The Evolution of Alice (21 page)

“What was she like?” he said, breaking the silence.

He placed the napkin back on the table and slid it over beside his glass.

“She was …” she said, but her voice started to crack. She gathered herself, then continued, “Beautiful and sad.”

“Why was she sad?” Gideon said.

“You don’t know me,” she said. “You don’t know me to ask that. Don’t ask that.”

“Okay, then,” he said. “How was she beautiful?”

This wasn’t met with such defensiveness. Gideon thought perhaps it was nice for her to think about her sister. Nice but painful. He did the same with Grace, with his grandpa. Even dreamt about them. Their features, to him, were still clear, as though he was looking at a photograph of them. He hoped they’d be like that forever. Frozen in time, unchangeable.

“She had black hair, so black and full. Perfect brown skin. Big bold eyes. She was just beautiful, you know?”

When Gideon heard the description of the woman’s sister, his heart pretty near stopped right then and there. The woman looked at him as though he was sick.

“You okay?” she said.

He nodded. He reached over and grabbed his glass of pop firmly. He took a sip and placed it back on the table.

“What was her name?” he said.

“Evelyn,” she said.

She finished her beer, placed the glass back onto the coaster, pushed it to the other side of the table. She stood up.

“Look, I have to go,” she said.

There was one lonely tear falling down her cheek, just like the bead of condensation that fell from her finger. He stood up too.

“She’s not really gone, you know,” he said.

She pushed hair behind her ear again, the same lock she had tucked behind her ear before. Her eyebrows scrunched together.

“What’re you talking about?” she said.

He didn’t answer at first. He picked up his drink and let an ice cube slip into his mouth. He chewed it thoughtfully. Finally, he said, “I mean, when you keep somebody in your heart, they don’t ever die. Not really.”

She wiped the tear away.

“Thanks,” she said.

As Gideon walked home later, he still wasn’t sure why he’d changed his mind about telling the woman about Evelyn. Maybe it was because she never would’ve believed him, might’ve told him to fuck off, stormed out of the pub, and he’d never see her again. And maybe it was because he wanted to see her again—not Evelyn, but the woman in the bar—despite her sunken eyes, despite her tangled hair, despite the hardship on her face. Maybe that was closest to the truth. In future days, he would search for her face along the crowded streets of downtown, not Alice’s, not Evelyn’s. In future days, on his walks, he would pass by the Yellow Dog Tavern to see if she was sitting there, staring out at nothing in particular.

Gideon woke up to a knock on the door. When he opened his eyes, he saw Evelyn lying on the floor in the same place he had seen her before. She was looking at the ceiling, the blank ceiling, and didn’t turn her head when he stood up from the futon. There was another knock. He didn’t move. He was afraid to. He didn’t want her to run off again. Another knock.

“Gideon,” said a voice through the door.

It was Alice. To his surprise, his heart kept a steady pace. His skin stayed dry. The world stayed still.

“I know you’re there. It’s almost midnight,” Alice said.

He looked to the door, to the tiny circle of light coming from the peephole. She was there behind the door. She’d come to see him. He’d asked her to.

Another knock.

“Open up,” Alice said.

He took a step toward the door but stopped. He turned his head back to Evelyn. She was still lying there, still staring at the ceiling, those beautiful big eyes wide open and transfixed by something; most certainly not the endless collection of tack holes in the drywall, most certainly not the white paint. He wished that he could see what she did. He saw for the first time how her skin shimmered with the evening light, as though a part of it. He took one careful step after another until he was right beside Evelyn, and farther away from the front door.

Another knock.

He got down onto his knees, placed his hands against the hardwood, and lowered himself to the floor. He turned onto his back, looked over at Evelyn. She didn’t move. Not her head. Not her body. He heard a frustrated sigh from outside the front door. He lifted his head and looked at the shaft of light coming from the space between the door and the floor. He could see Alice’s feet shifting this way and that. He knew her camouflage-patterned Converse shoes anywhere. After a few moments, they walked away. He listened as the sound of her footsteps trailed off down the hallway. He heard the elevator’s shrill ding. He heard the doors rattle open. He heard the doors slide shut.

Gideon placed his hand over his chest. Still calm. He rested his head against the floor and turned toward Evelyn, her midnight-black hair, her dark olive skin, her saucer eyes, and then he looked away, toward the emptiness of the ceiling above, toward dreams of white nothingness. He let out a deep, cleansing sigh.

Alice still remembered the first time she’d been to the city. She was young, and her mother had taken her to Zellers. It was April and the store was busy as people prepared for Easter—shoppers at checkouts had carts full of chocolate bunnies with yellow and blue eyes and cheap pastel-coloured wicker Easter baskets filled with green plastic grass. Alice was entranced by all the stuff at the department store. She followed her mother around the store touching bikes, dolls, clothes, toys, and a million other things. She asked her mother to buy everything she touched, but each time her mother said no.

“We’re not here to buy junk,” her mother said. “We can’t afford it.”

“Everybody else is buying fun stuff!” Alice said.

At the checkout, her mother placed boring items on the conveyer belt and, one by one, they rolled up to the cashier—toilet paper and canned food and boxed food and toothpaste. Then a Cadbury cream egg, in its alluring purple and red shiny wrapping, caught Alice’s eye. She wanted it so badly, but her mother would never buy it for her. She only bought cheap things. So Alice shoved it into her pocket and planned to eat it in the back seat on the way home. Upon leaving the store, Alice followed her mother through the parking lot and to their car but was stopped before she could climb into the back seat.

“What’s that in your pocket?” her mother said.

“Nothing,” Alice said.

She tried to hide the bulge by shoving her hand into her pocket, but it was too late. Her mother pushed Alice’s hand out of the way,
reached into the pocket, and pulled out the egg. She looked like she could’ve crushed it in her hand she was so mad, but instead gave Alice a sharp slap on the bum.

“I’ve never been more disappointed in you, Alice,” her mother said.

“I’m sorry!” Alice said through tears.

Her mother grabbed Alice by the arm, dragged her back inside the department store, and right to the front of the busy checkout line they’d just left, much to the displeasure of impatient Easter shoppers. Her mother made Alice hand the cashier the Cadbury cream egg.

“I took this. I’m sorry,” Alice said.

“What a shock,” the cashier said as he took the egg with an exaggerated sigh.

Alice noticed her mother’s jaws were clenched as she rummaged through her change purse and handed the cashier money.

“Well, at least you had the good sense to bring it back. Most of you only return stuff when you’re caught,” he said, then turned to Alice and handed her the egg.

“Here you go, kid. Enjoy.”

The Cadbury cream egg was resting in her palm, glittering in the bright store lights. She looked at her mom, then the cashier, and finally handed the egg back.

“No thanks,” she said.

I
N HER BASEMENT APARTMENT
, snuggled between Kathy and Jayne, Alice used the light of her cell phone to study the worn photograph of her and her girls. Grace was on the far left of the line, smiling so hard that her eyes nearly disappeared, taken over as they were by her cheeks. Next to Grace, Jayne, leaning forward on her elbows, her fingers locked together tightly, her beautiful long black hair tossed up in the air, whipping around like a flag, and a cute little half smile that made it look like she was winking at the camera. Kathy was next in the line, always slightly understated, always seeming a bit older than her years, her eyes kind of slanted down toward the sides of her face like sideways teardrops, her closed-mouthed smile creating subtle dimples on each cheek, the right cheek carrying a deeper dimple than the left, and her chin resting on her right fist. Then there was Alice, her black hair pushed back behind her ears, her eyes looking directly into the camera, directly at the photographer, her then-boyfriend Ryan.

Alice turned the phone’s camera on so that she could see herself, and moved the phone beside the photograph so there was a real-time image of her face added to the family portrait. She looked back and forth, from Alice then to Alice now, and wished she’d known then what she knew now. The pain then seemed a pittance. She would gladly trade it for what she felt currently. Give me the beatings, she thought. Give me the bruises and the clothing to cover them up. Give me the shame and give me the meekness. Give me all of it, she thought, just give me Grace. Please, God, just give me Grace. She looked at her eyes in the photograph, the deception in them.

“Smile, Alice,” Ryan had said. “Just try to smile.”

She tried. She really did. She looked at her girls to elicit a smile. Tried to ignore Ryan crouching behind the camera. But he was right there.

“Don’t ruin the picture,” he said.

She managed to push the corners of her mouth upward. She was afraid if she didn’t he would make her pay for it later. She saw his knuckles on either side of the camera. She could almost feel them against her jaw, her stomach, her arms.

“Get your hair out of the way. It’s covering your face,” he said.

With shaking fingers, she did. She pushed her hair behind her ears. Looked at her girls again. She didn’t want them dealing with her getting beaten again, running off to the bathroom, locking themselves inside until he left to cool off.

“Look at the camera. Look at me, damn it,” he said.

She did. She looked through the lens, right at him.

“Fine. That’s fine,” he said with the same tone he used so often, stark and disappointed, the one that made her know she was going to get it later. She’d ruined it. She’d ruined it again. If she could go back to that moment, she would have smiled so big and so hard.

Alice re-examined the photograph by the light of her cell phone. She looked to the field behind them that stretched far into the horizon, where a line of trees in the distance looked like a strip of Velcro holding up a perfect blue felt sky; to the tire swing just visible on the right side of the picture that allowed her to reach into the heavens and watch the girls play amidst the long grass; to Grace, who would be young forever, forever in the field, filled with an immeasurable joy; then at Kathy and Jayne, who were still with her, who would age, who would find joy, who would suffer, who would laugh, who would cry. In that moment, Alice wondered where she would want those things to happen. In the city everything was close but felt as far away as the tree line on the horizon behind her trailer. It was loud and cold and frightening. She thought back on her time there, and on how it had gone so terribly wrong.

Days earlier she had left the second-floor bathroom on her way to the basement, where she and the girls had been staying. Alice had spent so much time in the claw-foot tub since moving to the city that she might as well have had permanent prune hands and toes. It was the only place in the entire city, in that small bathroom with cracked powder-blue walls and scratched linoleum flooring, that she was able to trick her body into feeling relaxed. When she had navigated her way down the stairs, carefully avoiding the protruding staples on the last few steps where the paper-thin carpet was coming up, she walked past the laundry room and into her makeshift apartment.

Krista had set up a twin-sized mattress in the middle of the room, had moved her son’s hockey equipment into the laundry room to make the space. The smell of sweaty hockey equipment still hung in the air, though, even weeks after it had been removed. Scented candles just made it seem like the equipment was burning. There was a bathroom down there, but the water was usually yellow and the showerhead was broken and sprayed water all over the place. Alice and the girls didn’t use it much, except to pee in the middle of the night. Alice could never tell if the girls had flushed, on account of the basement water’s colour. And the fluorescent bulbs were dim, and the soul-sucking flickering light gave Alice a constant headache. Her cousin had set up a small television set near the foot of the bed, and that’s often where the girls were. That’s where they were when Alice entered the room. They looked like pieces of furniture in that depressing basement apartment. Their eyes were vacantly taking in an episode of Power Rangers for whatever damn reason. That wasn’t a typical show for them. Alice felt her heart sink.

“Darlings,” she said, “do you want to go play outside?”

She surprised herself when she said that. The girls hadn’t been outside for several days by this point. The last time they’d been outside, out in front of the house, Alice had given them clear instructions on where they could go: no farther than the white picket fence to the right, four houses down, and the fire hydrant to the left, three houses down. Letting them go out there at all was an enormous step Alice had taken. She wasn’t comfortable letting them play outside back home on the rez, where cars passed by infrequently. In the city, outside their new home, speed bumps had been created by the city due to the frequent, fast, and oblivious traffic. Alice had been watching them from the front step, and, when Jayne wandered onto the boulevard from the sidewalk, that was that. The girls were called over and sent down to the basement. Having them watch television was far safer than allowing them near a busy street.