Alice's Four-Letter Word

IT WOULD SEEM I HAVE NOWHERE TO SLEEP. The concrete scrapes against my feet because the soles of my sneakers are worn, and because I don’t lift my feet when I walk; I move in a curious, unhurried drag.  Laziness! My mother used to say, depending on her mood, or: Whimsical!  This thought of my mother, as thoughts of her always do, momentarily drowns out the music, which isn’t really music but things whisked together around me, full-bodied sounds: traversed laughter, flamboyant car motors, hasty feet and canvas bags unzipping - and she is standing in front of the brown-gold buffet with a ballpoint pen in her long fingers – always the first thing a person notices, the fingers, because they are attached to her hands, which are strong and dainty all at once, and she talks with her hands - she is animated - and when people first see her, if she is talking, they become hypnotized because she is like a ballet: dark (like me) and enchantingly graceful, and I wonder if it is meant to be a distraction from the rest of her: the too-sharp features and the segregated eyes.  She is writing a name: Mimi, which is what my father and I have always called her - and she writes it in different ways: curly script, straight and narrow, curt and quick, because she hasn’t yet figured out how to sign her name, a problem that began when she first came to America – but how long ago was that? - and then she says, in her baritone voice: Maria, not Mimi. 

A mother goose and her babies have sliced through the traffic and the sudden quiet they evoke, the confident crawl which has slowed everyone around them, pulls me out of my head and I am like the others, watching them, wishing I held the same naïve confidence – the assurance there is something on the other side.  By the time they make it across, I have convinced myself that I am on my way home, the spicy-bold fragrance of meat and potatoes roping me in, and my father, his sharply pressed shirt unbuttoned at the collar, is sitting on the left side of the couch.  I'd emerge just as he'd finish his reading, and he'd lower his glasses and ask about school - and Mimi, waltzing in from the kitchen, would dismiss him with a wave – because she hated when he bombarded me, or perhaps she felt bitterness over her own educational failures - and she would release me from my bag, commenting about the weight of it and how ridiculous the school is for requiring so many books.  She might cup my cheeks in her hands and plant wet, cushiony kisses on my forehead - and then, because maybe there was a scent or something in my voice amiss, she would rub her thumb across my face to see if I'd worn make-up, and if something came off on her finger, some rouge or mascara, her eyes, muted brown, would instantly ignite and she'd forget her overindulgence, and I'd know what was coming, and I'd run - possibly to the bathroom where I could push my body against the door - and I’d stay there until my father’s voice, wise, calm - no match for her - could be heard, offering a new target. 

I am walking towards nothing.  I'm going in the same direction as the house I used to live in; hi-ranch, big evergreen out front - but it isn't the same house.  There is no silver Oldsmobile in the ribbon driveway.  There is no clutter in front of the garage; no bike, no kickball, no rake.  The grass is not overgrown.  It is a disinfected feeling: the newly painted stoop - I had no idea concrete could be painted, and why hadn't we thought of it? - and the too-happy flower pots, which have a sort of purple-white perennial sprouting and hanging over them; there is an oscillating sprinkler which is always on, back and forth, soothingly lazy.  It is not a house I know. 

I suppose if I wanted to, I could climb over the gate and fall asleep in the hammock - because I know the hammock is still there.  But there are dogs that would find me; a child who might wander out and be scared. Still, the idea is seductive: the fig trees and the line of heavy hiding bushes; the coarse, picket fence with Cedric on the other side elevated on a pile of bricks so that we could talk, face to face, without walking around the block. 

Allie.  This is what Mimi called me.  Not Alice – which was taken from my father’s mother, and what he considered a lovely, unassuming name. Allie. Because she hated the sound of Alice as much as I did. I wanted a name that sprung an unexpected melody.  When I was little, I knew only that I wanted a prettier-sounding name, like Liliana.  The new mom calls me Alice.  Allie.  I hear it again.  But it's coming from behind me.  I stop.  Somebody bumps into me, then pushes past. If I could watch from the sky, I imagine we would look like ant soldiers, advancing in the same direction, away from the red-bricked school building – a building I no longer enter - foraging for food. 

The hand is on my shoulder, guiding me forward.  Stay at my house tonight.  Red-haired Elise.  Kind Elise, but sometimes impatient.   

Are you sure?  And I want to make sure she's sure, because last time I surprised her.  She had opened the door, wide-eyed and eager, and then, the drooping of the face, the slanting of the eyes when she realized it was only me - again.  She had said: Come in!  But, she was already moving into the dark hallway, and I followed quickly, not wanting to run into her reclusive father - a skeletal shadow of a figure I hardly knew.  When we got to her room, she tossed me a blanket and pillow, and I set up my bed on the spotty, hardwood floor.  She didn't speak to me, other than to tell me I shouldn't move around so much because I was a noisy sleeper and already my snoring had kept her up too many nights. 

Yes, I'm sure.  You can shower too. 

The idea elicits a surging high.  It is a feeling like the one I used to get on Christmas Eve, my knees pressed into the olive-green couch, my elbows at the window sill. How silly, when I think of it now: the snug footed-pajamas, the witless ambition to find, amongst the star-filled sky, a different, magical-kind of light. 

Okay.  Thank you.   

I think of something my father had said after a girl from class celebrated her ninth birthday.  She had brought, into school, the only present her mother gave: a floral writing journal with lined pages.  I’d been pompous.  I was used to big birthdays – balloons in my bedroom and bunches of exquisitely wrapped gifts.  To my father, I’d said: Can you believe - only a diary?  But my father’s eyes had darkened, and I found myself deflating beneath them.  Your mother has spoiled you, he said, It’s a shame, because you don’t understand what an apple means to a hungry person, or what a blanket means to a cold person, or what a book might mean to a house with empty shelves.  He was right, I didn’t understand.  Not even after he’d banned me from the television.  Perhaps he’d be pleased to know how much I understand now. 

Elise is beside me, hunched over, because she is tall and doesn't want to be tall, and then she is a few steps ahead of me, because we have become, in only the last year, two other people: the leader and the follower.  It isn't anybody's specific doing.  It is simply an occurrence that couldn't be helped - an inequality that developed when my situation defined us. 

We stop at the corner where the four roads meet.  There is a huddled bunch of us getting ready to make the left toward the seedier part of town, where, with every step, the tree-lined streets turn into rows of wire poles, and the houses squeeze together, and the trains can be heard every half hour.  Elise inches forward, the freckles on her face plentiful, especially against the lowering sun.  My legs become cemented.  I want to go with her, but there is a sort of pulling in my chest - a familiar pattern I feel the need to complete.  Straight.  I must go straight.  What is it? she asks.  I shrug: I’ll catch up.  She closes her eyes: Oh, Allie!  And then she is crossing the street without looking back.  I call to her: I'll come later!  But I'm not sure if she hears, because now there are lanes of cars between us and we are separated, the way the town is separated: this side, the middle class, and that side, the undesirables, though this side may as well be some sort of aristocracy, with all its overweening. 

The high I felt only moments ago has simmered into a customary warmth - the cracked sidewalk approaching, and then the habitual leap over it; the galvanized fence beginning just at the cross of the street, and my fingers brushing against it. The house materializing - the largest in town, and inadequately positioned, all stone, tulip-lined, same bushy dog coming to greet me, and others too, but in my mind, I have been carefully selected by him – though I have no idea if it is a male or female dog – and when I call him: Buster! (which is not really his name at all, only a name I have created in my mind, though there is a possibility I chose the right name) it provokes an ear-lifting, tail-wagging excitement that never fully exhibits for anyone else. 

One more block, and then I’ll be turning onto a quiet road, and I’ll pass the forest-green street signs: Orchard, Elm, then, finally, Locust - all tree-names that have been unknowingly etched into my memory because before I was allowed to ride my bike down to the duck pond, I could only go around these blocks over and over again, each wooden post a victory for me because it meant I was one round older, and it meant I could do it all over again. 

Once in a while, I would accompany my father on one of his strolls.  He liked to get his exercise and to allow the fresh air to be muddled with the other scents, the dirt and the flowers and the hamburgers on the grills.  He’d walk slowly, his orange-brown sunglasses reflecting everything, his hands in his pockets and my arm tightly wrapped around his, and then only our fingers would be connected, and I’d be trailing behind and pulling at his pocket because something was always grabbing my attention: a colorful bird, a spider hanging from its web – a lanky figure in the distance resembling Cedric.  Sometimes, we’d go as far as the candy store, where he’d get me a thick string of bubble gum and a Coca Cola for himself, and the woman behind the counter would find excuses to touch his arm, and she would smile in a way she never smiled when I was there with my mother.  I was used to this.  My father always garnered attention: at the bank, at the supermarket - because he was not only an attractive man, but attentive and kind.  He had exquisite manners.  He took notice of things and of people and he held open doors and carried bags to cars - and when he spoke people listened because he was wise and he said the kinds of things people hung to; things that most people couldn’t formulate themselves.   He was a teacher.  More importantly, he was a student.   

It was during a trip to Connecticut - when we had to turn around because my father was feeling funny, and my mother, who never drove, jumped into the driver’s seat, her hand patting his shoulder, then cradling his neck (though it wasn’t in her nature to be intimate with him in front of me) - where I came to see a bit of that firmly planted poise begin to crumble.  He’d been lurched forward, sharp with his tongue, and with me because I couldn’t stop asking him what was wrong, and his beige hair, always neatly combed to the side, was hanging in front of him, displaying, to my alarm, a shiny, pink balding patch I’d never noticed before. 

The experience didn’t prove as frightening as it might have been. In my mind, my father had a tummy ache. That’s all.  I understood tummy aches.  I had them whenever I drank too much milk.  Eventually, when my father finally reclined his seat and I brushed, with my hands, the hair back into the bare spot, I allowed myself to imagine we were on an adventure.  We were headed to an unknown destination (unknown to me) and my mother’s eyes we're copiously alive - I couldn't stop staring at her reflection in the mirror: peeled back, vulnerable.  There was a stirring inside of me - as if something unexpected was about to occur. I thought about motel rooms with crisp, heavy sheets – and beds I could jump on without getting into trouble.  I thought of the waterpark we had passed.  We were on vacation.  I was off from school.  I had no idea that it was the beginning of many other car rides to many other hospitals.  Or that in two years my father would not come home from the hospital at all and that I wouldn’t be allowed inside his room to say goodbye.  There would, eventually, be a name for it - but it was too long to remember, too difficult, perhaps, to say, and so somebody had reduced it to only four letters.  It didn’t matter, really, because I wasn’t allowed to say the word out loud.  People, Mimi had said, won’t understand.  She continued to say it: They won’t understand.  Even when she was standing in front of the exact same fate and the things that used to matter stopped mattering: the blue mascara I liked to wear, the bills piled on the table, the man from the park who used to call and hang up; even then all that mattered was that I never say the word. 

The blue house passes me slowly, blinds shut. The cardinal mailbox is open and empty, and it seems to be just as changed as the other house, because Mister Geddes, who used to spend hours during the summers watering his garden, sometimes even charitably turning the hose in our direction, died one evening while sitting in his favorite reading chair.  It happened years ago - a neighbor of a neighbor may have mentioned it once, but with all going on - my father sick, then my mother - I never noticed how much Mister Geddes had coalesced with the block, with my happy memories, and only now, in my hesitation, which has found me pondering in front of his house, do I miss seeing him sunken into his yellow-red beach chair, white, stringy hair - white, for as long as I can remember - charitable smile. Mimi used to wonder aloud why he couldn't sit in the backyard - why he had to shove his leisure right in our faces. But I knew he liked to watch people. He waved to everyone who passed him. He was a landmark, a comforting reminder that home was nearby, a constant in the midst of uncertainty.  

There is an unfamiliar vehicle in the driveway of the hi-ranch. I am suddenly grateful for the colossal evergreen - a tree that had always been there, a focus of conversation many times, though I never, until now, understood the fuss. What a force! Strong and high, thick, grey bark, shooting green spikes and pale cones.  A blue spruce, my father had called it. I take cover beneath it, the fragrant peppery scent spilling onto me.  I envision a blanket, and a picnic basket, and slices of Mimi's cinnamon-apple crostata. 

The car, black and shiny, with its vinyl-top half open, evokes a sense of juvenility: a stuffed rabbit hanging from the visor; a grey, hooded sweatshirt strewn over the seat, keys in the ignition. There's a colorful sticker smacked on the door – no thought at all to marks – with a single, glittering word: Smile.  I imagine the driver of the car to be a girl, and she would have long, black hair - because my image of long, black hair has always been of it tangled and sweeping amidst seductive gusts of wind, and she'd have pink toenails, too-dark sunglasses and legs sprouting from fashionably torn jean-shorts. She'd be beautiful, of course, but even more so, she'd be unaware of herself. Unimpeded.  To think, only a few years ago I was like that - at ease and immune to everything.  It seems, now, a foolish way to live.  And viciously appealing. I am aged beyond my years.    

There is a memory of me lying in the backseat of my father’s 1969 Firebird convertible.  I am twisted in a flannel blanket, and he is singing off-key to The Monkees. We are driving over the long, vibrating bridge, and the salt air is both moist and fresh on my skin.  He turns down the radio just for a moment.  Look, he says, the Fire Island Lighthouse! 

We had secrets, my father and me.  He’d let me spoon ice cream from the carton – even before dinner.  He’d take me to the drive-in theatre to see the movies Mimi thought I was too young to see.  He bought me records like Madonna and Prince – and then he helped me hide them.  I used to ask him why Mimi hated music.  He’d say something about the way she used to dance, and then, as quickly as the change in his eyes, he’d say: She wants to be the only one influencing you.

On the day she didn’t come out of her room – when I found her motionless beneath the sheets, a transistor radio whispering slow, somber sounds into her ear - I knew why she didn’t like music.  And then I hated music too. 

My father and I had secrets.  But I never, until recently, wondered about other secrets he may have had. 

Who are you?  There's a boy beyond the branches. Pale, longish hair. Probably around seven.  

-Allie.  

-Why are you sitting under my tree? 

-It's my tree, not yours.  

-No, this is my house.  

-It's my house.  

He doesn't say anything more and I see, beyond the bristles, that he is on the verge of a tantrum. Or maybe I simply sense tension. I change my tone: I used to live here. Before you. That's what I meant to say.  

-Oh. So it's still my tree then.  

-Yes. It’s yours.  

Then, perhaps fueled by a feeling of similar tension, he says: You can borrow it if you want.  

-Thanks.  

He crouches and slides under the wave of branches. When he is in front of me, I see that he has a birthmark on his cheek, and that one of his eyes is lazy. I wonder if he sleeps in my old room. I decide I'd like that.  

Whose car? I ask.  

-My babysitter's.  

I find myself glad it won't be staying. Your parents aren’t home?  

-I'm not supposed to tell you that.  

-Oh.  

-But there's only one.  

-One what? 

-One parent. My dad.  

-Where's your mom? 

He shrugs. He changes the subject: Where do you live now? 

-Nowhere.  

His blue eyes widen and in them, for a moment, I see the man he will become: lonely, sensitive - injured animals nurtured at his fingertips. I see tears - perhaps an artist's life. My father always said: Artists carry heavy burdens. Do something happy.  And I wonder if he'd been an artist once.  

-How can you live nowhere?  

-My parents are dead. They left me with an aunt I barely know. She has a nice house, though. A pool, too.  

-Wow, a pool? He dismisses what his brain can't comprehend.  I'd really like that.  

-Yes. But my aunt never goes swimming. And she doesn't really want me there. So, I left.  Now, I live nowhere.  Or everywhere – depending on how you want to see it. 

-Are you a missing child? Like on a milk carton? 

-I'm not a child. I'm practically grown up. You're a child. Anyway, there's nobody looking for me – not this time.  She said she wouldn’t look for me again. Saying it out loud, I wonder if it's this that's bothering me and not the way Janice, with her over-dyed hair, smells - or the way she talks in hurried impatience without ever really looking at me.  

The boy’s mouth curls and twists and he scratches his head. Well, he says, you can sleep right here if you want. I won't tell anyone.  Then, his eyes light up. You can borrow my Superman sleeping bag! It's really cool. I use it when I go camping.  

I smile. I imagine my room, once drowning in over-femininity, now painted brown - bunk beds, superhero posters - a television, perhaps.  

-That sounds nice.  Then, because sharing might keep me here after I go, I add: You'll like growing up here.  The ice-cream truck comes twice a day. And there's an old, orange cat that thinks the bricked barbecue is his bed. 

-I saw that cat! I've been trying to catch him but he's really fast.  

-You'll never catch him. I've tried.  

-What else? 

-The heater makes creaking sounds in the winter - you might think it's a door opening, but it's not.  

-More! 

-There's yellow wallpaper right under the peach wallpaper in the kitchen. And the ants never really go away – not even with traps.  

-Okay 

- There's a boy named Cedric who lives in the blue house behind yours. If you throw a ball over the fence he'll find it and he'll always throw it back. He knows my name.  

-What is it? 

-Allie. You can tell him you know me. You can tell him Allie said Hi. 

-Okay. I'll tell him.  

-And maybe you can tell him I miss him.  Yes. That would be safe.  

-Why don't you just visit him? 

I think of the long, pale fingers slipping through mine. Then, rewind, and there's a boy not much older than this one - and he is using his toy rake to help my father clear the lawn, and then he is with Mimi at the cherrywood table, and together they are cutting eye-holes for his ghost costume because his own mother didn't have the time. She never had the time. But that was okay. Because we did.  

-I can't. 

-Why? 

-I just can't.  

-Why? 

I sigh: There's no good reason. I just don't want to see him.  

-So you can but you don't want to. 

-You're smart for your age. 

-You don't know my age. 

-How old are you? 

-Almost seven.  

-Ah. I knew that.  

-Are you sure? 

-Yes I'm sure. 

We both jump at the sound of the front door opening, and then there is a girl - not black-haired at all, but completely bald and very tall. She is calling a name: Sam!  

Sam whispers: She has no hair.  

-I see that. Is she sick?  

-I don't think so. My dad says she likes to be different.  

- Oh.  And here I am wanting to blend.  

He doesn't reply to that.  Of course not.  What does he know about these kinds of feelings? 

-Do you want me to bring out my Superman sleeping bag? 

I do. I want to remain beneath the tree wrapped in his nectarine scent, and I want to watch the windows until the lights go out. Next time. 

He mimics me: Next time.  

He lingers, not wanting to leave. I understand. I want him to stay, too - because he is the beginning of new memories that will paint over the old ones.  But he must go, because he doesn't make his own decisions.   

I watch him running, awkwardly, toward the door, the babysitter not seeing me because she isn't looking. I know by dinner he will forget me, and then he will remember again each time the wallpaper peels, or the orange cat shows up, or when Cedric is standing over the fence, shading his eyes from the sun.  

My mother walked into the room that day without knocking.  She appeared, to me, childlike, with her mismatched clothing and my father’s old shirt in her hand.  She didn’t say he was gone.  She sat, silently, on my bed fingering the long-abused hair of my Barbie doll.  For a few, long minutes, I waited, my eyes on the cotton lace sheets, and then on the wood-framed picture of Jesus.  I had been busy with my thoughts: the math test coming up, the hair on my legs, the way Cedric's eyes went from umber to brown-gold depending on the weather.  When she finally curled into herself, she began rambling about regrets and the robbing of years.  I knew, only then, that my father was dead.  I said it twice in my mind: Dead. Then, Mimi’s voice was only a muddled part of the evening sounds, because I was trying to remember my father’s smile.  It was a distinct smile, overused and bounteous – but I couldn’t remember it.  Mimi was saying something about leaving me with Janice.  I said, from somewhere far away: I don’t want to live with Janice. 

I lie back, cushioning myself on the grass. The dying day has become hot.  Or rather, it's become still and pressingly heavy. My blouse tapes to the moist spots on my skin and I’m sure there are dark circles under my armpits. 

Perhaps it is this sudden awareness of discomfort that makes me think about the way my father used to run and dive into the ocean, whereas my mother wouldn’t even enter a pool. 

I think it might be the perfect evening for a swim.