“No. Why?”
Harry told John how she’d been looking for work. He found himself hoping John would say that an extra hire would be good for the store, but he just shook his head. “I don’t think so, do you? We can handle it, especially when Alice decides she wants to come back in and help.”
Harry walked slowly home from the store. He wasn’t sure he was up for another intimate dinner with Alice, and was relieved to see an unfamiliar car—a dark blue Jetta—parked next to his Civic in the driveway. The license plate read, CSHORE7. He thought maybe it was Alice’s friend Chrissie, who almost certainly would have a vanity plate. Harry went up to the front door, which was decorated with stained glass, and was about to enter when he peered, instead, through the one unstained piece of glass in the design. He could see partially into the kitchen, where an older woman was standing, her back to the door, but Harry could see that she was still wearing a raincoat and had a bright red scarf wrapped around her head. She was in profile, her lips moving as though she was talking rapidly. She wasn’t immediately recognizable. Harry stood for a moment, frozen on the front stoop, trying to decide if it was possible to enter the house and go straight up to his room. Maybe if he opened the door as quietly as possible. But, no, the strange woman was only twenty feet away in the kitchen. Harry would have to be introduced.
Instead of entering the house, Harry went around to the backyard, where there was an old, dilapidated barn on the property that had been one of the reasons Bill had originally been interested in the house. It was a small barn, unpainted, the wood weathered to the point where there were inch-wide cracks between the planks, but the roof was solid. Bill’s plan had been to restore it completely and eventually use it as storage for even more books. That had never happened, of course. Bill’s true passion had been the acquisition of books. Finding places to put them was a chore that he only got around to out of desperation.
The barn’s wide front doors were open, and Harry walked across the muddy yard and stepped inside, letting his eyes adjust to the dark, cool interior. He could hear the flutter of starlings high up in the rafters. In one corner was an old lathe, left by the previous residents. Harry remembered his father taking a look at it, telling him that maybe he’d take up furniture making and that way he could make his own shelves. “Can you imagine this place filled with books?” he’d said.
But except for the lathe, plus an assortment of lawn furniture and old dining room chairs, the barn was empty. Harry sneezed. The air in the barn, even with the wide doors flung open, was dusty and still, the floors pocked with bird shit. He wanted to get out of there, but instead of exiting the way he had come, he traversed the barn and stepped through the regular-sized back door.
Not ready to go back to the house, Harry sat on the doorjamb. There was a view out over the marsh that abutted the property. Harry felt a sudden and revolting sense of pure grief. It swept through him like an attack of nausea, an absolute knowledge that he was all alone and life was meaningless and devoid of joy. His heart fluttered, and for a moment Harry wondered if he was dying, as though his sudden awareness was bringing on some kind of attack. But then he felt a prick on his arm, and rubbed at it. He looked down and saw that he’d killed a mosquito, leaving behind a smear of blood.
His heart slowed, the terrible thoughts dissipating as rapidly as they had come. Still, he remembered a very stoned conversation he’d had in his dorm room a few months ago. He was with a junior named Tyler whom Harry had met through the cinema club. They’d been listening to a Sparklehorse album, and Tyler had suddenly started to talk about how short our time on the planet was, and how, in the blink of an eye, we would be dead, and everyone who ever knew us would be dead, and that was it. He’d spoken as though he was the first person ever to have had, or voiced, those thoughts. Fortunately, Paul had dropped by, changed the music to a Henry Mancini compilation, and forced Tyler to drink a cocktail. Harry thought of that conversation now, thought of how the deaths of both of his parents had erased a whole portion of his own life that existed solely as their memories. He was half gone, already, more than half gone.
The queasiness and fear returning, Harry made himself stand up. He walked back through the barn and to the front of the house. The car was still there, but the woman he’d seen in the kitchen was now standing on the front stoop, framed in the doorway, saying good-bye to Alice.
“Harry, this is Viv. I don’t know if you two have met.”
The woman turned to Harry, her dark eyes searching his face. She was very thin, her cheeks hollowed out, and suddenly the head scarf made sense. She must be sick with cancer, going through chemotherapy.
“I’m sorry about your father, Harry,” she said, her voice an unsurprising rasp. “I’m afraid I missed the funeral; I’ve been away.”
“That’s okay,” Harry said, then added, “Thank you.” His voice sounded shaky in his own head, probably because of the intense way she was looking at him. He willed himself to not look down at the ground.
“Thank you for coming,” Alice said, gently putting a hand on the small of the woman’s back, and walking her to the car. The woman moved fast, as though to escape Alice’s touch, and got into the car without saying anything else.
Harry stepped into the house and there was the smell of cooking. The table was set for two again.
Chapter 13
Then
Alice didn’t see Gina again that summer, not after that time they went swimming. She had denied that she was sleeping with Jake, of course, but it was painfully clear that Gina didn’t believe her, especially when, after they’d come in from the water, Jake had acted so strange, insisting on wrapping Alice’s towel around her. He’d also stared a little too long at Gina, barely covered by Alice’s bikini bottoms and the T-shirt plastered to her chest.
That fall, Jake and Alice drove to Canada, visiting Montreal and Quebec City. “Almost as good as France,” Jake said. “And a lot less expensive.” It was one of the few times that Jake ever mentioned money. Alice had always assumed that because Jake worked in a bank and wore nice suits, and their condo had a view of the water, they were rich and that money would never be a problem. It didn’t matter. Montreal was the most sophisticated place Alice had ever been to. They walked the city in the daytime, stopping into shops, and went to the best restaurants at night. Quebec City was even better, almost magical. They stayed at Le Chateau Frontenac, more of a castle, really, than a hotel. They ordered wine everywhere they went, and no one ever questioned Alice’s age. Maybe some of the hotel staff and waitresses looked at them together and thought they were father and daughter, but no one ever said anything about it. On the final night of their trip, on the boardwalk in Quebec City, Jake put his arm around Alice’s shoulders as they walked, something he’d never done before. “Let’s come back here next year,” Alice said. “This is better than France.”
“Don’t you want to visit other cities? You haven’t been to New York yet, have you?”
“Ugh. No thanks,” Alice said, thinking of Gina, and what it would be like to run into her if she was with Jake. She still couldn’t get the image of Jake, and the way he’d looked at Gina on the beach, out of her mind.
Over the winter, Alice got a part-time job at a drugstore in Kennewick Center. Jake had brought it up, asking Alice if she was bored just taking classes and spending time at home. “No, not really,” she said.
“It doesn’t bother you that you spend so little time with other people?”
Alice frowned and thought about it. “I spend time with professors, and I talk with other students, but you know I’d rather be here with you.”