We Can Only Save Ourselves Page 18

  “Kathryn, you know what I feel like right now?” Wesley said. “Go get the good shit. We’ll all take some and calm down.”

  Kathryn stood up, and Apple did too. “Not me,” said Apple. “You never take as much as the rest of us, and then you get to say and do whatever you want.”

  “It’s fun,” Janie said to her. “We always get to do whatever we want too.”

  “We can dance,” said Alice. “You like to dance. And Wesley will play for us. Maybe Hannah Fay can bake us a cake for after.” It was nearly ten, a little late for baking, but Hannah Fay nodded. “See?”

  “I’ll go get it,” said Kathryn.

  Apple threw her arms up. “I already said no,” she said. “God! Are any of you paying attention? Go get it, Kathryn, because I know you will. But I’m going to bed.” She went inside the house without closing the screen door behind her, but it gently floated closed anyway.

  “Go on, please, Kathryn,” Wesley said.

  That night, even though they took Wesley’s little pills, there was no cake and no dancing. Each of them existed in their own strange world, and Wesley only played his guitar for a little while. He talked and talked without stopping, and Alice thought it was brilliant, everything he said, but when he finished, she couldn’t remember what the words had been, the thoughts they created when they came out of his mouth. The words themselves were too loose, like eels in a river.

  Later, he sent the other girls inside and he did fuck Alice after all. He pinned her underneath him by her wrists, his hands like tight cuffs or claws squeezing her bones, and she lay still in the grass and tried to project peace from her body, and finally he stopped, calm and spent, and Alice thought it had worked, impressed by what her body could give him. She imagined him calling her by her new name, whispering it into her ear, but all he said was, “Go inside.” His tone wasn’t kind or unkind, and truthfully Alice wanted to sleep in the house anyway, not in the yard with the vines like snakes hanging in the trees. As she crawled in bed next to Apple, she put her arms around the other girl and held her the rest of the night.

  The next day, no one discussed Apple’s outburst, and when Wesley suggested another trip a few days later, Apple joined in and they all danced. She kept her eyes closed the whole time.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  ALICE DID NOT know her neighbors at the bungalow. She only knew that the house across the street was occupied by two men she saw walking their dachshunds in the morning and the evening, and that Wesley said they were lovers. He always said it in a lisping way and with a little shi-shi shake of his shoulders. “Oh please,” Apple said once to Alice in a low voice. “Like Wesley hasn’t fucked some guys in his life.” This shocked Alice at first, but the more she thought about it, the more she could see it. Wesley was passionate, and he liked a bit of a fight sometimes, some muscle behind their lovemaking, telling Alice to push or pinch or pull at him, how she imagined he might be with another man.

  Sometimes Alice ended up bruised herself. When she did, she tried to wear clothes that revealed the purple and blue marks, so that the others would see how game she was, how willing to do what was desired. The marks reminded her of her mother’s eyeshadow, which she used to smudge on her body when she was a little girl. (Her mother remembers the makeup, too, how Alice would ask if she was a beautiful woman now and her mother would tell her that beautiful women only put that on their eyes and not their arms, their legs, their hands.)

  So the men with the dachshunds. Then to the left of the bungalow was a single dad and his little boy; Alice assumed the mother had died. There was an older woman—a grandmother, she thought—who came to stay with the boy after school. Wesley did not like the single dad either. “He needs to find a wife,” he said once. “Plus he looks at me funny every time I see him.”

  “Maybe that’s just his face,” Alice had joked.

  “He should get a new one, then,” Wesley said.

  Then on the other side of their bungalow was an older couple with the horrible dog. They drove a van even though it was only the two of them who lived there, and Alice liked them because they were both tiny people, almost elven, and the woman gardened in the afternoons and the man tinkered with his car on the weekends, flat on his back underneath it with only his legs sticking out, just like you saw on TV. She enjoyed seeing them outside together, each in their own private world within the world they had created together. Otherwise, she had no real basis for an opinion of them. She had never spoken to them other than the occasional hello.

  Wesley didn’t seem to have feelings about the couple, but he hated the dog. They all hated the dog, even Hannah Fay. She claimed the pregnancy had given her superhuman hearing powers, so that the dog’s bark sounded even louder to her. It was an average-size dog, and it looked like any old mutt you’d see in any yard in the world—sort of orange and sort of brown, a tail that permanently curved up like a scythe, two alert, triangular ears, a white spot on his chest shaped like a crest. His name was Charlie, which they only knew because they heard it shouted so often: “Charlie! Stop! Charlie! Be quiet!” In fact, it had become a joke around the house that whenever one of the girls was being too loud or obnoxious, someone would say “Charlie! Stop!”

  One evening they were all out in the backyard, and Wesley had just finished photographing the girls, this time in the kind of animal masks they sold at the zoo. Now he had pulled an old easel out of the garage and was flinging scarlet paint at a canvas from a foot away, which meant that barely any color made it onto the canvas, instead freckling the grass with red. Not long after they had crept into that first house, he had revealed he had a new plan to get his message out to the world, fuck that asshole who turned him down because he had found someone better, bigger—an art dealer this time, not just some stupid gallerist—and this time Wesley wouldn’t take no for an answer. He’d been weak with the last one; the last one could smell it on him, the weakness, but this time things would be different. Alice wondered who this new guy was, this bigger, better man, and though she would never admit it to any of the others, she felt herself wondering if there even was another person at all. But why would Wesley lie? She told herself he wouldn’t. “Big things are coming,” Wesley said, inhaling deeply. “It’s in the air.”

  So that night everyone, even Wesley, was a little stoned, and it had been so, so pleasant, and they had been dancing in bare feet, and then they’d found two badminton racquets and a dirty old birdie in the garage, and Alice and Janie were batting the birdie back and forth, laughing each time they swung. It was the easy kind of night when Wesley just wanted to paint and talk, and Apple was in a good mood, and Kathryn too. Kathryn wasn’t wearing her glasses, and when they were off, it was a little like she was drunk; Alice thought it might be that the world was just a bit unfamiliar to Kathryn, enough that she wasn’t quite herself either. They had hung a string of lights across the backyard, and Kathryn said they looked like tiny, fuzzy suns burning only for them. Alice crossed her eyes and looked at them and saw that Kathryn was right.

  Then the elven couple to the right opened their back door, and Charlie was out. He barked. Wesley stopped painting. The dog kept barking, and he seemed to be right up against the fence. He snuffled and barked. “Motherfucker,” said Wesley, fingers tightening around the paintbrush.

  “It’s not even that he’s so loud,” said Apple.

  “But he is,” said Hannah Fay. “He’s so loud.”

  “It’s the pitch, though.” Apple rubbed at her temples. “It’s like it’s some frequency that God designed to punish us.”

  “Too bad Wesley burned his cassock,” said Alice, “or else he could forgive us for whatever sins we committed to deserve Charlie.”

  “I’m so sick of this fucking dog,” Wesley said. He dropped his paintbrush into the grass, walked over to the fence, and pounded against the wood with his fist. “Shut up,” he yelled. He kicked the fence and yelled again. On the other side, Charlie yelped and then continued to bark. The girls watched, A
lice and Janie standing side by side holding the delicate racquets, Kathryn waiting for direction, Apple sitting in the chair Wesley had just vacated.

  “Whoa, whoa, we’ll get it figured out,” said Hannah Fay, putting her hands on his shoulders. “We can talk to them. They’re sweet people. They won’t want you to be upset.”

  At Hannah Fay’s touch, or perhaps the gentle nudge of her stomach against his back, Wesley’s shoulders relaxed and he took a step away from the fence. Charlie barked, as if he could sense the retreat. “Fine,” said Wesley, turning to face her. “Get rid of it.”

  “Me?” asked Hannah Fay, looking around and lowering her voice. “Get rid of the dog?”

  “Anyone,” said Wesley. He looked past her to Alice and the others. “I don’t care who, but someone needs to take one for the team.”

  In Wesley’s chair, Apple straightened up. “Just so we’re clear, you don’t mean killing it, right?” she asked. She said killing it in a dramatic stage whisper. “You mean opening the door and letting it out.”

  “That’s one way to do it,” Wesley said, already walking back toward the house. Apple hopped up from the chair in case he wanted to sit, but Wesley didn’t stop until he got to the back door. Then, his hand on the knob, he turned around and said, “Get it done. I can’t get involved. I can’t take a scandal at this stage.” And he went inside, shutting the door behind him. Charlie barked.

  Apple sat back down in the chair. “This might come as a shock to you,” she said, “but I’m an animal lover, and I don’t think I can get behind letting this dog out.”

  “For Wesley, though,” said Janie. “Well, all of us really. The whole street!”

  “All of mankind!” said Alice. Janie tossed the shuttlecock in the air and swatted it toward Alice, who caught it in one hand. For a second she imagined it as an actual bird, and she closed her fingers around it and squeezed before uncurling them and picturing it flying away.

  “I can’t do it either,” said Hannah Fay. “I’m conspicuous.”

  Kathryn stepped forward. She was wearing her glasses again, and the reflection of the string lights twinkled in the lenses. “I’ll do it,” she said. “It’s no big deal.”

  “He’s man’s best friend, Kathryn,” said Apple.

  Kathryn shrugged. “Our family dog bit me when I was four. I have a scar on my calf.” Alice had noticed it. It looked like a zipper.

  “You can’t do it by yourself,” Alice said. She tossed the birdie at Janie, who swung and missed, and it sailed deep into the bushes. “I’ll help.”

  “Did Kathryn’s family dog bite you too?” Apple asked.

  Alice ignored her. She couldn’t think too much about the elven couple, but maybe they didn’t like the dog either. Maybe he belonged to a deceased family member, and they’d had to take him in. Maybe they would be relieved. They could get a new dog who was nicer, quieter. Besides, like Janie said, it was for Wesley. “When should we do it?” she asked. As she spoke, she felt overcome by the thought that she was the one meant to join Kathryn in this mission. It couldn’t be anyone else.

  Kathryn walked over to the easel, picking up the brush Wesley had dropped in the grass, and looked thoughtfully toward the fence. “We need to do some recon on their schedules,” she said. “I imagine they do the same things every week. Maybe even every day. And we shouldn’t talk about it out here.” Charlie barked.

  “Like anyone could hear you over this fucking dog,” Apple said loudly.

  “Alice,” Kathryn said, “tomorrow I need you to monitor. Maybe even make contact with the owners but only if you can play it cool.”

  Alice nodded. “I’m very cool.”

  “Is everyone laughing at me?” Kathryn asked, looking around. “What’s so funny?”

  “I’ll do the monitoring,” Alice said. “I promise. But can’t we just open the front door at some point and let him run out?”

  “That won’t work,” Kathryn said. “He’ll just come back when he’s hungry.”

  “What if,” Apple suggested thoughtfully, “Janie and I had the van out in front of the house? You and Alice herd the dog out the door and into the van. I’ll drive it away. How hard can it be?”

  “We should do more than that,” said Kathryn. “I just don’t know what. We need to wake the people up.”

  “No, no, no, no,” said Apple. “Wesley wants you to be discreet. This is not like the other stuff.”

  “Fine,” said Kathryn. “Whatever. I’m going to bed. Someone move the easel back in the garage, please.”

  “She is a certified lunatic,” Janie said admiringly, once Kathryn was inside. “I love it.”

  “She doesn’t have any outlet,” said Hannah Fay. “She’s at work all day. Let her play army commander if that will make her happy.”

  “She’s going to end up smearing a message in blood on the walls,” Apple said. “‘We killed your dog.’”

  “No one’s killing anything!” Alice protested. “And no one is smearing blood on any walls.”

  “Just make sure Kathryn’s on the same page,” Apple said.

  “Imagine her coming home with blood all over her hands,” said Alice. She spread her fingers wide and turned them over and over again, looking at them in mock horror like Lady Macbeth. “Out, damned spot,” she said.

  “His name isn’t Spot,” said Janie. “It’s Charlie.”

  Alice and Apple looked at each other and laughed, and Alice refigured the evolving picture of Apple before that she kept in her head: a girl with field hockey legs and a bad attitude, sitting in an advanced English 4 class just like any other girl Alice would have known back home, and Alice felt herself soften toward her friend, who was, in the end, like her after all.

  Next door, Charlie continued to bark.

  “I’m off to bed,” said Alice. “I need to rest up for my long day of espionage tomorrow.”

  The girls told her good night, and Alice slipped back inside. She wanted to find Wesley, but when she called for him, he didn’t answer. She poked her head in Hannah Fay’s study, stepped outside onto the front porch, and finally paused in front of Kathryn’s closed door, where she heard an unmistakable, familiar sound: Wesley’s harried breathing, small and hungry noises coming from a girl, Alice knew, beneath him. She stood there for a full minute, palm flat against the door like she might push it open, and listened. She had never understood the appeal of Kathryn to Wesley, who was so handsome, so dynamic and smart, but listening at the door, it occurred to her Kathryn brought an intensity with her to everything. Alice imagined that in bed, the physicality of it. She thought of how far removed Kathryn could seem from her feelings and how that might appeal to Wesley too. Kathryn didn’t care about being typical, comfortable, safe, all the things Wesley disdained.

  How different than Alice, who felt everything, everything in both places, her body and her heart. She wondered what it would be like to cut one out. The heart, she thought. She imagined herself, strangely, uncomfortably, as Kathryn right now in bed with Wesley and closed her eyes and leaned against the door. She would try it, next time Wesley chose her. Or better: she could take the best from each of the girls, their very finest quality, and make it her own. The no-nonsense physicality of Kathryn, the challenge of Apple, Hannah Fay’s gentleness, Janie’s optimism. Maybe, Alice thought, this was why Wesley had to keep them all. Together, they made someone perfect, the only kind of person Wesley deserved, but if anyone could embody all the attributes of Wesley’s perfect girl, it was Alice Lange.

  She heard voices in the house, and she leapt away from Kathryn’s door and darted onto the couch in the living room, where she closed her eyes and pretended to sleep. The girls shushed each other as they walked around her, and Alice listened to the familiar sounds of their bedtime routines: Hannah Fay washing her face, Janie eating a handful of cereal in the kitchen before brushing her teeth, Apple locking the back door, then the front door. Alice kept her eyes shut.

  Outside, Charlie barked until his owners called h
im back inside, and the street went quiet again.

  For three days, Kathryn went to work and Alice sat outside on the front porch and monitored the comings and goings of the couple next door. When Wesley was home, he would sit outside with her, his legs spread wide, strong and sturdy as tree trunks. He kept up a constant run of conversation the whole time, only occasionally turning his head toward Alice as he spoke. Otherwise he mostly kept his eyes on the street ahead, and she thought he must only be seeing whatever passed directly in front of him: the two men walking their dogs, a man on a bicycle who dinged his bell at them as he passed, the blue trash truck rumbling past, which made Charlie bark; they could hear him even though he was inside.

  Keeping his voice low, Wesley talked a little about the dog, the neighbors, the other girls. What interested Alice most (and what interested us most, too, because who doesn’t like to hear about themselves, how other people see them—isn’t this very thing Wesley’s trick with the camera?) was what Wesley had to say about the day he met Alice. About what he saw in her before he really knew her, about the neighborhood, about us. “Sometimes I know where I’m going and why,” he said. “Like with Janie. I knew exactly what would happen and who she was, so I took my time. I didn’t want to startle her. Like a deer in the woods. You know I thought about naming her Bambi? It was almost right, but it wasn’t. It wasn’t right enough.

  “But with you, I ended up in your neighborhood because someone needed a man to do a job, a friend of a friend, and I didn’t want to go because it was so far from here, and the truck was acting up, but we were low on money, and I knew I had to. I wasn’t even going to bring my camera, but a voice inside told me I needed to, and I grabbed it on my way out the door.

  “Did you go to church when you were a little girl? My aunt took me a few times, but every time I didn’t want to do something, she would tell me the story about Jonah and the big fish. She never said whale. She always said fish. God wanted Jonah to go somewhere, and he didn’t want to, and he ran away, and God sent the big fish to eat him, and he ended up right back where he didn’t want to go. So my aunt would say, if it’s right, you’re going to have to do it one way or another. Or else a big fish is going to eat me? I asked. And she said yes, or something like that, but even then I knew eventually I’d be so big, nothing could eat me. But I don’t know, I thought about that fish that day, and I ended up in your neighborhood. It’s nice. I pictured myself there. Not me, not who I am right now, but another version of me. Me if my life were different.” (Alice nodded. This was how she had begun to feel in the last days before she left. Another Alice, a different Alice—different only to her; to us, this would have been the Alice we always saw, the one we thought we knew. We try to hold both versions of Alice, but it was hard then, and knowing what we now know, it is harder still, and we must admit that only one Alice existed, and the one we saw was only a fabrication, a story we told ourselves.)