouble, he could barely look at them as the nurse hooked him up to the monitor.
Finally, when the nurse left, he broke down and couldn’t stop crying and apologizing.
Even when he tried to blame Alice— if only you’d let me go, I wouldn’t have had to sneak out —she just held his hand and nodded, wiping the tears from her face.
Nothing mattered to her beyond the fact that he was okay.
After the scans came back normal, and the doctor and radiologist assured them that there was no bleeding or skull fracture, Alice’s nerves still couldn’t settle. They ignited every time Finn groaned about his collarbone or a doctor stopped by to do yet another neuro check— person, place, time?
“Sit, love,” Nora said to Alice. “You’re driving yourself mad. And us.”
From the bed, Finn looked up at them and began crying again. “I’m sorry,” he sobbed, wiping his nose on the hospital gown.
Alice rushed over to kiss his forehead, but he pulled away from her.
He didn’t like to be fussed over. She was trying to give him the space she knew he needed, but all she wanted was to hug him and ask a million questions about what happened and how he was feeling.
Instead, she refilled his paper cup with ice chips and handed it to him.
“We know,” she said. “Shush. Just lie back down.”
Nora pulled out the chair next to her, and Alice sat again.
She picked up the Reader’s Digest on the table and skimmed its pages, looking for something that might distract her from annoying everyone in the room or, God help her, her own thoughts.
She scanned an article on whether apple cider vinegar was actually good for you, then tossed the magazine back onto the table.
Nora scooted her seat closer. She reached for Alice’s hand and pressed her rosary beads to her palm. “Try this,” she said.
Alice clutched the beads in her closed fist. She envied her mother’s and Kyle’s faith and the solace it offered.
A nurse popped in to check Finn’s vitals, and he said he needed to use the bathroom.
“Pee or poo?” she asked, and Finn blushed.
“Pee,” he said, mortified.
He tried to sit up, but the nurse stopped him. “You can’t get up until you’ve passed the final neuro,” she said. “I’ll bring the urinal for you to pee in.”
“Here?” Finn said. “In the bed?”
Instead of answering him, the nurse left and a moment later returned holding a skinny plastic jug with a handle. Finn looked like he was going to cry.
“Do you want us to stay?” Alice asked him.
“No!”
“Poor thing,” Nora said once they were in the hallway. “He is suffering.”
Alice felt her nerves flare again. “I knew something was off when he left dinner without having dessert,” she said. “Why didn’t I listen to myself?” She was just as angry at herself for not stopping him as she was at him for sneaking out.
Back in the room, Finn could barely look at them again.
Alice stood by the window and stared out into the night.
The parking lot was filled with cars, and she felt an unexpected kinship with the tribe of people at the hospital that evening instead of at home watching holiday movies and eating leftover-turkey-and-cranberry sandwiches.
In the window’s reflection, she stared at Finn, the sling for his collarbone wrapped around his shoulder.
He scratched at something under his neck collar, then let out a deep sigh that sounded like it came from an old man instead of a teenage boy.
When he was younger, she always seemed to know what he needed.
It came more naturally to her than knowing what she needed for herself.
Whenever there was a problem, she could tell by just looking at his face if the remedy was a snack, a bathroom, a nap, or a hug.
Now she wasn’t so sure. And even when she did think she knew the answer, he often pushed her away.
It is easier with a baby , she thought. You pick them up, feed them, and burp them.
She wished she could do that again with Finn, but also knew with certainty that she couldn’t with another baby. She wouldn’t.
Kyle appeared in the doorway. He had been at the front desk dealing with the insurance paperwork, and gratitude flooded Alice as she walked over to hug him.
“Does anyone want coffee?” he asked.
Nora, jacket draped around her shoulders to keep her warm, raised her Styrofoam cup to show she already had tea. “But you two go grab some and take a break,” she said. “I’ll stay with Finn.”
Kyle led Alice out of the room. This was the hospital where her mother had given birth to her and her siblings.
It was where Alice had spent countless hours as a kid when she broke her arm and Topher needed stitches and Maggie had her appendix removed.
As she and Kyle walked to the lounge, the blinding fluorescent lights, the beeps and trolleys, and the antiseptic smell all brought forth a cascade of shared memories.
The surreal first hours after Topher’s death.
The birth of Finn, terrifying enough, and then of James, when she was convinced she was going to die, and nearly did.
The lounge was empty and decorated for Thanksgiving with cutout turkeys and pumpkins taped along the walls.
“I can’t drink coffee,” Alice said. “My nerves are already frayed.”
“I’ll get you a hot chocolate,” Kyle said.
Alice sat across from the vending machines.
She watched him examine the selection of snacks, and though she wanted something simple and bland like popcorn, she waited to see what he’d choose.
He was doing everything right—dealing with the doctors and insurance, being patient with Finn—but the distance between them was vast and, it seemed to her, growing.
He handed her a cup filled with watery hot chocolate and a snack-size bag of Cheez-Its. “Sweet and savory,” he said.
She smiled and took a sip.
“Any good?”
“Shockingly bad.”
They both laughed, which helped ease some of the terribleness of the day and of this thing hanging between them.
She sat with him for a bit, slowly sipping the hot, bad drink. And because she’d been so consumed with concern about Finn for the past few hours, what came out next surprised her. “I’m worried about my dad,” she said.
Kyle nodded, which made it worse. Somehow, she’d hoped he would assure her that nothing was wrong.
“Why did we let him walk around the house with a shotgun in the first place?” she asked. It felt easier to believe that it had been their fault, something they could have stopped if only they’d been more vigilant.
Kyle sighed. “Maybe it was just the pressure of it all. Cait’s visit. Luke’s resurfacing. Trying to keep up with the house—the cost of the roof and everything.”
“The roof?”
“He didn’t tell you? The estimate was over thirty grand.”
“When I brought it up yesterday,” she said, “he claimed the roof was fine. When did he tell you this?”
“Last week at the trivia tournament. He didn’t want to bother any of you about it.”
It wasn’t the first time her father had been more forthcoming with Kyle than with her about her parents’ financial difficulties, and she was never sure how she felt about that.
“I guess he couldn’t take this rabid raccoon coming in and causing even more chaos,” Kyle continued. “He’s getting old.”
Alice handed him her cup, and he placed it on a table.
“He is,” she said. “So is my mom.”
He nodded.
Earlier that year, her mother had forgotten to take her statins for weeks, and she didn’t figure it out until her annual revealed a dangerous spike in her cholesterol.
Alice didn’t want to bring it up now, but she planned to take charge of her parents’ weekly pill organizers and talk to her father’s physician about stress management.
She was proud to take care of her parents—and she was going to be there for them, they deserved it—but she hadn’t expected to have to do it alone.
The role had unfolded slowly enough that she never noticed it all that much, but, lately, she’d averaged five to six doctor or physical therapy appointments each month between the two of them.
Sometimes, she realized, it felt like they were more like her children than her parents.
“Their care will fall to me,” she said.
She wished Kyle would piece together what she meant—that this was another reason she did not want a new baby or to risk her life with another pregnancy, but it went over his head.
“It’s always fallen to us,” he said.
“Not us, Kyle,” she said, aware of the edge in her voice. “ Me . Mostly. You clean their gutters, but it’s not the same, the emotional labor of caretaking.”
Kyle reached for her hand, but she brushed him away.
She wanted to say something that would jolt him into listening to her for a change, but when she opened her mouth to speak, something between a sob and a gasp burst out of her.
Her chest heaved as she tried to compose herself, and Kyle wrapped his arms around her shoulders and pulled her to him.
“Hey,” he said. “Look at me.” He held her by the chin. “We’ll be okay. We always are, right?”
She wasn’t sure what to believe, and she was too exhausted to tiptoe around false promises.
She knew he felt like she was betraying him, and to be the cause of his sadness was unbearable.
But what about her sadness? Her resentment?
She was starting to see that they would not survive if he could not accept her choice. And she didn’t know if he could.
“I don’t want this pregnancy to be another before and after,” she said.
Kyle started to say something, but a nurse came into the lounge to tell them that the doctor was performing the final neuro exam on Finn and needed them to be in the room.
They stood, and Kyle handed her the unopened bag of Cheez-Its.
She followed him down the hall, his hands in his pockets and head bowed.
As the doctor explained the post-discharge care instructions, Finn grew weepy again.
Not only would he not be allowed to play basketball for a while, but his brain needed to rest because of the concussion, and so he couldn’t use screens or even read his comics for a few weeks.
A forced break from everything sounded heavenly to Alice, but she understood why it made Finn even more upset.
“We can’t let him sleep, right?” she asked the doctor. “How long does he need to stay awake?”
“That’s actually a myth,” the doctor said. “He’s going to be tired.”
Kyle would take Finn back to the Folly, but Alice insisted on driving her mother back in Nora’s car. The roads were still a mess, and the last thing they needed was her mother getting into an accident.
As they pulled out of the hospital parking lot, Nora turned to Alice and said, “I know you’re tired, but could I ask one favor from you?”
“What is it?”
“Would you take me to Saint Mary’s?”
“Tomorrow?”
“Now,” Nora said. “Kyle can handle Finn for a minute. I’ll make it quick.”
Alice pushed open the church’s wooden doors, surprised to find the lights on in the vestibule, and let her mother in first. She felt like they were doing something wrong, sneaking in after hours, but Nora walked straight down the nave toward the pulpit without hesitation, as if she did this all the time.
Maybe she did. Alice dropped a few dollars into the collection box and followed after her, their footsteps disparate and echoing in the emptiness of the small cathedral.
Alice had spent nearly every Sunday morning of her life at the church, singing in the choir, and had had periods of devotion as a teenager, but over the past few years, her attendance was mainly for Kyle, a sort of performance for the families of his students—and maybe even for him.
But being there now with her mother, just the two of them, she felt a peace she hadn’t experienced in the limestone and stained-glass walls of the cathedral since she and Kyle used to attend mass on Friday nights in Brooklyn.
There were several votives already lit, which Alice also hadn’t expected.
She handed her mother a box of matches from the nearby table, and they each picked a candle to light, then knelt before the altar.
When she was pregnant with Finn and James, Alice would constantly say novenas to Saint Monica, but now she called on Mary directly.
Her prayers began with Finn but quickly meandered to a defensive plea for the choice she was prepared to make about the pregnancy.
She was not looking for understanding or even acceptance, just forgiveness.
Who are you to tell me this isn’t right for my life? And then, Oh, but please have mercy on me, please forgive me.
She opened her eyes, and her mother patted her on the shoulder and handed her a tissue. “Finn is going to be all right,” she assured her.
Alice straightened. She imagined sharing with her mother the other source of her pain, but that wasn’t possible, that would never be possible. Instead, she looked at her mother and said, “Have you ever done something you couldn’t forgive yourself for?”
Nora didn’t seem surprised by the question, which intrigued Alice.
She looked up at a fresco of Mother Mary on the ceiling, then back at Alice.
“I couldn’t protect him,” she said. She fidgeted with the Saint Christopher pendant at her throat, which she’d worn every day since Topher’s death.
“I’ll never be able to forgive myself for that. ”
Alice turned to the flickering votives, and the clarity of her decision dropped like a stone inside her. She buttoned her jacket, wrapped her arm around Nora, and gestured toward the door. “Let’s go,” she said.