Chapter 35
Alice’s father had visited Teddy every week; he’d known her all his life.
Sometimes she gave him candy, or hair pins, sometimes apple pips she’d saved from her lunch.
Sometimes she shuffled over to her bureau and gave him one of the ornaments that filled her bedroom – a cat, a dancing bear, a dog, a piece of sea-glass.
She called them the treasures. To her, they were treasures.
Bob Jansen took them, though he knew if his employer found out he’d get into trouble.
He gave them to his daughter, who called them treasures, too.
In the apple cart, the year she turned fourteen and her father got the big loan from Mr Kynaston and took over the orchards, Alice, lying back among the apples, had once asked her dad what was wrong with the big girl who lived in Mr Kynaston’s house. Her father had hesitated, then said:
‘Help her what?’
‘Make her calmer, they said. They don’t do it so much any more. They aren’t sure it’s a good idea. It wasn’t a good idea.’
He’d climbed into the cart next to Alice, taken an apple and sat beside her in silence, eating away, and it was the closest he had ever come to criticizing his employer.
‘I’m sorry I followed you here, Alice.’
‘It’s fine. I’m sorry for what I said.’
‘Me too. The arrogance. It’s none of my business what you do with your life. I just have one question. Where were the letters from?’
‘She gave them to me.’
‘What?’
‘Teddy. She handed them to me, when I arrived. All this time, she’s had them in her bureau, or someplace in her room.
They were lost – maybe her brother found them and hid them.
But she found them. She’s been waiting all this time to give them to me.
She knows what happened to her. She’s been waiting,’ she said again. ‘She knew we’d come. She knew.’
‘Oh, Alice.’
‘Don’t worry about me. I’m fine. It’s you – I keep thinking about you, Tom –’ He looked up at her. ‘I had no idea this would happen today – you do know that, don’t you? How do you feel?’
‘Of course. How do I feel?’ He put one hand over his right eye.
‘I don’t know what to feel. It’s something to get used to.
It’s – mad. But I know her. The moment I saw her I knew it was her.
And it helps, that she doesn’t really know who I am.
She was very sweet. She told me it’s always nice to see family. ’
‘Oh, Tom.’ Alice put her hand in his.
They were on the stuffy train, the steel girders of the bridge back into Manhattan flashing past them. It was still light. It was still the longest day.
‘But, you know, it makes sense. There was always something so odd, so absent, about my childhood. My dear dad, he’s lovely, but he wasn’t up to it.
How could he have been?’ His eyes shone with unshed tears.
‘God, Allie. He had to pretend my mother was his dead wife and she wasn’t.
And all this time he didn’t know what had happened to Teddy either.
I think I know when he found out, too.’ He shook his head. ‘So he’s mourning two women.’
‘Did he ever go to see her?’
‘I don’t see how he could have done. I don’t remember him leaving me, and he didn’t have any money,’ said Tom, considering it all.
‘Oh, hell, it’s complicated. The other idea I’ve been trying to get used to is that Irene wasn’t my mother.
And that means I was nothing to do with dear old Jenny and Henry.
So God knows why they agreed to take me on. ’
Alice looked out the window. ‘I suppose they loved their sister.’
‘Jenny loved Teddy so much she clearly thought she had to look after Teddy’s child, for Teddy’s sake, and for Irene’s. But she couldn’t tell anyone what had happened to Teddy – it was too awful and she felt partially responsible.’
‘Why?’
‘I’d imagine, given the tone of that letter from Wilder Kynaston, that Teddy’s affair with a woman was one of the reasons they forced the lobotomy on her.’ He put his hand under his chin. ‘How, Alice? How on earth was it allowed?’
‘It happened a lot,’ said Alice. ‘I know a girl in the city whose mother’s in an institution, because she went crazy after having kids. Started drinking and having affairs. They wanted to calm her down.’
‘I imagine that’s how they justified it to Kynaston. And to Teddy. Poor Teddy.’
Alice was turning over everything she and Tom had worked out on the train back together. ‘So my dad passed letters to your aunt through their friend Gordon – is that right?’
‘I guess so. I can’t find any of them. I’ll ask Gordon if he has any. He knew all along. He kept trying to tell me.’ He was staring out the window. ‘But I guess they kept Jenny up to date with everything.’
‘I think it’s the one time Teddy was truly happy, the war,’ Alice said. ‘From what my father used to say about it.’
‘I suppose the real hero is Irene Raven, and I never knew her either.’
‘But it was convenient for her too. I think there were lots of heroes,’ said Alice.
‘Your dad … My dad. Your friend Gordon. Jenny, in a way. Irene wanted kids and they couldn’t have them and there’s her unfaithful husband presenting her with a kid she could raise as her own …
What would have happened to you if she hadn’t agreed to adopt you is anyone’s guess. ’
Tom was silent, watching the city flash past them, ochre-coloured light on one side of the skyscrapers, black flat shadows on the others.
She put her hand on his again, unable to stop herself.
Her warm skin rested lightly on his hands.
She said, ‘I always felt I knew you. From the first moment I heard your voice.’
He looked up, and something flashed across his eyes. ‘I know,’ he said. ‘Me too.’
They sat in silence, hands clasped, until the train pulled into Grand Central.
It was dark when they got back to St Mark’s Place. Alice was so tired by now that her head was aching. She could not remember when she’d last eaten. The lights were all off at No. 5. Alice fumbled around under the planter with the dead marigold plant and took out the key. ‘Hey, Merlin,’ she called.
There was no answer. She went downstairs, to the kitchen, and Tom’s room. He followed her. There was a note on the dresser.
Missed you, Allie.
I might skip out of town for a few days, need to clear my head. I don’t know when I’ll be back. Go well, Allie. We can say we were here at this time of change. Peace and light.
J
Alice stood very still, holding the note in her hand.
‘Everything okay?’ said Tom.
‘Yes,’ she said.
Behind her, she sensed Tom’s awkwardness. He said, ‘I’m starving. I’m going out to the deli. Can I get you something? How about a meatball sandwich?’
‘Oh.’ Alice patted her pockets, embarrassed. The last of the roll of dollar bills had been spent on the train fare back. She had no idea where more money was. She was waiting to be paid for some posters she’d designed for a Love-in at the Astoria next month. Jack usually gave her money for food.
‘I don’t have any money,’ she said quietly. ‘I can owe you.’
‘It’s fine. I owe you. You got me a mother today.’
Alice smiled. ‘Okay. I’d love a meatball sub. Yes, please. How do you know I like them?’
‘I just remember hearing you say it once.’ He smiled back at her. ‘I’ll be right back.’
‘I’ll get the place fixed up while you’re out.
Thanks, Tom.’ He nodded, his gaze holding hers just a second longer than usual.
She was very aware of him, of the fact that no one else was there, of the heat, of the utter craziness of the day.
She took a deep breath and turned back into the apartment, then set about tidying up the filthy kitchen, humming to herself as she did so.
Curtis, Callie and Ginger were all out, and the street was quiet.
Someone was playing an accordion; a dog was barking; someone else was chanting loudly, and there was the usual fight going on in the apartment opposite.
Alice stacked the bowls, put the beaded cloth over the butter, wiped the counters, swept the floor.
She went back to the front stoop again and sat down: her empty stomach was making her head spin.
She wondered when Jack would come back, if he meant her to find him.
She wondered if he really preferred men, as Ginger had once told her she thought he did.
She thought about her mother’s glassy face, how all the grace and joy had gone out of it after too many long years were spent worrying about her father.
Alice rubbed her eyes. She was so sick of it all, and there was nothing to do but keep going.
She was nineteen and this was not the life her father would have wanted for her.
Or her mother. She thought about her mother’s face, telling her to go last fall, pushing her away, setting her free.
She thought about Teddy, how one night she had crept up to Valhalla in the summer after her dad died, when she felt really, really mad, simply walked in through the open door from the porch to see her in her room, how Teddy lay there, quietly, on her side, staring at nothing in her voluminous white flannel nightgown.
Hello, Alice, she’d said, her words laboured but clear for once, maybe because she was on her side and speaking softly. Hello. Take me to the Raven House.
That was what she’d been saying, all these years. Take me to the Raven House. Teddy knew where she wanted to be.
A voice behind her said, ‘Hey,’ and she jumped. It was Tom, with the meatball sub. She was hungrier than she had ever been, and these last eight months she had been hungry all the time. She almost tore the sandwich off him, opening up the foil and shovelling in a huge bite.
‘Sorry,’ she said between mouthfuls. ‘Dreadful manners.’
Tom shook his head, his mouth full. The chairs had vanished – furniture was often missing in St Mark’s Place – so they stood across from each other, leaning against the rickety kitchen table and grinning over the sandwiches.
‘Long day, huh,’ he said, swallowing.
‘In fact it’s been the longest day,’ said Alice, laughing almost hysterically, and then she found she couldn’t stop laughing.
‘Oh dear,’ said Tom, almost to himself, as she bowed her head, still laughing.
‘Sorry.’ Alice wiped her mouth and took a swig from the whiskey bottle someone had left on the table. ‘Listen.’
‘I’m listening.’
‘I never said something,’ she said.
They had moved next to each other. Tom reached behind Alice and took a swig from the bottle. ‘What?’
‘I kind of … I was rude, when we first met. I didn’t want you coming in and ruining everything. Trying to make me go back home.’
‘Allie –’ He put the bottle back down, the skin on his bare arm scraping her arm. ‘Don’t apologize.’
‘And I was kind of a bitch.’
‘You weren’t,’ he said.
‘I was. The truth is, I was scared.’
‘I know you were,’ he said calmly. ‘I know.’
Alice chewed the inside of her mouth, then gave a belch.
‘Oh –’ she said, but he just laughed, and belched as well.
‘We’re even. Aren’t we? We always have been. I knew when we spoke, Alice, I knew you.’ He took a deep breath, gave a shuddering sigh. ‘I always have.’
Their hips were touching, their legs, their feet.
She put her hand on his arm, turning to face him, and their eyes met. Tom reached up and brushed her hair out of her eyes.
‘Thank you,’ he said quietly. ‘For everything. And I’m sorry.’
‘What are you sorry for?’
‘For – coming over in the first place and being a prig today. For making you go back there. For our mothers. Both of them.’
‘I had to go back there.’
‘For taking up a bed here.’
‘I’d have drowned if you weren’t here.’
He took a swig of whiskey from the bottle and swallowed. She could hear something in his voice, a shaking. ‘For kissing you too. I shouldn’t have done it.’
‘I kissed you, Tom. Don’t worry about it.’ She moved toward him a little more, and put the sandwich down on the table. ‘Tom – I couldn’t have stopped myself, even if I’d wanted to, or tried to. I couldn’t.’ She smoothed the hair away from his brow.
‘That day in the park,’ he said. ‘With the broken cookies and the whiskey and when we talked. I knew it was right, I just felt it here –’ He thumped his chest, and she saw his eyes were shining with tears.
‘But I got it so wrong before, with that girl Celia I told you about. And I did again today, for what it’s worth, but that night we were drunk and angry and you were freaked out about Merlin and when we kissed I thought this is how it should be, it’s right, I know it’s right, but it’s the wrong time and I should have waited till it was.
The right time. Because I’m falling in love with you, and you need someone – you need the right person. ’
He put his hand on her cheek, his fingers stroking her skin so gently she could feel the whorls of his fingertips against her cheekbones.
‘Have you finished?’ Alice asked, smiling at him.
‘I think so,’ he said.
‘It’s the right time, Tom.’
They were very still, the motion of his fingers almost the only movement.
She stared at him, and his large dark eyes, the good one and the bad together; his jaw was set, his full, wide mouth closed.
And she reached up to touch his face, running her hands from his jaw to his cheek and through his thick, unruly dark hair, feeling her body respond as she did so, her nipples hardening under her shirt, a rushing sound filling her head.
‘Anyway,’ she said, her voice low. ‘How do we know if we don’t try?’ She moved so she was against him, pushing against the table, their hips touching, their breathing ragged. He put his hands on her hip bones, smoothed them, moved his hands up, pulling her toward him.
Something, someone, thudded above them – Ginger shouting about something on her way out, a door slamming. Alice whispered into Tom’s ear, ‘Shall we go upstairs?’
‘Yes,’ he said, ‘in a minute, just kiss me first –’ and she did.
He wrapped his arms around her, pushing her against the kitchen cabinet.
He tasted of truffles, of woods, of fresh things, of the sky.
He was delicious, heavy; she loved the smell and the bulk of him against her when he was so gentle in spirit. Alice said:
‘To be clear I mean let’s go to Ginger’s room right away –’
‘That’s what I mean too,’ he said, breathing in the scent of her and kissing her, his mouth hard on hers, his hand on her back, pulling her toward him.