Chapter 27. Alice
ALICE
Alice drove her mother through the half-plowed, nearly empty streets of Port Haven village in silence.
The roads were slick with ice, and she gripped the steering wheel tightly as though that might stop them from veering off the road.
Shattered from the day, she pulled into the driveway hoping the boys and Kyle were already asleep so that she wouldn’t have to talk.
Still, there was something she needed to say to her mother before they went inside.
“What happened with Topher was not your fault,” she said. “You tried to protect him.”
Nora stared straight ahead as she nodded, and though Alice knew she probably didn’t believe her, she was glad to have said it anyway.
“Ready?” Alice asked.
Nora reached for her bag, but then, still not looking Alice in the eyes, said, “Are you happy?”
A sharp annoyance rose up within Alice as she recalled the last forty-eight hours.
An unwanted pregnancy. Cait’s blowup at dinner.
Finn sneaking out and getting sent to the hospital.
Her father seeing the ghost of her dead brother.
Kyle being angry at her, without an end in sight.
Happy wasn’t exactly the word she would have used.
Then again, just like she thought when Father Kelly told his story at dinner, her mother wasn’t exactly asking a genuine question.
What she sought was reassurance. Alice had played this role countless times before.
She was the daughter her mother didn’t have to worry about.
The one in a stable marriage, with kids enrolled in Catholic school.
The one who still attended mass herself, whatever her reasons.
The child who’d come back and would never leave.
However wearying, Alice prided herself on that role, because it was an act of love none of her other siblings were deemed capable of offering.
“I’m happy,” Alice lied. “But I’m also tired. Can we go inside?”
Nora unbuckled her seat belt and reached for the door handle, then stopped again. “What about your sisters? Are they happy, do you think?”
Alice rubbed her temples. She could feel a headache coming on. “I don’t know,” she said. “What do you think?”
“Cait’s lonely.”
“She won’t be forever.”
“And Maggie, well, she doesn’t let me know what’s going on in her life anyway, so—”
Here we go. Alice had lost count of the times she’d talked to her mother about how to repair her relationship with Maggie. Mostly it was useless, as Nora just wanted to be soothed, to know that it wasn’t all her fault, but Alice did not have that in her now.
“You could ask her,” she said.
Nora shifted in her seat. “You don’t think I’ve tried?”
Alice looked up at the house, imagining everyone inside, asleep in their respective rooms, just as her mother had hoped for this weekend.
Her parents had always wanted a big family.
They’d had lonely childhoods in their own ways, and this shared dream was one of the things that had brought them together.
Her mother always said that if they hadn’t started so late, she would have had more children.
Now they’d lost a son, and two of their daughters rarely returned home.
But if Alice found Cait’s distance frustrating, she understood why Maggie stayed away.
She met her mother’s stare and tilted her head as if to challenge her defense. “I know today was hard, but I think Maggie seems happy—and in love.” Then she said, “But I’m not sure you see that, and she knows it, and she suffers because of it.”
Nora received these words with a tiny escaped gasp, but Alice didn’t take them back. They needed to be said. She should have said them a long time ago. And if she could not share her own truth with her mother, at least she could share her sister’s.
“You will lose her,” she continued. “You have to know that. Eventually you will lose her if you can’t accept her.”
They sat in silence. The storm had passed, and the moon shone brightly on the snow-covered evergreen bushes and the garbage bin with the dead raccoon in front of the house.
Tomorrow morning, Kyle would deal with animal control and take her parents to the parish for the food drive.
But where would things stand between them?
“Maggie knows I love her,” Nora said finally. “I love her very much.”
“But do you respect her?” Alice asked. “The life she’s living? Who she is? The choices she’s made?”
“I see.”
Alice wasn’t sure she did. Ever since Topher’s death, Nora had insisted on believing that he’d been destined for greatness had he not been derailed.
Who could say either way? Still, Alice knew that Daniel’s accident and the admission of guilt in the settlement were not the only things that had determined Topher’s life.
She’d always assumed allowing her mother to maintain this belief was both kind and harmless, but she was starting to see that there had been a price.
It had allowed Nora to stay in a world of fantasy, where none of her other children could possibly compete, and where their lives and choices were held to a false standard.
But she’d already said enough. She grabbed her bag. “I need to check on Finn.”
“Wait, and what about the boys? Are they happy? I mean, I know Finn made a mistake, but is he doing okay?”
Alice slumped back into her seat. “They’re fine. You see them nearly every day.”
“And Kyle?”
“We’re all fine, Mom. What’s this about?”
Nora shook her head. “I just seem to—” She stopped.
“To what?”
“To miss everything.”
“What’s everything ?”
“I don’t know,” Nora said. “That’s it. I don’t see the problem, or no one tells me until a full-blown crisis is under way.”
It was getting cold in the car, but something in Alice wanted to reveal everything she’d grappled with earlier in the church.
To lay it out for her mother. To tell her how she’d found a certain affirmation that ending the pregnancy was the right decision for her, no matter how it broke her heart, no matter how much Kyle might not see it that way, but that she was still desperate for someone to give her permission to have a life beyond motherhood, wifehood, and even daughterhood.
“I’m not in a crisis,” Alice said evenly.
Nora nodded. “Right, well. If you say so.”
She knows , Alice suddenly realized. She turned to face her. “Who told you?” she asked. “Cait? Kyle?”
Nora reached for her arm. “I heard you talking to Cait earlier today in the hallway. I didn’t mean to pry. Oh, love, I’m thrilled for you—”
“I may not keep it,” Alice heard herself say.
She knew her mother could influence her decision, and she was cautious about giving over that power.
“I love being a mother, but I don’t want to take that chance with my body.
” Then, choosing her words carefully, she said, “I don’t want to leave the boys motherless. ”
Alice understood Nora thought she was committing not only a crime against nature but one against her soul.
That she wanted more grandchildren. That this was, in fact, one of her biggest hang-ups with Maggie being gay—her fear that her youngest would never have children and, therefore, never live a full life.
For a long time, Nora said nothing. Finally, she said, very quietly, “I understand.”
“You do?” Alice said. She was so stunned, she wondered if her mother had misunderstood her.
Nora pressed her hands together and held them to her lips. “I had a miscarriage before Topher was born,” she said.
“I didn’t know that.”
“It was early on. I didn’t even know I was pregnant. I should have, but I was na?ve back then.” She stopped and breathed into her hands to warm them from the cold. “Your father and I were just engaged—”
“This was before you were married?”
“It was.”
Alice would never have guessed her parents had had sex before they were married. Growing up, the extent of sex education she and her siblings had received went something like: “Don’t. Until you’re married.” She looked at her mother. “What happened?”
“I was at the grocery store and started gushing blood and fainted.”
“Oh, Mom.”
“They told me while I was at the hospital. I was deeply ashamed, and I believed it was my fault. Like a punishment of sorts.”
Alice imagined her newly immigrated mother alone in the hospital, blaming herself for the loss. She couldn’t believe Nora had never told them about the miscarriage, that she’d kept that to herself all these years, but she knew why: she was ashamed to have gotten pregnant before she was married.
“There was a young priest who came to talk to me,” Nora continued. “He was so handsome. From somewhere in Italy. He told me how Saint Aquinas believed a fetus did not acquire a soul until further along in pregnancy.”
“I’ve heard that,” Alice said. Though she was pretty sure she’d read it in an op-ed against abortion, so she wasn’t sure how the argument held up, exactly.
“I don’t believe that’s true,” Nora said. “I believe human life begins at conception and is sacred.”
Alice closed her eyes and nodded. She swallowed hard again, and this time, she could not hold back the tears.
Her mother reached for her hand. “But I also believe your life is sacred. And that you are a moral person who will follow her own conscience.” Then she said in a soft voice, “And your boys do need you.”
All at once, it felt like nearly every muscle in Alice’s body released the tension it had been holding.
The pregnancy had been like a relentless fist squeezing her heart all day.
But the ache was not just for a child she knew, had known from the beginning, she would not keep.
It was for Kyle. It would be difficult, but she would survive the abortion.
What she did not want to lose was him. That had never been clearer to her than in this moment, with the gift of her mother’s acceptance.
She could smell her mother’s rose perfume across the seat. She clutched her hand, the skin cold and thin.