The Evolution of Alice (24 page)

“My name’s Morgan,” she said.

“Gideon,” he said.

“It’s nice to meet you,” she said. “Again.”

“You too, again.”

She heard squeaking from the splash pad. She recognized the sound. Somebody had sat down on one of the flower-petal seats and was spinning around. She’d stood in this place so often that she knew all the sounds. It was an odd place to know best.

“You know, if you keep lookin’ up, you’re gonna miss somethin’ right in front of you,” Gideon said.

She nodded her head, sighed. How many nights had she stood there? How many times had she pictured her sister on the balcony, then climbing over the side, then falling to the sidewalk below? But still she couldn’t, or perhaps wouldn’t, look away.

A
LICE ALWAYS THOUGHT
that if she did go and see Ryan she would leave in tears, angry and devastated, or feel like she had left a piece of herself behind, that he had taken something from her again. She never thought she would leave feeling more whole than she had in a long time. Yet there she was, walking away from the jail with a smile. She wasn’t beaming, mind you, but it was good enough. And, at first, when she saw Gideon’s truck in the parking lot, she smiled a little bigger, because, if you had told her a few days ago that she would be in a truck with him heading home, she would have thought you were crazy.

But as Alice got closer she noticed that Gideon’s face was slumped downward and didn’t hold the levity hers did. So, as she placed her hand on the passenger-side door handle, her own smile washed away. She didn’t blame him for it, though. Over the years he’d been there for her, to hold an ice pack on the places where Ryan had done the most damage, to dress her wounds, to hold her close against his body to let her know she was safe. And now there she was, leaving from a visit with Ryan, and looking glad about it. She got in the truck.

“So,” he said, sounding pissed.

She looked back at the girls to avoid responding. She didn’t like how he’d asked but also didn’t know what she could say. There was nothing that would’ve made him feel better about it anyway. Kathy was reading. She didn’t really do anything else lately, except when she was playing with Jayne. Jayne was busy colouring in one of her Disney princess colouring books. Alice craned her neck to get a closer look.

“Oh, Snow White,” she said to Jayne.

“You gonna tell me what happened in there or what?” Gideon said.

Alice turned back toward the front and looked at Gideon.

“Not if you’ve already made up your mind about it before I even say anything,” Alice said.

“Al,” he said, “there’s only one way it goes with him.”

“Well, it went fine anyway,” she said.

Gideon shook his head.

“That’s all I get?” he said. “Fine?”

“It’s private,” she said.

He exhaled aggressively through his nose, like a bull, and put the truck into drive. The truck began to move and then stopped abruptly, causing everybody to lurch forward then resettle. He put it back into park.

“After all we’ve gone through, you’re gonna tell me that something’s private?” he shout-whispered in an attempt to shield the girls from knowing they were fighting.

Alice looked out the passenger side window. She scanned the cars in the parking lot, looked back at the jail, and then turned back to Gideon.

“I’m sorry, Gideon,” Alice said. “But
we
didn’t go through it,
I
did. You were there for me, and I’m thankful, but there’s more to Ryan and me than bruises. There’s more than you could ever understand, and I don’t think I need to explain that to you.”

“I think you should. I think you owe me at least that,” Gideon said.

Alice put her hand on Gideon’s.

“I owe you a lot, I know that, but I don’t owe you this. This is between Ryan and me and nobody else,” Alice said.

Gideon moved his hand away.

“What about the girls?” Gideon said.

“That’s their father, Gideon. One day, it’s something I’ll have to tell them about. This is my family,” Alice said.

“So what am I then?” Gideon said.

Alice hesitated. She’d never thought about it before. If she was honest about it to herself, Gideon seemed as much a part of her family as Olive or Sara. Hell, the girls even called him uncle. But she didn’t want to share anything about Ryan with him, and she never had. She didn’t understand why, but it was what it was.

“I see,” Gideon said. “I get it.”

“Gideon,” Alice said.

He put the truck into drive.

“I’m not staying, you know. I’m just dropping you off,” he said.

“Okay,” she said. “Okay. I know.”

He pushed his foot against the gas pedal, and the truck pulled away from the parking spot. Soon, Stony Mountain Penitentiary was in the rear-view mirror. When the truck pulled onto the highway, Alice turned back to her girls and figured that they’d been listening to her and Gideon. They’d stopped what they were doing and were looking out their respective windows.

“Kathy,” she said. “Honey, why don’t you keep reading.”

Kathy turned away from the window. She picked the book up from her lap, curled her legs up onto her seat, and settled back into reading.

“Jayne,” Alice said, “why don’t you draw a picture for Mommy?”

Jayne looked away from the window. She nodded at Alice. She closed her colouring book and very neatly slid it into a cloth bag at her feet. She pulled out a sketch pad and flipped through page upon page of beautiful pictures, mostly of rainbows and castles and princesses, until she found a blank white sheet. She took out a plastic container of pencil crayons. She opened the lid, thoughtfully fingered through a variety of colours, but didn’t take one out.

“What’s wrong?” Alice said.

“I can’t think of anything to draw,” Jayne said.

“You’ll think of something,” Alice said.

Alice turned around. She looked at Gideon for a long while, waiting, hoping for him to look in her direction. He didn’t. She spent the next hour of the drive glancing over at him curiously. He was always the one doing the talking, and now there was nothing. She thought back over the past year. For so long after Grace died, he’d come by her house and sat with her, talked to her, and she had said almost nothing in return. She wondered if he’d felt then how she felt now, and if so, she understood, in some way, how hard it must’ve been for him to be around her. Yet, he still came, almost every day. For the first time, she wondered if she was right to not tell him about her visit with Ryan. Did he deserve to know? What did he deserve?

Eventually she gave up trying to get his attention and resigned herself to staring out the passenger-side window as he looked resolutely ahead. There was nothing but trees and open road for her to see. In the fall the drive was beautiful, the trees golden and majestic, the grass beside the highway glittering like burning embers. This time of year, however, everything was green, and it reminded her of the neatly manicured lawns of the city, which was nowhere she wanted to be. She realized how much she preferred dead grass and bad land.

Eventually the quiet became unbearable, and Alice decided to change the one thing she could. She leaned forward to turn on the radio. There was static at first, which wasn’t much of a surprise. Where they were, there wasn’t good reception, not for cell phones and not for the radio. She flipped through
FM
stations, stopped every once in a while when she heard a hint of anything through the static, and finally found a pop radio station. She leaned back in the passenger seat and returned to staring out her window, serenaded now by Miley Cyrus. Almost instantly, Gideon let out an expressive groan.

“What?” Alice said.

“I hate this music,” he said. “All sounds the same, you know. Even the women and the men, shit, can’t tell them apart. All singing to the same beat, in the same key. Can’t stand it.”

He leaned over, turned off the radio.

“You sound like your grandpa, you know,” Alice said.

Gideon shook his head. He turned the radio back on.

“What do you know about my grandpa?” he said.

Miley crooning over “We Can’t Stop” nearly drowned him out, but Alice heard him.

“I know lots about him,” she said.

“Yeah, you musta really cared about him,” he said.

Alice reached over, turned the radio off.

“I did care about him,” she said. “I do care.”

“Why weren’t you at his wake then? People who didn’t even know him too good still showed up, even if it was for the food or whatever. They were still there.”

“I …”

“And there I was starin’ out the window and waitin’ on you like some jackass,” he said. “Like a god-damn dog.”

“I was in the city. I couldn’t come,” she said, but corrected herself, because the distance wasn’t why. “I couldn’t go back.”

“And just how far do you think I woulda come back for Grace, huh?” he said but didn’t wait for Alice to respond. “I woulda went all the way around the world for Grace, for you and the girls. I woulda went all the way around the world twice.”

Alice’s knee-jerk reaction was to open her mouth and shoot something back, but there were no words to say. He was right. She’d heard from Olive that his grandpa had died. She’d almost gone back, she knew she should’ve, but she couldn’t bring herself to go. Alice turned away, back to the passenger-side window and, in the silence, wiped a tear away from her cheek.

Half an hour later, Gideon’s truck pulled up beside the barricade of stones Alice had constructed. Alice and Gideon sat in a familiar silence for a minute, as though they were both waiting for something that wasn’t coming. Finally, Gideon opened the driver’s-side door and stepped outside. Alice followed suit, and the girls, freed, rushed out of the passenger side of the truck. First Kathy, who shoved her way past Jayne, then Jayne, who gave Kathy a little kick in the pants on her way out. Kathy ran off down the driveway toward the front of the house. She picked up a ball, bounced it, and threw it into the old plastic basketball hoop. Jayne tugged at Alice’s arm.

“What, my darling?” Alice said. “Go play.”

Jayne handed her a folded-up piece of paper, then, quick as lightning, ran toward Kathy. She stole the ball from her sister and dunked it into the hoop. Kathy shouted at her, “Hey you little punk!”

Gideon walked around the front of the truck and met Alice near the passenger side door. He leaned up against the hood. Alice, cautiously, leaned against him, the paper Jayne had given her still in her hand. For a moment, she closed her eyes. She recalled the times when he would come into her bed and cuddle up beside her. He always knew just when she needed it, and he never tried to do anything else. He was always a gentleman. She put her head against his shoulder. He didn’t move away.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered.

Gideon took a deep breath. She wondered what he was thinking. He always just used to tell her his thoughts, whether she wanted to know them or not. She wanted that now. But things weren’t the same. Maybe they wouldn’t ever be.

“You know, all that matters to me is that you’re here and he’s not,” she said. “Nothing else matters.”

She leaned in closer, turned to him, put her arm around his waist. He put his hand on her forearm, held it there. She could feel him squeeze her arm slightly. Then he gently removed her arm from his waist.

“I met somebody back in the city,” he said.

He stuck his hands into his jeans, looked at Alice, who stood there motionless, speechless, then his eyes trailed off to the field behind the trailer.

“That’s why I can’t stay.”

Alice moved her head away from Gideon’s shoulder. She looked up at him. He was still staring out into the field, his eyes scanning from right to left and back again. She thought of what he’d told her a long time ago, about the paths in life, and she wondered where they’d both end up. Gideon, he was searching like his road was in the field behind her trailer, but where did that road lead? Was he thinking of
her
, whoever he’d met, or was he thinking about Alice? He looked like he was thinking back, not looking forward. Alice didn’t know what to make of that. All she really knew was that what Gideon had said almost hurt more than Ryan beating on her. It was worse, too, because she felt she deserved it.

She moved her body over, giving him space, and straightened her shirt out even though it was resting perfectly. What am I wearing? Blue jeans. Black shirt. Dirty camouflage sneakers. She owned one dress, if that, and never wore it. She never wanted to until that moment. She pushed her hair behind her ears, licked her lips, cleared her throat.

“What’s her name?” Alice said.

“That don’t matter, really. That’s private,” he ended up saying.

Alice turned away, not sure what to do or say. She wanted to know the woman’s name, and more. What was it about her that made him want to stay in the city, a place he’d never cared for, rather than be with Alice and the girls? She wanted to tell him to fuck off for saying that. But things between them were already so strained. She was hurt. He was hurt. If they had anything, maybe it was that. The hurt. What else was there?

She looked around aimlessly as though there were answers in the gravel at her feet, in the rust at the bottom of the truck’s passenger door, hidden under the rocks she’d piled up. And then she remembered the paper Jayne had given her, clutched firmly in her hand. She carefully unfolded it to reveal a picture, and she nudged Gideon to look at it with her.

It showed the back of Alice’s house. Alice recognized the girls’ swing set, the tire swing, the big open field, and the trees in the distance. Kathy and Jayne were standing at the front of the field right beside a woman she could only guess was herself, she being dressed in a very familiar pair of blue jeans and a black shirt. Grace was in the sky beside a couple of M-shaped birds and a bright yellow sun that had sunglasses on. Grace had wings. Beside Alice, there was another figure, a man. Alice didn’t know who it was.

“Want to call Jayne over here?” Alice said to Gideon, without looking up from the picture.