“Henry, I think you might be hyperventilating.”
He trips again but Alice catches him, sort of, or at least manages to ease him down to the curb.
“Henry, it’s okay. Just try to take one deep breath.”
“Alice,” he manages to choke out—
“What ?”
“When you kissed me . . .”
She looks down at her feet. Not a good sign. He braces himself.
“When you kissed me . . . Was it . . .?”
“Was it what?”
“A mistake?” he asks.
“No, I mean—”
“—Are you sorry?”
“No. I didn’t think—”
“Because I didn’t mean—”
“I know.”
“No, you don’t know,” he says. “You startled me and—”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry. Please don’t be sorry. What I mean is—”
“What?”
“I didn’t have a chance—”
“A chance to what?”
“A chance to kiss you back . . . And last night, when I was holding you, just holding you—”
“Henry, don’t.”
“Don’t what?”
“Don’t ask me.”
“I don’t want to ask you, I want to kiss you.”
“Don’t ask me.”
“Don’t . . . ?”
And she is looking at him with her deep, newly fathomless eyes that are shining with something that is not tears and not joy, but is still urgent and unreadable, and he wants to think about what Alice is feeling but all he can think about is what he is feeling. Is this what her mother was talking about this morning, that lifetime ago? It is not careful or considerate or cautious; it is a rush that’s propelling him, terrified that he could lose her forever, terrified that this could be his only chance, terrified that whatever happens in this moment cannot be taken back or erased or made right once it happens, that if he stumbles here, somehow that is who he is and who he will be forever and ever.
He looks down at his hands dangling between his knees, and suddenly it is all quiet inside of him. Too quiet, like all the air has been squeezed out of him and he is nothing but a shell. He can hear the breeze in the trees overhead; he can hear the traffic on Baird Road.
Alice kneels in front of him. She puts her hands on either side of his face.
“I don’t want anything else to change, Henry.”
“It won’t change.”
“It will.”
“But . . .”
“I can’t lose one more thing.”
He can’t hear her, really; he can’t hear anything but this new roaring in his ears when she is so close to him, and he pulls her to him, too fiercely, they nearly collide, he pulls her to him and for a second, looks into her eyes, her unreadable eyes. He closes his own eyes and with a prayer, a wish, a pure incantation of fear and desire, he kisses her. And this time there is no mistaking it, their lips actually touch. It is equally shocking as the first time, but they do not stumble and jerk and pull away.
Instead, Alice bursts into tears. These are not girly tears pulled out and turned on for effect, not that Alice is that kind of girl; these are racking, hiccupping, blubbering sobs. Henry has one wild, terrible moment where he thinks his kiss has caused these desperate feelings, before Alice leans into him and holds on to him and sobs and sobs into his shoulder.
He manages to stand up and pull her to her feet and hand her his handkerchief, which his mother had not only thought to provide but had carefully ironed that afternoon.
“It’s not you,” she chokes out, before burying her face in his handkerchief again. “It’s everything.”
Henry knows that everything is her dad and that her dad is everything, which is not exactly the way he feels about his own dad, and if anything, if it is even possible, this fills him further to the brim with Alice feelings.
And while it is true that Henry is nothing but a gangly fifteen-year-old boy, often sloppy, occasionally rude, with marginal hygiene habits, it is also true that he is still in possession of his own heart, his own inspired, musical, untouched heart, a heart capable of taking on Alice and her sadness and her loss and her love. So, on this night, when Alice pours out her grief for her father and her love for her father, and the ending of her time on earth with her father, it is Henry she chooses, Henry she pours these feelings into, Henry she blesses and burdens with her tears, Henry who has the strength of ten men as he stands up and stands steady beneath this onslaught that has knocked lesser men and boys to their knees.
May 8th
They are waiting on the airport tarmac for Angie and the military escort and the coffin to be unloaded from the plane. There is a special place at the airport for this, away from the main terminal. Alice is sitting in the front seat next to Uncle Eddie. Gram and Ellie are in the back. The hearse from Mahoney and Sons waits behind them. No one is talking. It is gray and cool, threatening rain. Good for the garden, Alice thinks, though we could use some sun.
A uniformed soldier follows Angie down the stairs as the hold of the plane is opened from the inside. She is wearing her glasses, Alice notices, even though she’s dressed up. Maybe she wants to hide her eyes.
Six soldiers stand with the coffin on their shoulders. Alice had expected a flag, but the coffin is bare. Angie is directed to a place near the hold. The soldier following her stands nearby. The funeral director appears at Uncle Eddie’s window.
“They’re waiting for us. Just walk up and stand beside Mrs. Bliss.” They pile out of the car and cross the gritty tarmac to stand beside Angie as Matt’s coffin is carried down the stairs. The single soldier turns toward the coffin and executes a very precise, slow-motion salute. Alice steps forward. The funeral director reaches out a hand to pull her back and Alice realizes they were not supposed to stop; they were not going to wait for her to meet her father, to acknowledge his return. Their job is simply to convey the coffin across the parking lot and into the waiting hearse. But they do stop for her, each in his dress uniform, each with his eyes front.
“Are you from my father’s unit?”
“No.”
“Did any of you know him?”
“No. I’m sorry.”
Gram steps forward.
“Come on, honey.”
Alice stands her ground. She turns to the single, saluting soldier.
“Did you know my father?”
He shakes his head. She turns back to the coffin.
“Can you put the coffin down, please?”
There is hesitation all around, subtle shifts in the soldier’s bodies, as they cannot break rank and look at each other. Alice chooses one soldier to speak to.
“Can you just let him touch the ground, please?”
The wind picks up; sand and dust swirl around their feet. It is possible that the soldier could choose to let the wind blow Alice’s words away, but she is standing firm and speaking clearly and looking him in the face even though he cannot meet her eyes.
He speaks a brief command, and then, moving as one, the soldiers lower the coffin to the ground and take a step away. She kneels beside the coffin and lays one hand on the smooth wood. She wants a moment for her father to land on the ground, for his body to arrive here, at home. She does not want her father’s soul to be lost in Iraq or in a plane flying above the ocean or somewhere in an army hospital in Delaware. She wants his soul to come home, however briefly,
home
, before it goes on whatever journey a soul must take, and she doesn’t believe this is possible if he never actually touches the ground. If she could she would open the coffin and put his feet on the ground, but this is the best she can do.
Angie reaches out to take her hand, pulling Alice to her feet, releasing the soldiers. They lift the coffin to their shoulders, walk the last steps to the hearse, and slide the coffin into the waiting bay.
They all wait where they are until the hearse starts up. The soldiers remain at attention while the family piles back into the car and slowly drives off, following the hearse. Ellie kneels on the seat and watches out the back window. Not one soldier moves a muscle while she can still see them. Uncle Eddie takes the turn onto Columbus Avenue too fast and Ellie slides into a seated position in between Alice and Gram. Angie puts her head back against the headrest and closes her eyes. She is as pale as the moon.
Gram reaches up and strokes Angie’s hair. Alice notices that Gram’s hand is trembling. Gram, realizing what Alice has seen, shifts to rest her hand on Angie’s shoulder.
“We’ll get through this,” Gram says.
Angie clasps Gram’s hand, and Alice sees that she is wearing Matt’s wedding ring on her second finger. When did they give that to her? In the morgue? Was it in a small plastic bag or an envelope? Did she slip it off his finger herself? Did they let her touch him? Why did Angie go alone, why didn’t she take Gram or Uncle Eddie with her, why did she refuse to let Alice come along?
Why are all of these things happening so quickly? There is too much to do, there are too many steps to take, no, no, there is not enough to do, she sees now; it will all go by too fast, it is out of her hands, it will all happen whether she wants it to or not, and he will be gone, truly gone, dead and buried, and there will not even be this, this strange hollow awkwardness, this unnatural quiet to fill up the emptiness he has left behind.
“Home?” Uncle Eddie asks.
“Mom, where are Dad’s dog tags?” Alice asks.
“Home,” Angie answers, touching her throat and the metal chain under her shirt collar.
“Can I have them?” Ellie asks. “Alice has his watch.”
“Not now, girls.”
They ride in silence, a terrible brittle silence. The air of the car is so full of unspoken feelings Alice is surprised the windows don’t blow out. She wants to shout or jump on the seat or scream; instead she opens the window to try to release the pressure. If they weren’t traveling I-90 at seventy miles an hour, she would stick her head out the window; her head, her torso, her arms, her legs, and suddenly she is fantasizing about jumping out of the car window, landing on the pavement, being hit by a car . . . Jesus! Where the hell did that come from? She can’t bear to think about the autopsy. But what about his spirit, Alice wonders? Where is it? Can she touch it, reach it, capture it like a firefly in a bottle? She doesn’t believe that. And even if she could believe it, even if his spirit is still alive and even if she could find it somehow, know where to look or what to say, if she could still talk to him; even then, it’s not enough. She wants all of him back, his face, his body, his voice, his big feet, his laugh, his patience, his impatience. She even wants him correcting her math tests, making her mad, holding her to a higher standard, holding her to seemingly impossible standards all the time. She wants him back, that’s all.
She starts to cry. She looks down at her hands, suddenly wet with tears. She tries to stop, but this silent weeping seems to be beyond her volition. As long as his body was still moving, she thinks, he was somehow still alive.
Ellie releases her seat belt and climb’s into Alice’s lap. She snuggles under Alice’s chin as Alice’s arms go around her. She insinuates her little hands right around Alice’s neck as she shifts her head to Alice’s shoulder.
Alice closes her eyes and breathes in Ellie, her clean hair, her compact little kid body, her clattering runaway heartbeat, her perfect shell ears. She rests her cheek on top of Ellie’s head and turns to look out the window. She closes her eyes against the day; she tries to let Ellie anchor her, hold her to the earth, when all of Alice just wants to let go, stop breathing, and float away into the sky, to let go of this life and to find her father, wherever he is.
They have left Matt’s body at the funeral parlor, dropped him off like delivering a package, and driven home, where they all scatter to their own corners: Angie to unpack and lie down, Gram to the restaurant, Ellie to visit Janna for the first time in days, Uncle Eddie to the garage. And Alice, where does Alice go?
She is furious that they have to leave Matt in yet another place that is not where he belongs; where he is being taken care of by strangers, or worse, stacked among the dead and left alone.
Alice heads out the back door and past the workshop to the garden. She does not pick up a tool. If she had a tool in her hand, she thinks, she would wipe out every plant in front of her. If she had a tool in her hand, she would knock down the workshop or smash the windows in the car. She briefly thinks of which tool would be best for smashing the car windows. The mattock, probably, or the ax.
She kneels at the first row, the beets, the hell with the mud and the nice khakis her grandmother insisted she wear to the airport, and she begins to weed the row and thin the seedlings. She always hated thinning until her father said fine, and they conducted an experiment. Two rows of carrots, one thinned, one left alone. And Alice saw for herself the result of overcrowding and lack of nutrients. Now she is an expert at this.
The earth is cool and damp and it has begun to drizzle. The sky is a dull oyster gray, almost the color of a sky threatening to snow, though it is much too mild for snow. Still she is cold, with a chill that seems to come from inside of her.
She puts both hands flat on the ground and leans on them. She wants to find her father here in his garden. She wants to believe something, anything, about an afterlife. She wants him to slam out of the backdoor, the way he always does, calling out to her, telling her the plan for the day.
But the door doesn’t slam. Her father does not call out to her.
She peels off her jacket, trades her khakis for running shorts, her muck boots for sneakers, and heads out for a run. It begins to rain in earnest. At first Alice listens to the rain, the hiss of the water under the tires of passing cars, and beneath that, the dead silence without her father and his voice in her head. She wants to run until her heart explodes. A funny way to die.