The Fall of Alice K. (39 page)

“Mine too,” said Lydia. “We talk about your class all the time.”

“I couldn't, I couldn't,” said Miss Den Harmsel.

Alice couldn't imagine that Miss Den Harmsel would ever cry, but she looked as if she was going to. Lydia and Alice sat tensely waiting while Miss Den Harmsel regained her composure.

“If I didn't have a few students like you two, I couldn't do this,” she said. “It wouldn't be worth it. It wouldn't be worth the time and effort; it wouldn't be worth the love I have for literature, for all the music and beauty of it. For the truth of life that only literature can show us. The way it can lift the human spirit. The way it can be a window into ourselves. A magnifying glass really. I know you understand what I'm saying.”

“Who wouldn't love Shakespeare the way you teach it,” said Lydia.

“And the way you read it,” said Alice.

“I wish all my students felt that way,” she said. “It's so hard today. I feel so irrelevant.”

“Don't say that,” said Alice.

“‘To thine own self be true,'” said Lydia.

“Lydia, you'd make a good Polonius,” said Miss Den Harmsel.

“‘And it must follow, as the night the day, / Thou canst not then be false to any man,'” added Alice.

“See what I mean?” said Miss Den Harmsel. “Oh my, oh my. If all my students could be like you two.”

She shook her head slowly and stared off somewhere over their heads. “If it weren't for a few students like you.” She kept staring over them and shaking her head. She looked as if she was replaying years of memories. “When I walk into class and look out at the students, if I didn't see some love of literature coming back at me when I teach. . . .”

She stopped again. Alice reached in her purse for a tissue, but Miss Den Harmsel didn't need one.

“There's no way you could know,” she went on, “and I don't expect you to know. You don't know what it's like to stand up there and pour your heart out at all those faces and see all these dumb expressions, like ‘Huh, where are you coming from anyhow, old fogey?' Good question. If you could see what I see from the front of the classroom—even in the advanced placement classes—all that indifference, all that blankness, all that emptiness, all that sadness that says, ‘What good is literature, what good is all this strange language that's so hard to understand? Give me a video game, give me a cheap thrill.' But you two. You two, you're different. I'm sorry for carrying on like this. But I had to tell you. I wanted to make sure you knew that before you graduated and went off to have your own exciting lives.”

“Oh, Miss Den Harmsel,” said Lydia.

“The world will always need teachers like you,” said Alice.

“The only thing I worry about with you two is that your dreams do not have the clarity of boundaries.”

This felt like chapter two of Miss Den Harmsel's thoughts to Alice and Lydia. Chapter two, and the terms were changing. She looked troubled with the kind of deep concern that can reach into a person and make them stiffen. It was a look of displeasure, and not the kind that softens and leads to tears.

“As you know very well, this community, we Dutch Calvinists, we know how to set boundaries. There is some freedom in that: if you know the rules by heart—if you've internalized them, so to speak—you can act quite
un
self-consciously. There is some freedom in autopilot.” Now she grinned at her metaphor.

“Freedom for Dwellers,” said Alice.

“Is that a reference to something?”

“Seekers and Dwellers?” said Alice. “Rev. Prunesma preached about that. Dwellers are comfortable with the restrictions around them.”

“Oh, yes, of course,” said Miss Den Harmsel. “Actually, I've heard that distinction before. It
is
useful. Personally, if I understand the distinction, I live my external life as a Dweller.” She paused.

Alice rarely heard Miss Den Harmsel make reference to anything so personal. “And your internal life?” she dared to ask.

“Yes, you're right: my internal life is the life of a Seeker.” She smiled again. “But you're changing the subject, aren't you?”

“I don't know.”

“I do have some concern about your dreams. Not that you shouldn't have them, but that you won't be ready for everything they bring.”

Miss Den Harmsel could not possibly have known about Alice's pregnancy, but of course she did know about her friendship with Nickson. She no doubt also knew that they had become more than debate partners. “Are you talking about Nickson?” Alice asked directly. “About Nickson and me?”

“Not really,” she said, “but that certainly is one indicator. He's a lovely young man. I totally approve of your friendship. Oh, I certainly do wonder if you've looked into a crystal ball of the future. There's no familiar
precedent for you. Not among your relatives. Probably not in this whole community. Different cultures. Very different cultures. If your friendship continues, will you be ready for the, well, for the complications that will accompany the friendship? If it deepens.”

“I feel like maybe I shouldn't be listening in on this,” said Lydia.

“Stay,” said Alice. “Please stay. I want you to stay.”

“I do hope this is not getting too personal,” said Miss Den Harmsel.

“No, no,” said Alice. “I need this conversation, and I need both of you here.”

“Take the sturdy framework of your culture with you,” said Miss Den Harmsel. “Build any elaborate structure you want around it.” She pointed to the model Globe Theatre. “The sturdy framework will always hold you up. Use what it has instilled in you. Don't desert it. Use it. And I'm talking to both of you now.”

“Yes,” said Lydia.

Miss Den Harmsel stood up, a clear signal that she had finished what she had to say. Alice and Lydia moved toward her. Miss Den Harmsel was not somebody a student would hug. Alice couldn't even imagine touching her. Lydia and Alice had a simultaneous impulse: they held out their hands to shake hers. She shook their hands, each separately, a good, formal handshake.

“Thank you,” she said.

Later when they talked, Lydia was quiet. “What's the matter?” asked Alice.

“I adore Miss Den Harmsel,” said Lydia, “but that ‘sturdy framework of our culture' is crap. I hate our culture of money and sports and racism, the whole blind conformity that assumes we have the answers. Answers? We don't even know how to ask the questions.”

“You're being awfully abstract, girlfriend.”

“You know exactly what I'm talking about.”

“I guess. But it's hardly newsworthy. People are people. Nobody's perfect.”

“Whoo-hoo! Should I write that down?”

“I think it's impossible for anybody who believes something strongly to be consistent. Believing anything strongly means that you're bound to be a hypocrite.”

“Amen. Maybe I will write
that one
down.”

Alice knew there would never be a perfect time to tell Lydia what she knew she had to tell her. Alone with her now was as good a time as any.

“Lydia, I've got to tell you something, and, no, I don't want you to write this down.”

“Uh-oh,” said Lydia the mind reader. “This does not sound good.”

They walked to the women's room and waited for the bell to ring.

“Is it so important that we should be late for class?” said Lydia.

“Yes. I think we won't have any trouble being excused just once.”

“Shoot.”

“I'm going to have a baby.”

“You what?”

“It's true.”

“Nickson got you pregnant?”

“Don't put it like that.”

“Didn't you use protection?”

“Yes. He always used condoms.”

“I can't believe you! Condoms are for keeping you from getting AIDS; the pill is for keeping you from getting pregnant! God! I can't believe you could be so dumb.”

“Don't, don't. Don't be cruel now.”

“You've never listened to me. You always think you're so damn smart. Now look at you: knocked up, and by somebody from a totally different culture.”

“Back off, Lydia. At least he's got a brain.”

Lydia was not backing down. She leaned into Alice. “You and I, Alice, we used to be smart together, remember? We didn't do stupid things like other people. Pregnant. Good grief, Alice. I still can't believe you could be so stupid.”

“You can be the damn valedictorian.”

Alice didn't know if Lydia was rejecting her or if she was rejecting Lydia, but this really was the last straw. If Lydia couldn't stand with her now, she wasn't a friend at all. Time to end the pretense. Alice was finished with Lydia for good this time. Totally finished with her. What an insensitive bitch!

40

It had not been a day for meeting in Miss Den Harmsel's room, so Nickson went straight for the 150 after school and hopped in. This was the first chance for him and Alice to talk all day—and now they'd have only a few minutes before she'd have to go home for afternoon chores. So much to talk about and so little time.

“You look angry,” he said.

“I am,” she said. “Very angry. Lydia.”

“Want to talk about it?”

“No, but tell me about your mom and Mai? How did they take it?”

“I didn't tell them yet.”

Alice pulled over. “You didn't tell them?” It was the first time she had ever shouted at Nickson, and she quickly checked herself. She'd save that tone of voice for that bitch Lydia. If she ever talked to her again.

“I'm not ready to tell them.” He wouldn't look at Alice.

“But you told Mai.”

“Didn't tell her either.”

“I don't understand,” said Alice. “I really don't understand. You two tell each other everything. Don't tell me you're afraid of your sister. She worships the ground you walk on. You could tell her anything and she wouldn't reject you. I know that much. I've seen you two. There's nothing you wouldn't do for each other.”

“She's a good sister.” He still wasn't looking at Alice, and she could tell how hard it was for him to be telling her what he was saying.

“So tell me. Why haven't you told her?”

“She'd tell my mom.”

“So tell Mai not to tell your mom until you're ready to tell her.”

“I don't think she could do that. It would come out.”

“I just don't understand.”

“I know it,” said Nickson. “What about your folks?”

“Predictable,” said Alice. “My dad took it all right until he talked to my mom. My mother, well, you can guess where she's coming from. My getting pregnant is all part of her idea of how everything is going to get worse and worse as we get closer to the millennium. My dad just caves in to her and does what she says, so now they both want me to go to a home for unwed mothers. They don't want me to ever see you again. And now that bitch Lydia.”

Alice drove on to the Vang house. All of her movements with the 150 were stiff and sharp, but when she drove up to the Vangs' house, she said, “I don't want you to get out. You're not even out of the car and I miss you already.”

“There's something I have to tell you,” said Nickson.

Alice's mind, her heart, were ready for a deepening announcement of his love. The sincerity in his eyes. “What is it?”

“Two things.”

Getting ready to tell her showed no struggle in his expression, but he did look serious, with his brow wrinkling and his dark eyes studying the empty space between them.

“I'm older than sixteen. Probably nineteen or so. There were some pretty mixed-up years in there.”

Alice nodded. “All right,” she said. “You said you might be older, but that's still only two years difference. You're wiser than sixteen.”

“Other thing is I've done some pretty bad stuff. Never been arrested, but I could have been. I have some money I shouldn't have.”

“Drugs ?”

He nodded.

“From around here?”

He nodded.

“You knew those guys who beat you up?”

“No. They thought I was somebody else, just like everybody figured. But I did some pretty big deals in September.”

“You're a drug dealer?”

“No. Not really. I just carried money from one place and drugs to another place.”

“This sort of thing is happening in Dutch Center?”

“Oh yeah. I'm not doing it anymore. Not going to either. Everything changed when I started seeing you. I'll never do anything like that again. But I've got some money.”

“This is hard to believe. This doesn't sound like you.”

“I did it for Mom. She's not making much. It doesn't bother her if your church keeps giving us stuff, but it bothers me.”

Of course. This sounded like the Nickson she understood and loved. He would never do anything illegal because he was selfish. He did it for the ones he loved. So he had been a drug and drug-money runner, a person who risked his life between two parties, neither of whom could be trusted. He risked his life for his family.

It had all happened in September. Nickson had kept his secret by being the one who bought the groceries and who made the bank deposits. When he bought groceries, he bought far more than the money his mother gave him could have paid for. When he made bank deposits with checks from Variety Paradise, he gave his mother cash and said this had been withheld from the checks he deposited in the bank. He had, in fact, always given her as much cash as he had deposited in their account. The Vangs now had three thousand dollars in the bank and another two thousand dollars hidden in Lia's sewing room.