Chapter 34 #2
‘No,’ she’d said. The two of them were huddled in bed together, and his hands were wrapped around hers, her head on his chest. They had just slept together for the first time, and he had cried, and she had wondered if that was it, because it didn’t seem like something to make a big fuss about.
But she’d told herself then, and in the months to come, that it didn’t matter.
She was here, with Jack, in the city. ‘It doesn’t seem real any more,’ she’d said, nestling more closely against him.
‘It seems fake. And I can’t see myself there.
I’m not that person any more. How about you? ’
‘My dad threw me in the lake to teach me to swim,’ Jack had said, his long hair flopping in his eyes.
‘He beat me when I flunked my senior year, took me down to the stables and beat me with the horse whip. He knocked up our nanny; she was twenty-one. I hate him,’ he said, and he’d started to cry.
‘I can’t ever go back. They can’t make me.
I’ll find something else to do, or I suppose I’ll just die.
I don’t care much one way or the other.’
‘I mean it, about going travelling, Allie,’ Dolores was saying. ‘I want you to think about it. Will you promise me?’
‘Dolo, I – I really can’t go.’
‘You can.’ Dolores was nodding. ‘More than that. You listen to me, Allie. You won’t speak to me after this maybe, but I gotta say it.
You were so cool when I moved here. You’d lost your dad; you were always so stylish and hard-working and gentle; and you were so kind; you looked out for me, and –’ Her voice thickened.
‘You’re so damn clever, Allie … You ask questions, you try to understand how the world works, and you’re always making things.
And I can’t stand to think of you like that, in the city not doing anything, and I know your dad wouldn’t like it either, and that’s the only time I’m damn well going to say that to you, honey.
’ Her eyes were shining with tears. ‘Come to Europe with me. Let’s cause some more trouble. Let’s work out what to do next.’
Alice rubbed her wet cheeks, then took Dolores’s hands. ‘I’ll think about it.’
‘Oh! Yay, Allie! Are you serious?’
Alice blinked, rubbing her eyes. She nodded. ‘Let’s do it. Let’s go.’
But she was staring at something that had just caught her eye. She took a step back, stumbling against a low picket fence, and Dolores’s hand shot out to hold her up.
‘Allie? What’s wrong?’
Alice stood stock still, staring across the road. ‘I –’ she began.
‘Allie?’
But Alice just shook her head, and continued to look straight ahead, at the figure directly in front of her.
It was her dad.
He was standing in the doorway of the diner.
He dropped some change into his pocket, then lifted his hand and waved to her.
She could see the gleam from the sun on his bald pate, just like that last day, and his grey, kind eyes.
And she could hear the jangling of his keys, and the change.
She could see the square outline of the book he’d been reading in the other pocket.
East of Eden : she knew it; it was one of his favourite novels.
‘Hey, Allie,’ he said, and it was his voice, his kind, soft, amused voice that was sad, so, so sad. She’d never noticed before that the sadness was part of him, because she saw him only as her father, as the man who loved her and made everything magical.
‘Dad –’ she said, and it sounded so weird, to say it aloud. ‘Dad? Is that you?’
But he didn’t hear her. He stood on the sidewalk, looking at her.
‘You couldn’t have done anything,’ he said. ‘I had to go, Allie. I couldn’t see anything any more. It was covering me, all the time. I wish I could have stayed, Allie. You – you understand, don’t you?’
And he held out an apple, and there were trees all around him, as though he was walking through the orchards toward her.
Alice reached out to take the apple, her eyes swimming with tears. ‘Yes, Dad,’ she said, in a whisper.
He nodded, and bowed his head, and then jangled the loose change and looked up. ‘I love ya, Allie,’ he said. ‘I always will. I hope you find the last treasure, honey. It’s with Teddy. You know it’s with Teddy.’
And he waved at her again, then walked down the street, into the setting sun, and as she watched him go he disappeared, as though vanishing into the trees.
‘Allie? Allie!’ Dolores was calling her loudly, and then shook her arm. ‘Jesus, are you okay?’
‘I’m fine,’ said Alice, and she smiled at Dolores. ‘Really, I am.’ She took Dolores’s hands. ‘I was somewhere else.’
‘I know you were.’ Dolores gripped Alice’s hands back.
They stood facing each other on the street, smiling, and she felt warmth, love, years of knowledge, passing from her friend to her.
‘I can’t believe you’re saying yes. Are you ready for it?
We’d have to hitchhike and sleep in railroad stations and wait tables and go weeks without washing … are you sure you’re ready for it?’
‘Oh, I’m ready, Dolo,’ Alice said, and she was laughing. She wiped away the tears, her body shaking with release. ‘Believe me, it’ll be a step up from how I’m living now. Give me till October. Then we go. Is that okay?’
‘More than,’ said Dolores.
‘I love you, Dolo.’
‘I love you, Allie.’
The gatehouse was empty, the windows shuttered. Someone had pulled down the ivy which had grown up since her father’s death, leaving black triangular speckles over the rough, grimy render.
She walked past the orchards and up the winding driveway. Tiny green-grey apples budded on the endless trees. Her father’s old ladder leaned against one. His ladder.
She remembered the time her mother had been in the city meeting a friend and Alice had gone looking for him one evening.
It was a late September afternoon, a glorious, golden day, and when she eventually located him it was because she heard him snoring in the branches of the gnarled tree by the house, the oldest in the orchard.
It had a wide-beamed main branch and, having climbed up using the ladder, he had fallen asleep.
He looked like a Hobbit. He used to sleep all the time, Alice could remember that now.
‘Don’t disturb your father,’ her mother would say. ‘He needs his sleep.’
Sometimes he stayed in bed for days on end.
Toward the end, he had been sleeping more and more.
She remembered now how the house had gotten darker and messier, and how in the days before her birthday he had suddenly emerged, and everything was golden again, and he was making plans and was the life and soul of the house again, the glue, the heart, the grit in the oyster.
All this, and she’d somehow forgotten it.
The porch was the same. The throw pillows on the benches. The bottle of rye whiskey still on Wilder’s study windowsill, though not the same brand, a cheaper variety. Alice faced the front door. She wasn’t afraid. She rang the doorbell.
Her mother answered the door almost immediately, an anxious expression on her face that froze when she saw her daughter.
‘Allie – oh, Allie, honey! You’re back!’
She flung herself at her daughter, clutching her tightly, as the noises from upstairs began.
‘ Ravenoose! Ravenoose! Ravenoose! ’ She could hear Teddy’s chair creaking across the boards with the force of movement.
‘Why are you here?’ Her mother released her, gripping her shoulders. Alice stared at her. It was strange to really look at someone you know that well, to really see them through fresh eyes.
Betsy had lost weight. The thinness in her face was offset by short bouffant hair, apple cheeks, deep-set twinkling blue eyes that gave her a girlish look, but the thinness made her seem bird-like, like she was pecking for scraps.
‘ Ravenoose! Ravenoose! ’
Alice said, ‘I came to see Teddy.’
‘Allie – come in and visit with me a little first,’ her mother said. She clutched at Alice’s shirt. ‘Goodness, darling, you’re so –’
‘I know,’ said Alice, half regretful. ‘I didn’t want to show up like this, but your husband, you remember, the one who tried to rape your daughter? He’s in the city for the day so this is my only chance to be certain I won’t see him. Can I go upstairs? Or can Teddy come down?’
‘ Ravenoose! Ravenoose! ’
Her mother was flushed. ‘Allie, I wish you could see it.’ She lowered her voice. ‘What I did for you.’
‘What you did for me? You stood there and saw him on me, and you walked away, Mom. You walked away. You did more than that, in fact,’ Alice said.
She felt as though the anger was liquid and it was filling her up steadily, right to the top.
‘You married him. You married Wilder Kynaston, Mom!’ Alice placed her hands on the doorframe to steady herself.
‘He stole everything. From me, from Dad, from me again. And nothing will ever happen to him.’
‘I wanted you to leave. I wanted you gone.’
‘It worked.’
‘So you’d take up the place at Barnard. So you’d – be free,’ Betsy said, her voice still low, fast, precise.
‘So you’d have a chance. Listen to me, kiddo.
Your dad couldn’t do what he wanted all his life, and it killed him.
I knew you had to get out – I knew if you didn’t you’d end up like him, Allie –’
‘I don’t want to talk to you about Dad,’ Alice said, furious at herself for the throbbing in her voice. ‘I don’t want to talk to you at all. I’ve come to see the house one last time and say bye to Dad, and I’ve come to see Teddy.’
‘You have no idea,’ her mother said with a thin smile. She folded her arms. ‘So self-absorbed – even now you’re all grown up.’
‘I’m self-absorbed? That’s rich, Mom,’ said Alice, trying not to lose her temper. ‘You abandoned me. Dad died and I needed you.’ It was easier to say this in an angry way than to feel how much it hurt.
‘You don’t know what it was like, Allie, with him …’ her mother said.
‘I was there!’ Alice shouted. ‘Of course I know!’