The Fall of Alice K. (48 page)

“Maybe you've learned something,” said her mother. “So have I. I had to go there. I had to live the ending. Oh, the Spam and pork and beans. You probably looked at the books I had.”

“You were taking Valium.”

“Except for the dozen you stole from me.”

“You were fighting anxiety or something. You weren't constructing a metaphor. Let me tell you straight-out, Mother. You are a weird person. I am not the only person who thinks so. Everybody knows you're not normal. You always say you're a realist? Does a realist fantasize the end of the world?”

“Fantasize ?”

“Isn't that what you were doing? You're not stupid like some of the wackos around here, but don't pretend you're normal. You're not, Mother. You're not a normal person.”

“As you wish. I see humility has not exactly slapped you across the face yet. I'm not sure what it will take.”

“Why are you all dressed up?”

“To welcome the new millennium. And to welcome Aldah for the weekend. She has shown so much improvement. That was one of the best ideas we ever had. She has shown so much progress after the years of darkness. This is a dawning for her too.”

Alice's need to confront or challenge her mother was gone. If this new freedom she was feeling was really a hardening of her heart, was this hardening a breastplate of security? It didn't feel like a breastplate of faith, but perhaps faith was nothing less than an absence of fear.

47

Lydia was getting responses from the many colleges where she had applied—including Princeton, Stanford, Yale, and McGill in Canada—and she had already gotten one notice of early admission. Her scores on all entry tests “were off the charts.” Lydia was hoping to have a double major, one in history and one in political science. Miss Den Harmsel seemed to know what direction Lydia would be heading before Lydia realized it herself.

Alice had applied to the big places too, but she hadn't followed up on any of them. Some letters that might have been acceptances were lying unopened in her room. She had not yet admitted to herself that by not making any decisions, circumstances would make them for her. If she waited until spring, there was really only one place where she could be assured of acceptance at such a late date, and she knew that place was Redemption. Alice knew that her academic achievements were not a secret and that she could probably be admitted to Redemption with little more than a phone call. She had looked at their catalog and found her eye moving to their major in elementary education.

Alice looked for her mother's Valium but couldn't find the bottle. Her mother was certainly still taking them, and hiding them was probably one more way that she could torment Alice.

The direct approach might set a new precedent, so Alice simply asked her: “Mom, I'm sorry I took those Valium without your permission but I sure could use some.”

“You're addicted,” said her mother.

“Me ? You're the one who's addicted.”

“I'll give you one, but if you think you need another one you'll have to see a doctor.”

She had the bottle of Valium in her pocket. She deposited one in Alice's outstretched hand and put the bottle back in her pocket.

Alice split the Valium in half and washed the half tablet down.

When she felt the tension leaving her shoulders and neck, it scared her. Not feeling pain at the absence of Nickson was an insult to their love. She should have been weeping and beating the walls. She didn't feel like weeping and beating the walls. She should have been planning a way to withdraw her money and go off to Saint Paul. She didn't feel like withdrawing her money and going off to Saint Paul. She lay in her room staring at the ceiling. Still no anger. Maybe the anger will come as an aftershock when I least expect it, she thought.

Then she had a feeling that she could only think of as admiration for the Vangs. Those people know how to make a decision and stick with it, she thought. They've been through so much, there's probably nothing on earth that can hurt them.

Was Nickson lying on a bed in Saint Paul, weeping because he was not with her? She didn't think so. Did she love him? Yes, and he probably loved her too, but something even bigger than their love had a grip on him now. There's something ruthless about that, she thought.

When Alice pondered her own life of the past few months—starting with the hailstorm through the steadily dripping news of their farm's problems, through her love for Nickson, the pregnancy and loss of it, through her father's health and the dead end to which her life had come, she wondered why she was not feeling total despair. If anything, the pain of it all was diminishing as fast as it had come upon her. It was not as if she thought that Rev. Prunesma might have been right when he told her that “love doesn't happen that fast.” If the love she had felt for Nickson wasn't the real thing, what would the real thing look and feel like ? She couldn't picture it, and within that emptiness there should have been waves of profound sadness, but there weren't. Even as part of her mind told her she should be feeling worse, she could feel an optimism hatching like a mayfly from the dark waters of her heart and whispering gracefully into the air. She did not know where the good feeling came from, and she did not know how to name it. It was bigger than anything Valium or marijuana or Shakespeare or Emily Dickinson could ever give.

As she imagined her own future, she saw a grade school teacher. She saw the earnest face of Miss Den Harmsel in her own face. She saw a room full of delighted faces.

When Alice picked up Aldah from Children's Care, the sight of her dear sister's face did awaken an old and tender feeling. Yes, she thought, the breastplate of love. Aldah would be a good beginning to the new millennium.

When Alice and Aldah got home, Aldah looked at her parents as if they were strangers and promptly asked Alice to take her back outside. Her father seemed to understand that Aldah was moving toward an independence that made him less necessary for her welfare or happiness. He walked over to her, bent down, and told her how big she was getting—which was a strange kind of lie because she had lost weight. Still, her father probably knew that the compliment was appropriate because Aldah had clearly grown in other ways.

Their mother looked at Aldah too but in no way showed any disturbance over the fact that Aldah showed no interest in her.

Aldah was eager to tell Alice about what she had been doing in Children's Care.

“I can read words,” she said.

“Of course you can, my special person.”

“I can fold clothes like this,” she said, and placed one hand over the other.

“Of course you can,” said Alice. “I am very proud of you.”

“Yes,” said Aldah.

Aldah didn't have anything she needed to tell or demonstrate to her parents.

“Come,” said Aldah, and coaxed Alice to go outside with her. It was freezing cold, but they walked around the farmyard looking at the items that had been prepared for the sale.

Aldah understood that all the items on display, from the tractors and wagons to the hoses and wrenches laid out on flatbed wagons, were going to be sold, and that they wouldn't be on the Krayenbraak farm any longer.

“Good-bye,” said Aldah to the John Deere 4440.

“Yes, good-bye, tractor,” said Alice.

Aldah turned to the hog house. “Good-bye,” she said. Then she looked at the Krayenbraak house and waved at it. “Good-bye,” she said.

“No, not the house,” said Alice. “Mother and Father and I will still live in the house.”

“Good-bye,” said Aldah.

“The 150 will be here!” said Alice. “Don't you think it needs some cleaning up, our 150?”

Her father was not required to sell it as part of the farm sale, but he didn't want it standing out there like a dirty sore thumb, indicating to buyers that they were sloppy and therefore not worthy of their serious attention on all the items they did have for sale. Aldah understood that washing the 150 on that terribly cold day was something she could do with Alice and Alice only. They were going to “make it shiny.” It was so very cold, but Aldah was also so very brave, setting to work with Alice, all bundled up with her thick mittens on, the yellow leather ones with the furry insides. She loved those mittens because when she held up her hands her fingers weren't there, just these two big paws.

“Paws! Paws!” she shouted as she waved them in the air.

She watched as Alice scrubbed down the 150—and there it was, like a bright red tulip blooming in winter, made brighter by the conspiracy of sunshine and cold—cold to give it the polish of a thin layer of ice, and sunshine to magnify the luster of everything. Aldah wanted to go for a ride when they had finished the job, go for a ride in “shiny one-fifty.”

“Yes, we'll go for a ride,” said Alice.

“Far away,” said Aldah.

“Not so far,” said Alice.

“I am your mommy,” said Aldah.

“No, no, Aldah, you are my sister. I am your sister. We are sisters.”

“You are my sister, I am your mommy,” she said.

“No, Aldah, our mommy is your mommy.”

“I am your mommy,” said Aldah and stamped her foot.

“Let's get in the pickup,” said Alice, but when she tried to open the door, it was frozen shut. She walked around to the door on the other side, the side that had the full exposure to the sunlight on the south, but even there the ice had a firm grip.

“All stuck,” said Aldah.

“All stuck.”

“Come,” she said, and reached out her big-mittened paw. “Read to me.”

“All right,” said Alice. “One story.”

“I am your mommy,” she said.

“No, no. I am your sister.”

“No, I am your mommy,” she said in a sassy, defiant voice.

They returned to the house and Alice did read to the smiling pleasure of her sister. In a few moments her eyes closed and her gentle snoring began. Alice was about to get an extra blanket for her sister, but then realized someone had turned up the thermostat and the temperature was a toasty seventy-four degrees.

No one, especially Rev. Prunesma, had ever told Alice that when Seekers stop seeking and try to become Dwellers they plunge into another desperation and another struggle. Alice felt that desperation now when she admitted to herself that she would not be joining Lydia in a grand intellectual journey in a prestigious university. She would not have that struggle, but she would have this one.

Her mother stood in the living room door dressed in her sleek and tight black dress, one that looked too feminine for church and too formal for home. A silver necklace glistened around her neck, her hair had been carefully coifed, and she had a slight smile on her face, one that Alice recognized as the grin her mother wore when she thought she had won an argument.

Acknowledgments

Special thanks to Mai Neng Moua, Blong Yang, and Chao Xiong for their patient and thoughtful assistance on Hmong culture and language. Any errors or misrepresentations are entirely mine. Special thanks also to Professor Herman De Vries, Stacey Knecht, and Maikel van de Mortel for their help with the Dutch language.

 

I want to thank Sarah T. Williams, Eric Goodman, and Josip Novakovitch for reading and critiquing early drafts and to the many other people who offered advice and encouragement along the way or provided crucial information, especially Cleo Granneman, Rob De Haan, James Schaap, Tobias Wolff, Bill Ransom, Willie Heynen, Dan Buyert, Owen Petersen, Daryll Vander Koii, Steve Mowry, and Drs. Jim McCarron and Doug Kurata.

 

Thanks to Dykstra Dairy for the informative tour of their facilities and to the Sioux Center, Iowa public library and librarians for directing me to historical materials on the early Dutch inhabitants of Northwest Iowa. Thanks also to the highly informed members of the Iowa Environmental Council.

 

For providing me residencies with space and time to write, I want to thank Robert Hedin and the Anderson Center in Red Wing, Minnesota, and Centrum Foundation at Fort Worden in Port Townsend, Washington; I am grateful to Greg Booth and Vickie Kettlewell for the use of the ranch-hand house at Sunup Ranch and to the Williams family for use of the “Writer's Cottage” on Lake Fredenberg.

Jim Heynen was born on a farm in Northwest Iowa. He currently lives in St. Paul, Minnesota, with his wife, Sarah T. Williams.

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