The Fall of Alice K. (22 page)

“Some of the smells just stick around,” he said, “and then there's
smells that you just remember, you know. I can't remember the refugee camp so good, but when we took a ride last week, just Mai and Mom and me, out in the country—the way we like to do—past these big chicken farms, I got a funny feeling about the smell; it just hit me like something sad, you know, and I told Mom, I said I didn't like the smell, and she said, ‘
qaib ntub dej.
' I was remembering that awful wet chicken smell from camp when I was a baby.”

He turned and put his hands toward Alice like the first time. “You don't smell so bad,” he said. “I can smell right through it to the real you.”

Alice entered another one of those moments when she felt set free from the ordinary ways of life into something different, foreign, and exhilarating. She held out her hands to meet his. She blinked against the blur of tears that were rising. He squeezed her hands gently, but he did not lean over to kiss her.

She thought about what he had just said. “So you think the person under this smell is still worth knowing?” she asked.

“Yes,” he said.

“I'm glad,” she said. “I'm glad.”

Increment by increment, she reminded herself. He had reached out to her with his own story. It had to be his way of rebuilding their friendship.

“We'd better stick to debate, though,” he said.

“I know,” she said.

“I like working on debate with you,”

“I like working with you too. You seem to understand the issues totally.”

“Studying is easy for me,” he said. She wondered if he was really telling her what
wasn't
easy for him.

She opened her hand on top of the table. He took it, looked up at her, then reached for a stack of cards where he had rebuttal notes. “We'd better get started,” he said.

“Yes, yes, of course,” said Alice. “We have a lot of work to do.”

Alice met Lydia after school and handed her the coat. The look on Lydia's face told Alice that she was still picking up the odor.

“Why don't you wear it home?” said Lydia. “Bring it back in a plastic bag.”

“What a strange day,” said Alice.

“How were things with Nickson in your debate session? Did you bring some room freshener?”

“Very funny, but I didn't have to,” said Alice. “He understood. He seems to understand everything.”

“You two have something big going.”

“It's you and Randy who've got something big going.”

No,” said Lydia. “No. What Randy and I have is not about anything big. It's not about love.”

“Aboot?” said Alice. “Aboot anything big?”

“You're getting passive-aggressive again,” said Lydia. “Don't tell me you're mad about my little air freshener comment. I'll say ‘abow-wowt' if you prefer.”

Lydia was smiling. It seemed that even she could forget the smell for a few seconds. But how could she say that what she had going with Randy was not big? What could be bigger than having sex with someone? Alice wanted her talk with Lydia to go on, but other students were walking near them, and she was not about to mention sex in front of them.

“You want to talk, don't you?” said Lydia. “I can see it in your face.”

“Very much. Yes. I really need to talk to you.”

“Drive me home,” said Lydia.

“But the smell in the 150 will be as bad as it is in my clothes.”

“I'm almost used to it already. Let's go.”

Lydia got into the passenger seat of the 150, and immediately it felt strange to have her there. Even though Lydia was her best friend, at moments like this Alice realized how much they
didn't
share with each other. Lydia hadn't told Alice about her boyfriend for weeks after they'd started up. That was a big omission, but Alice didn't share everything with Lydia either—not even the 150. This was the first time that Lydia had ever sat in the 150, and there was something so unfarmlike about her that had never come out so strongly as it did now. They were such equals when they were playing word games or talking Shakespeare and they were so mutually equal in contrast to the giggling airheads they had to put up with at Midwest, but Lydia and the 150 were a bad fit. Both Mai and Nickson looked more like people who belonged in a farm pickup than Lydia did.

The stench of pig manure was right where Alice had left it stranded
inside the cab. She opened the windows and turned the blower on full blast. “Sorry,” she said. “I'm afraid this thing has bad breath.”

“I can handle it. Let's talk.”

Lydia lived only eight blocks from Midwest, so Alice knew she'd have to take a few detours if they were going to get any serious talk in. “All right,” said Alice, “how can you say you and Randy don't have a big thing going when you're having sex with him?”

“Minor League sex,” said Lydia. “I don't want to be in love with the first guy I have sex with. I won't be ready for Major League sex until I'm through college and ready to get married to somebody I love.”

“I can't believe you can talk about a boyfriend like that. I could never talk about Nickson like that—and we're not having sex.”

“Not yet,” said Lydia, “but what you have is big. It's written all over you, and I think it's written all over him too, though I'm not sure I can read him as clearly as I can read you.”

Alice turned down a quiet side street and idled along at ten miles an hour through the drifting fallen leaves.

“I don't want you to be disappointed in me,” Lydia went on, “but I think it's time I'm more honest with you. You know that being born in Holland means my parents are a lot more tolerant than the folks around here. The Dutch in Canada were more tolerant too, at least about matters like sex. My mother knows I'm on the pill.”

“What?” said Alice. “Why did you lie to me about that? I thought we could trust each other about these sorts of things.”

“Sorry, but I didn't want to shock you. My mother also knows I'm not really serious about Randy.”

“And your mother can handle that?”

“Pretty much,” said Lydia. “She says I should be careful with my heart and anybody else's heart, but she says she trusts me not to get too reckless. I can live with that.”

“But we've been going to the same church and Bible classes all these years,” said Alice. “How can your folks be all that different from most of the people in our church? You dress a little differently, but you can't be all that different.”

“Appearances,” said Lydia.

“I'm supposed to know what that means?”

“Maybe people are what they appear to be. Maybe they appear as they would like to be.”

“That's not Shakespeare,” said Alice. “What have you been reading?”

“Just talking to my mother,” said Lydia. “I like the way my mother puts it when she says that going to church fills a real need in our lives. Say, what happened to the stink? I don't smell it at all anymore.”

“That's because you've become one with it. Like me.”

“‘I can't get enough of this great air,' Nancy inhaled piggishly.”

Finally, they were laughing together again.

Alice wanted to talk about Nickson before they arrived at Lydia's house, but she wasn't sure where to start. “Why do you say Nickson and I have something big?” she asked.

“I don't know that much about him,” said Lydia, “but I know you. You don't do anything halfway. You're an all-or-nothing sort of gal.”

Alice thought about that, not sure if it was true. “I think it's best that I'm just Nickson's friend,” she said. “I think we should stick to debate. He's so new and alone in Dutch Center, but he's
so
smart and
so, so
open about things. He's
so
willing to try something new.”

“You can hide behind your little debate screen if you want to,” said Lydia, “but you're obsessed with him, Alice. Question: Can you remember even one hour in the past two weeks when you weren't thinking
abow-wowt
him?”

“I think about a lot of things every hour,” said Alice.

“Hey, it's all right to be obsessed with him. You have my blessing. I just hope you don't get hurt.”

Alice stopped at an intersection and looked both ways for cars, though it was clear that none were approaching. “Nickson would never try to hurt me,” she said.

“Maybe not,” said Lydia, “but there's the rest of our Dutch Center world. You'll see some heads turning and some suspicious stares when people figure out that something big is going on behind your debate act.”

“It's not an act,” said Alice. “We're working hard on it. We'll be tough competition, you'll see.”

Alice pulled the 150 to the curb and stopped.

“I have had enough
terrible,
” she said through a throat that was tightening. “I want some
beautiful.
”

When Alice looked at Lydia, she saw that her eyes were glassy too.

“You're a beautiful person, Alice,” she said. “Without you at Midwest, I'm not sure I could stand it.” She slid over and flung her arms around Alice. Alice hugged her back but then saw a car of staring faces approaching from the opposite direction. Alice pushed Lydia away.

“Those people are staring at us,” she said. “They probably think we're lesbians.”

“Stop worrying about what people think,” said Lydia. She pulled Alice even closer and pressed her face against Alice's cheek.

Alice's face brightened. “All right, all right, I won't worry
aboot
it,” she said. “Now I've got to get you to your
hoose
so I can go home to do my chores.”

The house where Lydia lived was on a cul-de-sac on land that, when Alice was in grade school, had been the Van Haverhorsts' farm. Now it was cleared land with many new houses and small maple trees, a few that still had faltering blood-colored leaves. The Laats' home went up when Alice was in junior high and was the largest on the cul-de-sac, what some people would call a minimansion with its staggered high gables and an enormous picture window facing the street. The house was made of brick and had an arched entryway that shaded a large wooden door with a stained glass window in its upper section. A gray Lexus was parked in front of one of the three garage doors that faced the street.

Alice had seen the house often and had spent many hours after church when they were in junior high listening to music in Lydia's room. Her farm girl schedule never allowed her to spend weekends with the Laats, though the invitation had been made many times. But through all those years, Lydia had never been in the Krayenbraak farmhouse. It just never seemed to work out: too many chores to do, too many demands from Aldah—and what person in her right mind would invite somebody over to eat her mother's cooking?

Looking at the Laats' house, Alice saw it as she had never seen it before: it screamed
wealth,
which not only made the Laats
look
different but probably made them different in a host of other ways too. Inviting Lydia over to her world of hog and cattle feedlots and her mother's bad cooking would have been embarrassing in the past. It would be even
more embarrassing now that the farm was teetering and there wasn't even warm water in the cold white house with its even colder atmosphere.

More than a Lexus, what faced the street from the Laats' house was a bold Al Gore lawn sign. It was the first such sign that Alice had seen in Dutch Center and added one more piece of evidence:
The Laats are not one of us!

“I see you're not alone in your support of Gore,” said Alice.

“Indeedy,” said Lydia. “Especially my mom, but my dad too. My mom thinks Gore will be the candidate—and she reads
everything.
I like that she practices what she preaches: she started a recycling program at the library and is setting up classes for grade school kids on the environment.”

Except, perhaps, for a couple of Redemption College professors, there probably was not another Al Gore lawn sign in all of Dutch Center. If the Mexicans had Gore sentiments, they would be savvy enough not to put them on their lawns. But the Laats? These Dutch Canadian settlers, they dared to do it. They dared show their hand a year before the election!

“You're really behind Al Gore, aren't you?” Alice said.

“Oh, yeah,” said Lydia. “But I'm worried. Too much money on Georgie's side.”

“If a rich guy is going to win, why don't you think it will be Steve Forbes? Talk about money!”

“Flat-tax Forbes,” said Lydia. “I doubt it. One-act pony, that guy. And have you looked at his eyes on television? The guy doesn't blink. He's scary. But Georgie is just enough of a good old boy that the fat cats will love him. Corporation George. Just watch,” said Lydia.

“Looks like your folks are doing all right,” said Alice. “I mean, maybe not super rich, but, I mean, looks like your dad knows how to work the system.”

“Dad has done very well here,” said Lydia, “but he says he'd be happy to pay more taxes.”

Alice didn't know where to take the conversation after that. Money talk could only lead to pain. The very idea that somebody could have enough money not to worry about more taxes seemed, at that moment, simply bizarre.

“I don't want you to take my awful smell with you into your nice
house,” she said as Lydia opened the passenger door to get out. “What will your mom and dad think?” She grabbed Lydia's smelly coat and pulled it toward her, but Lydia yanked it out of Alice's hands.